US Department of Justice Sues Texas Over Redistricting
Today Attorney General of the United States Merrick Garland sued Texas over new maps drawn up during it's latest round of redistricting. "The new maps drawn up by Texas violate the Voting Rights Act and strip representation from people of color in Texas" he said.
Texas grew significantly during the last census count and gained 2 seats in the new Congress, requiring new maps be drawn. Almost all of this growth was from Latinx, Asian, and African American populations, with more than a few Californians thrown in the mix. Despite this, the representation of these populations is expected to fall in Texas under the new maps.
Texas adopted substantially gerrymandered maps during the last legislative special session, lumping all 18,204,891 Asian, African American, and LatinX persons into 1 statewide district, while 36 other seats will consist of voting districts containing only white men. Texas carved out 1 district containing all Californians, and this district is expected to elect whoever Elon Musk supports on his Twitter feed.
Under recent laws adopted by the legislature also restricting abortion, women on Texas no longer have any right to vote. While their unborn children have been granted "Personhood", the new laws strip "Personhood" from women.
Of the lawsuit, Governor Abbot said "This is the same old thing the intrusive federal government has been doing since 1861. They try to give darkies the vote and we take it away. It's just a game we play."
Ken Paxton announced he would vigorously defend the state of Texas against the lawsuit. "Texas has never surrendered against the Northern Aggressor and will defend our rights to allow representation to those who we deem fit. Namely, really old white men. We never surrendered in 1861 and we will not surrender now. We won then, and we will win now. We did win then, didn't we?"
Other Attorney General hopefuls in Texas also chimed in. When Louis Gohmert was asked about the news he said "What?" and later said after doing his research he believes that the US Department of Justice is not real, like climate change.