FRANCE PERSPECTIVE

Paris, May 28, 2026. Months ahead of the November midterm elections, US federal courts have rejected Republican-drawn electoral maps in the US South — Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida — citing the protection of civil rights. For French media, this episode goes beyond mere legal controversy: it reveals the deep-seated tension in which American democracy finds itself under Donald Trump's second term.

RFI, closely following Republican primaries, notes that Ken Paxton's victory in Texas — with 64% of the vote in the second round, thanks to decisive support from the president — illustrates the logic of territorial control that the Trump administration seeks to consolidate. The most expensive campaign in US history, with nearly $130 million spent, including over $90 million by Senator John Cornyn's team, testifies to the colossal stakes of each seat in a Congress where margins are infinitesimally small. In this context, redistricting is not a technical dispute: it's a tool of political domination.

Le Monde reports on Bruce Springsteen's scathing indictment in Washington, where he denounced a 'dangerous, racist, incompetent, and traitorous' president and a 'politicized and subservient' Justice Department. While an artist's words may seem anecdotal, Le Monde sees this as a sign of an American civil society on high alert, where institutional criticism migrates to the cultural sphere due to insufficient political space.

RFI also notes that Donald Trump is setting records for unpopularity: 65% of Americans are dissatisfied with his handling of the Israeli-Iranian conflict, and 69% contest his efforts to lower living costs. This erosion of his electoral base, according to French correspondents in Washington, creates a context in which judicial reversals on gerrymandering could weigh on the November ballot — provided federal court decisions are implemented in time.

For French observers, accustomed to a tradition of independent electoral district delimitation, the US practice of partisan redistricting remains deeply alien. The dominant framing of French coverage emphasizes the contradiction between Washington's democratic rhetoric and internal practices that undermine minority representation. France 24 EN, in its analysis of the European far-right's growing distance from Trump, suggests that the Trump model is losing its appeal precisely because its authoritarian levers — including control of electoral maps — are becoming too visible.

The question that runs through French editorial rooms is: do institutions still hold? Federal court rejections can be read as a provisional affirmative answer. However, the Texas campaign has also shown that loyalty to Trump now takes precedence over any institutional consideration within the Republican Party — a shift that Paris continues to document with growing unease.