Immediately after President Donald Trump ordered Texas to create five new GOP-majority congressional districts in a nearly unprecedented mid-decade redistricting effort, Lone Star State Republicans leapt into action, setting off blue state Democrats who vowed to respond in kind. Today, Texas is expected to unveil its new congressional maps, handing the President exactly what he demanded.
Currently, Texas has 25 Republican-held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and thirteen seats that were won by Democrats.
According to Punchbowl News‘ Wednesday morning report, Governor Abbott’s new map would increase the number of (likely) Republican-held House seats from Texas to 30, and reduce the number of (likely) Democratic-held seats to just eight.
Five GOP seats alone, in theory, could hand Mike Johnson another term as Speaker of the House.
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“It’s huge news in Austin and on Capitol Hill,” Punchbowl News reported. “It may help the GOP keep control of the House in 2026 — or trigger redistricting fights in other state capitals as Democrats retaliate.”
There might be drawbacks for Republicans.
“Democrats have declared that Republicans are at grave risk of spreading their voters too thin and creating districts that could flip blue in a bad year for Republicans. This kind of redraw is known as a ‘dummymander.’”
But the five new likely GOP districts Texas has drawn all show Donald Trump having won those voters by double-digits, making it more difficult for Democrats to flip them.
Texas moving forward with their redistricting plan means that several blue states may also attempt to redraw their congressional maps: California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Minnesota, and Washington reportedly are all in various stages, from initial conversations to drafting legislation.
Last week, U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) warned, “if they’re gonna go nuclear in Texas, I’m gonna go nuclear in other places.”
Maryland House Democratic Majority Leader David Moon, who is drafting new redistricting legislation, told Politico, “it seems very clear that self defense is something we have to put as a priority.”
“If that’s where we are, and that’s where we’re forced to go, then I think that’s where Democratic states need to be prepared to go,” he added.
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House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has indicated he wants to reorganize the congressional maps in at least five states, to help Democrats pick up as many seats as possible.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is in support of redrawing California’s maps: “I don’t like redistricting in the middle of a decade, but if that’s the game that Republicans want to play, we have to make sure that they know we’re going to put everything on the table,” she told NewsNation, as The Sacramento Bee reported.
Texas is not the only red state expected to move forward with redrawing its maps.
Punchbowl News last week reported that while “Democrats are desperate to push back against President Donald Trump’s brazen attempt to shift the House map in the GOP’s favor…Republicans are trying to muscle through new maps in Texas, Ohio and Missouri, with more red states potentially on deck.”
Legal challenges aside, “some Democrats believe they could squeeze as many as six new seats out of California between a remapping and a good stiff anti–White House midterm breeze,” New York magazine’s Intelligencer reported.
Democrats have in their favor strong anti-Trump sentiment and the fact that the party in control of the White House usually loses seats during the midterms—a fact Trump is trying to negate by ordering the redistricting. But Democrats also have tied their own hands. In the name of good governance, many blue state have independent redistricting commissions, and they may need to go to court to reach their goals.