Source: Fox News
One Year Later, Redistricting Wins for Republicans
One year ago this week, Texas passed a new congressional redistricting map, giving President Donald Trump his first major victory in his push to give Republicans a big boost heading into the midterm elections by drawing more right-leaning districts. One year later, as they fight to hold their razor-thin House majority, Republicans are the big winners, with partisan redistricting netting them at least 10 additional right-leaning congressional seats in time for the midterms.
Democrats and Pundits Criticize the Move
Democrats and left-leaning pundits repeatedly railed against Trump’s efforts and charged they would “shred our country’s democracy.” Top Democrats aimed to fight fire with fire but fell short. Their efforts to keep pace with the GOP were derailed following major court rulings by the Supreme Court and Virginia’s top court earlier this year, which were seen as major legal victories for Republicans.
Supreme Court Rulings Help Republicans
The GOP scored another redistricting win earlier this month in Missouri, when a judge allowed a new map, backed by Trump and passed last year by Republican state lawmakers, to be used in November’s elections. Progressive pundits that cast Trump’s push for Texas to redraw its congressional map before the 2026 midterms as a threat to voting rights and democracy. Among them was former MSNBC anchor Joy Reid.
John Oliver and Others Speak Out
She branded the fight a “Voting Rights 911” and later titled a segment on “The Joy Reid Show” as “Texas’s War on Democracy Through Gerrymandering.” John Oliver, host of “Last Week Tonight” on HBO, was also among a group of pundits that criticized the redistricting push as a power grab by Trump and the GOP. Oliver said gerrymandering was the practice of manipulating maps “to get the outcome you want,” and called it “putting a heavy thumb on the scale of who gets elected.”
Democrats and Republicans Clash Over Redistricting
It wasn’t just pundits who spoke out. Top Democrats also took action, after Trump, aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, first floated the idea of rare, but not unheard of, mid-decade congressional redistricting. After Texas led the way last summer, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin called a ruling by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court to greenlight the redistricting a victory for a “rigged map” meant to protect the GOP from midterm accountability.
