The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 19 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Suddenly, President Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 midterms with corrupt gerrymandering schemes seems to be in serious trouble. In Indiana, Republicans have announced that they lack the votes to redraw their congressional map. And on Tuesday, a panel of judges blocked a big GOP gerrymander in Texas, another big blow to Trump’s scheme. Trump is unhappy that his plot is faltering. He lashed out at Indiana Republicans on Truth Social threatening primaries and raging at the stupidity of one leading opponent. So is this plan dead? Not quite. Several aspects of this still remain unresolved. Republicans had added five seats in Texas. Those are now in serious doubt, but they have added four others. Meanwhile, Democrats are adding five in California and got one in Utah. Still, there’s a lot up in the air. So we’re working through what lies ahead with Heather Williams, who’s been leading the fight against the scheme as president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. Heather, thanks for coming on.
Heather Williams: Thank you. I’m glad to be here with you.
Sargent: In Texas, Republicans had added five seats in a gerrymander and a panel of judges just ruled that it’s likely unconstitutional. Politico called this a massive blow to the White House and Trump. It looks like this might be appealed and may end up at the Supreme Court. It’s always foolish to count on this court to do anything, let alone something on gerrymandering. What happened with the Texas ruling and what do you expect from the high court on that?
Williams: Yeah, Texas is it’s where it started, right? And this is where the president called on Republicans in a strategy that does not seem like it was well thought out. And so the process moved through the courts as one would expect here. And now we are sitting at a ruling that is not good for Republicans that creates a question mark of whether or not this map, the first one that Republicans gerrymandered in this mid-cycle process, is actually going to stand.
Sargent: Well, what do you think is going to happen? How do you anticipate this unfolding at the Supreme Court?
Williams: It’s an interesting question. I think it’s so new, and what this court does is… I feel like it’s always uncertain. But what I do know is going to happen while we wait for the process to play out in Texas is Republicans started this fight, as we were just talking about, and we are not going to sit by the sidelines and wait for this to happen.
We know that the president continues to put pressure on Republican lawmakers to continue the gerrymandering process. They have hit some roadblocks. And we know that the Democrats are going to continue to look at this because, at the end of the day, people deserve representation in Congress. And this—this is the path to making sure that that happens.
Sargent: Well, just to do the overview again, now that you subtract Texas’s five seats, Republicans got one each in North Carolina and Missouri and two in Ohio. That’s a total of four that they’ve got in the bank, as it were. But with Democrats adding five in California and in a surprise picking up one in Utah, Democrats are actually at a place where they’ve suddenly added more than Republicans. Isn’t that right?
Williams: Yeah. I mean, we still, of course, have to see what happens with this Texas case and how the courts decide on it. But yes, in terms of movement right now and what the landscape looks like, that is exactly right. And we know that the fight’s not over. And we also know that this electoral environment is good for Democrats. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it’s good for Democrats. So I think we’re in a pretty strong place in this moment.
Sargent: It certainly is a surprise twist. Let’s talk about Indiana now. Republicans appear to lack the votes in the state Senate to pass a redistricting there. This prompted an outburst on Truth Social from Trump, who attacked the Senate leader, Rodric Bray this way: “soon he will have a primary problem as will any other politician who supports him in this stupidity.” Trump also slammed him as “weak and pathetic.” But it sure looks like Trump feels that this whole thing is getting away from him and slipping away in a big way. What do you expect to happen in Indiana?
Williams: There seems to be hesitancy from the Republican caucus to move this forward. I think that there’s hesitancy to have the president tell them what to do. And I think it goes back to this plan was not well thought out. It was a reaction to something and now it is getting away. And we’re going to continue to see these conversations happen. But Republicans have hit a bunch of roadblocks here and it’s not looking good in Indiana.
Sargent: So Heather, if they do succeed in Indiana, which as you say is pretty dicey, how many could they add there? Not many, right?
Williams: That is right. Not many. I think it looks like at the most maybe one seat. They’ve got a lot of work to do, I think, to even get to that point.
