Texas GOP: Beware the Dummymander

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Kayla Guo at Texas Tribune:

As Texas Republicans prepare to redraw the state's congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, cautionary tales loom from past redistricting efforts that saw the state’s rapid demographic change collide with far-reaching partisan gerrymandering.

The move to carve out more GOP seats in Texas was unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Greg Abbott, who included redistricting in a sweeping 18-item agenda for the Legislature's upcoming special session. The announcement ended weeks of speculation over whether Texas Republicans would follow through on demands from President Donald Trump's political advisers, who have been pushing for the rare mid-decade redistricting gambit to improve the GOP's chances of retaining its slim majority in Congress.

Some Republicans, including members of Texas' congressional delegation, oppose the idea over concerns about jeopardizing their own seats if they miscalculate with the new districts.

A recent test case unfolded after the 2010 U.S. Census, when Republicans who controlled the Texas Legislature looked to maximize their party’s seats across the map by drawing reliable GOP voters into nearby Democratic districts and turning them red.

But by 2018, a Trump midterm election year, that aggressive approach came back to bite them. With a favorable national climate and explosive population growth driven almost entirely by people of color, Texas Democrats picked up 12 seats in the state House, ousted two longtime GOP members of Congress and narrowed their losing margins in statewide races.

“What looked like a solid gerrymander by the end of the decade had become almost a dummymander,” Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said. “The lesson from 2010 is that you can stretch yourself too thin, that you can be too smart for your own good. And when the politics change, you get bitten in the you-know-where.”

Something similar happened in 2006. 

Malevolence Compounded by Incompetence

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Its incompetence extends to current officials and nominees.

Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Singapore was told to “shape up and do some homework” as he struggled to answer questions about the country.

Read the full story here: https://t.co/ny8TosCYlW pic.twitter.com/tM1uN2UVKT

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 10, 2025

Someone tell Education Secretary Linda McMahon it's AI, not A1.... @Lesdoggg pic.twitter.com/tpVINadjwO

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 7, 2025

Yes, Hegseth should resign. Glad Sen. Tillis and Rep. Bacon are there now, but it should have happened in April. (Or, more accurately, he should never have been confirmed).https://t.co/2m8XtpHue6

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 10, 2025

Megabill and CA Republican House Members

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Dan Walters at CalMatters:

“Congressman David Valadao is doing exactly what he promised: delivering real results, restoring fiscal sanity, and fighting for California families,” NRCC spokesman Christian Martinez said. “His vote is proof that strong leadership and commonsense still matter in Washington.”

A couple of hours later, Protect Our Care California, a health care advocacy organization with close ties to Democratic Party leaders, announced that it will air video ads criticizing Valadao and nine other Republican congressional members for their votes.

“Representative David Valadao just voted for the largest health care cuts in history in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations, and we’re going to make sure that every single one of their constituents knows it,” said Matthew Herdman, director of Protect Our Care California.

The ads are aimed at Valadao and other members of California’s Republican congressional delegation, including Young Kim and Ken Calvert, because they are considered to be the most vulnerable incumbents as the two major parties battle over control over the House in next year’s elections.

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Valadao’s vote for the bill is especially noteworthy because Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by 12 percentage points in the San Joaquin Valley’s 22nd Congressional District, two-thirds of his constituents rely on Medi-Cal (California’s version of Medicaid) for their health care, and he had repeatedly promised not to vote for any reductions in the program.

New Data on the 2024 Election

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.

A June 30 release:

Today, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released the 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) report, the nation’s most comprehensive source of election administration data. It covers topics such as voter participation, voter registration, voter list maintenance, and election technology, as well as early and Election Day polling place operations for the general election. These results reflect a 100% response rate from all 50 states, five U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia.

Nearly 65% of the citizen voting age population participated in the general election, resulting in more than 158 million counted ballots. Over 72% of voters cast their votes in person at a voting location, either before Election Day or on Election Day. Over 98% of election jurisdictions used voting equipment that has voters mark a paper ballot or produces an auditable paper record of voters’ ballot preferences.

The 2024 EAVS Comprehensive Report and data, as well as previous EAVS reports can be found here.

