{"id":105201,"date":"2025-07-30T16:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T16:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/105201\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T16:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T16:06:11","slug":"texas-republicans-target-five-seats-in-new-congressional-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/105201\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Republicans target five seats in new congressional map"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sign up for The Brief<\/a>, The Texas Tribune\u2019s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.\n<\/p>\n

Texas GOP lawmakers released their first draft of the state\u2019s new congressional map Wednesday, proposing revamped district lines that attempt to flip five Democratic seats in next year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The new map targets Democratic members of Congress in the Austin, Dallas and Houston metro areas and in South Texas. The draft, unveiled by Corpus Christi Republican Rep. Todd Hunter, will likely change before the final map is approved by both chambers and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Democrats have said they might try to thwart the process by fleeing the state<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This unusual mid-decade redistricting comes after a pressure campaign waged by President Donald Trump\u2019s political team in the hopes of padding Republicans\u2019 narrow majority in the U.S. House. <\/p>\n

Currently, Republicans hold 25 of Texas\u2019 38 House seats. Trump carried 27 of those districts in 2024, including those won by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen. <\/p>\n

Under the proposed new lines, 30 districts would have gone to Trump last year, each by at least 10 percentage points. <\/p>\n

The districts represented by Cuellar and Gonzalez \u2014 both of which are overwhelmingly Hispanic and anchored in South Texas \u2014 would become slightly more favorable to Republicans. Trump received 53% and 52% in those districts, respectively, in 2024; under the new proposed lines, he would have gotten almost 55% in both districts. <\/p>\n

\"Inline<\/p>\n

Also targeted are Democratic Reps. Julie Johnson of Farmers Branch \u2014 whose Dallas-anchored district would be reshaped to favor Republicans \u2014 and Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, whose nearby district would remain solidly blue but drop all of Fort Worth \u2014 Veasey\u2019s hometown and political base. That seat \u2014 now solely in Dallas County \u2014 contains parts of Johnson\u2019s, Veasey\u2019s and Rep. Jasmine Crockett\u2019s current district, raising the prospect of a primary between Veasey and Johnson.<\/p>\n

The map\u2019s newly proposed GOP seat in Central Texas also triggers the prospect of Austin Democratic Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett facing each other in a primary for the area\u2019s lone remaining blue district. To avoid that scenario, one of the two would have to step aside or run an uphill race for a new Central Texas district, based in San Antonio, that Trump would have won by 10 points. <\/p>\n

In the Houston area, the proposed map would remake four Democratic districts. The biggest upheaval would be in the 9th Congressional District, a majority-minority seat represented by Rep. Al Green that currently covers the southern part of Harris County and its direct southern neighbors. It would shift to the eastern parts of Houston, where no current member of Congress lives. Instead of being a seat that Vice President Kamala Harris won by 44 percent under the current boundary, Trump would have won it by 15 percent.<\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 Republican-dominated Legislature last drew these maps in 2021, with an eye toward protecting incumbents by making their seats as safe as possible. Trump won every Republican-held Texas district in 2024 by double-digit margins, as did every GOP incumbent who received a Democratic opponent. Edinburg Rep. Monica De La Cruz\u2019s 14-point victory was the closest of any winning Republican. <\/p>\n

To pick up new seats, Republicans have proposed to pack more Democratic voters into districts in the state\u2019s blue urban centers, giving Democrats even bigger margins in districts they already control, such as those represented by Crockett, Rep. Joaquin Castro in San Antonio and Rep. Sylvia Garcia in Houston. And they\u2019re looking to disperse Republican voters from safely red districts into several districts currently represented by Democrats, such as the ones held by Johnson and Casar. <\/p>\n

No Republican incumbents\u2019 districts were made significantly more competitive. <\/p>\n

The map-drawers managed to move more Republican voters into Democratic districts around Dallas and Houston without imperiling the nearby seats of GOP Reps. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving and Troy Nehls, R-Fort Bend. Both faced competitive races in 2020 before their districts were redrawn in 2021 to become solidly Republican, and neither was made to sacrifice those gains in the state House\u2019s initial map.<\/p>\n

The changes would create two more districts in which white residents make up a majority of eligible voters, or citizens who are old enough to vote, hiking the number of such districts from 22 under the current map to 24. Hispanic residents \u2014 the state\u2019s largest demographic group, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates<\/a> \u2014 currently form the majority of eligible voters in seven districts, a total that would rise to eight under the new plan. <\/p>\n

Four of the five districts that Republicans have drawn with the intention of flipping are now majority-Hispanic \u2014 though the Hispanic populations in the new seats in Houston and Central Texas are almost exactly 50%.<\/p>\n

The proposed map would also create two majority Black districts, where previously there were none. Among them is the Houston-centered 18th Congressional District, which has been represented by a decades-long run of renowned Black Democratic members, including Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland, Sheila Jackson Lee and, most recently, Sylvester Turner, whose death in March<\/a> left the seat vacant. The map proposes to pack even more Democratic voters into the solidly blue seat: Harris won the district with 69% in 2024 and would have carried it with 76% under the new boundaries.<\/p>\n

Crockett\u2019s Dallas seat would also become majority Black.<\/p>\n

The 18th District was among Texas\u2019 four majority-minority congressional seats flagged by the U.S. Department of Justice as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, a charge Texas Republicans have interchangeably denied in court and cited as the basis for pursuing mid-decade redistricting.<\/p>\n

Any new map will inevitably be challenged in court. Courts have found that at least one of Texas\u2019 maps violated the Voting Rights Act every decade since it went into effect in the mid-60s. The current map is still being challenged in federal court in El Paso, with no verdict yet reached.<\/p>\n

The lineup for The Texas Tribune Festival continues to grow! Be there when all-star leaders, innovators and newsmakers take the stage in downtown Austin, Nov. 13\u201315. The newest additions include comedian, actor and writer John Mulaney<\/strong>; Dallas mayor Eric Johnson<\/strong>; U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar<\/strong>, D-Minnesota; New York Media Editor-at-Large Kara Swisher<\/strong>; and U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar<\/strong>, D-El Paso. Get your tickets today!<\/a><\/p>\n

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":105202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[7373,327,50,80,22204,5528,5526,5523,5525,5524,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-105201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-2026-elections","10":"tag-congress","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-redistricting","14":"tag-state-government","15":"tag-texas-government","16":"tag-texas-news","17":"tag-texas-policy","18":"tag-texas-politics","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114943045722561998","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}