A number of pundits have pointed out that Donald Trump is a prime example of projection; that when he accuses someone of bad behavior, it is almost always behavior in which he, himself, has engaged. His current effort to get Red states to redistrict mid-cycle is a perfect example. Ever since he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Trump has insisted that he couldn’t possibly have lost “fair and square,” that the election had been rigged. So, in typical Trump fashion, he is engaging in an effort to rig the upcoming midterms.
As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has recently written,
Texas Republicans are in the midst of making their state even more of a mockery of the concept of representative democracy than it already was. In an attempt to preserve the GOP’s narrow House majority in the 2026 midterms, lawmakers are tinkering with the boundaries of the state’s 38 congressional districts to create five more safe Republican seats, forcing several Democratic incumbents to seek re-election next year in districts that are suddenly, alarmingly red. Scrambling the map in this manner would ensure that in a state in which Trump earned 56 percent of the vote in 2024, Republicans would lock up 80 percent of the state’s representation in Congress for the rest of the decade.
The effort to give Republican candidates unearned advantages isn’t limited to Texas–Trump is currently leaning on other Red states, notably Florida and Indiana–to engage in the same gerrymandering, which he clearly believes will forestall a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives. (He really shouldn’t be so confident; in a special election just last Tuesday, a Democrat won a seat in the Iowa legislature with 55% of the vote–in a district that Trump had carried by 11 points. But recognition of nuance and complexity aren’t among Trump’s very limited intellectual skills.)
As Marshall quite correctly notes, “you can draw a straight line between this frantic gerrymandering arms race and a mind-bendingly stupid decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.” That “mind-bendingly stupid decision” was a 5-4 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause, a 2019 case in which the five Republican justices held that partisan gerrymanders are a “political question”—that is, an issue that must be left to the democratic process. “Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that the Constitution yields no workable standard for determining when a given gerrymander goes too far to be legal.”
In what is, in my view, still one of the most embarrassing paragraphs to appear in the pages of the United States Reporter, Roberts wraps in Rucho by noting that the holding constrains only federal courts; Congress, he says, would remain free to enact anti-gerrymandering legislation, as would lawmakers at the state level. The argument here is that voters who are dissatisfied with corruption in the political process don’t actually need John Roberts’s help, because they can always seek redress of their grievances via the aforementioned corrupt political process. This is roughly analogous to the fire department pulling up to a burning house, attaching the hoses to fire hydrants, and then politely informing the owner that it could rain any minute.
As Marshall points out, and as I have previously written, there definitely are standards the Court might have applied. The decision was clearly partisan. Republicans control 59 of the 99 state-level legislative chambers, and both the legislature and the governorship in 24 of those states. That compares with just 15 for Democrats. Despite the fact that most Blue states have significantly larger populations than the more numerous Red states, Republicans have power over the line-drawing process in more places than the Democrats–a power that allows the GOP to win elections despite garnering fewer votes overall.
It’s hard to argue with Marshall’s conclusion that what is happening in Texas and California and elsewhere right now “demonstrates just how vapid and hollow the reasoning in Rucho always was. You do not have to have a law degree to understand that a Texas map that transforms a 56-42 advantage into a 79-21 blowout is not, in any meaningful sense, fair.”
But it isn’t just Rucho. The Roberts Court will go down in history (assuming we have a history) as a disgraceful, rogue Court in which a blatantly partisan majority enabled an autocrat and undermined the democratic process in multiple decisions contrary to years of judicial precedents.
If and when the Democrats control Congress, they need to impose term limits on the justices, and expand the Court.
A slightly better analogy, in my view, might be for those firemen to say to the house owner, “there’s the hose, do what you need to do”.
Yep, what democracy we have had, as corrupt as it was, is NOTHING compared to what exists now.
