Breaking: the #texas map is thrown out, but that’s not even the best news #midterms #trump #congress

The breaking news that a federal appeals court threw out Texas's new congressional map is of course amazing, but not only for the obvious reason. This is of course the map that Trump felt entitled to that was going to give Republicans up to five extra seats. The map that triggered California to pass Proposition 50 to counter the two-to-one decision, the appeals court, which is based in Texas, invalidated the use of the map for the midterms, specifying in a 160-page majority opinion that the map illegally used racial data on black and Hispanic voters to suppress them.

But that's not the whole headline here, because by invalidating this map, the appeals process begins. Meanwhile, in California, the Department of Justice sued to stop the proposition map from taking effect using the exact same argument. That just like in Texas, they relied on racial data to draw the districts. So you might think if they threw out the Texas map on appeal,

they might do the exact same for California. That assumption would be incorrect because there is a deep legal framework connecting the equal protections clause in the 14th amendment through the Voting Rights Act and two decades of Supreme Court precedent including multiple landmark decisions that these justices helped decide. This framework is structured around the idea that it is legal and constitutional to use racial data to protect minorities but it is illegal and unconstitutional to use that same racial data to harm them. What I am saying here is that there is now a freakishly likely scenario where the Texas map fails on appeal, due in part to the fact that a

Trump-appointed judge on the Texas Appeals Court said substantial evidence shows Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map. Meanwhile in this scenario the California map stands because it was passed primarily to help Democrats, which this Supreme Court has ruled is legal. With a secondary outcome of protecting and empowering Hispanic voters. Delightfully punctuated by the fact that Hispanic voters in California supported

Proposition 50 at even higher rates than non-Hispanic voters. Meaning there's a scenario here, we're heading into the 2026 midterms, Democrats start with a plus 10 advantage. Democrats start with a plus 10 advantage. Plus 11 actually if you include Utah, compared to where we thought we would be