Democrats and pro-democracy organizations held a rally Oct. 16 to call for the creation of an independent redistricting commission. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued an order for two judicial panels to hear arguments against Wisconsin's current U.S. House maps. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a pair of three-judge panels to hear arguments in two lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional maps.
The challenges to the maps come as fights play out all over the country over the dividing lines of congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections. After Texas legislators worked to draw Democratic seats out of existence at the behest of President Donald Trump and a number of other Republican-led states followed suit, California voters elected to temporarily undo their state’s independent redistricting commission and allow Democratic leaders to wipe out Republican-leaning seats.
Similar efforts have followed to varying degrees of success in states including Arkansas, Indiana and Virginia.
Wisconsin’s political maps have been at the center of its divided government for more than a decade, with the Supreme Court undoing the partisan gerrymander in the state Legislature two years ago.
Since then, the focus has turned to Wisconsin’s congressional maps, where Republicans control six of the state’s eight districts. More than once, the Supreme Court has declined to hear cases that request the Court directly take up challenges to the congressional maps.
A lobbying effort in the state is also ongoing to establish an independent, nonpartisan process for creating the state’s legislative and congressional maps.
On Tuesday, the Court ruled that the challenges to the maps must follow a 2011 law, passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, which requires that challenges to the state’s congressional districts be heard by a panel of three circuit court judges.
Republicans had argued that law shouldn’t apply in this case. In a 5-2 decision, in which the court’s four liberal justices were joined by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Court ruled the law applies and the panels should be created.
In the majority decision, the Court’s liberals also appointed the panels — of which all the members were appointed by Gov. Tony Evers or endorsed liberal Justice Susan Crawford in this spring’s election.
Hagedorn dissented on the appointment of the panels, arguing the panel members should’ve been appointed randomly.
“Given the nature of this case and the statute’s implicit call for geographic diversity and neutrality, a randomly-selected panel and venue would be a better way to fulfill the statutory mandate,” Hagedorn wrote. “To be clear, I am not suggesting the judicial panel will fail to do its job with integrity and impartiality. But this approach is an odd choice in the face of a statute so clearly designed to deter litigants from selecting their preferred venue and judge.”
Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented from the decision, arguing the majority chose the judges on the panel to further the goals of the Democratic party.
In several previous lawsuits over political maps, Bradley and Ziegler have issued rulings that benefited the Republican party or further entrenched the partisan gerrymander that has allowed the Republican party to retain control of the Legislature for 15 years.
“Hand picking circuit court judges to perform political maneuvering is unimaginable,” Ziegler wrote. “Yet, my colleagues persist and appear to do this, all in furtherance of delivering partisan, political advantage to the Democratic Party.”
On Tuesday, Crawford and Justice Janet Protasiewicz also issued orders denying requests from Republican members of Congress and GOP voters that they recuse themselves from the redistricting cases. Since the two justices’ elections in recent years, the state’s Republicans have regularly accused the pair of making statements on the campaign trail that show pre-judgment of cases involving the state’s political maps.
“The Congressmen’s recusal theories are overbroad, impracticable, and rife with unintended consequences,” Crawford wrote. “Individuals and organizations have the right to contribute to judicial campaigns and to express their beliefs about the effect judicial elections will have on issues of importance to them. Demanding that a justice recuse from a case because third parties who made campaign contributions have expressed their views on high-profile issues improperly implies that the judge had endorsed or adopted such views. This insinuation is inappropriate, particularly where the judge has expressly disclaimed such an endorsement, and undermines judicial impartiality. Further, it would chill protected speech and undermine this court’s central role of deciding cases of statewide importance.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom looks on during an election night gathering at the California Democrats' headquarters on Nov. 4, 2025 in Sacramento. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Democrats’ sweep of the biggest races in Tuesday’s off-year elections, including a California ballot measure to redraw that state’s congressional lines to give the party up to five more seats in the U.S. House, gave the party new confidence heading into the midterm elections next year.
Democrats proclaimed the performances of Govs.-elect Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani showed voters’ rejection of President Donald Trump.
