Texas state Sen. Royce West has served in the Lone Star State’s Legislature since 1992. In his three decades of public service, he’s been through a couple of rounds of congressional redistricting.
That inherently political process can often be bruising, and the debate is often impassioned. But he said he’s never seen an effort to reshape his home state’s congressional map like he’s seeing now.
For one, it’s happening well before the once-a-decade release of U.S. Census data that’s critical to fairly apportioning representation for all Texans on Capitol Hill, he said.
For another, the effort, led by Republicans who hold a supermajority across state government, is coming at the behest of President Donald Trump and just months before the 2026 midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives, he continued.
And he and his Lone State colleagues have just one word to describe it: “RiggedDistricting.”
And since he was in Boston this week to call attention to a partisan fight that’s made headlines nationwide — and to attend a conclave of state legislators that drew thousands of his colleagues to the city’s Seaport district — West decided to put his argument in terms that the locals could appreciate.
“You know, there’s some guy by the name of Paul Revere, and I remember in history, he was traveling around saying, ‘The British are coming,“ West said during a news conference on the steps of the State House on Wednesday.
“Well, we’re traveling now, saying ‘RiggedDistricting’ is coming,’” he continued.
In public appearances across Boston this week, the Texas Democrats warned that the GOP-led effort to effectively erase five currently majority-minority seats is a prelude to a nationwide fight over voting rights and representation for Black and brown Americans nationwide.
West and other Texas lawmakers were joined at Wednesday’s news conference by Democratic legislators from three dozen states, several of whom sounded a similar warning.
Missouri state Rep. Ashley Aune said her state is next on the GOP’s redistricting wish list, with Republicans in the Show Me State looking to take a 6-2 majority on Capitol Hill and expand it to 7-1.
“I serve with a super-majority of Republicans in Missouri. And for the last several years under [former President Joe] Biden, we heard [from Republicans] ‘We can’t listen to the federal government. We can’t trust anything coming from the federal government,” she said.
“We’re ‘The Show-Me State’. All right, well, I guess Donald Trump showed us some maps, and we’re just gonna jump. What I keep reminding my Republican colleagues across the aisle is that Donald Trump is a president. He is not a dictator; he is not a king. But he is an authoritarian,” Aune said.
Trump injected himself into the fiery debate on Tuesday, announcing that he believes Lone Star State Republicans are “entitled to five more seats” on Capitol Hill.
If the effort in Texas is successful, Democrats would face a steeper climb as they seek to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections.
Republicans currently hold a 219-212 edge in the lower chamber, with four vacancies. Right now, Democrats only would have to flip a handful of seats to retake control.
The Texas contingent met with Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and Secretary of State William L. Galvin, both Democrats, on Tuesday. There, they sounded a similar warning.
Galvin, the state’s chief election officer, wryly noted that gerrymandering takes its name from former Vice President Elbridge Gerry, a Marblehead native.
Wednesday’s news conference fell on the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which resulted in more than 1 million Black Americans registering to vote in the four years after it was passed, according to the Brennan Center.
Massachusetts State Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, D-10th Hampden, implored the crowd to “listen to what we can do to continue to support our state legislators in Texas.”
Like other lawmakers, Gonzalez positioned the fight in Texas as a broader, nationwide battle.
“It is a united cause that we must continue to fight,” he said. “It is right. Not only right for Texas, but right for California; not only right for Texas, but right for Massachusetts; not only right for blue states, but right for red states and the United States of America.”
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