Texas Republicans started a national redistricting arms race. They may be losing
Earlier this year, after the Texas Legislature passed a new congressional map engineered to net five extra GOP seats, Republicans in Texas and across the country were triumphant.
The first shot in a brewing redistricting arms race had been fired at the behest of President Donald Trump, who was also looking to Republican legislatures in Indiana and Missouri to take up similar redraws. And while Democratic governors were sympathetic about calls to fight back, most were handicapped by independent redistricting commissions or maps with little ground left for Democrats.
The one exception was California and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who publicly made himself the chief foil to Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Newsom threw his weight behind a ballot measure to temporarily suspend the state’s independent redistricting commission and replace its congressional map with a new one designed to pick up five seats for Democrats, negating Texas’ impact.
The plan was untested and would seemingly require a significant financial effort. Even if successful, the redistricting math still seemed to favor Republicans, with more red states able to easily pursue a mid-decade redraw than blue states.
Now late in the fourth quarter, Democrats have seemingly reversed their halftime deficit in the redistricting arms race of 2025. A panel of federal judges in El Paso blocked Texas’ new map in a 2-1 ruling Tuesday, ordering the state to hold its 2026 elections under the existing map that, while still gerrymandered to favor Republicans, nonetheless leaves a far more friendly playing field for Democrats. Meanwhile, California’s redistricting proposition — which only came about because of Texas’ decision to pursue mid-decade redistricting — won a resounding victory at the ballot box Nov. 4.
In the ongoing rivalry between California and Texas, the Golden State has, for the moment, scored five points to the Lone Star State’s zero.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Newsom wrote on X. “This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”
While California’s Prop 50 initially included trigger language tying its new gerrymander to a redistricted map being adopted in Texas or another state, that clause was struck from the final version presented to voters, meaning the Texas ruling has no bearing on California’s map moving forward.
“Governor Newsom sent Governor Abbott a letter in [August], that was public, that told him, we don’t have to do this,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, a Democrat from California’s Inland Empire and the chair of the House Democratic Caucus. “Neither of us has to, but Texas decided to.”
To be sure, Texas Republicans’ map could be restored by the Supreme Court, which many Republicans think is a likely outcome. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly appealed the district court’s ruling to the Supreme Court, the state’s only option for relief.
“I’m not concerned about it,” said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Waco. “It’ll go to the Supreme Court, and we’ll be fine.”
The California map also faces a legal threat of its own, after the Department of Justice joined a Republican lawsuit arguing that lawmakers in the Golden State used race as a predominant factor in the drawing of at least one district, in violation of the Constitution.
But regardless, what started in Texas ended up empowering California Democrats and boosting Newsom’s profile. The California governor, a potential candidate for president in 2028, now leads the Democratic field in polling averages, having risen significantly in August and September.
Some Republicans in the Texas delegation were initially skeptical of the redistricting push. Tuesday’s ruling may have validated those fears.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who worked closely with Newsom to secure funding for the Prop 50 campaign in California, said she expects some Republicans may actually be relieved.
“It’s going to the Supreme Court, but I think some of those Democrats and Republicans in Texas are probably happy,” she said.
The redistricting wars
To make matters worse for the GOP, their structural redistricting advantage — especially without Texas, where the push kicked off — is shrinking and could backfire entirely without help from the Supreme Court.
Indiana Republicans have thus far refused a pressure campaign from the White House to take up redistricting, and Kansas Republicans declined to call a special session to draw out the state’s one Democrat. Missouri Republicans passed a new map taking one Democrat-held seat in Kansas City off the board, but that appears to have been canceled out by a court ruling in Utah ordering the creation of a heavily Democratic seat in Salt Lake City.
Ohio Republicans, who conducted court-ordered redistricting, struck a deal with Democrats on a map that makes a Republican flip more likely — though not guaranteed — in two Democratic-held seats. And North Carolina passed a map that favors Republicans in an additional seat. But some of those gains could be canceled out by Virginia, whose Legislature is preparing a ballot measure that could yield two to three pickups for Democrats.
Florida Republicans are planning to join the fray as well, though their effort could be complicated by a voter-passed fair districts amendment.
Taken together, Republicans have redrawn nine seats to favor themselves so far for 2026, and Democrats have new advantages in six. But without Texas, Republicans’ total crumbles to four, and Democrats would have the advantage.
“Right now, the Democrats are climbing over the ramparts on this redistricting fight, and establishment Republicans in Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana are all of a sudden getting cold feet,” Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist, said on his podcast Tuesday.
If Tuesday’s map ruling is upheld, Texas Republicans, in pursuing redistricting, may have signed the political death certificates of five congressional colleagues in California without elevating any of their own.
“It’s a little ironic,” said Rep. Ami Bera, a Sacramento Democrat. “We weren’t even thinking about redistricting in California until the president had Texas do it. And we’ll still see what happens, in terms of whether the Supreme Court hears us and so forth. But it would be pretty ironic that we redistricted, and Texas ends up not being able to do it.”
Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican whose seat was redrawn to favor Democrats, has been critical of the redistricting arms race for months and introduced a bill to ban mid-decade redistricting earlier this year. On Tuesday, he took Republican leadership to task for blessing Texas’ effort and the “utterly foolish” redistricting wars.
“It was a total failure of leadership to let this happen in a way that is going to be bad for our own members, bad for the House, bad for representation across the country,” he told Punchbowl News.
Vocal Texas Republicans, meanwhile, have publicly blasted the court ruling and projected confidence that the Supreme Court will overturn the ruling.
Former state lawmaker and Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi, like most Texas Republicans, said he thinks the ruling will be reversed, but he acknowledged state GOP leaders erred in embracing a DOJ letter that ordered redistricting based on the existence of racial coalition districts.
“The opinion acknowledges Texas’ right to redistricting for partisan reasons,” Rinaldi wrote on X. “But it says the State is unlikely to prevail because of the initial messaging from the DOJ and Abbott trying to state a constitutional legal basis. I think this ultimately gets overturned because it’s clear this was partisan. But that whole framing at the outset was an unforced error.”
Rep. Roger Williams, R-Willow Park, said he expected there to be legal back-and-forth over the map. But he said it’s too early to know how the ultimate redistricting war will shake out.
“Is this really going to keep California from doing what they’re doing?” Williams said. “We don’t know. So if Texas can’t do it, can California do it? Can all these other states do it? It’s going to be interesting — but I’m ready to go either way.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.