“The election results were not vague,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday. “They were not unclear. They were a lightning bolt: Trump, America doesn’t like what you’re doing. Change course.”
Republicans won control of the White House and both chambers of Congress one year ago, leaving Democrats without a clear leader or agenda at the national level.
Tuesday’s results helped clarify for the party that a focus on economic issues was a winning message that Democrats could carry into the midterms.
Those messengers included Sherrill and Spanberger on the one end of the party’s ideological spectrum, and the Democratic Socialist Mamdani on the other. All three shared a campaign message centered on addressing the cost of living.
More remaps
Effective campaigning may not be the only path Democrats are expected to take as they seek to regain power at the federal level. A wing of the party led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing other Democratic governors to redraw congressional lines to be more favorable to them.
The new California map is likely to be tied up in courts, at least in the short term. California Republicans sued in federal court Wednesday morning to block it.
Republicans, meanwhile, sought to downplay the importance of elections in largely Democratic areas while attempting to make Mamdani the new face of Democrats nationally.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday there were “no surprises” in the previous day’s elections.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, speaks at a press conference Nov. 5, 2025, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., alongside House GOP leadership and several House Republican lawmakers. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
“What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue,” the Louisiana Republican said. “We all saw that coming, and no one should read too much into last night’s election results — off-year elections are not indicative of what’s to come.”
The wins in Tuesday’s elections galvanized congressional Democrats to restart negotiations to end the government shutdown on their terms, with Democratic leaders of the House and Senate sending Trump a three-sentence letter “to demand” a meeting to negotiate an end to the longest government shutdown in history.
Control of Congress
Democrats said Wednesday the results showed they were within striking distance of regaining majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Democrats would have to net four seats in the House and the Senate to win control of a respective chamber.
Schumer said Tuesday’s results showed that was possible in the Senate.
“The election showed that Democrats’ control of the Senate is much closer than the people and the prognosticators realize,” Schumer said. “The more Republicans double down on raising costs and bowing down to Trump, the more their Senate majority is at risk.”
Vice President JD Vance was dismissive of Democratic gains Wednesday, saying on social media it was “idiotic to overreact to a couple elections in blue states” and praising Republican organizing efforts.
But Democratic campaign officials said Wednesday that analysis belied wins lower on the ballot, including flipping 13 Virginia House of Delegates seats, half of which Republicans held for decades, and statewide wins for low-profile offices in the key swing states of Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin responded to Vance’s claim during a press call.
“That’s bullsh—,” he said. “We won all over the country in red counties and purple counties and in blue counties. The reality is, is this was a huge rejection of the Trump extremism and an embrace of the hopeful, positive message that Democrats are offering up.”
Martin and other Democrats praised Tuesday’s winners for relentlessly focusing on economic issues, and said Democratic candidates in 2026 would keep that focus.
Redistricting arms race
Newsom, the chief backer of the referendum to temporarily revoke power from the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission, told other Democratic governors to take similar measures to enhance the party’s chances of winning a U.S. House majority.
“We need Virginia … we need Maryland … we need our friends in New York and Illinois and Colorado — we need to see other states meet this moment head-on as well,” Newsom said in a fundraising email Wednesday.
Martin characterized the passage of the California referendum, known as Proposition 50, as a reaction to Republican states’ moves to redraw their lines.
“What happened in Prop 50 was the counterpunch to level the playing field,” Martin said.
He indicated Democratic states would be happy to leave congressional districts as they are, but said the party would not hesitate to respond to GOP gerrymanders.
“Now, they want to keep doing it? Guess what: This is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party,” Martin said. “We will meet you in every single state that you decide to try to steal more seats. We’re going to meet you in other states. We are not going to play with one hand behind our back. We’re not going to roll over. We are going to meet you, fire with fire.”
Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the U.S. House Republican campaign organization, predicted in a statement that efforts to redraw congressional districts would not allow Democrats to win a majority in that chamber.
