Texas Creates 5 New House Seats In Areas Trump Won In 2024
Texas Republicans stunned legislators nationwide earlier this month when Governor Greg Abbott announced a special legislative session for flood relief would also focus on drafting a new electoral map ahead of the 2026 midterms. Texas' redistricting effort resulted in a map that creates five new House seats in districts President Trump won by double digits in 2024.
According to Politico, the new electoral map was revealed on Wednesday, and as expected, it entirely benefits state Republicans. The new map makes districts held by Democratic Reps Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez redder, while also packing Democratic voters into reliably blue districts. The map forces Democratic Representatives Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett to primary against each other and creates five empty seats in districts Trump won by 10-15 points last year. With just over a year until the 2026 midterms, both Democrats and Republicans will have to rush to recruit candidates to campaign for these seats.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with state Democrats in Austin on Wednesday to discuss how to respond to the new map. Texas Democrats have repeatedly floated walking out of the special session to break quorum and prevent the map from gaining approval. The special session is set to end on Aug. 19, though Gov. Abbott could call another special session to make sure the map is approved.
Texas's redistricting effort has spurred several other states to review their electoral maps as well. Ohio Republicans have also begun a redistricting effort, specifically targeting Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes' seat. While many Democratic leaders have criticized Texas's redistricting effort as blatant gerrymandering, that hasn't prevented several Democrat-led states from publicly floating the idea of beginning a redistricting effort themselves.
New York recently unveiled a bill allowing the state to engage in a mid-decade redistricting if another state did it first, though any new map in the state wouldn't come into play until 2028 at the soonest. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been the most bullish on redistricting, pushing for state Democrats to approve drawing up a new map to go tit for tat with Texas.
While in Texas, the power to redistrict lies solely with the state legislature, in many Democrat-led states, redistricting power lies with independent commissions, thus creating constitutional constraints on their ability to quickly draw up new maps.
It's worth noting that while the Texas special session was announced under the pretense of flood relief, few of the bills submitted during the pre-file period had anything to do with the recent floods. Add in the fact that we've heard more about this new map than any legislation intended to provide assistance to those affected by the floods, and it gives the appearance that the Texas GOP exploited this devastating tragedy to further their own political agenda.
The fact that we're talking about widespread redistricting in 2025 is incredibly unusual, given that traditional redistricting only occurs once every decade. Currently, the GOP only holds a razor-thin majority in the House, with Democrats only needing to net three seats for control to flip next year. Texas's redistricting effort came at the behest of President Trump, who wants to maintain the Republican majority by any means necessary.
Apparently, the best way to do that isn't by implementing policies that are actually popular and beneficial for the American public, but by rigging maps for political advantage. It's efforts like these that make it hard to have faith in American democracy. It's no longer about the best ideas and policies winning, but who can manipulate systems the best.
This apparent race to the bottom is terrible for Americans of all backgrounds. No matter who's doing the gerrymandering, the end result is a specific group (often Black folks, let's be real) getting disenfranchised.
SEE ALSO:
Texas Dems Fight Redistricting Effort Through Filibusters
Critics Call Texas Governor's New Congressional Map Gerrymandering
SEE ALSO
Texas Creates 5 New House Seats In Areas Trump Won In 2024 was originally published on newsone.com
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