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.
There’s a pretty strong argument against any attempts to accelerate this, and it’s the reason why states haven’t been trying to do this up until the age of Trump.
When we start invalidating representation we are eroding the entire principle of the United States. Yes, Gerrymandering has been going on for a long time, but the level of escalation that was attempted is unprecedented and extremely dangerous. This is why even California’s prop 50 has an expiration date.
We need a push for accurate districting, but that said, it was Republicans who have leaned hardest into the idea of abandoning democracy and California was a response, not a solution. It’s like if a violent, aggressive burglar breaks into your home and you shoot him, it’s probably the right thing to do to keep yourself safe, but you don’t want to make it your new policy to shoot anyone you see in your house, the long-term results of that policy will be bad.
How do we push for accurate districting with the current over representation of conservatives from broken districting who will fight tooth and nail against accurate districting (where they will lose all power because they’re the regressive minority).
By actually electing representatives instead of being involved only in federal, media spectacle elections every four years. States decide their districts, states are governed by people elected by the state’s population, and in many, many cases these people are chosen by parties, paid by political groups to run, and often run without opposition and the people electing them have almost clue nor care what the candidate’s actual values are.
We can still take it ALL back from corporate interests who have grifted the nation’s stupidest, most tuned-out segments, but it means activity and energy and socialization. If you want proof that this can work and social energy can reshape the political map, look at the recent wave of state elections and New York.
Nope, that’s the kind of thinking that let MAGA rise and take over.
Dems need to accept that they have to fight fire with fire. They don’t have lie, cheat, steal, commit treason, be in the blackmail club, be/support pedophiles, etc., they just have to b play Hard Ball.
That’s what MAGAs did during their larval Republican stage. McConnell played Hard Ball better than anyone, while Dems just forfeited the game entirely. It’s time for them to get back on the game, and ruthlessly play Hard Ball by every obscure and arcane rule.
That’s how you get more apathy and less people voting. Yes democrats have a problem with playing nice and not getting anything passed but they also have a larger identity problem of what they stand for and why people should vote for them, this is way more the reason Kamala lost then soft democrats as shown by the lack of turnout. If democrats don’t stand for democracy, what are they standing for?
Also the more prevalent this becomes the more they will use it against there left flank as well. The less there is a threat of a third party emerging due to gerrymandering, the more centrist the democrats can go and the more they can ignore the left.
The problem is when we have a party deciding the representation instead of the actual people in that land, who’s to say the party won’t do what parties have been doing since the country began, which is switch stances and adopt new values.
We don’t want states deciding what the people want, we want people deciding what the states want.
We can fight the MAGA mind virus without discarding the constitution. When we say “the left and democrats need to fight dirtier” we don’t mean doing the same thing that MAGA does, we mean we need to stop being civil and giving the GOP the chance to compromise on a policy level.