Bulwark Takes - Texas and Indiana May Derail Trump’s Gerrymandering Plan

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Sam Stein and Tim Miller take on the genuinely wild day in redistricting. Texas’ GOP-drawn maps were blocked by a federal court as Indiana Republicans revolt against Trump’s pressure campaign, and the whole 2025 gerrymandering project starts wobbling. Take our quick listener survey and help us make The Bulwark even better. https://bit.ly/bulwarkaudio

Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the board, joined by Tim Miller. Look at him in what appears to be a hotel. Nice shirt. Getting ready to interview Kamala Harris. Yeah, this is how you get ready to interview Kamala. You know, you just get into your cozy t-shirt. You start to think about it. You start to think about everything, you know, everything that came before. You start to marinate how you didn't just fall out of a coconut tree. You know, you got the product. Yeah. Are you not eating coconuts to like prep for this? I am. So I'm thinking about all that. I'm just going to get in the right headspace. So I'm also thinking about redistricting.

Yes. Oh, wow. What a segue. What amazing turn. Yeah, we're going to talk about redistricting here. Two big stories that just popped today. It's like midday, November, Tuesday, the 18th. The first I want to talk about is Texas, because Texas was like the big get for Republicans.

They made a big show. It started this whole process. They're going to redistrict. They're going to get five seats for Republicans. And with today, a federal court in Texas blocked the state from using the redrawn maps. They did so because they said it was done a sort of on a racial biased level or try to racial gerryman in the state. And so by two to one ruling with one of the judges being a Trump appointee, they basically said you're going to have to use the old maps for the midterms.

Now, before we get into it, it can be appealed. It will be appealed. It can be stayed. It likely will be state, although who knows. But if it does hold, this would be an incredible. incredible embarrassment for Trump could end up meaning that the Democrats leave this entire process with an actual gain of a seat or two. So I don't know what your thoughts are on here, Tim. I potentially even more. So I didn't interview Dave Wasserman, who is his ex-handle, his Twitter handle, is at Redistrict. So, you know, he knows a little bit about this. He's the authority here. So people can go watch that if they want to get really nerdy. But like just the broadest contours that I'll get to Texas about, you know, kind of just how much

this has changed in the last month, because it's truly. a remarkable turn of events like the the the the republicans were in a position even with california to kind of set this up to gerrymander themselves about like a 12-seat gain in the whole country which would have been pretty significant and then on top of that this voting rights act but you know which is the other kind of legal things happening in addition to texas you know had that been had that if that was overturned you know soon during a winter emergency session by scotis then maybe additional state. You know, you could have been in a situation where I was literally getting messages from people who know this stuff, who are nerds, who know I'm a nerd, who are like,

if everything goes right for the Republicans, then they might, they might win. They might successfully gerrymandered the country to such a degree. Even with California? Yeah, that the Democrats couldn't do it even in a wave. Like, that was the worst case scenario. Now, that was going to be, you know, all of the Republican states going exactly as they want. It was going to be the VRA, right? So it was a worst case scenario. But just like, that was literally on the, literally on the table. three weeks ago. And now, like, we've had these series of actions, including Virginia, where the Democrats got aggressive and are going on offense. Maybe they will go in some other states simultaneously with just these, you know, rake steps in the red states for the, for the

Republicans. You mentioned Texas. We'll talk about Indiana. The Texas situation, again, who knows, you know, this will, the gerrymated text maps will probably be through in 2026. But my two thoughts of this are one, the idea that we could have gone from like Republicans, like, creating an impenetral map for themselves to like the Democrats now potentially gaining seats through this if this Texas court thing stayed is like an unbelievable turn of events in a short period of time. Secondly, you know, I think that Texas has a secondary problem if you look at the Latino numbers right now, which is like what was underscoring a lot of the Texas redistricting was that was these kind of where the maps where Trump had done a lot of.

better down in these border, you know, heavily Latino kind of border communities, border districts, that's looking a lot shakier. So even if, you know, this court ruling is not upheld and the new maps are kept, you know, what looked like a five seat gain for Republicans in Texas is like maybe three or definitely like four, right? Like some of these other seats are looking shakier. Well, I was down in Austin for the Texas Tripp Fest last week. And look, it's a bunch of people who don't really like Trump.

and they were you know but the talk was really about that like when you were when you were just shooting the shit about Texas politics it's like two topics one was who's going to be the the Senate candidate for the Democrats and there's a lot there but two was what's going to what's going to be the actual outcome of this chairman and this is prior to this judge's ruling here and to a person they were just like don't don't just assume that all these seats are going to go to Republicans like there's really backclash happening here in Texas, primarily around affordability, but also around what's happening with ICE and things like that.

And these Latino voters, they were not, you know, they gravitated towards Trump, but they didn't decamp to Trump and they could come back. So there was a lot of optimism, again, huge pile of salt on that because these are people are paid to be optimistic by that. But this, so this case happens. I'm going to read a little bit from the ruling because it does underscore why they shot it down. They said, the public perception of this case is that it's about politics, to be sure politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map, but it was much more than just politics.

Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map, according to the ruling. So again, ruling on this, it will be appealed. We likely go to the Supreme Court. The thing, though, is that the deadline for filing is December 6, so there is a bit of a tight time on, so we're going to keep our eyes on that. Speaking of filing deadlines, I have a fucking epic filing deadline rant coming your guys well. later this week. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris is taking priority over that. Okay.

I'm excited to understand what that's about. I just like to tease. I like to tease people. People like, you know, when I'm really riled up about something and I'm riled up about filing deadline shenanigans, it's going to be the biggest video. Oh, is this the Chewry Garcia thing? You know, tens of thousands of views. Okay.

