Maryland Voters Hand Democrats Huge Win on Redistricting

Maryland voters approved a ballot measure Tuesday amending the state’s Constitution to allow Democratic-led congressional redistricting.

The measure, known as Question 3, passed 60 percent to 40 percent, with 77 percent of votes counted.

The measure does not enact a new map, but gives Maryland state legislators greater powers in drawing congressional district boundaries. Maryland has eight congressional districts, and all but one, the 1st district, are represented by a Democrat. The state Constitution currently requires compact districts that respect “natural boundaries,” and the 1st district, represented by Republican Andy Harris, is mostly confined to Maryland’s eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay.

Republicans fought the ballot question in court, but in September, the state Supreme Court allowed the amendment to be put to a vote in November’s elections. In the weeks leading up to the election, Maryland’s Democratic Governor Wes Moore campaigned for the measure, and former President Barack Obama lent his endorsement, filming a video ad urging voters to approve it.

Missouri also voted on redistricting Tuesday night, and the Show Me State’s residents blocked a Republican-led effort to gerrymander the state in favor of conservatives.

Last year, Donald Trump began pushing Republican-led states to gerrymander their districts in order to prevent a Democratic-majority in Congress from investigating him. This set off a gerrymandering war, and Republicans successfully got new maps in place in seven states: Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio. That was helped by the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act in April, allowing Southern states to eliminate majority-Black districts.

Until now, Democrats only had one successful redistricting effort in California and a favorable ruling from a federal judge in Utah, who rejected a Republican-drawn map in favor of independent redistricting reform approved by voters in 2018, creating another Democratic district. For 2028, it appears that Democrats are on their way to picking up another congressional seat from Maryland.

Missourians blocked a new congressional map pushed by the state’s Republicans and President Donald Trump Tuesday by nearly 62 percent of the vote.

Proposition A would have redrawn the state’s map to favor Republicans and push Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver, whose district currently comprises most of Kansas City along with nearby suburbs, out of office. The vote follows months of television ads mostly opposing the new map drawn by Republicans last year, according to St. Louis Public Radio.

Republicans tried to force their new map through before the midterms, but the Supreme Court halted their efforts in an unsigned order in September. In the months since then, Democrats successfully canvassed across Missouri in an effort to defeat the measure, while Republicans, who were hoping to have the map in place already, had less enthusiasm.

Trump began pushing for rapid redistricting last year in an effort to keep a Republican majority in Congress and prevent Democratic investigations of himself and his administration. That set off a gerrymandering war, with Republicans successfully getting new maps in place in seven states: Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio. The effort was helped by the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act in April, allowing Southern states to eliminate majority-Black districts.

Democrats were only able to respond with one successful redistricting effort in California, and picked up a seat in Utah thanks to a federal judge rejecting a Republican-drawn map in favor of independent redistricting reform approved by voters in 2018. In Missouri Tuesday, voters sided with Democrats, but the redistricting fight will continue there and across the country for 2028’s presidential election.

Donald Trump demanded that the midterm elections be another referendum on his popularity, but now he can’t seem to accept the results.

The president called in to Fox News around midnight to complain about the conservative media behemoth’s polls, which reflected Trump’s tanking approval ratings.

“And then I read at Fox that I’m not popular. The Fox polls are terrible. You ought to get yourself a good pollster ‘cause your polls are the worst,” Trump said live on air.

Host Brett Baier pushed back: “But tonight, actually, the results are pretty close to what the Fox polls showed.”

But Trump wasn’t willing to confront reality. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he snipped.

Democrats won big all over the country—even in historically deep red districts—taking control of both chambers of Congress in the process. Despite the obvious blow, Trump told Fox News that he had the “greatest two years in the history of the presidency.”

An NBC News Exit Poll found that more than half of voters saw the election as an opportunity to rebuke Trump and his MAGA agenda, which have thus far included an aggressive foreign policy that tied Americans to a wildly unpopular war with Iran, economic tariffs that vastly inflated the cost of living, and a militaristic deportation scheme that has pitted federal agents against the general population.

Republican candidates saw the writing on the wall months ago, but were unable to successfully peel their campaigns away from the president’s influence. Instead, the president urged voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” By late Tuesday, Trump was already trying to rewrite history.

