Downtown Lincoln on Mar, 25. 2025. (Juan Salinas II/ Nebraska examiner)
LINCOLN — Nebraska could join the national mid-decade redistricting fight that Texas and President Donald Trump started.
Retiring Nebraska Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon confirmed to the Examiner that national and state conversations are happening about Cornhusker State legislators potentially redrawing the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District — though he emphasized that, to him, it was “nothing serious.” Yet.
Much depends on how national Democrats react to Texas Republicans’ efforts to consider a new map designed to give the GOP up to five additional seats in the U.S. House in 2026, a mid-term election when the party out of federal power, the Democrats, typically gains seats and perhaps control of Congress.
Texas House Democrats fled Texas to block or delay adoption of the GOP majority’s proposed congressional maps. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to forcibly remove some Democratic lawmakers from office if they don’t return and provide the quorum needed to vote.
The Lone Star political standoff spilled over into Nebraska on Tuesday evening, when former Texas U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke visited Omaha to motivate Nebraska Democrats to more aggressively fight the excesses of the Trump administration and its fellow Republicans or risk losing the country to what he has described as increasing authoritarianism.
Mid-decade redistricting is highly unusual. Most redistricting is done at the start of each decade, after new Census counts. Redistricting processes vary from state to state. Some, like Iowa, have independent commissions tasked with drawing the maps, which state lawmakers weigh in on, while others, like Nebraska, let lawmakers run the show.
The effort from Texas Republicans has already caused a wave of other states — led by Democrats and Republicans — to consider earlier redistricting. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat leading a Democratic-led state, has said, “we are at war” as she explores her own ways to redraw maps in response to Texas.
Democratic-led California is looking to redistrict as well if Texas does. Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said redrawing is “on the table.” Republican-led Florida and Missouri are also considering redrawing congressional maps.
Nebraska also has been mentioned as a state that could redistrict, as first reported by D.C. insider Punchbowl News, partly to make it harder for Democrats to win the now open-seat 2nd District U.S. House race, which political experts see as a possible pickup for Democrats in 2026.
“I think a nationwide wildfire is absolutely upon us,” said Dan Vicuna, Common Cause senior policy director for voting and fair representation, referring to redistricting efforts from Texas and California.
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While the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee calls on blue states to draw new house maps and GOP-leaning groups do the same, Common Cause, a national organization with state chapters, is urging blue states to back away from a redistricting arms race. The group advocates for fairer redistricting.
“This is ultimately about fair representation for communities getting to have a say, Vicuna said. “That’s what we’re really talking about here, not just the food fight between the parties.”
In 2020, the Nebraska Common Cause chapter tried collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would have created an Iowa-style independent commission to draw congressional maps for the state, but the effort was stopped because of difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The GOP chair and vice chair of the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, State Sen. Rita Sanders of Bellevue and Sen. Bob Andersen, who represents western Sarpy County, said they had not heard talks about redistricting.
State Sen. Loren Lippincott of Central City, who proposed legislation to shift Nebraska to awarding its Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote statewide instead of splitting some by congressional district, also said he hadn’t heard about a redistricting effort. But he called the idea “interesting.”
Nebraska Republican Party Chair Mary Jane Truemper said that, while not being involved in any talks, the party would welcome mid-decade redistricting.
“I did not think the process was fair when we did our last census, because I felt like by including people who were noncitizens in that census, [the census] skewed the total populations for those congressional seats, and it’s skewed it in favor, obviously, [for] the urban districts,” Truemper told the Examiner.
During his first term, Trump pushed for adding a question about citizenship for the 2020 census, but the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the effort in 2019.
After the most recent census, when the GOP-led majority in the officially nonpartisan Nebraska Legislature redrew the state’s congressional map, it did so in a way that shored up the 2nd District by swapping some Democratic-voting residents in suburban Sarpy County with more reliably Republican-leaning residents of rural Saunders County. It helped maintain the swing district’s slight Republican lean.
The Nebraska Constitution requires redistricting legislation to come after the census, but it doesn’t specify whether lawmakers can revisit the maps before the next census. It says, “other established lines may be followed at the discretion of the Legislature.”
Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said any attempt to redistrict mid-decade could cause “major backlash,” as it could be seen as an “overreach of responsibility” and authority by lawmakers.
“Nebraska is small,” Kleeb said. “That would be very difficult for them to do. A lawsuit would happen if they tried to do that.”
During the last redrawing of the maps in 2020, a GOP-led statehouse proposal to split Douglas County failed to overcome a Democratic-led filibuster. Lawmakers reached a compromise with the current lines because Republicans lacked the votes to get around them and faced threats of a lawsuit.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen had no comment this week on the likelihood of early redistricting. But Pillen has thus far been willing to act at Trump’s request, and he could be inclined to do so as Charles Herbster, a major Trump donor, has been considering running against Pillen in the 2026 GOP gubernatorial primary.
“I’m sure there are those who would love to revisit the lines,” said State Sen. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, a Democrat.
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