A tough week for Susan Collins
It's grind time for Republicans. They have until Friday to deliver on President Donald Trump's rescissions request as they also try to salvage government funding talks that are spiraling out of control.
With several senators insisting on changes to Trump's proposal to claw back $9.4 billion for foreign aid and public media, White House budget director Russ Vought will head to the Hill tomorrow to talk with senators about the plan, our Jordain Carney reports. Tuesday is also when the Senate is expected to take its first procedural vote on the rescissions bill.
One of the week's main characters is shaping up to be Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins. She's among the senators resisting Trump's rescissions request in its current form. She's also trying to get the Senate's bipartisan funding negotiations back on track, after a fiscal 2026 Commerce-Justice-Science amendment from Sen. Chris Van Hollen targeting the relocation of FBI headquarters triggered a rift among Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other committee Republicans.
In the House, Republicans are less concerned with salvaging bipartisanship as they gear up to pass fiscal 2026 Defense Department appropriations this week. Though Pentagon funding has long enjoyed backing from both parties, Connor O'Brien reports that Speaker Mike Johnson can't bank on much Democratic support for the bill and will need to keep the GOP conference united to pass it.
The $831.5 billion bill cleared House Appropriations last month almost entirely along party lines, as Democrats decried conservative policy provisions that would block funding for troops to travel to seek abortions — a rolled-back Biden-era policy — and Pentagon diversity efforts. Democrats will push for votes to remove those and other GOP policy riders they consider non-starters, as well as to undo the Trump administration's policy barring transgender people from serving in the military.
Many Republican hawks had hoped for a larger price tag for the defense bill, which would keep annual Pentagon funding static. But expect hard-liners, whose votes Johnson will need to keep the bill on track, to continue to try to put their stamp on the plan. Several Republicans including Reps. Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Scott Perry have filed amendments to block funding, foreign military sales or munitions transfers to Ukraine.
GOOD MONDAY MORNING. Anyone else heading to the Congressional Women's Softball Game at Audi Field this Wednesday?
Reach your Inside Congress crew at crazor@politico.com, mmccarthy@politico.com and bguggenheim@politico.com. Follow our live coverage at politico.com/congress.
WHAT WE'RE WATCHINGWith help from Alec Snyder
The House will vote on legislation including a wetlands conservation bill and a sinkhole mapping bill at 6:30 p.m.
The Senate will vote to confirm Whitney Hermandorfer to be a U.S. circuit judge for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and to advance the nomination of Luke Pettit to be an assistant secretary of the Treasury at 5:30 p.m.
— Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers will hold private meetings shortly before evening votes.
— House Rules will consider the fiscal 2026 Defense appropriations bill and cryptocurrency legislation at 4 p.m.
— House Appropriations will have subcommittee markups of the Transportation-HUD bill at 5 p.m. and the Energy-Water bill at 6 p.m.
The rest of the week: The House will take up crypto legislation and move through appropriations bills. The Senate will work through Trump's rescissions package and more of his nominees, including Joseph Edlow to be the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at DHS.
Pro subscribers receive this newsletter with a full congressional schedule and can browse our comprehensive calendar of markups, hearings and other notable events around Washington. Sign up for a demo.
THE LEADERSHIP SUITE
Trump poised for big crypto win, but new House drama looms
House Republicans are set to make history this week when they send a landmark crypto policy revamp to Trump for his signature. But they're facing major snags in their quest to go further with a second big bill, our Jasper Goodman writes in.
As soon as Tuesday, the House is expected to pass a bill with bipartisan support that would create new federal rules for so-called stablecoins – in effect treating them as a legitimate piece of the broader financial system. The bill, which originated in the Senate but follows years of work launched by the House, marks the first time that Congress has pulled off a major rewrite of regulations to enshrine crypto.
As part of a 'crypto week' on the floor, the House will also vote on a broader bill to overhaul crypto rules – a market structure proposal targeting regulations for securities and commodities. It still has a long way to go before becoming law, and House Republicans are scrambling to lock down Democrats. A bipartisan show of force is key for House Financial Services Chair French Hill – a leading figure on crypto policy the last few years – to show that the bill is viable in the Senate.
