AUSTIN, Texas — On Wednesday, Texas Republicans initiated the process of approving new congressional maps that could yield their party up to five additional seats in the House of Representatives. This move is expected to ignite a nationwide conflict over redistricting.
The Texas House of Representatives’ decision came following encouragement from President Donald Trump, who advocated for the unusual mid-decade reshaping of congressional maps. This strategy aims to bolster Republican chances of maintaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. For the maps to be finalized, they need approval from the GOP-majority state Senate and the signature of Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
But the Texas House presented the best chance for Democrats to derail the redraw.
Earlier this month, Texas state legislative Democrats stalled the vote by leaving the state in protest, delaying proceedings for two weeks. Upon their return, they faced continuous police surveillance to ensure their participation in the Wednesday session.
The Texas maps’ approval, marked by an 88-52 party-line vote, is expected to lead California’s Democratic-led state Legislature to authorize a new House map this week, which would establish five new Democratic-leaning districts. Contrary to Texas, the California map would need voter approval in November to be finalized.
Democrats have pledged to file lawsuits challenging the new Texas map and criticized Republicans for prioritizing political maneuvering over enacting legislation to address last month’s devastating floods in the state.
Texas Republicans openly acknowledged their actions were for their party’s benefit. State Representative Todd Hunter, who authored the legislation to create the new map, remarked that the U.S. Supreme Court permits the redrawing of districts for overtly partisan reasons.
“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 pols in Washington DC 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,” California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin 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 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 minority-majority seats than the previous one they passed in 2021. Democrats and some civil rights groups have countered that the GOP does that through mainly a numbers game that leads to halving the number of the state’s House seats that will be represented by a Black representative.
State Rep. Ron Reynolds noted the country just marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act’s passage and warned GOP members about how they’d be remembered if they voted for what he called “this racial gerrymander.”
“Just like the people who were on the wrong side of history in 1965, history will be looking at the people who made the decisions in the body this day,” Reynolds, a Democrat, said.
Republicans spent far less time talking on Wednesday, content to let their numbers do the talking in the lopsided vote. Still, House Republicans’ frustration at the Democrats’ flight and ability to delay the vote was palpable.
House Speaker Dustin Burrows announced as debate started that doors to the chamber were locked and any member leaving was required to have a permission slip before exiting. One Democrat who refused the 24-hour police monitoring, State Rep. Nicole Collier, refused to agree and was confined to the House floor since Monday night.
Some Democratic state lawmakers joined Collier Tuesday night for what Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez dubbed “a sleepover for democracy.”
Republicans issued civil arrest warrants to bring the Democrats back after they left the state Aug. 3, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott asked the state Supreme Court to oust several Democrats from office. The lawmakers also face a fine of $500 for every day they were absent.
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Riccardi reported from Denver. John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.
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