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      Republicans are about to lose Texas – so they’re changing the rules | The fight to vote

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      Fight to voteTexasRepublicans are about to lose Texas – so they’re changing the rulesFor years, Fort Bend county was a Republican bastion, but recently it has become more politically competitive as local organizers work against gerrymandering

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      The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam Levine in New YorkThu 30 Sep 2021 10.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 30 Sep 2021 11.45 EDTSign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHappy Thursday,A few months ago, on the verge of the once-a-decade redistricting cycle, my editors and I started brainstorming how I could best write about the partisan manipulation of the boundaries for electoral districts – known as gerrymandering.Over the last few years, there’s been a growing awareness of what gerrymandering is and how it undermines people’s votes. But the process can be complex and confusing. We sought to find stories that would make gerrymandering tangible. What are the kinds of places that are going to get gerrymandered this year? And what are the consequences for communities that get carved up for political gain?Yesterday we published a story focused on Fort Bend county, Texas, which is just outside of Houston, that gets at both of these questions. I chose Fort Bend because it’s a place that almost perfectly encapsulates the political and demographic changes happening across the country. The county has exploded in population over the last decade, growing almost 40%, and it is extremely diverse, split nearly evenly between white, Black, Asian and Hispanic people. For years, the county was a Republican bastion, but recently it has become more politically competitive. Democrats flipped several seats at the county level in 2018, the same year Beto O’Rourke carried it in his failed US Senate run. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden also won the county.embedNabila Mansoor, a local organizer, told me it was exasperating to work against the wall of Republican gerrymandering. She pointed to two recent elections that Democrats lost in gerrymandered districts that she thought they should have been able to win. And it’s hard to get people to pay attention.“Trying to get the community to get really into this fight that is really kind of a political fight for our future has really been a kind of tough sell. No matter how hard we work. No matter how many voters we get out, no matter how hard we work, no matter how many new voters we get into the fold, that really our vote doesn’t count,” she said.Earlier this month, I spent a few hours one afternoon going door-to-door registering voters with Cynthia Ginyard, the energetic chair of the local Democratic party chairwoman. With a flood of new people moving in, Ginyard has made it a personal mission to make her party as inclusive as possible.“People ask me what’s my magic secret and I say ‘open my arms’,” Ginyard said as she bounded up the doorway of one house. “When I have functions and I have meetings, and everyone in the room is Black, I’ve got a problem. Because that is not Fort Bend.”embedDespite all of the change, almost everyone I spoke with recognized that Republicans would probably reconfigure the district lines this year to help them hold on to power. I was taken aback when Dave Wasserman, a senior editor at the Cook Political Report, told me that Republicans could transform the 22nd congressional district in Fort Bend from one that Trump won by about 1 percentage point in 2020 to one that he would have won by more than 20 points. Republicans, he said, could just cut out the most Democratic parts of the county and lump them in with already-Democratic districts in Houston. They would then probably replace those voters with Trump-friendly rural voters elsewhere. “That’s pretty easy to do,” he told me.On Monday, Republicans unveiled a congressional plan that does exactly that. Their proposed plan excises Democratic-leaning areas near Sugar Land and attaches two counties that voted overwhelmingly for Trump to the 22nd congressional district. If the 2020 election were run under the new boundaries, Trump would have carried the district by 16 points, according to Planscore, a tool that evaluates the partisan fairness of districts.Non-white voters accounted for 95% of the population growth in Texas over the last decade the census found. But the congressional map Republicans unveiled on Monday actually has one less Hispanic majority district (the current one has eight) and zero Black-majority districts (the current one has one).The Fort Bend county Republican party didn’t respond to multiple interview requests, but I spoke to Wayne Thompson, a Republican who served as an elected constable in the county, to better understand how the politics were changing. “I think the party as a whole did not reach out to people maybe that talked different than we did and looked a little different than we did. I don’t think that’s a prejudice thing. I think that’s just a severe error,” he said.Also worth watching …
      A partisan review of the 2020 election in Arizona failed to produce any evidence of fraud. Conspiracy theorists aren’t backing down and several other states are embracing similar partisan reviews.
