Trump later accused former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, of “treason” because of an investigation that uncovered Russian interference in that election. STOCK PHOTO

If the euphoria-inspired propaganda of President Donald Trump and his allies were to be believed, they should be able to cruise to victory in the 2026 midterm elections on the good ship “A Big Beautiful Bill” in a flotilla led by another vessel, “Project 2025,” along with smaller boats with “anti” in their names, such as “Anti-WOKE,” while gleefully gazing upward as Deportation Airways planes fly the undocumented away. So why did the Republican Party launch a gerrymander binge?

Rigging electoral maps has worked, as when Gov. Ron DeSantis personally redrew Florida’s voting districts and reassigned two congressional seats held by African Americans to majority European American, Republican, voters. He did not need the extra seats but his party did in Congress.

Now, Texas, whose congressional delegation already comprises 38 Republicans and 25 Democrats, is redrawing its map to include five additional Republican seats, a move that Gov. Greg Abbott spearheaded at the president’s urging. Some other Republican-controlled legislatures may soon follow, including, DeSantis, who swiftly announced that Florida, whose delegation already includes 28 Republicans – eight for Democrats – will seek to add “29, 30, 31, maybe. Who knows?” WQCS radio reported.

In retaliation, the California legislature has endorsed a tit-for-tat response from Gov. Gavin Newsom. Some other Democratic-controlled Legislatures could do so, as well. The nation has entered an era in which parties vie for congressional seats not by winning over voters with their agendas but by playing another highly divisive game of victory by exclusion.

The Republicans fear that they could lose the House, where they now have 219 seats. Democrats have 2012 and, should they win control, Trump’s agenda will be in trouble. He could also face new impeachment proceedings.

The president is also calling for a new Census, which is not due until 2030 and which would determine allocation of voting districts. He signed an executive order in March requiring voters to show proof of citizenship and blocking states from counting mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. He is looking into scrapping mail-in balloting altogether and also voting machines. Such measures are certain to make it more difficult for some Americans to vote.

It should not be this way.

It is true that the U.S. Constitution did not originally specify who can vote, leaving it up to states, most of which restricted it to European American land-owning men. The 15th Amendment in 1870 extended the franchise to men of all races but, again, some states attached conditions, such as a poll tax – payment for the right to vote — and literacy tests. Women got the vote only in 1920, nearly 150 years after the republic was founded, and Indigenous peoples four years later.

Then came the Voting Rights Act of 1965, first proposed by John F. Kennedy and implemented by Lyndon B. Johnson, “a comprehensive tool meant to undo the political hold of Jim Crow policies in the South and related discriminatory structures nationwide,” as the Brennan Center for Justice has noted. Section 5 of the law required that places with a history of discrimination must, as the Brennan Center explained, “obtain approval from the Department of Justice or a court before changing voting rules, a process known as ‘preclearance.’” Section 2 allowed for people, as the Brennan Center noted, “to sue – either on their behalf or with the assistance of the Justice Department – to undo existing laws and procedures that would deny equal political opportunity to voters to elect their candidates of choice.”

Congress, as required, had to reauthorize the law periodically and did so several times with bipartisan support in the House and unanimity in the Senate. But both sections have been rendered almost meaningless by rulings of conservative Supreme Court majorities. The Brennan Center reported that its research showed that “states that no longer had to get federal approval of new voting rules unleashed a wave or policies that made it harder to vote” and “the racial gap in voter turnout has grown in jurisdictions covered by Section 5.” The ruling against the right to sue has made it almost impossible to do so because of the costs and time involved. The high court thereby made possible what is happening in Texas – and California: drawing up new boundaries that are clearly partisan, even when racially discriminatory.

Republicans in power in some states, especially in the South, were quick to redraw their boundaries, enabling them to maintain and expand control, help tilt Congress in their party’s favor and also make it easier to win the presidency through an outsized role in the Electoral College, population-wise.

In addition, the court ruled in favor of plaintiffs challenging restrictions on campaign donations, deeming it as violating free speech rights, in effect equating corporations with people. That led to the rise of super PACS – Political Action Committees – and for elections to be bought. It is how Elon Musk was able to donate a quarter-billion dollars to Trump’s re-election campaign.

Elections have always been about power, of course, and this point is particularly pertinent now. Conservatives in Trump’s orbit want even greater control of Congress at a time of a compliant high court majority so they can pursue their counter-revolution – or as Talia Lavin put it in her book “Culture Warlords,” replace multiracial democracy with white power rule. They have started reversing all measures enacted by law that they deem liberal but which have generally helped move the nation further in the pursuit of a less imperfect union.

They would, no doubt, love to take the vote away from Indigenous peoples, African Americans and women, so the country would be run, once again, exclusively by European American men. In fact, there are now calls to disenfranchise women, as seen in a video featuring pro-theocracy Christian nationalists Toby J. Sumpter and Doug Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho – which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared. But it is highly doubtful that such a proposal will motivate women voters to abandon the Republican Party.

Critics would probably say that Trump supporters would be better off if the administration dedicates more effort to improving their lives. That could still happen before the president leaves office in 2028. Until then, it is an opening for Democrats but, for the most part, the gear shift of their vehicle for progress still seems stuck in complaints of oligarchy, authoritarianism and dictatorship.