Texas Republicans approve Trump-backed congressional map to protect party's majority
By Joseph Ax and Brad Brooks
Texas legislators on Wednesday passed a new state congressional map drawn at the behest of President Donald Trump to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats in next year's midterm elections, after dozens of Democratic lawmakers ended a two-week walkout that had temporarily blocked passage.
Republican legislators, who have dominated Texas politics for over two decades, have undertaken a rare mid-decade redistricting to help Trump improve their party's odds of preserving its narrow U.S. House of Representatives majority amid political headwinds.
The map, which will have to be reconciled with the state Senate's version, has triggered a national redistricting war, with governors of both parties threatening to initiate similar efforts in other states.
Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom is advancing an effort to redraw his state's map to flip five Republican seats. Democratic-controlled California is the nation's most populous state while Republican-led Texas is the second most populous. The Texas map would shift conservative voters into districts currently held by Democrats and combine some districts that Democrats hold.
Other Republican states -- including Ohio, Florida, Indiana and Missouri -- are moving forward with or considering their own redistricting efforts, as are Democratic states such as Maryland and Illinois.
Redistricting typically occurs every 10 years after the U.S. Census to account for population changes, and mid-decade redistricting has historically been unusual. Whenever the maps are drawn, tn many states,lawmakers manipulate the lines to favor their party over the opposition, a practice known as gerrymandering.
Texas Democrats on Wednesday raised multiple objections to and questions about the measure.
Representative John Bucy, a Democrat, said from the House floor before passage of the bill that the new maps were clearly intended to dilute the voting power of Black, Latino and Asian voters, and that his Republican colleagues bending to the will of Trump was deeply worrying.
"This is not democracy, this is authoritarianism in real time," Bucy said. "This is Donald Trump's map. It clearly and deliberately manufactures five more Republican seats in Congress because Trump himself knows the voters are rejecting his agenda."
Republicans argued the map was created to improve political performance and would increase majority Hispanic districts.
Bucy was among the Democrats who fled the state earlier this month to deny the Texas House a quorum. In response, Republicans undertook extraordinary measures to try to force the Democrats home, including filing lawsuits to remove them from office and issuing arrest warrants.
The walkout ended when Democrats voluntarily returned on Monday, saying they had accomplished their goals of blocking a vote during a first special legislative session and persuading Democrats in other states to take retaliatory steps.
Republican House leadership assigned state law enforcement officers to monitor Democrats to ensure they would not leave the state again. One Democratic representative, Nicole Collier, slept in the Capitol building on Monday night rather than accept a police escort.
Republicans, including Trump, have openly acknowledged that the new map is aimed at increasing their political power. The party currently controls 25 of the state's 38 districts under a Republican-drawn map that was passed four years ago.
Democrats and civil rights groups have said the new map dilutes the voting power of racial minorities in violation of federal law and have vowed to sue.
Nationally, Republicans captured the 435-seat U.S. House in 2024 by only three seats. The party of the president historically loses House seats in the first midterm election, and Trump's approval ratings have sagged since he took office in January.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Asahi Shimbun
an hour ago
- Asahi Shimbun
Taiwan's 2026 defense spending to exceed 3% of GDP, Central News Agency says
A Navy miniature is seen in front of displayed Chinese and Taiwanese flags in this illustration taken, April 11, 2023. (REUTERS) TAIPEI--Taiwan's cabinet plans defense spending next year of T$949.5 billion ($31.27 billion), amounting to 3.32% of gross domestic product, the official Central News Agency said on Thursday, set to cross a threshold of 3% for the first time since 2009. The move comes as China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has ramped up military and political pressure over the past five years to assert those claims, which Taipei strongly rejects. But Taiwan also faces calls from Washington to spend more on its own defense, mirroring pressure from the United States on Europe. This month, President Lai Ching-te said he wanted to boost defense spending to more than 3% of GDP next year. The budget includes funding for the coast guard, veterans and special projects, the agency added. It did not say what they meant in terms of a percentage increase over this year's defense spending. Taiwan was including spending for the coast guard in its total defense budget for the first time, two senior officials briefed on the matter told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They are standing on the frontline," said one, referring to the coast guard, which figures in regular stand-offs with China's coast guard and would, in time of war, be pressed into the navy's effort to defend Taiwan. The cabinet will hold a press conference later on Thursday to announce budget details. Taiwan's government has made military modernization a key policy platform and has repeatedly pledged to spend more on its defenses given the rising threat from China, including developing made-in-Taiwan submarines. China's air force flies almost daily missions into the skies near Taiwan, and holds periodic war games, the last in April. China is also rapidly modernizing its armed forces, with new aircraft carriers, stealth fighter jets and missiles. In March China unveiled a rise of 7.2% in this year's defense spending, to 1.78 trillion yuan ($248.17 billion), outpacing its 2025 economic growth target of about 5%.
