Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump is scared to death that the Democrats could win control of the House in Nov. 2026. That would mean they have the power to impeach him again and again. If the Democrats don't capture the Senate, there will be long public hearings to determine what the articles of impeachment should be. If the Democrats do capture the Senate (unlikely, but possible if all the stars align and there is a big blue wave), the impeachment will probably be quick and the Senate trial will be extended and televised. Trump really doesn't want any of this. Consequently, he is fighting like hell for every House seat—not by pursuing policies that are popular, but by trying to rig the game. Texas already changed its congressional map. Now the battle has shifted to Missouri and Ohio.
Missouri has eight House seats, currently occupied by six Republicans and two Democrats. This means that Republicans have 75% of the House seats, even though Donald Trump won only 58% of the vote in 2024. In other words, the House map is already heavily gerrymandered. But Trump wants more. The two Democrats are Wesley Bell in MO-01 (D+29) and Emanuel Cleaver in MO-05 (D+12). Both are Black. Bell ran against the very controversial former representative Cori Bush in the 2024 Democratic primary, and with some $800K from AIPAC, beat her. Given the tilt of the district (D+29) there is no way the Republicans can redistrict him out of a seat. So their goal is to de-seat Cleaver, who represents Kansas City, MO, and some of its suburbs.
Since the Republicans have the trifecta in Missouri, there is nothing the Democrats can do legislatively to stop the Republicans from redrawing the map. Instead, the blue team's efforts are aimed at a ballot initiative to stop or repeal the new map. It's complicated, but if the Democrats can collect 100,000 signatures on an initiative petition by Dec. 11, the state will not be able to draw a new map until the voters have had their say. Polling shows that about half the population is against a new map so there is a decent chance an initiative banning a new map would pass. After all, the only argument for a new map is that Trump wants it. There are probably not 50% +1 voters for whom that is a winning argument.
The referendum is being organized by a group called People Not Politicians. It has (tepid) support from national Democrats, since they are more focused on California. Missouri Democrats think the national party will pony up if the initiative makes it onto the ballot, though. The Missouri ACLU is preparing to fight any attempts by the Missouri AG to keep the initiative off the ballot.
Now on to Ohio. There have been endless fights there about drawing the maps, with people from all the different political parties fighting for fair maps and mostly the (Republican) politicians who run the state bitterly opposing them. There have been multiple proposals and court battles running for years. If you are really, really interested in the history of redistricting in Ohio you could: (1) see a psychiatrist to help you with your strange fetishes or (2) check out this short-ish summary.
Very briefly, the current state of affairs in the Buckeye State is that after the decennial census, the legislature is required to try to draw a map that gets bipartisan support. If it succeeds, the map is valid for 10 years. If it fails, there is a quick side trip to a Republican-controlled commission and then the legislature gets to draw a map that is valid for only two election cycles. That happened in 2020 and the two cycles were 2022 and 2024. Now the process repeats itself. The Democrats got an initiative on the ballot in 2024 to create a fair process, but due to a lot of misleading ads, it was voted down. At the moment, the Democrats have no real way to block the process. After the map is drawn, they can sue, but the Republicans have a 6-1 majority on the Ohio Supreme Court, so that is very unlikely to work.
The current Ohio congressional delegation is 5D, 10R. Three of the Democrats are in competitive districts, namely Greg Landsman (OH-01, D+3), Marcy Kaptur (OH-09, R+3), and Emilia Sykes (OH-13, EVEN). Those will all be targets in the new map. The Democrats' only hope is that the Republicans get too greedy and create too many districts with a small Republican edge—say, R+4—and in a blue wave, the Republicans can't hold them. (V)