Politics
New Texas Congressional map will create five districts Trump carried by double digits
Texas Republicans would create five House seats that President Donald Trump carried by 10 or more points in November through a redrawn Congressional map to be released Wednesday, according to a person close to the process who was granted anonymity to discuss a map not yet public.
Four of the GOP’s pickup opportunities reside in majority-Hispanic districts.
The new map — created at Trump’s urging — stands to upend the midterms next year and give Republicans an opportunity to cling to their razor-thin House majority. The GOP’s success depends on the party maintaining its gains among Hispanic voters, a demographic shift that helped Trump reclaim the White House.
The 30 -day special session called by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is scheduled to end on Aug. 19, which gives state lawmakers a few weeks to finish the process.
Congressional maps are redesigned at least once a decade, in response to the U.S. Census in what is typically a politically rife process. Ohio is also redrawing its maps ahead of 2026, and Democrats across the country are mulling ways to fight this existential threat as they grasp for control over the House next year.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies will be in Austin on Wednesday to meet with Democratic Texas lawmakers to discuss how to respond to the GOP‘s redistricting project. Democrats are debating walking out of the 30-day special session, which would deny Republicans the quorum necessary to approve the maps.
Though incumbent-versus-incumbent battles are often a result of redistricting, the person said the pending map is not expected to create any Republican primaries. The person added that the new map creates smaller geographical districts and splits fewer counties than the one in place.
Republicans are expected to reveal the Congressional lines as early as Wednesday afternoon. Trump would have carried three of the new GOP districts by 10 points, and the other two by more than 15, the person said.
Democratic governors are also threatening their own mid-cycle efforts, which they have promised to carry out if Texas pushes forward. California and New York are the states most likely to take action, but they face legal and political obstacles. Democrats are expected to mount legal challenges once the legislature approves the new map, and the party is already working to raise funds to combat the process.
So far the House Majority PAC — the leading fundraising arm for Congressional Democrats — has committed to spend $20 million fighting the effort and former President Barack Obama is headlining a fundraiser next month in Martha’s Vineyard alongside his former attorney general, Eric Holder, to defeat the GOP’s redistricting plans.
Moderate Democrats are sounding the alarm after massive losses in New York’s primaries. They fear they’re on the verge of losing the party’s ideological civil war — and hurting its electoral chances.
Leftist candidates swept a trio of deep-blue House seats in New York City, a seismic victory that toppled two incumbents, including the powerful chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. And after a string of progressive battleground wins in earlier primaries, moderates are making it very clear that the left’s winning streak is potentially just starting.
The far left is eyeing even bigger targets in key battleground primaries that will determine control of Congress as well as governorships in crucial swing states. Most immediately, moderates fear that a progressive primary sweep could imperil the party’s hopes of beating Republicans this fall.
They also have a more fundamental fear: that progressives are becoming more mainstream as they keep winning — reshaping the Democratic Party.
“Centrist Democrats, normie Democrats, need to realize we’re the insurgents, and they’re the new establishment,” said Liam Kerr, a co-founder of the moderate-aligned WelcomePAC. “It’s a long term structural problem more than it is any one particular win.”
Progressives have romped through Democrats’ spring primaries, notching a series of wins across both safe and competitive districts and upending House and Senate Democrats’ battleplans. Left flank candidates Randy Villegas and Matt Dunlap trounced the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s preferred picks in a pair of battlegrounds in California and Maine. And populist insurgent Graham Platner pushed out Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s handpicked recruit in Maine, Gov. Janet Mills, before voting even began — only to see his poll numbers slip amidst a series of personal scandals.
With New York in the rearview, upcoming races in Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin will test whether the insurgent left can continue its hot streak.
“It’s happening in New York, it’s happening in Michigan. I think we’re seeing it happen across the country now, that folks are sick and tired of being sick and tired,” said Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and locked in a bitter three-way primary. “So, certainly we’re going to harness that.”
First up will be Colorado, where Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros is mounting a strong challenge against longtime Democratic incumbent Diana DeGette in a safe seat. In the state’s battleground 8th District, the more progressive-aligned Manny Rutinel is facing establishment-backed Shannon Bird. Whoever wins will face freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans.
Even if those progressive candidates end up falling short, establishment Democrats are worried that President Donald Trump and the GOP will be able to successfully tie their more centrist nominees to the most-fringe members of the party, forcing them to respond to progressives’ most controversial comments and positions — like defunding the police or getting rid of prisons entirely.
“These races might have some impact on 2026 if Republicans weaponize the craziest ideas of these candidates against mainstream Democrats running in blue districts,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the moderate think tank Third Way.
The Blue Dogs, Democrats’ House centrist coalition and campaign allies, are worried as well.
Blue Dog Action’s Phil Gardner said it’s imperative that moderate Democrats in swing districts address Republican attacks head-on and put distance between themselves and the left flank of their party.
“The reason they do that is because it works,” Gardner said of GOP efforts to tie moderates to progressives. “Candidates running in these competitive seats should not rely on just anti-Trump sentiment or the Democratic brand, because you’re basically putting your destiny in the hands of forces far outside your control.”
