Trump redistricting push suffers twin setbacks

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s push to redraw congressional borders in Republicans’ favour before November’s midterm elections suffered twin setbacks Tuesday, as South Carolina lawmakers blocked a new map and a court halted Alabama’s redistricting plan.

The blows slowed a broader Republican effort, urged by Trump, to reshape voting districts in conservative-led states as the party tries to protect its narrow majority in the US House of Representatives.

In South Carolina, a bloc of Republican state senators joined Democrats to stop a last-minute plan that would likely have handed them control of all seven of the state’s House seats.

The proposal would have targeted the district of Congressman James Clyburn, the lone Democrat in South Carolina’s delegation and one of the most influential Black lawmakers in US history.

The state House had already approved new district lines, but the Senate rejected the blueprint after early voting began Tuesday for South Carolina’s scheduled June primary.

“Neither my conscience nor common sense will allow me to stop an election that has already begun,” Republican state Senator Richard Cash said in a statement carried by US media.

The move effectively blocks the new map ahead of the November midterms, though Republicans could revive the effort in a future session.

Hours earlier, a three-judge federal panel blocked Alabama from using a Republican-drawn map that would have given the party an edge in six of the state’s seven congressional districts.

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The court said Alabama’s plan intentionally discriminated against Black voters by spreading them across districts “to dilute votes, at least in part because they are Black.”

For now, Alabama must use the map in place during the last election, under which the state sent five white Republicans and two Black Democrats to Congress.

Alabama Republicans said they would appeal the ruling, which came after Republicans across the South moved to exploit a recent Supreme Court decision weakening part of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 law protecting minority voters.

Ordinarily, congressional districts are redrawn after each census. But Trump has pressed Republican-led states to redraw maps mid-decade, hoping to offset the usual midterm losses suffered by a president’s party.

Republicans have already enacted new maps in several states, while Democrats have had fewer opportunities to respond.

The national battle remains fluid, with Louisiana Republicans also pursuing a map that could eliminate a Democratic-held Black-majority district.

It wasn’t all bad news for Trump on Tuesday, as a judge allowed a new Republican-friendly congressional map in Florida to remain in place as it is challenged in court.

Almost two-thirds of Sunshine State voters approved a ban on partisan gerrymandering in 2010, but Governor Ron DeSantis’s general counsel has told lawmakers that the vote can be ignored, and the legal tussle is likely to end up in the Florida Supreme Court.

© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd

المصدر: New Straits Times