Texas Republicans answered President Donald Trump’s name to redraw the state’s congressional maps forward of the 2026 midterms by releasing a brand new map that eliminates 5 Home seats held by Democrats and creates 5 new seats that voted for Trump in 2024.
The brand new map would yield 30 Republican-leaning seats and simply eight Democratic-leaning seats. It will achieve this by splitting 5 seats presently held by Democrats in and across the cities of Houston, Dallas and Austin and within the closely Latino Rio Grande Valley. The purpose is to assist Republicans maintain their razor-thin four-seat margin within the Home within the 2026 elections to forestall any significant oversight of the Trump administration from a Democratic-controlled physique.
The elimination of 5 Democratic seats and creation of 5 Republican seats would trigger a 10-vote swing within the GOP’s favor, giving them a extra snug cushion within the occasion they lose seats in different states, because the celebration of the incumbent president virtually at all times does within the midterm elections. Nevertheless it comes with a bunch of dangers.
Democrats and a few redistricting consultants had raised the likelihood that the brand new gerrymander could transform what’s referred to as a “dummymander.” That’s when a gerrymander makes the seats of the celebration, redrawing the strains, extra weak to maximise the overall variety of seats they may win. If, nonetheless, there’s a sturdy anti-incumbent wave powered by an unpopular president, these seats may all of a sudden come into play for Democrats.
“Donald Trump and Texas Republicans are playing a dangerous game, and we’re ready to defeat now-vulnerable Republicans next November,” Katarina Flicker, spokesperson for Home Majority PAC, a Democratic Celebration tremendous PAC, mentioned in an announcement. “We’re bringing the full weight of our operation to the Lone Star State to make this backroom deal backfire and take back the House in 2026.”
However the brand new map is designed to keep away from this. Trump received all 30 GOP-leaning seats created within the new map by 10 factors or extra, and the map doesn’t meaningfully dilute present GOP-held districts.
Nonetheless, Democrats may compete in 4 of the brand new districts, in response to the Heart for Politics.
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However, the brand new map depends on Latino voters who shifted closely to their column in 2024 to proceed to vote Republican. Trump received 55% of the Latino vote in 2024 on considerations concerning the economic system and border safety, in response to the Texas Politics Challenge. With border crossings successfully halted and financial indicators not transferring in a markedly optimistic route from 2024, will these voters keep within the GOP column? Republicans are making an enormous wager that these at the moment are GOP voters and never swing voters.
That will matter most within the Rio Grande Valley, the place the brand new map provides Republican voters to 2 seats presently held by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. These seats will transfer from 52% and 53% Trump-voting districts to 55%. The Latino vote may additionally matter within the different seats the map carves up which can be held by Democratic Reps. Marc Veasey, Greg Casar, Lloyd Doggett and Julie Johnson.
Whereas the brand new map makes Cuellar and Gonzalez’ districts extra GOP-friendly, it splits up the opposite Democratic-held districts. Casar and Doggett can be compelled to run in the identical Austin-based seat beneath the brand new map, except considered one of them risked operating in much less pleasant terrain. The identical may occur with Johnson and Veasey, as Johnson’s Dallas-based district can be successfully handed over to the GOP whereas Veasey’s residence base of Fort Price can be faraway from his present district.
Democrats have promised to struggle again towards the GOP transfer by contesting the seats within the new maps and the courts. Home Majority PAC is planning to make investments $20 million in Texas to focus on GOP incumbents and defend Democrats with promoting, voter registration and a give attention to outreach to Latinos.
The brand new map’s merger of “the 35th and the 37th districts is illegal voter suppression of Black and Latino Central Texans,” Casar mentioned in an announcement. “By merging our Central Texas districts, Trump wants to commit yet another crime ― this time, against Texas voters and against Martin Luther King’s Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
Marina Jenkins, govt director of the Nationwide Democratic Redistricting Committee, mentioned in an announcement, “Texans deserve better than this, and if the legislature and the governor follow through with enacting this egregious gerrymander, it will face fierce legal challenges.”
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Democrats and Texas residents may deliver a Voting Rights Act criticism in courtroom towards the brand new map, though it’s prone to run right into a hostile fifth Circuit and Supreme Court docket which were seeking to additional destroy the Voting Rights Act.
The push to redraw Texas’ congressional map got here straight from the Trump administration when Harmeet Dhillon, assistant lawyer common for the civil rights division, despatched a letter to Texas officers declaring that 4 Democratic-held districts violated the Voting Rights Act and threatened authorized motion. Regardless of that declare being false, it prompted Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to convene a particular session to attract a brand new map.
In the meantime, Trump explicitly acknowledged the partisan purpose of the DOJ letter and the redistricting it prompted on July 15, saying, “I think we’ll get five” GOP seats out of it.
The brand new map is prone to now set off a gerrymandering arms race as Democratic-held states look to redraw their maps to eradicate GOP-held seats. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has already acknowledged that he’s methods to get across the state’s constitutional modification requiring districts to be drawn by an impartial fee. “California won’t be sitting on the sidelines,” his press workplace posted on social media after the brand new Texas map was launched. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has additionally proposed that his residence state of Maryland comply with go well with and eradicate the state’s solely GOP-held seat.
Former Legal professional Basic Eric Holder, who can be the chairman of the Nationwide Democratic Redistricting Committee, mentioned in an announcement on Wednesday that Democrats ought to reply with their very own gerrymanders regardless of his opposition to the observe.
“[W]e do not oppose — on a temporary basis — responsible responsive actions to ensure that the foundations of our democracy are not permanently eroded,” Holder mentioned. “Once this time has passed, measures at the federal and state levels must be put in place to outlaw the actions that have precipitated this crisis.”
However Republicans are additionally seeking to broaden their gerrymander romp with Ohio already transferring towards a mid-cycle redistricting to eradicate Democratic seats and Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis floating the identical.