Some on the left are growing frustrated as the establishment increasingly makes them pariahs.
“Having party leaders not make the newest and most exciting members of the party feel like they belong is counterproductive for a party that wants to keep growing,” said progressive strategist Rebecca Katz, whose firm Fight Agency works with El-Sayed and Platner, among others.
Still, establishment Democrats are rushing to shore up primary victories in key battlegrounds. In Michigan, where El-Sayed is leading in new polls, establishment Democrats have begun spending millions of dollars in recent weeks to boost Rep. Haley Stevens and stave off his rise. Reinforcements are also flowing in for El-Sayed.
And in Wisconsin, another key perennial battleground state with major down-ticket races, establishment panic about democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong’s momentum in the crowded gubernatorial primary has led some in the party to start coalescing around moderate Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. One Democrat dropped out and endorsed Rodriguez to try to consolidate the center-left vote.
“True leadership means stepping aside and making sure that we coalesce around someone who can win in November,” Democrat Missy Hughes said during a press conference shortly after she suspended her campaign on Monday.
Hong, in an interview Wednesday, said that the centrist lane is no longer the path to victory.
“I agree, we should coalesce around a leader that can win in November. And I think that I’m that leader,” Hong told Blue Light News. “The strategy of running moderates — we’ve lost the House, the Senate and the executive office. … Using the old playbook and looking at the results, I would hope that the course correction is to run some different plays.”But Republicans are salivating over Hong’s prior hardline stances and comments, including previous calls to defund the police. She has sought to alleviate concern about that issue: “there’s no way I’m going to cut public safety, I want to deliver it,” she said in a recent video.
While the left’s wins in safe seats are top of mind, there have been a string of victories for centrists in a number of other Democratic primaries in the most important battlegrounds. The Democratic establishment’s pick prevailed in the New York battleground seat to take on GOP Rep. Mike Lawler on Tuesday, and moderate Rebecca Bennett won the primary to take on GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in a top New Jersey battleground. Some battleground wins for moderates came even as GOP groups meddled to try and boost left-leaning candidates in Texas and Nebraska.
In Senate races, moderate candidates like former Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) cleared the field with no real challenger. And Texas’ James Talarico and Iowa’s Josh Turek were able to best their more-progressive challengers.
“In most of the flippable seats, you still do have electable Democrats, either winning the primaries, or there was just never really a primary to begin with, and people sort of coalesced,” Gardner said.
Schumer told reporters on Wednesday that every wing of the Democratic Party — not just progressives — was on the rise.
“You’re seeing centrist energy in Virginia, Iowa, and New Jersey, progressive energy in New York City,” Schumer said. “We’re going to harness it all to win in November. Because all Democrats are united in the mission of taking back the Senate and defeating Trump.”
Some progressives were also quick to call for unity after their wins Tuesday, and vowed to help their moderate counterparts this fall.
“I’m going to go help some frontliners win their races,” former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who defeated Rep. Dan Goldman by more than 30 points, told reporters on Wednesday. “I hope some moderates will come help Randy Villegas and other progressives win theirs.”
But the prospect of the left picking off a battleground seat in November has major implications for the party’s direction.
“We love the statistic that [progressives have] never flipped any seats. We love to say, ‘look at the polling,” said Kerr, the co-founder of the centrist WelcomePAC. “But we haven’t been scared enough. We’ve been high on our own supply of data while they’ve been organizing.”
And outside of this year’s midterms, there’s a broader fight to come in 2028, where an open presidential primary will shape the party for years to come.
“It is vital that Democrats do not mistake the radicalism of a very small electorate in very blue places with the desire of the larger Democratic Party to move sharply to the left,” Bennett said. “Those things are not the same, and Democrats running for president must resist the urge to believe what they see on social media and the siren song of the DSA and the activist left.”
Google’s YouTube reached a settlement with a minor who sued multiple social media platforms for allegedly impacting his mental health, lawyers announced Tuesday. The settlement, the terms of which are confidential, comes nearly a month away from the trial’s July 27 state date in Los Angeles…
Read More
The ‘Great American State Fair’ will open to the public with fanfare Thursday morning against a backdrop of partisan fighting and public fallouts over the celebrations marking America’s 250th anniversary. The 16-day fair, which boasts more than 150 exhibits featuring U.S. history, will kick off with a speech from President Trump on Wednesday evening…
Read More
- GOP leaders cancel Friday votes as House agenda hangs in balance
- Raskin launches discharge effort to formally block ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’
- Here’s why Republicans are worrying about high gas prices ahead of the midterms
- Trump and Vance tout Iran deal as a payday for US farmers
- Capitol agenda: Johnson tries to clean up Trump’s Hill mess
- The Dems already had AOC. Now they have DAC.
- Centrist Democrats are freaking out about progressives’ winning streak
- ‘Trying to read the tea leaves’: Ted Cruz offers few clues on his AI agenda
- YouTube settles case brought by minor alleging harm
- 5 things to know about the ‘Great American State Fair’
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship10 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words