On August 26, 2025, Jake Tapper squared off with former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger over his state’s redistricting ballot measure. Tapper smugly asked—no surprise here—whether Republicans were to blame for starting the recent trend of mid-cycle redistricting to boost their numbers in the House of Representatives.

“No, Jake,” Arnold said. “There has been gerrymandering going on for 200 years,” referencing Elbridge Gerry, the U.S. vice president under James Madison and former Massachusetts governor who redrew state senate districts to favor his Democratic-Republican allies. Schwarzenegger continued, “There is such extreme gerrymandering going on that in a state like Massachusetts, it has like 40% of the people voting for Trump, they have zero representatives;” President Trump won 36% of the vote in 2024 (2, 3). He added that New Mexico was the same story—45% voting Republican, and “zero is sent to the House, zero representatives from the Republican Party” (2)

How a normal American can hear the Terminator’s evidence and not see through Jake Tapper’s concrete wall of partisan hackery is beyond reason.

Now let’s look at Illinois and see if we spot any similarities. Long before Texas and other Republican-led states were accused of manipulating maps to favor Trump’s allies, Illinois Democrats had already perfected the art. President Donald Trump won 43.5% of the Illinois vote in the 2024 general election—yet only 3 of 17 congressional representatives are Republicans, roughly 17.5% of the delegation (3). For a party that speaks of “Democracy” as if it’s their sacred creed, how does Jake Tapper—professional virtue signaler for CNN—explain Illinois or the other states Arnold mentioned? He can’t.

Gerrymandering is the most anti-democratic flaw embedded in the U.S. political system: a mechanism for suppressing the general will through democratic means. It’s evil when Republicans do it. It’s evil when Democrats do it. Until virtue returns to Congress, fair players will continue to be left in the dust. Thus, the political game for power is played right before our eyes, showcasing a mockery of American civic dignity: our civic dignity.

President Trump could leave a legacy praised by Americans across the aisle if he used his political capital to end the tyranny of gerrymandering once and for all. Let’s pray that day comes.