When this gerrymander war started some pundit said that the GQP had the advantage in what they could accomplish. I don't remember the rationale, but it looks to be coming true.
Ohio: As many as 3 possible new GOP-leaning seats....
Missouri: 1 new GOP-leaning seat....
Plus, Republicans are eyeing more. In Indiana, Gov. Mike Braun is considering a November special session to redraw congressional maps after a pressure campaign from the White House, including a visit from Vice President JD Vance.
The White House has similarly applied pressure on lawmakers from Kansas, where Democrats hold one seat; Nebraska, where outgoing GOP Rep. Don Bacon’s Omaha district will be a top target of Democrats; and New Hampshire, which has two seats held by Democrats, according to reports. In Florida, a committee has been formed to pursue the idea of a mid-decade redistricting. All of those efforts may not come to fruition, but Republicans are certainly looking across the map.
Democrats have fewer options
California: Voters will get a say....
Utah: A court-mandated re-draw. A judge in Utah is requiring the legislature to redraw maps that ignored a nonpartisan redistricting commission and carved up a single Democratic seat around Salt Lake City among the state’s four congressional districts. The end result could be the return of a competitive district in Utah.
There are also nascent efforts to consider redistricting in New York, Illinois and Maryland....
There are no guarantees — look at Latinos in Texas
... In Texas, the gamble for Republicans is that Latino voters will continue to back the GOP at the same level as they did in 2024, when there was a dramatic shift despite Trump’s rhetoric about immigration on the campaign trail.
GoThinking LatinosGo!
Democrats have history in their favor
Trump and Republicans are fighting the tide of history with their redistricting efforts. Only twice since the Great Depression has the president’s party not lost seats in a midterm election. In both of those exceptions — 1998 and 2002 — the president in question had strong job approval ratings. Trump does not.
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But it’s also true that with fewer and fewer competitive seats, the pendulum does not swing as far. Democrats need to pick up a net of three seats to gain control of the House and gain a foothold of power in Washington, DC, to stand up to Trump.
President Joe Biden’s Democrats only lost nine seats in 2022, compared with the 40 Republican seats Trump lost in 2018.
No amount of redistricting is likely to save the House for Republicans if a true wave against Trump should materialize, but in this world of historically narrow House majorities, five to 10 more friendly seats could certainly change the equation.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Indiana Republicans are “ashamed of what they’re doing” on Thursday as he rallied opponents of a potential effort by GOP lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of next year’s midterm elections to add one or two US House seats more favorable to the party.
Buttigieg, the former South Bend mayor, returned to his home state for an appearance at the Indiana Statehouse where he urged Republican state lawmakers who are being pressured by President Donald Trump’s administration to redistrict to “show some backbone before it’s too late.”
“Refraining from cheating is a low bar,” he said. “But you’ve got to start somewhere, because they are under so much pressure from Washington to do something wrong.”
GoPete and Honorable RepubsGo
Even as Buttigieg enters the fray, Indiana Democrats face a daunting political reality: They have no way of stopping Republican Gov. Mike Braun and the state’s supermajority Republican House and Senate from redrawing its congressional maps to try to tilt the GOP’s current 7-2 House seat advantage to 8-1 or 9-0.
Braun and GOP legislative leaders have not yet made a public argument in favor of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps. However, Braun told state reporters Tuesday that redistricting “probably will happen.”
... Republican state Rep. Ed Clere told CNN that Missouri’s approval of new congressional maps last week “has only increased the pressure on Indiana, but for all the wrong reasons.”
“This is being driven by very raw and very cynical politics,” he said.
Clere has been one of the Indiana GOP’s most vocal opponents of mid-decade redistricting. He said doing so “establishes a dangerous precedent,” and said there is deep opposition within the party to redrawing the maps.
“There are Republicans who are more concerned with upholding principles than with cheating to win elections. And that’s what this is: It’s cheating,” he said. “This is about a lot more than a congressional map or an election. This is about who we are as a people, and whether we are willing to prioritize democracy over politics.”
Multiple Indiana Republican lawmakers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they expect Trump will eventually get his way....
It's a Cult.
Lament the murder, not the murdered.
