The Bogus Claims Behind a Power Grab

When Donald Trump claimed he deserved five more congressional seats in Texas because he won with "the biggest majority in history," he wasn't just stretching the truth—he was manufacturing a complete fiction to justify an unprecedented assault on democratic representation.

The facts are clear: Trump's 13.7% margin in Texas was the second-largest in the state's history, trailing both George W. Bush's 23-point victory in 2004 and his 21-point win in 2000. Even Mitt Romney beat Trump's margin in 2012. More importantly, electoral representation is based on population, not presidential vote margins. Texas already has 38 House seats based on the 2020 Census. Trump's logic is like saying a basketball team should get extra points because they won by a bigger margin—it's not how the game works.

But the lie served its purpose: providing political cover for what Texas Republicans have openly admitted is explicitly partisan redistricting designed to help maintain Trump's congressional majority.

The Texas Playbook: Weaponizing State Power

What's happening in Texas represents a systematic weaponization of state institutions against democratic opposition:

The Quorum Break Criminalized: When over 50 Texas House Democrats fled the state to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass their gerrymandered maps, Republicans didn't just issue civil arrest warrants—they got the FBI involved. Senator John Cornyn successfully requested federal assistance to hunt down state legislators for what is essentially a legislative dispute that dates back centuries in Texas politics.

Targeting Political Fundraising: Attorney General Ken Paxton—himself impeached for bribery charges—launched investigations into Beto O'Rourke's organization for helping fund the Democrats' travel expenses. Paxton then asked a judge to jail O'Rourke for allegedly violating a restraining order, calling donations "Beto bribes." This criminalizes standard political support that has been legal for decades.

Escalating to Violence and Threats: The rhetoric has had predictable consequences. After the FBI successfully located the Texas Democrats' hotel in suburban Chicago, the lawmakers were forced to evacuate Wednesday morning when their hotel received a bomb threat. Four hundred people, including guests and staff, were evacuated while bomb squads searched the premises. No device was found, but the message was clear. As State Rep. Ann Johnson said: "When the Attorney General tells people to 'hunt us down,' it's not just politics—it's a threat to our safety." State Rep. John Bucy added: "This harmful discourse emboldens bad actors and encourages violence."

Attempting to Remove Elected Officials: Governor Greg Abbott and Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court to remove Democratic lawmakers from office for exercising their constitutional right to deny quorum—a tactic Republicans themselves used when they were in the minority.

The Department of Justice under Trump did flag four Texas districts as potentially unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, but using that as pretext ignores the fact that Texas Republicans previously argued in court they were "race-blind" in drawing those very maps. The ultimate determination of constitutionality belongs to federal courts, not presidential political demands.

Florida Follows Suit

Not to be outdone, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced it would be "appropriate" to conduct mid-decade redistricting, with the Florida House creating a Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting. This comes after the Florida Supreme Court—dominated by DeSantis appointees—upheld his 2022 congressional map that eliminated a majority-Black district and gave Republicans a 20-8 advantage in the state's delegation.

DeSantis justified this by claiming Florida was "undercounted" in the 2020 Census, despite providing no evidence for this assertion. Like Texas, Florida is pursuing redistricting outside the normal decennial cycle for purely partisan purposes.

The Nationalization of Anti-Democratic Tactics

These aren't isolated incidents—they're part of a coordinated national strategy. Trump has pressured Republican-led states across the country to follow Texas's lead, while Democratic states like California, New York, and Illinois are now considering their own retaliatory redistricting efforts.

This represents the collapse of the democratic norm that redistricting happens once per decade based on Census data, not whenever one party fears losing power. Once these guardrails fall, they're extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.

A Historical Echo at the Japanese American National Museum

The most chilling moment in this escalating crisis came on Thursday, August 14th, when Governor Gavin Newsom held a press conference in Los Angeles to announce California's response to Texas's gerrymandering. As Newsom spoke at the Japanese American National Museum about protecting democracy, dozens of armed and masked Border Patrol agents surrounded the building, conducting immigration raids and making arrests.

The timing was no coincidence. Federal officials claimed the operation was based on intelligence and ongoing investigations, but the optics were unmistakable: federal law enforcement intimidating a governor during his political speech opposing Trump's agenda.

But the location makes this moment historically haunting. The Japanese American National Museum staff informed Newsom's office that the exact spot where Border Patrol agents were arresting people is the same location where Japanese Americans were loaded onto buses to be taken to internment camps during World War II.

Let that sink in. Federal agents, acting on orders from a president who has openly threatened to arrest opposition governors, conducted arrests at the precise location where one of America's most shameful episodes of authoritarian overreach began 83 years ago.

Whether intentional or not, the symbolism is impossible to ignore. It serves as a stark reminder that American democracy has fallen to authoritarianism before, and the warning signs we're seeing today—the weaponization of federal law enforcement against political opponents, the deployment of military force against state governments, the public threats to arrest opposition leaders—are not hypothetical dangers from some distant future. They are happening now, in real time, in the very places where they happened before.

The Constitutional Crisis Deepens

Trump's response to California's pushback has been to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles without Governor Newsom's consent—violating federal law that requires gubernatorial approval for such deployments. Newsom and California's Attorney General are now suing Trump for the "illegal takeover" of California National Guard units.

When Trump was asked whether he supported arresting Newsom, he replied: "I would do it, if I were Tom. I think it is great." This isn't political rhetoric—it's a sitting president endorsing the arrest of an opposition governor for opposing federal policies.

Democracy's Fragile Foundation

What we're witnessing isn't just political hardball or partisan tactics taken too far. It's the systematic dismantling of the democratic norms and institutions that make peaceful transfers of power possible. When elections can be rigged through unlimited redistricting, when political opposition is criminalized, when federal law enforcement becomes a tool of partisan intimidation, and when military force is deployed against state governments, we're no longer operating within a democratic framework.

The question isn't whether American democracy is under threat—it's whether American democratic institutions are strong enough to withstand this assault. The events at the Japanese American National Museum should serve as a sobering reminder that democratic backsliding doesn't happen all at once. It happens gradually, through the erosion of norms, the weaponization of institutions, and the normalization of what was once unthinkable.

History is watching. And history will judge whether we recognized the warning signs in time.