Texas state Republicans on Wednesday released a new draft congressional map which makes significant changes to districts held by Democrats across the state.
The Lone Star State’s House delegation currently comprises 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats, with one vacancy following the March death of Democrat Sylvester Turner. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott added redistricting to the ongoing special legislative session agenda following encouragement by President Donald Trump and his allies, who say they hope to pick up as many as five seats currently held by Texas Democrats. Gains in Texas could help House Republicans preserve their threadbare majority in next year’s midterms elections.
The new draft map would target Democratic-held seats in Austin, Houston, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth area —where a majority of the state’s Democratic delegation is concentrated.
Those changes will likely bring more Republican-leaning voters into districts such as the one held by Democrat Julie Elizabeth Johnson, located northeast of Dallas, while concentrating the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s urban core in the districts held by Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Marc Veasey, though Veasey would lose his Fort Worth base.
The map makes comparatively fewer changes to the two Democratic-held South Texas seats regarded as competitive, but both would become more Republican, The Texas Tribune reported. The seat currently held by Democrat Henry Cuellar would shift west and lose portions of Bexar County, home to San Antonio. The seat held by Democrat Vicente Gonzalez would shift slightly north, picking up areas currently represented by Republicans Monica De La Cruz and Michael Cloud.
Under the current Texas map, the seats held by Cuellar, Gonzalez and De La Cruz are the only ones rated as competitive by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.
The state House redistricting panel scheduled a Friday hearing over the new map. The special legislative session runs through Aug. 19, and the agenda includes other items such as legislation to address the deadly recent floods in Central Texas.
Democratic state legislators in Texas are weighing a plan to deny their Republican counterparts a quorum to pass the redrawn map by fleeing the state, The Texas Tribune reported. But the lawmakers would face daily fines and the threat of arrest should they take such a move.
Any redrawn map would also likely face legal threats from Democrats and their allies. The head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has represented or backed multiple challenges to congressional maps across the country, called the Texas proposal a “racially discriminatory, brazen power grab.”
“It is an insult to all Texans, who have demonstrated overwhelming, bipartisan opposition to President Trump’s order to draw a mid-decade gerrymander,” executive director Marina Jenkins said in a statement.
Texas’ current map already faces a court challenge over alleged Voting Rights Act violations — which a new map would short-circuit.
Pat Flavin, a political science professor at Baylor University, said Trump’s role in driving the Texas redistricting “can’t be understated” as the administration seeks to shore up House Republicans’ majority ahead of 2026. Traditionally, the party of the president loses congressional seats in a midterm election.
Speaking before the map was released, Flavin said that although states have done mid-decade redistricting in the past —Texas itself famously did so in 2003 — it seems like this effort has kicked off broader conversations about redistricting nationwide. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, publicly raised the prospect of another round of redistricting in his state, as has fellow Democrat New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
“This time around, my concern is it might be becoming a more normalized practice not only here in Texas but in other states as well,” Flavin said.
Texas’ aggressive plans may also run the risk of putting too many seats in play by making more Republican seats competitive in order to target Democrats, Flavin said.
“You do run the very real risk of spreading it too thin, and if there is enough of a wave in the 2026 midterm, you could end up losing districts you didn’t think you would,” Flavin said.
Flavin said the mid-decade effort from Texas, where the congressional delegation includes several occasional Trump critics from within his own party, also raises a new political dynamic.
“One new element or implication of all this is redistricting will now very much have a ‘Have you adequately supported us? So will we protect your seat?’ dynamic,” Flavin said.
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