Two red states are about to get redder thanks to brazen GOP cheats

Ohio and Texas could do it. Both states could steal enough congressional seats with new gerrymandered maps for voting districts to fortify the Republican majority in the U.S. House next year.

Rigging the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections with gerrymandered congressional districts drawn to guarantee GOP wins is paramount to protecting the Trump regime from political opposition.

By the time voters go the polls in 16 months, the ramifications of shredded safety nets, hiked tariff prices, lowered job growth, eliminated health insurance, gutted federal agencies, and expanded militarized raids in American neighborhoods may be acute.

The electorate may well be fuming and motivated to end, or at least put a check on, Trumpian madness by rejecting the rubber-stamping Republican majorities in Congress. The GOP-led U.S. House, with its exceedingly slim margin of command, is most vulnerable to a Democratic flip in the midterms.

Persuading voters on the merits of a highly unpopular agenda that hammers working families with the largest cuts to Medicaid and food aid in history, and showers the ultra-rich with huge tax breaks that add trillions of dollars to the national debt, is a tall order for Trump’s servile coalition on Capitol Hill.

So rather than take a chance on a losing argument, Trump wants the fix to be in before any vote is cast in the pivotal election. Redrawing congressional districts to give lopsided partisan advantages to one party fits the bill.

The felon-in-chief pressured the Republican governor of Texas to call a special legislative session this week with a rare ask of lawmakers: Consider redrawing congressional districts ahead of the midterm elections.

The Texas Republican Party hailed the unusual request to revise redistricting in the state mid-decade as “an essential step to preserving GOP control in Congress and advancing President Trump’s America First Agenda.”

There you go. A candid endorsement of politically manipulated district boundaries — that dilute votes and disenfranchise whole constituencies — to hold on to power.

If the Texas legislature can turn more blue districts into red ones through unfair, undemocratic gerrymandering, Republicans could pick up four or five seats in Congress and pad the House majority with predetermined election outcomes.

Ohio Republicans also plan to bolster the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House with two or three seats they intend to skew red when they draw a new congressional map soon.

Republicans lord over every aspect of redistricting in the state. They can easily ram through another unconstitutional redistricting map that flagrantly ignores the rule of law again and disregards the overwhelming mandate of voters for fairer, more competitive, more representational districts in Ohio.

Under one-party rule in Ohio, Republicans don’t have to follow the clear text of the state constitution on drawing legislative and congressional districts that broadly represent statewide voting preferences without unduly favoring one political party over another.

They have repeatedly brushed off Ohio Supreme Court orders to comply with constitutional redistricting amendments approved by over 70% of Ohioans.

They ran out the clock on challenges to their lawless gerrymandering until they could replace an independent state supreme court with a partisan panel.

This year Republican majorities in the legislature, the Ohio Supreme Court, and the Ohio Redistricting Commission will have another crack at out-gerrymandering the congressional voting districts they originally approved because the shelf life of the current maps — Ohioans have been forced to use for two elections — was limited to four years with no Democratic buy-in.

The congressional boundaries drawn in 2025 will dictate the next three elections. Expect even more lopsided districts designed to cement Republican dominance in Ohio.

The party is eying at least two congressional districts, represented by Democrats Marcy Kaptur in Toledo’s 9th and Emilia Sykes in the Akron-based 13th, to turn into solid Republican strongholds.

Cincinnati Democrat Greg Landsman, representing Ohio’s 1st district, could also be targeted with newly configured boundary lines that stretch into deep red territory.

What is no doubt taking form now, while unaware Ohioans vacation, is another unlawful scheme to win elections, not on merit, persuasion, or robust competition, but by cheating.

By circumventing constitutional mandates on redistricting with the blessings of accommodating Republican justices. By hollowing out the one person, one vote principle that asserts each individual’s vote should carry equal weight in the electoral process. (Gerrymandering stacks the deck by roping 2-to-1 ratios of Republican voters into failsafe GOP districts that consign opposition voters to statistical irrelevancy.)

But the fix is in to destroy any semblance of representative government in Ohio and steal a couple of congressional seats to secure a Republican majority in the U.S. House that will green-light whatever Trump wants.

In the coming months, Republican operatives in the state will go through the motions of consensus-making with Democrats in the Statehouse and on the redistricting commission but it’s all for show. GOP kingpins have no incentive to play fair or do right by Ohio voters — who voted twice to reform redistricting and end partisan gerrymandering.

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman and his coterie of legislative lackeys will do as they please.

Without any check on their power in the state, they will put party over people to secure Republican congressional majorities by rigging the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections with unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts to keep absolute rule — not self-governance.

• Marilou Johanek is a veteran Ohio print and broadcast journalist who has covered state and national politics as a longtime newspaper editorial writer and columnist.