The Texas House of Representatives approved new congressional maps that could give Republicans an even larger advantage in the state in the 2026 midterms.
The new maps carve out several new Republican-leaning districts while making Democrat-held districts in the Rio Grande Valley more competitive.
Congressional maps are typically redrawn once a decade, in light of new Census data. This mid-decade do-over was pushed by President Donald Trump, who hoped to mitigate the risk of a midterm blue wave that might stymie the final years of his second term in office. Trump leaned on the Republican-controlled state to create new GOP House districts, leading to a weeks-long standoff between state-level Democrats and Republicans.
When it became clear that they could not stop the maps through other means, Texas Democrats fled the state to deny a quorum to a special legislative session called by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The governor and Attorney General Ken Paxton pushed for the arrest of the absent lawmakers and weighed ways to strip the legislators of their seats. The Democrats only returned when Gov. Gavin Newsom put forward a plan to neutralize Texas’s action via redrawn maps in California.
Following their return, Democrats were placed under police surveillance and only allowed to leave the state’s Capitol with written permission. Democrats protested the requirements by tearing up their slips and spending the night on the floor of the House.
The newly approved maps will head to the state Senate, where they are expected to pass quickly. In response to the news of maps passing the House, Newsom shared a post to X that read, “It’s on.”
In a statement, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder criticized Republicans for taking up Trump’s project before passing relief packages for victims of the state’s recent floods. He called the map “disgraceful” and a “violation of the Voting Rights Act.”
“This fight is far from over. We, and the American people, will see this map in court,” he wrote.
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