Texas Republicans answered President Donald Trump’s call to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms by releasing a new map that eliminates five House seats held by Democrats and creates five new seats that voted for Trump in 2024.
The new map would yield 30 Republican-leaning seats and just eight Democratic-leaning seats. It would do so by splitting five seats currently held by Democrats in and around the cities of Houston, Dallas and Austin and in the heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley. The goal is to help Republicans hold their razor-thin four-seat margin in the House in the 2026 elections to prevent any meaningful oversight of the Trump administration from a Democratic-controlled body.
The elimination of five Democratic seats and creation of five Republican seats would cause a 10-vote swing in the GOP’s favor, giving them a more comfortable cushion in the event they lose seats in other states, as the party of the incumbent president almost always does in the midterm elections. But it comes with a host of risks.
Democrats and some redistricting experts had raised the possibility that the new gerrymander may turn out to be what’s called a “dummymander.” That’s when a gerrymander makes the seats of the party, redrawing the lines, more vulnerable to maximize the total number of seats they could win. If, however, there is a strong anti-incumbent wave powered by an unpopular president, those seats could suddenly come into play for Democrats.
“Donald Trump and Texas Republicans are playing a dangerous game, and we’re ready to defeat now-vulnerable Republicans next November,” Katarina Flicker, spokesperson for House Majority PAC, a Democratic Party super PAC, said in a statement. “We’re bringing the full weight of our operation to the Lone Star State to make this backroom deal backfire and take back the House in 2026.”
But the new map is designed to avoid this. Trump won all 30 GOP-leaning seats created in the new map by 10 points or more, and the map does not meaningfully dilute existing GOP-held districts.
Still, Democrats could compete in four of the new districts, according to the Center for Politics.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
On the other hand, the new map relies on Latino voters who shifted heavily to their column in 2024 to continue to vote Republican. Trump won 55% of the Latino vote in 2024 on concerns about the economy and border security, according to the Texas Politics Project. With border crossings effectively halted and economic indicators not moving in a markedly positive direction from 2024, will these voters stay in the GOP column? Republicans are making a big bet that these are now GOP voters and not swing voters.
That would matter most in the Rio Grande Valley, where the new map adds Republican voters to two seats currently held by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Those seats will move from 52% and 53% Trump-voting districts to 55%. The Latino vote could also matter in the other seats the map carves up that are held by Democratic Reps. Marc Veasey, Greg Casar, Lloyd Doggett and Julie Johnson.
While the new map makes Cuellar and Gonzalez’ districts more GOP-friendly, it splits up the other Democratic-held districts. Casar and Doggett would be forced to run in the same Austin-based seat under the new map, unless one of them risked running in less friendly terrain. The same could happen with Johnson and Veasey, as Johnson’s Dallas-based district would be effectively handed over to the GOP while Veasey’s home base of Fort Worth would be removed from his current district.
Democrats have promised to fight back against the GOP move by contesting the seats in the new maps and the courts. House Majority PAC is planning to invest $20 million in Texas to target GOP incumbents and protect Democrats with advertising, voter registration and a focus on outreach to Latinos.
The new map’s merger of “the 35th and the 37th districts is illegal voter suppression of Black and Latino Central Texans,” Casar said in a statement. “By merging our Central Texas districts, Trump wants to commit yet another crime ― this time, against Texas voters and against Martin Luther King’s Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement, “Texans deserve better than this, and if the legislature and the governor follow through with enacting this egregious gerrymander, it will face fierce legal challenges.”
Eric Gay via Associated Press
Democrats and Texas residents could bring a Voting Rights Act complaint in court against the new map, although it is likely to run into a hostile 5th Circuit and Supreme Court that have been looking to further destroy the Voting Rights Act.
The push to redraw Texas’ congressional map came directly from the Trump administration when Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, sent a letter to Texas officials declaring that four Democratic-held districts violated the Voting Rights Act and threatened legal action. Despite that claim being false, it prompted Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to convene a special session to draw a new map.
Meanwhile, Trump explicitly stated the partisan goal of the DOJ letter and the redistricting it prompted on July 15, saying, “I think we’ll get five” GOP seats out of it.
The new map is likely to now trigger a gerrymandering arms race as Democratic-held states look to redraw their maps to eliminate GOP-held seats. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has already stated that he is looking at ways to get around the state’s constitutional amendment requiring districts to be drawn by an independent commission. “California won’t be sitting on the sidelines,” his press office posted on social media after the new Texas map was released. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also proposed that his home state of Maryland follow suit and eliminate the state’s only GOP-held seat.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is also the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement on Wednesday that Democrats should respond with their own gerrymanders despite his opposition to the practice.
“[W]e do not oppose — on a temporary basis — responsible responsive actions to ensure that the foundations of our democracy are not permanently eroded,” Holder said. “Once this time has passed, measures at the federal and state levels must be put in place to outlaw the actions that have precipitated this crisis.”
But Republicans are also looking to expand their gerrymander romp with Ohio already moving toward a mid-cycle redistricting to eliminate Democratic seats and Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis floating the same.