Recently, former Republican House speakers Paul Ryan, John Boehner, and Newt Gingrich announced they’ll be using their high-dollar donors to fund a plan to gerrymander America’s congressional and legislative districts after the November elections.
And now, they’ve published a strategy document outlining the goals of their gerrymandering scheme – and the scope of their plans is shocking.
Ryan, Boehner, and Gingrich are targeting crucial legislative races in 2020 that they believe “could determine as much as a 136-seat swing in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next 10 years.”
More than half of the Democrats in the U.S. House would be eliminated with a 136-seat swing, giving Republicans a two-thirds supermajority. With that kind of unlimited power, House Republicans could overturn a Democratic president’s vetoes and even amend the Constitution to permanently enshrine Trump’s right-wing agenda in our nation.
This scheme explains why Republicans were so thrilled about confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Just months after he was sworn in, he was the deciding vote to remove ALL possible limits on partisan gerrymandering in federal courts – and now, GOP strategists say that ruling has given them the tools they need to create a decade-long GOP supermajority in Congress.
Republicans think all of that power is within their grasp this year, so we need to mobilize NOW to stop them.
Republicans just announced a major retreat in Texas
Not long ago, national Republicans painted a giant bullseye on their stronghold in Texas, telling the Associated Press that “it would be a huge blow for the Republican Party if we lost Texas.”
But then just hours later, that same GOP group – led by former speakers Paul Ryan, John Boehner, and Newt Gingrich – announced a major RETREAT in the state.
A new GOP strategy memo slashes in half the number of Democratic-held seats in Texas that Republicans identify as targets – from a dozen identified by Texas Republicans last fall, down to just SIX today.
Meanwhile, the Democratic target map is expanding. The latest Texas polls show state Democrats within the margin of error or even LEADING. And a coalition of progressive donors just stepped up to TRIPLE all gifts until Sunday to flip states like it blue.
Just two years ago, Texas was at the center of the blue wave that delivered the U.S. House and hundreds of key legislative districts into the blue column – and there’s every reason to think it could play that role again.
After 2018’s gains, we’re only nine seats away now from toppling the GOP majority in the Texas House and dealing a “huge blow” to Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression plans across the entire country.
Every challenger Republicans abandon puts the GOP further on its heels and that Democratic majority closer and closer to reality – but we NEED grassroots Democrats to step up right now, before opportunities like this slip away across the country.
