'Bring it on': Red-state Republicans who defied Trump dare him to retaliate

'Bring it on': Red-state Republicans who defied Trump dare him to retaliate

President Donald Trump is furious about Kansas Republicans' failure to follow his orders and pass a mid-decade gerrymander to eliminate the state's single Democratic congressional district — but the Republicans who refused are unbowed and defiant, The New York Times reported.

Around the country, Trump has demanded such redistricting projects, with controversial new maps passing in Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri to grant Republicans extra seats — but elsewhere, many of his efforts have stalled, the report said.

"Growing resistance from state lawmakers, for reasons both practical and philosophical, has put a chill on the effort," the report continued. "When the Republican governor of Indiana called a special session for redistricting last month, the Senate Republicans said the votes were not there. Maryland Democratic leaders are divided. And in Kansas, where top Republicans had hoped to meet about a new map last Friday, House leaders failed to get enough support."

GOP leadership in the state wanted to move forward with a plan to eliminate the district held by Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids, first elected in the 2018 Democratic wave midterm in Trump's first term. But a supermajority was needed to ensure Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly could not veto it — and a handful of Republicans balked over concerns the map could backfire and make some GOP seats competitive, torpedoing the effort at least until the regular session next year.

In the face of Trump's fury and threats to support opponents in primaries, these lawmakers are not backing down, the report noted: moderate GOP state Rep. Mark Schreiber, one of the defectors, said, “I’m very comfortable with my reasoning. If the president called, I would tell him the same thing. And if he ran a primary challenger, I’d say, ‘Bring it on.’”

This comes amid a broader fear among Republicans, growing after their brutal losses in the elections earlier this month, that mid-decade gerrymanders could backfire on them by taking GOP voters out of some red seats and accidentally making them competitive.

It also comes as Democrats fight back, with California passing a voter-approved map that redraws five Republican seats in retaliation for the Texas map, Virginia Democrats debating a similar measure that could eliminate three to four GOP seats, and state judges in Utah striking down the GOP's gerrymander there.