Wisconsin’s Lib-Led Supreme Court Stacks The Congressional Map Deck
The latest leftist gerrymander stunt should serve as a reminder to Republicans that failure to rewrite representation lines is not an option.The United States Senate is broken, and most Americans know it — including President Donald Trump. A chamber that once passed laws with a simple 51-vote majority, a practice that held for more than a century, now demands 60 votes for nearly anything of consequence.
Defenders call this the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” guarding minority rights. In reality, the 60-vote threshold is a rule the Senate invented in the last century — and one it can discard tomorrow.
The filibuster transformed from a test of stamina into a tool for avoiding hard votes — and, today, a convenient excuse to delay or kill the America First agenda.
Article I lists exactly seven situations that require a supermajority: overriding vetoes, ratifying treaties, convicting in impeachment, expelling members, proposing constitutional amendments, and two obscure quorum rules. Passing ordinary legislation is not on the list.
The Senate’s tradition of unlimited debate — the seed of modern filibusters — wasn’t designed to create a supermajority requirement. It was an accident.
In 1806, on Aaron Burr’s suggestion that the Senate rulebook was cluttered, the chamber deleted the “previous question” motion, the mechanism the House still uses to end debate and vote. No one understood the implications at the time. Filibusters didn’t appear until the 1830s, and even then they were rare because they required real endurance. Senators had to speak nonstop, often for days, until they collapsed or yielded.
Everything changed in 1917. After 11 anti-war senators filibustered Woodrow Wilson’s bill to arm merchant ships on the eve of World War I, the public revolted. Wilson demanded action. The Senate responded by creating Rule XXII — the first cloture rule — allowing two-thirds of senators to end debate.
Instead of restraining obstruction, the rule supercharged it. For the first time, a minority didn’t need to speak until exhaustion. They only needed to threaten it. The majority now had to assemble a supermajority to progress.
The filibuster transformed from a test of stamina into a tool for avoiding hard votes — and, today, a convenient excuse to delay or kill the America First agenda.
The Senate has rewritten its filibuster rule many times since. In 1975, it lowered the cloture threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths (60 votes). In 2013, Democrats eliminated the filibuster for most presidential nominees; in 2017, Republicans applied that same exception to Supreme Court justices.
These changes all point to the same reality: The filibuster is not a sacred tradition. It is a standing rule, created and amended by simple-majority votes. The Senate can change it again any time.
Filibuster defenders insist that ending the 60-vote rule would be radical.
It wouldn’t. In reality, it would restore the practice that governed the Senate for its first 128 years — unlimited debate, yes, but no supermajority threshold for passing laws.
RELATED: Democrats reject ‘current policy’ — unless it pays their base

Defenders also claim the filibuster forces compromise. History says otherwise. The biggest legislative achievements of the last century — Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — all passed when the filibuster was weakened, bypassed, or irrelevant.
What we have now is not deliberation. It is paralysis: a rule that allows 41 senators, representing as little as 11% of the country, to veto the will of the rest. The Senate already protects small states through equal representation and long tenures. Adding a 60-vote requirement for routine governance is not what the framers intended.
The solution is straightforward. The Senate can return to simple-majority voting for legislation. It can keep unlimited debate if it wishes — but require a real talking filibuster that ends when the minority runs out of arguments or public patience. Or it can leave the system as it is now and watch President Trump’s America First agenda stall for another generation.
The filibuster is not a 230-year constitutional safeguard. It is a 108-year experiment born in 1917 — and it has failed. The Senate invented it. The Senate can un-invent it.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito delivered Texas Republicans some good news on Friday, temporarily reinstating the Republican-friendly congressional map they passed in August.
After Texas Republicans surmounted weeks of obstruction by their Democratic colleagues, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ultimately signed the "One Big Beautiful Map into law" on Aug. 29, leaving the Lone Star Sate with a congressional map that could net the GOP five extra seats in the midterm elections.
'Radical left-wing activists are abusing the judicial system to derail the Republican agenda and steal the U.S. House.'
However, the adoption of the new map prompted hand-wringing among liberals and a successful Democratic gerrymandering campaign in California — as well as a legal challenge from several race-based groups of plaintiffs led by the League of United Latin American Citizens.
The plaintiffs alleged in their complaint that the map was the result of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering and asked a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to block use of the map for the 2026 elections.
The court on Tuesday ruled 2-1 in favor of the liberal advocacy groups, finding that the challengers likely would be able to prove that it was racially gerrymandered.
RELATED: Yet another state's districts found to be racist, resulting in new map for 2026 midterms

