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Donald Trump appears to be leading the most blatant election-rigging scheme in American history.
In the wake of The New York Times’ report last month on the Trump administration’s redistricting efforts in Texas, more details have emerged about the attempt to pressure the state’s leaders into a potentially unlawful — and certainly illiberal — mid-decade redraw of its congressional districts in order to shore up the GOP’s chances in next year’s midterms. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has instructed his state’s Republican-led legislature to craft a redistricting plan this summer, in a move my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown aptly assessed as a mockery of the Voting Rights Act.
Trump’s civil rights-averse Justice Department has specifically targeted four House seats with sizable Black and Latino populations for redraws, according to The Texas Tribune.
And on Tuesday, Trump openly told reporters that he’s pushing for a “very simple redraw” so that Republicans pick up five seats. He added that other states could undergo redistricting as well.
You’ll note that this desperate push comes as recent polling shows that Trump’s mass deportation agenda has sparked a backlash from Americans — and after his signing of a widely unpopular budget that is primed to strip health care and food benefits from millions of Americans while blowing up the federal deficit to fund tax cuts that will largely favor the rich.
In other words, this redistricting push seems like an obvious attempt to insulate Trump and his party.
“For decades, Texas Republicans have reduced relief programs, cut disaster infrastructure, ignored warnings about disasters, and then exploited these events to push an agenda that places Texas families in harm’s way and manipulates the rules to hold on to power,” Texas Democrats said in a statement. “Only losers change the rules in the middle of the game, and here they are, doing it again, all while making Texas families pay higher taxes, lose their healthcare, and defund their public schools.”
Top congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have denounced the gerrymandering plan, too. And some liberals are calling on Democratic-led states to gerrymander their maps in response, should the Texas plan succeed. Indeed, that could be necessary to undercut the GOP’s power grab. But that reality also underscores Trump’s corrosive power.
The openness with which the president of the United States and his allies are seeking to maintain power is clearly chipping away at the nation’s democratic foundation.