When they made state Attorney General Ken Paxton their Senate candidate for this fall, it wasn’t the first time that Texas Republicans threw their support behind an impeached, election-denying adulterer accused of a wide range of crimes. However, unlike the three primaries in which they nominated Donald Trump for president, the result of Tuesday night’s runoff could backfire on them.

The scandal-plagued Paxton is widely seen as a much weaker general election candidate than incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R), and while Democrat James Talarico heads into the fall as a slight underdog, he gives his party the best chance of flipping a seat that Republicans have held for 65 years.

If he were to manage that feat, the GOP would almost certainly lose control of the Senate. Because, if they can’t hold the Lone Star State, then it is likely that their candidates from North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, and Alaska (and possibly Iowa and Nebraska) would also be in real trouble.

In the case of Texas, however, it would be an entirely self-inflicted wound.

Republicans could have stuck with Cornyn, a fundraising machine who was expected to win reelection even in a tough environment for the GOP. But the senator wasn’t perceived to be MAGA enough, which opened the door for Paxton.

The result was a messy primary that cost more than $120 million and resulted in a runoff, which meant that the two Republicans kept attacking each other for 10 more weeks while Talarico started campaigning for the general election and raising money – including a record $27 million in the first quarter.

Trump could have prevented all of this by backing Cornyn early, which he didn’t do because he felt the senator wasn’t loyal enough to him personally, or by endorsing Paxton after the March 3 primary, which he didn’t do because it wasn’t clear until last week who would prevail, and he only likes to bet on sure things to maintain his near-perfect record of endorsing winners.

As a result, a race that the Cook Political Report had rated “likely Republican” was shifted to “lean Republican” immediately after it became clear that Paxton had pummeled Cornyn.

The good news didn’t stop there for Democrats (and democracy).

Earlier on Tuesday, a three-judge panel ruled that Alabama could not use for the midterms a gerrymandered map that would eliminate one of the state’s majority-minority congressional districts.

The Supreme Court’s decision last month to gut what was left of the Voting Rights Act caused several red states in the South to spring into action and put plans into place to disenfranchise their Black residents. In the case of Alabama, Republicans there wanted to revert to a map that had already been declared unconstitutional, which makes their election-rigging scheme unique.

In their decision, the three judges note that the GOP wants to use “a legislatively enacted districting plan that we found (after a full trial) intentionally discriminated against Black voters based on race in violation of the Constitution” instead of a “race-blind plan” that had been signed off on by the Supreme Court and was used in 2024 and the state primary earlier this month.

“Ultimately, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the three judges, two of whom were nominated by Trump, ruled.

Time will tell whether the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, which seems hellbent on doing its part to allow Republicans to keep control of Congress, will throw out its own precedents and allow the GOP to use its racist map.

For now, the decision reduces the number of congressional seats Republicans hoped to gain as a result of Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering-palooza by one.

But that wasn’t all.

The South Carolina Senate adjourned on Tuesday without redrawing the Palmetto State’s districts. While Trump and his henchmen wanted to eliminate the state’s lone majority-minority district, enough GOP senators defied him to nix that plan.

The key to their decision was that early voting for South Carolina’s primary began on Tuesday. Therefore, if a new map had been enacted, thousands of votes that were already cast would have been thrown out.

While that was apparently too undemocratic for a sufficient number of GOP senators, Republicans in Louisiana, where the governor halted the primary by declaring an “emergency,” had no such qualms.

The Alabama decision (if it is upheld) and the (in)action of the South Carolina Senate mean that the gerrymandering schemes of three states have now failed. Earlier this month, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the legislative process the General Assembly’s Democratic majority had used to let the people vote on a new map was unconstitutional.

Overall, Republicans are still expected to net about 10 seats from this redistricting war unless courts in Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Washington, DC, do their jobs for once instead of merely serving as GOP operatives.

But even if they don’t, Tuesday’s developments now make it more likely that Democrats will not only win the House but could also come out ahead in the Senate.

A Good Day for Democracy and Democrats originally appeared on WhoWhatWhy

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Texas Republicans nominated impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton as their Senate candidate, a choice criticized for potentially weakening their position against Democrat James Talarico, who is seen as capable of flipping a long-held Republican seat. The GOP’s decision to bypass incumbent Senator John Cornyn, despite his strong reelection prospects, resulted in a costly primary that allowed Talarico to gain momentum. Meanwhile, a federal court ruled against Alabama’s discriminatory redistricting plan, and South Carolina senators defied plans to eliminate a majority-minority district. These decisions, if upheld, hinder GOP gerrymandering efforts, enhancing Democrats’ prospects in upcoming elections.