Politics

Democrats seize on Utah in redistricting war

Published

10 months ago

August 29, 2025

As Republicans charge forward with their national gerrymandering gambit, Democrats are rushing to take advantage of an unexpected gift in Utah.

All of Utah’s congressional seats are held by Republicans, and the minority party has begun strategizing how to seize a seat in the Salt Lake City metro area — a blue corner of a deep-red state — following a judge’s orders this week for a new congressional map. President Donald Trump, aggressively pushing his party to redraw maps to maintain their slim House majority next year, immediately slammed the ruling.

Should a competitive seat emerge from the state legislature’s required remapping, former Rep. Ben McAdams, a conservative Democrat, would seriously consider entering the race. He has begun phoning donors to gauge interest, according to two people with direct knowledge of his thinking. Other names circulating within Democratic circles include state Sen. Nate Blouin. And some of the state’s Democratic donors say they are eager to back a candidate who would break Republicans’ grip on the state.

Meanwhile Utah Republican Party Chair Robert Axson said he’s had conversations with the White House since the ruling about their shared concerns around the “legislative process being undermined, and courts, rather than the people’s voice, weighing in on determining these maps through the legislative process.”

The legal curveball comes amid a national redistricting battle the GOP has been dominating, with its attempted five-seat pickup in Texas and White House-backed plans for redrawing maps in Indiana and Missouri. And it offers Democrats a slight boost in the national arms race that will determine whether they will regain any power in the midterms next year.

A court hearing is scheduled for Friday in the case that found Utah Republicans unlawfully bypassed voter-approved safeguards against partisan gerrymandering while creating the current map. That hearing will likely reveal how they plan to delay implementation of the ruling until after the midterms. Meanwhile, GOP leaders in the state legislature announced Thursday they will “attempt to redistrict under these unprecedented constraints.”

Democrats’ best hope of regaining power in Washington next year is through the House — increasing pressure on the party to respond to Republicans’ attempt to protect their majority by carving out seats across the country. But Democrats are hamstrung by independent redistricting commissioners and state constitutions, such that even a single seat in Utah would prove meaningful for the struggling party.

Monday’s decision from District Court Judge Dianna Gibson resulted from a lawsuit challenging the legality of the map adopted in 2021, which argues that when Republicans in the state legislature unlawfully ignored recommendations from an independent redistricting commission by cracking Salt Lake City into four districts. Its timing – on the heels of Texas and California engaging in tit-for-tat gerrymandering, and other GOP states following suit – thrusts Utah into the pitched national redistricting war.

“We’ve now finally got this decision years later that conspicuously comes during the conversation around what Texas has done, and that makes it super interesting and very relevant,” said Utah state Sen. Nate Blouin, a Democrat.

The judge found legislators improperly repealed a voter-backed measure that required independent oversight of redistricting and prohibited partisan gerrymandering. She ordered the legislature to submit a new map for her approval within 30 days. The lawmakers are set to convene a special session Sept. 15.

Democrats and aligned groups are gearing up for the possibility of a protracted legal fight and potential delays from the legislature in adoption of a new map. Elizabeth Rasmussen, executive director of anti-gerrymandering group Better Boundaries, said that “whatever the legislature decides to do next, we’re ready to continue to fight for fair maps.”

GOP legislative leaders indicated they will attempt to preserve the current maps’ goal of having districts that represent “both urban and rural voices,” implying that any new map may dilute Democratic voters.

“This race has the potential of of doing exactly the opposite of what you’re seeing in in Texas and California: to take partisan gerrymandering and partisan interests out of the election and get the power back to the voters,” said McAdams, the last Democrat to represent Utah in Congress until he was gerrymandered out of his district in 2021. “[This is] an opportunity, really, for the voters to choose the type of person they want to have represent them, instead of having it as a foregone conclusion.”

Utah Republicans have cast the decision as judicial overreach, a view Trump echoed by calling the ruling “absolutely unconstitutional” and pledging to do “everything possible” to protect the state’s four Republican House members.

State Sen. Scott Sandall, a Republican who chaired the recent redistricting process, called the decision “an attack from the left” and said the judge has “thrown redistricting into chaos.” He added he’s “positive that some kind of delay could be sought. That’s within the purview of the legislature to try to get a stay.”

Former Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican who appointed Gibson to the bench in 2018, dismissed Trump’s comments as “hyperbole” and called it wrong to “politicize” the judiciary, noting “it should not matter whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, it should not matter one iota.”

Any Democratic candidate will receive support from a surprisingly robust donor class composed of executives of Utah’s tech giants and startups who enjoy the state’s business-friendly climate. The business hub, dubbed “Silicon Slopes,” counts Adobe, eBay and Microsoft among the companies with major offices in Utah.

Recently, a group of progressive donors formed the Utah Donor Collaborative to unite Democratic donors and deliver targeted legislative wins throughout the state.

“We’ve got an infrastructure now that is a real positive,” said Jonathan Ruga, a major Democratic donor. “When new people come in that do have a moderate or a left-leaning ideology, I think they’re more apt to participate.”

