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Trump Urges Republicans to Fight Pennsylvania's Congressional Map

by Associated Press

   HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA --

   President Donald Trump on Tuesday encouraged Republicans to fight
   Pennsylvania's new court-imposed map of congressional districts, issued
   a day earlier in a move expected to improve Democrats' chances at
   chipping away at the GOP's U.S. House majority.

   "Trump tweeted that Republicans should challenge the new map of
   Pennsylvania's 18 congressional districts all the way to the U.S.
   Supreme Court, if necessary.

   "Your Original was correct! Don't let the Dems take elections away from
   you so that they can raise taxes & waste money!" Trump tweeted.

   Republicans have already vowed to challenge it in federal court, as
   early as Tuesday.

   The Democratic-majority state Supreme Court met its own deadline Monday
   to issue the new boundaries after it threw out a 6-year-old GOP-drawn
   map as unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The Republican-controlled
   Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf did not produce a consensus
   replacement map in the three weeks allotted by the court.

   The new map is to be in effect for the May 15 primary and substantially
   overhauls a Republican-drawn congressional map widely viewed as among
   the nation's most gerrymandered.
   New boundaries will likely usher in changes to Pennsylvania's
   predominantly Republican delegation, which has provided a crucial
   pillar of support for GOP control of the U.S. House.

   Most significantly, the new map gives Democrats a better shot at
   winning a couple more seats, particularly in Philadelphia's heavily
   populated and moderate suburbs. There, Republicans have held seats in
   bizarrely contorted districts, including one described as "Goofy
   Kicking Donald Duck."

   Republican Rep. Ryan Costello, whose suburban Philadelphia district was
   narrowly won by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, is in even more dire
   straits now that his district adds the heavily Democratic city of
   Reading.
   The state's delegation is already facing big changes in a year with six
   open seats, the most in decades. Meanwhile, candidates finding
   themselves in a new political landscape are rethinking campaigns a week
   before they can start circulating petitions to run.

   The map removes the heart of one district from Philadelphia, where a
   crowd of candidates had assembled to replace the retiring Democratic
   Rep. Bob Brady, and moves it to suburban Montgomery County.

   The new map does not apply to the March 13 special congressional
   election in southwestern Pennsylvania's 18th District to fill the
   remaining 10 months in the term of former Republican Rep. Tim Murphy,
   who resigned amid a scandal. But it renders the special election
   virtually meaningless: the court's map puts each candidate's homes in a
   district with a Pittsburgh-area incumbent.

   The court ruled last month that Republicans who redrew district
   boundaries in 2011 unconstitutionally put partisan interests above
   neutral line-drawing criteria. It was the first time any state court
   threw out congressional boundaries in a partisan gerrymandering case,
   this one brought by registered Democratic voters and the League of
   Women Voters last June.
   The new map repackages districts that had been stretched nearly halfway
   across Pennsylvania and reunifies Democratic-heavy cities that had been
   split by Republican map drawers six years ago.
   Democrats cheered the new map, while Republicans blasted it.

   Independent analysts said the map should improve Democratic prospects
   while still favoring Republicans as a whole. An analysis conducted
   through PlanScore.org concluded the court's redrawn map eliminates
   "much of the partisan skew" favoring Republicans on the old
   Republican-drawn map, although not all of it.

   University of Florida political science doctoral student Brian Amos
   said Clinton beat Republican Donald Trump in eight of 18 districts in
   the 2016 presidential election on the court's map. That compared with
   six of 18 districts Clinton won in 2016 under the invalidated map.

   Republicans who controlled the Legislature and the governor's office
   after the 2010 census crafted the now-invalidated map to elect
   Republicans and succeeded in that aim: Republicans won 13 of 18 seats
   in three straight elections even though Pennsylvania's registered
   Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.

   Republicans will argue in federal court that legislatures and
   governors, not courts, have the constitutional responsibility to draw
   congressional maps. But they appear to face an uphill battle since
   federal courts are normally reluctant to undo a state court decision,
   said Michael Morley, a constitutional law professor at Barry University
   in Florida. "I think it will be a major obstacle and a major challenge
   to get around it" Morley said.