A Virginia court on Thursday temporarily blocked Democrats from preparing for an April voter referendum to redraw the state’s congressional maps.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Virginia court on Thursday effectively blocked Democrats’ planned April voter referendum to redraw the state’s congressional maps, another potentially devastating blow to the party’s effort to pick up four more U.S. House seats in the national redistricting battle.
Virginia Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones has already vowed to appeal the ruling by a Tazewell Circuit Court, which granted a temporary restraining order requested by the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. The plaintiffs argue that the ballot referendum’s timing and phrasing are illegal.
The court’s decision on Thursday, while temporary, could kill the referendum for this year if it withstands appeal. The restraining order is in effect until March 18 and early voting is slated to start March 6.
The Republican request for a restraining order — also signed by Republican U.S. Reps. Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith — argued that Democrats were ramming redistricting-related bills through the legislature despite legal hurdles that prevent such a rushed process.
In a statement, the GOP national committee said the latest ruling was “a massive win in defending honest representation for every Virginian.”
It’s the second time Tazewell Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr. has ruled against Democrats’ redistricting agenda. In January, he ruled that a resolution for a constitutional amendment was illegally passed in a special legislative session and taken up too close to an intervening election.
That case has been appealed to the state Supreme Court, and justices had said they would allow the referendum to proceed while they review the appeal.
President Donald Trump launched an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle last year by pushing Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts to help his party win more seats. The goal was for the GOP to hold on to a narrow House majority in the face of political headwinds that typically favor the party out of power in midterms.
Instead, it created a national redistricting battle. So far, Republicans believe they can win nine more House seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Democrats think they can win six more seats in California and Utah, and are hoping to fully or partially make up the remaining three-seat margin in Virginia.
Before Thursday’s ruling, Democrats had been bullish in pressing ahead with their effort, releasing a proposed map that could give their party four more seats in the U.S. House. The redistricting plan has since been introduced in the legislature.
Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, a Democrat, said Thursday he was confident the latest court order would be overturned.
“The Supreme Court of Virginia has already made clear that this matter will go to the voters, but Republicans unhappy with that ruling went back to their friendly judge,” Scott said in a statement that pointed out Hurley’s earlier decision.
Democrats have also tried to limit which court venues can take up such cases. After Republicans filed their first suit in Tazewell, a conservative area in Southwest Virginia, Democratic lawmakers passed legislation saying legal actions related to constitutional amendments or their elections only have one proper court venue: the Circuit Court of the City of Richmond.
Virginia Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed the bill into law and set the date for the redistricting referendum for April 21.
In their court filings, Republicans have said Tazewell is still the correct venue despite the new law. Hurley agreed.
___ Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
After weeks of buildup and a missed self-imposed Jan. 30 deadline, Virginia Democrats on Thursday evening finally released their long-awaited revised congressional map.
This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury.
After weeks of buildup and a missed self-imposed Jan. 30 deadline, Virginia Democrats on Thursday evening finally released their long-awaited revised congressional map, proposing an aggressive 10–1 configuration that would tilt 10 of the state’s 11 U.S. House districts toward their party.
The proposed congressional map leaves several of Virginia’s largest districts visually intact while concentrating most of its changes in Northern and central Virginia.
The new plan preserves the broad outlines of some existing districts but redistributes how the population is grouped across much of the state.
The 9th District remains a single, expansive district in the state’s far southwestern corner. The Eastern Shore–based 2nd District is also preserved, maintaining a clear coastal anchor on the map.
The most visible changes are in Northern and central Virginia.
Districts now clustered in the state’s northeastern corner — particularly the 8th, 10th and 11th — are reconfigured and spread farther south and west, while several mid-state districts, including the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th, are reshaped into a tighter patchwork than under the current map.
During a news conference at the state Capitol in Richmond earlier in the day, legislative leaders said the maps reflect what they describe as an extraordinary political moment nationally, as Democrats move forward despite a court order halting the process and a pending decision by the Virginia Supreme Court.
House and Senate leaders pitched the proposal as a response to recent Republican-led redistricting efforts in other states and emphasized that Virginia voters — not lawmakers — will ultimately decide the maps’ fate in an April referendum.
Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, argued the proposal is necessary to counter what Democrats describe as a coordinated national strategy driven by President Donald Trump.
“Look, Donald Trump knows he’s going to lose the midterms. He knows it,” Lucas said Thursday. “That’s why he started this mess in the first place. … These are not ordinary times and Virginia will not sit on the sidelines while it happens.”
Lucas said Republicans have already moved aggressively in states such as Texas, North Carolina, Missouri and Ohio to redraw congressional lines ahead of the 2026 elections, forcing Democrats in Virginia to respond.
House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, echoed that message, saying the General Assembly has been working for weeks to prepare the maps for public release. “Virginia to the rescue,” he said.
A 10–1 map “levels the playing field, and we’re ready to move forward,” Scott said. “We’ll get those maps released and put them out in the open and allow them to be debated the way they should be in a democracy.”
Republican leaders denounced the plan Thursday morning and said their counterparts aren’t concentrating on solutions to the financial strain many Virginians are facing.
“Democrats are focused on political gerrymandering instead of focusing on affordability,” said Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover.
“The bills they are moving through the legislature are going to cost Virginians more money. It is taking money out of their pocket. But they’re more worried about political gerrymandering games and not Virginians, not the struggles that they are going through.”
The map’s release comes amid ongoing litigation over Democrats’ mid-decade redistricting amendment, which cleared the General Assembly earlier this year but was struck down last week by a Tazewell County Circuit Court judge. That ruling ordered lawmakers to stop the redistricting process, arguing the amendment violated the Virginia Constitution.
The case is now before the Virginia Supreme Court, which is expected to hear arguments later this month.
Despite the uncertainty, Democratic leaders said they remain committed to proceeding with a statewide referendum on April 21, when voters are set to decide whether to grant lawmakers authority to redraw congressional districts outside the once-a-decade redistricting cycle.
Under the state Constitution, amendments must pass two separately elected General Assemblies and then be approved by voters. Democrats completed the legislative portion of that process earlier this year, but the court ruling has cast doubt on whether the referendum can legally proceed.
Scott said he believes the judge exceeded his authority.
“You never want to speak ahead, you never know what a judge or jury are going to do,” Scott said. “But I think the law is clearly on our side. I think the judge overreached.”
Scott said the ruling relied on constitutional provisions that do not apply to the amendment process and predicted higher courts would reverse it.
“I think at the end of the day, (the Virginia) Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court will see the judge used the wrong sections of the Constitution to justify his argument,” he said.
Despite the legal challenge, Democratic leaders are moving forward with legislation that would implement the new maps only if voters approve them via referendum.
Scott said the writ setting the referendum has already been approved by the General Assembly and is currently on Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s desk.
“The calling has already been done,” Scott said. “And then the next thing is, we’re going to put the language in the bill with the maps in it in the caboose bill that we’re going to pass.”
Scott said Spanberger has already reviewed the maps, though the governor has not publicly endorsed the 10–1 configuration.
“The governor has seen the maps,” Scott said. “We wouldn’t be standing here if the governor had not seen the maps. I’m going to let the governor speak for herself.”
Spanberger’s team told WUSA9 Thursday that the map could be implemented before referendum voting begins, underscoring the governor’s role in ensuring the process can move forward if the courts allow it.
Her office has not publicly embraced any specific configuration, instead emphasizing that the ultimate choice should rest with Virginia voters and that the executive branch will act to administer the election should the constitutional amendment pass.
Lucas acknowledged that many Virginians favor the nonpartisan redistricting commission approved by voters in 2020 and said Democrats still intend to return to that system.
“The plan is for us to go back to the nonpartisan commission because that’s what Virginians voted for,” Lucas said. “The only reason we’re in this place right now is because of the power grab that started with Trump.”
Both Lucas and Scott rejected claims that the maps were drawn to benefit specific incumbents, despite reporting of internal Democratic debates over whether to pursue a 9–2 or 10–1 configuration.
Democrats currently hold six of the state’s 11 congressional districts.
“This was never about drawing a seat for a particular candidate,” Lucas said. “This was always about making sure that we defend democracy.”
Scott dismissed concerns that sitting lawmakers influenced the lines.
“If you’ve been paying attention to these last elections, you don’t know who the heck is going to win in these primaries,” he said. “Whatever happens, happens to that point.”
When asked who drew the maps, Scott said the legislature worked with outside consultants, but he declined to say more about the mapmaking process.
“We have some consultants. We’re not going to get into the details, but you all will be able to see it,” he said.
Lucas said Democrats believe the proposed districts remain competitive and that outcomes will ultimately depend on voter turnout and campaigning.
“The seats are competitive, but if you get out and work, you can win the seat,” she said. “But we’re not going to coronate you.”
For now, the fate of the maps rests with the courts and, potentially, Virginia voters.
Virginia Mercury reporter Shannon Heckt contributed to this story.
A modified version of the recommended redistricting scenario for the “Woodbridge Area” and “Potomac Shores” elementary schools emerged at the Prince William County School Board meeting Jan. 21.
A modified version of the recommended redistricting scenario for the “Woodbridge Area” and “Potomac Shores” elementary schools emerged at the Prince William County School Board meeting Jan. 21.
The current recommended scenario — dubbed Scenario 6 — would reassign over 2,600 students to new schools. It also includes the closure of the aging Potomac View Elementary School.
The Woodbridge Area elementary, set to open in the 2026-27 school year, will have a program capacity of roughly 630 students, while the new Potomac Shores elementary, set to open the following year, will accommodate just over 1,000 students.
Under Scenario 6, all of the affected schools would be within compliance over the next several years for capacity utilization, with no school exceeding 105% and other schools moving away from being less than 80% utilized.
The proposed redistricting would mean 2,660 students are reassigned to a new school, roughly 31% of the students who attend the affected schools.
The proposal maintains current boundaries for student walkers wherever possible, school system officials said, and students who attend Kilby Elementary would progress to one middle school — Fred Lynn — rather than two.
Under this scenario, students at Pattie Elementary School would progress to only one high school, Forest Park, and are no longer split between two middle schools. Vaughan Elementary School is reduced from three geographic progressions to two.
The school system ultimately recommended Scenario 6 with specific parameters for implementation, including:
Rising fifth-grade students will not be reassigned. All rising fifth graders residing in areas affected by the adjustments may remain at their currently assigned elementary school for their fifth-grade year.
The attendance area for the Woodbridge area elementary school will take effect beginning in the 2026-27 school year.
All remaining elementary school attendance area adjustments, including the establishment of the Potomac Shores elementary school attendance area, will take effect beginning in the 2027-28 school year.
Students in grades other than rising fifth graders who reside in areas reassigned effective of the 2027-28 school year will attend the school to which they are newly-assigned beginning in that school year.
The board held a public hearing on redistricting Jan. 21, where several community members expressed discontent with the recommended proposal.
Parent Shannon Quarles said Scenario 6 poses a problem for people who live in the Forest Park community.
The proposed redistricting would move Forest Park families from Pattie Elementary to Dumfries Elementary.
While the Forest Park communities are within one mile of Dumfries Elementary, Quarles said it is not a safe route for students walking to and from school.
“There are no sidewalks and no crosswalks along the busy Van Buren and Basetown roads,” Quarles said. “So despite proximity, our children do not have safe access to Dumfries Elementary as walkers.”
Justin Wilk, who represents the Potomac District, which is most affected by the redistricting, offered a motion last week to direct the school system to create a modified version of the recommended plan.
Specifically, Wilk requested that students in the “Graham Park corridor” remain at their current school, which is Dumfries Elementary. He also requested that students from the Forest Park area be moved to Covington-Harper Elementary School
“I believe these changes will maintain attendance area contiguity to the greatest extent possible while balancing capacity utilization across the schools impacted,” Wilk said.
Wilk’s motion was approved in 7-0-1 vote, with Vice Chair Richard Jessie, who was participating in the meeting electronically, abstaining.
The board is expected to finalize the redistricting scenario on Feb. 4, when the school system will present the final Scenario 6 with Wilk’s amendments.
Virginia voters will decide whether to back a redrawn district map that favors Democrats in the tit-for-tat battle for the U.S. House after the left-leaning Senate advanced a proposed constitutional amendment on Friday that supports mid-decade congressional redistricting.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia voters will decide whether to back a redrawn district map that favors Democrats in the tit-for-tat battle for the U.S. House after the left-leaning Senate advanced a proposed constitutional amendment on Friday that supports mid-decade congressional redistricting.
Such a congressional map has not been publicly released, though lawmakers say that will change by the end of the month. Officials have repeatedly vowed that voters would see a proposed map before the referendum is held, likely in April.
“Because this is a Virginian-led process and we’re asking for their permission, voters will be able to see the maps prior to their vote,” Democratic Del. Cia Price said Wednesday.
The closely divided state Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority, voted along party lines on Friday afternoon, following a similar vote by House Democrats earlier this week.
Trump teed up an unusual redistricting plan last year and pushed Texas Republicans to create more favorable districts for the party by way of new congressional maps. That triggered something of a mid-decade redistricting dogfight.
Since then, Texas, Missouri and North Carolina all approved new Republican-friendly House districts. Ohio also enacted a more favorable House map for Republicans.
On the Democratic side, California voters approved new House districts helping Democrats, and a Utah judge adopted a new House map that benefits Democrats.
There have been some defections in the nationwide redistricting battle: Kansas Republicans dropped plans for a special session on redistricting. Indiana’s Republican-led Senate also defeated a plan that could have helped the GOP win all of the state’s U.S. House seats.
It’s still up in the air as to whether new maps will be created in other states, such as Republican-leaning Florida, and Democratic-led Illinois and Maryland.
The redistricting battle has resulted, so far, in nine more seats that Republicans believe they can win and six more seats that Democrats think they can win, putting the GOP up by three. However, redistricting is being litigated in several states, and there is no guarantee that the parties will win the seats they have redrawn.
In Virginia, the redistricting resolution sparked raucous debate among lawmakers on the merits of gerrymandering a battleground state known to have independent voters, particularly after a recent years-long push for fair maps in the state.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said when Republican-led states “rig elections in their favor, our commitment to fairness that we made — that our voters made — effectively becomes unilateral disarmament.”
Virginia Republicans have admonished Democrats’ redistricting efforts, arguing gerrymandering isn’t the answer. Republican Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle said, “Republicans in Indiana stood up to political pressure and said, ‘We’re not going to play these political games.’ And they stopped.”
The state currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans who ran in districts whose boundaries were imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map after the census.
That commission came about following a 2020 referendum, in which voters supported a change to the state’s constitution aimed at ending legislative gerrymandering.
The new proposed constitutional amendment, if backed by voters, would only be in effect until 2030. The resolution also has trigger language, meaning Virginia lawmakers can only redraw congressional maps if such action is taken by other states.
In January, Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger backed Democrats’ redistricting effort but has not committed to a particular plan.
“Ultimately, it’s up to the people of Virginia to choose whether or not to move forward with the referendum,” she said.
___
Associated Press writer John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed.
___
Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, leaves after speaking with the media during the first day of the legislative session at the Florida State Capitol on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, in Tallahassee, Fla.
Photo by Matias J. Ocner
mocner@miamiherald.com
In his first year as Florida’s young and powerful speaker of the House, Miami Republican Daniel Perez created a new political dynamic in the Sunshine State, in which legislators began to claw back the power they had ceded for so long to Gov. Ron DeSantis and reassert their control over policy and the purse.
But that was last year. Heading into Perez’s second and final session in charge of Republicans’ agenda in the House, the dynamic has changed, and Perez may be the odd man out.
Perez, 38, says his relationship with the governor — who he says isn’t returning his calls — remains icy. And he doesn’t seem optimistic about his once-warm relationship with Senate President Ben Albritton following a blowup last year over taxes and spending that appeared to push the leader of the Legislature’s upper chamber closer to the governor.
With Florida’s legislative session beginning Tuesday, that evolving power dynamic is a wildcard that could affect the state’s ability to lock in more than $100 billion in spending, address the pressing problems facing Floridians and set in stone some of the GOP’s priorities, like drawing new congressional districts and cutting property taxes.
More than a dozen interviews with Republican members of the Legislature and players in the political process revealed just how fraught the relationship between the House speaker and Senate president remains — though both say they are looking forward.
“It doesn’t have to be a tough environment,” Perez told the Herald/Times this week in an interview. “It’s just a matter of having a willing and able partner, which, right now, doesn’t seem like something that’s feasible.”
The governor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, hands Florida Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, the gavel during the first day of the legislative session at the Florida State Capitol on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, in Tallahassee, Fla. Photo by Matias J. Ocner mocner@miamiherald.com
Priorities and Politics
Just like last year, Perez, a lawyer by trade, is playing his cards close to the vest.
He has no legacy bill that he is shepherding through the process. He says he believes the state has put the necessary changes in place to fix Florida’s property insurance crisis. And he has resisted calls from cash-strapped condo owners to overhaul the building-safety law he championed after the fall of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside.
His main goal, he says, is to pass a conservative budget that is smaller than last year’s, potentially setting up another difficult negotiation with the Senate, which is concerned with revenue shortfalls.
“This will be the first time that there will be a back-to-back cut in the budget coming out of the House since the recession,” Perez said. “And we’re proud to voluntarily take that task on.”
It’s hard to discern what measures Perez personally wants to pass. He isn’t sharing his preferences. And while he is addressing the governor’s priorities of redistricting and reducing property taxes, both issues have succumbed to the committee process with multiple proposals and much debate.
“We’re looking forward to that proposal if he were to ever have one,” Perez said of DeSantis’ desire to do away with property taxes for Florida residents with homestead exemptions on their primary residences. “And then I’m sure the Senate will soon thereafter follow his lead, so we’ll have that conversation at the right time.”
Just a year ago, the House and Senate appeared to be in lockstep, with DeSantis suddenly struggling to bend the Florida Legislature to his will.
That was clear before Florida’s regular 2025 legislative session. When DeSantis called for a special session on immigration, they called their own and passed legislation that they championed and he panned. Those battle lines appeared to persist when the House and Senate announced a plan for a state budget that would include billions in tax relief.
“I’m pleased to share with you that we have reached a framework for a budget plan,” Albritton said on the Senate floor on May 2. “As part of our agreement with the House, we will take up the most historic tax relief package in the history of our state.”
But Albritton says his Senate colleagues balked when it came time to whip votes on Perez’s specific plan to cut $5 billion from Florida’s sales tax as the policy was publicly denounced by the governor. He called Perez several days later and told him the Senate didn’t go for it.
“I can’t make the Senate do anything,” Albritton told the Herald/Times about the outcome.
Perez sent out a memo lamenting how the deal had been “blown up,” threatening a government shutdown as lawmakers approached the next fiscal year without a budget.
“The House and Senate had a deal on the budget,” Rep. Juan Carlos Porras, a Miami Republican, recounted to the Herald/Times this week. “And then over the weekend, the Senate president reneged on that deal, and that resulted in the numerous days that we didn’t have a budget.”
