Threats have been exchanged, and now we wait until someone pulls the trigger.

A bead of sweat trickles down Gavin Newsom’s greasy brow as he brandishes a ballot initiative at California’s independent redistricting commission: “I’m just crazy enough to do it, maaaaaan!,” he squawks as he cocks the hammer at the good-government hostages he’s taken. A thousand miles away across the great divide in Texas, Greg Abbott sits with his own set of Democratic captives, wondering whether he should have tried to rob this particular bank in the first place. (“This wasn’t even my idea!”)

Over the horizon, JB Pritzker and Kathy Hochul are rustling up bandits to pin Abbott down. Calls for backup have been sent to Indiana, Florida, and Ohio; will the cavalry arrive in time? The clock is ticking. A powder keg is set to explode, and the fuse for all of this was lit by Texas’s decision to engage — at President Donald Trump’s bidding — in mid-decade redistricting to squeeze another five potential Republican seats out of the state’s congressional delegation.

Readers, we are in the midst of a major political Mexican standoff, one that feels surprisingly unremarked upon as we accelerate pell-mell toward the inevitable consequences of the breakdown of a series of electoral norms. I cannot help but think about it in cinematic terms. First Sergio Leone, then Quentin Tarantino, and now Democratic and Republican lawmakers across the nation are holding one another at electoral gunpoint, threatening mutually assured construction: the abrupt and hyper-partisan redrawing of congressional boundary lines in every state where it is politically possible.

Are some red-state Democrats about to meet the electoral reaper? Will blue-state Republicans end up massacred in the long run? The answer in both cases is “yes.” You’ve seen the climax of Reservoir Dogs, right? We’re heading there politically, and I see no way out now — so let’s see who’s still around when everybody’s done emptying their chambers. Nobody is about to stand down.

Before the inevitable carnage commences, you may ask yourself: How did we get here?

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Last Sunday, Democrats in Texas’s state legislature fled from Austin to Chicago, Ill., in order to deny Governor Greg Abbott the quorum necessary to push through legislation redrawing Texas’s congressional map. The new map more or less guarantees three additional safe Republican seats for the state delegation, while creating two others within reach during a good electoral year.

2026 is not expected to be such a year for Republicans nationally, due both to the controversies created by the Trump administration’s policies as well as the deeper structural dynamics of American election cycles. (The party holding the presidency always faces headwinds in the midterms, absent historically anomalous circumstances.)

The move by Texas Republicans — neither illegal nor unprecedented in recent Texas history, but certainly unusual — came at Trump’s behest. He is rightfully concerned about the consequences of a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives for the last two years of his term. (If it happens, set the over-under for “articles of impeachment voted upon” at 1 and take the over.) Every extra Republican seat — even in a narrow minority — is a buffer against this.

Every action breeds a counterreaction, however, and Democrats have responded by immediately threatening to bulldoze their own pieties into a landfill. Governor Gavin Newsom posted the phrase “FAFO” on social media — readers are free to look up the term’s meaning on their own — as he announced his intent to similarly redistrict California from its current 43D–9R delegation into a desolate wasteland of Democratic blue.

What’s that you say? California has an independent redistricting commission that by law cannot undertake mid-decade redistricting? No matter: Newsom proposes to put a constitutional amendment on the November 2025 ballot that would “temporarily” relieve the commissioners of duty for a few cycles before returning them to power. (How very constitutional of him.)

Others have chimed in. Kathy Hochul briefly stirred herself from quiet repose as America’s most useless big-state governor to announce that she would also seek to redraw New York’s congressional boundaries. The irony runs rich here, as Hochul was mule-kicked by the New York Court of Appeals as recently as April 2022, when her attempted Democratic gerrymander of the state was rejected as being too ridiculous even for a panel of New York state judges. Looking to contribute in at least some way, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey ominously warned Republicans that she too would seriously consider gerrymandering her state’s congressional lines from their current 8–0 disposition in favor of the Democrats into an even fiercer 8–0 in favor of the Democrats.

Republicans have not been idle themselves. Vice President JD Vance flew off to Indiana the other day to try to talk Governor Mike Braun into redistricting Frank Mrvan, who represents Indiana’s portion of the Chicagoland region, out of his seat. Vance is also exerting pressure in his home state of Ohio, where there are potential seats to be gained by redistricting. In Florida, Ron DeSantis is seemingly game to call a special session and re-carve his state to the GOP’s advantage. (A pro tip for Ron: While you’ve got your knives out, carve this guy from his seat, too.)

Every state with a Republican or Democratic governing “trifecta” (the state house, senate, and governor’s mansion) and seats to potentially redistrict away is now on DEFCON 1. Threats have been exchanged, and now we wait until someone pulls the trigger. Will Abbott and the Texas GOP go through with redistricting? And what happens next?

*          *          *

My best guess: This is going to happen, it will be extremely messy, and it will absolutely benefit the Republican Party in the short term, while evening out in the long run. (The short term is all that a term-limited Donald Trump cares about.) I am not writing a normative analysis of these moves — “norms” are circling the drain at this point, my friends — merely a strategic one.

First, I operate from the assumption that the Texas redistricting is a foregone conclusion: Abbott and the Republicans have been backed into a corner by the Democratic flight to Illinois and have to follow through now or lose all credibility. I also suspect that Texas Republicans are overoptimistic about how well they will perform in these new districts — 2024 Trump voters are not necessarily the same as 2026 Republican midterm voters — but that is neither here nor there; they are getting them regardless.

The question is how long it takes to resolve the mess, and the longer it takes, the worse for Democrats on the counterresponse: Gavin Newsom’s promise to put a constitutional amendment before California voters in time for the 2026 midterms is critically time-bound, with a brief window to get it on the 2025 ballot. (A wise friend cautions that Newsom’s scheme also assumes the outcome — Californians voting in favor of temporarily suspending independent redistricting for explicitly partisan reasons — a bit too easily, even for California.) Hochul’s threat, meanwhile, is immaterial for 2026 because of New York’s legislative mechanics, though there is little doubt that the screws will soon be tightened on New York Republicans, whether in 2028 or (at the very latest) 2032.

Meanwhile, if the GOP makes a full-court press, they could gain anywhere from three to five seats from Texas, another three from Florida, a few from Ohio and Missouri, and perhaps one from Indiana in 2026. This would not necessarily be enough to make a Republican majority in that cycle — an enormous amount turns on the composition of the midterm electorate — but even a narrow minority would theoretically be enough to prevent a Democratic House from being run by its most impeachment-happy activists.

That is a short-term solution. As for the long-term outcome? For better or worse, Republicans under Trump have secured the first-mover advantage in what now promises to be a titanic battle to the extremes, likely to end in the computer-assisted “rationalization” of every state’s legislative map to favor whichever party achieves a governing trifecta first. It will be ugly — an unpleasant cull on both sides of the aisle, of legislators who are being ousted precisely because of their proven crossover appeal. (Goodbye, Vicente Gonzalez. Farewell, David Valadao.)

It is deeply unfortunate that such norms are now likely forever gone; then again, I promised not to write you a normative essay. The reason for this is that such laments are irrelevant in the face of the impending and unavoidable clash: The battle has now been joined, whether we like it or not. Begun, the gerrymandering wars have.