Texas House approves plan to redraw congressional maps to favour Republicans

CBC

a day ago

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 U.S. 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 Texas 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.
California eyes changes of its own
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 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 straightforward: 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."
'This is Donald Trump's map'
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."
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 Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. "And we're going to fight fire with fire."
Obama backs Newsom's response
A new California map would need to be approved by voters in a special election in November because that state normally operates with a non-partisan 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 U.S. president Barack Obama.
But in a sign of Democrats' stiffening resolve, Obama on 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.
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.
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.