Trump’s Washington
How President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.
Trying to shore up their congressional advantage, Republicans may have instead given Democrats another opportunity to pick up a valuable House seat next fall.
This isn’t a newsletter about Texas, where an off-year redistricting battle began at President Trump’s behest; or California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom’s corresponding effort to persuade voters to gerrymander California’s congressional map in favor of Democrats has spurred one of the most closely watched elections of the fall.
Today, I’m looking at a long-simmering redistricting battle in Utah that has flown more under the radar — but that could also have big implications for next year’s midterm elections.
A fight out West
Since the summer, President Trump and his aides have turned to redistricting as a keystone of their political strategy in the midterms and beyond. They have pressured lawmakers in states like Texas, Indiana and Missouri, urging them to shoehorn more safe Republican seats into their congressional maps any way they can.
But a fight playing out now in Utah that predates the president’s push shows how redistricting can get complicated — and potentially backfire — even when it seems like one party holds all the cards.
The story starts in 2021, when Utah Republicans drew themselves four safe seats, even though just three years earlier voters had called for independently drawn maps. A lawsuit ensued. And on Monday, in response to a judge’s order, Utah’s Republican-controlled state legislature passed a new congressional map that appeared to give Democrats their best chance in years to capture at least one of the state’s four House districts.
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