Other key findings from the 2024 EAVS include:

Voter Registration

• More than 211 million citizens were active registered voters for the 2024 general election — 86.6% of the citizen voting age population.
• State motor vehicle offices and automatic voter registration were the two most used methods of voter registration. Motor vehicle offices accounted for 32.2% of transactions processed. Automatic voter registration was used for 26.4% of transactions.
• States reported sending nearly 40 million confirmation notices as part of efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls. Accurate voter list maintenance is an essential part of a well-functioning voter registration system — having accurate lists helps reduce costs, decreases wait times and ensures that only voters eligible to vote can do so. Confirmation notices help ensure that voters are not removed in error.

Voting Methods

• In-person voting continued to be the most common voting method in the 2024 general election, with over 70% of voters choosing to cast their ballots in person. And 35.2% voted in person before Election Day, while 37.4% voted in person on Election Day.
• Voting by mail decreased to about 30% of total ballots cast in the 2024 election. Despite this shift, election officials continue to implement security measures to ensure this option is secure. Mail ballots are protected by state laws that determine how they must be filled out and returned by the voter, and then verified by election officials before they are counted.
• Over 98% of election jurisdictions used voting equipment that has voters mark a paper ballot or produces an auditable paper record of voters’ ballot preferences. The percentage of jurisdictions that reported using voting systems without a verified paper trail has decreased significantly since the 2022 general election. In the 2024 EAVS, only 80 jurisdictions in three states reported using these systems, with just one jurisdiction reporting only using this type of voting system.

Voting Systems and Election Supporting Technology

• Nearly 93% of states, the territories, and DC require voting system testing and certification either by statute or through a formal administrative rule or guidance. Some of these states require full EAC certification, while others require testing to federal standards or testing by a federally accredited laboratory.
• Nearly 40% of jurisdictions used electronic poll books to assist with voting, which was the highest percentage reported to date in the EAVS. Given the rise in use, the EAC recently established a Voluntary Electronic Poll Book Certification Program to evaluate and test the security, accessibility, and usability of electronic poll books across the country.

Poll Workers

• While 47.9% of jurisdictions reported facing significant challenges in recruiting and retaining poll workers, recruitment has become easier since the last presidential election. More than 770,000 individuals served as poll workers for the 2024 general election, the majority of which were over 61 years old.

Biden's 2024 Debate Memo

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.

 Politico Playbook reports on a 2024 memo urging Biden to debate early.  Oops.

With friends like these: In the ill-fated briefing document, dated April 15, 2024, Biden’s senior advisers told him not to wait for the autumn dates proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates — the first of which, they noted, was scheduled after mail-in ballots would start going out — but instead to arrange a head-to-head with Trump within a matter of weeks. The memo was obtained by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, in the process of reporting their new book, “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” which is out tomorrow.

Read it and weep: “By holding the first debate in the spring, YOU will be able to reach the widest audience possible,” Biden’s top aides told him — and by the way, every reference to Biden is written in attention-grabbing all-caps and bold — “before we are deep in the summer months with the conventions, Olympics and family vacations taking precedence. In addition, the earlier YOU are able to debate the better, so that the American people can see YOU standing next to Trump and showing the strength of YOUR leadership, compared to Trump’s weakness and chaos.”

Reality check: As readers may recall, it didn’t quite work out that way. More than 50 million Americans did indeed get the chance to see Biden stand next to Trump at the CNN debate on June 27. But the president melted down; his basic faculties failing him, his reelection hopes essentially torched inside 15 minutes. It was the most disastrous TV debate in history. Read the full memo here

And there’s more: The book says support for an early debate was not unanimous among the president’s aides, and that some members of Biden world felt he should not go head-to-head with Trump at all. One unnamed donor called the White House in May, the book reports, “alarmed” by a recent appearance by the president at a Chicago fundraiser, and urged his team to “find an excuse” to get him out of the debates. This was rejected out of hand.

Corrupted Justice Department

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  In March, Trump addressed an audience at the Justice Department and accused the media and his critics of breaking the law.  It is not hard to see his remarks as a directive to prosecute them.

Ryan J. Reilly at NBC:

One of three career federal prosecutors fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi last week has written a passionate goodbye to his colleagues, praising them for their willingness to “enter the arena” and encouraging them to not be timid amid ongoing threats to their work.

