Fitzpatrick, Suozzi call gerrymandering a threat to democracy

Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi turned a bipartisan warning into a direct attack on the way congressional maps are drawn, arguing that gerrymandering has become one of the most damaging forces in American politics. Speaking on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, Fitzpatrick said gerrymandering is "one of the most, if not the most, corrosive things to our democracy that I can imagine," a line that captured the urgency of the case both lawmakers were making.

The two men, who serve as co-chairs of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, also made their case on NPR two days earlier with Michel Martin. There, they described gerrymandering as the nation’s current greatest problem, a striking message from a Republican from Pennsylvania and a Democrat from New York who have built their public identities around the idea that Washington can still function through cross-party agreement. The caucus says it exists to move policy forward by finding common ground, and Fitzpatrick and Suozzi were elected co-chairs for the 119th Congress.

Their criticism lands in the middle of a redistricting fight that is no longer limited to the once-a-decade census cycle. North Carolina and Texas both used new congressional maps in their March 3, 2026 primaries after mid-cycle redistricting, underscoring how aggressively some states are now redrawing lines before voters go to the polls. The 2026 election calendar runs from those March primaries to the general election on November 3, 2026, meaning map-drawing battles are shaping the battlefield well before Election Day.

The legal terrain has also shifted. A recent Supreme Court ruling weakened a Voting Rights Act protection tied to minority representation in Congress, opening the door to additional redistricting fights. That has sharpened the stakes for both parties, each of which has reasons to preserve favorable lines and protect safe seats even while its lawmakers condemn the practice in public.

Outside groups are pressing for change, but the remedies remain politically difficult. Common Cause says most Americans oppose mid-decade redistricting and partisan gerrymandering. The Brennan Center defines gerrymandering as partisan manipulation of district lines to manufacture political outcomes. Campaign Legal Center says independent redistricting commissions and federal legislation are among the main tools to curb it. For now, the contradiction is plain: lawmakers denounce a system that distorts representation, yet the system endures because it keeps power where the parties want it most, inside districts designed to be hard to lose.