Gerrymandering: A moral assessment

The gerrymander issue

Trump asked for a new round of gerrymandering red states where it could make a difference. Texas was the first state to respond. The MAGA goal is to get rid of as many democrats in the House as possible. In response, some blue states responded or are considering responding in kind for the same reason. Among red states, Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have redistricted to target 7 democrats, five in Texas and one each in the other two states. A few weeks ago, California voters passed a ballot measure that allows redistricting in hope of getting rid of 5 Republicans. 

Trump started the current 2026 redistricting campaign. In July 2025, he explicitly called for Texas to redistrict. This was not a spontaneous action by red states. Whether the current wave of gerrymandering will make any difference in the 2026 midterm elections is unclear. If California had not responded it is likely that the advantage shift to Republicans would be significant, probably enough to keep Republicans in control of the House until the 2028 elections. But those assessments are based only on the current situation. The assessment is complicated and could change over time.

If successful, California's five-seat gerrymander would increase the state's Democratic delegation from 43-9 to 48-4. This directly offsets Texas Republicans' intent to flip five Democratic seats to Republican, but it leaves Republicans in California almost extinct in the House.

An analysis of morality

In general, gerrymandering is anti-democratic. Democracy can be argued to be morally superior to the various forms of authoritarianism, e.g., dictatorship, military junta, theocracy, plutocracy, or combinations thereof. Authoritarianism is almost always accompanied by serious corruption, sometimes amounting to kleptocracy. America's representative democracy allows citizens at least some say in how they are governed, what the laws will be and some power to replace elected representatives when people are unhappy. Gerrymandering undercuts these citizen powers, and it can thus be considered to be inherently immoral.  

If one sees MAGA elites as inherently authoritarian and anti-democratic one can say that if MAGA politicians retain control of the House until 2028, the threat to American democracy and rule of law could wind up being lethal to democracy. 

From the point of view that MAGA is a deadly threat to democracy, one can argue that blue state gerrymandering is a moral defense of democracy. Circumstances forced an in-kind response to an unprovoked red state gerrymander attack on democracy. What is a reasonable moral analysis? The immorality of the California gerrymander cannot be denied, it was real but provoked by threat. The Texas and other red state gerrymanders are immoral but unprovoked by threat. California and other pro-democracy states had no alternative response. The state created an independent redistricting commission in 2008-2010 precisely to avoid gerrymandering, but Republican states do not do that. Instead, red states weaponized redistricting to support MAGA authoritarianism. That left pro-democracy states no meaningful counter other than an in-kind response. The California gerrymander ballot measure responds to a Republican power grab provoked by President Trump.

Do two wrongs make a right? No not in a perfect world. But we do not live in a perfect world. From a pro-democracy point of view, red state gerrymanders support MAGA authoritarianism, while the opposition gerrymanders support democracy. Compared to the political opposition, MAGA elites play asymmetric constitutional hardball. In recent years, elite MAGA Republican politicians have systematically pushed constitutional boundaries and violated democratic norms far more aggressively than Democrats. This creates an asymmetric obligation problem where one side first abandons norms, arguably leaving the other side with a moral duty to unilaterally continue following the norms.

Restraining norms used to function as a mutual non-aggression pact. But they were not a suicide pact. When one side, MAGA in this case, systematically violates these norms while the other adheres to them, the result isn't moral superiority. Instead it amounts to structural democratic and moral decay.

If that is not the situation that pro-democracy opposition to MAGA authoritarianism faces, then exactly what is the situation, e.g., moral equivalence? 

Q: Is blue state gerrymandering the moral equivalent of red state gerrymandering?