Democrats’ chair vows to fight ‘tooth and nail’ to stop Trump, Republicans, in redistricting battle

The chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pledges that his party is “not going to roll over” in its redistricting duel with President Donald Trump and Republicans.

“This is not the Democratic Party of your grandfathers, which would bring a pencil to knife fight. This is a new Democratic Party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight, and we’re going to fight fire with fire,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said on Tuesday, as he teamed up with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Texas Democratic state lawmakers who fled to the heavily blue Midwestern state.

The move by the Texas Democrats is preventing the Republican-dominated state legislature from voting on new GOP-crafted congressional maps in the red state that would create five more right-leaning congressional districts at Trump’s urging.

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Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has called for those lawmakers to be arrested and prosecuted upon their return to the Lone Star State.

The Republican push in Texas is part of a broader effort by the GOP across the country to keep control of their razor-thin House majority in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.

Trump and his political team are aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats stormed back to grab the House majority in the 2018 midterms. 

“Donald Trump, Gov. Abbott, Texas Republicans, well they know that they’re headed for a loss of the Congress in 2026. They’re afraid, and they should be,” Pritzker claimed. And the governor charged, “they’ve decided that the only way to save themselves is to cheat, to change the rules in the middle of the game.”

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Martin, who’s aiming to rebound after a rocky couple of months after winning election as DNC chair in February, argued that the rare mid-decade redistricting move by Texas Republicans is a “clear and blatant violation of the Voting Rights Act.”

The DNC chair said it’s “a test case for the rest of the country. What Republicans are trying to do in Texas is a model for other red states to lie, cheat and steal their way to victory.”

Martin vowed that “Democrats are going to fight this tooth and nail.”

“Now is not the time for one party to play by the rules and the other party completely ignore them. They’ve decided to cheat and we’re going to respond in kind,” he said.”The Democratic Party didn’t start this fight but we’re not going to roll over. They want a fight and we’re going to give it to them and we’re going to put every option on the table.”

Among those options are legal avenues. 

And Democratic governors in blue bastions are vowing to respond by pushing redistricting in their states.

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Pritzker, asked by reporters if Illinois will push to redistrict to add more blue-leaning congressional seats ahead of next year’s midterms, said “here in the state of Illinois, it is possible.”

But the governor added, “it’s not something that I want to do.” 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who, similar to Pritzker, is considered a potential 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful, is aiming to redraw his state’s congressional maps, to give the state five more blue-leaning House districts ahead of next year’s elections.

But while the Republican push in Texas to upend the current congressional maps doesn’t face constitutional constraints, Newsom’s path in California is much more complicated.

The governor is moving to hold a special election this year, to obtain voter approval to undo the constitutional amendments that created the non-partisan redistricting commission. A two-thirds majority vote in the Democrat-dominated California legislature would be needed to hold the referendum.

“The proposal that we’re advancing with the legislature has a trigger only if they move forward, to dismantling the protocols that are well-established,” Newsom said on Monday. “Would the state of California move forward in kind? Fighting? Yes, fire with fire.”