A Texas House panel on Saturday advanced a proposed congressional map designed to add five new Republican-leaning districts ahead of next year’s high-stakes midterm elections after President Trump urged the state to move forward with the plan last month.
The state legislature’s redistricting committee approved the draft map along party lines in a 12–6 vote, following hours of testimony Friday from Texas Democratic U.S. House members and members of the public. With the proposal now out of committee, it could be brought to the House floor for a vote as early as Tuesday.
Governor Greg Abbott (R) announced last month that redistricting would be a key focus of the legislature’s special session. The new map is expected to eliminate three Democrat-leaning districts entirely and shift two more firmly into Republican territory, primarily by dispersing Democratic voting blocs in urban centers like Houston, San Antonio, and the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.
The redistricting effort follows a warning from the Trump administration, which raised “serious concerns” about the constitutionality of four existing districts in the state.
“As stated below, Congressional Districts TX-09, TX-18, TX-29 and TX-33 currently constitute unconstitutional ‘coalition districts’ and we urge the State of Texas to rectify these race-based considerations from these specific districts,” the DOJ’s civil rights division wrote in a letter addressed to Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The letter referenced Allen v. Milligan, a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court case centered on redistricting in Alabama and allegations of racial gerrymandering under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In a 5–3 decision, the Court ruled that Alabama had “likely violated” Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by not giving minority voters an “equal opportunity” to elect candidates of their choice.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court’s three liberal justices in the majority.
In its letter to Texas, the DOJ pointed to Justice Kavanaugh’s opinion, which noted that “even if Congress in 1982 could constitutionally authorize race-based redistricting under § 2 for some period of time, the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”
Texas stands to gain five more seats for Republicans with the new plan. Democrats have cried foul, but recent studies found that Democrat-run states have their skewed their congressional districts heavily against Republican voters for years.
