The Dictatorship
Republicans are suddenly having some regrets over the redistricting war
Ten months after President Donald Trump pressed Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional map to help secure more GOP seats in the midterm elections, the nationwide redistricting war could end up yielding either a small GOP advantage or, as it stands now, a small Democratic gain.
With Virginia voters opting to redraw their map Tuesday, Democrats are on course to pick up four seats in the commonwealth, as long as the map survives legal challenges. A circuit judge on Wednesday blocked the state from certifying the congressional map, ruling that the voter referendum was unconstitutional.
Virginia’s Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones has already vowed to file an appeal.
While the new map will have to survive legal challenges, Democrats may have mitigated the impact of GOP gains in other states that redrew their maps, such as Texas, North Carolina and Ohio, when you add in Democratic pickups in California from its new map.
The whole exercise raises an important question: Was this push to redraw maps in the middle of the decennial process really worth it?
When MS NOW asked Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., chair of the House GOP’s campaign arm, that question, he did not exactly offer a ringing endorsement of the redistricting war.
“Not for me to decide that,” Hudson said. “Wasn’t my decision.”
Other Republicans were decidedly more blunt, with some suggesting they wished Republicans had not started this fight.
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the former head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, made it clear he was not thrilled to see his state shake up its map, telling MS NOW, “No one cared to listen to the delegation.”
Asked if he wished the president had not requested that Texas redraw its map given what followed, Sessions left it at, “The president will live with the results.”
And Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., told Politico on Wednesday, “It was a mistake to go down this road.”
“The problem is, at the end of the day, whatever party wins, we all have to govern,” he said. “It’s harder to do when we’ve eroded our constituents’ trust in our democracy and the fairness of our elections — which is what mid-cycle redistricting does.”
The national redistricting fight began last summer, when Trump demanded Republicans in the Texas Statehouse redraw their congressional lines to help pick up an additional five seats in the House — in a pinkish state where the map was already gerrymandered in the GOP’s favor, 25-13. Republicans in Texas eventually complied with the president’s demands, drawing a map where the intended breakdown is 30-8, in a state where former Vice President Kamala Harris won 42% of the vote in 2024.
California, where the map was already gerrymandered in Democrats’ favor, 43-9, decided to retaliate. After putting the question to voters, the state voted to redraw the map further in Democrats’ favor, with the intention of picking up another five seats. Soon after, other states got into the game, looking to undo the effect of California’s redistricting effort. But on Tuesday, Virginia Democrats succeeded in passing a voter referendum to redraw its lines, with the intended breakdown being 10 Democratic House seats and one Republican.
While Florida may still get in on the battle and functionally give Republicans a slight advantage on the mid-decade redistricting battle, Democrats appear to be winning the gerrymandering game — at least for the moment. And that fact has vulnerable Republicans wondering whether either party should have gone down this road.
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., told MS NOW he does not believe “this tit-for-tat is especially beneficial to anybody in the end.”
“When everything is said and done, it’ll probably be a net wash,” he said.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., argued the math of which party comes out ahead is “irrelevant,” because mid-decade redistricting like this is “terrible policy.”
“We should be un-gerrymandering every district, not gerrymandering every district in America,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
And Senate Minority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said these are the “kinds of outcomes you’re going to run into” when “you go down the path of starting to do these things mid-decade.”
“States are, depending on who’s in power, going to try and work the maps to their advantage,” he said.
Some Republicans shied away from casting any blame on the president for setting this gerrymandering battle in motion.
Instead, many accused Democrats of starting this fight — specifically pointing to a previous redistricting feud in New York during the 2022 and 2024 elections cycles.
Rep. John McGuire, R-Va., who called the results of Tuesday’s election in Virginia “illegal and unconstitutional,” told MS NOW, “It did not start in Texas. It started in New York, by Democrats.”
Lawler echoed that sentiment, arguing that because the 2022 congressional map in New York “wasn’t good enough” for Democratic leaders, “they filed a lawsuit, came back, and won four seats as a result” in 2024.
Many of the lessons either party will learn from this exercise will depend on Florida, where state lawmakers are set to meet next week to consider their potential new map. But illustrating the unease among Republicans about redistricting, not all GOP lawmakers in the Florida delegation are cheering on an effort to squeeze out more Republican seats, which could weaken a number of their districts and leave many susceptible to a Democratic challenger — particularly in a wave election.
Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., who represents parts of Miami, said she likes her current district as it is.
“I think I’m doing well,” she said. “I’m representing them well, I think.”
But she remained deferential to Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla.
“If the governor of the state of Florida and the legislature believes differently, who am I to say?” she said.
Still, in an interview with Politico last month, Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., urged caution.
“I think the legislature needs to be very cognizant of the fact that if they get too aggressive,” he said, “you could put incumbent members at risk.”
Earlier this week, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., was asked by known what he thought of the redistricting war. Issa, a longtime Republican who decided not to run in 2018 as a blue wave gathered over the midterms during Trump’s first term, came back to Congress in 2021.
