The redistricting amendment passed by the voters in 2010 bars the drawing of lines "to favor a political party for partisan advantage." But that will be meaningless unless enforced by Florida courts.
There was a massive Cloudflare outage going on. My school’s services were partially affected, as was a wiki I’m active on (I’d rather not name which for privacy reasons.)
Garrett Mason is a "graduate" of Pensacola Christian College, a far-right institution that indoctrinates its students in Christian extremism. It's for people who think Liberty University is too liberal. I put graduate in quotes because PCC was unaccredited when Mason was there. Unsurprisingly, Mason is very conservative and would be pretty easy to defeat.
Cinde Warmington was a weak candidate last year, and she wouldn't do any better this time. Her pro-opioid lobbying is a massive albatross around her neck. I've seen rumors that state senator Donovan Fenton of Keene might run, and he'd be the better candidate.
Trump v DeSantis proxy war likely back on in the state CFO (treasurer) race next year. DeSantis appointed Blaise Ingoglia (after waiting forever for whatever reason) to succeed Jimmy Patronis after the latter won the special to succeed Gaetz. Ingoglia is a former state party chair who Trump thought was not loyal enough 2016 and ofc endorsed DeSantis in 2024. Trump originally, openly encouraged a primary v Joe Gruters, who succeeded as party chair, but then Gruters slotted in as full RNC chair after Whatley left for the NC senate campaign. Seemed like the proxy war was over, but now Rick Scott is endorsed Kevin Steele, and Trump is speculated to do so soon. Steele is an incredibly stupid state rep who's the original sponsor on a constitutional amendment referendum to get rid of nearly all residential property taxes (minus public school funding) and another forcing public universities to name a road after Charlie Kirk to keep state funding.
Holy hell, the Manhattan Institute. I didn't know they still existed. I was in their old headquarters? Years and years ago. Creepy place with a fallout shelter in the basement.
This was a particularly creepy fallout shelter. We're talking one single solitary dust covers children's desk, a swinging light. It was just missing an actual demon hiding in the corner. I also remember shotgun shells in the kitchen.
Ok, the shotgun shells are really weird. But when I was growing up, literally every lobby and basement on West End Avenue had old "Fallout Shelter" signs on it.
are there? i don't want to sound dismissive, but if you're polling 40 points behind, you're basically DOA unless there's a super good, Cuomo rapist level scandal at large
I would agree if like michael said, it didn't come at the expense of the rest of the state. Southern tier could use some love, and the city is often left behind, plus the capital region has so many state office buildings. Kathy has lavished funds on buffalo, no such luck for major metros in central new york or elsewhere
funny because this is exactly what makes her more effective in Albany compared to Cuomo or many of her predecessors; she came from outside of the downstate machine.
For the third time once again, no. Larry Summers was not "supposed to lead Project 2029." It is led by Andrei Cherny at the Democracy Journal. At most, he was going to be CAP's internal coordinator on their own efforts (and around economic policy only).
Project 2029 needs to be led by people like Chris Murphy, who are both economically progressive and who understand how dangerous the Trump Administration is to democracy and the rule of law. Larry Summers, and people like him, shouldn't be anywhere near it.
I don't think we need to be worrying about "Project 2029" (nevermind how weird and vaguely gross using the P2025 branding is) until at least after the midterms.
feels like this is omitting context, a lot of it, in fact. There is no official "Project 2029", because we currently have no Democratic candidates seeking the appropriate office. it's just one think tank's *idea* of what a Project 2029 *might* look like.
And the reporting suggests, pretty clearly, that Summers was going to be involved, but not as a "leader", merely someone present on the committee. But again... CAP =/= actual democratic platform and messaging.
Who knows what manipulation they are trying to do? I'd suggest ignoring them from now on, unless we want to try to analyze what kind of underhanded thing they're attempting to do for Republicans.
janet is the definition of generic, and i mean that either way it can be taken. End of the day either candidate isn't going to hit with the carpetbagger claims like sara gideon did five years ago
From what I have read about the 2020 Maine Senate Race, the DSCC is the main contributor. Endorsing Gideon’s campaign early on and well before the primary effectively killed any momentum with Gideon’s campaign and any ability for her to run a campaign independent of the influence by establishment Democrats.
Gideon was always going to win the primary since she had the entire state establishment, unions and "the groups" except environmental and leftist ones lined up behind her. There was no major rival for the DSCC to push out.