Seventy-one House Democrats voted for a similar crypto market structure proposal last year, but new concerns over the Trump family's business entanglements in crypto are making it a heavier lift this time around.
House eyes next week for Russian sanctions vote
The House is expected to vote on a bipartisan Russian sanctions bill next week. In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune is eyeing next week or potentially the following week to take up the bill, even as it hits a snag with Democrats over Trump's insistence that it give him more flexibility.
Sens. Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, the bill's lead sponsors, will meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for dinner tonight with other senators as the two try to shore up support.
Trump has been hinting at a 'major statement' on Russia this week, as he ramps up critcism over its operations in Ukraine.
'A turning point regarding Russia['s] invasion of Ukraine is coming,' Graham said in a joint interview with Blumenthal on CBS' 'Face the Nation' Sunday.
Thune, Schumer and the 2026 map
Can Democrats get their dream recruits? Can a bloody Republican primary in Texas put the state on the map? Read Aaron Pellish, Jordain and Elena Schneider on the key questions that could decide who will win the Senate in 2026 – and what Senate leaders are doing about it now.
POLICY RUNDOWN
HOSPITALS PRESS GOP TO SOFTEN MEGABILL MEDICAID CUTS — State-based hospital associations are ramping up a lobbying campaign to block Medicaid cuts from the GOP megabill, our Robert King, David Lim and Amanda Chu report. They're warning that slashing $340 billion from hospital budgets over a decade to offset parts of Trump's domestic policy agenda could have painful political consequences.
'Are they really going to want to cut rural hospitals in an election?' asked Chris Mitchell, head of the Iowa Hospital Association.
In related megabill fallout, our Liz Crampton and Nick Reisman report that the 'big, beautiful' law's cuts to health care and food assistance for low-income Americans are threatening to impose major costs on states and create budget nightmares for governors who face elections next year. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, for example, is contending with an $11 billion budget hole ahead of a potential faceoff against Trump ally Rep. Elise Stefanik.
On the energy side of the megabill saga, Zack Colman reports that Democrats are gearing up to make the case that clean energy cuts will drive up electricity prices.
'Democrats now have the high ground of price and Republicans are now the party of electricity shortages,' Sen. Brian Schatz said in an interview.
Republicans are also re-engaging with the energy cuts.
Sen. John Curtis worked to ensure Biden-era clean-energy tax credits weren't totally decimated in the megabill, including by softening some of the phase-out dates for certain programs. Now, he's trying to keep Trump from undoing that work.
Curtis told Benjamin he's in talks with the administration about the implications of a new executive order that could undo an agreement allowing companies to access credits if they spend 5 percent of the costs of eligible projects by mid-2026.
'The word we have from the White House is they'll follow the law,' Curtis said. But he added that it is 'yet to be determined' how the executive order is going to be interpreted.
TRUMP JUDGES BEGIN TO MOVE — It's shaping up to be a big week for Trump's second-term remake of the federal judiciary, our Hailey Fuchs writes in. The Senate is poised to confirm Whitney Hermandorfer tonight, making her the first new judge of Trump's second term. Hermandorfer, who is expected to receive party-line support, is the president's pick to serve on the 6th Circuit, the federal court that hears appeals from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.
On Thursday, Senate Judiciary is scheduled to vote on advancing the nominations of Emil Bove and Jeanine Pirro.
Democrats say Bove, the principal deputy attorney general nominated for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, is unfit for the position, citing allegations from a whistleblower that he suggested defying court orders in order to carry out the administration's deportation agenda.
Pirro is a former Fox News host Trump selected to be U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The previous nominee, Ed Martin, failed to gain enough support among Senate Republicans. Sen. Thom Tillis, who helped tank Martin's nomination, has said he'll support Pirro in committee and suggested he'll back Bove, too.
Best of POLITICO Pro and E&E:
CAMPAIGN STOP
FIRST IN INSIDE CONGRESS: NEW DEMS' MIDTERM PICKS — The New Democrat Coalition's political arm is endorsing its first slate of candidates for the 2026 midterms, our Nicholas Wu writes in. The centrist bloc is backing Christina Bohannan in Iowa's 1st District, Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin's 3rd District and Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania's 10th District. They're all candidates seeking rematches in purple districts, and they picked up the backing of the New Democrats last cycle, too. Stelson hasn't formally announced her bid yet but is widely expected to do so soon.