With his purple-ish district turned blue during this latest redistricting, Issa is one of the GOP casualties of the gerrymandering war. He looked at running in Texas, in one of the new districts Republicans had drawn, but ultimately decided he would not seek another term in Congress.
“There’s the obvious question of, is it ever a mistake to start a war?” Issa said Tuesday before the Virginia vote. “I don’t know.”
For their part, Congressional Democrats have dismissed Republican complaints that the 10 to 1 map in Virginia is unfair — even as some grapple with their own disdain for gerrymandering.
Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., who backed the creation of a bipartisan redistricting commission in Virginia in 2020told MS NOW he has reached the conclusion that the GOP is “only going to join us in supporting non-partisan redistricting when they learn that — best case — they’re going to fight to a draw.”
So far, Walkinshaw said, Republicans have concluded that “gerrymandering is in their interest politically, that’s why they oppose our national ban on partisan gerrymandering. We’ve got to show them that it’s no longer in their interest.”
And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s, D-N.Y., reaction to the GOP complaints was to mimic a baby.
“Wah wah wah,” she said.
“Democrats have attempted and asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering, and for 10 years, Republicans have said no,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Republicans have fought for partisan gerrymanders across the United States of America, and these are the rules that they have set.”
Jack Fitzpatrick and Nora McKee contributed to this report.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
Judge denies Kennedy Center request for pause in ruling ordering Trump’s name removed from building
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Kennedy Center was running out of options Friday evening to keep President Donald Trump’s name on the facade of the iconic performing arts venue.
A judge earlier in the afternoon rejected a request to pause a court-ordered deadline of Friday to remove references to Trump from the building and other aspects of the Kennedy Center’s operations. The institution appealed that ruling, an effort that was also rebuffed Friday evening.
Scaffolding was erected around a section of the building that includes Trump’s name but the Kennedy Center sought a short extension to complete the work. Shortly after midnight, the Kennedy Center asked a judge to extend the deadline until noon Eastern Time on Saturday because of storms that had swept through the Washington area Friday, causing a delay. Some of the thunderstorms included lightning.
In the filing, the Kennedy Center offered assurance that the “removal work is presently ongoing” and would “conclude in the early hours of the morning.”
Dozens of people spent hours on the plaza in front of the Kennedy Center taking pictures and cheering occasionally as they broke into chants of “take it down.” Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex-officio board member who sued to have Trump’s name removed from the building, was spotted at one point on the plaza as well.
After ignoring the Kennedy Center for much of his first term, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his return to office. Just a month into his second term, he ousted the center’s previous leadership and replaced it with a board of trustees that named him chairman. Trump’s name was quickly added to the building.
In his ruling that only Congress could make changes to the Kennedy Center’s name, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper also blocked the administration from closing the cultural and arts venue for major renovations that had been planned to start in July and last for two years.
The Kennedy Center’s leadership argued in its appeal Friday that the renovation was badly needed and accused the lower court, in terms that seemed similar to Trump’s speech patterns, of interfering in the effort.
“The District Court is not allowing us to close in order to properly fix up and repair the Building, including potentially life threatening structural damage like beams and parking garage ceilings that are rusted, and in serious danger of falling onto people below,” according to the appeal. “Indeed, total collapse!”
Even as the Kennedy Center has fought efforts to remove Trump’s name from the building, it has taken steps to comply with Cooper’s initial ruling.
A June 4 memo to staff from the Kennedy Center’s Office of General Counsel said email signatures, letterhead and other documents must reflect the name as “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center.”
The Kennedy Center’s website has dropped Trump’s name. And an earlier email sent to members offering ticket packages for the June 28 Mark Twain Award for American Humor ceremony came from the Kennedy Center without including Trump’s name.
___
Associated Press journalists Anna Johnson, Mark Sherman and Emily Wang in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court these days is generally in the business of helping executions go forward. But on Thursday night, the court did something notable: It told Alabama no.
Even then, the court wasn’t unanimous. Justices Clarence ThomasSamuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the refusal to let the nitrogen gas execution of Jeffery Lee proceed.
What prompted the rare rejection? In line with the typical shadow docket practice, the court didn’t explain itself. Nor did the dissenters, who merely noted their disagreement.
But a deeper look at the case helps us understand why a majority of the court was unwilling to help the state this time.
A Trump-appointed judge had permanently blocked Alabama from killing Lee using the nitrogen method, due to the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In her ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Emily Marks made it clear that she wasn’t stopping officials from executing Lee for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson. Rather, she was only barring the nitrogen method while leaving the state free to use others, such as a firing squad.
Yet the state still pressed to execute Lee with nitrogen on Thursday. The next roadblock it hit was a divided appellate panel, which declined to lift Marks’ injunction. Trump-appointed Judge Robert Luck dissented, stressing the high bar the justices have set for Eighth Amendment claims and accusing Lee of delaying his claim until the last minute. Luck noted that Lee’s victims didn’t get to choose how they died.
The appellate dissent reflects the Supreme Court majority’s view on capital punishment. So, when Alabama filed an emergency application to the justices on Thursday, it felt like the setting of a familiar scene: A lower court halts an execution, only for the high court majority to let it move forward. We have seen this movie before.
