Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, went on CNN this week and accused Republicans of rigging the next election through redistricting, then openly called on her own party to do the same thing she was condemning.
Appearing on CNN's "The Arena," Sewell told host Kasie Hunt that Democrats "can't sit back" and must "fight back" by redrawing their own congressional maps if red states redraw theirs. She acknowledged the strategy amounts to "a race to the bottom" but pressed ahead anyway, insisting the real issue is that Republicans are trying to "steal the next election."
The contradiction was immediate and unmistakable. In the same interview, Sewell claimed she voted against gerrymandering "not once, but twice" when Democrats controlled the House and touted her party's support for the Freedom to Vote Act. Then she urged blue states to gerrymander right back. That is not a principled stand against map manipulation. It is a permission slip for the very practice she says she opposes, dressed up in the language of self-defense.
As Breitbart reported, Sewell laid out her position in blunt terms during the Wednesday broadcast:
"I personally think that we, as Democrats, can't sit back. We have to fight back. So, if blue states, I mean, red states are going to redraw their maps, I think that Democrats need to think about redrawing their maps. I know it's a race to the bottom, but it's a, it's to the bottom, and you're fighting fire with fire. And I think it's important that we win this fight, because it's about making sure that the Republicans don't steal the next election. And that's exactly what they're doing."
Hunt pressed the congresswoman on the charge, asking directly: "Steal the next election, could you point to how you believe that's happening?"
Sewell pointed to redistricting activity in Florida and claimed the entire effort "was all started by Donald Trump, by asking Texas to find him five seats." She described the situation as a "tit for tat" and said the Supreme Court had enabled partisan gerrymandering by allowing states to draw maps along party lines while using partisanship as a shield against racial discrimination claims.
"What the Supreme Court has allowed them to do is to have partisan gerrymandering, and they can actually draw discriminatory maps and use it as an excuse that they did it for partisan reasons. It's pretty scary times to live in that we don't actually protect the rights of protected classes on race, but we allow partisan gerrymandering, and that's kind of where we are."
She added that the ability to "not only redraw seats, but now that they can redraw lines, even before elections, is pretty devastating."
Strip away the rhetoric and Sewell's position collapses under its own weight. She says gerrymandering is wrong. She says she voted against it twice. She says her party passed legislation to ban it. And then she says Democrats should do it anyway, because Republicans did it first.
That is not principle. It is expedience wearing principle's clothes. And it is a pattern that runs through Democratic politics on redistricting. The party rails against the practice in public, then quietly pursues it wherever they hold the levers of power. Voters in Virginia saw this firsthand when Democrats pushed their own redistricting power play and faced voter resistance.
Sewell never explained what specific maps or actions she considers stolen elections. She offered no vote totals, no court filings, no data. She named Florida and Texas, attributed the entire effort to Trump, and left it at that. Hunt did not press further.
The claim that Trump "asked Texas to find him five seats" went unchallenged on air. Sewell offered no source, no document, no date for the alleged request. It hung in the interview like an established fact, though it was presented as nothing more than her assertion.
Sewell has been a visible figure in Democratic confrontations beyond redistricting. At a Thursday budget hearing, she clashed with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his past comments about Black children. Sewell cited a 2024 podcast in which Kennedy said "every Black kid is now just standardly put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos" and said such children should have a chance to be "reparented." Kennedy denied or disputed the characterization, accusing Sewell of "making up" what he said. An HHS spokesperson later said the comments were being taken out of context, Fox News reported.
"You absolutely said it," Sewell told Kennedy during the hearing. "I am absolutely not making this up," she added after Kennedy pushed back.
The exchange illustrates Sewell's willingness to make sharp public accusations, and her habit of treating her own characterizations as settled fact, even when the other party disputes them on the record. Whether the subject is redistricting or health policy, the approach is the same: assert, escalate, and treat any pushback as proof of bad faith.
Sewell's complaint about the Supreme Court allowing partisan gerrymandering references a legal landscape that both parties have navigated for decades. The court has drawn a line between racial gerrymandering, which remains subject to constitutional challenge, and partisan gerrymandering, which the justices have largely left to the political process. Sewell framed this distinction as a threat to "protected classes on race," but the legal reality is more complicated than her CNN appearance suggested.
Democrats have not been passive bystanders in the redistricting wars. In Virginia, former President Obama personally championed a redistricting referendum that could have handed Democrats as many as four additional House seats. That effort eventually ran into legal trouble when the state's highest court intervened.
The Virginia Supreme Court kept that redistricting referendum on ice, dealing Democrats a significant legal setback and underscoring that courts have not simply rubber-stamped one party's map-drawing ambitions.
Sewell's framing, that redistricting is something Republicans do to Democrats, ignores these realities. Both parties gerrymander when they can. The difference is that Democrats publicly denounce the practice while privately pursuing it, then cry foul when Republicans play the same game without the moral posturing.
Calling redistricting an attempt to "steal the next election" is not a minor rhetorical choice. For years, Democrats have argued that claims of stolen elections are dangerous to democracy. They have said such language erodes public trust in institutions, fuels extremism, and delegitimizes lawful outcomes.
Now a sitting Democratic congresswoman uses the same language on national television, not about fraud, not about ballot tampering, but about the ordinary political process of drawing congressional maps. If "steal" means "my party might lose seats because of redistricting," the word has lost all meaning.
The broader Democratic coalition has shown signs of strain on multiple fronts. Internal tensions have surfaced over everything from leadership and titles to ethics scandals that have forced members from office. Sewell's rhetoric fits a party that increasingly reaches for the most inflammatory framing available, regardless of whether the facts justify it.
Sewell offered no evidence that any election has been stolen or will be. She offered no court ruling, no investigative finding, no statistical analysis. She offered a feeling, and a call for her own side to do exactly what she accuses the other side of doing.
Missing from the CNN interview was any acknowledgment that redistricting is a constitutional process carried out by state legislatures. Missing was any mention of the specific maps she considers illegitimate, or the legal challenges, if any, that Democrats have filed against them. Missing was any explanation of how the Freedom to Vote Act, which never became law, would have changed the current landscape.
Also absent: any recognition that Democrats have gerrymandered aggressively in states they control, including New York, Illinois, and Maryland. Sewell's narrative requires the listener to believe that only one party manipulates maps, a claim that collapses under the slightest scrutiny.
When a member of Congress goes on television and says the other party is stealing an election, the burden of proof should be high. Sewell did not meet it. She met the burden of outrage, which on cable news is apparently enough.
If Democrats want to gerrymander, they can say so. But they should stop pretending it's a principled response to Republican villainy, and stop calling every political setback a theft.
