Republicans in Texas are apparently going all in on an unusual, high-stakes mid-cycle redistricting effort to bolster their chances of holding the House of Representatives next year. But redrawing the maps could just as easily backfire and cause Republicans to lose otherwise impregnable seats, leading to a situation worse than the status quo.
President Trump said on a private call on Tuesday that he believes Texas could redistrict in such a way that would provide a net gain of five Republican seats. The White House has been pushing for such a plan for weeks. If successful, that could offset the usual losses for the party in power in the midterms. State leaders like Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) have signed on to the effort.
State officials in Texas have readied a special legislative session that starts next week, which will include redistricting. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) cited “constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice” in adding redistricting to the special session. This is the opposite of truth. The Justice Department did file a lawsuit over Texas congressional maps in 2021, alleging that nonwhite voters were underrepresented, but the Trump administration dropped federal participation in that challenge in March.
Only on June 30 did DOJ send Abbott a letter claiming that four districts in the state are illegal racial gerrymanders. The letter effectively says that Texas Republicans, who spent four years inside courtrooms insisting that their maps were race-blind, disadvantaged white voters in 2021, and now must remedy their mistake.
But whatever the pretext, carrying out the new maps is filled with danger that Republicans will overreach and harm themselves in the process.
THE CURRENT TEXAS CONGRESSIONAL MAP is designed for 25 Republicans and 13 Democrats; one of those seats is currently vacant, after Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner died in March. While the map is already heavily gerrymandered—Rep. Greg Casar has a district that stretches from East Austin to San Antonio, and the former Turner seat is a bizarrely shaped perimeter of neighborhoods around Houston—mapmaking science could in theory alter more Democratic seats into Republican targets. But to do that, Republicans would have to be shifted into those Democratic districts, making the GOP seats that remain more vulnerable in a wave election.
That’s what could be shaping up, after congressional Republicans passed a deeply unpopular budget bill and Trump continued his crusade of raising tariffs, which is starting to show up in inflation statistics. According to a survey from Trump’s pollster Fabrizio Ward highlighted by House Majority PAC, which is controlled by Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Republicans are behind in 28 House battleground districts on the generic ballot, with that three-point deficit more than doubling among those most motivated to vote.
Redistricting is likely to increase the number of battleground districts, but that may draw in not just Democratic but Republican incumbents as well.
Currently, the Texas map is designed for safety. The only real swing seats in the entire state are two in the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley, held by Democrats Henry Cuellar (TX-28) and Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34). These were accidentally created after Latinos in South Texas swung to the GOP.
Redistricting is likely to increase the number of battleground districts, but that may draw in not just Democratic but Republican incumbents as well.
There is no Republican seat with less than a seven-point advantage relative to the national ballot. But critically, outside of Cuellar and Gonzalez, there is no Democratic seat in Texas with less than an 11-point advantage relative to the national ballot. In other words, spreading around Republican voters into Democratic seats to make them vulnerable could end up hurting Republicans more than Democrats.
The first order of business for GOP mapmakers would be to make the Cuellar and Gonzalez swing seats more Republican. But there aren’t many ways to do that without taking votes from the districts of Republicans Monica De La Cruz (TX-15), whose district is in between those two Democrats; Michael Cloud (TX-27), who is to Gonzalez’s north; or Tony Gonzales (TX-23), who is to Cuellar’s west. De La Cruz and Gonzales in particular are in R+7 districts, on the outside of being endangered in a wave election. If they give up Republican votes, they would be far more vulnerable.
Next, in the Dallas area, Republicans are reportedly going after freshman Democrat Julie Johnson (TX-32). But her neighboring district is held by Keith Self (TX-03), who is more vulnerable than Johnson if he loses Republicans. So is Lance Gooden (TX-05), whose district is on the other side of Johnson’s.
The vote-rich Houston metropolitan area has two somewhat threatened Democrats, Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07) and Sylvia Garcia (TX-29). But Fletcher’s district is contiguous with Wesley Hunt (TX-38) and Troy Nehls (TX-22), whose districts are both less safe than Fletcher’s. Those would be the primary places to find Republican votes. In El Paso, Veronica Escobar (TX-16) is the most endangered Democratic incumbent other than the two in the Rio Grande Valley; but her district has only one neighbor, Tony Gonzales, and shifting that seat to make it competitive would really harm Gonzales’s chances of holding onto his seat.
The city of San Antonio is cracked (meaning split up among multiple members) five ways; making those seats more vulnerable for Democrats may harm Gonzales and Chip Roy (TX-21). The Austin metropolitan area is cracked six ways; weakening Democrats there would affect Republicans like Roy, Michael McCaul (TX-10), Pete Sessions (TX-17), and John Carter (TX-31); McCaul and Carter can’t afford to lose too many more Republicans.
There’s a name for this style of redistricting: a “dummymander,” where maps are drawn to so much partisan advantage that it leaves incumbents of the majority party vulnerable in the event of a major swing.
Roy has specifically questioned the wisdom of redistricting using 2020 census data, the only data available to properly size districts in a mid-cycle scenario. “We have a whole lot of people [that have] come into the state since then,” Roy told The Texas Tribune.
DEMOCRATS DON’T HAVE MUCH RECOURSE HERE. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said he would try to redo his state’s maps if Texas went through with their gerrymander. Fighting fire with fire sounds good, but he’s constrained on several fronts. California has an independent redistricting commission that was passed by the voters as Prop 11 in 2008. There is no mechanism for mid-cycle redistricting in that ballot initiative. Theoretically, California could ask for one—but the same 14 independent commissioners serve throughout the ten-year period, and they would need nine votes to act on any request, meaning all five Democrats and four independents. (The other five are Republicans.)
Even if that somehow happened, in that scenario the independent commission would draw the map themselves, which could end up worse for Democrats than it looks currently, with 43 Democratic seats and nine Republican ones. This is far different from the Republican-dominated Texas legislature drawing their own maps.
On a Pod Save America appearance, Newsom suggested a special session with a special election that would have to take place this year, in time to draw the actual maps before the 2026 primary opens for filing, which starts December 11. Acknowledging that this would be a “short window,” Newsom then mused that the legislature could redistrict congressional seats themselves with a two-thirds vote. “Every Census, the independent redistricting commission does the new map, but it’s silent about what happens in between,” Newsom said. He admitted that this was a “novel legal question,” and indeed, the idea that the legislature could wrest away independent redistricting mid-cycle would be immediately challenged in court, such that the maps drawn may not be available for the midterms.
There aren’t that many other good redistricting opportunities for Democrats. They already have all Democratic seats in Massachusetts and all but one in Maryland. Illinois is a 14-3 split, leaving little room to do much else. In New York, Democrats have a 19-7 split and could stand to gain more of an advantage. But the state already redrew maps last year, lawmakers failed to budge them in a Democratic direction, and its independent redistricting commission cannot be altered in time to change the maps again.
Failing that, Democratic lawmakers in Texas could try to deny the legislature a quorum by fleeing the state. They tried this in 2003 (in a redistricting fight) and in 2021 (over a voting rights bill); both times only staved off votes for a limited period and ended unsuccessfully.
National Democrats encouraged Democrats in Texas on a conference call on Tuesday to consider a walkout again, though whether the plan has any more chance of success is unclear. The special session does only last 30 days, though another one could be called later if Democrats thwart it.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running against Cornyn for Senate, threatened “hunting down” any legislator who missed the special session. In addition, anyone missing the session can be fined $500 per day.
The best way to counter the Texas effort may be to let them go ahead with it, in the hopes that real opportunities to have the whole thing blow up in Republicans’ faces will emerge.