As Texas Republicans try to muscle a rare mid-decade redistricting bill through the Legislature to help Republicans gain seats in Congress – at President Donald Trump’s request – residents in Austin, the state capital, could find themselves sharing a district with rural Texans more than 300 miles away.
The proposed map chops up Central Texas’ 37th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett, will be consumed by four neighboring districts, three of which Republicans now hold.
One of those portions of the Austin-area district was drawn to be part of the 11th District that Republican Rep. August Pfluger represents, which stretches into rural Ector County, about 20 miles away from the New Mexico border.
Thanks for the info that it’s totally legal, I didn’t realize that. So I guess the cases I’ve heard about where district boundaries were found illegal by a court must have been based solely on the racial discrimination aspect for violating a civil rights law or something (maybe the voting rights law that SCOTUS has been gutting step by step?)
I know there has always been plenty of gerrymandering, but there always seemed to be a limit to how far they went with it, so I stupidly thought there was some actual law limiting it in some way.