If Abbott had stuck with the story that this was purely political gamesmanship, the court would likely have allowed the redraw to stand, based on Supreme Court precedent effectively sanctioning partisan gerrymanders. But by repeatedly tying the process to a court ruling that changed the racial makeup of who can bring legal challenges under the Voting Rights Act, Abbott “explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race,” Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote in the ruling that blocked Texas’ new map.
lol. And because Texas went ahead with gerrymandering before CA put prop 50 on the ballot, CA removed the “if Texas gerrymanders” clause from prop 50. Since it was happening, they yanked the unnecessary conditional logic.
So now, prop 50 is happening, but Texas is stuck in the mud, and the GOP might get the opposite of the corrupt thing they pushed for. Amazing.
So as long as California is just doing partisan gerrymandering, and it’s not racial, or at least hasn’t said racial out loud, they’re also in the clear from challenges given it was approved by voters?
Yup. Unless the SCOTUS comes up with some stupid way to prevent California from doing something red states have been doing for years, but without voter approval.
But California and Newsom were pretty clear about this being 1000% about balancing political party power.
They did. https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-texas-redistricting-trump-republicans-discrimination-c1bbf88e2a1f7d49cda512b8ef165750
So do you think he might back off given Texas cant now?
TX is going to appeal to the Supreme Court. TX still stands a very good chance of getting their maps.
Also, you can’t really fuck with districts at the last minute. You need time for candidates and elections officials to organize around them.
Also, the GOP is trying this shit in other states.
CA needs to just assume the worst out what the GOP put in motion. This is too hard to counteract late in the game, which is why all this stuff if started going down a year and a half in advance.
Well, that didn’t take long
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/22/us-supreme-court-samuel-alito-grants-stay-in-texas-redistricting-lawsuit/87412332007/
Ah, all of that actually makes a lot of sense as to why they’d still go forward.
I had no idea they removed that. Dang.
Yeah, the final text basically called out a ton of states and operated with the assumption that some GOP gerrymandering was going to happen since efforts were pretty firmly in motion. The button had been already pressed by other states.
https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2025/special/pdf/text-proposed-law.pdf
Yeah, makes sense.