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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to reporters after a Democratic policy meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, October 5, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

There are no longer any Jewish Republicans in the United States Senate. But surely the Republican conference is familiar with chutzpah, once described as the nerve it takes for a child to shoot his parents and then seek the courts mercy because hes an orphan. Last week, Republicans showed a lot of chutzpah.

On Thursday, October 7, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the floor after a handful of Republicansand all of the Democratsvoted to override a Republican filibuster of a measure to raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling, of course, is a cap on how much the federal government can borrow to pay for past spending. Its not, as the GOP scaremongers would have you believe, a shiny black Amex card that the Democrats want to use to pay for confirmation surgery for Oberlin students and critical race theory for preschoolers. Its just like paying your Visa bill.

The debt ceiling is raised regularly because not raising it means the U.S. would be defaulting on its debts. The collapse of the full faith and credit of the U.S. would be unprecedented. The inability to issue and sell more Treasury bonds and Treasury notes would, as figures from Jamie Dimon to Bernie Sanders have noted, trigger an economic catastrophe. Even if the default only lasted an hour, it would likely raise borrowing costs for the U.S. forever, making the Biden spending proposals look like loose change.

Schumer noted that the GOP had cavedsomewhat. After the Republicans had insisted that the only way theyd raised the debt ceiling was through Democratic votes and the cumbersome reconciliation process, McConnell folded. He allowed for a short-term hike in the debt, enough borrowing to last until early December, when Congress would also have to face a government shutdown. After McConnell corralled 11 Republican senators to end a Republican filibuster, Democrats raised the debt ceiling with no Republican votes. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the vote to break the tie.

As this debt ceiling Band-Aid was being applied, Schumer took to the floor and scolded the Republicans. Republicans played a dangerous and risky partisan game, and I am glad that their brinkmanship did not work, for the good of Americas families, for the good of our economy, the New Yorker said. Despite immense opposition from Leader McConnell and members of his conference, our caucus held together, and we pulled our country back from the cliffs edge that Republicans tried to push us over. This is a temporary but necessary and important fix.

Republicans went bonkersnot over their taking the economy hostage but over the temerity of Schumer to rebuke them. Classless speech, said Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, one of the Republicans dragooned by McConnell into voting to raise the ceiling. Rounds added that Republicans wouldnt cooperate next time. Mitt Romney, whom Democrats have come to see as a voice of reason, went up to Schumer after the speech to express his displeasure about Schumers tone. Theres a time to be graceful, and theres a time to be combative, Romney said. That was a time for grace and common ground. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat whom Republicans love, ostentatiously buried his face in his hands while Schumer was speaking. I didnt think it was appropriate, Manchin said. Civility is gone.

The next day McConnell feigned being so angry that he vowed not to do anything in December to resolve the crisis his own party had caused.Last night, in a bizarre spectacle, Senator Schumer exploded in a rant that was so partisan, angry, and corrosive that even Democratic Senators were visibly embarrassed by him and for him, McConnell wrote to Biden. This childish behavior only further alienated the Republican members who helped facilitate this short-term patch.

Usually, Im on the side of comity (and comedy, as a former stand-up). I like all the legislative formalities like My friend from Alaska and Will the gentleman yield? Manners are the lubricant of civilization, and in the tiny world of the U.S. Senate, where you might end up working with the same codgers for 50 years, such rituals might seem like Kabuki, but they are not. Theyre neededbut not at the expense of truth.

The thing that Schumer did rightand that Republicans are pearl-clutching aboutwas to tell the truth. The GOP has threatened to blow up the economy, and just because they forged a deal to delay the detonation by a few weeks doesnt change that. McConnells plan to force Democrats to use reconciliation fell apart, causing the Kentuckian to make 11 members of his conference walk the plank even though the GOP insisted that they were not voting to increase the debt ceiling, only to end a filibuster. Im not surprised that Rounds and Romney are pissed offand even less so that Manchin is, too.

Schumer could have just said nothing or even something perfunctory about this awkward pause in the countdown to the financial apocalypse. But by using the moment to scold the Republicans and remind the country that this is an entirely GOP-manufactured crisis, he helped rally dispirited Democrats.

