The Texas Legislature gave final approval Saturday to an aggressively redrawn congressional map that kicked off a redistricting race between the Republican and Democratic parties that is likely to affect the fight for Congress long before any ballots are cast in the 2026 midterm elections.
Texas governor Greg Abbott has said he would sign the map into law once it reaches his desk.
The state senate passed the map in a party-line vote just days after it was approved by the Texas house on Wednesday. The new lines on Texas’s congressional districts were drawn to deliver Republicans up to five US house seats and help preserve the party’s thin majority.
“I’m convinced that if Texas does not take this action, that there is an extreme risk that that Republican majority will be lost,” said state senator Phil King during the floor debate on Friday. He said at several points that he did not “look any racial data”.
RM Block
“This map is legal in all respects,” Mr King said.
Texas Democrats, who temporarily blocked the passage of the map with a walkout in the state house, said the newly drawn lines illegally diminished the voting strength of black and Hispanic Texans. They have vowed to file suit against the map after it is adopted.
After more than eight hours of debate on Friday, a procedural motion by the Republicans denied the Democrats a chance to filibuster, moving the chamber to the final vote.
On Thursday, Democratic lawmakers in California approved a new map of their state designed to swing five Republican seats to Democrats, a numerical counter to Texas that is likely to go before California voters in a November referendum. US president Donald Trump is also pressing Republican legislators to counter in Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, where more Republican seats could be squeezed out of maps that already favour the GOP. Florida’s Republican house speaker has also vowed to enter his state into the race.
The results of the nationwide redistricting push might not save Republican control of the US house, where the party currently holds a slender four-seat majority.
[ Texas lawmakers pass new electoral map intended to favour RepublicansOpens in new window ]
Off-year elections almost always favour the party out of power in the White House. Even without the states most likely to redistrict – Texas, California, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio – 27 House seats that were decided by fewer than 5 percentage points in 2024 will remain in play; 14 of them are held by Republicans.
The Texas map’s passage was a big victory for Mr Trump. California governor Gavin Newsom may have numerically nullified the president’s gains in Texas, but he still faces a campaign to get his maps approved by voters who overwhelmingly backed the non-partisan redistricting commission that the new map would temporarily supplant.
In New York, governor Kathy Hochul met state Democratic leaders Thursday, but they still face legal impediments that are likely to stop any redistricting there before 2026. Other Democratic states, such as Maryland and Illinois, are running into similar hurdles.
The redrawing of congressional districts usually happens only after the decennial US census, in order to account for changes in population over time. But, with encouragement from Mr Trump, state leaders in Texas said they were legally permitted to redraw the lines at any time. And they said that recent US Supreme Court precedent allowed them to do so with the explicit goal of boosting the number of Republicans in the US house.
– This article first appeared in the New York Times
