12 new GOP seats out of thin air? Republicans are halfway there.

Here’s how the map is changing so far.

Texas: Five new GOP-leaning seats. In Texas, Republicans already redrew the map to put potentially five new red seats in play for the 2026 midterm election. They carved up seats held by Democrats around Dallas, Houston and San Antonio as well as the Gulf shore and the border with Mexico.

Ohio: As many as 3 possible new GOP-leaning seats. Ohio is required to redraw its already gerrymandered maps because of a quirk of state law. As that process begins, Republicans see an opportunity to carve out a few more Republican-leaning seats around Akron, Toledo and, maybe, Cincinnati.

Missouri: 1 new GOP-leaning seat. Republicans who control the state government passed a new map to carve up the Kansas City-area set held by longtime Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. It’s awaiting Gov. Mike Kehoe’s signature, but a signature-gathering campaign is underway in an attempt to block it.

Plus, Republicans are eyeing more. In Indiana, Gov. Mike Braun is considering a November special session to redraw congressional maps after a pressure campaign from the White House, including a visit from Vice President JD Vance.

The White House has similarly applied pressure on lawmakers from Kansas, where Democrats hold one seat; Nebraska, where outgoing GOP Rep. Don Bacon’s Omaha district will be a top target of Democrats; and New Hampshire, which has two seats held by Democrats, according to reports. In Florida, a committee has been formed to pursue the idea of a mid-decade redistricting. All of those efforts may not come to fruition, but Republicans are certainly looking across the map.

California: Voters will get a say. Golden State voters will go to polls in November to either endorse or veto Democrats’ plans to squeeze five more seats out of a map drawn by a nonpartisan commission that already favors them. California Democrats’ proposed new map could effectively cancel out the Texas gamble.

Utah: A court-mandated re-draw. A judge in Utah is requiring the legislature to redraw maps that ignored a nonpartisan redistricting commission and carved up a single Democratic seat around Salt Lake City among the state’s four congressional districts. The end result could be the return of a competitive district in Utah.

There are also nascent efforts to consider redistricting in New York, Illinois and Maryland. In New York, Democrats would have to find a way around the state constitution, which prohibits gerrymandering. In Illinois, congressional maps are already drawn to favor Democrats and there are only three Republican seats. There’s only one Republican seat in Maryland, and a previous effort to carve it up failed in the courts.

Even if the new map doesn’t put existing Republican seats at risk, which isn’t a guarantee, it’s possible they can’t win all five of the new targets. This is essentially a shell game where they’re moving voters from one district to another based on how they’ve voted in the past.

In Texas, the gamble for Republicans is that Latino voters will continue to back the GOP at the same level as they did in 2024, when there was a dramatic shift despite Trump’s rhetoric about immigration on the campaign trail.

It won't be enough. A Blue Wave is a comin'. 2018 Rdux

hi my name is Gerry. my last name is mander

As an Ohioan who watched their state vote FOR corruption, I don’t mind saying that gerrymandered redisticting—scares the hell outta me!

Republicans can only win by cheating.

They're dirty, evil, and rotten.

But that's why they keep "winning."

This country is so fucked.

There will be more than that after the next census.

Problem is: this stunt can backfire because it's based on past results. If there's a trend away from Trump, they've spread themselves too thin.

Interestingly, much of that Texas gerrymandering makes the assumption that Latinos will vote GOP.

That it increasingly not guarantee

You know his last name [italic]was[/italic] Gerry, and they compared his district to a salamander?

Hence the term "gerrymander."

You're welcome.

R4/R5 please, you guys act like Democrats haven't gerrymandered blue states to death.

I live in Massachusetts, where 36% of the Republican vote went to Trump, and yet there's no Republican representation from MA in Congress.

It's the same in most blue states.

Basically, everything Democrats accuse Republicans of, they're guilty of it themselves.

It's called projection.

They're no saints.

[quote]where 36% of the Republican vote went to Trump,

*where 36% of the vote went to Trump; Kamala got 61%.

R10, that doesn’t mean it was gerrymandering. In fact, Massachusetts was the only state where every county went blue in 2024. You would have to gerrymander in order to get Republican representation. Unlike Texas Democrats, Massachusetts Republicans lose regardless of where they run.

[quote]I live in Massachusetts, where 36% of the Republican vote went to Trump, and yet there's no Republican representation from MA in Congress.

That's called "taxation without representation."

Which is ironic coming from Taxachusetts, home of the Boston Tea Party, when numerous colonists in 1773 (some dressed as Mohawk Indians) sneaked aboard a British ship and dumped over 300 chests of British tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation.

All of this escalated tensions with Britain, ultimately setting the stage for the American Revolution.