Ed Hooper, the Senate budget chairman from Clearwater, remembers it differently. The Senate was preparing a state budget for less economic growth in the future as fewer people retire in Florida, he said, and Perez didn’t give them heads up about the House’s planned tax cut.
“That was a $5 billion surprise,” Hooper said. “There was no deal agreed on a sales tax reduction.”
The dispute kept lawmakers for months from passing a timely budget, leading ultimately to a deal in June that required two extensions of Florida’s legislative session. In the fallout, the close relationship between Perez and Albritton frayed.
Albritton told the Herald/Times in an interview on Thursday that he was focused on the future, not the past.
“I do not have disdain for the speaker,” said Albritton, a Wauchula Republican.
A policy Albritton cares about will be an early test for that resolve.
Next week, the Senate will pass the president’s Rural Renaissance package. It is supposed to drive economic growth in sparsely populated regions of the state—an affordability agenda that could be a powerful message during the midterm elections centered on high costs of living.
Perez killed the bill last year as part of the budget blow up. He’s likely to do it again.
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau reporter Garrett Shanley contributed to this story.
West Sacramento’s mayor is the latest person to announce plans to campaign for one of California’s congressional districts in the 2026 midterm election since the passing of Proposition 50.The voter-approved measure aims to send more Democrats to Congress by redrawing five Republican-heavy districts to include more Democratic voters. While District 6 is not one of those five targeted districts, the current officeholder — Democrat Ami Bera — has since announced plans to run for District 3, which is targeted.As a result, several people have announced campaigns for District 6, which now includes Martha Guerrero running as a Democrat.“I am running for Congress because our communities deserve a representative who has been in the trenches for working families,” Guerrero said in a release. “They deserve someone laser-focused on lowering costs and protecting their rights.”Guerrero in the release also touted her achievements in serving West Sacramento, citing public safety, flood protection, supporting small business and job growth, government transparency and homelessness.The mayor is in her third term as West Sacramento mayor after serving in the city council.Other candidates for District 6 include former State Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho and Republican Christine Bish.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
West Sacramento’s mayor is the latest person to announce plans to campaign for one of California’s congressional districts in the 2026 midterm election since the passing of Proposition 50.
The voter-approved measure aims to send more Democrats to Congress by redrawing five Republican-heavy districts to include more Democratic voters. While District 6 is not one of those five targeted districts, the current officeholder — Democrat Ami Bera — has since announced plans to run for District 3, which is targeted.
As a result, several people have announced campaigns for District 6, which now includes Martha Guerrero running as a Democrat.
“I am running for Congress because our communities deserve a representative who has been in the trenches for working families,” Guerrero said in a release. “They deserve someone laser-focused on lowering costs and protecting their rights.”
Guerrero in the release also touted her achievements in serving West Sacramento, citing public safety, flood protection, supporting small business and job growth, government transparency and homelessness.
The mayor is in her third term as West Sacramento mayor after serving in the city council.
Other candidates for District 6 include former State Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho and Republican Christine Bish.
It has long been obvious that North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature is impervious to shame, but a vote by Republican lawmakers in Indiana this week should deeply embarrass Republican lawmakers here.
Twenty-one of Indiana’s Republican state senators joined 10 Democrats on Thursday to reject President Donald Trump’s push for a mid-decade redistricting. The proposed new map likely would have shifted Indiana’s U.S. House delegation from 7-2 in Republicans’ favor to 9-0 Republican.
The vote was a setback for Trump, who is urging Republican-controlled states to further gerrymander their congressional districts to prevent Democrats from winning control of the U.S. House in 2026. Legislatures in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have gone along, but enough Indiana Republicans refused.
One of them, state Sen. Spencer Deery, said he voted no to preserve confidence in elections. “The power to draw election maps is a sacred responsibility directly tied to the integrity of our elections and the people’s faith in our constitutional system,” he said.
What a striking contrast that is to the behavior of North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers.
State Senate leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, urged his caucus to comply with Trump’s call to redistrict. He said it was necessary to prevent Democrats from obstructing Trump’s agenda.
But Berger also had his own concerns. It was reported that Berger, now facing a tough primary, could earn a Trump endorsement if he pushed the redistricting through. He did so in October, and the endorsement came this week.
House Speaker Destin Hall also caved to Trump’s demand that North Carolina’s districts be further stacked in his favor. The new map passed the House in October along party lines.
Hall falsely cast the new map as a response to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for a referendum to allow a redrawing of California’s districts. But Newsom only acted after Texas redistricted to create five additional districts favoring Republicans.
“Our state won’t stand by while Democrats like Gavin Newsom redraw districts to aid in their effort to obtain a majority in the U.S. House,” Hall said in a statement. “We will not allow them to undermine the will of the voters and President Trump’s agenda.”
So, Hall went ahead and undermined the will of the voters. Polls show that Trump and his agenda are underwater in North Carolina.
The redrawn North Carolina map is expected to produce another Republican U.S. House seat in an evenly divided state where Republicans have already gerrymandered their way to a lopsided 10-4 advantage.
During the Senate’s floor debate on the new districts, Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a Wake County Democrat, said, “This map represents the highest and most egregious form of unadulterated and unfettered partisan power grabs I’ve witnessed in my nine years serving in the Senate.”
Sen. Terence Everitt, another Wake County Democrat, used even stronger language. “History will remember the day fascism came to North Carolina,” he told the Republican senators. “And y’all couldn’t wait to get on your knees.”
In a remarkable turn, Everitt’s condemnation brought him a rebuke from Senate Rules Chair Bill Rabon, a Southport Republican. In a letter to Everitt, Rabon, said the Democrat’s words violated the Senate’s decorum. Meanwhile, manipulating congressional districts to appease Trump and deprive voters of their voice is, in Rabon’s view, not offensive.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance leaned on Indiana’s Republican senators who opposed drawing a new map, but those senators chose to do what was right and fair. One who stood up to Trump, Republican Sen. Mike Bohacek, said, “We don’t bend a knee to bullying and threats.”
North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers cannot say the same.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana’s Republican-led senate voted against a redrawn congressional map Thursday that would have favored their party in the 2026 elections, despite months of pressure by President Donald Trump for a rare mid-cycle redistricting.
Twenty-one senators from the Republican supermajority and all 10 of the chamber’s Democrats voted down the redistricting proposal. Trump has urged GOP-led states to gerrymander their U.S. house districts ahead of the midterms to create more winnable seats for Republicans. It’s an unusual move, since the district boundaries are usually adjusted based on the census every 10 year.
Ahead of the vote, Trump again criticized Indiana senators who resisted the plan, repeating his vow to back primary challengers against them.
“If Republicans will not do what is necessary to save our Country, they will eventually lose everything to the Democrats,” Trump wrote on social media. Some Indiana lawmakers have also received violent threats during the debate over the last month. Half of the state Senate is up for reelection in 2026.
Democratic state senators spoke against the redistricting legislation one by one during Thursday’s session.
“Competition is healthy my friends,” said Sen. Fady Qaddoura. “Any political party on earth that cannot run and win based on the merits of its ideas is unworthy of governing.”
Outside the state Senate chamber, redistricting opponents chanted “Vote no!” and “Fair maps!” while holding signs with slogans like “Losers cheat.”
The proposed map was designed to give Republicans control of all nine of Indiana’s congressional seats, up from the seven they currently hold. It would effectively erase Indiana’s two Democrat-held districts by splitting Indianapolis into four districts that extend into rural areas, reshaping U.S. Rep. Andr矃arson’s safe district in the city. It would also eliminate the northwest Indiana district held by U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan.
Despite Trump’s push, support for gerrymandering in Indiana’s Senate was uncertain. A dozen of the 50 state senators had not publicly committed to a stance ahead of the vote.
Republican Sen. Greg Goode, previously undecided, signaled his displeasure with the redistricting plan. In firmly delivered remarks, he said some of his constituents objected to seeing their county split up or paired with Indianapolis. He expressed “love” for Trump but criticized what he called “over-the-top pressure” from inside and outside the state.
Sen. Michael Young, another Republican, said the stakes in Congress justify redistricting, as Democrats are only a few seats away from flipping control of the U.S. House in 2026. “I know this election is going to be very close,” he said.
Republican Sen. Mike Gaskill, the redistricting legislation’s sponsor, showed Senators maps of congressional districts around the country, including several focused on Democratic-held seats in New England and Illinois. He argued other states gerrymander and Indiana Republicans should play by the same rules.
Nationally, mid-cycle redistricting so far has resulted in nine more congressional seats that Republicans believe they can win and six more congressional seats that Democrats think they can win. However, redistricting is being litigated in several states.
Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina quickly enacted new GOP-favorable maps, while California voters approved a new congressional map favorable to Democrats in response to Texas. In Utah, a judge imposed new districts that could allow Democrats to win a seat, saying Republican lawmakers violated voter-backed standards against gerrymandering.
The bill cleared its first hurdle Monday with a 6-3 Senate committee vote, although one Republican joined Democrats in opposing it and a few others signaled they might vote against the final version. The state House passed the proposal last week, with 12 Republicans siding with Democrats in opposition.
Among them was state Rep. Ed Clere, who said state troopers responded to a hoax message claiming a pipe bomb outside his home Wednesday evening. Indiana state police said “numerous others” received threats but wouldn’t offer details about an ongoing investigation.
In an interview, Clere said these threats were the inevitable result of Trump’s pressure campaign and a “winner-take-all mentality.”
“Words have consequences,” Clere said.
The White House has mounted an aggressive lobbying push. Vice President JD Vance met twice with Indiana Senate GOP leaders, including the full caucus in October, and senators also visited him in Washington.
