pending adjournment (12. 633)

Though both Republicans and Democrats regularly engage in gerrymandering, depending on the party in power when it comes time for redrawing the boundaries of voting precincts (normally conducted during a pre-set period follow a national decennial census—which some states attempting to remove partisanship from the process of re-districting altogether by soliciting a neural third party to set apportionment), rarely has such a push been made off-cycle and so transparently to disenfranchise Democrat-leaning districts than what is now happening in Texas with Democratic state legislators having fled to Chicago in order that the bicameral congress does not meet quorum and cannot proceed with voting to affirm the changes to the electoral map. Through the state’s governor, Trump has explicitly ordered redistricting in order to eliminate solidly Democratic areas and redistribute a sixty-forty percentile spread over all voting precincts so as markedly reduce the chances of Democrats of the Congress retaining their seats in the mid-terms and not dilute historically GOP-leaning areas—based on a calculus of by what percentage Trump carried the districts. This extreme measure by Texas Democrats is only a temporary delay tactic as they cannot wait out the entire special session called for deciding this issue and face daily fines for the absence. Had they remained within the state and not this self-imposed exile, state troopers could summon them to the capitol and compel their participation. With only the narrowest of majorities in both the House and the Senate, state legislators of other jurisdictions may try this manoeuvres after seeing how Texas combats truancy and forces the matter. Meanwhile, the Democratic caucus is entertaining countermeasures in kind, acknowledging that changing the rules and demographic landscape ahead of the election in eighteen months is not how democracy works, but also realising that further sidelining the minority party by minoritarian strategies is more unacceptable and they can’t roll over again and again.