Texas Republicans advance map that reignited US redistricting wars
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that the Texas legislature’s lower chamber passed a contentious new electoral map on Wednesday that aims to help Donald Trump’s Republican party retain its razor-thin US House majority in the 2026 midterm elections, AFP reported.
The vote had been delayed by two weeks after Democratic legislators fled the southern state to halt the redistricting drive, which carves out five new Republican-friendly districts.
More than 50 Democrats walked out, stalling legislative business and generating national headlines as they sought to draw attention to the rare mid-decade redistricting push.
The Democratic lawmakers returned this week, but not before their protest had set off a national map-drawing war, with Trump pressuring his party’s state-level officials to do everything they can to protect the majority in the US House of Representatives.
The stakes are sky-high for Trump, who will be bogged down in investigations into almost every aspect of his second term if Democrats manage to flip the handful of districts nationwide needed to win back the House in next year’s midterm elections.
Trump hailed the “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas“ on Wednesday night. “Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Texas never lets us down.”
The president also suggested Florida, Indiana and other states were looking into pursuing similar redistricting to benefit Republicans while once again calling to “STOP MAIL-IN VOTING.”
Trump – who has long railed against postal ballots, even though they have benefited his party and he has voted by mail – said in a separate post:
END MAIL-IN VOTING, AND GO TO PAPER BALLOTS. 100 additional seats will go to Republicans!!!”
In other developments:
-
The vice-president, JD Vance, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, staged a photo op with National Guard troops at Union Station in the nation’s capital. They were roundly booed and jeered on their way in and out of the station.
-
A federal judge denied the justice department’s bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Jeffrey Epstein in 2019. US district judge Richard Berman said the small number of documents seen by the court pale in comparison with the 100,000 records the government already has on Epstein and that disclosing them could harm victims.
-
Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor Trump has called on to immediately resign over an accusation that she falsely declared a property she obtained a mortgage on was her primary residence, responded on Wednesday that she has “no intention of being bullied to step down”.
-
Trump has bought at least $100m of bonds since he returned to office in January, according to a CNBC analysis of new filings from the president with the US Office of Government Ethics.
-
A young American citizen who was violently arrested by federal immigration officers in Los Angeles county in June, after he objected to the arrest of an older man in a Walmart parking lot, was charged with conspiracy to impede a federal officer.
Key events
Joseph Gedeon
Amid the Donald Trump administration’s heavy-handed review of Smithsonian museums, the Guardian has seen a document compiled by the White House that details examples of how the widely visited cultural institutions have overly negative portrayals of US history.
The document, based on public submissions shared with the administration, points to what it says are problematic exhibits at seven different museums, including a Benjamin Franklin exhibit that links his scientific achievements to his ownership of enslaved people and a film about George Floyd’s murder that it says mischaracterizes the police.
“President Trump will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable,” a White House official said. “Until we get info from the Smithsonian in response to our letter, we can’t verify the numbers of artifacts that have been removed because the Smithsonian has removed them on their own.”
Trump announced the initiative on Truth Social earlier this week, writing: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”
The seven museums that have so far been flagged for review include the National Museum of American History, National Museum of the American Latino, National Museum of Natural History, National Museum of African Art, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Museum of Asian Art.
Uganda has entered an agreement with the United States to take in nationals from third countries who may not get asylum in the US but are reluctant to return to their countries of origin, the foreign affairs ministry said on Thursday.
President Donald Trump aims to deport millions of immigrants who entered the US illegally and his administration has sought to increase removals to third countries, including by sending convicted criminals to South Sudan and Eswatini, Reuters reported.
“This is a temporary arrangement with conditions including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted,” Vincent Bagiire Waiswa, the ministry’s permanent secretary, said in a statement.
Waiswa added that Uganda would prefer to receive people from African nationalities under the agreement. “The two parties are working out the detailed modalities on how the agreement shall be implemented,” he said.
On Wednesday, another Ugandan foreign affairs official had denied a US media report that the East African country had agreed to take in people deported from the United States, saying it lacked the facilities to accommodate them.
Obama calls California’s redistricting plan ‘a responsible approach’
Robert Mackey
Barack Obama waded into states’ efforts at rare mid-decade redistricting efforts, saying he agreed with California governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to counter the new Texas congressional map by launching an effort to redraw his own state’s map and create more Democratic-friendly districts, calling it “a responsible approach”.
