The outcome of the political battle over Texas’ redistricting effort is already having major implications across the country.
Other Republican-dominated states are considering following Texas’ lead as Democratic governors weigh their options to retaliate with their own mid-decade redistricting efforts. The Texas legislature, meanwhile, is at a standstill after House Democrats fled the state in a bid to block the Republican effort to redraw congressional districts in the GOP’s favor.
President Donald Trump has pushed the redistricting effort, and Gov. Greg Abbott called the 30-day special session in which the GOP unveiled proposed maps that could shift as many as five US House seats into the Republican column. Abbott is now threatening to remove the Democratic lawmakers who left the state in a bid to block the House from voting on those new maps.
Here’s a look at what’s happening in Texas, and why it matters:
Why redraw districts now?
Congressional district lines are required to be redrawn once a decade, after the census. But mid-decade maneuvers like the one in Texas are unusual.
Texas Republicans want to pad the US House GOP majority ahead of next November’s midterm elections by increasing the number of seats Democrats need to flip — currently three — to claim House control.
Democrats face a much stiffer challenge in winning back the Senate. But if they win the House majority, it would give the party a foothold for Trump’s final two years in office. Democrats could slow or halt the president’s legislative agenda and use House committees to investigate his administration’s actions, much as they did in the last two years of Trump’s first term, from early 2019 to early 2021.
New maps vs. existing maps
The proposed maps unveiled last week by Texas’ majority-Republican legislature would aggressively redraw the state’s congressional districts to make five seats much more likely to favor GOP candidates.
The new Texas map features 30 districts that Trump would have won in 2024 if the map was in place, up from 27 under the current district lines. In total, there are five more seats that Trump won by more than 10 percentage points, according to data from the Texas Legislative Council.
The proposed map eliminates the seat of Rep. Greg Casar, who would likely be forced into a primary with another liberal Democrat, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, in the Austin area.
Republicans also propose merging the Houston-area seat of Rep. Al Green with a vacant seat held by the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died in office earlier this year. Green’s district was altered more than any other sitting member in the plan.
The map would also make two south Texas seats held by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez more Republican-leaning. But multiple Democrats view the seats as still in reach for the two centrist members who typically performed ahead of statewide or national Democrats.
Democrats push back and search for payback
Democrats are in the minority in the Texas House, but they hold enough seats that they can deprive the chamber of the number of legislators necessary to do business under House rules. That’s why many fled the state on Sunday, with most flying to Illinois and others traveling to New York, outside the reach of Texas law enforcement.
The departed lawmakers could face $500-a-day fines that can’t be paid with campaign funds — though the House Democrats and their supporters are already raising money to help cover those fines. Former US Rep. Beto O’Rourke told CNN his political action committee, Powered By People, which raised more than $700,000 for state House Democrats during a quorum break in 2021, will “raise whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to help these Texas Democrats with their lodging, with being able to feed themselves, supporting them with these $500-a-day fines.”
“We have their backs all the way,” he said.
Meanwhile, Democratic governors in deep-blue states are plotting retribution. The governors of California, Illinois, Maryland New Jersey and New York have suggested they will explore redrawing their own congressional district maps to add more Democratic-leaning seats, or left the door open to doing so.
“The gloves are off, and I say, bring it on,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday.
Could other Republican-led states follow Abbott?
Once a critical swing state, increasingly red Ohio is required to redraw its congressional districts this fall because the 2022 map was struck down as unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court. The makeup of the Buckeye State’s high court has changed since that ruling, and the new court is seen as much more likely to green-light a map that favors Republicans, who hold 10 of the state’s 15 congressional seats.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently floated the idea of a mid-cycle redistricting in his state, too. “I think the state malapportioned,” he told reporters in July, adding it would be “appropriate to do a redistricting here in the mid-decade.”
Punchbowl News reported the White House is pushing Missouri to redraw its districts to target one of just two Democratic-held seats, that of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, in a state where the GOP holds the other six House seats. The White House has also urged Indiana to redraw districts in which Democrats hold two of nine seats. Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan’s northwest Indiana district would likely be the target if the Hoosier State were to do so.
The redistricting battles cannot carry on without deadlines. In many states, including Texas, candidates must file for next year’s primary ballots before the end of this year.
Abbott’s next move
Abbott on Monday indicated he could seek more extreme measures than daily $500 fines to try to force Democrats’ hands or circumvent their quorum break.
He threatened to remove Democrats from the state House if they don’t return by 4 p.m. ET, when the legislature is scheduled to convene in Austin.
Abbott told Fox News that the Democratic lawmakers had “absconded” from their responsibilities. “I believe they have forfeited their seats in the state legislature because they’re not doing the job they were elected to do,” he said.
Have quorum breaks worked before?
Four years ago, Texas House Democrats used similar tactics — bolting to Washington, DC, for six weeks as they blocked Abbott and Republicans’ push to enact restrictive new voting laws during a special session.
Abbott called a second special session, and ultimately, House Democrats caved about two weeks into it.
After that quorum break, the Texas House imposed new rules that allow for $500-a-day fines and prohibit members from paying those fines from their campaign accounts.
It was part of a long history of quorum breaks in Austin that dates to the 1800s and includes at least two high-profile modern incidents. In 2003, Democrats fled to Oklahoma to block then-Gov. Rick Perry’s mid-decade redistricting effort — another quorum break that ultimately failed. In 1979, 12 Democratic state senators succeeded when they held out for four days to block an attempt to move the Texas presidential primary to boost former Gov. John Connally’s candidacy.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s David Wright, Kaanita Iyer, Sarah Ferris and Ethan Cohen contributed to this report.
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