The Flight of the Legislators

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, August 05, 2025

 

On Sunday, Democrats from the Texas House found themselves in a hellscape overrun by demons, sinners, and the eerie wails of lost, tormented souls: Chicago. How did things come to such a sad pass? They would tell you that their chief sin is their existence as an oppressed political minority in their state — now imagine how much sympathy that garners from me, an Illinois Republican. But why the sudden hejira?

 

Everyone in American politics who has a pulse knows by now that Texas Republicans are currently seeking to engage in a mid-decade redistricting of the state’s congressional map. The reason for the urgency is obvious enough: Trump is desperate to shore up his narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives during a 2026 midterm referendum on his presidency that looks to be about as well received by the national public as Disney’s recent live-action reboot of Snow White.

 

To that end, state Republicans intend to redraw the current congressional map to reflect Trump’s surging strength in the Rio Grande Valley and among Latinos (and, less remarked upon, the GOP’s declining power in the major metropolitan suburbs). For those unaware, the drawing of federal congressional maps is typically done the year after every U.S. Census — 2001, 2011, 2021, etc. — unless otherwise compelled by court order. There are no federal constitutional restrictions against redistricting in any other year, however — courts, as mentioned, have required it frequently — only prudential restraints.

 

And Texas Republicans said goodbye to restraint years ago. They successfully pulled off a spectacular round of congressional redistricting in 2003, after finally winning the state house, which took Texas from a 17–15 Democratic congressional majority to an (enduring) 21–11 Republican majority. What’s more, they were well within their rights to do so: The GOP had suffered for well over half a century from ridiculous congressional gerrymanders drawn by a Democratic state trifecta and, at the time, was laboring under a court-drawn legislative map whose lines reflected the bias of the preexisting Democratic 1991 map — one from a wildly different, forever-gone era of state politics.

 

Now they are at it again, but this time from a position of predatory opportunism. Having drawn the map once already in 2021, they were surprised by the strength of Trump’s 2022 and 2024 performances in Texas — a direct result of the border crisis — and see five new House seats potentially there for the taking. The proposed new map would squeeze even more juice from the orange, theoretically altering the state’s congressional balance from 25–13 to 30–8 in favor of the GOP.

 

The argument made by my intelligent conservative friends in favor of redistricting runs along the following lines: (1) As cynically grubby as this Lone Star State power play is, imagine a world where a Democratic House spends the next two years filing article after article of impeachment over Trump’s conduct during the first two years of this term; (2) they would do it to us too if they could. As to the former, I heartily agree. As to the latter, I’m not even sure it’s important either way.

 

For now, Democratic members of the Texas House have come to Chicago — fleeing Texas to avoid giving Republicans the two-thirds quorum of voting members necessary to pass their redistricting bill — and this means that they have made it personal. Get out of my town. Sure, poorly concealed presidential candidate JB Pritzker may have been there to personally welcome the Texas House members to Chicago with his open and voluminous arms, but the governor doesn’t speak for me, and as far as I’m concerned, the last thing we need right now is unemployable low-skilled Texans adding to Chicago’s already disastrous refugee crisis.

 

There is so much more I could say about this hilarious standoff. (I fully intend to do so again as events develop.) Most obviously, even the local mainstream media here in Chicagoland is dunking mercilessly on Governor Pritzker for welcoming the Texas truants, given his role as governor of the single most gerrymandered Democratic state in the nation. Texas Governor Greg Abbott is currently threatening to treat the fleeing lawmakers as though they have forfeited their offices and to replace them, and one supposes it is a matter of time before warrants are issued.

 

I was living in Madison during Wisconsin’s Act 10 crisis back in 2011, so believe me when I say that I’ve seen this movie before, including its inevitable denouement. But the stalemate could last longer this time than the one in Wisconsin (which played out over three weeks). Ironically enough, the original 2003 Texas redistricting imbroglio is instructive as a comparison; as it so happens, it featured a similar set of on-the-lam Texas Democrats. Back then, the so-called “Texas Eleven” fled to New Mexico to avoid a quorum in the state senate, and only after a monthlong standoff did one Democrat return to allow a vote. But the reason why he eventually buckled is because in 2003 Texas Democrats — still a party with a moderate faction — felt a pressure to resume business from their own constituents. In a modern era of polarization, they have a lot less to lose by holding out as long as possible.