She won her last race with only 51% of the vote and is much less popular now. She's very beatable, as long as we land a candidate who is not literally tattooed in controversy.
I understand the fears that if elected, he could turn into some sort of nazi and start supporting policies, like having roving gestapo mobs disappearing US citizens and having some of them killed in custody....
There's a Democrat and a Republican named Gene Ric, and both Rics refuse to run for office despite favourable polls and constant requests from their parties.
If republicans were willing to make a credit deal, the shutdown either wouldn't have happened at all or would have ended sooner. They would have done it sooner in the year, too, so it would have avoided 2026 insurance prices from going up.
Would prices even go down now, if they did a deal? I assume the answer is no, but I don't know. If that is correct, then republicans are already paying the political price for a lack of a deal and have little incentive to create one now.
GOP senators, in a recent closed-door lunch, noted that many of their health care ideas left out of the “big, beautiful bill” wouldn’t comply with the Senate’s strict rules for what can be included under reconciliation, according to one attendee granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.
Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The decision comes 10 days into the monthlong period when candidates can sign up for the March primary. The filing deadline is Dec. 8.
If this holds and Missouri blocks its new map, this whole redistricting gambit will have left republicans in a worse position than if they had done nothing.
And they chose to advance a map that has now been adjudicated to be illegal three months before that filing deadline, that's not the courts' (or the plaintiffs') fault.
No. Missouri and North Carolina rigged their maps and those are likely to stay due to the federal judges overseeing the states (as well as the GOP controlled state courts here in NC). So unless those maps are struck down too, Prop 50 is still a go.
Florida is still trying to squeeze extra seats out of their gerrymandered maps too, no telling whether the meathead and the state FL GOP will look at the setback in TX and say "nah, too much trouble."
Dhillon insisted that, to address constitutional concerns, Texas had to dismantle minority coalition districts. The court found the directive illegible, legally unsupported, factually inaccurate and focused on race in ways that were constitutionally impermissible.
“It’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors,” the judges wrote. “Indeed, even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General — who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration — describe the DOJ Letter as ‘legally unsound,’ ‘baseless,’ ‘erroneous,’ ‘ham-fisted,’ and ‘a mess.’”
Two more special elections in Minnesota for HD 47A & HD 64A. Both democratic seats vacated by women elected to higher office. 47A's Amanda Hemmingson-Jaeger was elected to the state senate, and Kaohly Her was elected mayor of St. Paul.
The primary (if needed) will be December 16th
The general will be January 27th.
Both districts are highly democratic, so it expected that the house will stay 67-67.
Scoop: @HarrisonJaime is launching what he calls a 7-figure battle plan to boost Dems in rural areas in 2026 races. His working theory is this cycle will be like 2006, when Dems won in red places. His targets, plus an early ad he has hitting @NancyMace
It would be nice to invest in rural areas more and reap the benefits, but over the last 20 years Democratic performance in most rurals,which was weak then, has cratered even further to the point that it can't be dismissed as just due to temporary factors or something that can be reversed easily. (The flip side of this is that nowadays we win lots of suburbs and exurbs that even in 2006 we didn't win.)
Still, just reducing the margin of rural defeat would be helpful, even decisive, in a number of states and districts. Not sure what Harrison's plan is, though hopefully it works better than whatever rural strategy the DNC had when he was chair.
The rurals are "where they are" because of a multi-decade, multi-domain, coordinated effort across political, religious, cultural and media spaces to get them voting they way they do. A single sector effort (a political party making a 7 figure spend for one cycle) is not going to unbake this cake. We're looking at a multidecade project.
I'd be up for more strategic rural investment. State house of senate districts with low minority turnout or with small colleges in them with low turnout that sort of thing and go from there if it works.
Rural Alaska could be a particular area of investment with large potential upsides. While a huge chunk of the state lives in or around Anchorage, there is a large indigenous population in rural Alaska. If we could increase their turnout or win over more of them in our column it could be enough to become more competitive in the state.
Alaska gets 2 senators just like every state, so that could be an enormous boon.
in defense of Harrison as DNC chair, this is something he spoke about as critically important, and clearly wanted to do. My understanding is that the Biden WH had a pretty tight leash on what he did as DNC chair. I was a DNC member.
People often confuse the governments of City of Miami with Miami Dade County. City of Miami has been a Rep stronghold while Miami Dade has a two term mayor who is a Democrat. FYI.
