Federal judge instructed state to use older maps, with Republicans likely to appeal decision
New maps that added five Republican districts in Texas hit a legal roadblock on Tuesday, with a federal judge saying the state cannot use the 2025 maps because they are probably “racially gerrymandered”.
The decision is likely to be appealed, given the push for more Republican-friendly congressional maps nationwide and Donald Trump’s full-court press on his party to make them. Some states have followed suit, and some Democratic states have retaliated, pushing to add more blue seats to counteract Republicans.
A panel of three federal judges in Texas said in a decision that the state must use previously approved 2021 maps for next year’s midterms rather than the ones that kickstarted a wave of mid-decade redistricting. The plaintiffs, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, are “likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map”, so the court approved a preliminary injunction to stop the map’s use for next year’s elections.
The thing is that, afaik, coincidentally gerrymandering by race isn’t sufficient to get the map thrown out. It has to be intentionally gerrymandered by race, with evidence to support such an assertion.
And the incredible thing is that Republicans can’t keep their damned racist mouths shut, and they keep incriminating themselves by either saying the quiet part out loud or getting so specific with their gerrymandering that it’s no longer plausible that it’s just a coincidence.
They’d get away with it if they were smarter (but then, if they were smarter they wouldn’t be racists)
It’s so depressing how dumb most people running the show nowadays are, even if you put aside the overt malice