After a month of losses and setbacks in his plan to push Republicans to rig congressional districts to give themselves extra seats, President Donald Trump suffered a massive blow as a three-judge panel, including a judge he himself appointed, struck down Texas’s new congressional districts as an illegal racial gerrymander.
The Texas redistricting was the first salvo in the rush around the country to redraw congressional lines in the middle of the decade, with Republicans in the Lone Star State pushing a new map that adds way more Republican voters to five Democratic-held congressional districts around Austin, Dallas, Houston, and South Texas. Democratic lawmakers in the state staged a protest by fleeing across state lines for around two weeks, and California lawmakers and voters retaliated by passing their own plan to draw out five Republican districts there.
While the decision voiding the Texas map and restoring the five chopped-up Democratic seats is likely to face additional litigation, the move triggered a firestorm on social media, with many commenters mocking the GOP’s misfortune and speculating whether Trump’s whole project was worth it in the first place.
“Old Don bout to be BIG MAD! I couldn’t be happier for he and his flunky, Abbott,” wrote Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX).
“Wow — Texas’ new gerrymander map just struck down,” wrote Jaron Zhou, political director at the betting platform Kalshi. “Texas is now at 88% of redistricting, below California and Virginia. If this holds, it could be one of the biggest self-owns from the GOP, given California has already redrawn its map in response.”
“Reading the opinion, it seems like the Trump Admin really screwed up here,” wrote engineer and urbanism activist Matt Spence. “They told the Texas governor *explicitly* to redraw majority-minority districts. That provides potential grounds for striking down the maps as a racial gerrymander. All the more reason that Democrats and Republicans should join together and ban gerrymandering nationwide. This whole circus is embarrassing and corrosive.”
One of the greatest ironies, noted some commenters, is that initially, California lawmakers originally planned to make their Democratic gerrymander legally contingent on Texas’ Republican gerrymander going forward — but the version of the ballot proposition that passed didn’t include that requirement.
“Since everyone is asking: No, this doesn’t undo #Prop50,” wrote Redistricting Partners owner Paul Mitchell. “The trigger language was removed in the legislative process as it was clear that TX was redistricting. So, even if their map is invalidated/postponed, the Prop 50 maps stay in place.”
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