Trump joined a conference call with senators on Oct. 17 to make his own 15-minute pitch. State Sen. Andy Zay said White House political aides stayed in frequent contact for more than a month, even after he backed the bill, urging him to publicly support it and track developments among colleagues as part of a “full-court press.”
A panel of federal judges on Wednesday allowed North Carolina to use a redrawn congressional map aimed at flipping a seat to Republicans, as part of a multi-state redistricting campaign ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The map targets the state’s only swing seat, currently held by Democratic Rep. Don Davis. The 1st District has been represented by Black members of Congress continuously for more than 30 years. The state legislature’s redrawing effort would shift the district from 48% to 44% Democratic, according to a CBS News analysis.
The three-judge panel unanimously denied preliminary injunction requests after a hearing in Winston-Salem in mid-November. The day after the hearing, the same judges separately upheld several other redrawn U.S. House districts that GOP state lawmakers initially enacted in 2023. They were first used in the 2024 elections, contributing to a Republican gain of three more congressional seats.
North Carolina is one of several states this year in which President Trump has directed the GOP to redraw maps in the middle of the decade — without courts requiring it — to avoid losing control of Congress in next year’s midterms. Besides North Carolina, Republican-led legislatures or commissions in Texas and Missouri have adopted new, more GOP-friendly maps. A lower court froze Texas’ new map last week, but the Supreme Court temporarily paused that ruling days later.
In California, voters countered by adopting new districts drawn to improve Democrats’ chances of winning more seats. And the Democratic-led Virginia General Assembly also has taken a step toward redistricting with a proposed constitutional amendment.
Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House and impede Mr. Trump’s agenda.
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled General Assembly gave final approval to the state’s district changes on Oct. 22. Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s approval wasn’t needed.
In a statement, North Carolina Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said the decision “thwarts the radical left’s latest attempt to circumvent the will of the people” in a state that voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
“As Democrat-run states like California do everything in their power to undermine President Trump’s administration and agenda, North Carolina Republicans went to work to protect the America First Agenda,” Berger said.
Wednesday’s ruling covers two lawsuits.
In one filed by the state NAACP, Common Cause and voters, the plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction on First Amendment grounds. They say Republican lawmakers unconstitutionally targeted North Carolina’s “Black Belt” instead of Democratic-voting areas with higher White populations because in 2024 they organized and voted for their preferred candidates and had sued over the 2023 configuration of the district.
In the second lawsuit, filed by voters, the case for a preliminary injunction rested in part on an argument that the use of five-year-old Census data due to the mid-decade redrawing of districts violates the Constitution, including the 14th Amendment’s one-person, one-vote guarantee. Additionally, it says lawmakers relied on race in mapmaking in violation of the First and 14th Amendments.
Attorneys for the Republican lawmakers defending the districts wrote that the objectives in redrawing the map were political, not racial, and were part of a “nationwide partisan redistricting arms race.” They rejected assertions about old Census data and retaliation over activities protected by the First Amendment, saying they don’t align with Supreme Court precedent.
Republicans now hold 10 of North Carolina’s 14 House seats — thanks in part to the 2023 map — and they hope to flip an 11th under the latest redistricting changes to the 1st District and the adjoining 3rd District. This effort happened in a state where Trump got 51% of the popular vote in 2024 and statewide elections are often close. Candidate filing in these and scores of other 2026 North Carolina races has been slated to begin Dec. 1.
The litigation challenging the October changes to the map said the boundaries approved by Republicans would result in the Black voting-age population in the 1st District falling from 40% in the 2023 map to 32%.
Republicans in part moved counties in the 1st District with significant Black -– and usually highly Democratic -– populations to the 3rd District currently represented by Republican Greg Murphy. Recent election results indicate both the 1st and 3rd would be favorable for Republicans.
Many of the same plaintiffs challenging the newly altered 1st District sued earlier over the House map enacted in 2023, alleging that Republicans unlawfully fractured and packed Black voters to weaken their voting power.
But the judges — all nominated by Republican presidents — recently dismissed the claims against five other congressional districts and three legislative districts, writing that those who sued failed to prove legislators drew the maps “with the discriminatory purpose of minimizing or canceling out the voting potential of Black North Carolinians.”
Based on overwhelming evidence that Republican lawmakers intended to racially gerrymander Congressional redistricting maps — because they said as much during public testimony early in the process — University of Houston law professor David Froomkin said he believes a district judge’s order to block the maps should stand.
“They said it was about race before they said it was about politics,” Froomkin said Monday.
But the maps approved by the state legislature in August, intended to flip five seats in favor of Republicans, will remain in place temporarily, per a Supreme Court ruling on November 21.
The decision, handed down by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, is a short-term pause while the high court decides which map Texas should use as a court battle over its legality plays out. The ruling came three days after a panel of district judges led by Donald Trump appointee Jeffrey Brown ruled on November 18 that Texas couldn’t use the maps approved in August, citing substantial evidence of racial gerrymandering.
Alito’s decision adds yet another layer of confusion for candidates and voters in the upcoming March 2026 primaries, for which the filing deadline is December 8. Froomkin said Monday that “we shouldn’t read too much into” Alito’s temporary stay.
“That is likely to be reconsidered by the entire Supreme Court in the coming weeks,” he said. “I imagine they will be sensitive to the December 8 filing deadline. I think there’s a strong chance that the district court decision will stand and that candidates certainly should stay the course for now.”
Six of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the mid-decade redistricting effort after he received a letter suggesting he do so from the U.S. Department of Justice. Republican legislators at first said they needed to redraw the maps to fix racial gerrymandering that occurred in 2021. When confronted with federal court testimony showing that Republicans referred to the ’21 maps as “race-blind,” the GOP changed its tune.
Froomkin said they were given bad legal advice.
“This is a relatively easy case in that there was a fairly explicit racial gerrymander here,” he said. “The story here is really a story of the careless, sloppy lawyering that we have come to expect from this administration. This decision could have been easily avoided if Republicans had consulted good lawyers [at the onset] rather than shooting from the hip.”
Abbott appealed the district judges’ decision to the Supreme Court and said in a press release last week that the maps approved by the legislature over the summer were drawn to “better reflect Texas’ conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason.”
As it stands today with the temporary stay in place, Congressman Al Green, a Democrat from Houston, no longer lives in District 9, an area he’s represented for 20 years. He now lives in District 18. Green filed for the District 18 seat earlier this month, but if Brown’s ruling stands, Green goes back to District 9. He’s one of several candidates in limbo pending a ruling from the Supreme Court.
The Congressional District 18 seat has been vacant since former Rep. Sylvester Turner died in March. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards are in a January 31 runoff to fill Turner’s unexpired term. The special election runoff will be governed by the maps that were in place when Turner was elected in 2024.
Froomkin said back in August, after Texas Republicans pushed through their map, that “the premise underlying this redistricting plan was that there was a racial problem with the prior map that needed to be corrected.”
The professor said Monday that even though the Republicans walked back the messaging that they were redistricting to correct a racial gerrymander, the damage was already done.
“It’s quite rare for the state to announce that it has a racial objective behind a redistricting plan,” he said. “In fact, announcing that the objective of a redistricting plan is to reallocate political power on the basis of race is exactly what a state is not supposed to do.”
“Even if, by some incredible coincidence, the mapmakers achieved the very result that they had been encouraged to reach by the DOJ without relying on racial demographic data, the fact that state officials characterized the plan’s goals in racial terms is itself a sufficient reason to invalidate the plan as a racial gerrymander,” he added.
The opinion handed down last week from Brown, a district judge from Galveston, offered scathing remarks toward the Trump administration for micromanaging a state’s redistricting process and chastised Governor Abbott and the elected Republicans for doing Trump’s bidding.
“To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map,” Brown said in his opinion. “But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”
The Brown ruling was a blow to Republicans who were hoping that the new maps would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts and protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House. Alito’s “pause” issued a few days later didn’t garner much response from either political party, as it appears they’re waiting to see what happens next, Froomkin said.
“I think that Judge Brown’s opinion for the district court was very careful, methodical and well-grounded in existing law and precedent. I would also observe that I really don’t think the Supreme Court has strong grounds to overrule the district court because the main issues are factual issues.”
The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily halted a lower court order that threw out Texas’ redrawn congressional maps in time for next month’s candidate filing deadline — as the state and its legal opponents square off on whether the maps were driven by politics or race.
Lawyers for Texas had asked the court earlier Friday to issue a stay and effectively let Texas return — at least for now — to the maps it passed over the summer, which redrew five Democratic House seats to make them more GOP-friendly.
Justice Samuel Alito granted the state’s request for an administrative stay, which means the lower court ruling is now on hold until the Supreme Court takes further action.
Texas is asking the high court to stay the lower court ruling on a longer-term basis by Dec. 1, noting that the deadline for candidates to file for next year’s primary elections is Dec. 8. He directed the plaintiffs who sued Texas to file their response by Monday afternoon.
The state’s redistricting push set of a nationwide effort to redraw House maps ahead of next year’s midterms, with California shifting five congressional districts to the left, and Missouri and North Carolina each shifting a seat to the right. President Trump has pushed other GOP-led states to take similar steps.
But earlier this week, a panel of federal judges blocked Texas from using its new maps in a 2-1 ruling. The court’s opinion, penned by Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, sided with plaintiffs who argued the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The lower court pointed to a majority-White Democratic district that it said should have changed more if the process was driven purely by politics, not race. It also argued that some state officials, like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, seemed to move in response to a letter by a top Justice Department official warning them to redraw four existing districts that the federal government viewed as illegal “coalition” districts, where non-Hispanic White voters are in the minority, but no racial group has a majority.
In Friday’s request to the Supreme Court, the state of Texas pushed back on these arguments, asserting that the redistricting process was entirely partisan and wasn’t motivated by race.
“From the start, everyone recognized that the purpose of Texas’s redistricting effort was Republican political advantage,” the state wrote, quoting several elected Democrats who criticized the new maps on political grounds.
Texas said the lower court ruling “erroneously rests on speculation and inferences of bad faith.” And it said the state GOP’s chief mapmaker worked with data on partisanship rather than race.
In some cases, the state of Texas cited a dissent from the lower court ruling written by Judge Jerry Smith. The Reagan appointee drew headlines earlier this week for his fiery opinion, which used the phrase “I dissent” 16 times, called Brown an “unskilled magician,” said the majority opinion would deserve an “F” on a law school exam and accused the other judges of improperly leaving him out of the process.
The State of Texas also argued the lower court ruling could cause “chaos” since it was issued during the candidate filing period for next year’s races.
The redrawn map sparked a nationwide redistricting battle and is part of President Trump’s efforts to preserve a Republican majority in the House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.
The Tuesday ruling came in a 2-1 vote by a three-judge panel. It dealt a blow to Republicans while Democrats celebrated it.
That’s because under the newly drawn map approved by Republicans, who stood to gain five congressional seats in Texas, the Democrats were facing a game of political musical chairs — some were set to retire or primary each other. Now, that may not have to happen.
“Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map,” which is illegal, the two federal judges who voted to block the map said in the ruling.
They also cited a U.S. Department of Justice letter to Gov. Greg Abbott from July about four coalition districts made up of Blacks and Latinos that include the 33rd Congressional District in North Texas, represented by Democrat Marc Veasey.
“DOJ threatened legal action if Texas didn’t immediately dismantle and redraw these districts, a threat based on their racial makeup. Notably, the DOJ letter targeted only majority non-white districts,” the judges’ ruling said. “Any mention of majority white districts, which DOJ presumably would have also targeted if its aims were partisan rather than racial, was conspicuously absent.”
There was no initial word on what the third judge on the panel said in dissenting.
Abbott slams judge’s “erroneous” decision
In a statement Tuesday, Abbott slammed the judges’ decision, calling it “clearly erroneous” and saying it “undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict. The State of Texas will swiftly appeal to the United States Supreme Court.”
The state filed its appeal to the highest court late Tuesday afternoon.
CBS News Texas spoke with Democratic members of Congress from North Texas who praised the ruling.
“I totally agree with the court,” said Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch. “You know, what the Republicans and Greg Abbott did in Texas, to seeking to disenfranchise voters of color was egregious, and the court clearly agreed with that. This opinion is sharp, and it is clear, and it is concise.”
Veasey, whose district covers Fort Worth, said, “I feel like we’re on good legal grounds here. So, I feel confident, but, you know, I’m going to be again cautiously optimistic in watching what the Supreme Court says.”
“I’ve always made it clear that this was racial, and I know that some people want to run away from the race element, but the law protects it. We know that our Constitution recognizes and protects it,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas.
Texas Republicans criticize judges’ decision
CBS News Texas also spoke with Republicans Tuesday night who called the judges’ decision wrong and said they are putting their faith in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Aaron Reitz, a GOP candidate for Texas attorney general, said, “My view is similar to Gov. Abbott’s and Attorney General Paxton, who have criticized the decision because, in fact, race was not used to draw these lines. Only politics was used, which is the appropriate standard.”
Another candidate for attorney general, State Senator Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, said it was a partisan map.
“Quite simply, this is a partisan map that draws more Republican seats and that’s why we’re going to win,” said Middleton. “That is why we’re going to be victorious in this appeal before the Supreme Court.”
As a result of the ruling, Rep. Johnson and Rep. Veasey said they will run for re-election in the districts they represent now.
Crockett she said she still hasn’t decided whether to run for re-election in her district in Dallas or if she is going to run statewide for U.S. Senate. She said she is waiting for polling to come back and that she hopes to make a decision by Thanksgiving.
The key, Crockett said, is if the polling shows she can beat a Republican candidate in the general election next November.
“At the end of the day, if the numbers are strong that I am our best shot, then it’s bigger than my district, it’s bigger than the state of Texas,” said Crockett. “This is about the country because we know if we can change the Senate map in this country, then that’s where we start to get wins.”
Crockett said the only way she or another Democrat can win is if they attract new voters, people who haven’t gone to the polls before, and not simply by attracting Republicans who cross the political aisle.
After a panel of federal judges in Texas this week struck down that state’s recently redrawn congressional maps, voters in California might be wondering if that means the Golden State will halt its own mid-decade redistricting plan.
After all, when Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats began talking about redistricting early on, they framed it as a counter to the gerrymandering in Texas that was meant to benefit Republicans there. In selling the idea to voters that California should adopt new maps that benefit Democrats, Newsom said, just before he signed a bill to call the special election, “We’re responding (to) what occurred in Texas; we’re neutralizing what occurred.”
However, now that Texas may not be able to move forward with its redistricting plan — the recent decision could still be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court — some voters may wonder if California ought to proceed with its new maps.
Newsom’s office confirmed that California can still go forward with its plan because it is not contingent on what happens in any other state.
That’s because on the day the California Legislature passed bills to call for a special election and put new maps before voters, language that said California’s new maps would be implemented “only if Texas, Florida, or another state adopts a new congressional district map” was removed. At the time, a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said that wording was removed because Texas had, by then, voted to redistrict.
“Because Texas Republicans have voted,” spokesperson Nick Miller said in an August email, “the original trigger language in our measure is no longer necessary.”
“To make sure the measure is clear to California voters when they have the final say, it has been removed,” he added.
Some voters may still be surprised, though, thinking California would only move forward with redistricting if Texas does. The title of the ballot measure had stated that Proposition 50 “authorizes temporary changes to congressional district maps in response to Texas’ partisan redistricting.”
“There is more than one reason that Californians may feel misled, including the reason for (our) lawsuit,” Mike Columbo, the lead attorney in a case challenging the state’s new congressional maps, said in an email.
That lawsuit — brought by California Republicans, and which the U.S. Department of Justice later joined — alleged California’s maps are unconstitutional because districts were racially gerrymandered. A spokesperson for Newsom previously expressed confidence that the state will prevail in court.
Asked if California still plans to redistrict in light of this week’s ruling on the Texas maps, Newsom’s office responded with a statement from the governor: President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “played with fire, got burned — and democracy won. This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”
To be clear: Texas has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2-1 decision by the federal district court judges. Should the nation’s highest court ultimately side with Texas, the maps that Abbott is pushing for could be implemented after all.
Meanwhile, irrespective of the Texas case, there’s still the matter of the Republicans’ lawsuit challenging California’s maps.
With that case still pending, voters and candidates alike may be asking what this means for California and the 2026 midterm elections. When will they know what the districts look like?
After all, a key date for candidates is coming up: Starting Dec. 19, candidates who don’t want to pay the filing fee to run for a House seat can begin gathering voter signatures to have the fee waived.
Knowing by then what the boundaries are for the district they’re running in is important, said Columbo.
“It will create a problem for voters and those candidates if the districts change after that date,” he said.
His team is seeking a preliminary injunction and requesting that California’s current congressional maps — used in the 2024 elections — remain in place until a final decision is rendered about the legality of those established by Proposition 50.
A three-judge panel will hear the matter on Dec. 3, and attorneys for the plaintiffs have asked for a decision on the preliminary injunction by Dec. 5 so that if the losing side appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court would have two weeks to weigh in before Dec. 19, Columbo said.
“The reason we are asking for such a quick decision is to avoid the confusion and disruption that would occur if we don’t have a decision by Dec. 19 and then later, the court determines that the maps are unconstitutional,” he said.
Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School who has taught courses on constitutional law and election law, said in these types of cases, a court generally will indicate which map shall be used for the next election while a case is still being heard.
“People need to know which lines are in place before they have to declare their candidacy,” Levinson said. “Judges will have to give some indication about whether or not the new lines can be used. That will obviously have huge implications for who runs, in which district and what the contest looks like.”
“We just need to know which lines to use,” she added. “But the case doesn’t need to have a final resolution” yet.
In the meantime, candidates have already started announcing their plans to run in districts based on the Proposition 50 maps. With California’s June 2 primary election just over six months away, a number of candidates have started fundraising and seeking endorsements.
One day after a Trump-appointed federal judge helped toss out Texas’ redistricting effort, a Reagan-appointed judge penned a heated and invective-filled dissent accusing his fellow jurist of “cherry-picking of the highest order.”
A three-judge panel ruled 2-1 on Tuesday that Texas must set aside the new congressional maps that it drew earlier this year, with Judge Jeffrey Brown writing for the majority that the map — which would create five new GOP-friendly House seats — was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The ruling was issued by Brown and Judge David Guaderrama, nominated to the bench by President Trump and former President Barack Obama, respectively. The state of Texas quickly appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ruling could upend this year’s nationwide redistricting gambit. Multiple states have followed Texas’ lead and redrawn their maps, including California, which made five congressional districts more friendly to Democrats in response.
The panel’s third member, Judge Jerry Smith, filed his response on Wednesday, writing the phrase “I dissent” some 16 times over the course of his 104-page opinion.
Smith, nominated to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan in 1987, accused the two other judges of issuing the ruling without giving him enough time to respond, which he called an “outrage.” He wrote that in the days prior to the ruling, Brown sent him a pair of drafts that were more than 160 pages long, only offered a few days to react, and didn’t wait for Smith to write his dissent.
“In my 37 years on the federal bench, this is the most outrageous conduct by a judge that I have ever encountered in a case in which I have been involved,” Smith wrote.
The dissent — which started by warning readers, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night!” — also attacked the opinion itself in often-harsh terms. He called Brown an “unskilled magician,” compared his reasoning to a “bizarre multiple-choice question from hell,” and called the ruling the “most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed.”
At one point, when discussing the court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction, Smith writes: “If this were a law school exam, the opinion would deserve an ‘F.’”
Race or politics?
At the heart of Smith and Brown’s disagreement is whether Texas lawmakers redrew the state’s House districts for partisan reasons or racial reasons.
The map-drawing effort began after Mr. Trump and his allies pushed Texas officials over the summer to create as many as five new GOP-leaning seats, as Republicans fight to hold onto a razor-thin House majority in next year’s midterms.
At one point during that gambit, Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, sent Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a letter alleging that a handful of the state’s existing districts were illegal “coalition” districts where non-Hispanic White voters are in the minority but no single racial group has a majority.
Tuesday’s majority opinion, penned by Brown, said that Abbott “explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race” and “repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts.”
The court concluded that the state’s redistricting effort was unconstitutional because it was driven by racial considerations, not pure politics. It’s legal for lawmakers to redraw maps for partisan reasons, Brown wrote, but racially gerrymandered maps can be challenged in court.
Smith disagreed, pointing to evidence that he said shows the new Texas maps were actually driven mainly by partisan politics rather than race.
The judge cited testimony from one of the mapmakers, Adam Kincaid, who explained at length why he made certain decisions to shift around the boundaries of congressional districts. Smith said Kincaid “had a perfectly legitimate and candidly partisan explanation for his every decision.”
Smith also noted at one point that California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who pushed to redraw his state’s maps in response to Texas, “took a victory lap” after this week’s ruling.
“That tells you all that you need to know—this is about partisan politics, plain and simple,” Smith said.
In response Wednesday night, Newsom wrote on X: “This judge says California’s redistricting in response to Texas was overwhelmingly partisan. Yes, ours was. That was the ENTIRE POINT!”
Smith claimed the “main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom.” He alleged Soros, the liberal megadonor, and his son, Alex Soros, “have their hands all over this,” claiming several lawyers and experts for the plaintiffs have links to groups that have received funding from the Soros family’s Open Society Foundations.
And Smith warned that, if the decision stands, it could disrupt next year’s congressional races.
“As a legal and practical matter, Judge Brown’s injunction turns the Texas electoral and political landscape upside down,” he said. “It creates mayhem, chaos, misinformation, and confusion.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the plaintiffs, said Smith’s claim that the redistricting was purely political is “flatly contradicted by the record.” The group also rejected Smith’s claim that the ruling would lead to “chaos,” saying the “true risk would be allowing an unlawful, racially discriminatory map to stand.”
“Protecting voters from racial discrimination is not activism; it is a constitutional obligation,” LULAC CEO Juan Proaño said. “The majority acted responsibly to uphold the law and safeguard the rights of millions of Texans.”
CBS News has reached out to Brown and the Open Society Foundations for comment.
As President Donald Trump laid it out to reporters this summer, the plan was simple.
Republicans, the president said, were “entitled” to five more conservative-leaning U.S. House seats in Texas and additional ones in other red states. The president broke with more than a century of political tradition in directing the GOP to redraw those maps in the middle of the decade to avoid losing control of Congress in next year’s midterms.
Four months later, Trump’s audacious ask looks anything but simple. After a federal court panel struck down Republicans’ new map in Texas on Tuesday, the entire exercise holds the potential to net Democrats more winnable seats in the House instead.
“Trump may have let the genie out of the bottle,” said UCLA law professor Rick Hasen, “but he may not get the wish he’d hoped for.”
Trump’s plan is to bolster his party’s narrow House margin to protect Republicans from losing control of the chamber in next year’s elections. Normally, the president’s party loses seats in the midterms. But his involvement in redistricting is instead becoming an illustration of the limits of presidential power.
Gov. Greg Abbott announces his re-election campaign for Texas governor in Houston, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Gov. Greg Abbott announces his re-election campaign for Texas governor in Houston, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Playing with fire
To hold Republicans’ grip on power in Washington, Trump is relying on a complex political process.
Redrawing maps is a decentralized effort that involves navigating a tangle of legal rules. It also involves a tricky political calculus because the legislators who hold the power to draw maps often want to protect themselves, business interests or local communities more than ruthlessly help their party.
And when one party moves aggressively to draw lines to help itself win elections — also known as gerrymandering — it runs the risk of pushing its rival party to do the same.
That’s what Trump ended up doing, spurring California voters to replace their map drawn by a nonpartisan commission with one drawn by Democrats to gain five seats. If successful, the move would cancel out the action taken by Texas Republicans. California voters approved that map earlier this month, and if a Republican lawsuit fails to block it, that map giving Democrats more winnable seats will remain in effect even if Texas’ remains stalled.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, posted on X after the Texas ruling, mentioning his Republican counterpart in Texas along with the president.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Republican whose northern California district would be redrawn under the state’s new map, agreed.
“It could very well come out as a net loss for Republicans, honestly when you look at the map, or at the very least, it could end up being a wash,” Kiley said. “But it’s something that never should have happened. It was ill-conceived from the start.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally with Harris County Democrats at the IBEW local 716 union hall in Houston, on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Karen Warren)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally with Harris County Democrats at the IBEW local 716 union hall in Houston, on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Karen Warren)
For Trump, a mix of wins and losses
There’s no guarantee that Tuesday’s ruling on the Texas map will stand. Many lower courts have blocked Trump’s initiatives, only for the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court to put those rulings on hold. Texas Republicans immediately appealed Tuesday’s decision to the high court, too.
Even before Tuesday, Trump’s push for mid-decade redistricting was not playing out as neatly as he had hoped, though he had scored some apparent wins. North Carolina Republicans potentially created another conservative-leaning seat in that battleground state, while Missouri Republicans redrew their congressional map at Trump’s urging to eliminate one Democratic seat. The Missouri plan faces lawsuits and a possible referendum that would force a statewide vote on the matter.
Trump’s push has faltered elsewhere. Republicans in Kansas balked at trying to eliminate the state’s lone swing seat, held by a Democratic congresswoman. Indiana Republicans also refused to redraw their map to eliminate their two Democratic-leaning congressional seats.
After Trump attacked the main Indiana holdout, state Sen. Greg Goode, on social media, he was the victim of a swatting call over the weekend that led to sheriff’s deputies coming to his house.
Trump’s push could have a boomerang effect on Republicans
The bulk of redistricting normally happens once every 10 years, following the release of new population estimates from the U.S. Census. That requires state lawmakers to adjust their legislative lines to make sure every district has roughly the same population. It also opens the door to gerrymandering maps to make it harder for the party out of power to win legislative seats.
Inevitably, redistricting leads to litigation, which can drag on for years and spur mid-decade, court-mandated revisions.
Republicans stood to benefit from these after the last cycle in 2021 because they won state supreme court elections in North Carolina and Ohio in 2022. But some litigation hasn’t gone the GOP’s way. A judge in Utah earlier this month required the state to make one of its four congressional seats Democratic-leaning.
Trump broke with modern political practice by urging a wholesale, mid-decade redraw in red states.
Democrats were in a bad position to respond to Trump’s gambit because more states they control have lines drawn by independent commissions rather than by partisan lawmakers, the legacy of government reform efforts.
But with Newsom’s push to let Democrats draw California’s lines successful, the party is looking to replicate it elsewhere.
Next up may be Virginia, where Democrats recaptured the governor’s office this month and expanded their margins in the Legislature. A Democratic candidate for governor in Colorado has called for a similar measure there. Republicans currently hold 9 of the 19 House seats in those two states.
Overall, Republicans have more to lose if redistricting becomes a purely partisan activity nationally and voters in blue states ditch their nonpartisan commissions to let their preferred party maximize its margins. In the last complete redistricting cycle in 2021, commissions drew 95 House seats that Democrats would have otherwise drawn, and only 13 that Republicans would have drawn.
The State Capitol is seen in Austin, Texas, on June 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
The State Capitol is seen in Austin, Texas, on June 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
Gerrymandering’s unintended consequences
On Tuesday, Republicans were reappraising Trump’s championing of redistricting hardball.
“I think if you look at the basis of this, there was no member of the delegation that was asked our opinion,” Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas told reporters.
Incumbents usually don’t like the idea of radically redrawing districts. It can lead to what political experts call a “dummymander” — spreading the opposing party’s voters so broadly that they end up endangering your own incumbents in a year, like 2026, that is expected to be bad for the party in power.
Incumbents also don’t like losing voters who have supported them or getting wholly new communities drawn into their districts, said Jonathan Cervas, who teaches redistricting at Carnegie Mellon University and has drawn new maps for courts. Democratic lawmakers in Illinois and Maryland have so far resisted mid-decade redraws to pad their majorities in their states, joining their GOP counterparts in Indiana and Kansas.
Cervas said that’s why it was striking to watch Trump push Republicans to dive into mid-decade redistricting.
“The idea they’d go along to get along is basically crazy,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.
A panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday that Texas can’t use the congressional redistricting maps approved in August — citing substantial evidence of racial gerrymandering — thwarting President Donald Trump’s plan to maintain a Republican majority in Washington.
The decision was hailed as a victory by Texas Democrats but political experts said it creates mass chaos and, “If you’re a candidate, you’re in a pickle.”
“It’s confusing for candidates, it’s confusing for voters, it’s confusing for the whole political system,” said University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who ordered the redistricting effort after he received a letter suggesting he do so from Trump’s Department of Justice, issued a statement following the ruling, saying he would swiftly appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texas’ conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason,” Abbott said. “Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during 10 days of hearings. This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict.”
It throws a wrench in the plans of some candidates who have already filed to seek office under the assumption that the new maps would hold. That includes longtime U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, who was drawn out of District 9 and announced recently he would run instead for District 18.
Immediately after the redistricting map was approved in August, Texas Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, filed for Congress in Green’s District 9, presumably assuming that he could win a congressional district that favored GOP voters.
So what happens to the 2026 midterms? Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, ordered Tuesday that the 2026 Congressional election “shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021.”
Candidates who need to change their plans will have to do so quickly. The filing deadline is December 8. “It’s really all up to the Supreme Court now,” Rottinghaus said.
The U.S. Supreme Court is also deliberating a redistricting case out of Louisiana that could result in weakening the Voting Rights Act, the professor pointed out.
“If the Supreme Court says the Voting Rights Act doesn’t exist anymore, then this will go away,” he said. “It’s hard to know what they will do, but they’ve been hinting at that. The court has to make that determination.”
The Supreme Court can take as long as it wants to make a decision on Texas’ redistricting maps but it will likely be pressured by Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton to make an emergency ruling before the December filing deadline, said Nancy Sims, a UH political science lecturer.
“To me, it won’t be solved until the filing deadline,” Sims said. “It’s just chaos. It’s massively chaotic. It’s really challenging for the candidates to know what to do. If you’re Al Green or Briscoe Cain, you’re in a pickle, and your donors are in a pickle. It’s a wait-and-see for a couple of weeks, with a holiday in the middle.”
Green, Cain, and Austin Democrats Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett — whose congressional districts were essentially merged together under the new map — and several other candidates are in a holding pattern, Rottinghaus added, as they wait to see what the Supreme Court does before they change their filing paperwork.
Congressional District 18 candidates Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards, who are facing off in a January 31 runoff, are unaffected since that election is a special-called contest to fill the unexpired term of the late former U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner. But it does produce uncertainty around who the runoff winner faces in the primary and when that election will be.
Menefee said in a statement Tuesday that the federal judge panel “confirmed what we already knew: this Trump-backed map was intentionally drawn to silence Black and Brown voters.”
“I hope the [Supreme] Court stands on the side of the Constitution and protects voters of color instead of letting politicians gut democracy in broad daylight. This moment will define what democracy means in 2025,” he said.
The Supreme Court could delay the primary to May while they’re litigating the map, Rottinghaus said. They’ve done it before.
“That’s why Ted Cruz is the junior senator from Texas,” he said. “In 2012, they pushed the primary off from March to the May deadline. Ted Cruz was way behind but a few months later, he was neck and neck. That pushed it to a runoff and he got the win.”
The three judges who voted to block the maps approved in August — Brown; Judge David Guaderrama, a Barack Obama appointee; and Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee — offered scathing remarks in their ruling toward not just Trump but Abbott and Texas Republicans.
“The justices were very unhappy with Trump’s political involvement in this,” Rottinghaus said. “They basically implied that because the president asked for this to happen, it sullied the whole process in a partisan way that is a prima facie outcome that this is all racially gerrymandered.”
“They’re very vocal about how the Trump administration is being unfair and misleading when it comes to the arguments they have made,” he added. “You have to read this as a full-on rebuke of Donald Trump. They also slap the Legislature and Greg Abbott around a little bit, basically saying that they did what Trump wanted, which is bad enough, but there are also all these mistakes they made procedurally. The outcomes are definitely gerrymandered by race. They’re very critical.”
Brown said in his ruling that “the public perception of this case is that it’s about politics.”
“To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map,” the ruling states.
Tuesday’s decision a huge blow to Republicans who were hoping that the new maps would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts and protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House, Sims said.
“It’s common for a president to lose the midterms,” she said. “The reason they went to this extreme with the mid-decade redistricting in the first place was to help try to shore up the House for the president and the Republican Party. The margins are so thin currently and the way to remedy that was to draw more Republican seats, and that’s what they set out to do. Texas was first in line with our hands up, saying, Yes, sir.”
Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson appears to have a solid hold on the votes he needs to block redistricting, but Gov. Wes Moore has a narrow path to changing the vote.
WTOP’s Kate Ryan reports on how Maryland’s debate is simmering again as the governor calls for a redrawing of the maps ahead of the 2026 elections
Gov. Wes Moore (D) has a difficult, but not insurmountable, path to redraw the state’s eight congressional districts — and it may hinge on the first-term Democratic executive’s ability to win votes in the Senate.
With the House of Delegates apparently on board with the governor, Moore needs to find 24 votes in the 47-member Senate to add Maryland to the list of states redrawing their congressional maps to gain partisan advantage ahead of the 2026 elections. But Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) put his 34-member caucus on record against redistricting on Oct. 28 with a three-page letter outlining a series of arguments against it.
The Moore administration has quietly cast doubt on how much support Ferguson has within his own caucus, and insists the field is constantly shifting. But for now at least, based on interviews with a number of Senate Democrats, Ferguson appears to be on solid footing with a majority of his caucus.
“I think that’s right,” said Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery County), vice chair of the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee, of the current state of affairs.
Kagan said she is generally supportive of the idea of drawing maps that eliminate the last Republican congressional district — the congressional map currently favors Democrats, who hold seven of the state’s eight U.S. House seats.
“If I had a magic wand, I would like an eight-to-zero map,” Kagan said.
But she said the state is “supremely unlikely” to contribute toward a national majority for her party, which has to be weighed against the threat of losing one or possibly two seats to Republicans, making Maryland “detrimental to the cause of winning a Democratic majority.”
“There’s an opportunity cost to this issue, because the time that we’re spending debating district lines should more wisely be spent on jobs, economic development, the climate crisis, civil rights, voting rights, health care, education and our budget challenges,” Kagan said. “There are so many public policy issues in front of us. At some point, this feels like a risky distraction.”
Protesters with the Indivisible Maryland Coalition rally Nov. 7 in the State House hoping to get Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) to support redistricting. (Photo by Nicole Pilsbury/Maryland Matters)
While the Republican Caucus also opposes midcycle redistricting, it is the Democratic caucus — which holds a 34-13 advantage in the Senate, and elected Ferguson to lead the body — that will determine the fate of the issue.
Maryland Matters sought interviews with more than 20 rank-and-file Senate Democrats — the bulk of the caucus. Roughly half agreed to an interview, though some asked to not be named. Others either declined an interview or did not respond to a request for comment.
Ferguson’s support — a broad term that includes senators who are merely deferential to their leader — appears to fall within a range of 20-25 of the Democratic Caucus’ 34 members,
A portion of that support comes from nearly a dozen lawmakers who make up his leadership team, including committee chairs and vice chairs.
“Clearly, the Senate does not have a strong desire to do redistricting,” said Sen. Karen Lewis Young (D-Frederick), who described herself as leaning in support of Ferguson but “keeping an open mind.”
Even those who said they favor midcycle redistricting acknowledge Ferguson’s advantage.
“The caucus members were behind the Senate president with that [Oct. 28] letter,” said Sen. Arthur Ellis (D-Charles). “He didn’t do that on his own, lot of discussions before that.”
But Ellis said events nationally have changed since Ferguson sent that letter three weeks ago.
Democrats, and in many cases their constituents, want to oppose President Donald Trump. But that visceral desire is tempered, for some, by concerns that doing so could backfire and inadvertently give Republicans more congressional seats.
“We have to be very pragmatic and thoughtful as we pursue this,” said Sen. Ben Kramer (D-Montgomery). “I get the emotions that are in play. I understand that there’s a lot of desire to push back on the administration. I’m sure there are places where Maryland can participate in that. I’m just not sure that this issue is one of those where we’re ultimately going to be a player.”
Kramer said he opposes the effort because of the risk of losing seats to Republicans or the courts tossing out new maps.
Ferguson has clear opponents, including Sen. Clarence K. Lam (D-Howard and Anne Arundel), who filed a bill in August calling for midcycle redistricting. Lam declined to comment for this story, but he isn’t alone.
“I’m hoping that we will call a special session to get this done right away,” said Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George’s). “We cannot let Trump continue to do what he’s doing and let Democrats look weak — as though we’re doing nothing.”
Ellis agreed with Muse.
“So to be honest, we’re taking it serious,” Ellis said. “We thought our one seat wasn’t important — our extra one Republican seat — but obviously it is to the national discussion. So a lot of talk, a lot of movement …. I’m not sure what the end result will be, but there’s a lot of discussion going on right now.”
Ellis said he’s hearing from constituents who are “reaching out to me, like: ‘Hey, join California, join the other states who are doing it.’”
“I have to listen to my constituents, and I believe most of my colleagues believe the same, and so we are able to change our mind,” he said. “And if enough members on the caucus, Democratic caucus, change our minds, then it will happen.”
Ellis said he would vote for redistricting if a bill comes to the floor, but he doubts the issue will reach the full Senate.
“If a bill comes on the floor of the Senate, yes, I’ll vote for it,” he said, before adding, “We don’t bring things on the floor, being a super majority, that’s going to fail.”
Moore could decide to call a special session before the legislature is scheduled to convene in mid-January. The governor convened a five-member redistricting advisory commission, led by U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), that held two meetings last week with a third scheduled Tuesday.
