“I urge our state legislature to reconvene to redistrict another Republican seat in Memphis. It’s essential to cement @realDonaldTrump’s agenda and the Golden Age of America. I’ve vowed to keep Tennessee a red state.” ~ Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, on X in April of 2026.
As one can plainly tell, Marsha Blackburn is a true believer, a connoisseur of the MAGA KoolAid. For a little context, Blackburn; opposes gay marriage, opposes choice, opposes LGBTQ rights, opposed the Affordable Care Act, does not believe in climate change, compared subsidized child care for low- and middle-income families to Soviet-era communism, and is, no surprise here, an election denier. Marsha can probably turn out a great apple pie (her degree is in Home Economics), but her words and actions clearly demonstrate that she represents everything MAGA and everything that’s contrary to what America is supposed to stand for.
Blackburn made her comment in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Calais decision which essentially tossed another shovelfull of dirt on the casket of the Voting Rights Act and at the same time, set off a renewed frenzy of gerrymandering.
What is gerrymandering? According to The Brennan Center, gerrymandering is “the process of manipulating election maps in ways that favor particular outcomes — (and) has long been a problem in the United States. Now, largely due to a series of Supreme Court rulings, it’s getting worse — and more frequent.”
Traditionally, redistricting is done every ten years following the decennial census, when the election maps are redrawn so that the districts are reasonably equal in population in order to satisfy the concept of “one man, one vote.” Typically, exceptions to the ten year tradition are a result of a court ordered correction. Gerrymandering is a partisan corruption of the process.
Gerrymandering is not a new phenomenon. It’s literally as old as the American nation, going back to 1788, and the very first congressional map. Historically gerrymandering has been an odious, if, grudgingly accepted, tactic. While the electorate’s outrage over gerrymandering is real and widespread, too many politicians speak out against the process but are loathe to do anything about it. One could reasonably call gerrymandering a cold war. It seems that there’s sort of an agreement among thieves (the party leadership) that gerrymandering is baked into the process and will continue, and any grievances over egregious examples will be settled in court.
One year ago, in 2025, the cold war turned hot, when Donald Trump,Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and the Republican led Texas State Legislature hatched a plot to redraw the election map in mid-decade in order to allow for the Republicans to gain five seats in the House in the upcoming 2026 midterms. Part of the impetus was the widespread disatisfaction with Trump’s unpopular policies and his broken promises that were pointing towards a Democratic majority in the House resulting from a midterm blue wave.
In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom joined the fight. Newsom, along with the California Democratic Party, came up with ballot Proposition 50, which would allow for the decennial map, drawn by an independent commission, to be scrapped in favor of a partisan map drawn up by the Democrats; all of this in order to offset the Texas scheme.
The proposition was abhorrent, anti-democratic, and, in its promise to return to an independent commission in 2030, quite likely wishful thinking if not an infamous lie. I voted for Proposition 50, but I threw up in my mouth while casting my ballot. In retrospect, and after everything that has happened since November of 2025, if I had to do it all over again, I might vote against it
Proposition 50 passed and represented a new escalation in the war. In war, escalation begets escalation, and from sea to shining sea, states both red and blue began scheming ways in which they could rig future elections through gerrymandering.
The next escalation came when the Supreme Court’s Calais decision cleared the way for scorched earth redistricting on the part of both parties.
As of this writing, ten states have redistricted in mid-decade. Other states have redistricting underway, and still others have it under consideration, and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen between 2026 and 2028.
And what is the end game?
Chaos.
There’s little reason to believe that the redistricting frenzy won’t continue with the approach of each election cycle It’s conceivable that, barring common sense legislation, electoral maps will be subject to change every time a party gains a trifecta (executive, legislative, judicial) in a state.
As the gerrymandering war rages, those states that try to hold the line and rely on non-partisan redistricting will be under pressure to join the battle.
It’s not as if the future generations of Americans weren’t warned about the dangers of party politics. George Washington, in one of America’s most famous and revered addresses, his farewell to the nation, sounded the alarm.