“No matter how Democrats redraw the lines to satisfy Gavin Newsom’s power grab, they can’t redraw their record of failure, and that’s why they will fail to take the House majority,” Hudson said. “Even under this new map, Republicans have clear opportunities to flip seats because Californians are fed up with Democrat chaos. We will continue to compete and win because our candidates are stronger, our message is resonating, and Californians are tired of being ignored.”
Trump zeroes in on filibuster
At a Wednesday breakfast with GOP senators, Trump had another idea for solidifying GOP power, saying the Senate needs to abolish the filibuster in order to end the shutdown and enact GOP policy while the party is still in the majority.
Senate rules require at least 60 senators to advance a bill past the filibuster. Republicans’ narrow 53-seat majority has created obstacles in moving forward their agenda — including the House-passed stopgap spending bill to keep the government open that’s now failed more than a dozen times.
“It’s time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that’s terminate the filibuster,” Trump said at the breakfast. “It’s the only way you can do it, and if you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape — we won’t pass any legislation.”
He added: “We will pass legislation at levels you’ve never seen before, and it’ll be impossible to beat us.”
In a social media post Tuesday night, Trump said pollsters attributed Republicans’ election losses to his name not being on the ballot along with the ongoing shutdown.
Trump wrote in a separate post earlier Tuesday that “the Democrats are far more likely to win the Midterms, and the next Presidential Election, if we don’t do the Termination of the Filibuster (The Nuclear Option!).”
GOP senators tepid
However, Trump’s push to do away with the filibuster has garnered little enthusiasm from GOP senators, including Majority Leader John Thune.
The South Dakota Republican reiterated on Wednesday that “there are not the votes there,” telling reporters that “the main thing we need to be focused on right now, in my view, is get the government opened up again.”
But some GOP senators appear to be on board with the idea, including Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who said he expressed his support for eliminating the filibuster during the breakfast.
“President Trump made a very convincing case,” Johnson told reporters. “We know the minute Democrats get (a) majority in the Senate, they’re going to get rid of the filibuster.”
“We better beat them to the punch and act while we can pass legislation for the benefit of the American public,” he added.
Sen. Jim Justice said that though he’s not in favor of getting rid of the filibuster, he wants to support Trump and would like the shutdown to end.
“I mean, because you got a lot of people that are really hurting, that’s all there is to it, and if it’s the only option to stop this nonsense, then I would support,” the West Virginia Republican said.
Sen. John Kennedy remained firm in his position, telling reporters that “the role of the senator is not just to advance good ideas, the role of the senator is to kill bad ideas, and when you’re in the minority — we’re not now, but we could be someday — it’s important to have a filibuster.”
The Louisiana Republican noted that “we killed a lot of (former) President Biden’s goofy ideas through a filibuster, and someday the shoe will be on the other foot, and that’s why I’ve always supported the filibuster.”
Republicans lash Democrats to Mamdani
Speaker Johnson and fellow House Republican leaders also sought to tie Mamdani to the Democratic Party.
Johnson said Mamdani “is truly a committed Marxist, and the results of that race tell you everything you need to know about where the Democrats in their party are headed,” adding that “from the backbench to their leadership, Democrats have fallen in line behind the socialist candidates.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana echoed that “when the city of New York elected Zohran Mamdani, he became the new leader of the Democrat(ic) Party.”
Scalise said that while the Democratic Party “had no problem making the shift to socialism — which they embraced wholeheartedly, led by Hakeem Jeffries and others here — America, mainstream Americans, Blue Dog Democrats across America, have not embraced socialism.”
House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan said “over the past year, Democrats have wandered around with no plan, no vision and no leader, but today, they finally found their leader — the radical communist mayor(-elect) of New York City, a self-proclaimed communist who wants Americans to pay for global health care.”
She added: “Well, you wanted it. You got it: A communist who wants the government to own grocery stores and a communist who wants the government to tell you what to do with your hard-earned money.”
As Democrats across the country devise ways to match Republican redistricting efforts, a long-standing battle over congressional maps has been quietly progressing in one of the nation’s most competitive swing states.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is taking up two gerrymandering lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional maps after years of back-and-forth litigation on the issue. Over the summer, it appeared redistricting efforts would go nowhere before the midterms; the state’s high court in June rejected similar lawsuits.
