Wisconsin Lawmaker: Corrupt maps in Texas will corrupt maps everywhere

Texas Democrats leave their state to freeze a Republican legislature ordered by Trump to gerrymander their congressional boundaries.

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Texas Democrats who fled their state to prevent a further Republican gerrymander of US congressional districts found lots of allies in Boston last week, including fellow legislators from Wisconsin.

This is the second week that the Texas House of Representatives has been silenced because Democrats left and denied Republicans a quorum to conduct business. For those GOP lawmakers, the first order of business was a mid-decade redrawing of congressional boundaries to comply with President Donald Trump’s demand to erase five seats held by Democrats and make them easier to win for Republicans.

For Wisconsin Democrats like Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire), who was in Boston for the National Conference of State Legislators convention, the stakes are easy to identify.

“If we allow this to happen,” Emerson said, “we’re never going to have fair maps anywhere ever again.”

Rigging political maps has been an unfortunate part of American politics throughout the country’s history, but rarely has it been so brazen as a president demanding a state legislator alter their maps on command rather than wait for the redistricting that happens after every 10-year census.

“It breaks my heart,” Emerson said, “especially in the context of being there in Boston, seeing what we’ve gone through to start our country and the revolution. No kings. This is our democracy on the line.”

Making matters worse for her party, Emerson noted, is that playing by the rules puts them at a disadvantage to offset the Texas gerrymander by having Democratic-controlled states redraw their own maps.

“Democratic states, for the most part, have already implemented nonpartisan redistricting commissions,” which take political mapmaking out of the hands of partisan politicians and remove the temptation to embrace corrupt cartography.

Wisconsin voters endured more than a decade of gerrymandered legislative maps until conservative control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court came to an end two years ago. Democrats feel they are in a position to win majorities in the state Senate and Assembly in 2026 — and many see pledging to adopt nonpartisan redistricting reform as a way to win over voters tired of political gamesmanship.