As Texas Democrats head back to the southern state amid redistricting wars with California, Rachel Maddow broke down the strategies she says President Donald Trump is using to “rig” the 2026 midterm elections so that Republicans can grab hold of Congress longterm.
After briefly explaining Trump’s call on Texas to redraw their congressional districts in an effort to nab five seats in the House of Representatives, a pursuit that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is matching, the MSNBC host detailed how not only is Texas getting in on the war, so are other red and swing states.
“It really is not just Texas,” Maddow said on Monday night. “Vice President J.D. Vance flew to Indiana last week to put pressure on the Republican governor there to also rig the Indiana maps; for the Republicans in Missouri and New Hampshire and South Carolina and Florida to try to get those states to all rig their congressional maps as well.”
She continued: “In an effort to effectively guarantee Republican control of Congress for years to come … demanding changes to congressional district maps to essentially make it structurally impossible for Democrats to control Congress. Again, using Republican-controlled states to do it.”
Her next point was Trump’s demand for a “new” census, despite work on the 2030 census already being in the works. Per NPR, Trump said via a social media post that the new census would exclude millions of undocumented migrants.
“The census is how we get congressional districts, and if Trump can effectively nullify the existing census by blaming the counting of immigrants or something, by doing so, he will lay the ground for claiming that all the existing congressional districts in this country, which all only exist because of that census … are all somehow bad and they can’t be used,” Maddow explained. “Therefore, we can’t have congressional elections using the congressional districts that we thought we have.”
According to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the “whole number of persons in each state” are to be counted as part of census numbers.
Maddow’s third and final point pertained to the options Americans have to cast their votes. On Monday, Trump took to his Truth Social account to announce that he plans to put an end to mail-in ballots and voting machines, which he says he’ll sign off on via an executive order, claiming, without evidence, that voting machines are “highly inaccurate.”
All of this, Maddow noted, is an “idea” Trump got from his wannabe “best friend,” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Trump said Putin gave him advice on how to conduct elections here in our country,” Maddow said. “Putin says that people shouldn’t be allowed to vote by mail. He says he got that idea from Putin. And so, today, Trump says that he will sign an executive order barring Americans nationwide from voting by mail and potentially banning voting machines as well.”
Maddow went on to warn those watching to take heed of Trump’s words and the actions that follow, also highlighting that his attempt to change voting policies will disproportionately target and impact marginalized groups of people.
“Urban downtowns will be filled with ICE checkpoints and intimidating National Guard troops to ‘double check’ that only citizens vote,” she predicted.