But liberal groups have found new ways to challenge the maps that the state Supreme Court appears open to considering. This time, plaintiffs are requesting the court appoint a three-judge panel to hear their partisan gerrymandering case, and a new group has stepped into the fray with a lawsuit that argues a novel anticompetitive gerrymandering claim.
The jury is still out on whether those rulings will come in time for 2026.
“Could they be? Yes. Will they be? That’s hard to say,” said Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice.
Some developments in the cases in October indicate that the gerrymandering fight in Wisconsin is far from over.
The justices have allowed Wisconsin’s six Republican congressmen to join the cases as defendants. The congressmen are now looking to force two of the court’s liberal justices, Janet Protasiewicz and Susan Crawford, to recuse themselves from the cases. Both justices were endorsedby the Democratic Party of Wisconsin; Protasiewicz criticized the maps on the campaign trail, and Crawford’s donors billed her as a justice who could help Democrats flip seats.
Some are unsure why the Republican congressmen are entering the fight now, months after the liberal groups filed the new cases.
“They took their time to even seek intervention, and now they’re seeking recusal, and now they’re trying to hold up the appointment process. I’m sure their goal is to try to throw sand in the gears of this litigation,” said Abha Khanna, a plaintiff attorney in Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the partisan gerrymandering case requesting that the courts appoint a three-judge panel to review the maps.
The offices and campaigns of the six Republican congressmen did not respond to requests for comment.
Khanna said her team filed the lawsuit with enough time to potentially redraw the maps, despite the congressmen’s recent actions.
“There certainly is time to affect the 2026 elections,” she said.
This lawsuit lays out a more familiar partisan gerrymandering argument, in which lawyers say Wisconsin’s congressional maps discriminate against Democratic voters. Six of the state’s eight House seats are filled by Republicans, even though statewide elections have been close partisan races. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — a Republican and Democrat, respectively — won their most recent statewide elections by a percentage point or less, while Gov. Tony Evers kept his office by more than 3 percentage points in 2022 (Evers will not be seeking reelection in 2026).
The plaintiffs believe they ultimately have a strong case because the state’s high court ruled in 2023 that the “least change” principle — which dictated the 2021 maps to be drawn “consistent with existing boundaries” of the 2011 maps — should no longer be used as primary criteria in redistricting. The state legislative maps were changed. But the federal district maps were not.
In effect, the maps that were proposed by Evers in 2021 continued on the legacy of Republican gerrymandering, Khanna said. The lawsuit, filed in July, requests the appointment of a three-judge panel to hear the case, after the state Supreme Court in June rejected the plaintiffs’ petition.
“It’s a judicially created metric that violates the principles of the (Wisconsin) constitution,” Khanna said. “This can be decided without any fact-finding at all. The court can decide it as a matter of law, and then we can proceed quickly to a remedial map.”
Not everyone involved is so optimistic that this will be resolved quickly. Jeff Mandell, a plaintiff attorney in the redistricting lawsuit alleging that the maps are illegally too favorable to incumbents — a new argument that hasn’t been tested in the state — said it is “exceedingly unlikely” that new maps could be drawn in time for the midterm elections. Primary candidates must file their nomination papers to the elections commission by June 1, 2026. The final district lines must be in place by spring for candidates to circulate their papers among the right voters.
“If we don’t have maps by the end of March or so, it’s very, very difficult to run the election next November,” Mandell said.
Even if the Wisconsin Supreme Court rules that the current maps are unconstitutional, the most likely scenario would punt the task of redrawing to partisan officeholders, he added — a process that could hinder easy consensus and potentially draw out the timeline for months.
Mandell’s lawsuit is arguably facing a bigger hurdle as it attempts to make the case that the districts are drawn in a way that makes it extremely difficult for challengers to have a real chance.
The exception is Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, where Rep. Derrick Van Orden has won by fewer-than-four-point margins and is currently facing three challengers, including the well-funded Democrat Rebecca Cooke, who lost to him in 2024.