"The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics," wrote Judge Jeffrey Brown in the ruling. "To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was among the liberals who celebrated the ruling, noting that "Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won. This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections."
But the celebration proved premature as Abbott and other Texas officials promptly appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement, "Radical left-wing activists are abusing the judicial system to derail the Republican agenda and steal the U.S. House for Democrats. I am fighting to stop this blatant attempt to upend our political system."
Justice Alito stayed the lower court's ruling Friday and gave GOP map opponents until Monday to respond to his order.
The Republican map is back in play pending the outcome of the state's appeal before the high court.
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So far, more than 100 federal court judges have ruled against the Trump administration in hundreds of lawsuits filed by states, unions, nonprofit organizations, and individuals.
While some of these rulings are fairly grounded in the Constitution, federal law, and precedent, many are expressions of primal rage from judges offended by the administration and moving at breakneck speed to stop it.
Trump sometimes exceeds his authority. Activist judges substitute ‘frequently’ for ‘sometimes.’ The Constitution and the Supreme Court disagree.
According to a Politico analysis, 87 of 114 federal judges who ruled against the administration were appointed by Democratic presidents, and 27 by Republicans. Most of the lawsuits were filed in just a few districts, with repeat activist judges leading the opposition.
Lawsuits against the administration may be filed in the District of Columbia and, often, also in other districts. Initially cases are randomly assigned. Plaintiffs focus on districts with predominantly activist, progressive judges. Because related cases are usually assigned to the same judge, later plaintiffs file in districts in which related cases were assigned to friendly activists.
Conservative judges generally believe they should interpret the law and avoid ruling on political questions, while liberals tend to see themselves as protectors of their values. After 60 years of domination by activist liberals, the Supreme Court and conservative appeals court judges are finally demanding that district court judges respect the Constitution. The Supreme Court is also re-evaluating precedents established by far-left justices who substituted their values for the words and intentions embodied in the Constitution.
To date, the Supreme Court has reversed or stayed about 30 lower court injunctions blocking the administration, and appeals courts have reversed or stayed another dozen. Even Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson imposed an administrative stay on a district court decision requiring the immediate resumption of SNAP payments.
Federal judges who oppose Trump’s agenda are openly opposing the Supreme Court. In April, D.C. Chief Federal Judge James Boasberg sought to hold administration officials in criminal contempt for violating an order the court had vacated. In May, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Ho criticized the court’s demand that district courts act promptly on administration requests. In a September ruling, Boston Federal Judge Allison Burroughs challenged the court for expecting lower courts to treat its emergency orders as binding legal precedent.
Ten of 12 federal judges interviewed by NBC News in September, and 47 of 65 federal judges responding to a New York Times survey in October, thought the court was mishandling its emergency docket. They described orders as “incredibly demoralizing and troubling” and “a slap in the face to the district courts.”
Deservedly so. Though the Supreme Court and appeals courts judges have rebuked district court judges for ignoring higher courts and abusing their authority, they continue to do so with rulings focused on identity politics and a progressive lens on the woes of immigrants, minorities, women, and workers. They likely expect to be reversed on appeal, but they secure wins by causing delay and creating fodder for progressive activists to rally their supporters.
There is little that can be done about these judges. Removal requires a majority vote in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate. With Democrats supporting these judges, those votes are unrealistic.
RELATED: Who checks the judges? No one — and that’s the problem.

Just a few of the dozens of examples of politicized judicial decisions:
In May, Myong Joun, a Biden appointee in Boston, enjoined layoffs at the Department of Education in a decision featuring an encomium to its anti-discrimination mission. The Supreme Court stayed his injunction.
Despite this precedent, Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee in San Francisco, issued a nationwide injunction barring the administration from firing union employees during or because of the government shutdown. Ignoring settled law, she bemoaned the “trauma” of workers who had been under “stress” ever since Trump’s election. Illston gambled correctly that the shutdown would end before her order could be reversed.
Indira Talwani, a federal district court judge in Boston, went further. Declaiming her fear that defunding Planned Parenthood would deprive women of access to abortions, she elided Article I of the Constitution, which requires all federal spending to be approved by Congress, nullifying a duly enacted statute that suspended funding of large abortion providers for a year. By the time she is reversed, the suspension will have expired.
In June, after San Francisco Federal Judge Charles Breyer enjoined Trump from federalizing the California National Guard, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit unanimously stayed his order, explaining that on military matters, the president’s judgment stands unless it is dishonest. Nonetheless, Oregon Federal Judge Karin Immergut subsequently blocked deployments in Portland, substituting her assessment of the situation for the president’s.
An Obama-appointed judge recently interviewed by NBC explained, “Trump derangement syndrome is a real issue. As a result, judges are mad at what Trump is doing or the manner he is going about things; they are sometimes forgetting to stay in their lane.”
Trump sometimes exceeds his authority. Activist judges, who self-reverentially believe progressive technocrats and judges are democracy’s guardians, substitute “frequently” for “sometimes.” The Constitution and the Supreme Court disagree.
BIDDEFORD, Maine—Senate candidate Graham Platner (D., Maine), the grandson of a renowned architect and a former prep school student, said the Democratic Party should be the "party of taxing the rich."
The post Maine’s Platner Says Democrats Should Be ‘Party of Taxing the Rich’ appeared first on .