AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show in Texas, where a major political fight’s playing out that could shape whether Democrats retake the House in the midterms and beyond. After the 2020 election, President Trump famously called the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and told him to find 11,780 votes. Now Trump has called on Texas Republicans to find five congressional seats ahead of next year’s midterms.

REPORTER: Are you calling, then, for a complete redrawing of the congressional map ahead of next year?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, no, just a very simple redrawing. We pick up five seats.

REPORTER: Where in —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But we have a couple of other states where we’ll pick up seats also.

AMY GOODMAN: This week, Republicans delivered, upon Trump’s request, and released their proposal for a newly drawn Texas congressional map that would add five Republican seats. It’s being pushed forward quickly, with a hearing set for today in Austin. Its newly drawn districts set up a likely clash between incumbent Democrats, including in the Austin area, where longtime Congressmember Lloyd Doggett, who’s served for three decades, would be pitted against the rising newcomer Greg Casar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This is Casar.

REP. GREG CASAR: It’s the same old BS: corrupt politicians having a scheme to rig the rules of our elections so that they can drown out voters’ voices and remain unaccountable. We’re not going to have it, not on our watch.

AMY GOODMAN: Casar, Doggett, Al Green and other lawmakers joined House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York at a Thursday news conference in Austin. Jeffries did not directly respond when asked if he’d support a move by Texas Democrats to walk out to stop the redistricting proceedings and face a $500-a-day for each — fine for each member.

MINORITY LEADER HAKEEM JEFFRIES: It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment, and all options should be on the table to protect the people of Texas. But Texas Democrats are going to be the ones to decide that. We will fight them politically. We will fight them governmentally. We will fight them in court.

AMY GOODMAN: After Texas Republicans unveiled a new congressional map favoring the Republicans, Democratic Congressmember Jasmine Crockett of the Dallas area revealed she would no longer live in her own district.

REP. JASMINE CROCKETT: I currently don’t live in the CD 30 that they created. I don’t. That’s not where I live. Now, they asked us where we live, because they are supposed to take that into consideration. And these are some of the things that the court will look at when they’re trying to determine whether or not there were problems with creating the maps, is incumbents and where they live. And they moved me out of my district. Yeah, they — they completely changed the makeup of Texas 30. It’s really awful. So, we’ll have to have some conversations about what that looks like. Just so you know, the rules when you are running for Congress on the federal level is that you don’t have to live in the district to run for the seat. But the question will be: What — what do my constituents say? What do they want?

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine, where his latest piece is headlined “Trump’s Texas Gerrymander Is Supercharging a New War on Democracy.”

Ari, how did Texas get to this point? And we may see, after this broadcast, the Democrats walking out of the state Legislature.

ARI BERMAN: Well, it really came from Donald Trump, Amy. And what’s happening in Texas is Trump’s most tangible plan to rig the 2026 midterms. It’s not his only plan to try to manipulate those upcoming elections, but it’s the most concrete plan we’ve seen yet, because five new seats in Texas would put Democrats at a huge disadvantage in terms of being able to take back the House. It would give Texas Republicans nearly 80% of seats in a state where Trump only won 56% of the vote in 2024.

And it’s really unprecedented, because this Texas map is already gerrymandered by Republicans. It already limits Democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color. And now that would be much worse. It would be even more skewed. And the fact that this is happening mid-decade is incredibly unusual, and the fact that it’s being pushed by the president of the United States is even more unusual. So, a lot of things are unprecedented right now, Amy, but I think it’s pretty clear to say this is a really unprecedented power grab we’re seeing in Texas.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Texas Republicans have repeatedly asserted that they drew the current redistricting maps race blind. Your response, Ari?

ARI BERMAN: Well, it’s interesting, because civil rights groups say the opposite. They say that the map discriminates against communities of color, the current map, because if you look at the last decade, 95% of the growth in Texas came from communities of color, but when it came time for Texas to draw new districts after the 2020 census, they drew new districts that had white majorities instead. So, people of color are 60% of the state of Texas, but white people control 65% of the districts. So there’s already this imbalance.

On the other hand, what the Justice Department has said is that four districts represented solely by Black or Hispanic Democrats were, quote-unquote, “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.” That was the theory they used to justify this special session in Texas. But that directly contradicts what Texas Republicans say, which is that these maps are race blind. So, if anything, the maps give too little emphasis on race, not too much.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking about major Trump critics, from Greg Casar, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, to Jasmine Crockett, Representative Al Green — of course, all lawmakers of color.

ARI BERMAN: Exactly. I mean, it’s not hard to see what they’re doing here. They’re trying to pick up seats for Republicans by diluting the power of communities of color in Texas by dismantling a district held by one Black Democrat, a district held by another Latino Democrat, districts that are supporting other Democrats from communities of color. So, a third of Texans are moved around on these maps, but two-thirds of Texans of color are moved around in this map.

