It's Done: Texas' New Congressional Maps Are Inevitable

Matt Vespa | August 20, 2025 6:30 PM

It’s over. Texas has a new congressional map for the 2026 midterms, though it took over two weeks after state Democrats unnecessarily fled to prevent a quorum. The new map gives Republicans five winnable seats, all majority Hispanic districts. Democrats could’ve said, ‘ok, let’s fight for these voters who are gettable,’ but they decided to make a hash out of it.

First, the messaging was abysmal, coupled with the fact that no one cared. Even the legacy press said these Texas Democrats ran away. They were off message from the get-go. Only after getting guarantees from California Democrats that they would gerrymander their state again did these exiled derelict lawmakers return to the Texas House to face the inevitable. The new map sailed through the Texas Senate—this was the final stop. And now it’s done (via Texas Tribune):

🚨#BREAKING: The Texas House of Representatives has passed a Trump backed GOP redistricting map following a seven-hour debate.
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) August 20, 2025

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas House gives initial approval to new maps that would create up to 5 more winnable congressional seats for the GOP.
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) August 20, 2025

The Republican-led Texas House on Wednesday pushed through a new congressional map crafted to hand five additional U.S. House seats to the GOP over fierce opposition from Democrats, who cast the plan as a racially discriminatory attempt by President Donald Trump to stack the deck in next year’s midterm election.
The House tentatively adopted the map, 88 to 52, on party lines, and was expected to grant its final approval later on Wednesday. A Senate panel advanced a similar map Sunday, and the full chamber was expected to send the new lines to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk later this week.
Republican lawmakers are pursuing the unusual mid-decade redistricting plan, which has set off a national map-drawing war, amid pressure from Trump to protect the GOP’s slim majority in Congress. The effort comes just four years after the Legislature last overhauled the state’s congressional map following the 2020 Census.
Democrats in the Texas House staged a two-week walkout over the plan in a bid to stall the map’s passage and rally a national response among blue states, where lawmakers could launch their own retaliatory redistricting efforts. The roughly two dozen Texas Democrats who returned to Austin on Monday said they were starting the next phase of their fight: putting the screws on their Republican colleagues and establishing a record that could be used in a legal challenge to the map.