Redistricting Imbroglio Worsens as Republicans Plot To Widen Their Efforts To Redraw Congressional Maps After Democrats Declare ‘War’

The redistricting and gerrymandering fires blazing across America turned into full-on infernos on Wednesday as Republicans threatened to widen their efforts to redraw congressional voting maps in their favor.Developments were swift, with a bomb threat forcing some of the Texas Democrats who left the state in protest of a redistricting bill to evacuate their Chicago-area hotel. President Trump also expanded his efforts, announcing he will dispatch Vice President Vance to Indiana to try to persuade the state’s legislative leaders to redraw its congressional map.Meanwhile in South Carolina, a Republican congressman called on the state legislature — where both houses are controlled by the GOP — to redraw its district lines to oust the state’s lone Democrat, Congressman Jim Clyburn, the most powerful Black lawmaker in the House.“We have Republican supermajorities in South Carolina. Let’s use them to create more competition in our congressional seats. I have no doubt Republicans can be successful in every part of our state,” Ralph Norman, who is running for governor in the state, said.“That will help increase Republican control of Congress and help President Trump pass his agenda. Every vote counts toward a conservative Speaker Mike Johnson rather than a liberal Speaker Hakeem Jeffries of New York City,” he said.The 6th District where Mr. Clyburn has been elected every two years since 1993 was first gerrymandered in the early 1990s to give Black residents more power. It is the only majority-Black district in the state.Florida Republican legislators also got into the act, announcing that on Thursday they will begin considering proposed maps that could ensure party candidates maintain a majority in the state’s congressional delegation for the next decade. One plan making the rounds at Tallahassee would create 15 Republican-leaning districts, leaving nine that favor Democrats. Three other seats would be narrowly divided but tilt slightly to the GOP.The imbroglio began when Democrats in the Texas legislature fled the state earlier this week in an attempt to prevent state Republicans from approving a new congressional map that would almost certainly eliminate five of the state’s Democratic seats in the U.S. House. Since that started other states, including California and New York, have threatened to redraw districts in retaliation.Governor Hochul declared on Monday that Democrats in her state are now “at war” with the Republican Party.“Here in New York, we will not stand on the sidelines with the timid souls on the sidelines who don’t care and will not invest their heart and soul into this battle,” she said at a joint press conference in New York. “This is a war. We are at war, and that’s why the gloves are off. And I say, bring it on with that.”“If Republicans are willing to rewrite these rules to give themselves an advantage, then they’re leaving us no choice; we must do the same,” Ms. Hochul said. “There’s a phrase, ‘You have to fight fire with fire.'”The situation has reached critical mass, with President Obama reappearing to scare Democrats into action. “We can’t lose focus on what matters — right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections. This is a power grab that undermines our democracy,” he wrote Wednesday on X.Mr. Obama in 2016 vowed to make redistricting the main focus of his political activity after his presidency. He joined forces with his attorney general, Eric Holder, who heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee intent on gerrymandering districts in the party’s favor. Democrats are now decrying the act of gerrymandering, though one Republican member of Congress noted that the practice was first created by Democrats.“Gerrymandering –– like the Ku Klux Klan, segregation of the Armed Forces, ending of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, current-day voting restrictions, and the list goes on –– are all creations of, you guessed it, the Democrat Party,” Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida wrote in an op-ed piece.“The Democrats can run, but they cannot hide from the truth when it comes to gerrymandering — their fingerprints are all over it,” he wrote.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who is widely expected to seek the party’s presidential nomination in 2028, is running headlong into the fray. He aims to redraw California’s congressional maps to give the state five more Democrat-leaning House districts going into next year’s midterm elections.The schedule is tight: The state legislature would need to declare a special election on redistricting by August 22 if it wants it to be on the November 4 ballot. Lawmakers are on recess until the 18th, meaning lawmakers will have just five days to finalize the maps and the ballot initiative and to take public comment.

Redistricting Imbroglio Worsens as Republicans Plot To Widen Their Efforts To Redraw Congressional Maps After Democrats Declare ‘War’

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