What will the comments be mixed? We'll see. I want to talk about the Indiana story because in many ways this is way more compelling. to me. So I'll set it up for you basically what happened just this afternoon. So a lot of pressure is being put on the Senate, the state senators to get ahead with redistricting. The House is fully on board and Mike Braun, the governor is now being just reamed by Trump to make it happen and he's fully on board. But the state senators are not. And so they voted today by a fairly wide margin to not go into special session, which is when they were going to do the redistricting. They said,

now, let's just do it in January. It was like 29 of them saying, don't want to do it now. It was a huge rebuke. And a number of them came out and just announced publicly, which they had not done to this point, that they were not going to vote for redistricting. The vote was 29 to 18. So Trump's flipping out, like he's throwing the books of these guys. And then the craziest thing happens is Mike Braun puts out a statement, the governor. He says, unfortunately, Senator Rod Bray, who runs the state Senate, was forced to partner with Democrats in all caps because he wants to do his Trump impression to block an effort by the growing number of American first senators who want to have a vote on passing fair maps.

Now I'm left with no choice other than to explore all options at my disposal to compel the state's Senate to show up and vote. I talked to a reporter who covers this stuff. The possibility is they dispatch like sheriffs to bring the senators back in to vote, to just get them on the record about where they come. That's what this is heading to. It is crazy. how far that they're going to go.

And especially now, I mean, given how successful the Democrats have been in pushing back, it's like even the best case scenario for Republicans is like, is shaky. I mean, for our first midterm, based on what we saw last week, based on kind of where, anything can happen in a year. But it's like,

okay, you know, it's one thing to say, oh, we're going to bring in the sheriffs as a power play to, like, guarantee that we hold the house. It's another thing to do that to like,

you know, give yourself a projection of being down 12, Senate seats or 12 house seats rather versus being down 14 you know but anyway uh look the indiana story and there are two other things are just worth mentioning either the mike pence of it all behind the scenes mike pence is obviously you know seeing just this is a tiny little bit of vengeance that he can have you know he's got limited power but he's got a couple buddies in the indiana state legislature and his his hand doesn't work here uh secondarily um there is a real impact like the last Last week's elections, you've been making fun of me in the Slack, which is fine, about, like, the new optimistic Tim talking about how this is the end of Trump.

And I don't mean it, like, literally in the sense that, like, Trump is going away tomorrow. Like, we have three more years of Donald Trump. Who the fuck knows what he's going to do? Yeah. What my point is that, like, it is possible that when we're gray, Sam, five, ten years hence, we'll look back. And be like, when did it start, when did his momentum, when did the momentum inexorably start to move away from him? Sure. And it's possible it has been the last week or two.

And this is just like, I connect that to Indiana in the sense. It's just like, people only have the courage and backbone to stand up to him if they, if they're not scared. Right. And like, and everybody's been scared of him, obviously within their own Republican Party, but up to it including like CEOs and rich people and, you know, Bob Iger. And like, people are just not as scared now. And I think that that is like a noteworthy shift. That's all. Yeah.

Okay. I heard, I listened to you and Bill on the pod yesterday. Oh, yeah? Like, very close to climaxing. Like, just, is it, is it the end? Is it the end, Bill? And our fan page, so there was clamoring for Bill to start reading the Z biotics ads. Does Bill need help getting over that hangover from Saturday night to, like, you know, I don't think so.

I think there's a reason the advertisers are targeting me. But yeah, no, me and Bill were a little, can me have. they'll be happy for one Monday. Can we just, can you let us be happy for one Monday? I mean, I didn't intervene. I just wanted to make sure that people's, look, I live life expecting the worse. And then when I get something that's not the worse, it feels great. But I'm always not going to like get upset because I totally anticipate the worst. And I fully expect that the Indiana Senate Republicans are going to say, oh, this is too much. Fine. We'll vote for it. Whatever. But, you know, it is, I will say, it is notable that this,

I mean, they're throwing everything they can at these guys. guys. And they are threatening them. I mean, one of the guys, the Senate leader Bray did have a, I think it was a swatting incident. Yeah, he was the swatting incident. Marjor Taylor Green was the pizza deliveries. But yeah, like this is real shit. These are real threats. I'm not trying to make light of them. I think that the threats actually don't work because two things. One is, I think it's like the public threats really have a way of actually stiffening people's spines. You don't want to be seen as bending to that shit because it just invites more of that behavior and two is i think you know it's strength in numbers really right like once you see that if you stand up to trump and it can work once

then other people are going to take that cue and so that's why i was talking to joe pertinent about this about the epstein stuff it's like the you know there is a significance obviously to the revelation of the files themselves but there's also a real significance to the fact that four people did stand up to all the pressure and prevailed because it's just going to invite that type of behavior in the future. I'm with you on all that. I just don't know why you can't, can't be as encouraged by the stiffened spines. But that's okay. I'm encouraged. I'm an emotional roller coaster. This is why people like, right with me, Sam. It's like, you know, it's just like you're up. The highs are so high. The lows are so low. You never know what you're going to get, you know, when you download the bulwark

take. Well, I usually do because when you edit bill, it's going to be something about the, you know, the federalist papers followed by, oh my God, we're on autocracy followed by. Let me get into Trump's head for a second and that's what you're going to get but it's worth it subscribe to the feed yeah all right plus churchill hey good luck tonight buddy have fun with Kamala looking forward to the pod and for those who are watching thank you for uh handling me and tim go dorky on redistricting for a little bit appreciate that and subscribe to the feed see you soon