Judge blocks Texas redistricting plan

I think most of us can agree that this is not the best news cycle for the Trump administration. Well, as bad as it has been, it just got worse, but that may not be the worst thing for Trump, to be honest.

A judge just blocked the Texas redistricting maps, which may put an end to the gerrymandering battle between red and blue states right now.

Redrawing the maps

This entire debacle was a mess right from the outset, and this outcome was very predictable based on what we have seen in the past.

Trump never hid his desire to gerrymander maps, and most states on both sides of the aisle had already gerrymandered their maps.

When Texas redrew its maps to remove five blue seats, California answered in kind, and all of the new maps were being challenged in court.

I was never in favor of this plan because I figured it would fail based on past court rulings, and even if they were “successful,” Democrats had more seats to play with, so we would ultimately lose this battle.

Declined

As noted above, the maps were challenged by Democrats before the ink was dry on them, and even a Trump-appointed judge could not sign off on them. Trump's judge as well as a Democrat-appointed judge rejected the maps, with a Reagan-appointed judge dissenting.

In a 2-1 ruling, the majority opinion stated, "DOJ threatened legal action if Texas didn't immediately dismantle and redraw these districts, a threat based on their racial makeup. Notably, the DOJ letter targeted only majority non-white districts.”

The ruling continued, "Any mention of majority white districts, which DOJ presumably would have also targeted if its aims were partisan rather than racial, was conspicuously absent."

Texas will appeal the ruling, as has already been announced by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but I am not sure the Supreme Court is going to accept these maps. To be quite frank, they should not. What worries me, however, is that since California did its maps with a ballot measure, Newsom may have found a loophole to keep his maps in place. I am not sure about the legalities of that just yet, so I need to do more research on it.

One more thing

The one good thing about the redrawn maps is that Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), 79, was going to retire rather than fight it out for a seat with a much younger Democrat.

Now that the maps have been rejected, the fossil plans on staying in office, stating, "To borrow from Mark Twain, I can happily say that the reports of my death politically are greatly exaggerated.”

He continued, "I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to continue to represent the only town I’ve ever called home, at a time when democracy faces the greatest challenges that it has ever faced at any point in my lifetime. Thank you."

Terrific. Another 80+-year-old member of Congress. Exactly what we needed in this country.