Roadblocks, however, soon emerged. For one thing, key Democratic officials started pushing back in the opposite direction: California is moving forward with a plan that would match Texas’ scheme, and related efforts are under consideration in Maryland and Virginia. A newly redrawn map in Utah, meanwhile, is likely to deliver another seat to Democrats.

For another, some red states have resisted the White House’s demands. A Trump-backed scheme in New Hampshire stalled; Kansas Republicans have balked, at least for now, in response to a redistricting plan; and GOP officials in Indiana, who’ve been the target of intense White House lobbying, are apparently walking away from the idea. Roll Call reported:

Republicans in the Indiana state Senate will not move forward with a plan to redraw the state’s congressional map next month, the chamber’s GOP leader said Friday. ‘Over the last several months, Senate Republicans have given very serious and thoughtful consideration to the concept of redrawing our state’s congressional maps,’ Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said in a statement. ‘Today, I’m announcing there are not enough votes to move that idea forward, and the Senate will not reconvene in December.’

.......As for the bigger picture, The New York Times reported two weeks ago that the Republican White House is responsible for what is effectively “an all-out gerrymandering war,” adding that election lawyers and experts “say that what is happening now is a crisis with few parallels in American history.”

The result is a multifaceted partisan scramble, with Trump and his allies targeting election data, mail-in ballots, voter ID laws, the census, voter registrations and indefensible gerrymandering — not because it’s responsible or because it’ll benefit the public, but because of Republicans’ desperation to hold onto power and to prevent Democrats from gaining a toehold that could lead to any degree of accountability for the president.

The stakes, in other words, are high, and if the redistricting arms race can result in a net gain of a half-dozen or so seats for the GOP — ensuring wins long before voters have their say — it might very well keep Republicans in power for the rest of the decade, no matter what the American people actually want.