One thing is holding Trump’s power together — but it’s on the verge of collapse

President Donald Trump returns to the White House, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Washington, D.C., March 1, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Donald Trump's presidency and the broader MAGA coalition are being tenuously held together by one thing, and according to a new breakdown from MS NOW, it is something that is already primed to collapse.

Writing for the network on Wednesday, reporter Hayes Brown argued that gerrymandering, the practice of designing congressional maps for partisan advantage, is "the glue holding Trump's fracturing MAGA coalition together." After it seemed like Democrats' counteroffensive might offset Trump's effort to use redistricting to rig the 2026 midterms, decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Virginia Supreme Court swung things back in the GOP's favor.

Notably, this plan is still not guaranteed to work. Trump's approval ratings are at such toxically low levels, that Democrats still have a clear path to the House majority, even if their margin ends up being less than it could have been. As Brown noted, if Republicans manage to gerrymander their way to keeping the House, the problems they are currently dealing with would still persist.

"If they manage to retain the House in the face of the growing backlash, then they likely won’t have enough new seats to move past the infighting and backbiting that’s currently denying them legislative momentum," Brown argued.

The new congressional maps being created in red states also carry the risk of backfiring, leading to unexpected Democratic wins, a situation sometimes referred to as a "dummymander."

"Meanwhile, the Democratic voters being deprived of districts don’t vanish into the ether," Brown explained. "Some new districts Republicans are creating will inevitably be less red than they were. In what was already shaping up to be a wave election, those Democrats tucked into newly GOP-leaning districts may find themselves more inclined to turn out to vote and negate the GOP’s plans with massive turnout."

He further noted that the onslaught of gerrymandering by Republicans has energized Democratic lawmakers, meaning there are already plans in blue states to aggressively pursue their own redistricting ahead of the 2028 elections.

"In following Trump’s lead, the Republican Party has chosen short-term gratification over long-term growth and stability," Brown concluded. "By seeking to silence all but their most fervent supporters, they have essentially told the rest of their voters that their priorities don’t matter. It’s hard to see that message drawing huge turnout this fall or convincing voters to hold their nose and support their incumbent. The fault lines that gerrymandering have temporarily fused together are still there, and still vulnerable to cracking apart."

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