He can issue such an order but it is unclear under what legal basis it would have any legitimacy. Of course, I can also say this about several things he’s already done without substantial challenge, so…
Stranger
On my way home from work I heard on the news radio that Trump is pressuring Indiana to redraw districts, too.
Northwest Indiana, near Chicago has, gasp, Black people living there. How could anyone be a good Republican without fucking those guys out of representation?
And Sen. Cornyn is saying Kash Patel has agreed to dispatch FBI agents to track down the Texas Democrats. Talk about weaponization of the DOJ…
Given a large number of the legislators are in Illinois, Gov. Pritzker made it clear he won’t be playing along with the FBI.
“I welcome the F.B.I. coming to the state,” he added. “But they won’t be arresting anyone because there is no federal law that prohibits those Texas House Democrats from being here.”
What could he do? Station Illinois state troopers at the hotel the Democratic lawmakers are staying at with orders to arrest any FBI agents that show up for attempted or actual kidnapping? Short of that, I think any measures are going to be merely symbolic.
Can they get an Illinois judge to issue a preemptive injunction preventing the FBI from arresting them?
State judges wouldn’t have power over the FBI, though if the feds broke an Illinois law in the process the state cops might be able to hold them for prosecution.
A federal district judge might be able to issue a writ of habeas corpus naming the Texas legislators if they get taken into custody, which the FBI might or might not honor before they spirit them back to Texas.
We seem to be in some very unprecedented times.
Hmm. What if the Illinois State Police put the legislators in protective custody?
At some point, something like this has to happen. Someone with real power has to use that to oppose these abuses. The States have state police and National Guards, not to mention various city police forces. Someone at that level, who has legitimate authority under a State, has to step up and tell the FBI or ICE, or whoever, “You’re not pulling that shit here.”
Well, but given how overwhelmingly Trumpy the police are at all levels in America, it’s also possible the governor orders in the state troopers to guard the hotel, and they either “fail” to obstruct the feds or decline the assignment outright. In other words, someone might appear to have “real power” only until they actually try to exercise it.
It seems to me the long term solution is for Congress (once Democrats are in control) to require that independent committees draw districts or some other rule. It certainly seems they could do so:
Article I, Section 4, Clause 1:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
Illinois Judge Scott Larson basically says no, I’m not going to hold these folks in contempt.
As the Petitioner has failed to present a legal basis for the court to obtain subject matter jurisdiction over this cause of action, this court is without jurisdiction to grant petitioner’s emergency motion to rule on pleadings
This court does not find that it has subject matter jurisdiction, this court does not consider the issues of personal jurisdiction, venue or the merits of the underlying petition for rule to show cause or the request to issue a rule to show cause upon the respondents
I can’t find a link to the actual ruling, just news reporting it.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5451206-illinois-judge-ken-paxton-texas-democrats/
Brian
I don’t know why the Texas Dems are fighting this redistricting so hard. It’s a big setup for a dummymander. They should just let the Rs commit their unforced error.
There’s an article in WaPo about it, but I’m not going to post a link because I can no longer give gift links.
IMHO it’s because the Democratic Party still hasn’t come up with a good idea on how to address the reason why this is being tried.
The obvious question is this. If this map is so good for Republicans, why wasn’t it implemented during the regular redistricting after the 2020 census? Was it because the Republicans, out of the goodness of their hearts, decided to give Democrats a fighting chance by having a fair fight in some purple districts? Was it because Republicans were too stupid back then the to realize they could have done even better than the map they actually went with in 2020? No, clearly I don’t think it’s either of those things. My belief is that this map would have been worse for Republicans a mere 5 years ago compared to the actual current map / the one that they went with in 2020, and that is why they didn’t go with it.
So what is the answer to my rhetorical question? What has changed between 2020 and the present day to make this new map more Republican friendly than it would have been back then? It’s the trend of young minority men moving towards the Republican Party. That also happens to be the problem that the Democratic Party has yet to come up with good ideas to address. Figuring out a solution to that problem is what Democrats need to focus on.
AIUI, the Republicans are basing it on the 2024 Presidential voting. Not the congressional voting, which is what the gerrymander is aimed at.
Right. But converting that to congressional districts is just a matter of overlaying the maps and then redrawing the lines. The number of split ticket voters who voted for Trump and for a Democratic congressperson (or who are likely to do so in 2026) are almost certainly too small to meaningfully consider for this kind of project. Then it becomes a matter of where, and with which voters, did Trump make gains in 2024 compared to 2020. And for that I would refer back to my above post.
ETA: In other words, this new map is a high risk / high reward map. The risk is assuming that the trend in young minority men moving to the Republican Party will continue. If that doesn’t happen, or if the trend reverses, this new map would be more favorable to Democrats compared to the 2020 map. I live in one such area, in one of the districts that Republicans are attempting to flip. As someone on the ground in one of the areas being gerrymandered (from distract 27 to district 34, currently R/D but likely to go R/R with the new map), I can almost guarantee that this is the reason the numbers make the new map more R friendly.
The other bad news for Democrats is that many Democratic voters in California aren’t on board with Gavin Newsom’s plan to gerrymander California.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/14/california-redistricting-newsom-poll-00508930
Looks like Ds will be bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Or as I like to think of it, the Mr. Miyagi school of of thought as applied to politics. “Politics for defense only” and since Democrats aren’t being attacked in California, initiating an attack against the Republicans is somehow wrong on principle. At least for the principles of the people who think that way. I am not one of those people. I’m in favor of Newsom gerrymandering California.
ETA: The other saying I often see has to do with wrestling with pigs in the mud. My response is that it’s time to learn to like the mud, because that’s the only way Democrats will be able to get us back to the way things used to be.
How Democrats in California and elsewhere should respond to the political machinations in Texas is an incredibly important debate to have. A couple of questions:
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In a contest to see which party can prevail through unscrupulous means, how could the Democrats possibly beat today’s Republicans?
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If fairness and accountability in governance is part of the Democrats’ mission, how is that served by resorting to gerrymandering?
In other words, “If you don’t like the fact that your vote doesn’t have any power, vote to change that”.
There’s different levels of fairness and accountability. To use a sports analogy, think of what the Texas Republicans are doing* as breaking one of the so called unwritten rules of baseball. What the California Democrats are doing is saying that they are going to follow the rule anyway even though it is unwritten on the national level. Yes, in California it’s the law, but the law can, and should, be changed.
*. At least WRT the gerrymandering itself, the response to the quorum breaking Ds is a different story.
ETA. There may be something or another written down about not being allowed to gerrymander if it disenfranchises a racial minority group. That doesn’t apply in this case, for the reasons I mentioned above. This specific gerrymander is about enfranchising a traditionally minority group, young Latino men (who it just so happens decided to swing R in the last 5 years).