If called back into special session, lawmakers will first have to take up any overrides of Moore vetoes, including his veto of a bill creating a commission to study on reparations.
Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee Vice Chair Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery). (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)
In his veto message, Moore said the reparations commission would be redundant — ironic, Ellis said, given Moore’s position on the creation of a redistricting panel.
“So why is the redistricting commission good for this thing that he wants to do now, but when we pass the reparations commission, he says it’s a waste of time?” Ellis asked.
Ellis said he looks forward to being able to work on a redistricting effort.
“I also look forward to override his veto of the reparations commission bill,” he said.
A spokesperson for the governor did not respond to a request for comment for this story. But supporters of redistricting have other levers to pull to bring senators to their side.
Moore last week announced the creation of a campaign slate that would focus on supporting and electing Democratic lawmakers supportive of his agenda. Redistricting was not specifically highlighted, but the timing of the announcement came as his redistricting advisory panel was holding its first meeting, angering Democrats in the House and Senate.
National Democrats are entering the fray, too. In a letter last Monday to the General Assembly, Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-4th) and Jamie Raskin (D-8th) lobbied hard for redistricting.
“We can redistrict to make Maryland House seats more competitive in a way that counters the Trump national steamroller, and we believe such an effort can survive any legal attack,” the Congressmen wrote.
Ellis said a call from Hoyer solidified his position.
“We’re not stiff, unyielding, people. I mean, we can be influenced, and we can change our minds, right?” Ellis said.
Muse said he spoke with the governor’s office about redistricting, and got calls from Hoyer and from Rep. Jim Clyburn (D- S.C.). “I just said that: ‘I’m where you are,’” Muse said.
Ferguson’s letter made much of the potential legal challenges associated with drawing a new map.
A court-drawn map would be an extraordinary, but not without precedent. In 2002, the state’s highest court struck down the state’s legislative districts map with less than a month before the filing deadline for candidates, so the court drew its own map rather than send it back to lawmakers.
The congressional districts approved in 2022 followed a process prescribed by the Maryland Constitution. Because of that, it is not known if the court would feel the same sense of urgency if it struck down a new map.
Unspoken in Ferguson’s letter is the real concern that the court would not redraw the map but send it back to lawmakers with restrictions on how districts are drawn and what can and cannot be considered. Such an order could set an unwanted standard for future redistricting.
Hoyer and Raskin argue that the courts are limited in what they can do.
“While Senator Ferguson is obviously right that there is an element of uncertainty in all litigation, there are some well-established doctrines that courts follow out of deference to the legislature’s constitutional power over redistricting,” Hoyer and Raskin wrote. “Chief among these is the principle that, when a court strikes down a newly elected map as unlawful, the legislature must be afforded a reasonable opportunity to remedy the violation.”
Muse agreed, saying: “Whatever the judges do, we’re the Senate, and we write the laws.”
Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George’s) during a Feb. 28 news conference. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)
Moore’s redistricting push comes in response to President Donald Trump’s push to get Republican-led states to redistrict early, with the goal of drawing more GOP-friendly districts, easing the party’s effort to retain its hold on the House of Representatives in 2026.
Trump succeeded in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott signed a new map into law in August. But California voters this month approved a new map that has the potential to cancel any gains in Texas.
But Republicans have also redrawn maps in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Notably, court challenges are still underway in many red states.
Maryland has only the one seat in GOP hands that it could try to flip, the Eastern Shore-based 1st District held by Republican Andy Harris. Some argue the 6th District, which encompasses part of Montgomery County and the Western Maryland panhandle, is a competitive district. That seat is held by Democratic Rep. April McClain Delaney.
Sen. Charles E. Sydnor III (D-Baltimore County) said that anger from registered Republicans, who are outnumbered 2-1 by registered Democrats in Maryland, would be justified, if the state were to redraw its maps so that all eight districts lean left.
Sydnor said he’s sympathetic because he fought gerrymandering in his own county, after the county council packed voters of color into two majority-Black districts, which a court later overturned, determining that the map diluted the Black vote.
“I’m particularly sensitive to the feeling of one attempting to disenfranchise you. So, I don’t think it’s the right answer,” Sydnor said of midcycle redistricting.
By comparison, Sen. Mary-Dulany James (D-Harford) said that if a redistricting bill reached the floor in the Senate, her vote would depend on the map in front of her. She believes her district in Harford County, District 34, would be better off in a congressional district of Western Shore counties around Baltimore, not lumped in with the Eastern Shore, as it is today.
“I want to protect Harford County,” James said. “Harford County has been thrown about, and District 34 has been thrown about, in various maps over the years.”
The 1st District, in yellow, is the only one currently held by a Republican in Maryland’s congressional delegation. (Screenshot)Overall though, James said she thinks redistricting is risky, and “the president of the senate has put his finger on the really great challenges facing Maryland if we were to consider redistricting.”
Other Senate Democrats told Maryland Matters they have yet to make up their minds, including Sen. Ben Brooks (D- Baltimore County).
“Are we talking about something that’s going to make a major difference in Maryland? Or are we talking about something that’s going to make an impact statement nationwide? That’s the conundrum,” Brooks said.
Brooks said he hears varying opinions from his constituents, but plenty of people are in favor, largely because they see Trump’s policies as egregious.
“Because of what’s going on now nationally — the shutdown, even the tearing down of the East Wing. It’s got a lot of people exercised,” Brooks said. “The arresting people who are cutting grass, at Home Depot or at McDonald’s. … All of those things weigh heavily on fairness in the minds of people.”
As legislators weigh their decision, they also must consider the political leanings of their district.
In Anne Arundel County, Stephen A. Tillett, a minister, is challenging Senate Finance Chair Sen. Pamela Beidle in next year’s Democratic primary. Tillett was a featured speaker at a recent State House rally demanding Ferguson pass a redistricting bill.
Sen. Nick Charles (D-Prince George’s) said his constituents seem to broadly support redistricting, so he would feel comfortable voting for it. But he is also weighing the fact that the move could put Democrats in danger of losing a seat or two in the House.
“I can vote for it and the people in my district would love it,” Charles said. “But there’s possibilities that things could happen.”
SALT LAKE CITY — The most recent Democrat to represent Utah in Congress announced Thursday his bid to return to Washington after a judge adopted a new congressional map creating a heavily Democratic-leaning district in the state.
Former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams will run in a new district centered on Salt Lake County, Utah’s population center and an island of Democratic support in an otherwise red state. He was once the county’s mayor, then its state senator, and represented much of the area within his previous congressional district from 2019 to 2021.
The new district is the result of a legal battle in which a judge struck down the map adopted after the 2020 census because the Republican-led Legislature had bypassed standards established by voters to ensure districts don’t deliberately favor a party, a practice known as gerrymandering. Late Monday, Judge Dianna Gibson again rejected a revised map drawn by lawmakers and adopted one from voting rights groups who were plaintiffs in the case.
With the ruling, Democrats are all but certain to flip a seat in Utah, where Republicans currently hold all four U.S. House districts.
Nationally, Democrats need to net three House seats next year to wrest control of the chamber from the GOP and impede President Donald Trump’s agenda. Several Republican-led states have responded to calls from Trump to add winnable seats for the party through mid-decade redistricting. But Democrats have been fighting back to try to offset GOP gains.
McAdams, a moderate Democrat, could face a full slate of candidates to his political left who see an opportunity for Utah to send a more progressive politician to Capitol Hill. While in Congress, he was a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of centrist Democrats viewed widely as the party’s most conservative House members.
State Sen. Kathleen Riebe also launched a bid for the seat this week. In her announcement, the former teacher pledged to be a strong voice for Democrats in Congress and an advocate for working families. She served on the Utah Board of Education from 2017 to 2018 and has been in the state Senate since 2019.
Competition is good for democracy, McAdams told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. But he argued his experience and deep connections in the community make him the right person to represent the Salt Lake City area.
McAdams said he thinks Washington under Trump is broken and needs leaders who have shown they can stand up to the Republican president. He went on to criticize Trump for sending troops into cities, splitting apart immigrant families and prosecuting his political opponents.
“I think people know me. I am somebody who brings people together to get stuff done, but I’m also somebody who stands for what I believe in, and I’m not afraid to stand alone if that’s what’s required,” McAdams said, noting he voted to impeach Trump in 2019 despite knowing it could cost him reelection.
The following year, McAdams lost his reelection bid to former NFL player Burgess Owens, a Republican, by less than a percentage point. Owens was reelected in 2022, after the district was reconfigured to include more rural areas, and again in 2024.
During his 2018 campaign, McAdams described having anti-abortion views. He said he had deep personal beliefs about the sanctity of life but that decisions about terminating a pregnancy should be made by a woman in consultation with her doctors, family and faith counselors.
The former congressman said Thursday that the reality across the country has since changed dramatically, with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“We’re seeing women denied access to health care all across the country, even leading to preventable deaths in several tragic cases,” McAdams said. “Because of that, I would vote to restore a woman’s right to choose and vote to codify Roe.”
He and Riebe are running in the new 1st Congressional District for the seat held by Republican Blake Moore. District lines and numbering changed significantly under the new map, meaning Moore’s northern Utah district is geographically very different from the new 1st District.
Matt Lusty, a spokesperson for Moore’s campaign, said the congressman will run again for one of Utah’s four seats.
Democratic state Sen. Nate Blouin told the AP on Thursday that he, too, is “leaning strongly towards” running in the new 1st District. Blouin said voters in Salt Lake County deserve a progressive voice and have “a generational opportunity to rewrite Utah’s narrative.”
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Associated Press writer Mead Gruver contributed from Fort Collins, Colorado.
