Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar warns {that a} transfer to redraw Texas congressional districts will undermine democracy within the Lone Star State and past.
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Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar.(Invoice Clark / CQ-Roll Name, Inc by way of Getty Photographs)
President Trump and his Republican cronies are conscious that their “One Massive Lovely Invoice” is polling miserably with an voters that, by most accounts, actually hates it when the federal government guts Medicaid and anti-hunger applications so as to fund tax cuts for billionaires. The unpopularity of the GOP’s signature legislative effort might spell catastrophe for the occasion’s efforts to take care of its slender management of the US Home within the 2026 midterms. However Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar (D-TX) warns that the president and his GOP allies have developed a contingency plan to keep away from voter accountability subsequent yr—and it facilities across the Lone Star state.
Trump has pressured Texas officers to maneuver quickly—as quickly as subsequent week—to redraw congressional district traces to dramatically cut back the variety of Democratic-leaning constituencies within the state. If the president’s scheme succeeds, Democrats might lose as many as 5 of the seats they now maintain in Texas.
Casar spoke to The Nation about what’s at stake for voting rights in Texas—the place, as he notes, GOP gerrymandering is already extreme: “Proper now, it’s 12 Democrats and 35 Republicans, with one emptiness, in a state that (Republican Senator) Ted Cruz couldn’t even get 51 p.c of the vote in in 2018.” Casar warns that if Republicans get away with radically redrawing Texas congressional districts to favor the GOP and shield Trump much more, this mannequin for assaulting voting rights will rapidly transfer to different purple states.
How massive a menace to American democracy and voting rights is Trump’s Texas scheme?
This can be a five-alarm hearth for voting rights and democracy throughout all the nation. In my opinion, that is the most important menace to our democracy proper now that no person’s speaking about.
This isn’t nearly anybody election. Texas already has a deeply and illegally racially gerrymandered congressional map. Donald Trump is demanding to place that racially gerrymandered map on steroids.
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There’s been appreciable dialogue about whether or not Trump and the Republicans would attempt to discover some option to mess with the 2026 election cycle. Why is he performing now?
Trump simply bought accomplished pushing by way of a invoice to kick 15 million People off their healthcare, all to pay for billionaire tax cuts. He is aware of that’s deeply unpopular. He doesn’t wish to be held accountable for that. Nor does he need himself and his household to be held accountable for his or her corrupt and unlawful enterprise dealings.
If he can’t win the election (beneath current maps), he desires to rig the foundations of the election by suppressing the vote of hundreds of thousands of Texas voters of colour and working-class Texans—by radically gerrymandering a map in a method that no person has seen earlier than, after which getting the Supreme Courtroom to rubber-stamp it at nighttime to permit for even additional gerrymandering and voter suppression past Texas
What you’re saying is that the redrawing of congressional district maps in Texas might develop into a template for creating all types of recent Home seats that shall be gerrymandered to favor the Republicans. If the Republicans succeed, they may save GOP management of Congress, even when most voters wish to finish that management.
That’s proper. What they’re speaking about doing in Texas is mainly (packing Democratic voters right into a handful of districts) or splitting them up illegally into little shards and thereby diluting their voting energy.
Trump desires to take us again to pre-1965 on Medicaid. And, now, he desires to take us to pre-1965 on voting rights. (Ed. observe: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is meant to protect towards racial discrimination in voting. Although its powers have been severely undermined by the conservative majority on the US Supreme Courtroom, some protections stay, significantly towards the dilution of voting rights for traditionally underrepresented communities. Casar’s worry, and that of many others, is that the excessive court docket may enable Texas to additional erode these protections.)
This can be a departure from previous practices, even for Republicans, isn’t it?
Sure. Often there’s some limits on craven right-wing gerrymandering in purple states. Often, they’re restricted by Republican congressional incumbents wanting their districts to remain typically the identical, so they don’t seem to be too susceptible in elections. And, additionally, whereas a lot of the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, the Republicans haven’t been keen to fully ignore it.
These have been the 2 limits on probably the most excessive types of racial, right-wing gerrymandering. Trump goes “no limits.” He’s saying, “Screw even the neighborhoods and districts of Republican members of Congress. Screw each a part of the Voting Rights Act.” Trump is ignoring any half that’s left of the Voting Rights Act and saying that that is about Trump’s safety first. And that’s what we’re going to get subsequent week within the Texas legislative session. And the query is: Will Republicans lastly begin discovering a spine when Trump is operating over their very own districts and electoral futures? And can Texas Democrats mobilize, and can Democrats mobilize nationwide, as a result of this can be a nationwide voting rights problem?
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It seems like Trump desires to maneuver quick on this—to get maps redrawn effectively earlier than the 2026 marketing campaign ramps up.
That is all about Trump wanting to stop any type of accountability for himself.
As we realized in 2018, when there was a Democratic wave through the first Trump administration, it created a chance for Home Democrats to analyze Trump’s corruption and to begin reining in a few of Trump’s worst abuses. Trump doesn’t need that to occur once more. So he’s threatening Texas Republican members of Congress, and Republican legislators, and telling them to mess up their very own districts, suppress their very own voters, have interaction on this loopy, unprecedented stage of gerrymandering, and, in the end, shatter what stays of the Voting Rights Act, all to learn Trump. These Texas Republicans need to resolve whether or not to characterize the pursuits of their voters and their very own electoral pursuits, or whether or not they’re simply Trump’s water boys.
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Effectively, what we now have seen in an terrible lot of circumstances, Congressman…
I do know, they usually haven’t any spine and simply resolve to be waterboys.
If Republicans in Congress and the legislatures associate with this, that would considerably undermine Democratic prospects in 2026.
The 2 key assumptions which have held collectively the concept we now have large alternatives in 2026 are: One, that Trump wouldn’t run over his personal Republican incumbents. And, two, that Part Two of the Voting Rights Act would maintain.
Trump is difficult these assumptions. He’s saying that he doesn’t care if he threatens, or makes extra susceptible, his personal Republican members.
And, two, (Trump and the Republicans) are saying they’re keen to go to unprecedented lengths to cut up communities of curiosity beneath the Voting Rights Act.
If Trump does these two issues, and does them efficiently, then, you’re proper, we might find yourself with a particularly unfair and rigged election system in 2026. And, if we don’t struggle again, with the whole lot we’ve bought, if we don’t acknowledge that this can be a five-alarm hearth, we’re giving Trump an open lane to do these two issues.
John Nichols
John Nichols is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on matters starting from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Occasion to analyses of US and international media methods. His newest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Instances bestseller It is OK to Be Indignant About Capitalism.
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