And he forced the presswhich has been portraying the GOP debt crisis as a stand-off, with both sides not wanting to blinkto pay attention and quote him laying the blame on McConnell, where it belongs. (For more on the press struggles to get this right, see Breaking the News, the new Substack from the longtime Washington Monthlycontributing editor James Fallows.) In a way, Schumer had to do the presss job for it. Weve got another eight weeks of this idiotic and dangerous game that the GOP is playing just so they can label the Democrats as fiscally reckless. (Where were they for the Trump tax cuts?) Hopefully, the press will get better at this.

This kind of moment doesnt come easily for Schumer. Hes spent 46 of his 70 years as a legislator. He lives and breathes by all the enforced decorum, whether it was the New York Assembly, the U.S. House, or the U.S. Senate. This time, the chutzpah got to be too much.

Continued here:
Chuck Schumer, Chutzpah, and the Crybaby Republicans - Washington Monthly

Todd Legitimate Rape Akin en route to losing a Senate seat in 2012. Photo: Bill Greenblatt/UPI/Shutterstock

In mid-2012, Republicans appeared to be on the brink of reclaiming control of the U.S. Senate, an impressive feat given the supermajority Democrats had mustered as recently as 2009. But that reconquista was delayed for two years, in no small part because two Republican Senate candidates in very red states crashed and burned after making inflammatory comments about abortion bans that did not include exceptions for rape.

The first, more memorable disaster was the implosion of the candidacy of Missouri congressman Todd Akin, who died this weekend at the age of 74. Expected to dispatch Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in a state trending hard to the GOP, Akin went down the tubes after an August 2012 interview that went very wrong, as Politico reported at the time:

Speaking to Charles Jacoon the Jaco Reporton St. Louiss Fox station, Akin was answering a question about allowing abortions in the case of rape. He said, If its a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

Akin, who is attempting to oust Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill,also stated that if a women did conceive after a rape, he would still oppose abortion in this case because the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.

The implied suggestion that pregnant women who suffered rape were probably lying about it was politically deadly. It played right into McCaskills strategy of depicting Akin as a right-wing extremist. Then, a few months later, Richard Mourdock of Indiana blew up his Senate campaign when he said pregnancies produced by rape were intended by God. The dual disasters in Missouri and Indiana led to a boom era for Republican consultants like Kellyanne Conway who counseled male candidates on how to sound less piggy.

Cosmetics aside, though, the central problem was that Republican politicians in thrall to the anti-abortion movement held extremist positions that were horrifying to your average swing voter. The anti-abortion movement itself had a pragmatist wing that was adept at shedding crocodile tears over rare late-term abortions (which troubled said swing voters) and that accepted rape-and-incest exceptions in proposed abortion bans as a compromise with political reality. But Akin and Mourdock said the quiet part out loud and let the strategic mask slip. The Republican Party paid the price.

The Akin saga is newly relevant today with anti-abortion absolutists in the ascendancy within the GOP at the very moment the U.S. Supreme Court may be on the brink of reversing or severely modifying the constitutional right to pre-viability abortions that has been in place since 1973. Two Republican-enacted state abortion bans are at the center of this impending judicial counterrevolution. One from Texas has been given at least a temporary green light by a six-justice Supreme Court majority on grounds that they cannot figure out how to cope with the laws novel vigilante enforcement provisions. Another from Mississippi is about to be reviewed as the first frontal challenge to Roe v. Wade since 1992. The two laws have different pre-viability thresholds (Texass is at about six weeks of pregnancy; Mississippis is at 15 weeks), but neither law has a rape-and-incest exception.

In defending these laws, Republicans have two options: rationalize banning all abortions no matter the circumstances via the kind of inane arguments Akin and Mourdock made or just flatly admit that they have little or no respect for the impact unwanted pregnancies have on those forced to carry them to term. With the big Supreme Court decision in the Mississippi case (Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization) likely to drop late next spring just as the midterm general-election cycle heats up, the timing could be terrible for GOP House and Senate candidates. And Democrats, who are desperately looking for a way to buck the historic midterm trend that threatens its control of Congress, can be expected to make a very big deal out of their opponents indifference to the plight of rape-and-incest victims.

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Todd Akin Exposed the Republican Partys Abortion Extremism - New York Magazine

Days after Pennsylvania Republicans subpoenaed Gov. Tom Wolfs administration for millions of voters personal information, including the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, the head of the Senate GOP acknowledged the request was intrusive.

But, Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward said, the subpoena simply demanded the same records the administration had already disclosed to third parties. Not only that, but those outside groups could have compromised the voter rolls, she suggested last month: We dont know what information they could add to the system. We dont know what information they could take from the system.

It was a striking claim. Trump supporters have been pushing similar claims for months, and the Republican senator leading the partys new election review has said lawmakers will be digging into the issue.

But theres no evidence to support it. A top Pennsylvania elections official said in sworn testimony earlier this year that outside groups had no such access. House Republicans investigating the matter accepted his explanation.

Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), House Republicans point person on elections, said hes concluded theres nothing to it: Just because you read it on the internet doesnt mean its true.

The statements from Ward and other Republicans which run contrary to all available evidence show why experts fear the Pennsylvania Senates investigation of the 2020 election wont improve voter confidence, as its proponents argue, but rather sow doubt and spread more misinformation.

Elections experts and nonpartisan pro-democracy groups have condemned Pennsylvanias review, which began 10 months after Donald Trump was defeated, as part of a national movement to discredit Joe Bidens victory. Since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the stop the steal movement has focused on efforts by GOP-led legislatures in swing states to conduct what they call forensic audits of the election.

These kinds of audits are not audits they are partisan efforts to try to delegitimize a past election, said David Becker, head of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Wards office stood by her claims and said the investigation may soon provide proof.

Ward spokesperson Erica Wright said the administrations unwillingness to be forthright and years of mounting public questioning of the electoral system have led us to this point.

There is so much more that is being investigated, she added, and we look forward to sharing as able.

The claims center around the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, commonly known as the SURE system the statewide voter database established two decades ago as part of nationwide modernization efforts after the 2000 election.

Before that, Pennsylvanias 67 counties maintained separate voter rolls. The centralized database is easier to oversee, including processing changes when a voter moves between counties.

Its run by the Department of State, which oversees elections, and officials are in the process of replacing it.

READ MORE: What to know about Pennsylvania Republicans investigation of the 2020 election

In 2016, the Department of State rolled out whats known as an application programming interface, or API. APIs are a way for computers to share information and are widely used by websites and apps across the internet. This API allows other entities, such as political parties and advocacy groups to create custom voter registration apps and websites.

Such groups have long run registration drives using paper applications, and the API allows them to effectively do the same online.

Once sent to the state, applications are held in essentially a digital waiting room in the SURE system and treated the same as those sent directly through the Department of State website: The department checks some information, then sends applications to counties to process. Counties can reject applications if they find problems.

Approved applications are moved into the full database.

Since the Senate began its inquiry in late August, Ward had stayed mostly silent. But on a Sept. 20 call with reporters, Ward said, the Department of State gave outside third party groups access to our SURE system.

We dont have any idea how many third-party vendors or people had access to the system, she said. We do not know how much access they had to the information in the SURE system.

The subpoena asked for the same information she said the state had already given to third-party groups.

Two days later, Wright wrote in an email that the department has already compromised the voter registration system by granting third parties access to individual driver license numbers, last four digits of social security numbers, and signatures.

Asked for evidence, Wright provided three documents.

The first, a manual, describes API usage and how data is sent to the system. It doesnt say third parties can interact with the official database itself, such as to automatically add voters or change existing voters data.

The second, a 2016 statement from a nonprofit using the API, says Pennsylvania allows third parties to directly upload registrations and signatures to its voter registration database. But while third parties can upload applications, they dont immediately enter the database: Theyre first reviewed by elections officials.

The third is a 2019 SURE system audit by then-Auditor General Eugene DePasquale that criticized the administrations lack of cooperation. But that audit doesnt discuss the API and doesnt claim third parties have access to SURE.

READ MORE: She lost big in the Philly suburbs. She went hunting for voter fraud. Now Kathy Barnette is a rising GOP star.

Sen. Cris Dush (R., Jefferson), who chairs the committee that issued the subpoena, said his panel will be digging into the issue of third-party access to the voter database. Everybodys aware already that thats happened, he told a conservative activist in a September interview. Were going to be investigating what impact that had on the process.

A Dush spokesperson acknowledged that the Department of State has previously addressed the issue but said the senator and others in the caucus still do have questions about that.

Following up on that to make sure that information is accurate is an important part of oversight, spokesperson Jason Thompson said.

Testifying before a state House committee earlier this year, Jonathan Marks, deputy secretary for elections and commissions at the Department of State, was asked by multiple lawmakers whether outside groups had access to the voter registry. He was unequivocal.

No, they dont have access to the SURE system, Marks testified under oath.

We upload the data provided by the third party so that the county has that in their workflow, Marks said. But at no point does the third party have access to the SURE system.

A department spokesperson reiterated in a statement: There is no access or opportunity to retrieve or view any voter registration information. Any claims to the contrary are false.

Grove, the chair of the committee, said he was satisfied.

There was a fear that those entities had direct access to the SURE system so they could manipulate data: add names, remove names, change stuff, Grove said. So we asked, in multiple hearings and we did learn that theres not direct access to third parties.

Grove said Senate Republican leaders have not asked him about the issue.

READ MORE: Pa. Republicans wont hire a contractor for 2020 election review until a judge gives the OK

On Sept. 15, the GOP-led Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee voted along party lines to issue the subpoena.

Senate Democrats filed a lawsuit to block the subpoena, arguing it violated voters privacy. They also asked a judge to order Republicans not to hire a vendor for the review until the litigation concludes.

In response, Republicans noted the Department of State contracts with a vendor to help run the SURE system and that Pennsylvania is a member of a consortium of states that share data including drivers license and last four digits of social security numbers to help maintain accurate voter rolls.

Republicans court filing says nothing about the API.

Dozens of groups have partnered with Rock the Vote, a nonprofit that works to get young people registered to vote.

They include advocacy groups across the political spectrum, including the ACLU, AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters, the Mike Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety, and the National Rifle Association affiliate Trigger the Vote, according to the Department of State.

Republicans have raised concerns about the possibility of third-party groups using the data theyve collected to, for example, falsely submit mail ballot applications or commit other fraud.

But that isnt unique to the API. Consider voter registration drives using paper: After voters fill out the forms, its possible to, say, make photocopies or write the information down somewhere else.

Similarly, a third-party group can hand people tablets to fill out the Department of States online form and if theres keylogging software, it can log the personal information.

So there are ways for a malicious actor to exploit the system, but its not through direct access and its not a new problem.

Continued here:
A top Pa. Republican made a big claim to defend the partys election review. Theres no evidence for it. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Over the last 10 years, the voters of color in a steadily diversifying Tarrant County have seen their political clout grow.

In 2014, Ramon Romero was elected the countys first Latino state representative. Last December, Mansfield voters elected Michael Evans as the first Black mayor in the citys 130-year history. And in November, Tarrant voters went for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, cementing a major political shift that started when the district chose Beto ORourke over Ted Cruz two years earlier.

In Texas Senate District 10, which is nestled entirely inside of Tarrant and makes up about half of the county population, the districts growing Asian, Black and Hispanic populations regularly band together to pick Democratic candidates, including former state Sen. Wendy Davis in 2012 and the current incumbent, Sen. Beverly Powell, in 2018.

But as lawmakers charge ahead with redrawing district lines, those voters of color could see their voting strength diluted in the Texas Capitol. The proposed Senate map, drafted by Republicans, took aim at the district splitting it up and pairing its voters with those in counties to the south and west that made the district much whiter, more rural and more likely to vote for the GOP.

Powell said Republicans in charge are clearly trying to deny voters of color their voice in elections in an effort to bolster conservative representation.

The proposed map intentionally, unnecessarily and illegally destroys the voting strength of District 10s minority citizens, she said.

Since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, Texas has not made it through a single decade without a federal court admonishing it for violating federal protections for voters of color. Ten years ago, a federal court ruled that a similar attempt to redraw District 10 was intentionally discriminatory.

The chambers chief map-drawer this time around, Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, has said the maps were drawn race-blind.

In hearings following the release of the Senates proposed map, Tarrant County elected officials and residents implored lawmakers to leave the district unchanged. But an amended proposal headed for a vote in the full Senate now has the remaining Tarrant County sections of the district tied in with eight rural counties in the new Senate District 10 six more than the original proposal.

Powell said urban voters of color who remain in the district would be drowned out by white, rural voters in Cleburne and Mineral Wells with different needs. She has pleaded with her colleagues not to break apart the existing district.

This is personal to the people of Tarrant County, she said. They want to preserve their ability to have their voices heard in their elections.

But on Monday, longtime state Rep. Phil King, a Republican who lives in Parker County, one of the new counties in the proposed district, announced he would run for the seat if lawmakers approved it. Twenty minutes later, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, endorsed King for the seat.

On Tuesday, the Senate Redistricting Committee approved the map by a vote of 12-2.

Huffman has said she consulted with the attorney generals office to ensure the maps she drafted comply with the Voting Rights Act, which protects racial minorities from discrimination. But she has refused to say what specific parameters she considered in her work.

Huffmans office did not respond to a request for comment.

The proposed changes to Senate District 10s racial makeup are stark.

Under its current configuration, District 10 has an eligible voter population that is 54% white, 20% Hispanic, 21% Black and 3% Asian. Under the proposed changes, the districts voting age population would be 62% white, 17% Hispanic, 17% Black and 2% Asian.

Each of the eight counties newly drawn into the district has a population that is 70% white or higher, and none has a Hispanic population larger than 25% or a Black population larger than 5%.

But more precisely, Powell said the proposed map draws a jagged gash from east to west Tarrant County that splits up traditionally Hispanic neighborhoods in north and south Fort Worth. Those in the south remain in the district, while those in the north are placed in a newly drawn Senate District 9 represented by Republican Sen. Kelly Hancock.

In total, Powell said, 133,000 people more than 70% of them people of color are moved out of Senate District 10 and into Senate District 9, whose eligible voting age population under its new boundaries would be majority white.

Tristeza Ordex, a Latina political activist who helped campaign for Powell in 2018, said moving Hispanics into a majority-white district would harm their ability to elect candidates who push for issues important to them.

The Republican Party is doing everything they can to try to break some of the voters in that district, Ordex said. Thats going to affect us.

She noted that before Powell, Senate District 10 was represented by Konni Burton, a staunchly conservative GOP senator and strong proponent of the sanctuary cities ban passed in 2017.

That hurt so many people, Ordex said, noting that Burtons views were at odds with many of the districts residents. Burton lost her reelection to Powell.

In recent years, Tarrants Latino community has organized around issues like putting an end to a county program that allows the sheriffs office to hold immigrants living in the country illegally for federal immigration authorities, Ordex said. Community activists have sent dozens of people to commissioners court meetings to pressure officials to end the contract, showing the growing influence of voters of color in the county.

If those voters are shifted into safely Republican Senate districts, Ordex fears their concerns would be brushed aside. Ordex, who has worked as a staffer for state lawmakers, said the district could get a senator who supports ending the Texas Dream Act, which guarantees in-state tuition to immigrants in the country without legal permission.

They dilute our vote, and what are they going to do? she said. Theyre going to make decisions for us.

Sergio De Leon, a Tarrant County justice of the peace, said the issues of a major urban area like Tarrant are not aligned with the largely rural counties that the Senates proposal would add to the district.

Inner-city Fort Worth Hispanics do not tend to cattle, they dont cut hay or gather at the feed store, he told lawmakers. We work two or three jobs, meet up at the Fiesta supermarket and taquerias.

In the eastern section of the district, Powell said, the map shoves a crooked billy club north from Senate District 22, represented by Republican Brian Birdwell, that splits the city of Mansfield, a rapidly growing district with a growing and diverse population, into two Senate districts.

Evans, the citys mayor, told lawmakers that more than 41,000 of the citys 72,000 residents were placed in Senate District 22, which runs as far south as Waco.

The remaining 30,056 Mansfield residents are packed into new SD-10 but submerged in a district dominated by Anglo voters in Johnson, Parker and now other rural counties of record, of which our city shares no interest, he said.

Evans said his city deals with urban issues like mass-transportation infrastructure, housing and equity in local public schools and would have no influence in agrarian and rural communities.

Sixty-five percent of the citys Black population is drawn into District 22 while the remaining 35% goes into District 10, even though the city has been entirely contained in District 10 for the last two decades.

It is discriminatory, it is illegal, he said.

Asked by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, how he would change the map, Evans responded:

I would leave it just as it is, and watch it continue to grow, so that the community can come together and vote for and elect the candidate of their choice.

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Historically red Tarrant County diversified in the last decade. Now Republicans are trying to divide up its voters of color. - The Texas Tribune

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In 2020, Democrat Candace Valenzuela,who was running to become the first Black Latina member of Congress, lost the closest congressional race in Texas to Republican Beth Van Duyne.

She was considering running again in 2022 for Texas 24th congressional district, once a stronghold of suburban Republicanism between Dallas and Fort Worth, but when she saw the redistricting maps for the US House released by state Republicans last week, it was viscerally shocking to me, she said.

Biden carried the 24th by five points in 2020, as the population of people of color surged in the suburbs and moderate white voters turned away from Donald Trump, but Republicans had transformed the district into a bastion of white Trumpism.

The DallasFort Worth area has grown faster than any part of Texas, with more Latinos living there than in the entire state of Colorado, notes Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice. Yet instead of creating a new majority-Latino congressional district, Republicans chopped up diverse cities like Carrollton, which is 60 percent nonwhite and where Valenzuela became the first Black woman to win a school board seat in 2017, into five different congressional districts to undermine minority voting power. She used to describe her district as a donut circling DallasFort Worth International Airport. Now she calls it a butterfly shrimp, with its body in suburban red areas by the airport and its tail weaving in and out of the most conservative parts of Dallas.

They werent just trying to extract people of color who are trending Democratic in order to protect Beth Van Duyne or other Republicans, Valenzuela said. They were trying to completely and totally neutralize their voting power. This is something that is happening across the state.

Through the redistricting process, Texas Republicans are building a sea wall against demographic changean early indicator of how the Republican Party nationally is responding to momentous population changes not by reaching out to growing communities of color but by diluting their voting power. At a time when Texas is becoming more diverse and Democratic, the new maps drawn by Republicans for congress and the state legislature would make the states political representation far whiter and more Republican, all but ending competition at the very moment when ascendant Democrats are finally making the state competitive.

White voters have been a minority in Texas since 2004 and over the past decade 95 percent of the states growth came from communities of color, but the GOPs proposed congressional map increases the number of white Republican districts and decreases the number of majority-Latino and majority-Black districts. It packs minority voters into as few urban areas as possible in cities like Austin, Dallas, and Houston to limit their representation, while spreading out the rest among deeply red exurban and rural areas to nullify their influence. Despite gaining nearly 2 million Hispanic residents and more than 500,000 Black residents since 2010, Republicans didnt draw a single new majority-Latino or majority-Black congressional district. Instead, the two new House seats the state gained due to population growth were given to majority-white areas in Austin and Houston.

Republican House candidates won 53 percent of the statewide vote in 2020 but would hold a projected 65 percent of seats under the new lines, which were approved by the state Senate redistricting committee on Monday. The number of safe GOP seats would double, from 11 to 22, while the number of competitive districts would fall from 12 to just one. Nine Texas House Republicans, including Van Duyne, currently hold seats in districts won by Biden or where Trump won by five points or less, but theyre all drawn into districts that Trump would have carried by double digits. This will push state and national politics even further to the right, as Republicans worry more about primary challengers than Democratic opponents.

Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country but you wouldnt know it by looking at this map, said Li. It totally tries to kick the can down the road on the growth in the states minority population.

Texas 24th Congressional district in current form vs proposed GOP plan. The GOP map removed diverse Democratic areas and adds in whiter Republican ones.

Mother Jones illustration; District Viewer; Congress.gov

The 2020 race in the 24th was a battle between two candidates representing very different visions of the state: its diverse, Democratic, progressive future against its white, Republican, reactionary present and past. While Valenzuela rallied voters of color and appealed to disaffected Republicans, Van Duyne was best known as a former mayor of Irving who rose to prominence in tea party circles after falsely accusing local Muslim imams of trying to implement Shariah and urging the Texas legislature to pass an anti-Shariah bill. She befriended Michael Flynn in 2016 and joined the Trump administration as an official with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Valenzuela lost by just 4,500 votes, a heartbreaking defeat for Democrats, but said we got closer than we had been in a long time.

Van Duyne called her victory Nancy Pelosis most bitter loss and styled herself as part of a conservative squad to take on progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Once in Congress, she voted against certifying the election results in Pennsylvania, was fined for twice violating the Houses mask mandate, and during a recent debate over abortion held a baby doll in the shape of a fetus while speaking on the House floor. The Atlantic called her the new face of Trumpism in Texas.

