Texas House approves redrawn maps sought by Trump ahead of 2026
elections
[August 21, 2025]
By JIM VERTUNO and NICHOLAS RICCARDI
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas House on Wednesday approved redrawn
congressional maps that would give Republicans a bigger edge in 2026,
muscling through a partisan gerrymander that launched weeks of protests
by Democrats and a widening national battle over redistricting.
The approval came at the urging of President Donald Trump, who pushed
for the extraordinary mid-decade revision of congressional maps to give
his party a better chance at holding onto the U.S. House of
Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. The maps, which would
give Republicans five more winnable seats, need to be approved by the
GOP-controlled state Senate and signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott
before they become official.
But the Texas House vote had presented the best chance for Democrats to
derail the redraw.
Democratic legislators delayed the vote by two weeks by fleeing Texas
earlier this month in protest, and they were assigned round-the-clock
police monitoring upon their return to ensure they attended Wednesday’s
session.
The approval of the Texas maps on an 88-52 party-line vote is likely to
prompt California’s Democratic-controlled state Legislature this week to
approve of a new House map creating five new Democratic-leaning
districts. But the California map would require voter approval in
November.
Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new Texas map in court and
complained that Republicans made the political power move before passing
legislation responding to deadly floods that swept the state last month.
Texas maps openly made to help GOP
Texas Republicans openly said they were acting in their party’s
interest. State Rep. Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation formally
creating the new map, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed
politicians to redraw districts for nakedly partisan purposes.
“The underlying goal of this plan is straight forward: improve
Republican political performance,” Hunter, a Republican, said on the
floor. After nearly eight hours of debate, Hunter took the floor again
to sum up the entire dispute as nothing more than a partisan fight.
“What’s the difference, to the whole world listening? Republicans like
it, and Democrats do not.”
Democrats said the disagreement was about more than partisanship.
“In a democracy, people choose their representatives,” State Rep. Chris
Turner said. “This bill flips that on its head and lets politicians in
Washington, D.C., choose their voters.”
State Rep. John H. Bucy blamed the president. “This is Donald Trump’s
map,” Bucy said. “It clearly and deliberately manufactures five more
Republican seats in Congress because Trump himself knows that the voters
are rejecting his agenda.”
Redistricting becomes tool nationwide in battle for US House
The Republican power play has already triggered a national tit-for-tat
battle as Democratic state lawmakers prepared to gather in California on
Thursday to revise that state’s map to create five new Democratic seats.
“This is a new Democratic Party, this is a new day, this is new energy
out there all across this country,” California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin
Newsom said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. “And we’re going to
fight fire with fire.”
A new California map would need to be approved by voters in a special
election in November because that state normally operates with a
nonpartisan commission drawing the map to avoid the very sort of
political brawl that is playing out. Newsom himself backed the 2008
ballot measure to create that process, as did former President Barack
Obama. But in a sign of Democrats’ stiffening resolve, Obama Tuesday
night backed Newsom’s bid to redraw the California map, saying it was a
necessary step to stave off the GOP’s Texas move.
“I think that approach is a smart, measured approach,” Obama said during
a fundraiser for the Democratic Party’s main redistricting arm.
The incumbent president’s party usually loses seats in the midterm
election, and the GOP currently controls the House of Representatives by
a mere three votes. Trump is going beyond Texas in his push to remake
the map. He’s pushed Republican leaders in conservative states like
Indiana and Missouri to also try to create new Republican seats. Ohio
Republicans were already revising their map before Texas moved.
Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland’s and New York’s
maps as well.
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Democratic lawmakers Texas Rep. Gene Wu, left, and Rep. Nicole
Collier, right, talk before a debate on a redrawn U.S. congressional
map in Texas during a special, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Austin,
Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
However, more Democratic-run states have commission systems like
California's or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do,
leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. New York,
for example, can’t draw new maps until 2028, and even then, only
with voter approval.
Texas Democrats decry the new maps
In Texas, there was little that outnumbered Democrats could do other
than fume and threaten a lawsuit to block the map. Because the
Supreme Court has blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only
way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing it
violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority
communities together so they can select representatives of their
choice.
Democrats noted that, in every decade since the 1970s, courts have
found that Texas’ legislature did violate the Voting Rights Act in
redistricting, and that civil rights groups had an active lawsuit
making similar allegations against the 2021 map that Republicans
drew up.
Republicans contend the new map creates more new majority-minority
seats than the previous one. Democrats and some civil rights groups
have countered that the GOP does that through mainly a numbers game
that leads to halving the number of the state’s House seats that
will be represented by a Black representative.
State Rep. Ron Reynolds noted the country just marked the 60th
anniversary of the Voting Rights Act’s passage and warned GOP
members about how they’d be remembered if they voted for what he
called “this racial gerrymander.”
“Just like the people who were on the wrong side of history in 1965,
history will be looking at the people who made the decisions in the
body this day,” Reynolds, a Democrat, said.
Republicans hit back at criticism
Republicans spent far less time talking on Wednesday, content to let
their numbers do the talking in the lopsided vote. As the day
dragged on, a handful hit back against Democratic complaints.
“You call my voters racist, you call my party racist and yet we’re
expected to follow the rules,” said State Rep. Katrina Pierson, a
former Trump spokesperson. “There are Black and Hispanic and Asian
Republicans in this chamber who were elected just like you.”
House Republicans’ frustration at the Democrats’ flight and ability
to delay the vote was palpable. The GOP used a parliamentary
maneuver to take a second and final vote on the map so it wouldn't
have to reconvene for one more vote after Senate approval.
House Speaker Dustin Burrows announced as debate started that doors
to the chamber were locked and any member leaving was required to
have a permission slip. The doors were only unlocked after final
passage more than eight hours later. One Democrat who refused the
24-hour police monitoring, State Rep. Nicole Collier, had been
confined to the House floor since Monday night.
Some Democratic state lawmakers joined Collier Tuesday night for
what Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez dubbed “a sleepover for
democracy.”
Republicans issued civil arrest warrants to bring the Democrats back
after they left the state Aug. 3, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott
asked the state Supreme Court to oust several Democrats from office.
The lawmakers also face a fine of $500 for every day they were
absent.
___
Riccardi reported from Denver. John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and
Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.
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