In a normal year, December can be a wonderful time to unplug from the news and lean into the holiday spirit. Unfortunately, 2025 is not that year.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday night put an end to some of the mounting uncertainty surrounding the 2026 elections: It ruled that Texas can use its new GOP-backed congressional map next year – even though a lower court found that it was likely an illegal racial gerrymander. The ruling could result in five more Republican seats in Congress.
Despite this unfortunate new clarity, uncertainty continues to reign supreme seven months into President Donald Trump’s scheme to gerrymander the GOP’s path to victory in next year’s midterms. We’re now waiting for important — doubly important after the Texas ruling! — redistricting updates in Indiana and Missouri.
Trump finally succeeded in bullying Indiana Republicans into taking up mid-decade redistricting, but the outcome is still completely up in the air. The Indiana House backs the Trump plan and has advanced a proposed map that could eliminate both of the state’s Democratic districts (despite accusations that it’s an illegal racial gerrymander). But in the Senate, GOP leader Rodric Bray has insisted there aren’t enough votes to pass the map.
Indiana Republicans have been under relentless pressure from the White House to back redistricting since at least August, but that’s escalated into threats and harassment from members of the public in the weeks since Trump called out lawmakers by name on social media.
Indiana is the fourth state to take up redistricting at Trump’s demand, but it’s the first one where the outcome is uncertain. With the Indiana Senate set to convene Monday, the map could be dead in the water if 16 Republicans come out against it. We’ll soon find out where they stand – and no one’s exactly sure where the votes will fall.
Meanwhile, in Missouri, voters have been organizing a citizen’s veto referendum to block the congressional gerrymander Republicans passed in September. Now, their big deadline is just days away: They must submit more than 106,000 signatures to the state by Dec. 11 to get the measure on the ballot.
The group behind the referendum, People Not Politicians, says they’ve gathered far more than the required number of signatures. That should mean Missourians will get the chance to vote on the map soon. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t. Instead, People Not Politicians faces a gauntlet of legal battles, with the GOP throwing new hurdles in their path at every turn – rejecting signatures, proposing misleading ballot language and even challenging in court voters’ right to hold the referendum at all.
With only a short window of time between the Dec. 11 deadline and the registration period to secure a place on the 2026 ballot, the next few weeks are going to be an intense legal race to determine who gets to decide the congressional map: Republicans or Missouri voters? Read more about the Missouri referendum here.