Politics

Iran set to progress at World Cup

Published

50 minutes ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iran’s adventure through a World Cup beset by geopolitical complexity and logistical complications will likely continue after the team landed a frenetic 1-1 draw against Egypt. The high-stakes encounter kicked off hours after a tenuous peace between Washington and Tehran was threatened by American strikes on Iranian military installations along the Strait of Hormuz. Read the full story from Seattle by Sasha Issenberg and Sophia Cai here.

Politics

The “Pride Match” that wasn’t

Published

3 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SEATTLE — As a lesbian who was born in Egypt, Noha Mahgoub could have chosen to dress for what local organizers branded a “Pride Match” in colors associated with either her sexual orientation or her country of origin. The 43-year-old Democratic legislative aide — one of the top staffers in Washington state government — chose the latter, arriving in a red Egyptian national team jersey, a black hat emblazoned with YALLA and red-white-and-black tricolor facepaint.

“I’ve seen Pride shirts, I’ve seen Pride face paintings,” she observed from a concourse minutes before national anthems began echoing around Lumen Field. “It’s been really great, but I’m seeing a lot more Egypt and Iran and people cheering for their countries and singing their songs.”

Indeed, despite FIFA’s announcement that rainbow flags would be permitted in the stadium, few were visible as the match began. Instead, the stands rippled with the colors of the two Middle Eastern countries on the field, including many of the pre-revolutionary lion-and-sun flags that FIFA has attempted to ban under a stadium code of conduct that prohibits political displays.

Mahgoub had seen Egypt’s national team in person only once before, as a child while the team was angling to qualify for the 1990 World Cup. Since then, Mahgoub and her family relocated to Washington state, where she said the local Egyptian-American community has become enlivened by new arrivals coming to work at Seattle-based tech companies.

“You know how it is, you start calling everybody your cousins — a lot of cousins that I wasn’t related to,” Mahgoub said. “Well, I think a lot of them are here.”

Politics

Why Belgium’s prime minister isn’t cheering on the Red Devils

Published

5 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Ah, Belgium. The country of fries, chocolate, Kevin De Bruyne and, some might say, chronic political division.

Beyond Brussels, a mighty international melting pot, the country is split between Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia and a small German-speaking community. Those linguistic divisions are mirrored in its politics: Belgium has separate party systems on either side of the language border, as well as a highly devolved federal structure that gives significant powers to its regions.

Today, Belgian politics is as fragmented as ever. It took 234 days to form a federal government after the June 2024 election (yes, you read that right). The delay was driven largely by the fact that no camp came close to winning a majority, forcing months of negotiations between parties with sharply different ideological and linguistic bases.

Flemish nationalism has also become a growing force, shaped by two right-wing nationalist parties: the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which wants to transform Belgium into a looser confederal state and ultimately give Flanders far greater autonomy, and the far-right Vlaams Belang, which openly campaigns for Flemish independence.

So, you might think the 2026 World Cup would offer Belgium’s leader a rare opportunity to rally and unify the country behind a shared national symbol, right?

Wrong.

Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who hails from the N-VA party, has expressed almost no public support for the Red Devils, Belgium’s national soccer team.

That contrasts with leaders in nearby countries that also qualified for the World Cup. The leaders of the Netherlands, Germany and France have all publicly backed their squads, whether on social media or through public appearances.

The reason may be simple: De Wever just doesn’t care for the sport.

A Belgian official told Blue Light News: “The prime minister is not a soccer fan, so he doesn’t seek to project that image publicly. To do otherwise would not be authentic.”

Flemish media have indeed reported that the prime minister has little interest in soccer. In a podcast appearance a few years ago, he said the sight of people “going totally crazy in a group in the stands” left him feeling “ice cold.”

But politics is likely part of the story too. De Wever has led the Flemish nationalist N-VA since 2004. Throughout his political career, he has argued that Flanders should have far greater autonomy and that Belgium should evolve into a confederal state. For a politician with that background, overt displays of Belgian national unity probably don’t come naturally, and in fact contradict emphasis on Flemish autonomy.

This is not the first time the N-VA’s relationship with the Red Devils has attracted attention. In 2015, after Belgium reached No. 1 in the FIFA world rankings, Francophone Socialist Party leader Laurette Onkelinx asked the Chamber of Representatives to applaud the team. All parties joined in, except the N-VA.

During Euro 2016, the N-VA had to deny it instructed ministers and MPs to avoid publicly celebrating the Red Devils so as not to appear too Belgian, after rumors circulated in Belgian media.

One of De Wever’s few comments about this year’s World Cup concerned Belgium’s official tournament song. His complaint: It did not contain a single word of Dutch.

“My staff have confirmed to me that not a single word is sung in Dutch. That is, to put it mildly, not elegant,” he said, in keeping with his ideologies of promoting Flanders, when asked about the song during a parliamentary committee hearing.

Sport is often treated as a vehicle for national unity. In New Zealand, Belgium’s opponent in today’s match, elite teams have successfully woven elements of Māori culture into their sporting traditions, most famously through the prematch haka, which has helped create a shared cultural identity that connects Māori and non-Māori New Zealanders.

In Belgium, however, this World Cup has not yet become that kind of unifying project. At least not from the very top.