House Editor David Wasserman writes: After nearly a year of wrangling behind the scenes, in legislative chambers, and in courtrooms from San Antonio to the Supreme, we may finally have the map that will be used for the 2012 elections. In January, the Supreme Court ordered that an earlier interim map drawn by a three-judge federal panel in San Antonio strayed too far from the GOP legislature's original plan. The panel's first plan gave Democrats three of Texas's four new seats, while the legislature's plan had given three of the four new seats to Republicans. Not surprisingly, court-supervised negotiations between plaintiffs and state lawyers resulted in a new map that splits the new seats 2-2, largely resembling the legislature's plan but featuring a new Hispanic-majority district in Dallas-Fort Worth.
The Department of Justice must still preclear these lines, although it is expected they will do so on an expedited timeline. It's also possible that Republicans will seek to pass a "permanent" map for subsequent election cycles. But with the already-pushed-back May 29 primary date looming, this is likely to be
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