As this year’s midterm elections loom ever nearer, Democrats are taking a page from President Donald Trump’s playbook and aggressively redistricting to strip Republicans of congressional seats. In the Old Line State, a special panel convened by Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) to redraw the state’s congressional district maps proposed a new map on Tuesday, eliminating the sole Republican-held Maryland seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“At a moment when other states are moving aggressively to redraw maps, and when fundamental voting rights protections face renewed threats, Maryland has a responsibility to lead with urgency,” said Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), chairwoman of Moore’s advisory panel. “Our goal is to ensure our congressional delegation reflects the will of the people, protects representation for historically underrepresented communities, and gives Marylanders a Congress that can serve as a real check on this president.”

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who represents Maryland’s first congressional district, is currently the only Republican of the state’s eight elected representatives in the U.S. House. The new map would take territory from what is currently the first district and give it to the third district, held by Rep. Sarah Eslfreth (D-Md.), and combine the remainder of the first district with what is currently the third district, which encompasses most of Anne Arundel County, all of Howard County, and part of Carroll County, where registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats nearly two to one.

However, Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson (D) has voiced his opposition to the new district maps, even though Moore and other Democrats tout the redistricting measure as a means of handing their own party another congressional seat. “Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” Ferguson wrote in a letter late last year.

He pointed to a 2021 case in which new congressional districts were drawn — again, giving Democrats an advantage — but were struck down by Maryland’s Supreme Court as violating the state constitution, which the court argued bars drawing or redrawing congressional maps on the basis of political affiliations. “In response, we passed a new congressional map before the end of the 2022 Legislative Session, and all parties withdrew their legal claims. It is important to note this, because the withdrawal of the challenges meant that Maryland’s highest court has never reviewed the current congressional map,” Ferguson noted. He admitted that nearly one-third (31.5%) of Maryland voters are registered Republicans, yet only one-eighth of the state’s representatives in the U.S. House is Republican. Redrawing the current congressional maps, he warned, could trigger legal challenges that could actually end up giving Republicans a better chance at winning congressional seats.

Democrats in neighboring Virginia have also moved to redistrict, in a move Republicans are decrying as unlawful. Last week, Old Dominion Democrats greenlit a constitutional amendment allowing the state’s Democrat-controlled General Assembly to draw new congressional maps, rather than the non-partisan board previously tasked with doing so. “What Virginia is trying to do is highly illegal, and we’re fighting them in the court, and I think we’ve got a very good argument,” said National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson, according to The Washington Times. “I’m very hopeful we can stop this illegal action that they’re trying to take.”

A county judge, however, has already rejected one Republican challenge to the redistricting effort, arguing that because the new maps have not yet been presented to the public and because the redistricting effort will be voted on by Virginians in a special referendum in April, the courts cannot interfere.

Not so in the Empire State, where a Democrat-appointed judge just declared the only Republican-held congressional district in New York City to be unconstitutional. Acting New York County Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Pearlman determined Wednesday that the boundaries of New York’s 11th congressional district, currently held by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and comprising the entire borough of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, unconstitutionally dilute black and Hispanic voting blocs.

The Democrat-aligned activist attorneys who filed a lawsuit to reshape the district argued that a rise in Staten Island’s black and Hispanic populations was not enough to shift the district from red to blue, but that the district must be combined with part of Manhattan in order not to dilute the minorities’ votes. Pearlman, appointed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D), largely agreed, ordering the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission to redraw the district’s boundaries by February 6, in time to impact the midterm elections in November.

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter observed, “With state legislatures in session and the 2026 midterm elections months away, expect more states to enter the fray in the mid-decade redistricting war. In years past, state courts have been active in overturning existing maps and forcing the state to draw new maps; I would expect some of that to happen in the next few months.”

Carpenter continued, “There is also the specter of a decision on the viability of portions of the Voting Rights Act from the Supreme Court in the background, which could open up as many as 19 new seats that red states can target for redistricting. All that to say, we’re not done with redistricting; in fact, I would expect a lot of activity in the next few months.”

Last year, Trump called on GOP-led states to redistrict in order to bolster the slim Republican majority in the House and flank his administration with both chambers of Congress. When red states, including Texas and Florida, introduced new congressional maps to net Republicans more House seats, blue states threatened to respond in kind, kicking off a nationwide battle over congressional districts.