"There's not any doubt who started the ongoing bipartisan gerrymandering competition: Donald Trump, with his successful lobbying of Texas Republicans to conduct a rare mid-decade redistricting measure aimed at giving the GOP up to five new House seats. And it's equally clear that in designing a new House map for California that voters approved overwhelmingly as Prop 50, Golden State Democrats were trying to counter what Texas had done and that Trump was encouraging other Republican-controlled states to do."
"So it feels a bit disingenuous that Trump's Justice Department, joining a lawsuit earlier filed by California Republicans, is suing to invalidate Prop 50 on grounds that it's a "power grab," per the Associated Press: "California's redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an emailed statement. "Governor Newsom's attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.""
"Below the surface, what DOJ is up to is part of a broader GOP legal offensive designed to overturn voting rights as a legitimate motive in drawing legislative maps, as Democracy Docket explains: The plaintiffs - including the California Republican Party - argued the state violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution by drawing congressional district lines based on race "to favor Hispanic voters ..." "The end result is a map that manipulates district lines in the name"
Donald Trump's lobbying led Texas Republicans to pursue a rare mid-decade redistricting to add up to five GOP House seats. California enacted Prop 50 to redraw its House map, a move framed as a countermeasure to Texas and as voter-approved. The Justice Department joined a lawsuit from California Republicans seeking to invalidate Prop 50, with Attorney General Pam Bondi calling the plan a "brazen power grab" that tramples civil rights. California submitted the map to voters, complicating claims of silencing. The litigation forms part of a GOP legal strategy to challenge voting-rights motives in map drawing, alleging Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment violations for race-based districting.
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