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.
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.