Richard Arlin Walker
Special to ICT
Alabama-Coushatta Tribe Chairwoman Cecilia Flores in Texas can drive just an hour to meet with her local member of Congress, and vice versa. But that visit could soon take hours.
The Texas Legislature redrew its congressional district boundaries to give Republicans an advantage in five districts in the 2026 midterm elections. Redistricting mid-decade is unusual and was initiated by President Donald Trump, who needs a Republican majority to keep his domestic and foreign agenda alive.
Alabama-Coushatta’s reservation – north of Houston in a rural area known as the Big Thicket – is currently in the 8th District, represented by Morgan Luttrell of the Houston suburb of Magnolia. If the redistricting plan survives a court challenge in October, Flores will be in the 10th District, which stretches more than 200 miles away to Austin, where incumbent Republican Rep. Michael McCaul now operates his district office. McCaul, however, announced recently he is not seeking re-election.
Luttrell “has made visits here when he’s home in the district,” Flores said. “Our concern is, with the new district office so far away, it’s going to be difficult for Congressman McCaul to do that. We have a very good working relationship with Congressman Luttrell. He’s gone back to D.C. for us on some of our issues. He understands our rural area.”
Flores said “we remain optimistic” of developing a good relationship with McCaul. “We just want to make sure that our votes count and that our voices are heard,” she told ICT.
The U.S. Constitution mandates a population census every 10 years; legislatures adjust their congressional and legislative district boundaries accordingly so each district contains roughly an equal number of people, adhering to the “one person, one vote” principle. However, boundaries are often redrawn in a way that favors one political party, a strategy known as gerrymandering.
Texas’ redistricting plan was the first political chess piece played in the effort to bolster Trump’s support in Congress. California responded with a redistricting plan of its own that could flip five congressional seats in the Golden State and offset GOP gains in Texas. Missouri’s Republican-led legislature approved a map designed to help their party win another U.S. House seat, but opponents vow to block it in court or with a referendum, NPR reported.
Other states considering redistricting, according to NPR: Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland and Kansas, which could put U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, Ho-Chunk, at risk.
Meanwhile, Republican-majority legislatures in Ohio and Utah are under court orders to redraw their states’ maps by month’s end. Those maps either replaced more neutral maps or were approved without bipartisan support.
‘Monitor for possible dilution of voting strength’
In an Aug. 27 report on PBS NewsHour, reporter Lisa Desjardin described the pre-midterm redistricting as “a game of inches.” Each political party is making a play to gain a House seat that makes or breaks the majority – a play that reflects the deep partisan division in the country.
Republicans have a 219-213 House majority — with three vacancies that will be filled this year in special elections – and a 53-47 majority in the Senate. All 435 seats in the House and 35 of 100 Senate seats will be on the midterm ballot on Nov. 3, 2026. Sixteen Republican and 10 Democratic House members are not seeking reelection in 2026, according to Ballotpedia.
Native American voting rights advocates fear redistricting will dilute their voting strength by splitting their communities into multiple districts, ensuring their preferred candidate in a district cannot win, or concentrating their communities in a single district, thereby neutralizing their voting strength in other districts. Such moves are illegal under the Voting Rights Act.
That’s what happened in North Dakota, in a redistricting that is being challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court. Citizens of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians formerly voted in two legislative districts. Redistricting placed a supermajority of Turtle Mountain Band voters in one district, diluting their voting strength in the other district.
In short, where Turtle Mountain Band citizens once had a voice in electing two legislators, their opportunity to elect legislators is reduced to one district.
“As a general matter, any time redistricting occurs there is a risk that a legislature will redraw the map in a way that dilutes the votes of minority voters, including Native American voters,” said Lenny Powell, a Native American Rights Fund attorney and citizen of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians.
“I think the Texas redistricting and the redistrictings that are being contemplated in other states pose an especially high risk of unlawfully diluting votes of minorities and Native Americans,” Powell said. “These are politically motivated redistrictings. The reason for redistricting after the Census is strictly to ensure there’s equal representation, but that’s equal representation based on population, not political affiliation.”
He added, “It’s important for tribes and Native people to be engaged and to monitor for potential dilution of Native votes and to advocate against those sorts of actions.”