Sargent: It sure looks that way. Although I got to think the pressure is going to be much more intense now that the Texas thing fell apart. I will say though, it looks like the big unknown right now is Florida. Republicans there seem poised to move ahead sometime soon. It’s a huge state. Now that we know this, it’s even more likely that Democrats will respond with the redistricting of their own in Virginia, which is another very populous state, but not nearly as populous as Florida. What’s going on with that in Virginia? What can Democrats reasonably expect there?
Williams: We just notched a win in the process in Virginia by securing that legislative majority in the state house that was on the ballot in November. They passed the first round before the election. They’ve got to pass it again in the legislature early next year, and then, similar to California, it’s a constitutional amendment. So it would go to the ballot.
The question on Virginia, the question on Florida, the question in so many of these places is how fast does the process move and how… what is the impact of how they bump up against deadlines? And that, I think, is going to be the thing that we’re going to continue to look out for and hear more about—what is the implication of the next step in the 2026 elections: candidate-filing deadlines, primaries that will have an impact on when maps can be changed in order to have the 2026 elections?
Sargent: Well, I got to think of the size of the victory in Virginia [where] Abigail Spanberger won the gubernatorial race by 15 points. There’s a trifecta and there was a really big pickup on the state legislative level as well. I got to think that really emboldens Democrats to say we’re going to do this. We can’t let them outflank us with Florida, right? I mean, is there any, is there any doubt that Virginia will move forward? I would expect that they will. Right. And how many seats do you think Democrats can add from there?
Williams: Yeah. So Virginia, it looks like maybe a two to four seat are in play in this process. They are again in a constitutional process, so it has to pass the legislature. again, and then it has to go to the people. So there’s some steps involved and again, some deadlines that they’re working through. I think the other thing that is happening that is [a] complimentary and less processed piece is that Democrats are honing in on what this electorate wants. And the takeaway from Virginia that I think is actually applicable in this context in 2026 is that we won in Trump districts. So the idea that all of these gerrymanders are unreachable for Democrats or that there is not a path to the majority is just fundamentally not true. So while the process takes place on mid-cycle redistricting, there is also efforts, of course, around the campaign side to ensure that we’re maximizing opportunities in this electorate and reaching voters where they are.
Sargent: Yeah, it looks to me like what we saw in Virginia and in California, the through line is basically people want a Democratic party that is going to fight Trump on every conceivable front, no matter what it takes. Now, I think Democrats at the start of this whole mid-cycle redistricting process were a little uncomfortable with kind of going to war in that way, but the fundamental thing that I think has changed, you’ve seen it from people like Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, is that they’re essentially saying, you know what, Republicans don’t get to play by their own rules anymore. Is that the fundamental thing here?
Williams: Yeah, I think Governor Newsom said a version of what people are looking for is strong and wrong and not weak and right. And I think that the big picture here is that voters are looking for someone to stand up for them and fight for them. They’re not looking for UFC-style fighting. They’re looking for someone to be on their side, to create a better future.
And I think one of the big lessons that we took away from previous election results and from the electorate was that we needed to meet voters where they were on the issues that they cared most about. And that has been affordability. That has been economic prosperity and opportunity. And all of this is happening in the construct of a presidency that is neglecting the issue that he campaigned on most, and not only neglecting it, but he’s creating more harm for people.
And the redistricting process is not going to solve all of those problems for Republicans. So we sit at this place where there is absolutely an ask to their elected officials and candidates to be strong, to be bold, to stand up for something, right? And to fight for it, while also recognizing that hearing people when they say this economy is not good for them is really meaningful.
Sargent: Well, let’s talk about a deeper problem that Democrats have here. And this is one you’ll appreciate. The Democrats have perennially faced the situation where a lot of donors and rank and file voters don’t take state legislative contests seriously enough. I don’t know what it’s going to take to persuade people of the importance of these races, but one thing that should do it is watching Trump order GOP controlled legislatures to deliberately redraw their maps solely for the GOP to keep power in Congress despite having a profoundly unpopular agenda.
Can you talk about that big picture? This has always been a thing for democratic operatives such as yourself, the reluctance to take state legislative contests seriously enough.
