Beau of The Fifth Column

Lucky for you, it's definitely time to talk about it again.

There's really just three simple parts to the equation.

Let's start with this.

Trump saw a pretty big uptick in support from Latino voters during the last election.

Republicans believed this swing was permanent.

So, when they gerrymandered Texas and redrew the maps, they counted heavily on Latino areas as friendly ground and based the maps around maintaining Trump's gains.

But then, Trump enacted his policies.

The landslide victory Democrats just got in Texas was definitely influenced by a massive swing in Latino voters.

So, what we have is a situation where Republicans redrew maps based on the 2024 voting habits of a demographic.

Now they're finding out that the voting habits aren't the same in 2026.

This has all the makings of a classic dummy-mander.

See, they counted on the rural Latino vote heavily in those maps.

They counted on that demographic to hold certain districts.

And because they thought they would hold them, they could shuffle other demographics into districts that leaned blue in an attempt to drown out people's voices by picking the voters.

The actual effect of this process may have been to make both the blue-leaning district and the district they pulled Republican-leaning demographics from more competitive.

Texas GOP consultant Brendan Steinhauser said, quote,

The imagery coming out of Minnesota in the last few days has had a huge impact on not only Hispanic voters, but swing voters, independents in Texas and around the country.

Well, howdy there, Internet people.

It's Belle again.

So today, we're going to talk about DHS funding, deadlines, and Trump.