The Dictatorship

Texas House approves redrawn maps sought by Trump ahead of 2026 elections

Published

10 months ago

August 22, 2025

Texas House approves redrawn maps sought by Trump ahead of 2026 elections

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas House on Wednesday approved redrawn congressional maps that would give Republicans a bigger edge in 2026, muscling through a partisan gerrymander that launched weeks of protests by Democrats and a widening national battle over redistricting.

The approval came at the urging of President Donald Trumpwho pushed for the extraordinary mid-decade revision of congressional maps to give his party a better chance at holding onto the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. The maps, which would give Republicans five more winnable seats, need to be approved by the GOP-controlled state Senate and signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott before they become official.

Protesters gather in the rotunda outside the House Chamber at the Texas Capitol as lawmakers debate a redrawn U.S. congressional map in Texas during a special session, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

But the Texas House vote had presented the best chance for Democrats to derail the redraw.

Democratic legislators delayed the vote by two weeks by fleeing Texas earlier this month in protest, and they were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring upon their return to ensure they attended Wednesday’s session.

The approval of the Texas maps on an 88-52 party-line vote is likely to prompt California’s Democratic-controlled state Legislature this week to approve of a new House map creating five new Democratic-leaning districts. But the California map would require voter approval in November.

Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new Texas map in court and complained that Republicans made the political power move before passing legislation responding to deadly floods that swept the state last month.

Texas maps openly made to help GOP

Texas Republicans openly said they were acting in their party’s interest. State Rep. Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation formally creating the new map, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed politicians to redraw districts for nakedly partisan purposes.

“The underlying goal of this plan is straight forward: improve Republican political performance,” Hunter, a Republican, said on the floor. After nearly eight hours of debate, Hunter took the floor again to sum up the entire dispute as nothing more than a partisan fight. “What’s the difference, to the whole world listening? Republicans like it, and Democrats do not.”

Democrats said the disagreement was about more than partisanship.

“In a democracy, people choose their representatives,” State Rep. Chris Turner said. “This bill flips that on its head and lets politicians in Washington, D.C., choose their voters.”

State Rep. John H. Bucy blamed the president. “This is Donald Trump’s map,” Bucy said. “It clearly and deliberately manufactures five more Republican seats in Congress because Trump himself knows that the voters are rejecting his agenda.”

Redistricting becomes tool nationwide in battle for US House

The Republican power play has already triggered a national tit-for-tat battle as Democratic state lawmakers prepared to gather in California on Thursday to revise that state’s map to create five new Democratic seats.

“This is a new Democratic Party, this is a new day, this is new energy out there all across this country,” California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. “And we’re going to fight fire with fire.”

A new California map would need to be approved by voters in a special election in November because that state normally operates with a nonpartisan commission drawing the map to avoid the very sort of political brawl that is playing out. Newsom himself backed the 2008 ballot measure to create that process, as did former President Barack Obama. But in a sign of Democrats’ stiffening resolve, Obama Tuesday night backed Newsom’s bid to redraw the California mapsaying it was a necessary step to stave off the GOP’s Texas move.

“I think that approach is a smart, measured approach,” Obama said during a fundraiser for the Democratic Party’s main redistricting arm.

Texas troopers watch from the balcony as lawmakers debate a redrawn U.S. congressional map in Texas during a special session, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

The incumbent president’s party usually loses congressional seats in the midterm election. On a national level, the partisan makeup of existing districts puts Democrats within three seats of a majority.

Trump is going beyond Texas in his push to remake the map. He’s pushed Republican leaders in conservative states like Indiana and Missouri to also try to create new Republican seats. Ohio Republicans were already revising their map before Texas moved. Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland’s and New York’s maps as well.

However, more Democratic-run states have commission systems like California’s or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do, leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. New York, for example, can’t draw new maps until 2028, and even then, only with voter approval.

Texas Democrats decry the new maps

In Texas, there was little that outnumbered Democrats could do other than fume and threaten a lawsuit to block the map. Because the Supreme Court has blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing it violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority communities together so they can select representatives of their choice.

Democrats noted that, in every decade since the 1970s, courts have found that Texas’ legislature did violate the Voting Rights Act in redistricting, and that civil rights groups had an active lawsuit making similar allegations against the 2021 map that Republicans drew up.

Republicans contend the new map creates more new majority-minority seats than the previous one. Democrats and some civil rights groups have countered that the GOP does that through mainly a numbers game that leads to halving the number of the state’s House seats that will be represented by a Black representative.

Texas state Rep. Marc LaHood looks over a map as lawmakers prepare to debate a redrawn U.S. congressional map in Texas during a special, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

State Rep. Ron Reynolds noted the country just marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act’s passage and warned GOP members about how they’d be remembered if they voted for what he called “this racial gerrymander.”

“Just like the people who were on the wrong side of history in 1965, history will be looking at the people who made the decisions in the body this day,” Reynolds, a Democrat, said.

Republicans hit back at criticism

Republicans spent far less time talking on Wednesday, content to let their numbers do the talking in the lopsided vote. As the day dragged on, a handful hit back against Democratic complaints.

“You call my voters racist, you call my party racist and yet we’re expected to follow the rules,” said State Rep. Katrina Pierson, a former Trump spokesperson. “There are Black and Hispanic and Asian Republicans in this chamber who were elected just like you.”

House Republicans’ frustration at the Democrats’ flight and ability to delay the vote was palpable. The GOP used a parliamentary maneuver to take a second and final vote on the map so it wouldn’t have to reconvene for one more vote after Senate approval.

Some Texas state House Democrats are refusing to leave the chamber, after Republicans required them to sign a form allowing Department of Public Safety troopers to follow them. It comes after Democrats left the state to stop a Republican redistricting plan.

House Speaker Dustin Burrows announced as debate started that doors to the chamber were locked and any member leaving was required to have a permission slip. The doors were only unlocked after final passage more than eight hours later. One Democrat who refused the 24-hour police monitoring, State Rep. Nicole Collier, had been confined to the House floor since Monday night.

Some Democratic state lawmakers joined Collier Tuesday night for what Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez dubbed “a sleepover for democracy.”

Republicans issued civil arrest warrants to bring the Democrats back after they left the state Aug. 3, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott asked the state Supreme Court to oust several Democrats from office. The lawmakers also face a fine of $500 for every day they were absent.

___

This story was first published on Aug. 20, 2025. It was updated on Aug. 21, 2025 to correct that the partisan makeup of existing districts puts Democrats within three seats of a majority, instead of that Republicans control the U.S. House by three votes.

___

Riccardi reported from Denver. John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.

The Dictatorship

Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race

Published

4 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.

Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.

* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.

* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.

* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.

* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.

* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.

* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls

Published

4 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls

Jun. 22, 2026, 11:39 AM EDT

After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”

Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.

The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.

“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.

Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.

Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.

In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.

But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.

An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.

The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.

“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.

“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.

Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.

“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.

“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.

In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”

In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”

After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.

“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”

Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”

“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.

On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”

Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.

Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal

Published

4 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal

As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.

But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”

In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:

In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.

“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.

As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”

He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.

“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”

The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”

Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.

In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.