Since President Donald Trump began his march to the top of the Republican Party a decade ago, his backers have offered one simple reason for their support: because he fights.
A hallmark of the New Right, the slice of the conservative movement most fervently in Trump’s corner, is the aggressive use of political power to benefit friends and punish foes.
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That’s how the Left has always done things, they argue, despite wrapping themselves in the flag of nonpartisan good government.
For that reason, they are not worried that the new Republican push on redistricting or the possible prosecution of Democrats involved in promoting Trump-Russia collusion — against the evidence and intelligence available at the time, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently concluded — will backfire.
In their telling, this is how Democrats have always done business, and the only difference is that Republicans are finally fighting back.
Thus, Republicans are moving ahead with redistricting talks, not only in Texas but also in Ohio, Missouri, South Carolina, and Florida. Vice President JD Vance was in Indiana on Thursday, and redistricting was reportedly on the agenda.
DEMOCRATS TAKE INSPIRATION FROM REPUBLICANS’ 2010 PLAYBOOK TO COUNTER REDISTRICTING EFFORTS
Republicans are looking to squeeze additional House seats out of red states as they prepare to defend a slim majority in the 2026 midterm elections. Combined with more of their members representing safe Trump districts and far fewer defending seats in districts won by the previous Democratic presidential nominee, this could help House Republicans defy history. More than 90% of congressional districts aren’t really competitive in the general election.
In all but two of the midterm elections since 1938, the president’s party has lost House seats. Republicans shed 40 House seats in Trump’s first midterm election back in 2018. This cost the GOP the majority and contributed to Trump being impeached twice.
Democrats have threatened to retaliate, but many large blue states already keep Republican-friendly congressional districts to a minimum. This includes Illinois, to which Texas Democrats have fled to protest their state’s Republican redistricting efforts.
Fairness aside, many have looked at the Democrats’ options for fighting gerrymandering with more gerrymandering and determined that there are few. “In an arms race where there’s a race to gerrymander the most, there’s not a scenario where they have more seats than we do,” a Republican operative told Politico.
“Another great chapter in ‘Democrats Threaten To Do The Thing They Already Do If The GOP Joins In,’” historian Carl Paulus wrote on X in response to Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) saying “all bets are off” on redrawing Illinois’s congressional map.
Even the relative centrist James Carville has spoken in favor of political brinkmanship in response to GOP redistricting maneuvers, arguing Democrats should expand the Supreme Court, add new reliably blue states, and federalize elections. “If the Democrats win the presidency, the Senate and the House in 2028 … they are just going to have to unilaterally add Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states,” the longtime Clinton consigliere said on a podcast.
Former President Barack Obama and longtime ally Eric Holder, the former attorney general, have made redistricting to the benefit of Democrats and progressive causes their top political project since leaving office.
Obama is also at the center of the Trump-Russia reappraisal being forced by Gabbard. She argues that the Obama administration, with the president’s knowledge, manipulated the intelligence in support of Russia interfering in the 2016 presidential election, specifically to help Trump win. What Obama manipulated, Hillary Clinton and her campaign arguably fabricated. The Justice Department has received criminal referrals, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered a grand jury investigation.
Democrats say this continues Trump’s pattern of criminalizing dissent and trying to jail political opponents, dating back to the “lock her up” chants about Hillary Clinton at 2016 campaign rallies. Republicans counter that this misses an obvious point: The first Trump administration never prosecuted Clinton, while Trump was indicted multiple times across various jurisdictions, including two cases brought by a special counsel appointed by former President Joe Biden’s attorney general during the 2024 election cycle.
A prevalent view in conservative circles is that the pre-Trump GOP attempted to play by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, with the presidential candidacies of Mitt Romney and the late John McCain especially proving the saying “nice guys finish last.” While Democrats vigorously contest this version of recent political history, many Republicans prefer Trump’s combativeness.
TRUMP AND OBAMA, FOREVER LINKED IN HISTORY
“I cannot spare this man,” Abraham Lincoln is said to have responded when advised to fire Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War. “He fights.”
While there has been frustration with Trump from elements of his base on issues ranging from foreign policy to the Jeffrey Epstein files, this appears to be the playbook his administration is going to continue to follow throughout his second term.