So, it’s really a surgical dismantling of representation for communities of color. And it’s happening, Amy, on the verge of the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which takes place next week. And so, they really are trying to weaken this historic voting rights law in order to pick up these seats that Trump wants in Texas.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what’s happening today, the possibility that Texas Democrats could flee the state again. Explain what that means.

ARI BERMAN: Well, there’s going to be a hearing first in the Legislature, but Republicans are going to try to move this very, very quickly. Remember, the stated purpose of this was supposed to be to look at the horrible flooding that happened in Texas. That’s what Democrats are saying that the state should be focused on, how so many people died. Instead, they added redistricting, and that’s completely overshadowed the horrific crisis that happened in Texas.

But the idea is that if Texas Democrats leave the state, they will prevent Republicans from having a quorum to be able to pass the maps. They did that in 2003, when Texas did its first mid-decade redistricting under the auspices of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. They did it in 2021 to try to stop a voting rights bill. The problem is, is that it’s very expensive for them to do this. Each member would be fined $500 a day. They couldn’t pay it out of their campaign accounts. They’d have to go somewhere. And I would imagine not just the state of Texas, but the federal government would come after them. I’m sure Trump would be eager to weaponize the Justice Department, the FBI and other law enforcement to go after these Texas Democrats. So, they have a hard decision to make, but they don’t have the numbers to stop the bill, absent leaving the state.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the role of the Supreme Court?

ARI BERMAN: Well, the Supreme Court laid the groundwork for this kind of egregious gerrymandering. They laid the groundwork for it by gutting the Voting Rights Act. States like Texas, which had a long history of discrimination, previously had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. They don’t have to do that anymore, so that makes it easier to discriminate. And the Supreme Court also, in 2019, in a case called Rucho v. Common Cause, said that the federal courts couldn’t stop partisan gerrymandering, that they not only couldn’t block these kind of lawsuits, they couldn’t even review them. That means that if states like Texas draw these really egregious maps, and they say, “We’re just doing it for partisan purposes, that, yeah, Trump told us to do it,” yeah, that might look partisan, but that’s fine, because partisan gerrymandering is legal. That’s because of what the Supreme Court has done. So, the Supreme Court, John Roberts, the chief justice, and the other conservative justices, they have directly laid the groundwork for what’s happening in Texas right now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to talk about what’s happening in the rest of the country in response. California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to the new Texas redistricting map by saying that next year’s midterm elections are being rigged, and vowed to fight back with redistricting in California.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM: I think there’s a growing recognition in this country, not just with Democrats, independents, but also Republicans, that de facto the Trump presidency ends in November of next year. If the American people are given a fair chance and a voice and a choice, we will take back Congress. The president United States recognizes that, so he wants to rig the game, wants to change the rules midterm. They’re very effective at this. They’ve done this in the past. They’ve got a lot of experience doing this. … They are doing a midterm rejection of objectivity and independence, a act that we could criticize from the sideline or an act that we can respond to in kind, fight fire with fire.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s California Governor Gavin Newsom. Now to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who also weighed in on the redistricting plans.

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL: All’s fair in love and war. Because we are following the rules, we do redistricting every 10 years. But there’s other states that are violating the rules and are going to try and give themselves an advantage. All I’ll say is, I’m going to look at it closely with Hakeem Jeffries.

AMY GOODMAN: So, again, that’s New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Talk about the significance of these two states, both Democratic governors, on either side of the country.

ARI BERMAN: Well, blue states want to respond to Texas. It’s going to be more complicated. Both New York and California have independent redistricting commissions. They have prohibitions on gerrymandering in their constitutions, so it’s not as easy as it would be in Texas to gerrymander. At least in California, they seem to be developing a plan to pass new maps and then have voters approve them in a special vote, basically, that would take place in November. That’s the latest plan that I’ve seen. It’s risky. It could get blocked by the courts. The voters could reject it if that happens. But I think that Californians and in New York and other blue states, they feel like they have a moral duty to respond, that if the maps get so rigged in the Republican direction, Democrats have no choice but to draw their own new districts.

Now, what I worry about, Amy, is that we’re going to be in a race to the bottom here, that there’s going to be retaliatory districting happening from red and blue states, and something that’s very abnormal, which is the redrawing of districts mid-decade, will become normalized because of what Trump did. And the reason this is happening is because we don’t have federal legislation banning partisan gerrymandering, and we have a Supreme Court that said that this kind of partisan gerrymandering is OK. And that has really led to a race to the bottom for states to do these kind of tit-for-tat gerrymanderings. And I’m worried about where it ends.

AMY GOODMAN: Ari Berman, we want to thank you so much for being with us, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine. We’ll link to your latest piece, “Trump’s Texas Gerrymander Is Supercharging a New War on Democracy.” That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman.