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Vice President JD Vance pushed back on NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker’s question on Sunday about Texas Republicans redrawing the congressional map for their state, arguing that they are attempting to level the playing field.
The question came after the Texas Senate passed a new GOP-favored congressional map on Friday which made five districts more Republican-friendly ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“So they expanded the map for Republicans in their state,” Welker began. “If President Trump’s agenda is so popular, why do Republicans need to add additional seats to the map?”
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“Well, first of all, Kristen, you have to ask yourself, ‘Why have Democrats gerrymandered their states aggressively over the past ten to 20 years?’” Vance responded. “If you look, for example, at the popular vote in a lot of these states, and Massachusetts, where 32% of the residents of Massachusetts voted for Republicans, zero Republican federal representatives.”
He continued, “So we’re not trying to sort of — all we’re doing, frankly, is trying to make the situation a little bit more fair on a national scale. The Democrats have gerrymandered their states really aggressively. We think there are opportunities to push back against that. And that’s really all we’re doing.”
Several Democratic leaders, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, quickly began efforts to redistrict their states to counterbalance Texas Republican gains. On Thursday, Newsom signed into law three bills to help overturn the preexisting congressional maps and the state’s independent redistricting commission in favor of a map drawn up by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
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The bills allow California voters to decide on the matter in a special election on Nov. 4.
Vance called on Republicans to counter Democratic gerrymandering and to “rebalance the scales” and “push back against a very unfair system” earlier this month.
“The only real way to fight back against it is for us to redistrict, in some ways, as aggressively as these hard-blue states have done,” Vance told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
He was unconcerned by Newsom and other Democrats, claiming that there wasn’t much more gerrymandering they could do.
“There’s just not a whole lot of juice left out of that lemon,” he said. “The Democrats have already gone as far as they possibly can.”
Fox News’ Alex Miller and Peter Pinedo contributed to this report.
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