The Window is Closing

Republicans are rewriting the rules. Democrats can't keep playing the old ones.

Hi Friends,

As our General Election campaign ramps up, I wanted a space to keep you updated on what we’re doing and how I’m thinking about the constant influx of news and threats to our democracy.

We’ve moved our newsletter to Substack and you’ll keep getting these updates in your inbox, just like before. The difference now: if you have the Substack app, you can comment, reply, and join the conversation in real time.

That last part is especially important to me. A lot of people talk about “meeting voters where they are.” For me, that’s not a platitude, it’s a two-way street our campaign is trying to build with our supporters and constituents.

Last Thursday, I sat down with Shia Kapos of Politico Illinois. Shia asked if Illinois Democrats should redraw our congressional maps to respond to gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states. This conversation has become increasingly potent in the wake of the Virginia Supreme Court decision on Friday striking down that state’s successful April 21st redistricting ballot measure.

Here’s my answer: I hate partisan gerrymandering. We should ban it nationally.

But. If Republicans are playing by one set of rules while Democrats force themselves to play by another, that’s not a functional democracy. We have to respond in kind. When the Illinois General Assembly was considering mid-cycle redistricting here in Illinois last year, I spoke out in support of the idea. I still think it’s the right move for states run by Democrats, whenever feasible, at least until there is a national ban on this kind of gerrymandering.

As I told Shia, this moment demands this bold action. The GOP is at the culmination of their decades-long pursuit to rig the system at every level to ram through their right wing agenda. Last month, the hyper-partisan U.S. Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent in shredding the Voting Rights Act, opening the floodgates to partisan gerrymandering while diluting Black and Brown representation. Already, states like Florida and Tennessee are rushing to redraw their maps to lock in more Republicans – and squeeze out Black voices.

Then, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the will of the voters, striking down a redistricting referendum that would have tilted the balance in favor of Democrats. They didn’t just overturn a map, they overturned an election.

And by the way – not only do all of these decisions make it easier for state governments to redistrict now, but they also open the door for states to continuously redistrict year after year. A suburban Congressional seat looks like it’s starting to turn blue? Republicans could just change the map to move it out of reach from the Democrats.

This is the dismantling of our democracy in real time. While Democrats pushed for independent redistricting commissions, Republicans seized power in state legislatures and redrew maps to lock in their gains. Now, under Trump, Republicans launched a national redistricting war to keep control of the U.S. House. The two parties are operating in fundamentally different universes, and that asymmetry is categorically undemocratic.

The window to fight back is rapidly closing. If these Republican-drawn maps get locked in at the state and federal level, we don’t just lose the next election. We also accept institutions that are designed to continually change the rules to elect the Republicans, no matter the political environment.

When the will of voters becomes essentially obsolete, there’s no longer any reason to expect government to do anything the people actually care about. So much for worker protections, cost-of-living measures that actually reach working people, and human rights.

The rich get richer. People lose protections, lose opportunity, lose their voice. The system stops responding to anyone who isn’t already winning.

The next two years of political decisions will shape society for many years to come. These seemingly small steps, gone unnoticed, could end the American experiment as we know it. So that’s what this newsletter is going to be about: the stakes, the strategy, the people doing the work, and what you can do to fight back.

Right now, I’m going to ask you for one thing: keep paying attention. Send someone in your network this Substack, talk about what happened in Tennessee and Virginia. Tell people on both sides of this aisle why this is dangerous.

Thanks for being here, hit reply, drop a comment, tell me what you’re seeing out there.

Let’s go.

— Daniel