However, the mayor of Miami-Dade County was also Republican for 16 years from 2004 to when the incumbent Cava flipped it in 2020. (Republicans Carlos Alvarez and Carlos Gimenez, who now serves in Congress, held it).
Rep. Clay Higgins was the only no vote for the Epstein files. His response was crap too — he claimed they weren’t protecting “people who did nothing wrong” in the files.
I mention this because I’ll be shocked if he does not receive a primary challenge over this. The GOP is notoriously petty regarding primaries.
I'm disappointed that all the NC House Republicans voted for it. I was looking forward to Moore, Foxx or Harris getting bludgeoned on "protecting the pedo in the Oval Office" by voting against it.
"I have been a principled “NO” on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Not by my vote. The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans. If the Senate amends the bill to properly address privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated, then I will vote for that bill when it comes back to the House."
It mirrors concerns shared by Mike Johnson, who, according to CBS news, says the bill "does not do enough to protect victims and is written in such a way that could require the release of child sexual abuse material, information exposing whistleblowers or other material about investigative sources and methods." https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/epstein-files-vote-2025/#post-update-5e939fe4
Wasn't this Trump's stance until a day ago? I imagine there will be more heat on the Republicans who brought the discharge petition to the floor in the first place, like Boebert and Mace. Massie and MTG are already in the crosshairs after all.
IL-4: Despite denying purposefully installing his chief of staff as his successor, Rep. Chuy Garcia was in fact the first signature on her petition for Congress, Politico reports.
Like, no one cares that García decided to retire due to health/family concerns (that's what his defenders are trying to make it about)! It's that he colluded to protect his chief of staff from a competitive primary! And fairly obviously so, it's not like this is a new tactic.
I'm just shocked people are trying to defend this. What part of this is remotely OK? Why even have primaries if this is what they're going to do? (To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if there are Dems who are against the existence of a primary process in general.)
You don't have to defend it to see it as a venial sin. So much worse has happened in IL politics. As Brad Warren points out, this isn't our first rodeo with this kind of thing--when Bill Lipinski retired from Congress *after* the primary, the party appointed his son who didn't live in Illinois at the time.
Meanwhile, Rahm Emanuel is on some sort of comeback tour, even after he covered up the murder of an unarmed Black teenager. Our former House Speaker is going to jail. The former head of the Finance Committee in the Chicago City Council (the most powerful committee) is in jail. 2500 electeds in IL have gone to jail in the past 40 years. I could go on.
Patty Garcia can be defeated in 2028. MGP can take her outrage (which she never directs at the donor class) and redirect it to something relevant to her constituents. Everyone should release the grasp on their pearls and focus on winning majorities.
I'm sorry, but "it happened before" and "there are worse problems" aren't exactly moving arguments to me. And neither of them make this remotely OK. My chief concern with what Chuy did is, given the attention given to it by the press, other Democrats are going to try it next. Sure it's just Chuy now, but what happens if this becomes more normal, even commonplace? What if other House Dems start retiring at the last second to clear the field for their chosen successor? Will primaries even mean anything anymore at that point?
Selective outrage doesn't suit you. Where were you when Torricelli dropped out just before the election and had to be replaced by Lautenberg? No primary there.
Nobody kept other candidates from filing before Chuy announced his retirement. If Patty Garcia is lousy, she'll be the Michael Flanagan of the 4th District. Anyone who's upset about this can run as an independent in the general. Problem solved.
Challenging an incumbent is far different than running in an open primary. I don’t buy that argument either. And again, it wasn’t right in the past when it was done, and it isn’t right now.
In other words, you don’t line up this number of electeds on such short notice without some level of pre-planning. It was an organized handover no matter what he’s saying
Florida:
The House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting is expected to meet for the first time next month.
The House posted an authorized time for the committee to meet on Thursday, December 4.
https://www.wctv.tv/2025/11/17/redistricting-committee-expected-meet-december/
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/florida-lawmakers-schedule-launch-for-mid-decade-gop-gerrymander/
The redistricting amendment passed by the voters in 2010 bars the drawing of lines "to favor a political party for partisan advantage." But that will be meaningless unless enforced by Florida courts.
RDS and FL Rs are obedient when TACO demands they redraw their districts to keep a GOP House majority. Dummymander potential?
RDS=?
Ron DeSantis. (It's amazing how much of a non-entity he's become in the past couple years.)
Has anyone else had issues with DRA this morning? It's been off and on for me for the past hour, but mostly off.
