probably deserves its own thread https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...-gerrymander-redistricting-midterms-backfire/ Opinion Editorial Board The Texas gerrymander freakout What’s happening in the Lone Star State is not a threat to democracy. August 20, 2025 at 7:32 p.m. EDT Yesterday at 7:32 p.m. EDT Texas Republicans forged ahead Wednesday with their plan to prematurely redraw the state’s congressional map. Partisan gerrymandering is never pretty, no matter which side is doing it, but hold the apocalyptic warnings about the end of democracy. Republicans’ gambit could well prove shortsighted. With Democrats back after fleeing the state for weeks, members of the Texas House voted on party lines to redraw the state’s congressional districts six years early. Typically they wait until after census data guides their changes, but Texas is breaking that norm after the Justice Department told the state some of its current districts might be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. This Justice Department notice serves President Donald Trump’s political agenda for the 2026 midterm elections, but that does not mean it’s frivolous. The Supreme Court could soon prohibit any racial considerations in the redistricting process. Whatever the finer points of the law, it is indisputable that Republicans are exploiting that opening to make Texas’s districts more favorable to their party, which holds 25 of 38 seats in the state’s delegation to the House of Representatives. They are creating five new districts in territory Trump won by double digits last year. Republicans won 220 House seats in 2024, just over the 218-vote threshold for a majority, so it’s plausible that control of Congress for the last two years of Trump’s presidency could turn on these changes. But Democrats are favored by history and recent polling that gives them a five-point edge on the generic ballot among registered voters. They would need to massively underperform expectations for Texas to prove decisive. Given the unpredictability of politics, it is possible that making new seats competitive for Republicans could also create unexpected opportunities for Democrats. For example, over the past 15 years, Latinos have moved in the GOP’s direction while the suburbs have moved toward the Democrats. It’s hard to predict the pace of an ongoing electoral realignment. The Lone Star State’s changes are not happening in a vacuum. If bomb-throwing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton topples incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican Senate primary, a Democrat could be competitive in a general election. Voters angry about the gerrymander could punish Republicans at the polls statewide. Outside Texas, House candidates in swing districts might also get mileage out of Texas’s antics. At least six other states are potential targets to change boundaries ahead of the midterms. Though it is a legitimate fear that mid-cycle redistricting will become the norm, it is not inevitable. Several Republican legislators in Indiana have come out against doing so, despite pressure from the White House. Although California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) says he will try to further gerrymander his state if the Texas map goes through, he would need to win a statewide referendum in November overriding the redistricting commission. As blue as California is, Newsom could face an uphill climb. Republicans hold 17 percent of House seats despite winning 39 percent of the popular vote. Despite state-by-state distortions, the overall House map is actually quite “fair” by recent historical standards. In 2012, for example, Republicans won 234 House seats, a comfortable majority, even though Democratic candidates beat them by more than 1 million votes. In 2024, Republicans won their bare majority of 220 seats despite winning about 4 million more votes. Partisan gerrymandering has been an unpleasant part of the American system since the founding era. Democrats have a right to knock Texas Republicans, just as Republicans should criticize Democrats in states such as Illinois. Redistricting is an inherently political issue. Even if Texas’s move triggers an arms race, the trend will not put American democracy on life support. One silver lining of the gerrymander wars is that they might remind Americans how much Congress should matter. The legislative branch has been increasingly passive as a policymaking body, serving primarily as a sword to investigate presidents or a shield to protect them. Time is better spent worrying about congressional fecklessness.
on New York's proposed retaliatory gerrymander NY’s redistricting fight is complicated. Thank Andrew Cuomo. https://gothamist.com/news/nys-redistricting-fight-is-complicated-thank-andrew-cuomo excerpt: As lawmakers in the Lone Star State take up redistricting ahead of schedule at President Donald Trump’s behest, New York lawmakers are hustling to respond. The U.S. House of Representatives is currently split 219 Republicans to 212 Democrats, with four vacancies. Texas Republicans aim to redraw their lines again to give them an advantage in five more districts. The move has outraged Democrats because it would come in the middle of the decade. Redistricting normally occurs every 10 years, after the decennial census. In response, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democrats in the Legislature have threatened to initiate early redistricting in the Empire State. But that process won’t be easy, due to reforms pushed through by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo more than a decade ago. Those reforms enshrined in New York’s constitution restrict redistricting until after the next census is conducted in 2030. The state is also required to follow specific steps that would delay the new maps from being in place until 2028 at the earliest. “Cuomo created this reform package, with the support of the then-Republican majority in the state Senate,” said Jeff Wice, director of the New York Elections, Census and Redistricting Institute at New York Law School. At that point, a small group of rogue Democrats were conferencing with the state Senate GOP to give them majority control of the chamber. Revisiting those heady days in the 2010s highlights how much the gerrymandering debate’s terms have shifted. Back then, many Democrats argued nonpartisan maps were key to a healthy democracy. Now, Trump is pushing the GOP to break the decennial redistricting cycle to bolster his agenda. And New York is among the blue states open to fighting Texas’ gerrymandering fire with fire. Back then, Cuomo’s idea was to take the redistricting process away from the Legislature and put it in the hands of an “independent redistricting commission.” In 2014, voters adopted the ballot measure, over the objections of some good government opponents who argued the structure of the commission was doomed to fail. Those warnings proved prescient. Cuomo’s spokesperson Rich Azzopardi says that version of the story ignores the fact that, at the time, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle supported a process intended to limit partisan influence. “Not only was it passed twice by a Democratic Assembly and a Republican Senate but also approved by a majority of New Yorkers,” Azzopardi said. Fast forward to 2021, when the commission deadlocked, kicking redistricting back to the state Legislature in 2022. Then Democrats drew lines, Republicans sued, and the courts ruled the Democrats’ maps amounted to an illegal partisan gerrymander. Arguments and litigation continued until the state Legislature adopted new state Assembly and congressional lines for 2024. The current lines are supposed to remain in place until 2031. On Tuesday, state Sen. Michael Gianaris and Assemblymember Micah Lasher introduced a constitutional amendment that would allow New York to take up redistricting early if another state does it first. more at the link
This is so maga......................b**** about what someone else does in response to what you are doing LOL No backbone in the maga verse, when trumpy called Kemp in Ga to "find 11,00" votes he said NO.......ask Wheels to find 5 more seats and he answers hell yea boss
I think it's time to get rid of the electoral votes completely. It's all becoming a "cheat to win" as many electoral votes as we can these days.
So much for the rush to get the Democrats back to the session to help the flood victims as usual the only people the Replicans care about is themselves and how to remain in power.
Abbot has run Texas into the ground, we are no longer a donor state we took in billions from the feds......sad. https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-most-and-least-to-federal-revenue/ DD
4 of the 5 districts will be Hispanic majority. This could backfire because they actually think those Hispanics are Republicans now just because they voted for Trump. LOL. We shall see...
I'm actually afraid they'll claim election fraud if redistricting backfires and just steal the seats. Their justification would be that they pre rigged the election legally so how could they lose.
The Republicans started Gerrymandering, look at Indiana in 2010 for example.....vs now.... They have squeezed that lemon as much as possible, the DEMS fighting back now is balancing it out - then once it is balanced, they can force PROPER redistricted by population and not race by making Gerrymandering illegal. We need to remove all this SHITSTAINS that the GOP has put up to this moment trying to create a FACIST state. RESIST and FIGHT......for your country, it needs you. DD
stuff like this is why they’re trying to rig the maps before the midterms as dumb as republicans are, even they are not dumb enough to not realize that what they are doing is deeply unpopular
