Trump isn't "entitled" to Texas congressional seats [View all]

Trump isn’t “entitled” to Texas congressional seats
The 2026 midterms will not be free and fair if Trump can help it

By Austin Sarat
Published August 7, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) Elections, for some reason, seem to unsettle and unnerve President Donald Trump. Losing is an intolerable outcome; winning is satisfying only if it produces a landslide, whether real or imagined..

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Trump’s election anxieties were on display on Tuesday during an interview with CNBC. “We should have many more seats in California. It’s all gerrymandered. We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats,” he said. Four of those seats are currently held by Black or Hispanic lawmakers. Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Black Democrat, occupied the other one until his recent death.

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What really matters here is not the truth of Trump’s claim, but that in his view, he and his Republican allies are “entitled” to seats held by duly elected representatives the Republican-dominated Texas state legislature seems determined to deliver for its party. That’s not the way elections are supposed to work — not democratic elections, at least.

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Americans need to wake up and stop thinking that the 2026 midterm elections will be free and fair. In fact, so long as the president has anything to say about it, the era of free and fair elections in this country will be a distant memory.

The only hope we have of preserving whatever is left of our democracy depends on whether Democrats in blue states succeed in matching the Republicans, gerrymander for gerrymander. And even then, the prospects for the Democrats to retake the House of Representatives will not be great. This is because, as the Washington Post reported, “Republicans have full legislative control of 23 states compared with only 15 for the Democrats — giving them more places to squeeze out a congressional seat here and there. Should there be a call to the barricades, Ohio is expected to quickly follow Texas’s lead, and so might Missouri and Florida, for starters.” ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/07/trump-isnt-entitled-to-texas-congressional-seats/