In a separate interview Tuesday night, Trump told Politico’s Dasha Burns that his party would have won big if he was on the ballot.

“I wasn’t on the ballot, and we didn’t get the people out, but I wasn’t on the ballot,” Trump said. “If I was on the ballot, we would have won. We would have won it all very easily.”

“But Mr. President, you told voters that you were on the ballot, to vote as though you were on the ballot,” Burns reminded him.

“I said, ‘Think about me being on the ballot,’ but they didn’t agree and they didn’t like the candidates in most cases. Just one of those things,” Trump said.

He then offered that he didn’t want to blame any one individual, but that he watched the results roll in with “great interest” and that he “learned from it.”

“What did you learn, sir?” Burns pressed.

“Well, we’re going to work with the Democrats, to make sure things go well for our country. They’ve already called and—I have the right to veto everything, but I don’t want be just sitting there vetoing everything,” Trump said. “We have a lot of friends in the Democratic Party.”

After wasting almost half a billion dollars supporting Republicans in the midterm elections, tech oligarch Elon Musk is having trouble digesting the Democratic landslide.

Musk took to his X platform in the early hours after midnight Wednesday, offering some lame observations as his preferred candidates were trounced. At about 1:12 am, Musk posted, “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” before following that up with, “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time 🤷‍♂️” a minute later.

A couple of hours later, he commented, “Interesting” on a repost of exit polling purporting to show that voters supported the Trump administration’s immigration policies, but massively opposed the Iran war.

It’s not clear where that polling is from or whether it is credible, but in any case, Musk appears to be trying to cope with the negative results as best as he can. Stocks in his Tesla and SpaceX companies are plummeting Wednesday despite other tech companies doing well in early trading. His plan to merge SpaceX and Tesla might now hit some obstacles in a Democratic-controlled Congress, which has already signaled that investigations of the tech oligarch are on the way.

Plus, Musk moved his companies from California to Texas to escape Democratic oversight, only to now have a Democratic governor in the Lone Star State, Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned against Musk. She also called for a moratorium on new data centers and an end to tax breaks for the industry. Now, Democrats in Texas, as well as across the country, have him and other tech barons in their crosshairs.

“They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” posted Democratic Senator Ed Markey Tuesday night.

Michigan voted to send Democrat Abdul El-Sayed to the Senate Tuesday night, making him the first Muslim senator.

El-Sayed beat Republican Mike Rogers with 51.89 percent of the vote, Decision Desk HQ projected, with 77 percent of the votes counted.

“You’ll notice I always say ‘Inshallah’ [God-willing],” El-Sayed said in his victory speech Tuesday evening. “Tonight, we can turn that ‘Inshallah’ into ‘Alhamdulillah’ [Praise Be to God].”

El-Sayed survived a brutal election campaign beginning with the state’s Democratic primary in which millions of dollars in outside money was spent to try to defeat him, particularly from donors and organizations affiliated with the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.

In the end, El-Sayed’s message that money spent on the Iran war and on aid to Israel should be used to help struggling Americans propelled him to victory over Rogers. The former Detroit and Wayne County health commissioner also fought off Islamophobic attacks from Rogers, President Trump, and Vice President JD Vance.

“JD, habibi, there’s a delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January,” Vance said in his victory speech.

Last month, a Republican plant at a Michigan town hall attempted to trip up El-Sayed by asking him to condemn the Muslim Brotherhood, only for El-Sayed to turn the tables on the questioner, and create a viral campaign moment about his allegiance to the Constitution.

President Clinton, who inspired El-Sayed to go into politics, went to Michigan to campaign for El-Sayed and condemned the Islamophobic attacks on him in a powerful speech in late October. Former President Obama also campaigned in Michigan for El-Sayed, as did Vice President Kamala Harris.

El-Sayed’s victory in a close battleground state that Trump won in 2024 is even more good news for Democrats’ control of the Senate, but also for whoever the Democratic nominee for president will be in 2028. In order for Democrats to take back the White House in two years, they will almost certainly need Michigan’s electoral votes.

This story has been updated.