Early measure of public support
One of the few Native Americans in the U.S. House of Representatives could find her reelection chances eroded if the Republican-led Kansas legislature chooses to redraw its congressional district boundaries.
Davids, the only Democrat representing Kansas in the U.S. House, won her four bids to represent the 3rd Congressional District by margins of 9 to 12 percent. She co-chairs the Congressional Native American Caucus and is also a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure, Small Business, and Agriculture committees.
“She is the only Democrat in Kansas and they have a plan to rip apart her district so that she won’t carry it,” said Anna Whiting Sorrel, Salish Kootenai, a Democrat from Montana and voter rights advocate.
“She has done amazing things — she and Deb Haaland — for Indian people across the country,” Sorrel said. “She does work that benefits everybody – Native and non-Native. For example, working to preserve access to health care. In Montana, 102,000 people have already been kicked off of Medicaid. That’s about 33.9 percent of all Montanans, and of that about 15,000 are American Indians.”
Davids’ own state of Kansas is expected to lose roughly $4 billion in Medicaid funding, according to her website. Nearly 93,000 Kansans will lose coverage and six rural hospitals in Kansas will be at risk of closure, according to the website.
Redistricting in Missouri could prove problematic for Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Kansas City. Cleaver, who is African-American, a 10-term congressman and former Kansas City mayor who is credited with leading the economic revitalization of his city.
Voters’ feelings about Trump’s policies get their first reveal in special elections scheduled this year. Democrat James Walkinshaw, a former county supervisor in Fairfax County, Virginia, won a special election Sept. 9 to succeed Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Virginia, who died on May 21.
Arizona voters on Sept. 23 will choose a successor to Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, who died March 13. Texas voters on Nov. 4 will choose a successor to Rep. Sylvester Turner, Democrat, who died March 5
Voters in Tennessee on Dec. 2 will select a successor to Rep. Mark Green, Republican, who resigned July 20. Nineteen candidates – among them three Democrats and three Republicans serving in the state legislature – hope to advance from the Oct. 7 primary.
Chris Stearns, Navajo, sees signs that voters will choose change in the 2026 midterms. He’s a Democrat who represents a Seattle-area swing district in the Washington state House of Representatives. He served as director of Indian affairs for the U.S. Department of Energy in the Clinton administration and later chaired the Washington State Gambling Commission and the Seattle Indian Health Board.
“The people in my district are afraid and they’re angry at what they’re seeing,” Stearns said. “They’re seeing the prices of everything in the stores go up. They’re seeing less produce on the grocery shelves. They’re seeing programs that provide health care getting cut and funding for schools getting cut.
“Until now, I have never seen anti-Trump protests out on the street in areas of my district that are Republican. I was just at one on Labor Day. It’s one thing to see people rise up and speak their minds in Seattle. But when it comes out to what was a swing district, you can really see the unrest and the unhappiness with this administration. It is extremely palpable.”
Could economy be the deciding factor?
Republicans’ push to redistrict before the midterms carries some political risk. Politico reported on Aug. 26 that 81 percent of respondents to a Change Research poll oppose mid-decade redistricting in their states. Redistricting, poll respondents said, “should be conducted in a balanced way.”
Vice President JD Vance justified pre-midterm redistricting, telling USA TODAY on Aug. 27 that “Democrats have rigged the game. They’ve made it so that even when the American people vote for Republicans, they don’t necessarily get Republican congressional majorities.”
Vance’s assertion, however, is not supported by history. Republicans are currently the majority party in the House and Senate. In Vance’s lifetime (he was born in 1984), Republicans have been the majority party in the House and the Senate 12 times; Democrats have been the majority party in the House 10 times and in the Senate 11 times.
Republicans led a unified government — meaning the president’s party was the majority party in the House and Senate — four times during Vance’s lifetime; Democrats led a unified government three times.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to try sowing voter doubt in the integrity of the nation’s elections. He still claims he lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud — claims debunked by Trump’s first-term Justice Department, a federal cybersecurity agency, and local and state elections officials from both parties. More than 60 lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies challenging the results of the 2020 election were dismissed for lack of evidence or dropped.
