Judge set to choose new congressional map in fight that could reshape House control
A district judge in Utah is expected to make a blockbuster ruling on Monday on which of three congressional maps the red state will use in the 2026 midterm elections.
The decision by Utah District Judge Dianna Gibson on which map she chooses could determine if Democrats have a fighting chance next year of flipping one of the state's current four Republican-controlled U.S. House seats.
Utah is the latest state to find itself smack in the middle of the high-stakes redistricting showdown between President Donald Trump and Republicans versus Democrats to shape the midterm battlefield in the fight for the House majority.
The faceoff over redistricting in Utah, a state Trump carried by nearly 22 points in last year's presidential election, was triggered by a lawsuit by the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government, which prompted Gibson to throw out the state's current congressional map. The plaintiffs argued that the current map favored Republicans.
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Gibson's move required the GOP-controlled state legislature to draw a new map, which lawmakers approved last month.
The map drawn by the legislature could give Democrats a chance of flipping a U.S. House seat in two of the state's four districts.
Gibson, who will choose between the legislature's map and two others drawn up by the plaintiffs, said she would rule by Nov. 10, which is the day Utah Lt. Gov Deidre Henderson said any new congressional map must be in place to be used in next year's elections.
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The ruling in Utah comes six days after California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative which will temporarily sidetrack the left-leaning state's nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democrat-dominated legislature.
That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which would counter the passage earlier this year in the reliable red state of Texas of a new map that aims to create up to five right-leaning House seats.
"California stepped up. Now, we are taking this fight across the country — helping Democrats in other states push back against Trump’s election rigging," California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement to Fox News Digital last week, as he pointed to the push by Trump and Republicans for rare mid-decade redistricting.
It's part of a broad effort by Trump's political team and the GOP to pad the party's razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats. Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio have drawn new maps as part of the president's push.
Trump is aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections.
Illinois and Maryland, two blue states, and Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature, are moving towards redistricting or are seriously considering, as are the red states of Indiana, Kansas, and Florida.