Nikkei Asia
an hour ago
- Nikkei Asia
China calls for deeper exchanges, security with Pakistan, Afghanistan
Left to right, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi poses with his counterparts, Afghanistan's Amir Khan Muttaqi and Pakistan's Ishaq Dar, in Kabul on Aug. 20. (Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs X post) August 21, 2025 11:41 JST BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called on Pakistan and Afghanistan to strengthen trilateral exchanges at all levels, as Beijing pushes to strengthen security with its neighbors, according to a statement from the ministry.
Yomiuri Shimbun
an hour ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Appeals Court Allows Trump to End Temporary Protections for Migrants from Central America and Nepal
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday sided with the Trump administration and halted for now a lower court's order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Central America and Nepal. This means that the Republican administration can move toward removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose Temporary Protected Status designations expired Aug. 5. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire Sept. 8, at which point they will become eligible for removal. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted the emergency stay pending an appeal as lead plaintiff National TPS Alliance alleges that the administration acted unlawfully in ending Temporary Protected Status designations for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal. 'The district court's order granting plaintiffs' motion to postpone, entered July 31, 2025, is stayed pending further order of this court,' wrote the judges, who are appointees of Democrat Bill Clinton and Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Temporary Protected Status is a designation that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary, preventing migrants from being deported and allowing them to work. The Trump administration has aggressively sought to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It's part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants. Secretary Kristi Noem can extend Temporary Protected Status to immigrants in the U.S. if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe for return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangerous conditions. Immigrant rights advocates say TPS holders from Nepal have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade while people from Honduras and Nicaragua have lived in the country for 26 years, after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 devastated both countries. 'The Trump administration is systematically de-documenting immigrants who have lived lawfully in this country for decades, raising U.S.-citizen children, starting businesses, and contributing to their communities,' said Jessica Bansal, attorney at the National Day Laborer Organization, in a statement. Noem ended the programs after determining that conditions no longer warranted protections. In a sharply written July 31 order, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco kept the protections in place while the case proceeds. The next hearing is Nov. 18. She said the administration ended the migrant status protections without an 'objective review of the country conditions,' such as political violence in Honduras and the impact of recent hurricanes and storms in Nicaragua. In response, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary at DHS, said, 'TPS was never meant to be a de facto asylum system, yet that is how previous administrations have used it for decades.' The Trump administration has already terminated TPS designations for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, more than 160,000 Ukrainians and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. Some have pending lawsuits in federal courts. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Noem's decisions are unlawful because they were predetermined by President Donald Trump's campaign promises and motivated by racial animus. But Drew Ensign, a U.S. deputy assistant attorney general, said at a hearing Tuesday that the government suffers an ongoing irreparable harm from its 'inability to carry out the programs that it has determined are warranted.' Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Gerardo Torres said Wednesday that the appellate decision was unfortunate. He said the government hopes to at least buy time for Hondurans with the temporary status so they can seek out another way to stay legally in the U.S. 'We're going to wait to see what the National TPS Alliance decides, it's possible the case could be elevated to the United States Supreme Court, but we have to wait,' he said. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end TPS designations for Venezuelans. The justices provided no rationale, which is common in emergency appeals, and did not rule on the underlying claims.
