DALLAS — The ruling may have come from a three-judge panel in El Paso, Texas. But it is still reverberating across the entire country.

In a two-to-one decision, the panel struck down the congressional map lawmakers passed over the summer in an attempt to give Republicans five additional seats in the U.S. House.

In the majority opinion, Judge Jeffrey Brown, appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.” A judge appointed by President Obama agreed and Texas, for the time being, reverts back to the 2021 congressional map.

But in a scathing dissent, Judge Jerry Smith, a President Reagan appointee, called the ruling perverse and bizarre, saying: “This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever

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