The median margin of victory in Wisconsin’s remaining congressional districts is about 29 percentage points, according to a NOTUS review.
“Thirty points is not something you can overcome by having a really good candidate, it’s not something you can overcome by having a great campaign plan and executing it flawlessly, it’s not something you can overcome when there’s a swing election,” Mandell said.
The next months will prove whether the incumbent argument is convincing to Wisconsin’s justices, who have heard their share of redistricting cases.
This story was produced andoriginally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
Democrats and pro-democracy organizations held a rally Thursday to call for the creation of an independent redistricting commission. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A group of pro-democracy organizations held a rally, attended by Democratic legislators, Thursday afternoon outside the state Capitol to push for the creation of an independent commission tasked with drawing the state’s legislative maps.
The renewed push for permanently taking the construction of Wisconsin’s political maps out of the hands of politicians comes amid a national debate about gerrymandering and as the state’s Democrats are outlining what state government will look like if they hold power in all three branches after next year’s midterm elections.
Across the country, Democrats — who have for years been the party calling for a nonpartisan process for drawing political maps — are weighing the merits of “unilaterally disarming” by putting the drawing of maps in the hands of independent bodies in blue states while Republicans are redrawing maps in red states such as Texas in an explicit effort to hold on to their slim congressional majority.
Next month, voters in California will weigh in on a referendum asking if the Democrats in control of the state’s government can temporarily bypass the independent map-drawing commission and redraw maps to benefit Democrats as a counter to the Republican effort in Texas.
State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), a candidate in the Democratic primary for governor, told the Wisconsin Examiner after the Thursday rally that Wisconsin Democrats should push for a permanent resolution to the state’s map debate because a more effective counter to increasing authoritarianism than tit-for-tat congressional gerrymanders is creating systems that allow government to be more responsive to voters’ wishes.
“Here in Wisconsin, what the people want are permanent fair maps, and that means keeping the decision of redistricting out of politicians’ hands and within a group of nonpartisan folks,” she said. “If we’re going to have representative democracy, that’s what we need. But we also have to remember to be proactive, and that’s why the permanent fair maps matter. And if we’re going to be responsive to an eroding democracy, that’s also how we should be empowering the people …”
After Thursday’s rally, the advocates — including members of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and Fair Maps Wisconsin Coalition — were going into the Capitol to deliver the draft of their plan to legislators.
Under the plan, the state Department of Administration would be responsible for managing the selection of 18 independent redistricting commission members (15 acting members and three reserve members).
The membership would be divided evenly between representatives of the two major political parties and unaffiliated. Members would not be allowed to hold other public offices and could not be a family member of a public office holder. Lobbyists and anyone who has donated more than $2,000 to a candidate for office in a year over the previous five years wouldn’t be allowed to sit on the commission.
After the DOA selects a pool of 240 applicants, the majority and minority leaders of both legislative chambers would be allowed to strike down a certain number of candidates.
The IRC would be required to hold public hearings while it deliberates on the maps. Approval of final maps would have to come through a two-thirds majority vote that includes votes from members representing the interests of both major parties and the independents.
The plan includes a provision for members to rank proposed maps if such a “multi-partisan agreement” can’t be reached.
Any proposed maps from the commission would need to still be approved by the Legislature and governor within 30 days. If maps aren’t approved, the Legislature or governor must provide a written explanation to the commission and the commission would have 15 days to respond or provide new maps.
The Legislature and governor would have three attempts to approve maps before Aug. 15 of a redistricting year. If maps can’t be codified by then, anyone in the state would have the authority to file a lawsuit with the Wisconsin Supreme Court to adopt a commission-proposed map.
Democrats said at the rally that they want to make sure the commission is crafted in a way that prevents meddling after the fact from politicians. Redistricting commissions in states such as Iowa and Ohio have been undermined once their proposals were subjected to the political process.
Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) said Republican legislators like the Iowa-style commission because if they vote down the commission’s proposals three times, the map-drawing authority returns to the Legislature.
“They figured out the flaw in that model,” he said. “That is why we need a Wisconsin model, a Wisconsin model that works for all of us.”
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