There has always been a practical reason why states didn’t embrace redistricting sooner by mid-decade. Besides the fundamental fact that it is undemocratic, there is also the possibility that it will not work, or will have an adverse effect on the party trying to muscle its way to an interim majority in the House of Representatives.
Trump’s poll numbers have the look and smell of a term-limited president on the verge of becoming a lame duck as the opposition party appears poised to return to power.
Republicans could have come up with some good policy ideas or perhaps tackled the issues voters care about most instead of cutting taxes for billionaires and redesigning the White House, but that would have taken work and effort to understand what the American people want.
Trump’s idea was to try to muscle his way to victory by forcing the Republican-led states to reconsider their congressional maps.
The president ensured that Texas immediately joined the queue, creating no fewer than five new seats in the Republican House. Gerrymander of North Carolina gained an additional Republican seat.
Then the wheels started to fall off for the Republicans. Ohio Republicans were deterred by an aggressive gerrymander from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. A Utah judge threw out that state’s MAGA-drawn map and created an additional Democratic-leaning district. California passed Prop 50 to counter the Texas Gerrymander with five new Democratic House districts.
Trump was counting on other red states to support him, but he got very bad news about a state he had been seeking for months.
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