Sheila- while the degree of corruption is on Steroids now- Fascism at our door, our history has never promote true democracy. When did the Election of US senators go to us? Not in the 1700’s. My (Black) spouse would say, We Black People have faced Fascism essentially since the 1600’s, now it’s Your Turn to wake up and Resist. Your People like Richardson ably point out The Moment’s Huge Dangers- we, especially white men need to Wake Up!
Roberts is as corrupt as Scalia, as is the entire court today. I’ve heard of “circular logic,” but is there such a thing as ‘circular illogic’? Would it be the bending over backwards and shoving one’s head up their arse?
I expect the net gerrymandering across the country to be a net-zero event.
Additionally, once they’ve expanded districts all across the country, that means even more elections, more politicians, or more money the oligarchs will have to pay to control their state and Congress. The oligarch-owned media will love that, since that’s their annual bread and butter.
The downside is that they’ll need to spend much more on elections, having previously explored ways to minimize costs. Now, this will blow the budgets for elections. They are moving in the wrong direction – circular illogic?
In our small county, they had to cut the number of precincts because they couldn’t find enough workers. Won’t the redistricting effort also increase the need for poll workers?
For some reason, the stock market is blowing this off, and based on analysts’ forecasts of existing market valuations, they anticipate only upside. The price-to-earnings ratio is incredibly high, indicating that investors are betting the stock market will continue to rise. I wouldn’t call the people I follow contrarians. Still, they’re either all wrong, Wall Street is playing a game that hasn’t unfolded yet, or they’ve missed it completely again – another tech bubble, or empty your savings accounts and buy stocks?
Maybe Gerrymandering should go by the wayside. If it’s capable of starting a civil war in Ireland why couldn’t it start one in the U.S.?
Yes, Suzanne, it really should, because, at bottom, it is anti-democratic.
Projection in politics goes beyond Trump’s idiocy, has been evident in much of the GOP blathering for quite some time, now.
It is sad to recall the days of my youth when I had a mostly positive view, and respect, for SCOTUS. Perhaps I was naive (perhaps, my ass) in my youth, and bought what In saw as the general attitude, in New York City, anyway. The “Impeach Earl Warren” signs were evident elsewhere, though.
What the country is dealing with now is attributable to Mitch McConnell, who, no longer running for office, has had the temerity to state that Donny Boy is not fit for office.
There is never going to be a way for any office holder to configure districts without choosing self-interest over the public good when they get to decide the outcome of redistricting. An independent, non-partisan or bi-partisan commission is the only way that the outcomes will ever promote fair competition.
Indiana is 60/40 but will be 20/80 or even 10/90 when Braun calls a special session to secure the GOP’s stranglehold on the General Assembly and the Congressional delegation. All of the suppose hesitancy is to give dump and his oligarchy handlers more time to twist arms, intimidate and threaten. It is gangster fascism, lead by a deranged and dangerous megalomaniac in the last throes of his delusion, skillfully manipulated by sociopaths hungry for power and control.
If we don’t resist with everything we’ve got, the end of our democratic republic will continue to its death and authoritarian rule by the White Christian nationalists ascend. Women and minorities have the most to lose, but even more do our children and theirs. Oh, what a world…indeed!
Call me a cynic (who isn’t nowadays), but who wouldn’t be surprised if the supreme court will find insignificant technical issues as a way to strike down all the Democratic gerrymandering and to let stand all the red states’ gerrymandering.
I had always assumed, ignorantly and incorrectly, that our Constitution and the federal justice system, along with the congressional branch, were a vaccine that taught our effective immune system how to resist pathological government takeovers. Trump I taught us that was not likely to be the case. Trump II proves that this is not the case at all.
If there is a next presidential election the Democrats will need to spell out exactly how they intend to return the country to the Rule of Law. It will take not only a keen and dedicated President but also a Congressional majority of honest and true to the Constitution representatives and senators. And the return to the Rule of Law needs to be the number one, top, most important item on the next administration’s agenda. AND they can start with the Supreme Court!
Another term for projection is gaslighting. Another term for DT is fascist.