Texas lawmakers on the floor of the State House in Austin. Photo / Getty Images
Maps intended to help the GOP win five more US House seats in the midterm elections cleared a key procedural vote in the State Legislature. California will counter.
An aggressively partisan congressional map of Texas cleared a key procedural vote on Wednesday as Republicans in the Texas House took a major step toward giving President Donald Trump the gerrymander he requested, which could deliver his party as many as five new US House seats.
The vote, 88-52, fell along party lines and came after seven hours of at-times tense debate. It was the first of two tallies needed for the House to adopt the new map, with the final passage expected to follow by evening. The state Senate is expected to vote on the map Thursday (Friday NZ time), then send it by the end of the week to Governor Greg Abbott for his promised signature.
The redrawing of Texas’ map was only the first battle in what is likely to be a bruising and protracted coast-to-coast clash over redistricting between states led by Republicans and those led by Democrats over the coming months. The California Legislature is expected to vote Thursday on a newly drawn congressional map designed to flip as many as five Republican-held seats to the Democrats, a counterweight to Wednesday’s vote in Texas. California’s changes would then have to be approved by voters in a referendum in November.
If the fight broadens significantly, the outcome of the redistricting war could help determine control in the US House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a slim majority, even before a single vote is cast in what were expected to be very close midterms elections in 2026.
Already, Trump and his allies have been looking past Texas to other Republican states, including Indiana, Missouri and Florida. Beyond California, Democratic state leaders are looking at Illinois and Maryland before the 2026 midterms, and New York before the 2028 presidential election, vowing to embark on their own mid-decade redistricting efforts.
For Democrats, however, the fight is proving harder. The California effort will require working around the state rules that give an independent commission responsibility for redistricting. That is why the map that is up for passage in the state Legislature there Thursday would also have to be approved by voters.
The path to passage in Texas has been far simpler, despite sustained Democratic opposition.
Wednesday’s vote on the map had been delayed by more than two weeks by dozens of Democratic state representatives, who left the state to halt its passage by denying the House enough members to meet.
But as soon as they returned Monday, Republican lawmakers moved swiftly to ensure its passage, rapidly approving an updated version out of two committees and assigning each Democrat a state police chaperone to ensure that representative could not leave again.
“The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance,” state Representative Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, said Wednesday in a speech introducing the map legislation, known as House Bill 4.
“According to the US Supreme Court, we can use political performance” in drawing congressional districts, he said. “And that is what we’ve done.”
One Republican member from the Fort Worth area, David Lowe, wore an oversized round pin reading “Big Beautiful Map” – a reference to Trump’s description of the Texas redistricting.
As debate began, chants and cheers could be heard through the closed doors from dozens protesting in the Capitol rotunda against the redistricting.
“House Bill 4 is an illegal and racially discriminatory congressional map that this body has no business passing,” said state Representative Chris Turner, a Dallas-area Democrat. “This illegal and rigged mid-decade redistricting scheme is dividing our state and our country.”
Republicans have revised the map that has been under consideration since it was introduced last month. It would still aim to flip the five seats that Trump has publicly called for, but it was reworked slightly to place additional Republican voters in the districts where Republicans already hold House seats.
“Please pass this map ASAP,” Trump urged on social media Monday. “Thank you, Texas!”
After passage in the state House, the map would go to the state Senate, where Republican leaders have an even stronger hand. Once Abbott signs it, Democrats have said they will challenge the redistricting in court.
The actions by Texas and California this week will likely narrow the battlefield for control of the US House next year, a critical fight that will shape the remainder of Trump’s term. Even so, with the House so narrowly divided, the expanding fight over redistricting alone is not likely to determine control of the chamber.
Some of the districts being redrawn in the two states could remain competitive in a non-presidential election.
Even without the states most likely to redistrict – Texas, California and Ohio – 27 House seats that were decided in 2024 by fewer than 5 percentage points will remain in states unlikely to redraw their maps. Of those, 14 are held by Republicans, 13 by Democrats.
Still, Texas is the biggest prize available for Republicans, Trump has said.
And tensions have been rising in the state Capitol this week.
When the House chamber officially opened for Wednesday’s proceedings, arriving lawmakers were greeted by an unusual sight – several of their Democratic lawmakers were already inside after spending the night there in protest.
Those lawmakers objected to being forced to sign a permission slip that linked them to a state police officer assigned to follow them. Those escort officers were a condition set by the Republican speaker for allowing them to leave the Capitol, after they returned from their walkout.
One state Representative, Nicole Collier of Fort Worth, refused to sign the permission slip. She slept in the brown leather chair at her legislative desk on Monday, with two others who joined her. On Tuesday, the group had grown to about a half-dozen, as several members tore up the slips they had signed and went into the chamber.
Collier was then told by a senior Republican House member on Wednesday that she could be arrested after other female lawmakers complained that she was conducting a video call inside a bathroom in the Capitol. The call was organised by the Democratic National Committee and included Governor Gavin Newsom of California.
Texas law prohibits photographing or recording a visual image of another person in a bathroom without consent. Collier abruptly left the call.
The drama has drawn national attention. But none of the Democrats’ actions could undo the political reality that Republicans in the Texas House outnumbered Democrats, 88-62. Ten Democrats were recorded as absent in the vote Wednesday.
The strict attendance rules imposed by the House would expire after the passage of the map, House Speaker Dustin Burrows said Wednesday.
The day’s most heated moments came over the question of race and how the new map impacts districts currently occupied by Black members of Congress in the Houston and Dallas areas. In Houston, the map moves the 9th Congressional district, held by US Representative Al Green, an outspoken Trump critic, to an area where Republican voters predominate.
Hunter and Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, a Democratic state representative from San Antonio, argued over whether the Black members of the House were consulted over the map. “We weren’t asked any questions,” said Gervin-Hawkins, who is Black.
Hunter, who is white, disagreed. The two members interrupted each other several times. “Members, please try not to talk over one another,” Burrows interjected at one point.
“You own the walkout,” Hunter said to Gervin-Hawkins, talking loudly across a chamber that had grown otherwise quiet. “Don’t come into this body and say we didn’t include you. You left us for 18 days.”
The vote Wednesday took place during a 30-day special legislative session, the second such session called by Abbott to address redistricting and measures related to the deadly July 4 floods in the Texas Hill Country. (The first session expired without any action because of the Democratic walkout.)
No votes have taken place on the House floor related to flood recovery. That was set to be handled later, after redistricting.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: J. David Goodman
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