Washinton’s weariness after years of public service are evident in his letter. It is a love letter addressed to the infant nation and its people. And it’s also an admonition. In both his letter, and the timing of his resignation from service, there’s a warning over the dangers of leaders hanging onto power for too long.
Washington served as an example to future leaders that their time in government should be limited. It’s an example that many current (and deceased) politicians, in their hubris and selfishness, failed to heed. The names McConnell, Grassley, Feinstein, and Biden immediately come to mind.
In his address, Washington was clear about the dangers of party politics.
“However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
Washington continued, “the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
“It (party politics) serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”
Would it have been realistic to imagine an America without political parties? Likely not. But it would have been possible, and certainly wise, to construct some guardrails that would limit the destructive influence of parties.
From my perspective, Blackburn’s tweet was one of the most disturbing and demoralizing comments I’d heard from a politician – left or right, Republican or Democrat, in recent memory. Three sentences that encapsulate a destructive strategy being used by both parties to nullify the concepts of fair elections and principled and even handed representation.
A robust democracy demands divergence. It requires space for ideological and political disagreement and the pursuit of bipartisan solutions for bridging those disagreements.
In his book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter, described democracy as, “that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” True enough but what Schumpeter leaves out is the notion that to be democratic, the competition needs to be fair. And gerrymandering is the antithesis of fairness.
Gerrymandering is the process by which a party (and by default that party’s candidate) literally chooses the electorate, rather than the electorate choosing its representative.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties poll unfavorably, and yet both parties control the levers of government, and of the elections. Polling shows that up to 71% of voters oppose partisan gerrymandering, yet the parties ignore the will of the people.
But that’s the way it is isn’t it? A majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws. Polling shows that up to 80% of voters are opposed to Citizens United. Most Americans are in favor of a Medicare-for-all type healthcare program. And what is the response from Congress? It harrumphs loudly over WNBA player Caitlin Clark getting hard fouls by other players. Your tax dollars at work.
Is there a solution to gerrymandering? Of course there is.
Congress could pass a law banning partisan gerrymandering. In 2022, it came close to a semblance of a solution in the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.
According to The Brennan Center, the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, would have required “strong, uniform rules for congressional redistricting, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering and strengthened protections for communities of color.”
It also would have ensured “greater transparency in the redistricting process and add enhanced judicial remedies to ensure that discriminatory or gerrymandered maps can quickly be challenged in court and fixed.”
The bill died on the Senate floor, another victim of the filibuster.
In the current political climate, the chances of anything like the Freedome to Vote Act making its way through Congress and then getting Trump’s signature, are about the same as getting struck in the head by a meteorite.
Or
Currently, the number of representatives in the House sits at 435. That number is not constitutionally mandated. The only mandate is that there can be no more than one representative per 30,000 people. The number 435 was fixed by the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. Yes, Congress has remained immobile on this for 97 years. Further proof that the best thing that Congress is good at doing is
nothing.
While the number 435 has remained static for nearly a century, the population has not. Currently, each member of the house represents, on average, more than 760,000 Americans. This imbalance hardly contributes to equitable representation.
Expanding the number of representatives could lead to better representation and more effective responses to the needs of constituents.
A law like the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, or an increase in the number of representatives in the House only require acts of Congress.
And therin lies the problem.
As I considered Blackburn’s tweet, one that I would normally brush off as mere MAGA bullshit, I began to realize the futility in the movement to save the American democracy.
I remember a short conversation that my wife and I had in the midst of the post-Calais gerrymandering warfare. Cora was busy in the kitchen. As I leaned against the kitchen counter I said, “The democracy, or whatever there was of it is dead. This gerrymandering isn’t going to stop. Every time a new party gains a majority in the state, they’re going to redraw the maps. It’s going to be a never ending cycle and those motherfuckers in Congress are going to do nothing about it, because there’s nothing in it for them.”
She had no answer beyond a brief look of sadness before looking back down at her work.
The Life in My Years 
I keep saying it’s a good time to be old. I’m 83. I do, however, worry about the future my grandchildren face and their children.
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I feel exactly the same way Anne. My grandchildren are all approaching college age and I’m trying to convince them to find a way to relocate to Europe.
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“Shine, perishing republic.”
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