Republican Judges Leave Democrats No Choice But To Escalate

I had this piece mostly completed on Thursday. It was originally drafted to flag my concern, as I did on the podcast, that the Republicans on the Virginia Supreme Court might well overturn the state’s the new congressional map. The next morning, that sinking feeling gave way to incandescent rage.

Donald Trump began trying to rig the midterms in Texas last year, but Democrats across the country understood his scheme and organized to counteract him—including by passing referenda explicitly designed to neutralize partisan Republican gerrymanders.

But Republican political corruption is so thorough, it seemed unwise of Democrats in Virginia to count on GOP judges to respect the will of voters. Sure enough…

Between the nullification of the Voting Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court’s six Republican justices—in a ruling timed to allow southern states to squeeze in a few more gerrymanders—and the Virginia decision overturning a counter-gerrymander that had real legitimacy, Democrats were gut punched. And because these developments came as something of a surprise, the media has largely treated them as elements of a plot twist. Republicans started the fight; Democrats got the upper hand; but at the last minute fortunes reversed again in a surprising manner.

“Just two weeks ago, Democrats felt increasingly emboldened about taking control of the House in November after seeming to fight the redistricting wars to a draw,” wrote the New York Times. “But two court rulings—one by the Supreme Court and another by Virginia’s top court—and an aggressive new push by red states to carve up congressional maps have delivered the Republican Party its biggest burst of momentum in many months…. Bullish Republicans feel they are back in the game.”

This isn’t factually wrong, but from the horserace framing to the implication that Republicans simply caught a run of good luck, it is a poor way to understand what just happened.

From the moment Trump instructed Texas Republicans to carve up their congressional maps, Republicans across the country understood it was their assignment to steal as many House seats as political constraints would allow. But when Democrats retaliated, the stakes increased: It was no longer just a fight for control of Congress; it had become a fight to save the whole kleptocratic right-wing project in America.

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Democrats took Trump and the GOP by surprise in the gerrymandering arms race. Republicans have essentially admitted as much. They saw how Democrats comported themselves through the early months of 2025 and really through the entirety of the Trump era—always deferring to norms or fear of backlash—and concluded Dems wouldn’t have the stomach to retaliate.

But Democrats found gumption. And by the time Sam Alito and his five co-partisans on the Supreme Court announced their Voting Rights Act decision, Dems had actually outplayed the GOP. Republicans’ rotten culture prohibits them from blaming Trump for anything, but they’d clearly come to the conclusion that his greed and bad faith had backfired.

In hindsight (and, to the credit of worthy critics, like Beto O’Rourke, in foresight) Democrats should have pressed their advantage harder than they did. Squeezed more seats out of California. Gone in for seats in Illinois and Maryland. The threat to the Voting Rights Act was well known, the holding was easy to anticipate. And Dems were only going to make Republicans regret their decision by delivering them a drubbing, not just by fighting them to a draw.

They may get a second chance. They have the means to respond to the Virginia Supreme Court, and they can begin drawing new maps for 2028. But it’s more critical than ever that they reach acceptance and embrace zero-sum methods. They’ve come a long ways, but grokking the fact that Republican jurists picked a side in this partisan fight—and, more importantly, why they did it—may help Democrats gain a bit more clarity: It’s unpleasant to coexist with a conservative judiciary; it is intolerable to coexist with a fully partisan one.