Link is here: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office on Friday slammed an interim redistricting map proposed by a three-judge panel in San Antonio, saying the federal jurists overstepped their bounds in redrawing House and Senate district lines that could cost Republicans a half-dozen seats next year. “Contrary to (a) basic principle of federalism, the proposed interim redistricting plan consistently overturns the Legislature’s will where no probability of a legal wrong has been identified,” Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, said in a statement. The proposed interim map appears to have most heavily impacted state House districts in the Houston area. Republicans could lose as many as three Houston-area seats under the court’s proposed map, which also undid the Legislature’s merger of two majority-minority districts that are represented by Democrats. The Legislature’s merger of Democrats Scott Hochberg and Hubert Vo’s southwest Houston districts was one of the items that Justice Department’s lawyers identified as a Voting Rights Act violation. The proposed House, which was endorsed by two of the three judges, also would place Republican Reps. Beverly Wooley and Rep. Jim Murphy into a single district. “I don’t think the Democratic Party could have hoped to have a plan drawn like this if they controlled the Legislature,” said Paul Bettencourt, a former executive with the state Republican Party and former Harris County tax assessor.
and this:
This is getting WAY out of hand. States can’t keep fighting battle after battle with DOJ – time to do away with Section 5 Preclearance.