GOP Bid to Tilt Election Map Backfires After Texas Court Ruling

Texas Republicans had a plan to give President Donald Trump and his party an advantage in next year’s midterm elections. Right now, it’s backfiring.

A panel of federal judges shot down an attempt to redraw Texas’s congressional map and give the Republican Party five additional US House seats, granting a preliminary injunction that bars the state from using the new map in 2026. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the state would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Texas state lawmakers approved the unusual mid-decade redistricting at Trump’s urging this summer, after the president called for the party to protect its narrow majority in Congress. But the move touched off a nationwide redistricting arms race in which Democrats, at least for the moment, appear to have gained the upper hand.

California Governor Gavin Newsom succeeded this month in getting voters in his state to approve a redistricting plan that offsets the Texas map by creating five new Democratic-leaning districts. Lawmakers in Virginia are considering drawing new districts to boost Democrats, and a new court-ordered map in Utah is likely to give Democrats an additional House seat. Officials in Maryland and Illinois are also considering drawing new maps that could benefit Democrats.

Tuesday’s decision orders the 2026 elections in Texas to be carried out under the state’s existing maps. With a Dec. 8 state deadline for candidates to file campaign paperwork approaching, Texas may be running out of time to reverse this ruling and tilt the playing field in the GOP’s favor.

“The legal avenues are rapidly shrinking because candidates in the states have to file by a certain date to run in the new districts,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

Read More: Here’s How Texas Is Redrawing Its Election Map to Benefit Trump

Race was at the heart of the Texas case. The plaintiffs — a coalition of minority and voter-rights groups — said the new map unlawfully dismantled four minority opportunity districts, which is banned under the Voting Rights Act. Texas said the map is strictly for political gain, which is allowed, and that it was drawn without regard to race.

“The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences – and for no other reason,” Abbott said in a statement, calling the ruling “clearly erroneous.”

Democrats in the state rejoiced at the decision. “A federal court just stopped one of the most brazen attempts to steal our democracy that Texas has ever seen,” Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu said in a statement.

Even before the Texas ruling, there were signs that Trump’s effort to use redistricting to lock in the GOP’s House majority was faltering.

Indiana Republicans said last week that they didn’t have enough support to redraw that state’s maps despite pressure from Trump and Republican Governor Mike Braun. And it’s unclear whether Kansas Republicans have enough votes to call a special session and draw a new map that would net them one additional seat.

Read More: DOJ Seeks to Block California’s New Congressional Maps

California’s new map, meanwhile, is facing a legal challenge from the Trump administration and state Republicans. The Justice Department argued in a court filing that California’s map illegally bolsters the voting power of Hispanics in the state. US Attorney General Pam Bondi called the new map an attempt at a “brazen power grab” by Newsom.

Outside of Texas, Republicans are expected to pick up one more seat in Missouri, one in North Carolina and potentially two more in Ohio in 2026 as a result of redistricting. Republicans could also gain seats in Florida, where lawmakers are expected to begin exploring the drawing of a new congressional map next month.

Democrats could also lose House seats in the South if the Supreme Court makes it more difficult to challenge racial gerrymandering, in a Voting Rights Act case the court is currently considering.

Read More: How Redistricting Keeps Changing the US Political Map

--With assistance from Elena Mejia.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Anna Edgerton in Washington at aedgerton@bloomberg.net;
Madlin Mekelburg in Austin at mmekelburg@bloomberg.net;
Julie Fine in Dallas at jfine44@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net

Tim Annett

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