Donald Trump celebrated a triumph in Texas as the GOP passed a new redistricting law, which Trump claims could set the party on course to gain 100 seats in Congress. 

The Texas House approved new maps on Wednesday that would provide the GOP with a bigger advantage in 2026, pushing through what critics have labeled as a partisan gerrymander, sparking weeks of protests by Democrats and intensifying a national battle over redistricting.

Trump not only celebrated the bill’s passing on Truth Social, but spelled out his game plan for further Republican victories nationwide. 

‘Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!! Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself. Texas never lets us down,’ he commented.

He then mentioned potential moves in other states: ‘Florida, Indiana, and others are looking to do the same thing. More seats equals less Crime, a great Economy, and a STRONG SECOND AMENDMENT. It means Happiness and Peace.’

Trump said the next move is to, as he put it, ‘STOP MAIL-IN VOTING, a total fraud that has no bounds’ as well as instituting paper ballots.  

‘If we do these TWO things, we will pick up 100 more seats, and the CROOKED game of politics is over. God Bless America!!!’ 

The maps, which would provide Republicans with five more winnable seats, are anticipated to be approved by the GOP-majority state Senate and signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

Abbott celebrated the passing of the bill by giving it a familiar nickname to many Trump fans.

‘Congrats to the Texas House on passing the One Big Beautiful Map,’ he wrote. ‘It will make Texas, and Congress, a brighter shade of Red.’ 

But the Texas House vote had presented the best chance for Democrats to derail the redraw.

Democrats tried to resist by fleeing the state. In early August, 57 lawmakers skipped town, flying to Illinois and New York in a dramatic attempt to block the GOP’s map vote. 

They then said that  they were being treated like fugitives as they are threatened with arrest if they don’t show up to the house to vote during a bitter redistricting fight that could hand Republicans and Donald Trump five extra seats in Congress.

State troopers were ordered to shadow Democrats around the clock, even when they dropped their kids at school, to ensure they stayed for votes. 

Their forced presence gave the Texas House a quorum, the minimum number of lawmakers required to move legislation forward.

One of the most defiant Democrats has been Rep. Nicole Collier of Fort Worth. She refused to sign the paperwork authorizing DPS monitoring and instead stayed inside the chamber for more than 30 hours, even sleeping overnight on the floor.

Her stand drew supporters to the Capitol Tuesday evening, but the crowd was evacuated when someone posted a threat on social media urging others to ‘go to the Capitol and shoot and kill those who will not allow lawmakers to leave,’ according to local outlet KVUE.

She eventually drew embarrassment earlier Wednesday when she joined California Governor Gavin Newsom and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker on a conference call and abruptly leaved after being told she was committing a felony. 

Meanwhile, support for Collier mounted, with the Fort Worth representative receiving a call from former vice president Kamala Harris. 

Collier shared on X that Harris told her: ‘You are among those that history will reveal was among the heroes of this moment, so you just stay strong.’

She has also filed a lawsuit against Texas, alleging ‘illegal restraint by the government’ for not being allowed to leave.

‘I refuse to comply with this unreasonable, un-American and unnecessary request,’ Collier told CBS News.

By Wednesday, the Texas House was voting on amendments to the new maps, with a final vote approved later in the day. 

The change of the Texas maps on an 88-52 party-line vote is likely to prompt California´s Democratic-controlled state Legislature this week to approve of a new House map creating five new Democratic-leaning districts. 

But the California map, pushed by Newsom, would require voter approval in November.

Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new Texas map in court and complained that Republicans made the political power move before passing legislation responding to deadly floods that swept the state last month.

Texas Republicans openly said they were acting in their party´s interest. State Rep. Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation formally creating the new map, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed politicians to redraw districts for nakedly partisan purposes.

‘The underlying goal of this plan is straight forward: improve Republican political performance,’ Hunter, a Republican, said on the floor. 

After nearly eight hours of debate, Hunter took the floor again to sum up the entire dispute as nothing more than a partisan fight. 

‘What’s the difference, to the whole world listening? Republicans like it, and Democrats do not.’

Democrats said the disagreement was about more than partisanship.

‘In a democracy, people choose their representatives,’ State Rep. Chris Turner said. 

‘This bill flips that on its head and lets politicians in Washington, D.C., choose their voters.’

State Rep. John H. Bucy blamed the president. ‘This is Donald Trump’s map,’ Bucy said. 

‘It clearly and deliberately manufactures five more Republican seats in Congress because Trump himself knows that the voters are rejecting his agenda.’

The Republican power play has already triggered a national tit-for-tat battle as Democratic state lawmakers prepared to gather in California on Thursday to revise that state´s map to create five new Democratic seats.

‘This is a new Democratic Party, this is a new day, this is new energy out there all across this country,’ Newsom said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. 

‘And we’re going to fight fire with fire.’

A new California map would need to be approved by voters in a special election in November because that state normally operates with a nonpartisan commission drawing the map to avoid the very sort of political brawl that is playing out. 

Newsom himself backed the 2008 ballot measure to create that process, as did former President Barack Obama. 

But in a sign of Democrats´ stiffening resolve, Obama Tuesday night backed Newsom’s bid to redraw the California map, saying it was a necessary step to stave off the GOP´s Texas move.

‘I think that approach is a smart, measured approach,’ Obama said during a fundraiser for the Democratic Party’s main redistricting arm.

The incumbent president’s party usually loses seats in the midterm election, and the GOP currently controls the House of Representatives by a mere three votes. 

Trump is going beyond Texas in his push to remake the map. 

He´s pushed Republican leaders in conservative states like Indiana and Missouri to also try to create new Republican seats. Ohio Republicans were already revising their map before Texas moved. 

Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland´s and New York´s maps as well.

However, more Democratic-run states have commission systems like California’s or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do, leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. 

New York, for example, can´t draw new maps until 2028, and even then, only with voter approval.

In Texas, there was little that outnumbered Democrats could do other than fume and threaten a lawsuit to block the map. 

Because the Supreme Court has blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing it violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority communities together so they can select representatives of their choice.

Democrats noted that, in every decade since the 1970s, courts have found that Texas´ legislature did violate the Voting Rights Act in redistricting, and that civil rights groups had an active lawsuit making similar allegations against the 2021 map that Republicans drew up.

Republicans contend the new map creates more new majority-minority seats than the previous one.