Van Duynes extreme voting record should have made her vulnerable in a fast-changing swing district, but Republicans protected her by increasing the percentage of white voters in the district by 15 points, from 59 percent to 74 percent. The district has gone from favoring Biden by 5 points to favoring Trump by 12 points. The partisan lean of the district has shifted to the right by nearly 20 points, more than any district in the state.

Valenzuelas home was drawn out of the district, which she suspects was intentional, as was the home of Democratic state Rep. Michelle Beckley, who announced a challenge to Van Duyne in July. Van Duynes home was narrowly kept in the district, but predominantly Latino communities in Irving that she used to represent were excised to make the seat more Republican.

If I were to run in the current iteration of TX-24, Id be surprised if I made it to the high 40s, Valenzuela said. The way that 24 looks now, I dont think Id want to put my family through it.

The same level of gerrymandering is a defining feature of the maps drawn for the state legislature, where Republicans are desperately trying to insulate themselves from accountability after passing a flurry of extreme laws this year, such as a six-week abortion ban, permission for residents to carry guns without a permit, and a sweeping voter suppression law.

Republicans are in a position to let lines and laws overwhelm demographics and ultimately the will of Texans, Valenzuela said.

Under the GOPs proposed map for the state Senate, 20 of 31 districts would have white majorities, even though white people make up just under 40 percent of the states population. The number of pro-Trump districts increases from 16 to 19.

The proposed state House map, like the congressional map, would also create more white districts and fewer districts where Black and Hispanic people make up a majority of eligible voters. The number of majority white districts would rise from 83 to 89 out of 150, while the number of Latino districts shrinks from 33 to 30, and the number of Black districts falls from seven to four. The map creates 10 more pro-Trump districts, giving the GOP close to 60 percent of seats after Democrats came close to retaking the chamber in recent elections.

Overall, white voters would control a majority in 60 percent of districts for the US House and state legislaturefar above their numbers in the state.

The same strategy could soon be replicated in other Southern battleground states. Republicans need just five seats to take back the House and could accomplish this through gerrymandering in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina.

Similar to Texas, all of Georgias growth in the last decade came from communities of color. The state gained 1 million residentsincluding 350,000 Black residents, 270,000 Latino residents, and 160,000 Asian American residents, while the white population shrankbut redistricting maps released for Congress on September 27 by Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and the chair of the state Senate redistricting committee targets Black political representation.

The draft map takes aim at Rep. Lucy McBath, a Black Democrat who represents Newt Gingrichs former congressional district. McBath, who became a crusader against gun violence after her teenage son Jordan Davis was murdered by a white man in 2012, would see her suburban Atlanta district go from one that Biden carried by 11 points to one Trump won by six. The most diverse and Democratic parts of DeKalb County, which Biden won with 83 percent of the vote, would be removed, and Forsyth County, a hotbed of white Republicanism one hour north of Atlanta where Trump won 66 percent of the vote, would be added in.

Forsyth County has a particularly ugly racial historyin 1912, following the lynching of a Black man, white residents forced all 1,000 Black residents to leave the county. When thousands of civil rights activists led a march in 1987 to expose what had happened, white residents, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, shouted, Nigger, go home! at them and held signs that said Keep Forsyth white.

The proposed congressional map also targets Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop in southwest and middle Georgia. The Black voting age population in his district would drop from 50 percent to 47 percent, which could be enough to defeat him, given how few rural white residents vote for Democrats anymore.

The map released by Duncan, a prominent critic of Trump, could be replaced by a more extreme pro-Republican gerrymander when the Georgia legislature convenes in early November to take up redistricting. Its telling that the moderate plan drawn by an anti-Trump Republican still potentially eliminates two seats held by Black Democrats.

The squabbling on Capitol Hill over the Democrats infrastructure and spending plans has overshadowed how theFreedom to Vote Actintroduced by Senate Democrats last month would ban the kind of racial and partisan gerrymandering pushed by Republicans in states like Texas and Georgia.

If the Freedom to Vote Act was there, this map would be instantly blocked, Li said of the Texas congressional plan.

Yet Democrats are running out of time to pass it or devise a strategy for overcoming a GOP filibusterand could soon be powerless to stop the GOPs takeover of the US House and state Capitols for the next decade.

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Texas Republicans Are Pulling Out All the Stops to Dilute the Voting Power of People of Color Mother Jones - Mother Jones