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Texas Republicans approved redrawn US House maps that favor incumbents and decrease political representation for growing minority communities, even as Latinos drive much of the growth in the nations largest red state.

The maps were approved late Monday night following outcry from Democrats over what they claimed was a rushed redistricting process crammed into a 30-day session, and one which gave little time for public input.

They also denounced the reduction of minority opportunity districts Texas will now have seven House districts where Latino residents hold a majority, down from eight despite the states changing demographics.

What we are doing in passing this congressional map is a disservice to the people of Texas, Democratic state representative Rafael Anchia said to the chamber just before the final vote.

The states Republican governor, Greg Abbott, is expected to sign off on the changes.Civil rights groups, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, sued before Republican lawmakers were even done Monday.

The lawsuit alleges that Republican mapmakers diluted the political strength of minority voters by not drawing any new districts where Latino residents hold a majority, despite Latinos making up half of Texass four million new residents over the last decade. Abbotts office did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Republicans have said they followed the law in defending the maps, which protect their slipping grip on Texas by pulling more GOP-leaning voters into suburban districts where Democrats have made inroads in recent years.

Texas has been routinely dragged into court for decades over voting maps, and in 2017, a federal court found that a Republican-drawn map was drawn to intentionally discriminate against minority voters.

But two years later, that same court said there was insufficient reason to take the extraordinary step of putting Texas back under federal supervision before changing voting laws or maps.

The maps that overhaul how Texas nearly 30 million residents are sorted into political districts and who is elected to represent them bookends a highly charged year in the state over voting rights.

Democratic lawmakers twice walked out on an elections bill that tightened the states already strict voting rules, which they called a brazen attempt to disenfranchise minorities and other Democratic-leaning voters.

The plan does not create any additional districts where Black or Hispanic voters make up more than 50% of the voting population, even as people of color accounted for more than nine of 10 new residents in Texas over the past decade.

Republican state senator Joan Huffman, who authored the maps and leads the Senate Redistricting Committee, told fellow lawmakers that they were drawn blind to race. She said her legal team ensured the plan followed the Voting Rights Act.

The Texas GOP control both chambers of the legislature, giving them nearly complete control of the mapmaking process.

The state has had to defend their maps in court after every redistricting process since the Voting Rights Act took effect in 1965, but this will be the first since a US supreme court ruling said Texas and other states with a history of racial discrimination no longer need to have the justice department scrutinize the maps before they are approved.

However, drawing maps to engineer a political advantage is not unconstitutional. The proposal would also make an estimated two dozen of the states 38 congressional districts safe Republican districts, with an opportunity to pick up at least one additional newly redrawn Democratic stronghold on the border with Mexico, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of data from last years election collected by the Texas Legislative Council. Currently, Republicans hold 23 of the states 36 seats.

Following negotiations between Texas House members and state senators, the Houston-area districts of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat who is serving her 14th term, and Congressman Al Green, a neighboring Democrat, were restored, unpairing the two and drawing Jackson Lees home back into her district.

Texas lawmakers also approved redrawn maps for their own districts, with Republicans following a similar plan that does not increase minority opportunity districts and would keep their party in power in the state House and Senate.

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Texas Republicans approve redrawn maps decreasing representation for minority voters - The Guardian

Oct. 18, 2021 4:21 pm ET

Republican Party leaders need to woo Sen. Joe Manchin to their ranks immediately. We can ill afford to wait for the outcome of next years midterms. President Bidens proposed $3.5 trillion legislation is a malignant forced march into an unaffordable welfare state (The Entitlements of U.S. Decline, Review & Outlook, Oct. 7). Mr. Manchin has sound reasons to consider a party change. His principles are more aligned with Republican centrists, his West Virginia constituents would likely support the switch and, most important, his voting as a Republican would swing the balance of power in the Senate.

President Bidens train of abuses and usurpations, to borrow Jeffersons phrase from the Declaration of Independence, stand common sense on its head: his self-inflicted southern border crisis; his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan; his anti-fossil-fuel policies that cede our energy independence and threaten national security; his divisive claims of systemic white racism and demands for economic equality, not equality of opportunity; his Covid-19 shutdowns and vaccination mandates that threaten citizens livelihoods; and so forth.

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Why Joe Manchin Should Join the Republican Party - The Wall Street Journal

Then theres the political calculus. Several Republican governors, including Abbott in Texas, are facing primary challenges from their right. Some, like DeSantis in Florida and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, have eyes on 2024. Both of those factors are sending GOP governors scrambling to shore up support among the partys base.

That audience is front and center in all of these decisions, Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser said.

And right now that base is anti-mandate. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that 64 percent of Republicans would prefer to vote for a candidate who encourages vaccines but that an even greater number 75 percent want a candidate who opposes mandates. A Morning Consult/POLITICO poll from August found only about 35 percent of Republicans were in favor of mandatory coronavirus vaccines.

Vaccine requirements remain very unpopular with the Republican base, GOP strategist Ryan Williams said. Any support for a vaccine mandate at this point would be damaging for any governor thinking of running for president as a Republican.

DeSantis has built a national reputation for fighting any type of Covid restrictions, including school mask mandates and efforts to force businesses to implement vaccine mandates on staff for customers.

As the Delta variant surged and DeSantis battled schools over mask mandates, his approval rating dropped below 50 percent, according to an August Quinnipiac University poll.

But DeSantis dug in. And as the Delta variant began receding and the number of new infections decreased, DeSantis saw his poll numbers nationally remain high among Republicans. A GOP poll found that DeSantis led former Vice President Mike Pence, 22-15, in a theoretical presidential matchup without former President Donald Trump on the ballot.

Now DeSantis is opening a new battle with the Biden administration over the proposed federal vaccine mandate, vowing to challenge the requirement in federal court and fining a local county $3.57 million after it ordered hundreds of its employees to be vaccinated.

We basically don't want people to be discriminated against, DeSantis told reporters this past week. This has become about politicians wanting to control people. Why would you want to see people lose their livelihoods?

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These Republicans torpedoed vaccine edicts then slipped in the polls - POLITICO

Although the full scope of the grand jurys work was not immediately clear, the witness who testified said it grew out of the referral sent to the attorney generals office earlier this year, which pointed to a number of potential campaign finance violations during 2020.

The Globe also reviewed a subpoena provided by the witness, which was issued by the attorney generals office in early September, and called the person to testify on a matter referred to only as a John Doe Grand Jury Investigation.

Grand juries are charged with determining whether prosecutors have gathered enough evidence to merit a criminal indictment in a case. The proceedings are confidential.

During the 2020 election cycle, when both he and his wife were on the ballot, Ryan Fattman made a series of rapid-fire donations from his campaign account totaling over $136,000 to the state party. The GOP quickly spent nearly the exact same amount of money, in similar if not identical increments, to help Fattmans wife in her reelection bid. Public records show six of the partys expenditures aiding her came in October, and often just days after her husband, a fellow Sutton Republican, cut checks to the party.

Regulators did not publicly state which donations they were scrutinizing, but the donations fall within the timeframe in which state campaign finance regulators say the Fattmans, Lyons, and others may have violated campaign finance laws, including those barring people from disguising the true source of donations.

There are no legal limits on how much Ryan Fattman could donate to the party from his campaign account, or how much the party could spend to aid another candidate. But campaign finance officials said earlier this year that Ryan Fattman may have broken a rule that says candidates cannot make contributions to a political committee on the condition or with the agreement or understanding that the funds must then be sent to someone else, according to campaign finance officials.

Earlier this year, both the Fattmans and Lyons denied wrongdoing and cast the regulators probe as unfair. Fattman told the Globe earlier this year that candidates can make unlimited contributions to a party committee, at which point they lose control over how those funds are used.

I didnt tell the party how it must spend my donations, and the party didnt make any promises to me, Fattman said in April.

Neither the Fattmans nor Lyons returned requests for comment Monday. Earlier this year, Lyons called the referral by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance a blatant political hit job.

In the past few months, Ryan Fattman has raised $76,000 in a legal defense fund, records show.

The office of Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, confirmed earlier this year that the matter was under review but did not indicate whether prosecutors would pursue criminal charges.

Spokespeople for the attorney general declined comment Monday.

Earlier this year, campaign finance regulators also said they found evidence that the Sutton Republican Town Committee, which is led by Ryan Fattman and another family member, may have violated campaign finance laws.

Public records show that in August of 2020 Ryan Fattman donated $25,000 to the town committee, where his brother, Anthony, is chairman and the senator himself is secretary. In the two-plus months afterward, the committee reported making $33,253 in in-kind contributions to help Stephanie Fattmans campaign, including in canvassing and phone calls to buttress her successful reelection to a second six-year term.

It was not clear whether those donations are being probed by the grand jury.

In early February, the states Office of Campaign and Political Finance issued the Fattmans a notice of intent to refer an investigation into them to prosecutors. The couple sued in March to block that and were ultimately unsuccessful. The Fattmans argued that regulators had pursued a biased and illegal investigation and had refused to turn over all the evidence against them.

Matt Stout of the Globe staff contributed reporting.

Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @emmaplatoff.

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Grand jury is said to have heard testimony about potential campaign finance violations by MassGOP head, Republican state senator - The Boston Globe

A former Forsyth County Republican Party chairman is accused of stealing from a church and Habitat for Humanity store in Brunswick County.

John NathanTabor, is charged with four counts of felony larceny of motor vehicle parts, felony larceny of a motor vehicle, felony larceny, felony breaking and entering, and misdemeanor injury to real property in Brunswick County.

Tabor was arrested in Ocean Isle Beach the night of Oct. 7and is accused ina string of catalytic converter thefts, includingfromSeaside United Methodist Church and a Habitat for Humanity Restore. He also allegedly stole catalytic converters from two other residents, arrest warrants state.

Tabor, 48, was in custody at the Brunswick County detention center on a $75,000 secured bond. The detention center confirmed Tabor was released on Oct. 14.

In August, Tabor was alsoaccused of cyberstalking the pastor of the Kerwin Baptist Church in Forsyth County. He has an upcoming court date for the misdemeanor cyberstalking charge on Nov. 5, according to N.C. Courts. He also has an upcoming court date onNov. 10 for a charge of cyberstalking with the use of electronic communication in Catawba County.

According to the North Carolina Real Estate Commission, Tabor's broker license was permanently revoked in May following a commission hearing which found Tabor allegedlyattempted to collect finder's fees while his company was unlicensed.

Tabor was the chairman of the Forsyth County Republican Party from 2009 until 2012 and branded himself as a "biblically-based" conservative.

He is scheduled to appear in court on the Brunswick larceny charges on Jan. 4, according to N.C. Courts.

Reporter John Orona can be reached at 910-343-2327or jorona@gannett.com.

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Former Republican party chairman accused of stealing car parts in Brunswick - StarNewsOnline.com