2025 shockers: The biggest moments that rocked the campaign trail
It was an off-year when it comes to elections, but 2025 was on fire on the campaign trail, as next year's looming midterm showdowns took shape.While it was never expected...
By Fox News · Fox News
It was an off-year when it comes to elections, but 2025 was on fire on the campaign trail, as next year's looming midterm showdowns took shape. While it was never expected to match the intensity of the tumultuous 2024 battles for the White House and Congress, this year's off-year elections grabbed outsized national attention and served as a key barometer leading up to the 2026 midterm contests for the House and Senate majorities. Here are five of the biggest moments that shaped the campaign trail. Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, President Donald Trump in June first floated the idea of rare but not unheard of mid-decade congressional redistricting. HERE ARE THE NEXT BATTLEGROUNDS IN REDISTRICTING FIGHT The mission was simple: redraw congressional district maps in red states to pad the GOP's razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats. Trump's first target: Texas. A month later, when asked by reporters about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats across the country, the president said, "Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five." The push by Trump and his political team triggered a high-stakes redistricting showdown with Democrats to shape the 2026 midterm landscape in the fight for the House majority. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called a special session of the GOP-dominated state legislature to pass the new map. But Democratic state lawmakers, who broke quorum for two weeks as they fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill, energized Democrats across the country. Among those leading the fight against Trump's redistricting was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. California voters earlier this month overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative which will temporarily sidetrack the…