Andrew Floyd had been a leader in the Capitol Siege Section and stayed with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, now headed by interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. In an email sent Thursday, he expressed pride in seeking justice for “despicable and illegal acts against our brothers and sisters in uniform” who were victimized during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

“They entered the arena and were assaulted. Later, they were re-victimized. Called crisis actors, vilified, threatened, and told that what they experienced did not happen,” Floyd wrote in the email seen by NBC News.

...

Floyd's departure is part of what current and former officials describe as a growing "brain drain" at the FBI and Justice Department, as seasoned public servants leave under mounting political pressure and fear of retaliation.

Michael Feinberg at Lawfare:

On May 31 of this year, in a series of phone calls beginning at nine in the morning and ending that afternoon, the newly installed Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Norfolk Field Office, Dominique Evans, made clear to me that, at the direction of Dan Bongino, my career with the organization had—for all intents and purposes—come to an end.

It would be an understatement to say that I had not expected this. In fact, I was in the midst of preparing for a potential move to Washington, D.C. to take on a new position at FBI headquarters.

But, it turned out, I had made a terrible mistake: I had remained friends with someone who had appeared on Kash Patel’s enemies list. How did Bongino find out about this private friendship? I honestly don’t know. What business was it of his? None at all. Was I accused of any sort of misconduct? No. It didn’t matter.

I faced a choice: get demoted or resign. I became the latest of a great many senior FBI special agents to walk out the door.

The specifics of my experience may be unique—details often are—but the broad strokes of the story have become unfortunately common in recent months, as more and more special agents are driven out of the Bureau on mere suspicion of political unreliability. These developments should be concerning to all Americans. In the past six months, the FBI—and, for that matter, the Department of Justice and intelligence community as a whole—has been forcing out a wide range of experienced personnel needed to protect our nation. Under Patel and Bongino, subject matter expertise and operational competence are readily sacrificed for ideological purity and the ceaseless politicization of the workforce. At a time of simultaneous wars across the globe and a return to great power competition, this makes us all less safe.

The Megabill Aftermath

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Maeve Reston and Theodoric Meyer at WP:

History and dismal public polling suggest President Donald Trump’s $3.3 trillion tax bill, approved by Congress this week, could help Democrats win back the House in the 2026 midterm elections.

The bill is deeply unpopular — with nearly 2-to-1 opposition, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted in June. But Republicans still have an opportunity to shape public perception of the bill because more than a third of Americans had no opinion of it and two-thirds said they had heard either little or nothing about it.

...

While Trump made substantial inroads with low-income voters in the 2024 election, the top 10 percent of earners get about 80 percent of the bill’s benefits, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton budget model. The bill also makes deep cuts to federal support for wind and solar power and other renewable technologies — leading some experts to warn that the legislation could raise energy prices for consumers at a time when demand is soaring

....

Trump has pledged not to cut Medicaid and has falsely claimed that the bill simply targets waste, fraud and abuse in the program. But at least 17 million Americans will lose their health care coverage, according to nonpartisan estimates — the result of the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, the expiration of subsidies for health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, and other Republican changes. That could pose a major liability for vulnerable Republicans such as Rep. David G. Valadao, who represents a district in California’s Central Valley with one of the highest numbers of Medicaid recipients in the country, according to an analysis by KFF.

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The bill includes a $6,000 deduction for seniors — which stemmed from Trump’s campaign pledge — but the provision will not benefit tens of millions of low-income seniors, who do not have a sufficient tax liability to claim the deduction. Our colleague Jeff Stein has the details on who will benefit here

...

Working-class voters in the swing state of Nevada — many of whom work in the hospitality industry — frequently cited Trump’s promises to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime as a reason they were leaning toward voting for Trump. Partially fulfilling those promises could help Republicans running in three Democratic-held House seats in Nevada that are perennial battlegrounds. (Both provisions will be phased out at the end of 2028.).

 

Don't overlook this. By backloading Medicaid cuts until 2027/2028, Trump and GOP have ensured that the bloodbath will start when JD Vance's 2028 campaign really gets going. "Working class populist" Vance will have to defend that carnage in real time.https://t.co/1gjAxXtLaA pic.twitter.com/HhB1ojuLuu

— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) July 5, 2025