THE BEST OF THE REST
Bannon warns GOP could lose 40 House seats over Epstein files, from Ashleigh Fields at The Hill
The exclusive Capitol subway that keeps trapping US senators, from David Sivak, Samantha-Jo Roth and Ramsey Touchberry at Washington Examiner
CAPITOL HILL INFLUENCE
William Shelby has joined AxAdvocacy as a government relations associate. He previously was an intern for former Rep. Mike Waltz and former Sen. Richard Shelby.
Brittney May is joining Ameren Corporation as a federal government relations representative. She most recently was senior legislative affairs manager at the National Hydropower Association and is a State Department and Ways & Means Committee alum.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Former Reps. Patrick Kennedy and Tom Latham … Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick … Washington Free Beacon's Eliana Johnson … National Retail Federation's Matthew Shay … Chicago Sun-Times' Tina Sfondeles … Ammon Simon … Mike Panetta of the Beekeeper Group … James Davis … Meta's Nkechi Nneji … Axios' Caitlin Owens … David Weissman … Tigercomm's Mike Casey … Corey Solow … Tony Hanagan … Dana Youngentob of Sen. Angus King's office
TRIVIA
FRIDAY'S ANSWER: Claude Marx correctly answered that the last time someone successfully succeeded a family member in an Arizona special election was Mo Udall succeeding his brother Stewart Udall in 1961.
TODAY'S QUESTION, from Claude: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is the son of which former U.S. senator? Who was his predecessor?
The first person to correctly guess gets a mention in the next edition of Inside Congress. Send your answers to insidecongress@politico.com.
CORRECTION: Friday's newsletter misspelled Potter Stewart's name in trivia. Our apologies.
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The Hill
24 minutes ago
- The Hill
A postmortem on the dismantling of USAID
On the first day of his second term, President Trump issued an executive order suspending all foreign aid expenditures, except for those providing emergency and military assistance. On March 10, the administration cancelled 83 percent of the programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID, Trump declared, had been 'run by a bunch of radical lunatics.' Elon Musk opined that the agency was 'a criminal organization.' Social media outlets spread false allegations that USAID had spent $60 million on condoms for South Africa. On May 21, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 'No one has died because of USAID.' Lawmakers presented him with credible evidence that he was wrong. By the middle of the year, 94 percent of USAID's 4,500 employees, many of them living overseas, had been laid off. As of July 1, Rubio announced, 'USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance.' The State Department would only implement existing and new foreign aid programs if they advanced the administration's 'America First' agenda by privileging 'trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, investment over assistance.' The dismantling of USAID has already had a negative impact on the lives of tens of millions of poor and vulnerable people in some 130 countries. And the evisceration of USAID is undermining our national interest. Established in 1961, USAID became the world's leading donor of humanitarian, economic development and democracy-promoting programs. The organization has had considerable success in alleviating poverty and malnutrition, decreasing the spread of infectious diseases and increasing access to safer drinking water and sanitation. Its programs helped mitigate the effect of natural disasters and achieve substantial reductions in mortality rates across all ages and causes, death rates from HIV/AIDS, malaria and tropical diseases. Working with non-government organizations, USAID provided educational opportunities for women in Afghanistan and supported independent media committed to correcting disinformation campaigns by state-controlled outlets in Eastern Europe. Although MAGA Republicans have denounced USAID as 'woke,' the agency's largest implementing partner in 2024 was Catholic Charities. In the last four years, Samantha's Purse, founded by Franklin Graham, the son of evangelical minister Billy Graham, received $90 million in USAID funds. A study recently published in The Lancet, the respected scientific and medical journal, estimates that the implications of dismantling USAID could 'reverberate for decades,' with an impact 'similar in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict.' By 2030, an additional 14 million people, 4 million of them children under five years old, could die. 630,000 of those deaths would be associated with dramatic reductions in staff, medications and treatment through PEPFAR, President George W. Bush's signature foreign aid initiative. USAID is a paradigmatic example of the exercise of 'soft power,' a difficult to quantify strategy of exerting national influence through trade, economic assistance, educational exchanges, public-private partnerships and relationships with business and political leaders. China had already strengthened its global ties by investing $679 billion — more than nine times the foreign aid expenditures of the U.S. — between 2013 and 2021 to construct or repair roads, railways, airports and energy and