Tag: gerrymandering

“We’re Gonna Punch These Sons of B*tches in the Mouth” – Newsom Threatens MAGA, Lashes Out at Texas Republicans For Passing New Congressional Map

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) lashed out at Texas Republicans for passing a new Congressional map that gives the GOP five more US House seats.

Last week, the Texas House failed to achieve quorum for the sixth time since early August, stalling the GOP’s redistricting plan. Only 95 lawmakers showed up for the 10 a.m. session, once again falling short of the 100 needed to reach a quorum.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Governor Greg Abbott threatened the derelict Democrats with arrest and removal from office if they didn’t return to the Capitol.

After two weeks on the run, Texas Democrats finally returned to the Capitol this week.

On Wednesday, the Texas House of Representatives approved a redistricting plan that hands five additional U.S. House seats to Republicans, cementing the GOP’s dominance in the state delegation from 25 to a potential 30 out of 38 seats.

The Texas House of Representatives passed the congressional redistricting bill by an 88–52 partisan vote.

Newsom went off on Texas Republicans during an appearance on The Siren podcast on Wednesday and threatened to punch back with his own redistricting map.

“This is radical rigging of a midterm election,” Newsom told The Siren podcast on Wednesday. “Radical rigging of an election. Destroying, vandalizing this democracy, the rule of law. So, I’m sorry. I know some people’s sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”

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PARTY OF THE PEOPLE: Obama and Other Democrat Elitists Holding Fundraiser for Redistricting Efforts on Posh Martha’s Vineyard

Former President Obama is holding a fundraiser for redistricting efforts along with ‘wingman’ Eric Holder, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The event is happening tomorrow, August 19th, and it’s happening on the ritzy Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard.

What is it about Martha’s Vineyard and Democrats? They’re absolutely obsessed with it as a destination, except for illegal immigrants, of course.

The Hill reported on this a couple of weeks ago:

Obama leading Democratic redistricting fundraiser in Martha’s Vineyard

Former President Obama is set to appear at a Democratic redistricting group’s fundraiser next month in Martha’s Vineyard, as the party looks to go toe-to-toe with Republicans’ redistricting push in Texas.

Obama is named as a special guest on an invitation for an event hosted by former Attorney General Eric Holder, the chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), according to an invitation obtained by The Hill and first reported by Politico.

The invitation says the dinner and discussion will benefit the NDRC and affiliated groups on Aug. 19.

Democrats are pushing for blue states to consider redrawing their House maps to offset similar efforts taking place in Texas, where President Trump has said he’s looking to pick up five House seats.

How perfect is it that Democrats are doing this in Massachusetts, a state with zero Republican representation, despite the fact that more than a third of the state voted for Trump?

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Is She Drunk? Kamala Harris Sounds Sloshed as She Weighs in on Texas Redistricting Efforts

Kamala Harris sounded drunk as she weighed in on the GOP’s redistricting efforts in Texas.

Harris met with young Latino leaders earlier this month to discuss the redistricting efforts by Republican legislators in Texas.

The video of the meeting was posted to Kamala Harris’ social media this weekend.

“It’s going to take all of us to fight back against Republican redistricting efforts in Texas. I’m so proud of the Democrats in the state legislature. They have shown immense courage and are putting up one hell of a fight,” Harris said.

As usual, Kamala Harris made no sense whatsoever. There was no enthusiasm during the meeting and the young Latino leaders were not impressed with Harris.

“When things don’t go the way Republicans want, they cheat and lie,” Harris said.

Of course, this is projection.

“This is not a census year but this is a year with the Big Beautiful Bill! And the unpopularity of it and so [the Republicans] want to bend the rules!” Harris said.

Harris praised the AWOL Texas Democrats as the video ended.

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AWOL Texas Democrats Unveil New Plan to Strongarm GOP Amid Redistricting Fight

AWOL Texas Democrats unveiled a new plan to strongarm Republicans amid a redistricting fight.

The Democrats fled to Illinois last week to block the Republicans from voting on a new congressional redistricting map.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Governor Greg Abbott threatened the derelict Democrats with arrest and removal from office if they didn’t return to the Capitol.

