Texas House approves redrawn maps to benefit Republican party during 2026 midterm elections

The Texas House has approved redrawn congressional maps requested by US President Donald Trump that would give the Republican party an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump had pushed for the extraordinary mid-decade revision to give his party a better chance at holding onto the US House of Representatives in 2026, as it would give Republicans five more winnable seats.

The maps still need to be approved by the GOP-controlled state Senate and signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott before they become official.

Redistricting normally takes places every 10 years following a national census. House districts are then apportioned to the states based on each state’s population.

As states grow, they can gain seats. But if their population shrinks compared with those of other states, they can lose seats.

In this case, Texas districts are being gerrymandered, meaning they are redrawn for partisan gain.

Republicans and Democrats both do it, but Republicans have more openly embraced the process.

Texas Republicans openly said they were acting in their party’s interest. “The underlying goal of this plan is straight forward: improve Republican political performance,” said State Representative Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation formally creating the new map.

Texas House Democrats had attempted to derail the redraw, with legislators delaying the vote by two weeks by fleeing the state earlier this month. They were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring upon their return to ensure they attended Wednesday’s session.

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 DC choose their voters.”

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.

Gerrymandering as a tool in fight 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 the 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 Governor 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 the 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 US President Barack Obama. But in a sign of Democrats’ stiffening resolve, Obama has 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.

“I’ve had to wrestle with my preference, which would be that we don’t have political gerrymandering, but what I also know is that if we don’t respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy," he added.

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, cannot draw new maps until 2028, and even then, it could only do so with voter approval.