digital infrastructure. It began filling the soft power void created by the dismantling of USAID almost immediately in Nepal and Colombia. U.S. foreign aid, moreover, is relatively inexpensive. In 2023, total expenditures for non-military foreign aid were $71.9 billion, 1.2 percent of the $6.1 trillion federal budget. USAID was responsible for $43.5 billion of the $71.9 billion. The U.S., it's worth noting, gives a relatively low percentage of its GDP in aid compared to most other wealthy nations. As Trump and Rubio surely know, a substantial majority of Americans do not understand the aims and achievements of foreign aid or know how much the U.S. spends on it. On average, Americans believe that foreign aid constitutes 31 percent of the federal budget. About 70 percent of Americans (and 9 out of 10 Republicans) think Washington spends too much money assisting other countries. Trump and Rubio are not attempting to enlighten them. The dismantling of USAID provides a teachable moment. Referring to PEPFAR, former President Bush recently asked and answered a rhetorical question: 'Is it in our national interest that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is.' Providing humanitarian assistance is the right thing for the wealthiest country in the world to do, whether or not there's an immediate payoff. But it is also one of many ways, in our increasingly interconnected and interdependent planet, in which a robust USAID served — and might again serve — America's national interest.
Axios
24 minutes ago
- Axios
"He's a madman": Trump's team frets about Netanyahu after Syria strikes
As smoke and debris swirled over the Syrian presidential palace, the chatter in the West Wing grew louder: Benjamin Netanyahu is out of control. What they're saying:"Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time," one White House official told Axios, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. "This could undermine what Trump is trying to do." A second senior U.S. official also pointed to the shelling of a church in Gaza this week, which led President Trump to call Netanyahu and demand an explanation. "The feeling is that every day there is something new. What the f***?" A third U.S. official said there's growing skepticism inside the Trump administration about Netanyahu — a sense that his trigger finger is too itchy and he's too disruptive. "Netanyahu is sometimes like a child who just won't behave." Netanyahu's spokesperson Ziv Agmon did not respond to a request for comment. Why it matters: Six U.S. officials tell Axios that despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that halted this week's escalation in Syria on Friday, this week ended with the White House significantly more alarmed about Netanyahu and his regional policies. However, Trump has so far refrained from public criticism and it's unclear if he shares his advisers' frustrations. It is not totally clear whether he shares his advisers' recent concerns about Israel's actions in Syria. Driving the news: On Tuesday, Israel bombed a convoy of Syrian army tanks en route to the city of Suwayda to respond to violent clashes between a Druze militia and armed Bedouin tribesmen, which had killed over 700 people as of Saturday according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Israel claimed the convoy crossed into a zone of southern Syria it demands be demilitarized, and that the Syrian military was participating in attacks on the Druze minority, which Syria denies. U.S. envoy Tom Barrack asked his Israeli counterparts on Tuesday to stand down to allow for a diplomatic resolution, and the Israelis committed to do so, according to a U.S. official. Instead, after a pause, Israel escalated the strikes. On Wednesday, Israel dropped bombs on Syria's military headquarters and near the presidential palace. Friction point:"The bombing in Syria caught the president and the White House by surprise. The president doesn't like turning on the television and seeing bombs dropped in a country he is seeking peace in and made a monumental announcement to help rebuild," a U.S. official said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Netanyahu and his team to stop on Wednesday. Netanyahu agreed to do so in return for the Syrian military withdrawing from Suwayda. But by then countries including Turkey and Saudi Arabia had conveyed angry messages to the Trump administration about Israel's actions, and several senior U.S. officials had complained directly to Trump about Netanyahu. Behind the scenes: Among those officials were Barrack and White House envoy Steve Witkoff — both close friends Trump's, according to a U.S. official. The general belief in the White House was that Netanyahu bombed Syria because of domestic pressure from Israel's Druze minority and other political considerations. "Bibi's political agenda is driving his senses. It will turn out to be a big mistake for him long-term," a U.S. official said. Another U.S. official said the damage the Israelis had done to their standing at the White House over the past week didn't seem to be breaking through to them. "The Israelis need to get their head out of their asses," the official quipped. Between the lines: The tensions over Syria came just days after Netanyahu's visit to D.C., in which he met Trump twice and the two leaders seemed closer than ever in the