Austin, Texasrevealed plans for a new U.S. House map on Wednesday, advancing a quick and unprecedented summer redrawing that Democrats have little choice but to thwart in order to fulfill President Donald Trump’s objective of adding more winnable GOP seats prior to the 2026 elections.
During a special 30-day session of the GOP-dominated Legislature called by GOP Governor Greg Abbott, Republicans aim to enact the new map, which would add five more Republican-leaning seats that Trump is vying for.
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The majority of the adjustments are aimed at Texas’ large cities, which are the few Democratic strongholds in the rapidly growing state of almost 30 million people.
With a similar movement in progress in Missouri, Trump’s staff has hinted that efforts could spread to other states after urging Texas to support the GOP.
According to Republican state representative Cody Vasut, who chairs the Texas House’s redistricting committee, the new maps show a way for a Republican to capture five more of those seats.
However, in order to oppose the GOP’s efforts, the initiative has prompted lawmakers in California and New York to think about redrawing their districts as well. Abbott could call another special session, but Democrats in Texas are also thinking about walking out to stop the GOP from approving new maps before the session ends on August 19.
The new map increases the number of seats Republicans might win to 30, up from 25 of the state’s 38 seats. If the lines had been drawn in 2024, Trump would have won at least 10 percentage points in each of the 30 districts, giving conservatives hope in the face of what is sure to be a challenging election climate for the GOP.
On social media, Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom claimed that the 2026 election was being rigged.
He wrote on X that California will not stand by and let that happen.
With varying degrees of success, Texas lawmakers have left sessions in an attempt to block the opposing party.
A scheme to move the date of the state’s GOP presidential primary to favor former Governor John Connally was thwarted in 1979 when a dozen liberal Democratic state senators from Texas, who became known as “bunkers,” holed up in a staffer’s garage and fled the Texas Rangers for four days.
Democrats fled to Oklahoma and New Mexico in 2003 when Texas Republicans attempted to redraw district borders for a single congressional election, but they were unable to reverse the GOP plan. For the first time since the 1870s, Republicans had won complete control of the Legislature in the 2002 elections. Their new congressional map also gave the GOP six seats in 2004, bringing their total number of seats to 21 to the Democrats’ 11.
Because his district would be combined with another Democratic-held seat, U.S. Representative Greg Casar, whose seat would be drawn into a liberal district for Austin and San Antonio with fellow Democratic incumbent Lloyd Doggett, referred to the planned alterations as unconstitutional voting suppression.
In a statement, Casar emphasized that everyone who values our democracy must band together to oppose this unlawful plan.
The additional seats result from the collapse of Casar and Doggett’s seats, the conversion of two Democratic-held seats in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area into GOP-majority seats, and the mild Republicanization of two recently narrowly won Democratic seats in the Rio Grande Valley.
In the two biggest cities in Texas, Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which is in charge of creating GOP maps, justified the plan as advantageous for minority populations. According to him, the new plan would add one new majority Hispanic district and two new Black-majority seats, one in Dallas and one in the Houston region.
“If you look at it, you’ll notice that many of the communities that were divided in the last map were combined in this one,” he remarked.
However, Trump has been promoting redistricting in Texas specifically to help Republicans maintain their majority in the U.S. House. Additionally, Democrats have few ways to oppose the GOP’s initiatives. Although an independent body creates political boundaries, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom of California has discussed redistricting.
Democrats in New York last week proposed a plan that would permit a new map ahead of schedule, but it would necessitate changing the state constitution, which would need to be passed by voters and the Legislature twice. New lines could be installed as early as 2028.
Although Democrats have historically drawn districts that would be more advantageous for their party, New York also has a nonpartisan panel tasked with drawing the state’s congressional borders.
While acknowledging the 2026 limitations of his plan, Democratic state senator Michael Gianaris, the proposal’s sponsor, stated that we cannot simply watch Texas redo its maps.
In a phone interview following Texas’s proposal of its new plan, he stated that although there might be opportunities elsewhere, this is not a war that will be resolved in a year. Regretfully, this is just another way that our democracy is being manipulated for political gain.
Democrats attacked Republicans harshly during the first three days of Texas’ special session, questioning why redistricting was being done at a time when lawmakers should be concentrating on relief operations after fatal floods in the Hill Country.
Hundreds of locals testified in GOP-led meetings, voicing their worries about the new districts’ potential impact on Democratic voters and the fact that the maps are not yet available. Vasut denied repeatedly that voters would be harmed by the maps.
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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas, and Cappelletti from Washington. Contributions came from Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, for the Associated Press.
