All posts tagged "Redistricting"

The Supreme Court on Friday dealt Missouri Republicans another defeat, blocking lower federal courts from forcing the state to use the Trump-backed 2025 congressional map in the midterms.

The unsigned order is a win for People Not Politicians, the group that forced a referendum on the map. It puts on hold rulings from the Eighth Circuit and a federal judge, including an appeals court decision one legal expert had called "borderline lawless," and warns that federal courts should not change a state's election rules once voting has already begun.

"Given this Court's two prior orders in this litigation, our conclusion that this was error should come as no surprise," the justices wrote of the Eighth Circuit's ruling....

Legal analyst Michael Popok broke down a dramatic day in Missouri's redistricting war, describing a "very hot and upset" state Supreme Court that found Secretary of State Denny Hoskins in contempt for trying to defy its order.

On his MeidasTouch show Legal AF, Popok recapped this week's twin hearings, in which the court ruled Hoskins "was in contempt" of its Sept. 3 injunction barring him from using a Republican-drawn congressional map. The GOP secretary of state had emailed local election officials directing them to use the 2025 map anyway, citing a conflicting federal court order.

Hoskins escaped punishment only by "purging" the contempt, reversing course and instructing officials to use the older 2022 map after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the GOP version hours earlier....

South Carolina's Republican-majority Senate voted to stop a measure to push a new congressional map forward — an open rejection of President Donald Trump's demand for redistricting, according to reports.

As early voting began on Tuesday for the already scheduled June primary, a measure to accept a redrawn congressional map failed in the state's Senate in a 20-24 vote, NBC News reported.

The vote "was a surprise rejection of President Donald Trump, who had urged lawmakers to pass a redrawn map that eliminated the state’s single majority-Black district and gave Republicans a chance to win the seat," according to NBC News....

A Louisiana man said during a state Senate redistricting hearing that MAGA was "the last breath of the Confederacy."

In an emotional speech on Monday, the resident who identified himself as Marshawn said he had "zero doubt" that Republicans in the state would pass a map that erased majority-Black districts.

"If y'all can give us less than zero seats, you would do it. Y'all do this under the orders of somebody that said the Civil Rights Act was harm for the white people, that it caused reverse racism," he explained. "RFK said that Black children are overfilled on antidepressants and that they need to be re-parented on different forms, all of them. Pete Hegseth constantly brings Doug Wilson to the Pentagon to give a prayer service. Doug Wilson is the same pastor that said that slave owners were on strong spiritual ground."...

Red state officials trying to redistrict their state congressional map suffered a setback in a lower court on Friday.

According to Alabama journalist Kyle Whitmire, a three-judge panel denied Alabama a stay, saying that it doesn't have the jurisdiction. Alabama officials have been trying to undo a federal injunction that came out of the case Allen v. Milligan, which restricts state lawmakers from redistricting until the next Census in 2030.

Alabama officials filed an emergency motion demanding a stay that ended up before the three-judge panel earlier in the week, asking it to lift its own injunction. A separate emergency order was filed to conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles requests from the 11th Circuit asking the Supreme Court to lift an injunction....

A Tennessee state lawmaker set a paper Confederate flag on fire Thursday inside the state's capitol amid protests after the state's Republican lawmakers enacted a new U.S. House map and split the state's only majority-Black congressional seat.

Rep. Justin Jones, a community organizer and Democrat representing the state's 52nd district, used a lighter to set the paper on fire as it burned among a large crowd of cheering demonstrators.

Protests were ongoing Thursday, the third day of a special session in Nashville, where Republican leadership was advancing a new congressional election map after President Donald Trump's demands that the GOP lawmakers redraw the red state’s congressional districts. ...