Texas Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a redrawn map of the state’s congressional districts designed to help their party keep control of the House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections. The redistricting proposal complied with a request from President Donald Trump.
The new map, which still needs the approval of the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature, carves up five districts now represented by Democrats, greatly diminishing the incumbents’ chances of winning re-election.
The map places two current Democratic congressmen — Greg Casar, a rising progressive, and Lloyd Doggett, an old-line liberal — into the same new district in the Houston area, effectively pushing one out of office.
Casar called the move “illegal voter suppression of Black and Latino Central Texans.
By merging the districts, Casar wrote on X, “Trump wants to commit yet another crime — this time, against Texas voters and against The Voting Rights Act.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who called state lawmakers into a special session to redraw the congressional map, has defended the effort.
“We will maximize the ability of Texans to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Abbott said last week.
‘A simple redrawing’
Trump recently suggested that Republican-led states redraw congressional maps this year, even though the process normally takes place just once a decade after new census data is released.
“Texas will be the biggest one,” Trump said. “Just a simple redrawing, we pick up five seats.”
In recent decades, the party of the incumbent president tends to lose big in midterm elections. In 2022, halfway through President Joe Biden’s single term, Republicans picked up 10 House seats, giving them a slim majority in the chamber. Four years earlier, at the midpoint of Trump’s first term, Republicans lost a staggering 42 seats, ceding what had been a seemingly insurmountable majority in the House.
Republicans now hold a 219-212 majority over Democrats. Four seats are vacant — three that were held by Democrats who died in office and one that was occupied by a Republican who resigned last week.
In Texas, Republicans fill 25 of the state’s 38 congressional seats. If the new districts stand, they could easily take 30 seats in the 2026 elections, primarily in the Austin, Dallas and Houston areas. The five newly drawn districts would include areas that Trump carried by 10 percentage points or more in 2024, according to Punchbowl News.
‘Two can play this game’
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The House of Representatives is divided among 219 Republicans and 212 Democrats. Four seats are vacant.
Democrats have vowed to fight the Texas redistricting — in the Lone Star State and beyond.
A political action committee aligned with House Democrats is reportedly buying hundreds of thousands of dollars in airtime for ads attacking the new map in several Texas congressional districts. The ad campaign is part of the Democrats’ planned $20 million campaign for Texas congressional seats in 2026.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries traveled to Austin to confer with Texas Democrats on a plan to defeat the redistricting proposal. Democrats reportedly are considering boycotting the legislative chambers for the final vote on the map to keep it from passing. They tried a similar tactic to block a vote on Republican-backed election bills in 2021.
“This is a moment that requires a forceful on-the-ground response,” Jeffries told Politico, adding that Republicans are “afraid of the voters in 2026 in the midterm elections, and they’re trying to cheat to win.”
From Austin, Jeffries will head to California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has threatened to push through a redistricting plan of his own to freeze out his state’s Republican members of Congress.
“Two can play this game,” Newsom wrote on X on July 15.
His party already holds 43 of California’s 52 congressional seats, and Newsom has said a new map could help elect an additional five Democrats.
‘Ample justification’
The redistricting efforts could spread to even more states.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said redrawing congressional districts makes sense in his fast-growing state.
“We’re malapportioned right now as a country, I think because of the migration and but the state of Florida, I think for sure,” DeSantis said at a news conference last week. “So I think there’s ample justification to do it.”
Democratic governors in New Jersey and New York have also raised the possibility of redistricting, although the constitutions of both states allow the process only once a decade.
Texas lawmakers could vote on the new map as early as next week. The new districts would likely be challenged in court.
Some Republicans aren’t sure redistricting is the safest approach to keeping the GOP House majority.
“There is some risk of making safe Republican seats more competitive, and I think that the incumbents are certainly worried about that,” GOP strategist Brendan Steinhauser told Fox News. “If you talk to Republican members of Congress, they’re going to be worried about their own seats. They don’t want to be in a seat that’s more competitive.”
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Author: Alan Judd
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