WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump stated Tuesday that he’s pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps to create extra Home seats favorable to his occasion, a part of a broader effort to assist the GOP retain management of the chamber in subsequent yr’s midterm elections.
The president’s directive indicators a part of the technique Trump is more likely to take to keep away from a repeat of his first time period, when Democrats flipped the Home simply two years into his presidency. It comes shortly earlier than the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature is scheduled to start a particular session subsequent week throughout which it should take into account new congressional maps to additional marginalize Democrats within the state.
Requested as he departed the White Home for Pittsburgh about the potential for including GOP-friendly districts across the nation, Trump responded, “Texas would be the greatest one. And that’ll be 5.”
Trump had a name earlier Tuesday with members of Texas’ Republican congressional delegation and instructed them the state Legislature would pursue 5 new winnable seats via redistricting, in response to an individual acquainted the decision who was not approved to debate it. The decision was first reported by Punchbowl Information.
Congressional maps drawn after the 2020 census have been anticipated to stay in place via the top of the last decade. If Texas redraws them on the behest of Trump, that might lead different states to do the identical, together with these managed by Democrats. In response to the Texas plan, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on social media: “Two can play this recreation.”
Nonetheless, Democrats could have their palms not less than partly tied. Most of the states the occasion controls have their state legislative and congressional maps drawn by impartial commissions that aren’t imagined to favor both occasion. That is the case in California, the place Newsom has no position within the redistricting recreation after voters accredited the fee system with a 2008 poll measure.
Redistricting is a constitutionally mandated course of for redrawing political districts after the once-a-decade census to make sure they’ve equal populations. However there isn’t a prohibition towards rejiggering maps between censuses, and typically court docket rulings have made that obligatory. The wave of voluntary mid-decade redistricting that Trump is encouraging, nevertheless, is uncommon.
Home Democratic Chief Hakeem Jeffries would not remark Tuesday on whether or not nonpartisan programs akin to California’s must be rolled again, as a substitute saying Trump’s push will “undermine free and honest elections.”
“Public servants ought to earn the votes of the those that they hope to characterize. What Republicans try to do in Texas is to have politicians select their voters,” Jeffries stated at a information convention.
Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, whose district consists of a part of Austin, additionally criticized Texas Republicans for specializing in redistricting after July Fourth vacation floods killed not less than 132 folks, and with extra nonetheless lacking.
“There’s little doubt there have been the failures at each degree of presidency. The county, the state of Texas, the federal authorities. What the particular session must be about is doing one thing to right these failures,” stated Doggett. “Redistricting, this scheme, is an act of desperation.”
The particular Texas legislative session scheduled to start out Monday is meant to primarily give attention to the aftermath of the lethal floods.
An agenda for the session set by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott put forth plans to take up “laws that gives a revised congressional redistricting plan in mild of constitutional issues raised by the U.S. Division of Justice.”
Republicans in Ohio are also poised to redraw their maps after years of political and court docket battles over the state’s redistricting course of. The GOP-controlled legislature there may be contemplating increasing the occasion’s lead within the congressional delegation to as a lot as 13-2. It at the moment has a 10-5 benefit.
Nonetheless, there are sensible limits as to what number of new seats any occasion can squeeze from a map. That is why some Texas Republicans have been hesitant about one other redraw. In 2011, the occasion’s legislators drew an aggressive map to develop their majority, solely to search out seats they thought have been protected washed away within the 2018 Democratic wave election throughout Trump’s first time period.
In response, the map in 2021 was drawn extra cautiously, primarily preserving the GOP’s present outsized majority in its congressional delegation. There are 25 Republican Home members from the state in comparison with 12 Democrats and one Democratic emptiness that’s scheduled to be stuffed by a particular election.
Any effort to develop the variety of GOP seats will imply redistributing Democratic-leaning voters from these blue districts into Republican ones. That might tip beforehand protected GOP districts into the Democratic column, one thing Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee chair Suze DelBene predicted at a Tuesday press convention.
“Any new map that Texas Republicans draw will virtually inevitably create extra aggressive districts,” she stated. “This scheme to rig the maps is hardly going to shore up their majority. It will develop the battleground within the race for almost all.”
Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn was extra bullish on a mid-cycle redistricting, noting that Latino voters in Texas have been trending towards Republicans in latest elections. He stated redrawing the map this yr “will imply vital features for Texas Republicans.”
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Related Press Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington and author Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