Ahead of the 2026 midterms, however, Trump’s second-term Justice Department is seeking access to voting machines and voter registration records in several states. Trump, who has voted absentee, is seeking to eliminate absentee ballots and require in-person voting. Powell said that would disenfranchise many rural voters — Democrats and Republicans — who don’t live near polling places. The Pew Research Center reports that 46 percent of rural residents vote by absentee ballot.
But it may be the economy, not redistricting, that determines which political party prevails in the midterms.
Trump won the 2024 presidential election with 49.8 percent of the vote, which means 50.2 percent voted for someone else. He won Wisconsin by 29,397 votes, Michigan by 80,103 votes, and Pennsylvania by 120,266 votes. A shift in voter confidence in the economy — the big issue in those states, followed by election integrity, abortion access and immigration — would have given Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris the Electoral College majority and the presidency.
Perception and pocketbook are often deciding factors in elections. The unemployment rate dropped in 2019, during Trump’s first term, to a 49-year low; the rate of inflation dropped to 1.2 percent in 2020; and the number of manufacturing jobs grew. He also appointed three Supreme Court justices, clearing the way for Roe v Wade to be overturned; and brokered the peace agreement and establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
But Trump’s campaign for reelection in 2020 was derailed by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 1.2 million Americans died during the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the unemployment rate peaked at 8.1 percent in 2020; and the cost of energy and food prices escalated amid supply chain issues.
During his presidency, President Joe Biden won bipartisan passage of a massive infrastructure investment bill; economic and labor productivity growth surpassed expectations; inflation was brought down without a recession to 2.4 percent; and wealth gains were strong for younger and lower-income households.
Biden had the most diverse Cabinet in presidential history: the first African-American, Asian-American and female to be elected vice president; the first African-American woman appointed to the Supreme Court; and the first Native American, named to a Cabinet position, with Haaland named as Secretary of the Interior.
But Biden’s reelection hopes — he ultimately bowed out and passed the baton to Harris — were derailed by increases in the cost of living, increases in immigration at the southern border, and wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Despite the fact that the economy was robust, voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania weren’t feeling it. Groceries and gas cost more, so voters were willing to overlook Trump’s history of inflammatory speech, his hush money conviction, and separate civil judgments for defamation and financial statement fraud.
But will midterm voters overlook cuts to Medicaid, trade policy uncertainties, a weakening job market, sliding consumer confidence, and a national debt that is bigger than the nation’s entire economy? Stearns doesn’t think so. And he hopes Democrats running for office in the midterms can turn voters’ attention to what the party is doing to protect and fight for working families.
“We are the ones who are filling in the gaps on health care and Medicaid,” he said. “We’re the ones who are finding sources of funding for schools and to fix roads. We’re the ones trying to keep the lights on. The White House is slashing all funding for renewable projects. They’re shutting down wind projects that are almost done and that will increase our utility bills. So our message is, we are the ones who are keeping the lights on, fighting for lower prices, trying to make conditions better for working families.”
Stearns added, “The White House is focused on billionaires. The corporate tax breaks and tax breaks for billionaires are astounding. Our focus is on the middle class, and that is the winning message.”
MIDTERMS AT A GLANCE
Primary elections: Dates vary by state. The earliest is on March 3, the latest is on Sept. 15.
General election: Nov. 3, 2026
On the ballot: All 435 seats in the House and 35 of 100 Senate seats.
Date terms begin: Those elected will take office on Jan. 3, 2027.
What members of Congress do: All bills for raising revenue originate in the House of Representatives. The House has the constitutional authority to impeach, or indict, federal officials and send the impeachment to the Senate for trial. The House has the constitutional authority to elect the president should the Electoral College be deadlocked. The House introduces legislation and votes on bills approved by the Senate. The Senate has the constitutional authority to try impeachments, approve presidential appointments, approve or reject treaties, and elect the Vice President in the event of an Electoral College tie (the vice president serves as president of the Senate). The Senate introduces legislation and votes on bills approved by the House.
Terms, pay and benefits: Senators are elected to six-year terms; House members are elected to two-year terms. They are paid $174,000 a year and are eligible for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, with a federal subsidy on premiums; and retirement benefits through the Federal Employee Retirement System, which includes Social Security, a 401K-type savings plan, and a pension based on service years. A minimum of five years of service is required for pension eligibility.