A former Trump administration official thinks he has the best solution for flipping Congress to Republican control in the 2022 midterm elections — not by promoting good candidates or ideas that appeal to voters, but by redrawing congressional maps in GOP-leaning states through extreme partisan gerrymandering.
Carlos Trujillo, who worked in the Trump White House and is also a former Florida lawmaker, told Axios this week that he believes his home state is the key to Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives in next year’s elections.
“Whoever controls the U.S. House could come through Florida — and I think it will come through Florida,” he said.
Trujillo admits he’s taking a page from Democrats in 2018, when they won control of the House. While Democrats did have a national strategy to win, they also put heavy focus on winning districts in California they hadn’t focused on before, gaining seven new seats in the state on their way to netting 40 congressional seats across the country overall that year.
The former Trump administration official thinks that Republicans can do the same in 2022 — but rather than trying to win additional seats the traditional way (for instance, campaigning against an opponent by offering better ideas on how to govern), Trujillo says his plan relies on redrawing the congressional maps in Florida in order to strengthen Republicans’ prospects for maintaining and gaining wins in that state.
Trujillo, who has helped Republicans redraw districts in the past, noted that the Florida Supreme Court ruled against the party’s gerrymandered maps last decade for being too partisan, but that the court has since shifted in a more conservative direction.
“The Supreme Court has completely turned over in Florida over the last 10 years. So our hope is the maps that are presented — as long as they’re in compliance with the state Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act — should be ratified by a nonactivist Florida Supreme Court,” he explained.
Trujillo’s statements are a blatant admission that the Republican Party is set to use the power of redistricting to help them win control of Congress, rather than relying on the democratic principle of courting voters to their cause in 2022.
Indeed, largely because many state legislatures have already been gerrymandered, Republicans are set to control the redrawing of 18 states’ congressional maps, while Democrats will only have control of seven states’ maps. And as a report from RepresentUs, a nonpartisan organization that fights against political corruption, demonstrates, 35 states are at risk of having their redistricting process “rigged” with over half the country deemed to be at “extreme” risk of that happening.
The manipulation of political maps that Trujillo has spelled out and other Republicans likely plan to employ could be reduced substantially through federal legislation currently being considered by Congress.
The For the People Act, which contains a number of election reforms, includes provisions on how congressional maps are to be redrawn in state legislatures in accordance with the decennial census. Rather than allowing legislatures controlled by one party or the other determine how maps are crafted, the bill would require states to come up with a nonpartisan form of congressional map-drawing (similar to the Iowa model), limiting the effect that either political party can have in producing outcomes that are more beneficial to themselves rather than to the voters they are supposed to be representing.
The For the People Act has already passed the House of Representatives, but faces an uphill battle at passage in the evenly divided Senate.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.