afterglow of the war with Iran. In addition to Syria and the attack on the church in Gaza, the murder of Palestinian American Saif Mussallet by a mob of Israeli settlers last weekend also sparked pushback from the Trump administration toward Netanyahu's stridently pro-settler government. Amb. Mike Huckabee, who days earlier had visited Netanyahu's corruption trial in a show of support, released a series of statements calling the attack "terrorism" and demanding answers. On Saturday, he also visited a Christian community in the West Bank that had been targeted by settler attacks. Huckabee, long an effusive supporter of Israel, also criticized the Israeli government this week for making it harder for American evangelicals to obtain travel visas. The other side: The Israelis were surprised by the U.S. pushback over the Syria strikes. A senior Israeli official said Trump had encouraged Netanyahu to hold parts of Syria during his first weeks in office and hadn't previously expressed concerns about Israel's interventions in the country. The official stressed that Israel only intervened after its intelligence indicated the Syrian government was involved in attacks against the Druze. The official denied any domestic political considerations. "The U.S. wants to keep the new Syrian government stable and doesn't understand why we attack in Syria, because of attacks on the Druze community there. We tried to explain to them that this is our commitment to the Druze community in Israel," the senior Israeli official said. State of play: The instability in Syria is a major concern to the administration. On Saturday, Rubio posted on X that the regime in Damascus needs to help bring peace and stop the killings. But a senior U.S. official said Israel shouldn't be able to decide whether the Syrian government can exert its sovereignty over its own citizens and territory. "The current Israeli policy would lead to an unstable Syria. Both the Druze community and Israel will lose in such a scenario," the official said. The big picture: This was hardly the first time Netanyahu tested Trump's patience. His gamble that Trump would ultimately back his strikes on Iran paid off in dramatic fashion. He's pressed on in Gaza for months despite Trump's desire for an end to the war. In Syria, he bet once again that he could escalate dramatically without destabilizing the region or his relationship with Trump. And Trump aides have become more and more aware in recent months of the influence far-right Jewish supremacist elements in Netanyahu's coalition have on policy. This dynamic has also become more evident to the broader MAGA movement. The bottom line: U.S. officials who spoke to Axios cautioned that Netanyahu's luck, and Trump's goodwill, could run out.
San Francisco Chronicle
24 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Texas Republicans aim to redraw House districts at Trump's urging, but there's a risk
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat who represents a slice of the Rio Grande Valley along the border with Mexico, won his last congressional election by just over 5,000 votes. That makes him a tempting target for Republicans, who are poised to redraw the state's congressional maps this coming week and devise five new winnable seats for the GOP that would help the party avoid losing House control in the 2026 elections. Adjusting the lines of Gonzalez's district to bring in a few thousand more Republican voters, while shifting some Democratic ones out, could flip his seat. Gonzalez said he is not worried. Those Democratic voters will have to end up in one of the Republican districts that flank Gonzalez's current one, making those districts more competitive — possibly enough so it could flip the seats to Democrats. 'Get ready for some pickup opportunities,' Gonzalez said, adding that his party is already recruiting challengers to Republicans whose districts they expect to be destabilized by the process. 'We're talking to some veterans, we're talking to some former law enforcement.' Texas has 38 seats in the House. Republicans now hold 25 and Democrats 12, with one seat vacant after Democrat Sylvester Turner, a former Houston mayor, died in March. Gonzalez's district — and what happens to the neighboring GOP-held ones — is at the crux of President Donald Trump's high-risk, high-reward push to get Texas Republicans to redraw their political map. Trump is seeking to avoid the traditional midterm letdown that most incumbent presidents endure and hold onto the House, which the GOP narrowly controls. Trump's push comes as there are numerous political danger signs for his presidency, both in the recent turmoil over his administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and in new polling. Surveys from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show most U.S. adults think his policies have not helped them and that his tax cut and spending bill will help the wealthy. Republicans risk putting their own seats in jeopardy The fear of accidentally creating unsafe seats is one reason Texas Republicans drew their lines cautiously in 2021, when the constitutionally mandated redistricting process kicked off in all 50 states. Mapmakers — in most states, it's the party that controls the legislature — must adjust congressional and state legislative lines after every 10-year census to