On Wednesday, a judge in Annapolis handed Maryland Democrats a rare loss in a year when they usually get whatever they draw up. Democrats already hold seven of the state's eight congressional seats, 87.5 percent of the delegation, and Gov. Wes Moore called a special session in August hoping to grab the last one too. The judge said not so fast, at least for the November ballot. The state filed its appeal within hours. This fight is not over. But the ruling is worth sitting with, because it says something true about how power actually behaves. It never volunteers to share.

I've spent 30-plus years advising people on their fiduciary duty, the legal obligation to act in someone else's interest even when it costs you something. Legislatures drawing their own district lines carry no such duty. They answer to nobody but the next election, and the next election is exactly what they're trying to rig.

Maryland's actual problem isn't underrepresentation. Trump pulled roughly 34 percent of the presidential vote there in 2024, and Larry Hogan, a popular former governor, took nearly 43 percent of the Senate vote the same year. That's not a fringe. That's a third of the state that gets exactly one voice in the U.S. House, Andy Harris in the 1st District, because his seat sits far enough from Baltimore and Annapolis that Democrats haven't yet figured out how to crack it. The blocked amendment would have let Maryland draw a new map that jumps the Chesapeake Bay to swallow Harris's district whole. The........

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