On Sunday, Politico’s Gregory Svirnovskiy regurgitated talking points by Illinois Democrat governor J.B. Pritzker and former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder to suggest Democrats’ gerrymandering is permissible, while smearing Republicans’ attempt to redistrict in Texas as a Trump-backed “attempt to cheat mid-decade.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called a special legislative session to, in part, consider new maps “in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.” This came right after the DOJ expressed “serious concerns” that four Texas districts were unlawfully gerrymandered on racial grounds. Last week, close to 60 Texas House Democrats abandoned the state and headed to Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts to protest a new redistricting proposal that could give Republicans five more congressional seats.
As The Federalist reported, Illinois is the most gerrymandered state in the country. In fact, as Nathaniel Rakich and Tony Chow wrote in 2022 in FiveThirtyEight, Illinois’ “gerrymandered congressional map seems hell-bent on making Republican congressmen from Illinois an endangered species.” Democrats — who were in charge of redistricting in the state — “drew a map that packed all five Republicans” in Illinois’ U.S. House delegation “into just three.” And despite Democrats not winning even 60 percent of the popular vote in 2024, the party holds 14 out of the state’s 17 congressional seats.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member