What is DRA?
Dave's Redistricting App. It's the web application that people here use to make the redistricting maps that are posted here.
Not just here...it's renowned across the political industry as an exceptional map-building tool.
There was a massive Cloudflare outage going on. My school’s services were partially affected, as was a wiki I’m active on (I’d rather not name which for privacy reasons.)
My school's internet has been sporadically out for a week or so, yet ironically came back today.
A few notes about the digest entries:
Garrett Mason is a "graduate" of Pensacola Christian College, a far-right institution that indoctrinates its students in Christian extremism. It's for people who think Liberty University is too liberal. I put graduate in quotes because PCC was unaccredited when Mason was there. Unsurprisingly, Mason is very conservative and would be pretty easy to defeat.
Cinde Warmington was a weak candidate last year, and she wouldn't do any better this time. Her pro-opioid lobbying is a massive albatross around her neck. I've seen rumors that state senator Donovan Fenton of Keene might run, and he'd be the better candidate.
What about former state senator and 2022 nominee Tom Sherman for governor?
He'd be a fine option.
Never heard of it before, but it's another university precinct you can spot, like Liberty University
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/us/elections/2024-election-map-precinct-results.html
NY-08: Ossé, not Osse :)
Trump v DeSantis proxy war likely back on in the state CFO (treasurer) race next year. DeSantis appointed Blaise Ingoglia (after waiting forever for whatever reason) to succeed Jimmy Patronis after the latter won the special to succeed Gaetz. Ingoglia is a former state party chair who Trump thought was not loyal enough 2016 and ofc endorsed DeSantis in 2024. Trump originally, openly encouraged a primary v Joe Gruters, who succeeded as party chair, but then Gruters slotted in as full RNC chair after Whatley left for the NC senate campaign. Seemed like the proxy war was over, but now Rick Scott is endorsed Kevin Steele, and Trump is speculated to do so soon. Steele is an incredibly stupid state rep who's the original sponsor on a constitutional amendment referendum to get rid of nearly all residential property taxes (minus public school funding) and another forcing public universities to name a road after Charlie Kirk to keep state funding.
https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/11/18/pasco-republican-kevin-steele-to-take-on-blaise-ingoglia-in-gop-race-for-cfo/
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/18/florida-steele-cfo-desantis-trump-scott-00655582
Siena poll | 11/10-11/12 RV
New York Governor
🟦Kathy Hochul 52%
🟥Elise Stefanik 32%
Someone else 2%
Don’t know/refused 14%
—
New York Governor Democratic primary
Kathy Hochul 56%
Antonio Delgado 16%
Someone else 3%
Don’t know/refused 25%
https://t.co/92C1u7oRMR
Compare this with the fake polls. Two parallel universes.
Polls of NY-Gov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_New_York_gubernatorial_election#Polling_3
Siena has polled four times, finding Hochul +23, +14, +25, +20. There are six other polls, all from GOP affiliated groups:
Grayhouse (R): Hochul +6, and then +5
co/efficient (R): Hochul +1
Harper (R): Hochul +11
J.L Partners (R): Hochul +3
Manhattan Institute (R): Stefanik +1 LMAO
2026 is going to be a tremendous year for fake polls, I can feel it.
Holy hell, the Manhattan Institute. I didn't know they still existed. I was in their old headquarters? Years and years ago. Creepy place with a fallout shelter in the basement.
Tipped, but every building dating back to the 1950s or earlier had "fallout shelter" signs in their lobby and basement.
This was a particularly creepy fallout shelter. We're talking one single solitary dust covers children's desk, a swinging light. It was just missing an actual demon hiding in the corner. I also remember shotgun shells in the kitchen.
Ok, the shotgun shells are really weird. But when I was growing up, literally every lobby and basement on West End Avenue had old "Fallout Shelter" signs on it.
Did Trump even try to mention WES in this years election? He won’t touch the losers with a 10 foot pole.
I bet Elise will get the same treatment next October.
100% - he'll abandon her so fast it'll make your head spin
Like I've been saying all along...she is in no danger next year, barring some massive scandal or profound change in the current political environment.
Now this seems more based in reality.
i wish delgado would knock her off, just to finally remove the western new york focus emanating out of the gov office
That's not a big objection I have. There are much better reasons to oppose Hochul.
are there? i don't want to sound dismissive, but if you're polling 40 points behind, you're basically DOA unless there's a super good, Cuomo rapist level scandal at large
Yes, there are. I'm not saying her defeat in a primary is likely. Why are you always unnecessarily confrontational?
because you say things I have questions about
michael I agree with you, that is the one that just popped to the top of my head.
