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…The proposed Texas map is designed to net the GOP up to five House seats — potentially enough to decide the majority…

Outside Texas, key Democratic governors have launched an aggressive counteroffensive to try to neutralize the GOP’s redistricting push.

…Newsom, who’s made no secret of his presidential ambitions, has openly accused Trump of “rigging” the midterms and suggested California could redraw its map to eliminate all nine GOP-held seats.

[New York Gov. Kathy Hochul] called Monday for disbanding New York’s independent redistricting commission and embracing partisan hardball, telling reporters that she’s “tired of fighting this fight with my hand tied behind my back…I cannot ignore that the playing field has changed dramatically, and shame on us if we ignore that fact and cling tight to the vestiges of the past,” Hochul said.

  • FuglyDuckEnglish
    64•7 days ago

    fucking bullshit.

    GOP, and texas in particular, started it. All they had to do was not gerrymander more than it already is, and CA and other states wouldn’t respond in kind.

    But fucking hell. Either it’s illegal for everyone, or its legal and fair for everyone. So make this about Texas being controlling assholes instead.

    It’s about fucking time Democrats started acting like they’re in a fight for the existence of the US.

    • @[email protected]English
      19•7 days ago

      GOP, and texas in particular, started it.

      Republicans were gaming redistricting since 2010 with REDMAP. From 2016

      It was never a secret. In 2010, the conservative political strategist Karl Rove took to the Wall Street Journal and laid out a plan to win majorities in state legislatures across the country.

      “He who controls redistricting can control Congress,” read the subhead to Rove’s column.

      The plan, which its architects dubbed REDMAP for Redistricting Majority Project, hinged on the fact that states redraw their electoral maps every 10 years according to new Census data. REDMAP targeted states where just a few statehouse seats could shift the balance to Republican control in the crucial Census year of 2010.

      That plan worked spectacularly. It’s why today Republicans have a majority in nearly two-thirds of the country’s state legislative chambers. And it’s why in 2012 Democratic statehouse candidates won 51 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania, which voted for Barack Obama in the presidential election, yet those candidates ended up with only 28 percent of the seats in the legislature.

      The Democratic strategy on this was to basically sit on their asses until 2016 when the DNC decided to found NDRC

      McAuliffe and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi convened discussions during the 2016 Democratic Nation­al Convention about creating a group focused solely on redistricting. The initiative took on new urgency after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential race even as she won the popular vote, re­inforcing the imperative that Democrats regain power at the state level. After the election, McAuliffe, Pelosi, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer visited the White House to get Obama’s blessing. “It was the president who said, ‘I’ll bring Eric in,’” McAuliffe recalled. Obama decided to make redistricting reform a central focus of his post-­presidency and tapped Holder as his top lieutenant.

      in 2017 whose mission wasn’t to gerrymander for Democrats but to install independent redistricting commissions as if gerrymandering isn’t a political arms race.

      Many of the Democratic groups fighting for a redistricting overhaul say these sorts of commissions are the future.

      Former Attorney General Eric Holder now leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He is perhaps the most high-profile Democrat focused on this issue, and he said he would “oppose any Democratic attempts to gerrymander” in 2020.

      “All we want to have is fairness because if we have a fair redistricting process and fair elections, I am confident that Democrats, progressives will be just fine against Republicans and Conservatives,” Holder said.

      They only figured out now that great Democratic leaders before did wrest & wield power to their cause instead of pretend kumbaya is a winning strategy.

      Franklin Roosevelt understood the use of power. Lyndon Johnson understood the use of power. And Democrats have got to get back to that.

      • socsaEnglish
        5•7 days ago

        I remember the DNC opposed non partisan redistricting in my state for this exact reason and they got a ton of shit for it. Democratic voters have a hand in this as well because they refuse to play the game and prefer instead to huff farts.

      • FuglyDuckEnglish
        7•7 days ago

        For the most part, in my lifetime, democrats have always been sitting with their thumbs up their asses.

        Remember, the GOP have been working towards this shit for 50+ years- literally establishing “news” orgs like Fox ad propaganda outlets, and gerrymandering at every opportunity or fucking around with judicial nominations, etc.

        Trump isn’t the cause. He is a symptom.

        • @[email protected]
          2•7 days ago

          This has been a republican strategy decades in the making. The comment above framed it as an arms race and that’s a good way to put it. They’ve had the overthrow of democracy in their heads as an objective and have undertaking a concerted strategy to achieve it.

          The democrats were always going to be at a disadvantage simply responding to that, but that disadvantage is made a lot worse by the fact that they don’t seem to want to respond to it. They have an idea of what this country is and that comes with a bunch of lines their unwilling to cross. Meanwhile republicans had a clear idea of what they want this country to be and were willing to trample any line, break any law or norm, in order to make it a reality.

          This? The news story we’re responding to? It may represent the first stumbling steps off the starting line. But it doesn’t change the fact that the starting pistol sounded decades ago and the republicans have been running the whole time.

          Too little, to late. I don’t want that sentiment to be true, but I find it hard to look at this situation and view it in any other way.

    • @[email protected]
      7•7 days ago

      If the republicans want to ban gerrymandering on a federal level I’m all for it. They can stop this bullshit that easily