From Florida to Virginia to Texas, politicians are fighting over lines on a map — and the winner could control Congress for a decade.

It’s happening again. Across the country, a very old political game is being played with very new urgency — and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Redistricting, the once-a-decade redrawing of voting maps, has exploded into an ongoing political battleground, with Florida, Virginia, and Texas all locked in fights that could reshape who controls the U.S. House for years to come.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is pushing hard. He’s called a special legislative session starting Tuesday to fast-track a new congressional map — one that critics are already calling a “DeSantis gerrymander” that could hand Republicans up to four additional House seats. Opponents aren’t mincing words: one legal analyst called the proposed map “blatantly unconstitutional” before the ink was even dry.

“My job is not to draw distinctions or inferences from the map.”— Florida official, declining to defend the proposal publicly

Meanwhile, in Virginia, a court-approved map that had briefly favored Democrats is now frozen. Republicans filed a procedural challenge, and the state’s high court heard oral arguments this week — a reminder that every line drawn in politics eventually finds its way to a judge.

And in Texas? A federal court had blocked the state’s redrawn map, calling it a likely racial gerrymander. But the U.S. Supreme Court just stepped in and reinstated it anyway. Governor Greg Abbott celebrated, saying the new districts “better align representation in Washington” — though critics argued what they really align is partisan power.

Where each state stands right now: