'Fasten your seatbelts': Reagan-appointed judge fumes at Texas redistricting effort

A judge appointed by Ronald Reagan has fumed at the decision to reject the GOP's proposed redistricting of Texas.

In a 2-1 ruling, the three-judge panel said the new congressional maps drawn earlier this year must be set aside. The proposed map, should it have been passed into law, would have opened up five new Republican-friendly House seats. The redistricting was voted against by Judge Jeffrey Brown and Judge David Guaderrama, two judges recommended to the bench by Donald Trump, according to CBS.

But the third judge on the panel, the Reagan-appointed Judge Jerry Smith, has denounced the decision in a 104-page document that told readers to "fasten your seatbelts". Judge Smith called the ruling and subsequent decision-making of his fellow judges "outrageous".

Judge Smith would go on to write that the rejection of the GOP's redistricting map was an act of "judicial activism". The proposed map was rejected on grounds of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. Judge Smith claims he was not given "reasonable time" to respond to Judge Brown's "160-page opinion".

He wrote, "In my 37 years on the federal bench, this is the most outrageous conduct by a judge that I have ever encountered in a case in which I have been involved. In summary, Judge Brown has issued a 160-page opinion without giving me any reasonable opportunity to respond."

Judge Smith later writes, "In 37 years as a federal judge, I've served on hundreds of three-judge panels. This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed."

US District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, wrote that the challengers were “likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

A statement from US Attorney General Pam Bondi denounced the decision. She said, "We strongly disagree with today’s district court ruling on Texas’s redistricting map - Texas’s map was drawn the right way for the right reasons."

Earlier this year, Trump had told CNBC's Squawk Box that the GOP had an "opportunity" to increase its seats in Texas and that the party were "entitled to five more seats".

He said, "We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas. And I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats."