Texas GOP passes the House gerrymander Trump asked for
Texas Republicans approved a new, aggressively gerrymandered congressional map early Saturday morning, moving forward with a power grab pushed by President Donald Trump.
The GOP-controlled state Senate approved the map on a party-line vote after hours of debate that began Friday morning. Republicans used a procedural move to block a Democratic senator’s plans to filibuster the bill, forcing it to a vote — one final show of force from GOP leadership after weeks of partisan fighting.
The map could ultimately help flip as many as five seats for the GOP starting with next year’s midterms. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is set to quickly sign the legislation, capping off a turbulent few weeks in Texas over Republicans’ now-successful effort to further skew the maps in the GOP’s favor ahead of the 2030 census.
Under the new map, Republicans in Texas are aiming to earn 30 House seats — up from their current 25 — as they attempt to hold onto control of the chamber in what could be an unfavorable environment for them next year. Republicans currently have just a three-seat majority in the House, so the new Texas map alone will significantly affect their chances.
The unusual offcycle redistricting effort in Texas has set off a contentious national tit-for-tat. California formally launched its preemptive retaliation on Thursday, with lawmakers approving a ballot measure redrawing the state’s map to create five new Democratic seats to offset Texas. That measure — which would temporarily circumvent the state’s independent redistricting commission — now goes to voters on the November ballot, a gerrymander Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has cast as necessary to preserve democracy.
But Republicans could soon have the advantage as a redistricting battle escalates nationwide: The White House is pressuring other GOP states, like Indiana and Missouri, to take on their own redistricting gambits. Democratic governors in New York and Illinois have vowed to fight back, but have so far taken no concrete steps to do so.
The National Redistricting Foundation, an arm of the Democratic Party’s main redistricting organization, immediately challenged the new map in federal court.
The complaint — a supplement to a long-running lawsuit over the state’s now-outdated, post-2020 census map — lodges a bevy of challenges against the new lines, including that it is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and that it violated the Voting Rights Act.
“The Texas Legislature subordinated other redistricting criteria — including partisan advantage — to race” in drawing the new maps, the challengers allege.
The case, in particular, homes in on the new map dismantling so-called coalition districts, which are districts where no single racial group makes up a majority, but Black and Latino voters collectively do. Democrats argue that the “intentional targeting” of those districts would be impossible to do without taking race into account.
Republicans, however, contend that they redrew the districts explicitly for partisan purposes and did not account for race or ethnicity.
“I did not take race into consideration when drawing this map,” said state Sen. Phil King, the Texas Republican who wrote the redistricting legislation, at a committee hearing. “I drew it based on what would better perform for Republican candidates.”
The Trump administration’s Department of Justice spurred the redistricting into motion by arguing Texas’ previous map was unconstitutional because it contained several of these types of coalition districts.
At the time, the DOJ cited a 2024 ruling by the 5th Circuit — which controls Texas-based cases — that found that the Voting Rights Act does not allow for distinct minority groups to join together to make a claim, meaning mapmakers were not required to draw these coalition districts. That ruling, however, did not find that coalition districts were unconstitutional as the Justice Department asserted.
Racial gerrymandering claims are one of the last remaining ways to challenge a political map in federal court, since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 barred them from policing partisan gerrymandering. The new map — which was drawn using 2024 election data — creates four new majority-Hispanic districts, drawn to reflect Hispanic voters’ shift toward the GOP.
The Voting Right Act has faced significant legal challenges, with the Supreme Court gradually chipping away at the landmark civil rights-era legislation over the last decade and a half. Two significant pieces of federal litigation — including one the Supreme Court will hear in October — could further weaken the VRA, potentially undermining some of the claims in Texas.
The Democrats’ lawsuit also challenges the premise of voluntary mid-decade redistricting — which is legal in many states — by bringing a “malapportionment” claim, which argues that some voters are more powerful than others because the congressional districts are not equal in population when they were drawn this week.
“Texas’s population has grown by nearly five percent since the 2020 census — more than any other state in the country,” the suit read. “Although states generally ‘operate under the legal fiction’ that plans remain constitutionally apportioned for ten years after they are adjusted for a given census, states should not get the benefit of that legal fiction when they choose to engage in unnecessary, mid-decade redistricting.”
Before the maps passed, Democrats asked a federal district court to be prepared to quickly rule on the legality of the new maps. Lawyers are set to conference with the court on Wednesday to discuss that request.
Texas House Democrats protested the maps by leaving the state for two weeks, depriving Republicans of the ability to conduct legislative business. Those lawmakers returned on Monday — clearing the way for Republicans to quickly pass the legislation. Democrats racked up thousands of dollars in fines for ducking their legislative duties, and when they returned, House Speaker Dustin Burrows sought one last punishment: He ordered law enforcement to chaperone the Democrats to ensure they would be present for passage of the map.
One Democrat, state Rep. Nicole Collier, refused to sign a permission slip allowing an officer to monitor her movements, instead staging a three-day sit-in on the House floor.
“When I press that button to vote, I know these maps will harm my constituents — I won’t just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination,” Collier said from the chamber.
The Senate passed its map on Saturday morning after thwarting an attempted filibuster by another Democrat who planned to stage one last protest against the legislation. But Republicans made a procedural move that ended debate and the chamber approved the map along party lines.
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