Texas Democrats will reportedly return to the Capitol for Governor Abbott’s 2nd special session to vote on the GOP’s redistricting effort, however, the timing is unclear because now they are making new demands.

According to the Associated Press, Texas Democrats won’t return home unless “Texas Republicans end a special session and California releases its own redrawn map proposal.”

The Associated Press reported:

Texas Democrats on Thursday moved closer to ending a nearly two-week walkout that has blocked the GOP’s redrawing of U.S. House maps before the 2026 election and put them under escalating threats by Republicans back home.

The Democrats announced they will return so long as Texas Republicans end a special session and California releases its own redrawn map proposal, both of which were expected to happen Friday.

Democrats did not say what day they might return.

On Wednesday, an Illinois judge denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request to enforce arrest warrants against derelict state House Democrats.

Judge Scott Larson said Paxton failed to “present a legal basis for the court to obtain subject matter jurisdiction over this cause of action…”

Governor Abbott laughed at the Democrats as they made all kinds of demands for a second special session from Chicago.

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Newsom says California to draw congressional maps to ‘END TRUMP PRESIDENCY’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said California will move forward with drawing new congressional maps that he said “WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY” and allow Democrats to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!),” Newsom wrote Tuesday night, in a post written in the style of President Donald Trump’s occasionally all-caps social media posts.

The announcement comes amid Texas Republicans’ efforts to redraw congressional maps in their party’s favor. The redistricting showdown in Texas has led blue states to threaten to retaliate — with Newsom proposing to cut five GOP-held seats in California.

The redistricting battle in Texas — and potentially other states — has national implications, with control of the U.S. House potentially at stake. The Texas GOP’s proposed congressional map could net Republicans between three and five seats in next year’s midterm elections — seats that could make a difference as Republicans work to maintain their small majority in the U.S. House.

A spokesperson for California State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas confirmed to ABC News that the state legislature is aiming to release draft maps on Friday.

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Jasmine Crockett’s Racist Redistricting Comments Get Fact Checked by Greg Abbott

Texas Governor Greg Abbott responded Sunday to Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett’s claims that the state’s new redistricting maps would silence minority voters, pointing to recent Republican gains among Hispanic, Black, and Asian voters as evidence to the contrary.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday with host Shannon Bream, Abbott addressed remarks Crockett made a day earlier on MSNBC, where she argued the GOP proposal would strip minority communities of political influence.

Democrats in the Texas Legislature have left the state for Democratic strongholds such as New York and Illinois in an effort to block the Republican-backed redistricting plan, which analysts say could result in the GOP gaining as many as five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“First of all, it wouldn’t be a day that ends in the letter Y if Jasmine Crockett didn’t say something racist,” Abbott told Bream.

“But second, her ‘facts’ are wrong, because the facts in Texas are under the maps that we are drawing, four of the new seats will be predominantly Hispanic seats. The problem that Democrats have in the state of Texas is Hispanics, black voters and other voters, they have learned now that the ideas that Democrats stand for are contrary to the ideas that the Hispanic community and black community stand for. They all want secure borders, they don’t want men and women’s sports and they want support for law enforcement.”

Abbott said GOP outreach has increasingly resonated with minority voters in recent election cycles.

“What we are finding is these Hispanics are voting for Republicans,” Abbott said.

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Report: Texas Democrat Fugitives Concede, Will Return to Austin

The Texas House Democrats who abandoned their state in protest of the Republican-led redistricting effort will return home after Gov. Greg Abbott (R) took “emergency action” to begin removing the absent legislators as they refused to show up for work.

Multiple sources revealed the news to ABC13 on Tuesday, though the exact date the Democrats will return to the state capitol in Austin was not confirmed. 

The state House had only 95 members present for the second day in a row on Tuesday, with Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) predicting that the session will end and a new one will start assuming there is no quorum on Friday, the outlet noted.

