304
Greg Abbott accused of trying to ‘fix’ midterms for Republicans by redrawing congressional maps
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
304 points (99.0% liked)
News
30922 readers
2789 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Again, they forgot to say AGAIN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_in_Texas#History
Rigging the districts is a long-standing Texas tradition, running straight back to the state's founding. Under the current map, the State Senate is so meticulously drawn that Texas would need a 60/40 Dem voting majority to have a prayer of flipping it.
Abbott is trying to squeeze yet another ounce of tomato juice from a crushed can.
At this point the only way to realistically get that squeeze is to create more districts that are "very safe" versus "locked in," and at least some Republicans will push back to save their own skin. Texas won't need to go blue for this to backfire or at least be of minimal impact.
This is as close as I get to optimism about state politics though.
The GOP has a lot of techniques to drive down voter participation and soften up democratic opposition. Rewriting the districts just lets them define the terms of engagement.
Until we get a Wisconsin-style full-state flip and some replacements at the state level, or a Federal DOJ willing to drop the hammer on all the little parasites skittering around the state, there's very little the state-level Dem Party can do to resist this kind of malfeasance.
Abbott's been consolidating more and more power in Austin as the various municipal and county level seats have flipped to Democrat. With Trump at his back, the state is increasingly feeling like a single-party dictatorship.
Don't forget the Lt governor has more power than the governor, and the railroad commission right next to him.
That stopped being true decades ago, when Perry was granted a bunch of appointment power under the Republican legislature.
The Lt. Gov set the agenda in the State Senate, which made the position a bottleneck in the legislative process. But Senate Republicans are in total lockstep. The real legislative power rested with the House calendars committee for a few sessions, as the legislature was only in session for a few months every few years and the House could kill a bill by timing it out.
But of late, Abbott has excercised his ability to call "emergency" sessions liberally. And since he can get the agenda in these sessions, he can bully the House Reps into compliance by dragging them back over and over again until they concede.
At this point "accused" seems like it should be "Duly recognized"