No turning back now. Ugh.

R10 needs to be deported to Texas, Florida, Alabama, or Mississippi.

That MAGAT cunt doesn't deserve to live in Massachusetts.

They love the benefits of living in a blue state, but trash their politics all day long.

R10 needs to jump in a grease fire.... NOW!

Big gay Pete was recently trying to stop Indiana from redoing their current maps.

R8 Agreed. I also found that most interesting. The thing is, when you gerrymander to extreme levels like this, it leaves them much more exposed in the event of a blue wave election. They take districts that were say R+20 and dilute them down into new districts that are R+5-10. But a blue wave can overcome those types of margins much more easily.

I can see this backfiring. Fingers crossed.

Kansas Repugs want to gerrymander out the state's only Democratic U.S. Rep.

[quote]I live in Massachusetts, where 36% of the Republican vote went to Trump, and yet there's no Republican representation from MA in Congress.

That's not how it works. You can't just look at vote percentages and map them to congressional delegation.

[quote] If the conservative argument wins out — and wins quickly — this could yet prove the decisive moment in the 2026 elections. Multiple red states would be likely to follow Louisiana’s lead and start redistricting efforts, eliminating formerly legally protected Black- and Hispanic-majority seats that tended to vote Democrat in the past. Andrew reported in August that two liberal groups calculate as many as 19 Democratic seats in red states could be redrawn in that scenario — and that’s on top of the gerrymandering efforts already underway in Texas and elsewhere.

This is crushing. Democrats need to find a way to broaden their appeal.

[quote] This is crushing. Democrats need to find a way to broaden their appeal.

At a minimum, they need an economic downturn.

[quote] This is crushing. Democrats need to find a way to broaden their appeal.

The Democrats’ election strategy in recent years has been to only try to turn out their own voters. Any attempt to mute issues that push people away or to come up with their own solution for how to enact what moderates or conservatives want is treated as anathema. The fallback strategy is to pray to nobody that there will be a catastrophe that will by itself cause Republican voters to switch. With both strategies, Democrats do nothing to try to entice non-Democratic voters affirmatively to come aboard. Fear hasn’t worked, but Democrats seem no closer to coming up with a winning platform to convince people to vote for them, and not just vote against Republicans.

"Taxation without representation", I believe this is called.

Time to start talking about soft seccession.

Why should Democratic-led states continue to put up with this horseshit?

[bold]As I have said for years, once Democrats did nothing when SCOTUS seats were stolen, the Republicans would keep stealing. And here we are. And once again we do nothing but complain. If only Democrats elected thieves instead of wimps. [/bold]

The Senate is lost for as far as the eyes can see; now the House looks to be similarly lost. If you're not in deep despair, you don't have a pulse.

CNN’s Harry Enten says the Democrats’ chances have been slowly declining over the past few months. By then, New York City will likely have a Democratic Socialist mayor—someone who will inevitably be labeled a communist. With government-run food stores and other highly progressive policies in place, many people will see those accusations as believable. It’s shaping up to be a perfect political storm.

Someone strong like Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries need to get ahead of this.

[quote] With government-run food stores and other highly progressive policies in place

Mamdani will have little success implementing his policy goals.

R26 = Exactly. We don't come back from this. The Republicans are never going to give up power now. We are now basically living in the dawn of a One Party State. It's textbook.

We need a transformational, realigning candidate. Like Clinton, Obama, or even (at the margins) Trump.

Nebraska almost got a non-Republican Senator when the Democrats backed an independent who almost won. They’re trying it again. These kind of relationships might work in areas where Democrats are toxic.

It might mean moderates making peace with AOC and Mamdani, and vice versa.

But Jeffries and Schumer are not going to be helpful.

[quote] We need a transformational, realigning candidate.

James Talarico.

[quote] Nebraska almost got a non-Republican Senator when the Democrats backed an independent who almost won.

Fischer beat Osborn 53.19-46.52. Not exactly a nail-biter.

JEFFRIES and AOC will be having a town hall on CNN tonight. For those lacking boredom in their lives.

R31, Nebraska may be a model for less Republican states. Fischer beat the Democrat 57 to 38 in 2018, which was a bad year for Republicans. 2024 was a good year for Republicans.

[italic]I created the linked thread "Dominion Voting Systems sold to company run by former Republican election official" who is a 2020 election denier but it didn't get much traction. I'll repost one of my posts in this thread as it seems relevant:[/italic]

It's easy to see what's going to happen here. The Republican/MAGA Party are going to employ various tactics to ensure that Democrats can't win elections from now on. Oh sure - the Democratic Party will get plenty of votes - but just never enough votes to actually win the Congress, Senate or the Presidency again.

The tactics will be things like using ICE and National Guard at polling stations to terrify voters into not voting. Gerrymandering. Banning early voting or making it very difficult. Using voter suppression to discourage or prevent specific groups of people from voting or even registering to vote. Going after political enemies to terrify the rest of Americans. Paper ballots which can be slightly tampered with (i.e. lost). Voting machines which are owned and controlled by Republicans like Leiendecker... It won't be overt and in your face but it will be just enough. Just enough so the Dems can't quite win anything. All of this will add up to the Republican/MAGA Party winning every time from now on. It's what other authoritarian dictatorship countries have done like Russia, Hungary, Turkey etc. to keep the opposition out of power. Trump has already shit all over electronic voting so now he will have to do an about face and say that now it's owned by someone with integrity who can be trusted and so voters should use it.

I don't know why people aren't running around screaming about what's happening. This is much more important than anything else going on. I genuinely think that most Americans believe this absolutely couldn't happen in America and any suggesting of planned election tampering by the Trump administration is just more hysteria. But that's exactly what this is. One thing we know from human history is that authoritarian dictatorships do not willingly cede power and will do and say anything to retain power. MAGA intend to cement power and retain power and then rule for the foreseeable future.

I don't think it's a safe bet to say that there will be a blue wave in 2026. I don't think we can rely on it because I don't think it's going to be allowed to happen. I think that we will see MAGA retain power for generations to come and at this stage, the Trump administration are midway to later stages through implementing their Christian nationalist fascist authoritarian regime and in years to come, it could become more and more severe. Once they get it properly implemented they will work on making it more severe to cement their power. Something similar to a watered down Gilead.

Meet The Republican Who Just Bought Dominion Voting Machines:

Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown lost his seat last November. He has no chance of winning in Ohio again. So of course he is running in a special election to complete JD Vance Senate term. He just ran a disasterous campaign months ago and now he wants to lose again and asking for donations?. And of course he got mopped up over Trans Issues and flip flopped, which made things worse. We don't need more wimpy Sherrod Browns running for office.

Reminder that Democrats were also saying the same things after 2004, including that Republican owned voting machines would rig the election. Don’t give up before you’ve actually lost.

[quote] We don't need more wimpy Sherrod Browns running for office.

While I agree he'll lose, there's no one else who would fare any better now in Ohio.

Erin in the Morning? Really, r36? That tranny is a nutcase.

R38. Brown is going to lose by an even bigger margin than he did last Novmember. I would suggest Buttigieg come to Ohio and shake up the race. But after he fucked up the East Palestine train wreck situation, Ohio wouldn't welcome him.

R39 = Perhaps the Columbus Dispatch will be more to your liking?

California, New York and Illinois have the potential to fight back against this - by gerrymandering the living shit out of each state before November 2026.

On the downside it seriously messes up representation by POC in Congress, but has the potential to counteract the most egregious gerrymandering they can pull off in the South.

Newsom, Hochul, Pritzker, you know your assignment in the next 12 months.

Because of its constitution, R42, New York can’t do anything until ‘28. And Illinois can’t contribute much, if anything, because it’s already heavily gerrymandered. Hopefully, the Supreme Court doesn’t issue its decision until the end of its term, making it too late to affect the midterms.

Your next moves gets ours, Beta Cuck Texas.

What's it gonna be?

Once again, the much-maligned California has to bail the civilized half of the country out from the grips of the red state mouth-breathers.

R15, Massachusetts is a nightmare under their current piece of shit governor, maura healey

[quote] James Talarico.

???? Please explain how a young Christian white male would be "transformational."

Poor, poor Texas. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Every move they make can be done better and bigger by California.

James Talarico is a Christian who understands pluralism and believes in the separation of church and state. For Texas, he’s a home run because he actually has true ethics. He reminds me a bit of Jimmy Carter.

If it were up to me? I’d outlaw all religion. But in this reality, with TX taken over by a Rethuglican Cartel, he’s the best we’ve got down there. I cannot imagine them letting him win because he would shake shit up.

Texas is the worst. But let's not pretend California is the pinnacle of leadership. They don't know how to fix crime or homelessness. That's fine. Smash and Grab crime. Endless shoplifting. Homeless encampments. They cannot solve it.

R50, and yet we still innovate better than Texas ever could imagine.

Texas takes California's sloppy santorum and cum-droppings.

Texas is just so desperate to be the #1, "Biggest" state ever.

What must it feel like for them when nutty, fruity-ass California keeps anally raping them?

^^^^Is RAPE really a joke? Seriously? That's what you're going with? Grow up. ^^^^