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Maryland residents bristle at Wes Moore’s redistricting push

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As President Donald Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering push in Republican states hit a roadblock in Indiana last week, Democrats looking to make up ground in blue states got some unwelcome news: Fewer than one-third of Maryland residents view redrawing the state’s congressional lines as a “high” priority, per a survey out Monday.

Just 27 percent polled by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, labeled redistricting a top issue, trailing far behind the cost of health care (77 percent), the quality of K-12 education (75 percent) and reducing crime (73 percent).

The survey comes as lawmakers in the Old Line State grapple over whether to push forward an effort to redraw congressional lines to give Democrats a chance to flip the state’s lone Republican-held seat. Maryland lawmakers are slated to convene for a special legislative session on Tuesday, though they made clear redistricting will not be on the agenda.

A similar push Trump championed in Indiana would have eliminated up to two Democratic-held seats; it was soundly rejected by that state’s Republican-led state Senate last week in a sharp rebuke of the president by members of his own party. Their opposition also relieved pressure mounting in some blue states, including Maryland, for state lawmakers to forge ahead with their gerrymandering counteroffensive.

For several months, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a likely 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful, has been urging lawmakers to consider redesigning the state’s maps, but has been stymied by state Senate President Bill Ferguson, a fellow Democrat who thinks the move could jeopardize the strength of Maryland Democrats’ congressional dominance. Democrats control seven of the state’s eight congressional seats.

“This is not a huge priority for Maryland voters,” Mileah Kromer, the director of the university’s Institute of Politics, which conducted the survey, said. “Perhaps one of the reasons it hasn’t really caught on as a major priority is because over the last year, Maryland voters continue to express concerns about the economic situation in the state.”

Earlier this year, state lawmakers passed measures raising taxes and fees by $1.6 billion — and are bracing for lingering negative repercussions from the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.

The survey of 801 Maryland adults, the majority of whom were registered voters, found 28 percent of respondents said the Maryland congressional lines were drawn fairly, compared to 41 percent who said they were drawn unfairly. Twenty-nine percent did not have an opinion.

When broken down by party affiliation, responses show variance in opinion over how Maryland’s maps are currently drawn and whether mid-decade redistricting should be taken up by the state legislature ahead of the 2026 midterms, with control of Congress at stake.

Among Democrats, 37 percent said the state’s congressional maps are drawn fairly. And among the majority who believe otherwise, 18 percent said the lines favor Democrats and 10 percent said they favor Republicans.

Just 17 percent of Republicans surveyed said Maryland’s congressional lines are drawn fairly. Among those who view the state’s maps as unfair, 63 percent said the lines favor Democrats, while just 3 percent contend they favor Republicans.

While high numbers of both parties said they were paying at least some attention to the redistricting debate — 61 percent of Democrats; 71 percent of Republicans — their views of what to do about it also broke along party lines.

Maryland Democrats’ views of mid-cycle redistricting showed that nearly an equal percentage said they don’t like it and it should not be done — 25 percent — compared to 28 percent who said they don’t like it but believe it is necessary. Just 6 percent of Democrats support it but think it’s the wrong thing to do, compared to 32 percent who said they like it and mid-decade redistricting should be done.

Among Republicans, 67 percent said they don’t like it and mid-decade redistricting should not be done compared to 9 percent who consider it necessary. Fewer than 10 percent of Maryland Republicans said they like it, but it’s the wrong thing to do or that they like it and lawmakers should move forward with it.

The poll was funded by the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the university. It was conducted between Dec. 2 and 6 and has a 3.5 percent margin of error.

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DNC scraps midterm convention plans

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The Democratic National Committee is canceling plans to host a midterm convention, as the party faces a fundraising crunch.

The DNC also announced Monday that it would hold the 2028 presidential convention from Aug. 7 to Aug. 10, 2028. Five cities — Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia — are under consideration to host it, officials said.

The committee announced its decisions to DNC members during a phone call Monday afternoon, according to two people who participated and were granted anonymity to describe a private meeting. DNC Chair Ken Martin said he’d received feedback from Democrats, urging the party committee to focus its resources on campaign work in states, one of those people said.

The DNC is facing a staggering fundraising problem, with the Republican National Committee holding a $100 million cash edge over them at the start of 2026. Last fall, the DNC took out a $15 million loan to invest in the Virginia and New Jersey elections, a move that raised concerns among Democrats about the party’s financial health.

In a statement on the decision to cancel the midterm convention, DNC’s executive director Roger Lau said they’d “baited” Republicans “into wasting time and money on a midterm convention,” while the DNC has “put resources where they’re needed most.”

Jessica Piper contributed to this report. 

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Political cartoons from the desk of Matt Wuerker
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Majority of Americans oppose Trump’s Iran strikes, per new polling

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Americans broadly disapprove of the Trump administration’s military strikes on Iran, according to several polls conducted after the U.S. attacked Tehran early Saturday morning.

Nearly six in 10 Americans said they oppose the decision to take military action against the Middle Eastern country, according to a text poll conducted by SSRS for BLN on Saturday and Sunday. A separate SSRS poll, conducted via text message for The Washington Post, found that more than half of Americans disapprove of the strikes, with 52 percent opposing and 39 percent supporting.

The lack of public support for President Donald Trump’s decision to move forward with airstrikes comes as White House allies worry the move could throw the GOP’s fragile coalition into jeopardy ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. A Blue Light News poll conducted in January, when the president was still weighing diplomatic and military options, found that nearly half of Americans opposed the possibility of military action in Iran.

Support for the attacks was largely split along partisan lines, with Democrats far more likely than Republicans to say they opposed Trump’s decision.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend, which closed before the U.S. military announced the first American casualties in the war, found that 55 percent of Republicans approved of the strikes — but 42 percent said they would be less likely to support the attacks if they resulted in American troops being harmed or killed.

The Washington Post poll also found that Americans varied widely in their impressions of the Trump administration’s primary goal in the conflict, with some respondents citing regime change and others pointing to oil or regional stability.

The administration has repeatedly said that the strikes were motivated by the goal to destroy Iran’s conventional and nuclear weapons programs — despite Trump’s insistence that the country’s nuclear capabilities were “totally obliterated” in limited airstrikes last year.

A majority of the people surveyed by BLN said they anticipate that a long-term military conflict between the U.S. and Iran is likely, a possibility Democrats are raising alarm about as they push for a vote on congressional war powers resolutions. Trump said Monday his administration had initially “projected four to five weeks” of conflict but had the capability to fight for longer, if necessary.

Support for the war also plummeted when Americans were posed with the possibility of gas prices rising due to the conflict. More than a third of Republicans polled by Reuters said they would be less likely to support continued attacks if oil or gas prices increased in the U.S., and 38 percent of registered voters polled by Morning Consult on Saturday said the U.S. should seek a diplomatic solution if the conflict leads to “significantly higher gas prices.”

That comes after oil prices jumped more than 10 percent Sunday after Tehran launched retaliatory attacks on several oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, which facilitates more than a fifth of the world’s waterborne crude oil transportation.

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