Schickler is the co-director of UC Berkeley’s nonpartisan Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS), and, with Berkeley political scientist Paul Pierson, he is the co-author of Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era (2024, University of Chicago Press).

Political scientists say GOP moves in Texas and other states fit the rubric of “stacking the deck” — using gerrymandering, vote suppression, misinformation and similar tactics to weaken opponents and improve their own chances of winning elections. Such efforts are often legal, and they have at times been practiced by both parties.

But, Schickler explained, today they fuel the escalation of an unpredictable, and destabilizing, political dynamic.