Williams: You make such an important point. And I will say Republicans have known this, right? If you remember 2010, they invested in the project called Project Red Map. That investment in state legislatures from national Republicans down into the states was about this moment. It was about their ability to use state legislatures to move their agenda—whether that agenda was testing Project 2025 and moving the Overton window, whether that agenda was trying to secure their power when their policies were unpopular and not meeting voters where they were in a mid-cycle redistricting process like they are employing right now.
The president obviously has called on legislatures, which has put an enormous spotlight on the impact legislatures have—not just on the normal policy issues that you would expect them to for their constituents within their state borders, but also the deep implications that they have on the rest of the ballot and our ability as Democrats, or frankly their ability as Republicans, to have a congressional map across the country that is representative or favorable or whatever adjective one wants to use, that sits with state legislatures.
And we’ve made a lot of progress in telling the story of state legislatures and why Democrats should care about them alongside the interest in, of course, eventually taking back the White House, winning Congress, and having federal power. But I think that this spotlight has shown the urgency behind the strategic sort of change or inclusion, if you will, and why it matters so much.
Sargent: Well, let’s talk about what it’s going to look like at the end of the day here. So if Republicans have added four seats, not including Texas—let’s just say maybe Texas doesn’t come through for them in the end—but they do get a bunch out of Florida, they could still kind of end up ahead of Democrats, right? But only marginally.
If I understand this correctly, they’ve got their four that they’ve pocketed. If they add a few more out of Florida, and yet Democrats are able to offset that with Virginia, we’re pretty close to parity. Maybe Republicans go a little bit ahead of them, right? What do you expect at the very end of the day?
Williams: What I expect at the end of the day, honestly, is that we have campaigns up and down the ballot that are fighting for a different future for voters. And they are telling that story. And the reason why I say that is because the electorate in 2025 did not look the same as the electorate in 2024. The midterm electorate in 2026 is also not going to look the same. And if we are able to continue the momentum that we have seen in 2025, those coalitions of voters that these maps—these Republican maps—are predicated on are called into question, right?
These voting blocks that voted for Trump are not secure for Republicans. And Democrats have a lot of work to do to communicate and to connect with voters, again, about what a different future looks like on the issues they care most about. And we are doing that, and we are committed to doing that through these midterms.
So I don’t want to undervalue the impact of the mid-cycle redistricting conversation that is happening and the need for Democrats to continue to evaluate opportunities and seize them where they can. That remains important. Whether the Republican strategy is falling apart or not does not matter. They started this. We cannot let up.
And the same goes for the electoral environment. We won some great elections in 2025. We exceeded expectations. We moved voters across states into voting for Democrats. And we need to hold that and build on that for the midterm so we can be successful up and down the ballot.
Sargent: Right. It seems like at the end of the day, you could see something close to a wash in the redistricting wars. And in addition to that, Democrats maybe are able to put more seats in play on the House level than expected, because in order to redistrict, Republicans have to spread around the Republican vote a little more and they’re taking their safe-seat Republicans and making them a little more vulnerable. After seeing what happened in these elections just this year, you got to think that there’s at least a decent chance that in 2026, there’s something close to a blue wave and it goes and gets some of those seats that are now more vulnerable as a result of this scheme. So in some sense, it could backfire on them even even more brutally than we expect. Correct?
Williams: Yes. Republicans have a circular feedback loop right now that is telling them that the way that they are governing, and the things that they are prioritizing, is what voters want them to be doing. And voters are telling them very clearly and very loudly that they are not. And I think the more that Republicans continue to tell voters that their experience in this economy, their experience in their community right now, is not valid and not true, the more agitated people get about looking for alternatives.
And that’s where certainly Democrats come in, with a strong message building off of a united front in 2025, rooted in classic kitchen-table political issues. And we’re going to carry that. And that means that there are a lot of seats in play up and down the ballot. There’s a lot of opportunities for Democrats.
I mean, in elections alone this year, we have flipped—at our ballot level—we have flipped Trump double-digit districts. We won R-plus-four seats in November. This was not blue states where we just won easy. These were hard-fought wins where we moved the needle, and we can build on that and do it again in November 2026.
Sargent: It’s certainly getting very interesting. Heather Williams, thanks so much for giving us that overview.
Williams: Thank you so much.