Donald Trump’s approval rating is currently lower than it was after 1/6. Trump has known for some time that his presidency is effectively over if Democrats win back the House of Representatives in 2026.
If Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives, Trump will become a lame duck, and by late summer 2027, Democrats will hold their first presidential primary debates, and the nation will turn its attention to the 2028 elections.
Trump will be an afterthought, and the person who will keep the seat warm for the next, and certainly much younger, president.
To counter his impending irrelevance, Trump came up with a plan.
Trump’s plan is to rig the 2026 midterm elections by letting red states win more Republican seats for his party.
It seemed like a great idea that came to fruition when Texas quickly aligned and redrew its maps to create five new Republican seats in the House of Representatives.
What Trump never counted on was Democrats fighting back.
Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) responded to Texas with Prop 50, a voter-approved ballot measure that allowed California to redraw its maps to create five new Democratic-leaning seats. Unlike Texas, California bolstered its Democratic-leaning districts to keep several Democratic seats safe.
North Carolina has gerrymandered to add a Republican House seat, as has Missouri. Ohio went for a weaker gerrymander and ultimately retained several Democratic seats. The latest Democratic victory came in Utah, where a judge threw out a Republican gerrymander and implemented a map that would give Democrats a new seat in the House of Representatives.
Read more below to see the surprising result of the Democratic pushback.