1312. ETTD. 86 47.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said Sunday his state is not “going to sit on our hands” amid the nationwide redistricting fight.
Last week, Moore formed a redistricting advisory commission to explore redrawing Maryland’s congressional maps.
“If other states are going to go through this process … we’re not just going to sit on our hands because Donald Trump tells us to,” Moore told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” “That’s not the way this process is going to work.
Moore, echoing his Tuesday press release, said Sunday the commission will speak with Marylanders across the state in effort to draw “fair maps.” Maryland currently has seven Democrats and one Republican in its House delegation.
Good, but just one available.
... Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina have followed Texas’s lead, while Republicans and Democrats in Ohio compromised on a map that could give the GOP an edge in two districts next November....
MD could cancel MO. I'm not sure how many seats were stolen here in NC. I think VA, with its Dem sweep last week, has more GQP seats to "adjust".
Lament the murder, not the murdered.
1312. ETTD. 86 47.
The House voted Tuesday to reprimand Illinois Rep. Chuy Garcia over an eyebrow-raising succession plan for his congressional seat, a move that divided Democrats who were furious with a member of their own caucus for triggering the vote.
The House voted 236-186 for the measure, with 10 members not voting and four voting present. More than two dozen House Democrats voted for the resolution, along with all Republicans.
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., defied her party by introducing the resolution on the House floor to rebuke Garcia, who represents parts of western Chicago and its suburbs. She said the vote disapproving of Garcia’s conduct was necessary because it’s important to call out “election subversion” by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Garcia announced he was not seeking reelection earlier this month just before the deadline to file paperwork for the seat. By then, his chief of staff was the only candidate who had submitted the needed paperwork.
It was this kind of anti-democratic BS by establishment Dems that caused me to leave the Party that I had been so active in.
“My responsibility as an elected representative of my community is to say loudly and consistently, humbly and with love that no one has the right to subvert the right of the people to choose their elected representatives,” Perez said during a Monday evening floor speech.
Good on Perez. Idk that this resolution is the best tactic, but Garcia needs to be called out. It's a shame that the article doesn't name his complicit chief of staff, likely the next US Rep.
Blowback from Democratic lawmakers was swift.
A Tuesday statement before the vote from House Democratic leaders, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, defended Garcia as a “progressive champion” and a “good man.”
“We unequivocally oppose this misguided resolution and urge our colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus to reject it,” the statement said.
Multiple Democratic lawmakers rallied to Garcia’s defense ahead of the vote and attested to his character and history as an advocate on issues like immigrant rights.
Irrelevant.
Others jeered and booed at Perez as she spoke during a debate on the House floor.
Rude.
... “It shouldn’t have caused as much friction as it did to speak honestly and consistently about election subversion,” Perez said in a statement. “Congress is a legislative body, not a social club, and the American people will not accept blind calls to party loyalty in defense of an effort to deny them the right to a free and fair election.”
Lament the murder, not the murdered.
1312. ETTD. 86 47.
The United States Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found the Texas 2026 congressional redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race.
The order signed on Friday by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map, which is favourable to Republicans, to be used in the US midterm elections next year.
Worst AG in the nation:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hailed the ruling, which had granted an “administrative stay” and temporarily stopped the lower court’s “injunction against Texas’s map”.
“Radical left-wing activists are abusing the judicial system to derail the Republican agenda and steal the US House for Democrats. I am fighting to stop this blatant attempt to upend our political system,” Paxton said in an earlier post on social media.
Projection.
... The new redistricting map for Texas was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 on Tuesday, saying that the civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters were likely to win their case.
One was TRE45QN appointee, a “Radical left-wing activist" according to corrupt Paxton.
The redrawn map was likely racially discriminatory in violation of US constitutional protections, the court found.
White supremacy in action.
... Texas was the first state to meet Trump’s demands on redistricting. Missouri and North Carolina followed Texas with new redistricting maps that would add an additional Republican seat each.
Ah, just one seat here. If that. There may be blowback to the MAGA attempt to steal the US House for the GQP. GoMd and VAGo!
... Redrawn voter maps are now facing court challenges in California, Missouri and North Carolina....
It's a Cult.
Irrelevant.
Projection.
Alito, etc