      Michigan Republicans are moving ahead with a petition drive to go around the state’s Democratic governor and enact new voting restrictions.
      Please continue to write to me each week with your questions about voting rights at sam.levine@theguardian.com or DM me on Twitter at @srl and I’ll try to answer as many as I can.TopicsTexasFight to voteUS politicsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Kim Jong-un orders hotline with the South to reopen as he condemns ‘cunning’ US

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      North KoreaKim Jong-un orders hotline with the South to reopen as he condemns ‘cunning’ US North Korean leader said Biden offer of dialogue is ‘a facade’ and blamed the US for ‘hostile policy’ Justin McCurry in Tokyo and agenciesWed 29 Sep 2021 21.34 EDTLast modified on Wed 29 Sep 2021 21.55 EDTKim Jong-un has condemned a US offer of dialogue as a “facade”, state media reported, but said he had ordered officials to restore communication lines with South Korea to “promote peace”.Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, the North Korean leader accused the US of continuing a “hostile policy” against his nuclear-armed country, despite the Biden administration’s offers of negotiations without preconditions.Talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been at a standstill since the collapse of the February 2019 Hanoi summit between Kim and then-president Donald Trump over what the North would be willing to give up in return for sanctions relief.Under Joe Biden, the US has repeatedly offered to meet North Korean representatives anywhere, at any time, without preconditions, while saying it will pursue denuclearisation.But Kim condemned the declarations as “nothing more than a facade to mask their deception and hostile acts and an extension of hostile policy from past administrations”, the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported.Kim also said South Korea “still follows the US,” and that “mutual respect must be guaranteed and unfair views and double standards attitude dropped” before the countries could declare an official end to the 1950-53 Korean war, which ended with a truce but not a peace treaty.Nonetheless, he expressed a willingness to restore North-South telephone and fax lines in early October, while urging Seoul to abandon its “double-dealing attitude” and “hostile viewpoint”. Inter-Korean relations, he said, were at a “crossroads of serious choices” between reconciliation and a “vicious cycle of confrontation”.‘Pushing the nuclear envelope’: North Korea’s missile diplomacyRead moreKim’s comments are an apparent effort to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington as he wants South Korea to help him win relief from crippling US-led economic sanctions and other concessions.Under the Biden administration, “the US military threat and hostile policy against us have not changed at all but have become more cunning”, he said in a lengthy address to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North’s one-party parliament.The United States said Wednesday it bears “no hostile intent” towards North Korea and remains open to the idea of negotiations. “We hope the DPRK will respond positively to our outreach,” a State Department spokesperson said, adding that Washington supports “inter-Korean cooperation” as aiding stability on the peninsula.North Korea has been largely biding its time in recent months as it assessed the Biden government and focused on domestic issues.Kim’s influential sister, Kim Yo-jong, was appointed to the country’s top government body, amid a raft of changes approved by the Supreme People’s Assembly. Her official rank has risen and fallen over time, but her new position on the State Affairs Commission is by far the most senior post she has held.Nine members of the commission were dismissed, including one of its vice-presidents, Pak Pong-ju, and diplomat Choe Son-hui, a rare senior woman in the North’s hierarchy who has played a key role in negotiations with the United States.North Korea has been behind a rigid self-imposed blockade since early last year to protect itself from the coronavirus pandemic, with the economy suffering as a result and trade with key partner China dwindling to a trickle.Kim’s speech was the latest in a series of actions with international ramifications this month.This week, it tested what it said was a hypersonic gliding missile, and earlier this month announced it had successfully fired a long-range cruise missile, after holding a scaled-down military parade.The North’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes are banned under UN Security Council resolutions, and it is subject to multiple international sanctions as a result.North Korea says it fired new hypersonic missile into seaRead moreThe UN security council will hold an emergency meeting Thursday on North Korea, at the request of the US, France and the United Kingdom, diplomatic sources told AFP Wednesday.North Korea has not shown any willingness to give up its arsenal, which it says it needs to defend itself against a US invasion.At the UN general assembly this month, the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, repeated his call for a formal declaration of the end of the Korean war.Seoul is also spending billions on military development as both Koreas build up their weapons capabilities in what could become an arms race on the peninsula, with ramifications for neighbouring Japan, China and the wider region.This month, the South successfully test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) for the first time, making it one of a handful of nations with the advanced technology, and this week, it held a ceremony to launch its third submarine capable of carrying SLBMs.TopicsNorth KoreaUS politicsSouth KoreaKim Jong-unnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Capitol attack committee issues fresh subpoenas over pre-riot Trump rally

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      US Capitol attackCapitol attack committee issues fresh subpoenas over pre-riot Trump rally Eleven people connected to Women for America First subpoenaed, including Trump 2016 campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson Hugo Lowell in WashingtonWed 29 Sep 2021 18.40 EDTLast modified on Wed 29 Sep 2021 19.03 EDTThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Wednesday issued a second tranche of subpoenas to individuals connected to the rally immediately preceding the 6 January riot, where Donald Trump incited his supporters to commit insurrection.The new subpoenas for people involved in the march and rally reflects the select committee’s far-reaching mandate to examine whether the attack on the Capitol was planned in advance, according to a source familiar with the matter.Trump plans to sue to keep White House records on Capitol attack secretRead moreHouse select committee investigators in total subpoenaed 11 individuals connected to the Trump-supporting organization Women for America First that organized the rally at the Ellipse, including its two co-founders, Amy Kremer and her daughter Kylie Jane Kremer.“The investigation has revealed credible evidence of your involvement in events within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in the subpoena letters.“Accordingly, the select committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” Thompson said.The select committee also subpoenaed other individuals linked to Women for America First: Caroline Wren, Cynthia Lee Chafian, Hannah Salem Stone, Justin Caporale, Katrina Pierson, Lyndon Brentnall, Maggie Mulvaney, Megan Powers, and Tim Unes.House select committee investigators are specifically questioning Pierson – a spokesperson for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – about a 4 January encounter with Trump where the former president asked about a separate event featuring Roger Stone and Ali Alexander.The select committee, in subpoenaing Pierson and investigating an additional event on the day before the Capitol attack organized by Chafian, is examining connections between the rally leaders and Trump, who helped drive attendance by elevating 6 January as a “wild” protest.House select committee investigators said in the subpoenas that they believed the 11 people assisted in organizing the rally in support of Trump and his lies about a stolen 2020 election, which incited his supporters to storm the Capitol in his name.But in a notable addition, the select committee added in the subpoenas that they had been identified as potential witnesses because they communicated with former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – as well as Trump himself.The select committee is expected in the coming weeks to authorize still further subpoenas to Trump officials and other individuals connected to the Capitol attack, which could ultimately number in the hundreds, according to a source familiar with internal deliberations.But it was not immediately clear whether the latest subpoena targets would comply with the orders that compelled them to produce documents by 13 October and appear for depositions in October and November before a select committee that has plainly enraged Trump.The Guardian first reported on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers are planning to sue to block the release of White House records from his presidency to House investigators over executive privilege claims, according to a source familiar with his planning.Trump also expects the four aides subpoenaed in the first tranche of orders last week – Meadows, deputy chief Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and department defense aide Kash Patel – to defy the orders, the source said.The former president’s efforts to resist the select committee on every front by claiming executive privilege faces steep obstacles, in part because the justice department declined to assert protection over prior testimony related to 6 January.But the plan to mount legal challenges could ensure the most sensitive Trump White House records are tied up in court for months, delaying the select committee as it aims to produce a final report before the 2022 midterms to shield it from accusations of partisanship.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More