She's the first Governor from outside of NYC or Westchester in decades and decades. Maybe western NY could use a little focus.
I actually agree with this, but not to the expense of the needs of other parts of the state.
I would agree if like michael said, it didn't come at the expense of the rest of the state. Southern tier could use some love, and the city is often left behind, plus the capital region has so many state office buildings. Kathy has lavished funds on buffalo, no such luck for major metros in central new york or elsewhere
funny because this is exactly what makes her more effective in Albany compared to Cuomo or many of her predecessors; she came from outside of the downstate machine.
I'm not advocating for a governor from new york city, lord no, i'm just tired of her. Doesn't mean I will not rejoice in her trouncing stefanik
what does you disliking Hochul have to do with where she's from lmao? what?
Hochul will cruise to reelection, I'm not sure how one could construct an argument otherwise
If Elise Stefanik does worse next year than Lee Zeldin did back in 2022, then she might not even be able to get back to the House in 2028.
Sounds like Governor Hochul could win re-election by a wider margin than back in 2022 thanks to Elise Stefanik.
Also, not being 2022 will help immensely as well.
Indeed!
"WaPo confirms our Friday scoop about Summers & CAP's Project 2029, but doesn't say "the Prospect first reported this," as usual. https://prospect.org/2025/11/14/epstein-confidant-larry-summers-guiding-democrats-project-2029/
WaPo also omits: the housing paper CAP released that they got the exclusive on was supposed to have Summers' name on it."
https://x.com/ddayen/status/1990444843290735092
Summers was supposed to lead Project 2029.
For the third time once again, no. Larry Summers was not "supposed to lead Project 2029." It is led by Andrei Cherny at the Democracy Journal. At most, he was going to be CAP's internal coordinator on their own efforts (and around economic policy only).
What support do you have for the idea that Summers was going to lead Project 2029?
WaPo and American Prospect report that he was going to lead the economic part of Project 2029, arguably the main part.
So, not the lead of Project 2029?
Project 2029 needs to be led by people like Chris Murphy, who are both economically progressive and who understand how dangerous the Trump Administration is to democracy and the rule of law. Larry Summers, and people like him, shouldn't be anywhere near it.
I think if should be led by an expert team of both progressives and abundists not failed small government neoliberals like Summers.
Chris Murphy is an ideologue not an expert. He's one of my favorite dems.
I don't think we need to be worrying about "Project 2029" (nevermind how weird and vaguely gross using the P2025 branding is) until at least after the midterms.
feels like this is omitting context, a lot of it, in fact. There is no official "Project 2029", because we currently have no Democratic candidates seeking the appropriate office. it's just one think tank's *idea* of what a Project 2029 *might* look like.
And the reporting suggests, pretty clearly, that Summers was going to be involved, but not as a "leader", merely someone present on the committee. But again... CAP =/= actual democratic platform and messaging.
2026 Maine Senate Poll
🔵 Generic Democrat - 49%
🔴 Susan Collins (Inc) - 41%
Cygnal (🔴)
600 Likely Voters
11/10-11/11
Unfortunately both Democrats in the race are very much not generic democrats.
Which begs the question.. why did Cygnal not test the known Democrats
Who knows what manipulation they are trying to do? I'd suggest ignoring them from now on, unless we want to try to analyze what kind of underhanded thing they're attempting to do for Republicans.
Probably because it gives a sense of Collins' vulnerability in a defensive midterm cycle, something she hasn't experienced before.
janet is the definition of generic, and i mean that either way it can be taken. End of the day either candidate isn't going to hit with the carpetbagger claims like sara gideon did five years ago
Sara Gideon was a generic Democrat.
...who didn't live in Maine until she was in her 30s.
She had served Maine for 15 years by then. Her loss is wholly her fault.
From what I have read about the 2020 Maine Senate Race, the DSCC is the main contributor. Endorsing Gideon’s campaign early on and well before the primary effectively killed any momentum with Gideon’s campaign and any ability for her to run a campaign independent of the influence by establishment Democrats.
Gideon was always going to win the primary since she had the entire state establishment, unions and "the groups" except environmental and leftist ones lined up behind her. There was no major rival for the DSCC to push out.
If Cygnal's showing her in the low 40s, it must be pretty bad.
She won her last race with only 51% of the vote and is much less popular now. She's very beatable, as long as we land a candidate who is not literally tattooed in controversy.
Platner's tattoo isnt great, to put it lightly.
I understand the fears that if elected, he could turn into some sort of nazi and start supporting policies, like having roving gestapo mobs disappearing US citizens and having some of them killed in custody....
OH WAIT THE CURRENT GOVT IS DOING THAT NOW
/s
If only we could get Gene Ric to enter the race.
There's a Democrat and a Republican named Gene Ric, and both Rics refuse to run for office despite favourable polls and constant requests from their parties.
Remember: This is the same alleged pollster that did a lying so-called "poll" about the Democrats, so who knows what their numbers are or why?
AL-Sen: Paul Finebaum will announce his plans late January, after the college football season
Is he a football coach?
No. An ESPN commentator.
smarter than tuberville, but well who isn't
No, he’s infinitely dumber, actually
Source: every time I hear about a “take” of his, I feel stupider. Also, he got his start as a sports radio jock in Birmingham
every time I hear a take of his I think: didn't he say the opposite a week ago? which I take to mean he's full of it, not dumb
Or both
not really!!
White House apparently asking for Republicans to ditch any ACA credit deal and go full bore with GOP Healthcare Bill 2.0 via reconciliation.
If this happens the Senate legit comes into play. Just insane political malpractice should it actually occur.
That doesn't surprise me at all.
If republicans were willing to make a credit deal, the shutdown either wouldn't have happened at all or would have ended sooner. They would have done it sooner in the year, too, so it would have avoided 2026 insurance prices from going up.
Would prices even go down now, if they did a deal? I assume the answer is no, but I don't know. If that is correct, then republicans are already paying the political price for a lack of a deal and have little incentive to create one now.
GOP senators, in a recent closed-door lunch, noted that many of their health care ideas left out of the “big, beautiful bill” wouldn’t comply with the Senate’s strict rules for what can be included under reconciliation, according to one attendee granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/11/18/congress/white-house-health-bill-tariffs-00655917
Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The decision comes 10 days into the monthlong period when candidates can sign up for the March primary. The filing deadline is Dec. 8.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/18/texas-redistricting-ruling-lawsuit-el-paso-court-2026-midterms/
If this holds and Missouri blocks its new map, this whole redistricting gambit will have left republicans in a worse position than if they had done nothing.
My bet is that the Supreme Court majority will put the decision on hold under the Purcell doctrine while they consider the ruling.
Purcell keeps getting moved back. Soon every election change will be deemed too close to an election.
But Texas has an early primary and filing deadline.
And they chose to advance a map that has now been adjudicated to be illegal three months before that filing deadline, that's not the courts' (or the plaintiffs') fault.
Maybe - considering the swift drop in Latino support for the GOP, this may end up becoming a blessing in disguise for their potential dummymander.
No-one said the new map could possibly end up with them having -fewer- seats, so it's not a dummymander.
Does anyone know if the California law that was passed via ballot measure is explicitly tied to the implementation of the Texas remap?
No, they removed that provision after TX passed the illegal map and passed the amendment to put Prop 50 on the ballot.
Newsom ended up being three steps ahead of Rolldemort and TACO.
Can we STOP with names making fun of his disability?! Would we use anti-Black epithets for a Black Republican? I don't think so.
Ho-ly shit.
Now I don't put it past SCOTUS to fuck this up for us, but that's huge.
If the map is invalidated, does the California map go away too, since it was explicitly tied to Texas? /thinking face
No. It wasn't made contingent on that in the language of the proposition approved by the voters.
So Republicans trying to gerrymander 5 seats for them could result in the complete opposite?
Indeed
No. Missouri and North Carolina rigged their maps and those are likely to stay due to the federal judges overseeing the states (as well as the GOP controlled state courts here in NC). So unless those maps are struck down too, Prop 50 is still a go.
Florida is still trying to squeeze extra seats out of their gerrymandered maps too, no telling whether the meathead and the state FL GOP will look at the setback in TX and say "nah, too much trouble."
Missouri can be put on hold via the referendum. NC though is gone.
What is the court's rationale?
They pointed out that the 2025 Congressional maps were a clear racial gerrymander. Which it was.
I think the only reason they were able to move this fast is because the *2021 map* was still being sued over, so they just amended the complaint.
