The Texas State House on Wednesday passed a new congressional map, blasting through a Democratic roadblock in a bid to bolster the GOP’s chances of holding onto the U.S. House next year.
The map passed through the Republican-controlled House on a 88 to 52 vote, setting up a new look for the upcoming 2026 midterm elections with the addition of five Republican-leaning congressional districts in the Lone Star State.
Still, the map must make its way through the Texas State Senate before it lands on Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.
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Abbott pushed for the creation of a new map to adhere to President Donald Trump’s desire to not see a repeat of the 2018 election cycle, where Democrats handily regained the majority in the House and acted as a foil to the president’s legislative desires toward the end of his first term.
While Republicans control a supermajority in deep-red Texas and already passed the map through the state Senate, Democrats still needed to create a quorum in the House in order to actually move the process along.
Dozens of Texas Democrats fled the state to stall the process, creating a national media frenzy and generating support from Democratic donors, including groups linked to George Soros and Beto O’Rourke, to help pay for their fines, travel and lodging.
It generated pushes to have them arrested by Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as a request from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tx., to have the FBI track them down and the DOJ to launch an investigation into the political action committees funding their escape.
Democratic leaders announced on Monday that they would return for the second special session following California’s plan to redraw its maps to soften the blow from the Lone Star State, ending the blockade and allowing Republicans to charge ahead.
Texas House Democrats accused the GOP of crafting a map that was illegal and racially discriminatory, and they tried and failed on the House floor to add amendments to the bill that would have halted the process. Despite Democrats’ best efforts, Texas House Republicans shot down a dozen amendments to the bill.
“Members, it breaks my heart to see how this illegal and rigged, mid-decade redistricting scheme is dividing our state and our country,” Rep. Chris Turner, a Democrat, said. “This is Texas, it’s not Washington D.C. The impulses of outside politicians and their billionaire backers shouldn’t dictate what we do in this chamber, in this House.”
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Rep. Todd Hunter, a Republican who wrote the bill for the new map, countered that four of the five new districts were “majority-minority Hispanic,” and noted that each of the new districts now trended Republican. Still, he made no qualms as to why Republicans were pursuing changes to the congressional maps.
“The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward, [to] improve Republican political performance,” he said.
But the Democrats’ blockade ended on Monday, when Abbott called for a second special session, after their demands for California to also begin a redistricting cycle were met in an effort to nullify the map Texas Republicans were creating.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Democrats unveiled their new map last week, which, if passed, would create five new Democratic-leaning congressional districts that would counteract the Texas legislature’s new map.
