AUSTIN, Texas (AP) \u2014 The Texas House on Wednesday approved redrawn congressional maps that would give Republicans a bigger edge in 2026, muscling through a partisan gerrymander that launched weeks of protests by Democrats and a widening national battle over redistricting.<\/p>\n
The approval came at the urging of President Donald Trump, who pushed for the extraordinary mid-decade revision of congressional maps to give his party a better chance at holding onto the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. The maps, which would give Republicans five more winnable seats, need to be approved by the GOP-controlled state Senate and signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott before they become official.<\/p>\n
But the Texas House vote had presented the best chance for Democrats to derail the redraw.<\/p>\n
Democratic legislators delayed the vote by two weeks by fleeing Texas earlier this month in protest, and they were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring upon their return to ensure they attended Wednesday\u2019s session.<\/p>\n
The approval of the Texas maps on an 88-52 party-line vote is likely to prompt California\u2019s Democratic-controlled state Legislature this week to approve of a new House map creating five new Democratic-leaning districts. But the California map would require voter approval in November.<\/p>\n
Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new Texas map in court and complained that Republicans made the political power move before passing legislation responding to deadly floods that swept the state last month.<\/p>\n
Texas maps openly made to help GOPTexas Republicans openly said they were acting in their party\u2019s interest. State Rep. Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation formally creating the new map, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed politicians to redraw districts for nakedly partisan purposes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe underlying goal of this plan is straight forward: improve Republican political performance,\u201d Hunter, a Republican, said on the floor. After nearly eight hours of debate, Hunter took the floor again to sum up the entire dispute as nothing more than a partisan fight. \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference, to the whole world listening? Republicans like it, and Democrats do not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democrats said the disagreement was about more than partisanship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a democracy, people choose their representatives,\u201d State Rep. Chris Turner said. \u201cThis bill flips that on its head and lets politicians in Washington, D.C., choose their voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
State Rep. John H. Bucy blamed the president. \u201cThis is Donald Trump\u2019s map,\u201d Bucy said. \u201cIt clearly and deliberately manufactures five more Republican seats in Congress because Trump himself knows that the voters are rejecting his agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
Redistricting becomes tool nationwide in battle for US House<\/strong> \u201cThis is a new Democratic Party, this is a new day, this is new energy out there all across this country,\u201d California\u2019s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. \u201cAnd we\u2019re going to fight fire with fire.\u201d<\/p>\n A new California map would need to be approved by voters in a special election in November because that state normally operates with a nonpartisan commission drawing the map to avoid the very sort of political brawl that is playing out. Newsom himself backed the 2008 ballot measure to create that process, as did former President Barack Obama. But in a sign of Democrats\u2019 stiffening resolve, Obama Tuesday night backed Newsom\u2019s bid to redraw the California map, saying it was a necessary step to stave off the GOP\u2019s Texas move.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that approach is a smart, measured approach,\u201d Obama said during a fundraiser for the Democratic Party\u2019s main redistricting arm.<\/p>\n The incumbent president\u2019s party usually loses seats in the midterm election, and the GOP currently controls the House of Representatives by a mere three votes. Trump is going beyond Texas in his push to remake the map. He\u2019s pushed Republican leaders in conservative states like Indiana and Missouri to also try to create new Republican seats. Ohio Republicans were already revising their map before Texas moved. Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland\u2019s and New York\u2019s maps as well.<\/p>\n However, more Democratic-run states have commission systems like California’s or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do, leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. New York, for example, can\u2019t draw new maps until 2028, and even then, only with voter approval.<\/p>\n Texas Democrats decry the new maps<\/strong> Democrats noted that, in every decade since the 1970s, courts have found that Texas\u2019 legislature did violate the Voting Rights Act in redistricting, and that civil rights groups had an active lawsuit making similar allegations against the 2021 map that Republicans drew up.<\/p>\n Republicans contend the new map creates more new majority-minority seats than the previous one. Democrats and some civil rights groups have countered that the GOP does that through mainly a numbers game that leads to halving the number of the state\u2019s House seats that will be represented by a Black representative.<\/p>\n State Rep. Ron Reynolds noted the country just marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act\u2019s passage and warned GOP members about how they\u2019d be remembered if they voted for what he called \u201cthis racial gerrymander.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust like the people who were on the wrong side of history in 1965, history will be looking at the people who made the decisions in the body this day,\u201d Reynolds, a Democrat, said.<\/p>\n Republicans hit back at criticismRepublicans spent far less time talking on Wednesday, content to let their numbers do the talking in the lopsided vote. As the day dragged on, a handful hit back against Democratic complaints.<\/p>\n \u201cYou call my voters racist, you call my party racist and yet we\u2019re expected to follow the rules,\u201d said State Rep. Katrina Pierson, a former Trump spokesperson. \u201cThere are Black and Hispanic and Asian Republicans in this chamber who were elected just like you.\u201d<\/p>\n House Republicans\u2019 frustration at the Democrats\u2019 flight and ability to delay the vote was palpable. The GOP used a parliamentary maneuver to take a second and final vote on the map so it wouldn’t have to reconvene for one more vote after Senate approval.<\/p>\n House Speaker Dustin Burrows announced as debate started that doors to the chamber were locked and any member leaving was required to have a permission slip. The doors were only unlocked after final passage more than eight hours later. One Democrat who refused the 24-hour police monitoring, State Rep. Nicole Collier, had been confined to the House floor since Monday night. Republicans issued civil arrest warrants to bring the Democrats back after they left the state Aug. 3, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott asked the state Supreme Court to oust several Democrats from office. The lawmakers also face a fine of $500 for every day they were absent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas (AP) \u2014 The Texas House on Wednesday approved redrawn congressional maps that would give Republicans a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":162865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,8988,7371,7372,80,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-162864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-election","10":"tag-fort-worth","11":"tag-fortworth","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115064824350170731","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162864","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=162864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Republican power play has already triggered a national tit-for-tat battle as Democratic state lawmakers prepared to gather in California on Thursday to revise that state\u2019s map to create five new Democratic seats.<\/p>\n
In Texas, there was little that outnumbered Democrats could do other than fume and threaten a lawsuit to block the map. Because the Supreme Court has blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing it violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority communities together so they can select representatives of their choice.<\/p>\n
Some Democratic state lawmakers joined Collier Tuesday night for what Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez dubbed \u201ca sleepover for democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n