Dhillon insisted that, to address constitutional concerns, Texas had to dismantle minority coalition districts. The court found the directive illegible, legally unsupported, factually inaccurate and focused on race in ways that were constitutionally impermissible.
“It’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors,” the judges wrote. “Indeed, even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General — who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration — describe the DOJ Letter as ‘legally unsound,’ ‘baseless,’ ‘erroneous,’ ‘ham-fisted,’ and ‘a mess.’”
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-dojs-ham-fisted-letter-key-to-ruling-blocking-texas-gerrymander/
lol noting the typographical errors is amazing
for anyone who's still wondering, Paul Mitchell of PDI, the architect of the new CA maps, has explicitly said that this does not invalidate the CA map. https://x.com/paulmitche11/status/1990854493546615233
Having said that, this case is on a rocket docket to SCOTUS.
Two more special elections in Minnesota for HD 47A & HD 64A. Both democratic seats vacated by women elected to higher office. 47A's Amanda Hemmingson-Jaeger was elected to the state senate, and Kaohly Her was elected mayor of St. Paul.
The primary (if needed) will be December 16th
The general will be January 27th.
Both districts are highly democratic, so it expected that the house will stay 67-67.
Scoop: @HarrisonJaime is launching what he calls a 7-figure battle plan to boost Dems in rural areas in 2026 races. His working theory is this cycle will be like 2006, when Dems won in red places. His targets, plus an early ad he has hitting @NancyMace
https://x.com/sahilkapur/status/1990514186028564864?t=oBufKQMtgdRVgAt1AJZVxQ&s=19
Not sure what his plan is but would have been nice to have while he was DNC Chair...
It would be nice to invest in rural areas more and reap the benefits, but over the last 20 years Democratic performance in most rurals,which was weak then, has cratered even further to the point that it can't be dismissed as just due to temporary factors or something that can be reversed easily. (The flip side of this is that nowadays we win lots of suburbs and exurbs that even in 2006 we didn't win.)
Still, just reducing the margin of rural defeat would be helpful, even decisive, in a number of states and districts. Not sure what Harrison's plan is, though hopefully it works better than whatever rural strategy the DNC had when he was chair.
The rurals are "where they are" because of a multi-decade, multi-domain, coordinated effort across political, religious, cultural and media spaces to get them voting they way they do. A single sector effort (a political party making a 7 figure spend for one cycle) is not going to unbake this cake. We're looking at a multidecade project.
I'd be up for more strategic rural investment. State house of senate districts with low minority turnout or with small colleges in them with low turnout that sort of thing and go from there if it works.
Rural Alaska could be a particular area of investment with large potential upsides. While a huge chunk of the state lives in or around Anchorage, there is a large indigenous population in rural Alaska. If we could increase their turnout or win over more of them in our column it could be enough to become more competitive in the state.
Alaska gets 2 senators just like every state, so that could be an enormous boon.
Absolutely agree.
seems to obviate the fact that they are targeting specific districts, not just "the rurals" as a general concept.
Jon Tester narrowly won MT-01 in 2024, for example - that represents a winnable rural district. not all rurals are the same.
in defense of Harrison as DNC chair, this is something he spoke about as critically important, and clearly wanted to do. My understanding is that the Biden WH had a pretty tight leash on what he did as DNC chair. I was a DNC member.
People often confuse the governments of City of Miami with Miami Dade County. City of Miami has been a Rep stronghold while Miami Dade has a two term mayor who is a Democrat. FYI.
However, the mayor of Miami-Dade County was also Republican for 16 years from 2004 to when the incumbent Cava flipped it in 2020. (Republicans Carlos Alvarez and Carlos Gimenez, who now serves in Congress, held it).
How long has the City of Miami been a Republican stronghold? That is news to me.
The Digest mentions that Miami has had a Republican mayor since 2009, but from 1996-2001 and 1985-1993 they also had a Republican in office
Yeah, I unintentionally started reading the response thread before finishing the digest. I don't usually do that.
LA-3:
https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-files-vote-clay-higgins-released-11068404
Rep. Clay Higgins was the only no vote for the Epstein files. His response was crap too — he claimed they weren’t protecting “people who did nothing wrong” in the files.
I mention this because I’ll be shocked if he does not receive a primary challenge over this. The GOP is notoriously petty regarding primaries.
I'm disappointed that all the NC House Republicans voted for it. I was looking forward to Moore, Foxx or Harris getting bludgeoned on "protecting the pedo in the Oval Office" by voting against it.
