Winning Power in Competitive Authoritarianism
America's Supreme Court and Virginia's state supreme court distorted law to give Republicans unfair electoral advantages, but as Hungary shows, Democrats can still gain power
America’s democratic backsliding deepened as the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in Louisiana v. Callais. The VRA passed Constitutional muster many times, and Congress renewed it in 2006 by large supermajorities, but the John Roberts-led Supreme Court undid it because they personally dislike the outcome, which isn’t their job. Meanwhile, the Virginia state supreme court blocked an amendment to the state constitution that passed by popular referendum, which isn’t really their job, and did so on a technicality that they didn’t apply to the previous Virginia constitutional amendment addressing redistricting. Both decisions boost Republicans’ political power and weaken Democrats’.
The judges wrote up some lawyerly bullshit as rationalization, of course, but I refuse to indulge such obvious bad faith, especially given the larger context of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s assault on U.S. Constitutional democracy. If you’d like to parse the legal language, or see how the judges denied facts, distorted law, and contradicted themselves, try this or this or this.
Here, in plain language, is what happened:
Republican partisans on the Supreme Court created a pretext to gut the Voting Rights Act so the former Confederate/Jim Crow states, and red states more broadly, could manipulate maps to lock Black Americans and other minorities out of government representation. After the decision, multiple Republican-controlled states rushed to do exactly that. Then Republican partisans on the Virginia state supreme court created a pretext to prevent Virginia Democrats from responding in kind.
Tennessee Republicans carved up Memphis’ Congressional district, putting each piece with enough rural white areas to shut the city’s residents—over 62% Black and overwhelmingly Democratic—out of representation, and make the state’s Congressional delegation exclusively instead of mostly Republican. Louisiana Republicans are stopping primaries where votes have already been cast so they can redraw maps and get an all-Republican delegation, violating the “Purcell Principle” that says there can’t be changes close to an election, which the Supreme Court treated as important when it advantaged Republicans. Florida is moving to redistrict to get Republicans more seats, even though Florida law says they can’t.
All that is being done by governors and state legislatures, some of which are gerrymandered into disproportionate representation themselves. Virginia at least held a referendum to redistrict in Democrats’ favor, which was honestly framed as a response to red states’ redistricting in Republicans’ favor, and won majority support. The red states didn’t bother asking the public.
Virginia’s referendum makes state Democrats’ effort a little more democratic, but it’s still bad for democracy. White rural Virginians deserve representation, same as Black urban Tennesseans.
Except America isn’t a full democracy anymore. Thanks to Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, the Republican Party, and the Roberts Court, with a big assist from right-wing media and tech industry oligarchs, the United States has backslid into competitive authoritarianism. It’s not consolidated authoritarianism like in China, so there are still elections for national office. But the ruling party has abused power to give itself unfair advantages, with recent gerrymandering only one example.
I don’t want the United States to be in this position, but here we are. The available choice to pro-democracy Americans is (1) weakly acquiesce to further democratic backsliding and entrenched one-party rule, or (2) respond in kind to balance out illegitimate Republican power grabs as best as possible.
Ideally, fighting back will convince Republicans it’s in their interest to honor principles of democracy even if they don’t believe in them, and join Democrats in banning gerrymandering for everyone. If not, then countering the power grabs would still reduce Republicans’ illegitimate advantages, increasing the chances pro-democracy forces can gain enough power to enact democratic restoration in 2029.
In that spirit, the Virginia governor and state legislature should follow Louisiana, Tennessee, and Florida, redistricting however they want. They could defend this as the will of the people expressed via referendum, by pointing to the Supreme Court’s recent Callais decision, and/or by rejecting the state court’s bad faith cancellation of a constitutional amendment. Republicans will presumably object, but at least this makes them work to try to stop it. If they manage to, then tweak the wording and pass it again. A more drastic option within the state legislature’s legal authority is to lower the age limit for state supreme court judges from the current 73 to 54, the age of the youngest member of the faction that blocked the amendment.
I’m not necessarily saying they should do these particular moves—take this more as considering possibilities than crafting a detailed plan—nor claiming that anything will definitely work. But Virginia’s Democratic majority, and pro-democracy Americans more broadly, should fight rather than acquiesce, using any nonviolent means they can come up with, and see what happens. Get caught trying instead of forfeiting in advance. The one thing they should not do is accept that anti-democracy Republicans get to play by different, more favorable rules.
A common argument against actions like these is it will prompt Republican retaliation, setting off a downward spiral. But Republicans are already doing everything they can think of to give themselves unfair advantages. They’re already gerrymandering millions of Americans out of representation, already judge-shopping to get partisan ideologues who will distort the law in Republicans’ favor, already violating the Constitution in multiple egregious ways, and already attempted a coup.
When Democrats push back, the most Republicans can do is continue what they’re already doing. Appeasement never dissuades them from that. If anything, it encourages them.
Winning an Unfair Fight
While I think that Democrats and anyone who prefers democracy over authoritarianism should stand up to Republicans’ anti-democracy actions, I’m not panicking over the Virginia decision. It concerns only four Congressional seats—out of 435 in the House—and I stand by the argument I made in February that Trump’s effort to steal the midterms will likely fail. Not because Republicans aren’t trying, or will hold back, but because they lack the capacity. They’re beatable.
Pro-democracy Americans should fight as hard as they can for a fair system while working as best they can to gain power in the current unfair one. It shouldn’t have to be that way, but it is.
Hungarians’ recent success in ousting authoritarian Viktor Orban via elections despite distortions in the ruling party’s favor show that it’s possible. They needed a unified opposition and overwhelming numbers, crushing Orban’s party by nearly 20 points. That isn’t fair, but they pulled it off.
With that in mind, the biggest card pro-democracy Americans currently have is massive turnout in November 2026.
The president’s party usually loses seats in the midterms, and no president has had approval ratings as low as Trump. The 2018 and 2022 midterms show that some Trump supporters don’t vote unless he’s on the ballot. Beyond that, some of his 2024 voters are disillusioned—by ICE, corruption, high gas prices, etc.—and will swing to Democrats or stay home. And the worst economic effects of the energy supply crunch from Trump’s Iran war haven’t hit yet, so sentiment this fall should be even more negative for the president and his party.
High electoral margins can overcome Republicans’ anti-democratic measures. Not in every district or even state—some post-Callais gerrymanders in southern states will shut Black residents out of national representation, which probably can’t be fixed without national power—but enough to gain control of at least one house of Congress.
Winning a majority in the House is the best available way to start checking Trump, using investigatory authority and Constitutional power of the purse. The bigger the electoral margin, the greater symbolic rebuke and institutional strength in the House.
If Democrats win the Senate, even better, though that will be harder since it’s six years from Democrats’ 2020 electoral victory, and this year’s map favors Republicans. But even closing Republicans’ current 3-seat advantage in the Senate would strengthen the minority and put them in a better position for 2028.
Big turnout will also yield important gains at the state level. That’s where Supreme Court-enabled racial gerrymandering will be most directly impactful, since they can shut minorities out of state government entirely. And state gains can be nationally impactful, since state legislatures and state judges are shaping who a state sends to Congress.
America’s pro-democracy opposition is down, but not out. Success is possible under competitive authoritarianism. But you have to really compete.