As of this morning, Illinois' ghastly gerrymander is now complete-- an ugly corrupt mirror image of what Republicans would do if they could-- as they are doing in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and other states they control. The Illinois map was already rated an "F" by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a nonpartisan evaluation group, for giving Democrats a grotesquely unfair advantage. With Illinois losing a House seat there will be two less Republicans going to Congress in 2023 and one more Democrat. Illinois will have no competitive districts-- a disgrace-- and results in 14 Democrats and 3 Republicans, as opposed to today's 13-5 split.
The new boundaries would put Adam Kinzinger and Darin LaHood into a red "packed" district (IL-16) the LaHood would easily win. Kinzinger has already announced this morning he won't run next year. Two other Republicans are thrown into the same situation-- conservative Republican Mike Bost will have to face QAnon sociopath Mary Miller in another "packed" red district (IL-12). The third Republican seat (IL-15), presumably the one that Rodney Davis will have to himself, surrounds that most absurdly gerrymandered squiggle of a district (IL-13), specifically designed for Democrat Nikki Budzinski, a former aide to both Governor J.B. Pritzker and Biden.
This is Kinzinger's video announcement of his retirement. "In this day, to prevail or survive, you must belong to a tribe," he noted. "Our political parties only survive by appealing to the most motivated and the most extreme elements within it. And the price tag to power has skyrocketed, and fear and distrust has served as an effective strategy to meet that cost. Dehumanizing each other has become the norm. We’ve taken it from social media to the streets. We’ve allowed leaders to reach power selling the false premise that strength comes from degrading others and dehumanizing those that look, act or think differently than we do. As a country, we’ve fallen for those lies, and now we face a poisoned country filled with outrage blinding our ability to reach real strength."
As if to confirm exactly what Kinzinger was saying about what's wrong with the current politics of the country, Señor Trumpanzee released a statement almost immediately:
First thing tomorrow morning we'll be taking a look at the way the repulsively corrupt Illinois Democratic establishment is trying to gerrymander Marie Newman out of Congress.