“The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy” —Elbridge Gerry (1787)
Elbridge Gerry was a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, but joined others who did not sign our Constitution because it did not contain a Bill of Rights to secure the fundamental rights enumerated in the Constitution from adulteration. For that, we owe him an eternal debt of gratitude.
Gerry also served as our nation’s fifth vice president under James Madison, though only for a year until Gerry’s death in 1814. But it is what he did as governor of Massachusetts in 1812 that brought his name forward in history. Gerry signed a bill creating new partisan state senate districts. One of those in Boston was so convoluted that a cartoonist depicted it as a mythological salamander. And thus rose the portmanteau — the combination of Gerry and salamander to become “gerrymander.”
And that brings me to the latest chapter of gerrymandering, in this case, the congressional redistricting wars in Texas. Both Republicans and Democrats have been gerrymandering congressional districts nationwide for more than 200 years, but after Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called for a special session for redistricting in Texas, 30 Texas Demos fled the scene to deny Abbott’s special session a quorum so that it could not be convened.
They did so because Texas is likely to pick up five Republican seats through redistricting in what is a completely legal process.
Ironically, some of those Lone Star Democrats fled to Elbridge Gerry’s state of Massachusetts, which Demos have gerrymandered into such convoluted districts as to ensure there is NOT ONE Republican in that state’s congressional delegation, despite the fact that more than 36% of its registered voters are Republican.
Others went to New York, every inch of which has been gerrymandered by the state’s Democrat Party. And the rest went to Illinois, where, despite the fact that Donald Trump received 45% of the vote in 2024, only 18% of the state’s congressional seats are Republican.
But given the howls from the Texas Demos and their corrupt political kindred in the states now hosting them, you would think this had never happened before. Unhinged Texas state Rep. Jolanda Jones even exclaimed, “I will liken this to the Holocaust!” She explained: “How is somebody in the position to kill all of them people? Well … good people didn’t realize that what happens to them can very soon happen to me.”
A great example of failed public elementary schools!
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, a Democrat, evaluated Democrat-controlled states across the country, and despite Republican candidates winning 43% of the vote in those states, they only had 22% of the congressional seats.
Yeah, you get it — Demos are masters of congressional gerrymandering despite their protestations, and they are all for “democracy” except when they aren’t.
Essentially, the Texas Demos are complaining because the parties are only supposed to stack the political deck every 10 years based on the results of the decennial census.
And their census protest played right into Trump’s hands — a brilliant play.
In 2016, and again in 2024, among his key campaign issues, Trump ran on stopping the flood of illegal immigrants across our southern border. In effect, Joe Biden created an open border resulting in the invasion of millions of illegal aliens.
President Trump’s actions in his first six months have resulted in a reduction of 1.6 million illegal aliens of the estimated 18 million now in the United States. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said of foreign leaders in Central and South America, “Over and over again, I’m hearing that hundreds of thousands of their citizens are coming home, voluntarily.”
Of course, the optics of ICE raids that the Leftmedia platforms are pushing across their networks have resulted in a softening of public support for Trump’s deportation policies, but you wouldn’t know that based on the flood of applicants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jobs.
For years, amid other detrimental factors associated with illegal aliens — not the least of which is almost $200 billion from taxpayers for subsidized housing, medical care, education, and the cost of crime and incarceration — most of the conservative political concern has been that the Demos’ strategy of allowing a flood of illegal immigrants was to eventually naturalize them en masse in order to grow their voter base.
Indeed, states including New York and California allow noncitizens to vote in state and local elections, and clearly, they influence election outcomes. But they are prohibited from voting in federal elections.
What has escaped much scrutiny, until now, is that despite the federal election prohibition on voting by illegal aliens, Demos have benefited in national elections from concentrations of illegal aliens in their “sanctuary cities” who have been counted in the census, and those counts are used for redistricting.
Now that Texas Demos have raised the decennial census issue, Trump has responded with a one-two punch.
First, the Trump administration has renewed its calls to ensure clean voter records and rolls, the lack of which was clearly evident in the Demos’ massive bulk-mail ballot fraud in the 2020 election.
And the second punch: Trump is calling for a new census that excludes counting illegal aliens.
As Nate Jackson noted, “In 2019, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to exclude illegal aliens from the 2020 census by adding a citizenship question, though the courts blocked him on procedural grounds.”
But he is going to try it again. Trump declared: “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures. People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”
Arguably, the last census taken, during the ChiCom Virus pandemic, was not accurate. According to the New York Post, “The last census, undercounted the population significantly in many red states like Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas, while overcounting in many blue states like Delaware, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island.” Florida and Texas, for example, were denied one additional House seat that they were entitled to. Colorado, Minnesota, and Rhode Island should probably have one fewer Democrat seat.
That would be one reason for another census count.
But to the point, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s intellectual bulldogs, asserts that “20 to 30 of House Democrat seats wouldn’t exist but for illegal aliens.” He adds: “Democrats cheat. We all know Democrats cheat. We’ve all understood that. But their counting of illegal aliens in the census, they have to be excluded.” Miller concludes that Demos have “gerrymandered the vote beyond all recognition.”
In short, the Demos’ open-border strategy has already produced a political windfall.
Ira Mehlman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) says: “By some estimates, California’s large illegal alien population resulted in that state getting four to five more representatives than it would have if illegal aliens were excluded for this purpose. The system actually rewards states that enact policies that draw illegal aliens.”
It is doubtful that Trump’s order will pass the Supreme Court’s constitutional scrutiny. That is a high hurdle. But he has certainly shined a bright light on the census count of illegal aliens for the purposes of gerrymandering congressional districts.
I wonder what old Elbridge Gerry would say … probably something about how “the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy” rather than the principles of our Republic.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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