“The Virginia Redistricting Commission’s first-ever attempt to draw fair political maps collapsed in spectacular fashion Friday, when frustrated Democrats walked out of a meeting after Republicans rebuffed their suggestions for reaching a compromise,” the Virginia Mercury reports.

“A number of states have proposed or finalized new congressional district maps in the past week. The recurrent theme: protecting incumbents rather than expanding majorities,” Axios reports.

“The flurry of activity is just the start of the high-stakes process that has the potential to affect congressional power for a decade. The biggest states are still to come — as well as deadlines, lawsuits and the potential for lots of court-drawn midterm maps.”

“Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars in 2020 to keep Democrats from painting more of Texas blue. Now, the GOP is trying to fireproof its districts with a new map that contains the suburban damage they’ve suffered,” Politico reports.

“While the precise boundaries are still being finalized, the new map is likely to shore up all of the state’s GOP incumbents by packing Democrats together in three new deep-blue seats in the biggest metro areas: Austin, Houston and Dallas.”

Abby Livingston: “My very very first takeaway from the Texas redistricting map: This is a map drawn for incumbent protection more than anything else.”

“Only one Republican lawmaker showed up for a scheduled floor session of the Oregon House of Representatives Saturday as the minority party denied quorum to prevent the passage of new state legislative and congressional district maps,” the Salem Statesman Journal reports.

“The boycott came after a new congressional map was proposed Saturday morning that was not as heavily slanted toward Democrats as the previous version, but could still result in a 5-1 Democratic congressional delegation.”

David Wasserman: “All over the Deep South—in states such as Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina—the story is familiar: Gerrymandered maps have packed Black voters into a lone Voting Rights Act district, while Republicans dominate every surrounding white-majority seat. In past decades, many of those VRA districts’ Democratic representatives were loath to unravel their own safe seats. But today, Democrats’ prevailing mentality has shifted. And as the 2022 redistricting wars heat up, multiple lawsuits aiming to unpack hyper-minority seats could help determine control of the House.”

“House Democrats spent the past two elections crowing about ousting Republicans from longtime red districts that had suddenly grown competitive. Now, Republicans are about to make many of those targets disappear from the battlefield entirely,” Politico reports.

“GOP mapmakers are readying to shore up more than a dozen of the most hotly contested House battlegrounds from the past four years, narrowing Democrats’ path to maintain control of the House, as they prepare for midterm elections that are historically tough for the party in power.”

“Seven years ago, New Yorkers voted decisively to empower a new bipartisan commission to do what self-interested politicians could not: draw new congressional district lines that were not gerrymandered to favor a particular party,” the New York Times reports.

“But as the panel prepares to unveil its proposed maps for the first time on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers in New York and Washington are already laying the groundwork to cast them aside — plotting to use their supermajorities in Albany to draw new district boundaries for the next decade that might eliminate as many as five Republican-held seats.”

“Under the most aggressive scenarios, Democrats could emerge from 2022’s midterm elections with control of as many as 23 of New York’s 26 House seats in an all-out effort to prop up their chances of retaining control of Congress.”

The Cook Political Report has a new map to track which incumbents (or retiring incumbents’ districts) are most at risk in the redistricting process.

Nebraska Republicans have proposed splitting Omaha between two congressional districts, turning one swing district into two safe Republican seats, the Lincoln Journal Star reports.

“That dramatic move could alter the political landscape of Nebraska’s only swing congressional district, which handed an electoral vote to Democratic President Joe Biden last November and elected a Democratic congressman in 2014.”

If this proposal goes through, the biggest losers will be Omaha’s television stations which run millions of dollars in political ads every two years.

Dallas Morning News: “Two Democratic state senators on Wednesday filed a lawsuit that challenges the plans of Gov. Greg Abbott and GOP legislative leaders to redraw political maps in a special session this year. The senators argued that the Texas Constitution requires that it be done in a regular session that won’t happen until 2023.”

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) “keeps hearing Missouri Republicans will try to redraw his Kansas City-area district to get him out of office. He’s starting to believe it,” the Kansas City Star reports.

Said Cleaver: “I hear that literally every day from somebody. So I guess I have to, at this point, assume that it’s going to be a serious effort to alter the present construct of the Fifth District.”

Richmond Times-Dispatch: “A new redistricting commission made up of citizens and legislators was meant to end decades of partisan gerrymandering and produce fair maps for Virginia’s political districts. Early in the process, partisan tensions are already dividing the commission and threatening to derail its work amid a fast-approaching deadline.”

New Jersey Globe: “The New Jersey Supreme Court has picked John Wallace as the tiebreaker for the Congressional Redistricting Commission, siding with the choice of Democrats for the post.”

“The tiebreaker vote could have national implications in President Joe Biden’s midterm elections, where Republicans are just five seats away from controlling the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Redistricting expert David Wasserman has an early read on the U.S. Census data: “Based on the strong urban and weaker rural numbers I’m seeing, this is a much more favorable Census count than minority advocacy groups and Democrats had feared.”

Nate Cohn: “It’s a pretty decent set of data for Democrats in redistricting.”

Axios: “Almost all of the country’s population growth occurred in large metro areas over the decade.”

Politico: “The Census Bureau’s long-awaited release of redistricting data Thursday will unleash a torrent of new state political maps in the weeks and months to come, starting with the handful of states pressed against early fall deadlines to enact new district boundaries.”

“Altogether, the maps could tilt control of Congress for the next decade, but they’ll come out one by one at first. Strategists from both parties predict that some states will finalize maps as soon as September and that roughly half of the states will set their new lines by the end of the year. The rest will follow in the first few months of 2022.”

Punchbowl News: “But Republicans and Democrats have this lingering elation or dread — depending on which side of the aisle you are on — the GOP is already close to winning back the House even before one vote is cast in the 2022 midterms.”

“Fresh off sweeping electoral victories a decade ago, Republican politicians used census data to draw voting districts that gave them a greater political advantage in more states than either party had in the past 50 years,” according to a new Associated Press analysis.