Efforts to drain more politics out of legislative mapmaking for the new decade are getting pride of place as GOP-run legislatures convene in a pair of generally red Midwestern states.
Influential lawmakers from both parties in the Indiana General Assembly signed a pledge Monday to support legislation making the next round of redistricting more transparent, nondiscriminatory and politically impartial than in the past.
And in Missouri, where the General Assembly convened on Wednesday, leaders of the GOP majorities are pushing a measure they describe as a compromise for tamping down the state's past tendencies toward partisan gerrymandering. Democrats are not yet on board, however.
Legislative and congressional district lines across the country get redrawn once a decade, the year after the census details how the population has changed and relocated, to reflect the Constitution's one-person, one-vote mandate.
Under the maps that were in use for the past decade and will be used for the last time this fall, the GOP has a comfortable hold on seven of the nine U.S. House seats in Indiana and six of the eight districts in Missouri, along with supermajorities in both halves of the legislatures in both states. But in the last statewide races in both places, for Senate seats in 2018, Republicans Mike Braun of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri each defeated incumbent Democrats with just 51 percent of the vote.
The redistricting reform bill on the agenda in Indianapolis with the best chance of passage would allow citizens to access the detailed census data so they could try their hand at drawing political boundaries — and would require, at least theoretically, the legislators to take such handiwork into account when setting the real lines.
"Legislators should serve in competitive districts," GOP Sen. John Ruckelshaus said in unveiling the bill and its bipartisan roster of sponsors this week. "I think we're all better for that. Competition is good."
He conceded, however, that his more ambitious measure — to turn the redistricting responsibilities over to an independent commission — was not likely to advance any farther this time than the previous two times he's offered it, which was nowhere.
In Missouri, by contrast, 62 percent of voters in 2018 approved redistricting changes as part of a sweeping constitutional amendment. It created a new position in Jefferson City for a nonpartisan state demographer, with responsibility for proposing state House and Senate maps after the 2020 census with the goals of achieving both "partisan fairness" and "competitiveness." Six finalists are still in the running.
Some Republicans are pushing for having the state vote to change the system again this fall — so that the demographer's work next year would be subject to approval by the same bipartisan (but GOP-tilted) commission that drew the lines a decade ago. Some Democrats are willing to go along but others say that would undercut the point of the referendum two years ago.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.