{"id":211810,"date":"2026-05-27T04:29:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T04:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/south-carolina-republicans-defy-trump-again-to-reject-rapid-redistricting-drive-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T04:29:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T04:29:48","slug":"south-carolina-republicans-defy-trump-again-to-reject-rapid-redistricting-drive-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/south-carolina-republicans-defy-trump-again-to-reject-rapid-redistricting-drive-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"South Carolina Republicans defy Trump again to reject rapid redistricting drive – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bid to remake maps and reduce Democratic voters in Jim Clyburn\u2019s district before midterms fails in state senate
Republican lawmakers in South Carolina<\/a> have defied Donald Trump and rejected a breakneck bid to redraw the state\u2019s congressional districts ahead of November\u2019s US midterm elections.
In a 26-18 vote, state senators rejected mid-decade redistricting in a special session of the legislature, ending hope in Washington to split up congressman Jim Clyburn\u2019s district and add to the list of gerrymandered gains for Republicans<\/a>.
The proposal would have canceled the congressional election under way \u2013 early voting began on Tuesday morning \u2013 and rescheduled it with new district lines that would have significantly reduced the number of reliably Democratic voters in Clyburn\u2019s district.
It comes as Republicans push to redraw voting districts to the party\u2019s advantage in an effort to preserves its slim majority in the US House of Representatives, scrambling to leverage a recent US supreme court ruling that weakened minority protections<\/a> under the federal Voting Rights Act.
The South Carolina state senate is composed of 34 Republican senators and 12 Democratic senators. Fourteen Republicans voted with Democrats blocking passage of the redistricting bill, days after a supermajority of the South Carolina state house of representatives voted to send it to the senate.
\u201cNineteen days ago, a map \u2026 was generated by a consultant from Washington DC, without any input from South Carolinians,\u201d said state senator Tom Davis, a Republican from Beaufort and Jasper counties. \u201cWe were told: pass this map.\u201d
A short-circuited process led legislators to reject the proposal, he said. The consultant who drew the map spoke with legislators via Zoom from Washington DC for seven minutes and 40 seconds before leaving without taking questions, Davis said. \u201cSeven minutes and 40 seconds is our legislative record \u2026 I don\u2019t know how anybody with a straight face in this chamber can vote for a map with that absence of diligence.\u201d
Some senators said it was simply too late to make a change. \u201cSouth Carolina citizens are going to the polls today. And neither my conscience or common sense is going to let me stop an election that is already under way,\u201d Republican state senator Richard Cash said.
Clyburn, the Democrat whose district Republicans are trying to reshape in their quest for a clean sweep of South Carolina\u2019s seven congressional seats, was among the first to cast an early ballot in the small city of Orangeburg. A defiant Clyburn insisted he would run for re-election, regardless of what the district looks like.
\u201cI\u2019m OK if it\u2019s Trump plus 20,\u201d Clyburn said while describing the potential Republican advantage in a reshaped district. \u201cI would be running where I live.\u201d
More than 26,000 votes were cast in South Carolina by noon on Tuesday on the first day of early voting for the 9 June primary after Democrats called for people against a proposed new map to turn out in force. In 2022, about 125,000 early votes were cast the entire two weeks.
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to be dictated to. We\u2019re not going to be forced to do something by Washington DC,\u201d said Russell Ott, a Democrat from Columbia\u2019s southern suburbs. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s what South Carolina is all about. That\u2019s kind of in our DNA.\u201d
Ott said he expected some blowback toward the Republican members who rebuffed Trump\u2019s demands. \u201cThey were put in an untenable position\u201d by Trump, Ott said. \u201cI think that if I\u2019m a Republican, that\u2019s probably who I\u2019m pretty upset at right now. This was not something that had to happen.\u201d
The Republican-led house already has passed a plan that would reconfigure Clyburn\u2019s district, void the results of current congressional primaries and instead hold new US House primaries in August.
Trump has lobbied for the plan, making at least two phone calls to the Republican state senate majority leader, Shane Massey, and also phoning in to a private meeting of Republican senators earlier this month. He also has maintained the pressure on social media.
But Massey has resisted. \u201cSouth Carolina has always punched above their weight,\u201d he said during a debate earlier this month<\/a>. \u201cDoing this will diminish that influence.
\u201cThere are likely consequences for me, personally, taking the position that I am right now,\u201d he added. I\u2019m comfortable with that. I may not like it, but I\u2019m comfortable with it.\u201d
Associated Press contributed reporting<\/em><\/p>\n

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Bid to remake maps and reduce Democratic voters in Jim Clyburn\u2019s district before midterms fails in state senateRepublican lawmakers in South Carolina have defied Donald Trump and rejected a breakneck bid to redraw the state\u2019s congressional districts ahead of November\u2019s US midterm elections.In a 26-18 vote, state senators rejected mid-decade redistricting in a special session […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":211811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}