ensure that districts have about the same number of residents. That is a golden opportunity for one party to rig the map against the other, a tactic known as gerrymandering. But there is a term, too, for so aggressively redrawing a map that it puts that party's own seats at risk: a 'dummymander.' The Texas GOP knows the risk. In the 2010s, the Republican-controlled Legislature drew political lines that helped pad the GOP's House majority. That lasted until 2018, when a backlash against Trump in his first term led Democrats to flip two seats in Texas that Republicans had thought safe. In 2021, with Republicans still comfortably in charge of the Texas Statehouse, the party was cautious, opting for a map that mainly shored up their incumbents rather than targeted Democrats. Still, plenty of Republicans believe their Texas counterparts can safely go on offense. 'Smart map-drawing can yield pickup opportunities while not putting our incumbents in jeopardy,' said Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which helps coordinate mapmaking for the party nationally.. Democrats contemplate a walkout Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session of the Legislature, which starts Monday, to comply with Trump's request to redraw the congressional maps and to address the flooding in Texas Hill Country that killed at least 135 people this month. Democratic state lawmakers are talking about staying away from the Capitol to deny the Legislature the minimum number needed to convene. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton posted that any Democrats who did that should be arrested. Lawmakers can be fined up to $500 a day for breaking a quorum after the House changed its rules when Democrats initiated a walkout in 2021. Despite the new penalties, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, who led the walkout in 2021, left open the possibility of another. 'I don't think anybody should underestimate the will of Texas Democrats," he said. Texas is not the only Republican state engaged in mid-decade redistricting. After staving off a ballot measure to expand the power of a mapmaking commission last election, Ohio Republicans hope to redraw their congressional map from a 10-5 one favoring the GOP to one as lopsided as 13-2, in a state Trump won last year with 55% of the vote. Democrats have fewer options. More of the states the party controls do not allow elected partisans to draw maps and entrust independent commissions to draw fair lines. Some party leaders, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are maneuvering to try to find ways around their commissions to counter Texas, but they have few options. The few Democrat-controlled states that do allow elected officials to draw the lines, such as Illinois, have already seen Democrats max out their advantages. Trump and his allies have been rallying Texas Republicans to ignore whatever fears they may and to go big. On Tuesday, the president posted on his social media site a reminder of his record in the state last November: 'Won by one and a half million Votes, and almost 14%. Also, won all of the Border Counties along Mexico, something which has never happened before. I keep hearing about Texas 'going Blue,' but it is just another Democrat LIE.' Texas has long been eyed as a state trending Democratic because of its growing nonwhite population. But those communities swung right last year and helped Trump expand his margin to 14 percentage points, a significant improvement on his 6-point win in 2020. Michael Li, a Texas native and longtime watcher of the state at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, said there's no way to know whether that trend will continue in next year's elections or whether the state will return to its blue-trending ways. 'Anyone who can tell you what the politics of Texas looks like for the balance of the decade has a better crystal ball than I do,' Li said. Aggressive redistricting also carries legal risks One region of the state where Republican gains have been steady is the Rio Grande Valley, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico along much of the state's southern border. The heavily Hispanic region, where many Border Patrol officers live, has rallied around Trump's tough-on-immigration, populist message. As a result, Gonzalez and the area's other Democratic congressman, Henry Cuellar, have seen their reelection campaigns get steadily tighter. They are widely speculated to be the two top targets of the new map. The GOP is expected to look to the state's three biggest cities to find its other Democratic targets. If mapmakers scatter Democratic voters from districts in the Houston, Dallas and Austin areas, they could get to five additional seats. But in doing so, Republicans face a legal risk on top of their electoral one: that they break up districts required by the Voting Rights Act to have a critical amount of certain minority groups. The goal of the federal law is to enable those communities to elect representatives of their choosing. The Texas GOP already is facing a lawsuit from civil rights groups alleging its initial 2021 map did this. If this year's redistricting is too aggressive, it could trigger a second complaint. 'It's politically and legally risky,' Li said of the redistricting strategy. 'It's throwing caution to the winds.'
