WaPo Editorial Board goes full denialism: What's happening in the Lone Star State is not a threat to democracy.

[Celerity]

WTF

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/20/texas-gerrymander-redistricting-midterms-backfire/

https://archive.ph/N9Tx9



Texas Republicans forged ahead Wednesday with their plan to prematurely redraw the state’s congressional map. Partisan gerrymandering is never pretty, no matter which side is doing it, but hold the apocalyptic warnings about the end of democracy. Republicans’ gambit could well prove shortsighted.

With Democrats back after fleeing the state for weeks, members of the Texas House voted along party lines to redraw the state’s congressional districts six years early. Typically, they wait until after the census provides new data to guide their changes, but Texas is breaking that norm after the Justice Department told the state some of its current districts might be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

This Justice Department notice serves President Donald Trump’s political agenda for the 2026 midterm elections, but that does not mean it’s frivolous. The Supreme Court could soon prohibit any racial considerations in the redistricting process.

Whatever the finer points of the law, it is indisputable that Republicans are exploiting that opening to make Texas’s districts more favorable to their party, which holds 25 of 38 seats in the state’s delegation to the House of Representatives. They are creating five new districts in territory Trump won by double digits last year.

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