Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, right, after he received Abbott’s endorsement at the South Texas International Airport Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023, in Edinburg, Texas.Eric Gay/AP
The state of Texas is currently mourning at least 120 lives lost due to horrific flooding in the Hill Country. But Texas Republicans appear focused on a different priority: re-gerrymandering their state to reduce Democrats’ chances of retaking the US House in 2026.
After intense lobbying by the White House, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Wednesday that the GOP-dominated state legislature would reconvene this summer to redraw its Congressional districts.
It’s a shocking move on multiple fronts.
First, there’s the timing. Districts are typically redrawn after the decennial census at the beginning of the decade to account for population changes. And, given the scale of the devastation in the Hill Country and questions about the state and national preparedness to alert residents and combat the flooding, one would think that state leaders would be laser-focused on preventing another such tragedy.
“While Texans battle tragic and deadly flooding, Governor Abbott and House Republicans are plotting a mid-decade gerrymander,” Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote on X. “They should be modernizing emergency response—not rigging maps.”
Then there’s the substance. Texas already has some of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the country. Republicans control two-thirds of US House seats, even though in the 2024 election Trump only won 56 percent of the vote in the state. Texas gained 4 million people between 2010 and 2020, giving the state two new congressional seats. Ninety-five percent of the population growth came from people of color, but, in a brazen effort to forestall the impact of demographic changes, the state drew two new seats in areas with white majorities instead.
“The partisan effects of the maps are achieved by discriminating against communities of color,” Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice told me at the time. Both the Biden Justice Department and civil rights groups sued the state, alleging that the maps intentionally discriminated against Black and Hispanic voters. A federal trial in that case just recently concluded, with the verdict pending.
As if the current maps weren’t skewed enough, the Trump White House reportedly urged Texas Republicans to pursue an even more “ruthless” approach ahead of the midterms that could net the GOP four or five new seats. In fact, Trump’s Justice Department, which has dramatically reversed all voting rights enforcement, appears to have orchestrated the push to redraw the state’s US House districts. The department sent a letter to Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday alleging that four of Texas’s congressional districts were “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.” Abbott then cited “constitutional concerns” as a reason to call a special redistricting session.
“I view the DOJ letter as offering a fig leaf, if you think one is necessary, to give the governor an excuse to redistrict.”
“I view the DOJ letter as offering a fig leaf, if you think one is necessary, to give the governor an excuse to redistrict,” says Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama.
It just so happens that all four of the districts singled out by the DOJ have been represented by Black or Hispanic Democrats. That raises the likelihood that Texas Republicans, in a bid to give their party more seats, will redraw their districts in a way that further reduces representation for voters of color, who are already severely underrepresented in the state where their numbers are growing.
The DOJ is interpreting the Voting Rights Act, experts say, in an extremely dubious way that turns the purpose of the law on its head. Its letter claims that coalition districts like the ones in Texas, where minority groups together form a majority, “run afoul of the Voting Rights Act.” As evidence, it cites one major case, a 2023 ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative appellate court in the country, in which it overruled a lower court opinion by a Trump-appointed judge striking down a county commissioners’ map in Galveston, Texas, that eliminated the only majority-minority district. The 5th Circuit’s opinion has not been upheld by the Supreme Court, nor adopted by any other appellate court.
Levitt called the 5th Circuit’s decision “dead wrong” and the DOJ letter “embarrassing.”
The GOP strategy, while potentially blunting Democratic efforts to retake the House, is not without risks.
The last time Texas Republicans redrew their districts mid-decade, in 2003 under the orders of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, state legislative Democrats fled the state, leading to a lengthy political battle. It’s possible that could happen again. During the summer of 2021, they also decamped to Washington, DC, in an unsuccessful bid to prevent Republicans from passing new voting restrictions. It’s also possible that blue states like California or New York could retaliate by redrawing their own maps to counter the GOP. And Texas Republicans, by moving voters from safe Republican areas to target Democratic incumbents, could also endanger the reelection bids of some of their own members.
“If the Republicans get too terribly greedy,” says Levitt, “they could end up achieving exactly the opposite of what they’re trying to achieve.”