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Rep. Jasmine Crockett Says Republicans Want to ‘Systemically’ Remove Black ‘Electeds’

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) claimed Monday that Republican-led redistricting efforts are aimed at reducing the number of Black members of Congress, asserting that these moves violate constitutional protections and the Voting Rights Act.

Speaking during an appearance on CNN’s The Lead, Crockett alleged that Republican lawmakers in multiple states are working to “systemically get rid” of Black elected officials as part of their strategy to secure political victories.

“When it comes to our base, they want to see a fight,” Crockett said.

“They don’t want to see us just lay down and say, OK, well, the Republicans want to do whatever they want to do. They want to minimize voices. They want to systemically get rid of those black electeds.”

Crockett pointed to several states she says are already engaged in these tactics.

“When I look at the numbers, and to be clear, Florida is already in this thing. We know that Texas is in this thing. We know that they’re putting pressure on Indiana as well as Missouri,” she said.

According to Crockett, these efforts are part of a broader Republican plan to win elections by altering congressional maps in ways that reduce minority representation.

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Politico Hacks Insist Gerrymandering Is Different When Democrats Do It

On Sunday, Politico’s Gregory Svirnovskiy regurgitated talking points by Illinois Democrat governor J.B. Pritzker and former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder to suggest Democrats’ gerrymandering is permissible, while smearing Republicans’ attempt to redistrict in Texas as a Trump-backed “attempt to cheat mid-decade.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called a special legislative session to, in part, consider new maps “in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.” This came right after the DOJ expressed “serious concerns” that four Texas districts were unlawfully gerrymandered on racial grounds. Last week, close to 60 Texas House Democrats abandoned the state and headed to Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts to protest a new redistricting proposal that could give Republicans five more congressional seats.

As The Federalist reported, Illinois is the most gerrymandered state in the country. In fact, as Nathaniel Rakich and Tony Chow wrote in 2022 in FiveThirtyEight, Illinois’ “gerrymandered congressional map seems hell-bent on making Republican congressmen from Illinois an endangered species.” Democrats — who were in charge of redistricting in the state — “drew a map that packed all five Republicans” in Illinois’ U.S. House delegation “into just three.” And despite Democrats not winning even 60 percent of the popular vote in 2024, the party holds 14 out of the state’s 17 congressional seats.

In New York, Democrats at the state level blocked a proposal drawn by the state’s bipartisan Independent Redistricting Committee (IRC) last year and instead approved a map which, as NBC News’ Jane C. Timm wrote, gave “Democrats a slight boost.”Notably, New Yorkers passed a constitutional amendment in 2014 creating the IRC, which is tasked with drawing new maps every 10 years. Democrats had previously been shot down by the courts after they, as Timm described, passed maps “that so significantly boosted their congressional prospects” in 2022.

In Massachusetts, there are a total of zero Republican congressional districts despite the state swinging more than 36 percent for Trump in 2024.

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California Moves Forward With Special Redistricting Election To Counter Texas’s Plan

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday that the state will move forward with a ballot measure in November to redraw its congressional map in response to a Republican-backed redistricting plan in Texas.

Speaking alongside state Democratic leaders, Newsom said they would call for a special election in the first week of November to vote on redrawing the congressional map, a move that could potentially add five more U.S. House seats to the Democratic tally.

“We are talking about emergency measures to respond to what’s happening in Texas, and we will nullify what happens in Texas,” the Democratic governor told reporters.

“We will pick up five seats with the consent of the people, and that’s the difference between the approach we’re taking and the approach they’re taking. We’re doing it [on a] temporary basis,” he added.

Newsom also reaffirmed that the state will remain committed to its independent redistricting process. The Democrats said they expected to have a newly agreed-upon map, based on previous plans reviewed by the state’s independent redistricting commission, ready for public scrutiny next week, three months before it would go to voters.

Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who attended the conference, backed Newsom’s decision and praised Texas Democratic lawmakers for their efforts to block the GOP’s redistricting plan.

“It’s not wrong in what we’re doing. This is self-defense for our democracy,” Pelosi said. “I thank again our Texans for their leadership, for their courage, and most of all, for their patriotism.”

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