A Texas House panel on Saturday advanced a draft congressional map designed to create five new Republican-held districts, sparking sharp protests from Democrats who argue the plan will dilute the voting power of people of color.
Texas GOP Unveils Redistricting Map
Texas Republicans have explicitly stated their goal is to gain more seats in Congress.
- A Texas House panel approved a new congressional map along party lines Saturday.
- The proposed map aims to add five new Republican districts.
- Democrats contend the map suppresses the votes of people of color.
- Republican lawmakers openly stated the map is based on political performance.
The chamber’s redistricting committee voted 12-6 to approve the map. This came after extensive testimony Friday from Texas Democrats and the public, who largely opposed the proposal. The full state House could consider the map as early as next week.
Earlier in the proceedings, Republican lawmakers shed their previous justifications, openly acknowledging the map’s intent. Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi, who is carrying the bill, stated, “We have five new districts, and these five new districts are based on political performance.” This marks a clear shift from earlier legal arguments, such as those offered by the U.S. Department of Justice.
This redistricting effort was reportedly spurred by pressure from President Donald Trump’s political operatives. They allegedly urged state leaders to redraw the map to help Republicans secure their narrow House majority ahead of a crucial midterm election.
Mapping the Changes
The proposed map, released Wednesday by the House redistricting committee, carves up existing districts in the Houston, Austin, and Dallas areas. The goal is to create five additional districts where Donald Trump secured at least 10 percentage points more of the vote in 2024 than his opponent. In 2024, Trump won 56.2% of the votes cast in Texas. Currently, Republicans hold 66% of Texas’ 38 House seats. The new map is projected to increase this to 79%.
“Political performance does not guarantee electoral success — that’s up to the candidates,” Hunter said. “But it does allow Republican candidates the opportunity to compete in these districts.”
Governor Greg Abbott had initially cited a letter from the Justice Department claiming four Texas districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered on racial lines when he added redistricting to the special session agenda. However, on Friday, Republicans were clear: their aim was not to address racial gerrymandering, which some testified does not exist in the current map. Their objective, they stated, was to maximize the GOP’s chances of controlling up to 30 congressional districts.
“These districts were drawn primarily using political performance,” Hunter reiterated, pointing to Republican gains across the state since the last redistricting in 2021, particularly among Latino voters.
Voting Rights Act Concerns
While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that states can draw electoral maps based on partisan grounds, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits diminishing the voting power of people of color. During Friday’s hearing, Democrats argued that the proposed map unconstitutionally concentrates voters of color into a few districts while spreading them thinly across others, thereby reducing their ability to elect their preferred candidates.
North Texas Voices
“Every citizen should have equal access to choose their representation, instead of crowding Black people to the point that all the Black people in the state only have two representatives, and all the Latinos in the state are crowded up to the extent that their voting power is diminished,” stated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas, addressing state lawmakers.
Despite people of color forming the majority of Texas’s population and driving its recent growth, the new map creates 24 majority-white districts – two more than the current map, which is itself facing a lawsuit for potentially violating the Voting Rights Act.
Republicans countered claims of voter suppression, noting the map creates one new majority Hispanic district and two new majority Black districts. However, Democrats argued these districts are nearly split 50/50, which they believe is insufficient to guarantee the election of preferred candidates.
U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, whose district would be partially dissolved by the new lines, recalled that his seat was drawn by a federal court “to ensure that communities of color, Black and brown Texans, could finally have a voice in Congress.”
“Now, that voice is again under threat,” Veasey added. “This is a map that was drawn behind closed doors — as we’ve heard here today — to dismantle representation and weaken our power in turn.”
Legal challenges to the proposed map could take months or even years to resolve. A lawsuit concerning Texas’s current maps, passed in 2021, finally went to trial last month, nearly four years after they took effect.
In the interim, Republicans in the state Legislature hold sufficient votes to pass the map as drafted.
Democrats, lacking power in the statehouse, have limited recourse to block the map’s passage. A drastic measure involves fleeing the state to deny Republicans a quorum for legislative action, a costly and politically uncertain tactic that state House Democrats were reportedly still considering before the full chamber vote.
During Friday’s hearing, the sole opportunity for public comment on the House’s map proposal, Democrats implored Republicans to halt or slow the redistricting process.
“This is not a Texas map. It is a Trump map,” declared U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat. “It was imposed by President Trump, who has a stranglehold on Congress, and the only question here is whether he also has a stranglehold on this Texas Legislature.”