 

Nancy Mace Is Campaigning for Only One Man’s Vote

 

A month ago, I proudly and pompously swore a written oath never to discuss Congresswoman Nancy Mace again — I invite you to examine my reasons why — and now she has almost immediately made an oath-breaker out of me. (The last person to do this was Greta Thunberg, which is fitting: Both of them are known primarily for overweeningly insisting upon themselves.)

 

Mace has announced that she is running for governor of South Carolina, in a race that — as with all open gubernatorial seats in true MAGA country — looks to be a typical red-state five-car primary pileup. Mace joins a field already crowded by four other candidates, including Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette, State Attorney General Alan Wilson, and fellow Representative Ralph Norman.

 

It is worth the bare notice, I suppose, but I also could not help but notice how she launched her campaign. Mace is a deeply unserious candidate for governor; a woman most famous for knifing her own speaker of the House in the back from the left — piggybacking on Matt Gaetz’s coup — for his insufficient feminist wokeness. She is therefore counting on being the “glamour” candidate, with a nationwide profile and statewide name recognition.

 

She is doing this not because she is appealing to South Carolinians, per se, but for the vote of one particular man: Donald Trump. Over the course of a lengthy weekend interview with Meg Kinnard of the Associated Press, Mace formally announced her run, highlighting herself as “Trump in high heels” and promising that “no one will work harder to get his attention and endorsement.”

 

Mace is cynical, but she’s not stupid. She knows as well as anyone that in a state with a Republican primary electorate like South Carolina’s, a Trump endorsement is the golden ticket to primary victory. If she secures it, she is likely to be the nominee. I hope she does not, and not because she is manifestly unfit to govern. Rather, I’d prefer we not nominate someone with the potential to become Mark Robinson (or Mark Sanford) 2.0 a mere two years after having tried this experiment in North Carolina’s gubernatorial race.

 

Gym Class Just Got Fiercer

 

On Thursday, a collective shudder ran through the spines of every bookishly unathletic fortysomething progressive, as President Trump announced his latest move to transform America’s vulnerable youth into a fascist brigade: He is reinstating the Presidential Fitness Test. You remember that from your days in gym class, right? A little running, some sit-ups, pull-ups, some stretches, and a prize for hitting certain benchmarks. Obama got rid of it as part of his turn toward a kinder, gentler, and (let’s be frank) softer America, and now Trump has announced — without adding further detail — that it’s coming back.

 

And a shadow has apparently fallen over the staff of the New York Times, their moods darkening as they are re-traumatized by shameful flashbacks to the serial indignities of middle-school gym class, the cruel gibes of their fellow children, and their inability to develop upper-body strength: “For Some, Return of Presidential Fitness Test Revives Painful Memories.”

 

While some still proudly remember passing the test with flying colors and receiving a presidential certificate, many others recoil at the mere mention of the test. For them, it was an early introduction to public humiliation.

 

“You would see it,” Ms. Burnett said. Her classmates “would feel body shamed if they didn’t perform as well.”

 

You’re darn right they did, lady! And it built character. One by one, gray-haired liberals lined up to agonize to the Times about one of the least intimidating rites of passage of our childhood: failing to do a pull-up. (One 60-year-old woman lamented: “It was survive or fail. It was Darwinist.”) The only things missing from the piece were tales of kids who failed the fitness test getting wedgied in the locker room by the football team.

 

How pathetic. I don’t mean to mock kids who are scared of looking like unathletic nerds in front of their peers; I want to laugh at older people who were apparently so scarred by their own experience of failure that they now feel the need to speak up on behalf of younger people. Since we’re doing this, allow me to offer my own two cents, as a former nerdy kid who never in a million years would have gotten a Presidential Physical Fitness Award: It’s okay not to care. I well recall that easily 50 percent of my male classmates, similarly, could not do pull-ups at the time. I cared about books (and, to a lesser extent, video games), not athletics.

 

I cannot emphasize enough how surprisingly easy it is for a twelve-year-old to be at peace with not being able to do a pull-up. I remember telling my gym teacher, “Look, I’m going to hang here on this bar just to see how long I can do it, and then I’m peacing out” and moving on with life. I didn’t even consider it an embarrassing moment, only a realistic one. After all, a kid’s got to know his limitations, and it was helpful, if nothing else, to be made aware of mine.