Category: News

❓WHAT HAPPENED: U.S. Circuit Court Judge Jerry Smith has posted his dissent in Tuesday’s federal case, which saw a three-judge panel halt Texas from implementing its newly approved congressional map for the 2026 midterm elections.

👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: U.S. Circuit Court Judges Jerry Smith and Jeffrey Brown, plaintiffs, and the State of Texas.

📍WHEN & WHERE: The ruling against Texas came down on Tuesday, with Judge Smith’s dissent posted online on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.

💬KEY QUOTE: “The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent.”

🎯IMPACT: While Judge Smith’s dissent will have little immediate impact, a number of the issues raised in the document could form the basis of the opinion being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Jerry Smith has posted his dissent in Tuesday’s federal case, which saw a three-judge panel halt Texas from implementing its newly approved congressional map for the 2026 midterm elections. The majority, led by Trump-appointee Judge Jeffrey Brown, found supposedly compelling evidence that the redrawn districts amount to racial gerrymandering.

However, in his dissent, fellow appellate judge Jerry Smith takes Brown and his colleagues to task over their ruling and their reliance on testimony from supposed experts who are allegedly bought and paid for by George and Alex Soros. “I append this Preliminary Statement to dispel any suspicion that I’m responsible for any delay in issuing the preliminary injunction or that I am or saw slow-walking the ruling. I also need to highlight the pernicious judicial misbehavior of U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown.” Judge Smith begins his dissent, before plunging headlong into a 160-plus page scathing critique of both the panel’s jurisprudence and Judge Brown’s behavior.

“The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent,” the conservative appellate judge writes, continuing: “One of the plaintiffs’ top experts is Matt Barreto. He is a paid Soros operative and does not attempt to hide it. His CV confirms it. He expects to receive $2.5 million from George and Alexander Soros.” Judge Smith adds, “Soros has been pumping money into Barreto’s UCLA Voting Rights Project for years. And this steady supply of money won’t stop until 2026, at the earliest. Unsurprisingly, Barreto has been on quite a road show for years, parading across the country opposing Republican redistricting. That is the tip of the iceberg. The lawyers are involved as well.”

“To his credit, the lead counsel for plaintiffs does not try to hide it, either. Chad Dunn acknowledged so in open court—he works with Barreto at the same Voting Rights Project that receives Soros funding,” Judge Smith notes, before moving on to Mark Elias’s involvement: “It does not stop there. The Elias Law Group draws from the Soros coffers, too. Counsel for the instant Gonzales plaintiffs, David Fox, is a partner at Elias, which ‘has collected more than $104 million’ from Democrat Party committees and donors, including Mr. Soros. Firm Chair Marc Elias formed entities, ‘tucked inside large existing nonprofits,” that “raised tens of millions of dollars from some of the richest donors on the left—including from foundations funded by Mr. Soros.'”

“On a silver platter, Judge Brown hands Soros a victory at the expense of the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. Judge Brown won’t tell you that. I just did,” Judge Smith states. The entire dissent is worth reading, albeit it is, as Judge Smith admits, very long.

Image by Karin Bolovtsova.

Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.