To help boost Republican chances in the 2026 midterms, President Trump said he wanted his party to pick up five more House seats in Texas after unusual mid-decade redistricting.
Democrats call it cheating. Republicans say they’re hypocrites.
Over two dozen Texas Democratic lawmakers spent the day in Chicagoland after fleeing the state in a last-ditch effort to stop Republicans from overhauling their state’s congressional map.
After the Democrats left Texas, the Republican-dominated House was unable to establish the quorum of lawmakers required to do business on Monday.
The redistricting plan, requested by President Trump, would give the GOP an edge in five Democratic districts.
The fight has galvanized both parties.
“The president is trying to inspire a naked power grab in Texas,” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said.
Democratic caucus chair declined to say how long the Texas democrats will stay in Illinois.
“They owe it to the people who they represent to get back to their state and to legislate and to support what the fine people who elected them expect them to do,” Kathy Salvi, Illinois Republican Party chair, said.
Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott has urged the House members to return home, and he’s threatening to remove them from office if they don’t.
The House issued civil arrest warrants intended to compel the return of absent members, but it was not immediately clearly whether those can or will be enforced beyond Texas borders.
The controversy has shined a spotlight on Illinois’s congressional map.
As a candidate, Gov. JB Pritzker vowed to veto redistricting drawn by legislators or their staff, but he went on to approve a map that gave his party a 14-3 advantage in the congressional delegation.
“Governor Pritzker inserting himself into what’s going on in Texas is the height of hypocrisy,” Sen. John Curran (R-Downers Grove) said. “He broke his promise to Illinois voters not once but twice in signing the most gerrymandered map in the nation.”
“The fact that we are very good in Illinois at delivering for the people of Illinois and that people react to that and vote for our candidates is very different than cheating mid-decade by rewriting the rules because their cult leader Donald Trump tells them to do that,” Gov. Pritzker said.
This situation is a slippery slope as the Democratic governor of New York said the state would begin the process of redistricting to benefit Democrats in response to what Texas is doing. California is also exploring options.