Plus, the court previously permitted nitrogen gas executions in Alabama. In the case of Anthony Boyd last yearJustice Sonia Sotomayor lamented the majority’s refusal to extend him what she called “the barest form of mercy,” which she said would have been letting him die by firing squad, which “would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to 4 minutes.” She issued a similar dissent the year before in the case of Kenneth Smithwhich she concluded “with deep sadness, but commitment to the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.”
Lee’s case was different, as his lawyers and a key outside advocate explained to the justices. His lawyers said it was “unlike every previous method of execution challenge that this Court has considered.” They said that unlike prior cases where lower courts issued temporary stays for inmates, this one had a permanent injunction that followed “a full three-day bench trial on the merits — the first such trial anywhere on the constitutionality of nitrogen asphyxiation.”
That key outside advocate was Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck, a Supreme Court expert who filed an amicus brief. He said Alabama was trying to do something procedurally that it shouldn’t be allowed to do. “After all,” Vladeck wrote, “allowing Alabama to execute Mr. Lee through a grant of emergency relief would necessarily frustrate this Court’s ability to conduct plenary review of the district court’s final, permanent injunction.”
To be clear, the justices can still reverse Marks’ ruling in a future round of litigation. Or, as the judge noted, the state can execute him by other means. The question on Thursday night was whether the court would make the case moot by letting Alabama execute Lee before the state’s appeal could be fully vetted in an orderly fashion. With that in mind, it would almost be unremarkable that the court rejected the state’s emergency application, if it weren’t for the fact that the justices had previously intervened to help governments conduct executions over lower courts’ objections.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that three justices voted to let Lee’s execution go forward as planned, its unconstitutionality notwithstanding. Of course, while none of the justices explained their views, we can presume that the three dissenters are prepared to disagree with the lower courts’ constitutional analysis if and when the case comes back to the high court.
Next week, the justices are set to issue another round of opinions from cases argued this term, as we creep toward the end of June, when some of the court’s most contentious decisions have historically come.
Have any questions or comments for me? Pleasesubmit them through this formfor a chance to be featured in the Deadline: Legal Blog and newsletter.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
Ex-reality TV star and MAGA-backed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt angrily conceded the race Friday in a combative video in which he derided, and appeared to threaten, the women who finished ahead of him.
Nearly four days after The Associated Press projected Councilmember Nithya Raman will advance to the November general election to face incumbent Mayor Karen BassPratt announced that “the campaign portion of my mission to save Los Angeles is coming to a close, and I’m moving on to the next, more interesting phase.”
With 99% of ballots counted as of Friday, the AP put Pratt in third place, with just more than a quarter of the vote — 3.5 percentage points behind Raman and nearly 9 points behind Bass.
Pratt initially stood in second as returns came in on primary night, but his lead over Raman steadily narrowed as mail-in ballots were counted. By Sunday, she had overtaken him by less than 1 percentage point.
President Donald Trump and other MAGA supporters suggested Pratt’s apparent reversal of fortune proved fraud, but elections experts say it is California’s voting systemcoupled with the city’s small Republican voter base, that explain his third-place finish.
What, exactly, Pratt’s next chapter in civic life will consist of is unclear. But if his Friday announcement is any indication — he called Bass and Raman “dumb and dumber” and “corrupt communists” — it will include continued attacks on his former opponents. And contrary to Pratt’s pledge that he would leave the city if he lost, he suggested he will instead stay put in LA.
“A lot of dim-witted jerks thought I was in this for a grift, that I was going to roll up and leave town if I didn’t get into City Hall,” Pratt said in the video. “Hey, morons, I didn’t get in this for political power. I got in this to expose this corrupt machine, and nothing has changed.”
Addressing Bass and Raman, Pratt added: “I will be lighting you up every single day, and now I don’t have to worry about offending BLN viewers. I don’t have campaign laws hamstringing me now. It’s war.”
Filled with expletives and images of fires, violence and homeless encampments, Pratt’s video channels the same angry populism he ran on. His Republican supporters —including Benny JohnsonTrump administration official Richard Grenell and the chair of the LA County GOP — cheered his final message as a candidate.
Best known for his role as Heidi Montag’s bad boyfriend on MTV’s “The Hills,” Pratt launched his surprise mayoral campaign in January, a year after his family home burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire. While his platform initially focused heavily on what he and his supporters characterized as the failures that led to the damage caused by the fires, Pratt expanded his campaign to focus on forcing homeless people off the streets, cleaning up alleged “fraud” in the city’s finances and saving abused dogs on Skid Row.
With his massive online following and social media savvy, Pratt catapulted himself from long-shot candidate to one who earned Trump’s support and managed to outraise both Bass and Raman.
In the video, Pratt also said he possesses “some recordings of one of your exalted candidates doing and saying something that would make her resign in shame.”
A spokesperson for Raman’s campaign declined to comment to MS NOW on Pratt’s message. Spokespeople for the Bass campaign did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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