An unelected district court judge ruled late Monday night that a Republican-proposed congressional map in Utah — a state that voted for President Donald Trump by nearly 22 points last November — was unconstitutional and instead, the state would have to adopt a map that creates a solid Democrat seat. The decision marks the latest setback in a string of redistricting battles that Republicans appear increasingly unwilling to fight, even as Democrats move full steam ahead with their own partisan redistricting efforts.
Utah District Judge Dianna Gibson ruled that the GOP proposal “unduly favors Republicans and disfavors Democrats.” The state legislature was ordered to draw a new map after the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government sued over the current maps. Gibson previously ordered the state to draw a new map. The legislature approved a new map that retained the four congressional districts, though it made two of the districts slightly more competitive. But Gibson struck the new map down, instead accepting the plaintiff-drawn map that creates a new, safely Democratic district. Cook Political Report Senior Editor and Elections Analyst Dave Wasserman said the new district is a +24 for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Granted, Utah Rep. Matt MacPherson doesn’t want to simply roll over and take it so easily, and announced on X that he has “opened a bill to file articles of impeachment against Judge Gibson for gross abuse of power, violating the separation of powers and failing to uphold her oath of office to the Utah Constitution.”
But as Wasserman noted in a separate post, this is a “huge win” for Democrats, who “have quietly strung together an impressive streak of victories over the past few weeks that have, surprisingly, pushed the mid-decade redistricting war closer to a draw.”
And as 2026 nears, the outlook continues to worsen as Republicans in Republican-led states appear to lack the appetite needed to fight Democrats’ insatiable hunger for power.
As The New York Times reported Tuesday, “Democrats are demonstrating the ability — and the will — to amend blue state constitutions to allow for partisan gerrymandering.”
Nowhere is that more apparent than in California and Virginia.
California voters approved Proposition 50 last week, which will allow Democrats in the state to amend the state constitution to bypass the state’s redistricting committee and gerrymander the state further in Democrats’ favor. The ballot measure came in response to Texas’ effort to redistrict in order to comply with a DOJ finding that four districts were unlawfully gerrymandered on racial grounds. The new Texas map will likely give Republicans five extra seats.
Meanwhile in Virginia, where Democrats swept the state legislature races, plans appear to be underway for Democrats to try to amend their state’s constitution “to allow for partisan gerrymandering ahead of the 2026 election,” according to The Times.
Meanwhile Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said “Colorado must be prepared to respond” to states like Texas and any other Republican states who have talked about redistricting.
As The New York Times reports, “If those or other efforts ultimately materialize and succeed, it’s possible that Republicans, not Democrats, will ultimately lose the most seats from redistricting.”
So how are Republicans fighting back?
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre M. Henderson — a self-described “Republican” — stated she would work to implement the new Democrat map despite the dubious fact that a single, unelected, inferior court judge may not have the authority to override elected state officials.
“There will likely be an emergency appeal, but the process of finalizing new boundary details will take weeks of meticulous work on the part of state and county officials. Barring an appellate court ruling, we must begin without delay to ensure that everything is in place for candidate filing in January,” she said.
And to Weiser’s point, Republicans talked a good game on redistricting, but so far are not actually following through on that plan.
In Kansas, top House Republicans “dropped efforts to force a redraw of U.S. House districts” for now, according to The Associated Press. Meanwhile in Indiana, there is not enough support yet to redistrict, with Politico’s Adam Wren reporting that the spokeswoman for Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said, “The votes still aren’t there for redistricting.” In fact, during a recent interview Bray’s team reportedly requested that an answer about redistricting be removed from the final production. This despite the fact that Indiana currently has seven Republican-held congressional seats and two Democrat-held seats in a state where 59 percent of voters chose Donald Trump for president in 2024. As state Sen. Liz Brown pointed out in these pages, Indiana currently has a “balance of voters” similar to that of Massachusetts, where none of the state’s nine congressional seats is held by a Republican.
Not to mention that Democrats in states like Massachusetts, Illinois, and Connecticut have already gerrymandered Republicans almost entirely out of the state. Not a single Republican holds one congressional or Senate seat in Massachusetts and Connecticut although roughly 40 percent of voters in both states voted for Trump last election. Illinois is one of the most gerrymandered states in the union, with Nathaniel Rakich and Tony Chow writing in 2022 in FiveThirtyEight that the state’s congressional map “seems hell-bent on making Republican congressman from Illinois an endangered species” despite 43 percent of voters choosing Trump in November of last year.
But Democrats are following through on their plans, taking action now instead of waiting for Republicans to make the move. As 2026 draws near, if things continue on the same path as they are now, Republicans can kiss their majorities goodbye.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
