Governor Gavin Newsom is doing exactly what he had to do with his redistricting plan in California: attempting to stop Donald Trump rigging the 2026 midterms election in Republicans’ favor.

When you have a president bent on maximizing his autocratic power and positioning his party to dominate federal elections and create virtual one-party rule, no response is too extreme.

Newsom didn’t choose to create five Democratic-leaning House districts out of territory currently held by Republican lawmakers. He threatened it as a tactic to get Trump and his obeisant Texas governor and lawmakers to back off their gerrymandering scheme to rig the election.

Since Texas went through with the redistricting, Newsom had the choice of allowing Trump’s attempt to steal the House to go unchallenged or to counterattack and re-level the playing field.

That Trump would attempt to rig the 2026 midterms should shock no one.

This is the guy who lied that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — who coerced governors, state legislatures, and election officials to change votes, who created fraudulent elector slates to cast fraudulent electoral votes, who tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the electoral certification process, and who incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol in an attempt to halt the presidential certification of Joe Biden.

It is also no coincidence that three of Trump’s most admired political pals – Vladimir Putin, Victor Orbán, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — enjoy virtual one-party rule, their parties having long-established strangleholds on election results and governmental power. Thinly veiled autocracies today, the erstwhile democracies of Russia, Hungary, and Turkey have been crushed.

This is exactly what Trump and his Project 2025 chums have in mind for the US.

Trump is attempting to kneecap the Democratic Party’s chances in all future elections through gerrymandering and voter suppression. Measures such as eliminating mail-in voting, disallowing voting machines, reducing the number of polling places, eliminating election-day registration, and requiring proof of citizenship are all aimed at suppressing the vote of minorities who traditionally support Democrats.

Trump’s successful ploy to add five Republican districts in Texas is part of a grander scheme to reshape America’s governance system and render the two-party democratic system defunct.

In virtual one-party systems, the ruling party controls all branches of government, Trump’s obvious goal.

In one-party rule autocracies, opposition parties and shows of public dissent are often suppressed through legal, political, or violent means. Power is centralized within the ruling party and its authoritarian leader, with no democratic system of checks and balances to restrain it. Constitutions are reinterpreted or rewritten to help the ruling party and its authoritarian leader remain in power indefinitely.

This is the direction the US is headed. We have an overreaching, power-grasping president and a rubber-stamp Republican Congress that obediently does his bidding. Atop the judicial system is a pliant Supreme Court filled with Trump appointees. Federal judges who rule against Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders are maligned and served with lawsuits.

Authoritarian bullying is rampant. Trump punishes universities and states that refuse to bend a knee to his demands. He calls out the national guard to militarize Democratic-controlled cities and launches sham investigations of Trump’s critics conducted by the servile heads of the DOJ and FBI. Trump signs executive orders that violate states’ and the federal legislature’s rights. These anti-democratic acts are just the beginning.

Trump may steal the 2026 House election by other red states following Texas’s gerrymandering lead coupled with repressive voting laws that disenfranchise traditional Democratic voters. Republicans’ one-party rule would then be given two more years to entrench itself in the manner of Putin’s, Orban’s, and Erdogan’s parties. Democracy as we have known it would no longer exist.

With his redistricting plan, Newsom is pushing back. Other Democratic states may follow suit. But Trump’s election scheme has created a chillingly dark day for American democracy. Thanks to Trump, the winning party in 2026 must out-manipulate the other, since winning fairly is no longer an option.

Democrats must win the House by hook or by crook in 2026 to save America from becoming an autocratic, one-party rule country. Every anti-democratic act that Trump commits provides more striking evidence of the intent.

Governor Newsom did not stand by and let Trump’s dirty election tricks go unchallenged. If other Democratic leaders and the vast majority of voters follow suit, Trump’s second attempt to destroy American democracy will be his last.

  • Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor