Jeffries on Indiana redistricting vote failure; ‘A good night for the American people’
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Thursday praised Indiana Senate Republicans for striking down redistricting efforts in the state.
“Well, across the board, it was a good night for the American people and a bad day for Donald Trump,” Jeffries said during an appearance on MS Now’s “The Briefing.”
“And in Indiana, his effort to try to rig the midterm elections, because he knows that his policies has been the disaster, the Republican Party has been a disaster, the House Republican Conference has been a disaster, they’ve got nothing positive to present to the American people,” the New York Democrat told host Jen Psaki.
The Hoosier State Senate rejected a new GOP-favored House map in a 19-31 vote. The lower chamber passed the measure, which was backed by President Trump, last Friday — just days after the new district lines were proposed.
The president was quick to slam state Senate GOP Leader Rodric Bray (R) for not backing the new district lines.
“I heard he was against it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, when asked about the upper chamber’s rejection of the map. “He’ll probably lose his next primary whenever that is. I hope he does because he’s done a tremendous disservice.”
Trump has in recent days ramped up his threats to support primary challenges to Republicans that push back on redistricting.
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Jeffries said the vote against Trump’s recommendation signals a change in the president’s base, adding that Republicans are “trying to gerrymander congressional maps all across the country.
“And that’s not working for them,” the lawmaker continued. “And they didn’t expect the forceful Democratic response, which we’ve seen, of course, in California, we’ve seen movement in Virginia and other states, because we’ve made clear from the very beginning, we will not let these Republicans mathematically gerrymander their way into artificially keeping their majority.”
In recent months, a number of Democratic and Republican states have voted to introduce mid-decade redistricting ahead of next year’s elections. Among them are Texas, North Carolina, California, Missouri, Ohio and Utah — with several sparking legal battles.
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