His full tweet explaining his vote reads:
"I have been a principled “NO” on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Not by my vote. The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans. If the Senate amends the bill to properly address privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated, then I will vote for that bill when it comes back to the House."
It mirrors concerns shared by Mike Johnson, who, according to CBS news, says the bill "does not do enough to protect victims and is written in such a way that could require the release of child sexual abuse material, information exposing whistleblowers or other material about investigative sources and methods." https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/epstein-files-vote-2025/#post-update-5e939fe4
A big nothing word salad. Typical of someone like Higgins.
Wasn't this Trump's stance until a day ago? I imagine there will be more heat on the Republicans who brought the discharge petition to the floor in the first place, like Boebert and Mace. Massie and MTG are already in the crosshairs after all.
IL-4: Despite denying purposefully installing his chief of staff as his successor, Rep. Chuy Garcia was in fact the first signature on her petition for Congress, Politico reports.
Like, no one cares that García decided to retire due to health/family concerns (that's what his defenders are trying to make it about)! It's that he colluded to protect his chief of staff from a competitive primary! And fairly obviously so, it's not like this is a new tactic.
Garcia pulled a Lipinski!
You don't even have to look back that far, Mike Haridopolos was nominated very much like this just last year!
I'm just shocked people are trying to defend this. What part of this is remotely OK? Why even have primaries if this is what they're going to do? (To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if there are Dems who are against the existence of a primary process in general.)
One example would be the clown Rachel Bitecofer with her late night rants against the existence of primaries.
She goes way too far with the fear mongering & her rants against primaries are a no-go. Open ranked choice elections are the way to go.
Only 23 Dems voted for the disapproval resolution, mostly moderates you'd expect.
The party establishment continues to fail at reading the room.
Wait, so 23 moderates voted in favor of disapproval? Isn't that good?
You don't have to defend it to see it as a venial sin. So much worse has happened in IL politics. As Brad Warren points out, this isn't our first rodeo with this kind of thing--when Bill Lipinski retired from Congress *after* the primary, the party appointed his son who didn't live in Illinois at the time.
Meanwhile, Rahm Emanuel is on some sort of comeback tour, even after he covered up the murder of an unarmed Black teenager. Our former House Speaker is going to jail. The former head of the Finance Committee in the Chicago City Council (the most powerful committee) is in jail. 2500 electeds in IL have gone to jail in the past 40 years. I could go on.
Patty Garcia can be defeated in 2028. MGP can take her outrage (which she never directs at the donor class) and redirect it to something relevant to her constituents. Everyone should release the grasp on their pearls and focus on winning majorities.
And MGP is, again? Someone should post a pinned list of initials and full names for us to refer to, but I don't think there's a way to do that, so...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Gluesenkamp_Perez
I'm sorry, but "it happened before" and "there are worse problems" aren't exactly moving arguments to me. And neither of them make this remotely OK. My chief concern with what Chuy did is, given the attention given to it by the press, other Democrats are going to try it next. Sure it's just Chuy now, but what happens if this becomes more normal, even commonplace? What if other House Dems start retiring at the last second to clear the field for their chosen successor? Will primaries even mean anything anymore at that point?
Selective outrage doesn't suit you. Where were you when Torricelli dropped out just before the election and had to be replaced by Lautenberg? No primary there.
Nobody kept other candidates from filing before Chuy announced his retirement. If Patty Garcia is lousy, she'll be the Michael Flanagan of the 4th District. Anyone who's upset about this can run as an independent in the general. Problem solved.
Challenging an incumbent is far different than running in an open primary. I don’t buy that argument either. And again, it wasn’t right in the past when it was done, and it isn’t right now.
Also the hostility is completely unwarranted.
Just going through this list:
1. Rep. Chuy Garcia
2. Cook County Board Commish Alma Anaya
3. State Sen Celia Villanueva
4. State Rep Aron Ortiz
5. Alderwoman Jeylu Gutierrez
5. Alderman Michael Rodriguez
6. State Rep Norma Hernandez
7. Frm State Rep Yareli Cortez
8. Chicago Schoolboard member Yesenia Lopez
9. Chicago Schoolboard member Rodolfo Lozano Jr.
In other words, you don’t line up this number of electeds on such short notice without some level of pre-planning. It was an organized handover no matter what he’s saying
https://x.com/Blake_Allen13/status/1990865463199297645