“I believe that governor Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach. He said this is going to be responsible. We’re not going to try to completely maximize it,” Obama said at a Tuesday fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. “We’re only going to do it if and when Texas and/or other Republican states begin to pull these maneuvers. Otherwise, this doesn’t go into effect.”
Obama also called Newsom’s strategy “measured”, as it only temporarily grants the California legislature the ability to redraw maps mid-decade.
While noting that “political gerrymandering” is not his “preference,” Obama said that, if Democrats “don’t respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy”.
According to organizers, the event raised $2m for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and its affiliates, one of which has filed and supported litigation in several states over Republican-drawn districts. The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Eric Holder, who served as Obama’s attorney general and heads up the group, also appeared.
Americans worry democracy in danger amid gerrymandering fights, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
Most Americans believe that efforts to redraw U.S. House of Representatives districts to maximize partisan gains, like those under way in Texas and California, are bad for democracy, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
More than half of respondents – 57% – said they feared that American democracy itself was in danger, a view held by eight in 10 Democrats and four in 10 in president Donald Trump’s Republican party.
The six-day survey of 4,446 US adults, which closed on Monday, showed deep unease with the growing political divisions in Washington – where Republicans control both chambers of Congress – and state capitals.
The poll found that 55% of respondents, including 71% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans, agreed that ongoing redistricting plans – such as those hatched by governors in Texas and California in a process known as gerrymandering – were “bad for democracy.”
At Trump’s urging, Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott has called a special session of the state legislature to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, aiming to help Republicans defend their 219-212 US House majority.
When Texas Republicans redrew their congressional map this month at the urging of Donald Trump, they faced a difficult task.
They needed to find a way to pick up five seats that the president wanted ahead of the midterm elections next year without spreading their voters too thin and jeopardizing the 25 seats they already held.
Here is a visual breakdown of the redrawn congressional maps…
Texas Republicans advance map that reignited US redistricting wars
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that the Texas legislature’s lower chamber passed a contentious new electoral map on Wednesday that aims to help Donald Trump’s Republican party retain its razor-thin US House majority in the 2026 midterm elections, AFP reported.
The vote had been delayed by two weeks after Democratic legislators fled the southern state to halt the redistricting drive, which carves out five new Republican-friendly districts.
More than 50 Democrats walked out, stalling legislative business and generating national headlines as they sought to draw attention to the rare mid-decade redistricting push.
The Democratic lawmakers returned this week, but not before their protest had set off a national map-drawing war, with Trump pressuring his party’s state-level officials to do everything they can to protect the majority in the US House of Representatives.
The stakes are sky-high for Trump, who will be bogged down in investigations into almost every aspect of his second term if Democrats manage to flip the handful of districts nationwide needed to win back the House in next year’s midterm elections.
Trump hailed the “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas“ on Wednesday night. “Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Texas never lets us down.”
The president also suggested Florida, Indiana and other states were looking into pursuing similar redistricting to benefit Republicans while once again calling to “STOP MAIL-IN VOTING.”
Trump – who has long railed against postal ballots, even though they have benefited his party and he has voted by mail – said in a separate post:
END MAIL-IN VOTING, AND GO TO PAPER BALLOTS. 100 additional seats will go to Republicans!!!”
In other developments:
-
The vice-president, JD Vance, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, staged a photo op with National Guard troops at Union Station in the nation’s capital. They were roundly booed and jeered on their way in and out of the station.
-
A federal judge denied the justice department’s bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Jeffrey Epstein in 2019. US district judge Richard Berman said the small number of documents seen by the court pale in comparison with the 100,000 records the government already has on Epstein and that disclosing them could harm victims.
-
Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor Trump has called on to immediately resign over an accusation that she falsely declared a property she obtained a mortgage on was her primary residence, responded on Wednesday that she has “no intention of being bullied to step down”.
-
Trump has bought at least $100m of bonds since he returned to office in January, according to a CNBC analysis of new filings from the president with the US Office of Government Ethics.
-
A young American citizen who was violently arrested by federal immigration officers in Los Angeles county in June, after he objected to the arrest of an older man in a Walmart parking lot, was charged with conspiracy to impede a federal officer.
