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.
This is so fucking hilarious. MAGA tried to illegally game the system, and brag about it at the same time, so California and others tried to match them, only legally.
Now the illegal MAGA plan gets shut down, while the legal Democratic plan moves forward. It looks like the Dems have stolen a MAGA plan, and improved on it, and will now beat MAGA with their own plan. Every single Blue state should do this. If suppression is good for MAGA, let’s see how they like discovering that they created a two edged sword.
More of this, PLEASE.
California’s prop 50 won’t happen if Texas’ plan doesn’t happen. Prop 50 specifically states that it’s a response to Texas’s illegal gerrymandering attempts and is exacted only of Texas’ attempt is not stopped
Actually, they removed the trigger language from Prop 50 shortly before the vote. So it is actually going more like what the person you’re responding to had said.
lol
Every single Blue state should do this.
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.
Unless you get burglarized every other night.
You’re missing the point of the analogy.
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.
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.
instead of the actual people in that land
That doesn’t happen either way.
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.
“We can’t because then the Repugs will play dirty” is not an excuse. They have shown countless times that they will play dirty anyway. Grow a fucking spine.
Learn to read and add this block to your growing collection of consequences of being a dipshit.
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.
You just gotta love the naked corruption in front of your eyes and then still saying how free you are
Just fucking end first past the post already!
Stop treating the symptom and rip out the cause.
In Denmark where I’m from we’ve just held mayoral elections and an interesting thing happened that highlights how much voting systems matter. In one particular municipality a party got enough votes that they had more seats in the local legislature than to hey had candidates. This meant that they appointed someone from a different party to the final seat. They got more votes than they could represent themselves so they chose who they thought most aligned with them and appointed that person. No votes were ignored due to happenstance, there were clear rules to handle it.
Now I very much do not agree with this party and I’m saddened by their popularity in the area, but such is life in a democracy.
∆∆∆ This guy fucks
Seriously though it is so incredibly important to nuke FPTP from orbit. We’re never going to get measurable change without it.
I get how this works in the senate. How does it work in the house?
A low-key hilarious artifact of the prohibition of racial gerrymandering and acceptability of political gerrymandering is that Republican-gerrymandered maps are pretty much ALWAYS gonna be more overtly racially biased than Democratic-gerrymandered maps.
By which I mean: staunchly Republican supporting areas tends to lean heavily white, while staunchly Democratic supporting areas tend to be much more cosmopolitan and racially heterogeneous.
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
thats why they are get all upset with CRT too, its racial legal discrimination against POCs , more to agains tblacks. eventhough this is a legal concept taught in grad school.
Which is great until SCOTUS finishes fully gutting the Voting Rights Act next year.
they’re are waiting when nobody is noticing, and they will pounce and repeal the SAME SEX Marriage first.
They actually decided to hear that case, so that one’s safe for now.
I’m amused that if this does get stopped by judges, and the other one recently reportedly blocked for the same reason in another state, that if California redistricts their maps it’s really going to be the GOP shooting themselves in the foot.
Post this to the Funny community.
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You just keep appealling till someone lets it happen.
It’s basically a game of hot potato where you don’t want to be unlucky when the game ends, but nothing else matters. Pass it too early and you’ll get it back, just with less time on the clock.
You just keep appealling
till someone lets it happen.until 6months before the election then claim its too late to change up.When the highest tier of appeal is the current Supreme Court, that means it will almost certainly settle in Republicans’ favor eventually. You’re right in that it’s just a question of how long it takes to get there.
The only chance this redistricting has at not passing on appeal is if all of the retaliatory redistricting efforts are taken down with it and there is a concern that the sum total of these redistricting efforts may cost the Republicans more seats than they are to gain. There’s no way they allow Texas to be rejected while California goes forward.
California was a referendum by the voters. Texas was a unilateral decision by the current government.
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There are many texans that would very much surprise you, it seems.
Tx republicans have been rigging elections in their favor for decades now. Though there is definitely a higher concentration of bigots and x-phobes in the south, they are still the minority. Those governing the state simply do not accurately reflect the will of its people because it is far less profitable to do that than it is to do its immediate alternative.
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there were, until many migrated to texas and florida as republican voting.
I’m sure that’ll stop them
