The GOP Isn’t Being Subtle About Rigging the 2026 Midterms

Its California suit is the latest proof.

By Tianna Mays

As a long-time advocate for free and fair elections, equal representation, and the fundamental right to vote for every U.S. citizen, I must admit that California’s decision to pursue mid-decade electoral redistricting gave me pause. Briefly.

Civil rights advocates have spent decades warning about the dangers of partisan map manipulation. So, I know why many take issue with “mid-decade redistricting,” no matter which party is advancing it.

But none of us has the luxury of assessing Californians’ overwhelming vote in favor of Proposition 50 in a vacuum. Proposition 50 allows partisan redistricting to secure more Democratic-held seats in the U.S. Congress. Gov. Gavin Newsom has been clear about why this unusual step was taken. It’s a direct response to the wave of red-state gerrymanders deliberately engineered to give Republicans more seats in Congress by diluting Democratic strongholds and marginalizing the political power of Black and Hispanic voters. In other words, California’s Proposition 50 did not emerge out of nowhere.

And here is another crucial difference: California’s voters approved this change. They debated it, and they made a choice at the ballot box. The same cannot be said for Missouri, North Carolina, or Texas, where lawmakers, at the behest of President Trump, rammed through mid-decade maps to entrench Republican power. Those maps were not ratified by voters. They were engineered to diminish the voices of Democrats and communities of color, as a federal court in Texas concluded this week.

California Proposition 50 voting map by county

This is where the GOP’s recent lawsuit against California’s redistricting plan veers from disingenuous to dangerous. President Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has now joined the GOP suit, which claims that California’s voter-approved map amounts to “racial gerrymandering.” That accusation collapses under the slightest scrutiny. When Texas drew districts in the late summer to diminish the votes of Black communities, the GOP called it “reform.” When Missouri’s Republican lawmakers followed suit and dismantled the district of one of two Black Democrat representatives to produce a 7/8 Republican state delegation, they called it the will of Missouri voters. Now that California voters have chosen to counterbalance this brazen power grab, the GOP suddenly is concerned about civil rights and Voting Rights Act protections.

Their selective outrage is offensive. The California GOP’s lawsuit is not about protecting voters, and Trump’s DOJ has not demonstrated it cares about the rights of all voters. If it did, the president would have never ordered red states to engineer more Republican districts. The GOP’s California suit—and the GOP’s gerrymanders across red states—are about maintaining power and, more specifically, rigging the 2026 midterm elections.

It’s also important to remember that we did not get here overnight. The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has spent the past decade and a half hollowing out the Voting Rights Act. First came the dismantling of preclearance in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. Then the Court weakened Section 2 in Brnovich v. DNC. Now the Court is considering Callais v. Louisiana, a case that could gut remaining Section 2 protections altogether. If the Court takes that step, communities of color will lose one of the only tools they have to challenge racially discriminatory maps. And Congress will need to intervene to restore federal voting-rights protections.

On the same day that California voters passed Proposition 50, Mississippi voters showed what happens when the courts step in as they should. Federal courts intervened in Mississippi to correct discriminatory maps and ordered a special election. Voters then flipped two state Senate seats and one state House seat, breaking a longstanding Republican supermajority.

That contrast shows why this moment is so fraught and dangerous. Federal power is being deployed in an attempt to override the will of millions of California voters, even as racial gerrymanders proceed elsewhere without a word from the Department of Justice. In other words, the GOP’s strategy is unmistakable: Block people from having their say at the poll and shamelessly challenge results when voters don’t toe the GOP line. California’s voters made their choice clear on election day. The GOP is suing simply because they don’t like that choice.

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Tianna Mays is the legal director at Democracy Defenders Action.