Daily Herald opinion: Political power plays: As Texas redistricting farce unfolds in the suburbs, we need focus on national map reform

The latest movie from the Coen Brothers, the duo known for their dark humor and quirky characters, comes out later this month. But the inspiration for their next could very well be unfolding in the suburbs.

The dark tale — comic if weren’t so disturbing — would begin at the White House.

A president with no respect for democracy’s checks and balances very much wants his Republican Party to remain in control of Congress come the 2026 midterms. And he’s found a red state eager to help.

The narrative would then shift from Washington, D.C., to Texas, where GOP lawmakers get busy redrawing congressional boundaries to please the president. They find a way to give him five more Republican seats and, quite possibly, control of the U.S. House for his full four-year term, attempting to squash any chance of a Democratic majority.

Then, the plot thickens.

To block a vote on the maps, Democratic lawmakers flee the Lone Star state for Illinois, a place where political map manipulation has been elevated to an art form. The visiting Texans, enjoying suburban hospitality as they make the press conference rounds, vow to risk arrest rather than allow the Texas redraw go forward.

It’s farce at its best — but politics at their worst.

The Texas move to redraw its districts, an action normally reserved for after census data is released once a decade, is a blatant attempt to sway an election and control the U.S. balance of power. To do so, minority neighborhoods would be broken up, diluting their voices and disenfranchising voters, the precise opposite of the intent when the Founders built the concept of redistricting into the Constitution.

And, if successful in securing the House for Republicans, the remap could grant President Donald Trump, already frighteningly emboldened in his second term, even greater power.

Make no mistake: Playing dirty in drawing districts is not just a Republican pursuit. We have long railed against Illinois Democrats for creating long, winding districts that snake through the state with the sole purpose of holding on as the majority party in Springfield.

How bad is Illinois’ map? Princeton’s Gerrymandering Project graded it an “F” in 2021.

The timing of the Texas case, however, makes it especially egregious. Now, the Democratic governors of California and New York are threatening to follow suit by redrawing their own maps to favor Democrats; Gov. JB Pritzker has not ruled out doing the same here in Illinois.

And Tuesday, Politico reported, other states are mulling changes as well — with talk of Vice President JD Vance heading to Indiana to eek out more Republican seats there.

We have long believed strongly that fair maps are essential to fair elections. If you abandon the belief that elected bodies should reflect the will of voters over the whims of mapmakers, then wouldn’t gerrymandering be on the table every time a party in power feels threatened?

Yet, in this case, is there an argument to made for a bold response to balance the scales? If, as Trump said in a CNBC interview Tuesday, Republicans are “entitled” to more congressional seats in Texas, then aren’t Democrats “entitled” to more in Illinois, New York and California?

Michelle Obama’s quote — “if they go low, we go high’’ — comes to mind. But what if “going high” means furthering very real threats to democracy?

These are hard questions for hard times, and moral clarity is difficult to come by.

What is clear, however, is the need for reform — and not just on the state level. Last year, Democratic U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Laphonza Butler of California introduced the Redistricting Reform Act of 2024. It called for a more transparent, less partisan approach to drawing political maps — and banned mid-decade attempts to redraw them.

It never made it to a vote. If it had, perhaps this week’s fiasco could have been averted.

Instead, we’re watching the drama play out in here in the suburbs and worrying about what lies ahead.

In the hands of the right filmmaker, a fictional version might end with a bit of karmic justice. Real life is far more complicated.