Texas Republicans answered President Donald Trump’s name to redraw the state’s congressional maps forward of the 2026 midterms by releasing a 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 might achieve this by splitting 5 seats at the moment held by Democrats in and across the cities of Houston, Dallas and Austin and within the closely Latino Rio Grande Valley. The aim 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. However it comes with a bunch of dangers.
Democrats and a few redistricting specialists had raised the likelihood that the brand new gerrymander might develop into what’s referred to as a “dummymander.” That’s when a gerrymander makes the seats of the celebration, redrawing the traces, extra weak to maximise the entire variety of seats they might win. If, nevertheless, there’s a sturdy anti-incumbent wave powered by an unpopular president, these seats may all of the sudden come into play for Democrats.
“Donald Trump and Texas Republicans are taking part in a harmful recreation, and we’re able to defeat now-vulnerable Republicans subsequent November,” Katarina Flicker, spokesperson for Home Majority PAC, a Democratic Party tremendous PAC, stated in an announcement. “We’re bringing the total weight of our operation to the Lone Star State to make this backroom deal backfire and take again the Home 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 current GOP-held districts.
Nonetheless, Democrats may compete in 4 of the brand new districts, in line with the Center 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 issues concerning the economic system and border safety, in line with the Texas Politics Project. With border crossings successfully halted and financial indicators not transferring in a markedly constructive course from 2024, will these voters keep within the GOP column? Republicans are making an enormous wager that these are actually GOP voters and never swing voters.
That might matter most within the Rio Grande Valley, the place the brand new map provides Republican voters to 2 seats at the moment 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 are 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 pressured to run in the identical Austin-based seat underneath the brand new map, except one among them risked working 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 house base of Fort Value can be faraway from his present district.
Democrats have promised to battle again towards the GOP transfer by contesting the seats within the new maps and the courts. Home Majority PAC is planning to invest $20 million in Texas to focus on GOP incumbents and defend Democrats with promoting, voter registration and a concentrate on outreach to Latinos.
The brand new map’s merger of “the thirty fifth and the thirty seventh districts is illegitimate voter suppression of Black and Latino Central Texans,” Casar stated in an announcement. “By merging our Central Texas districts, Trump needs to commit yet one more crime ― this time, towards Texas voters and towards Martin Luther King’s Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
Marina Jenkins, government director of the Nationwide Democratic Redistricting Committee, stated in an announcement, “Texans deserve higher than this, and if the legislature and the governor observe by way of with enacting this egregious gerrymander, it can face fierce authorized challenges.”
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Democrats and Texas residents may carry a Voting Rights Act grievance in court docket towards the brand new map, though it’s more likely to run right into a hostile fifth Circuit and Supreme Court docket which were trying to additional destroy the Voting Rights Act.
The push to redraw Texas’ congressional map got here immediately from the Trump administration when Harmeet Dhillon, assistant lawyer basic 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 said the partisan aim of the DOJ letter and the redistricting it prompted on July 15, saying, “I believe we’ll get 5” GOP seats out of it.
The brand new map is more likely to now set off a gerrymandering arms race as Democratic-held states look to redraw their maps to get rid of GOP-held seats. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has already said that he’s methods to get across the state’s constitutional modification requiring districts to be drawn by an impartial fee. “California received’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 home state of Maryland follow suit and get rid of the state’s solely GOP-held seat.
Former Legal professional Normal Eric Holder, who can be the chairman of the Nationwide Democratic Redistricting Committee, stated in an announcement on Wednesday that Democrats ought to reply with their very own gerrymanders regardless of his opposition to the apply.
“[W]e don’t oppose — on a brief foundation — accountable responsive actions to make sure that the foundations of our democracy will not be completely eroded,” Holder stated. “As soon as this time has handed, measures on the federal and state ranges should be put in place to outlaw the actions which have precipitated this disaster.”
However Republicans are additionally trying to increase their gerrymander romp with Ohio already moving toward a mid-cycle redistricting to get rid of Democratic seats and Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis floating the same.
