Rep. Veronica Escobar
President Donald Trump’s request that Texas Republicans seek to create five new congressional seats for the GOP in an upcoming special legislation could involve redrawing boundaries in El Paso, a website focused on Congress says.
Diluting the traditional Democratic stronghold of Texas’ 16th Congressional District, currently represented by Veronica Escobar, is one of the options being considered by Republicans ahead of the special session set to begin July 21, according to Punchbowl News.
Details of a specific redistricting plan in Far West Texas hasn’t been made public, but almost certainly would involve placing much more of El Paso into the 23rd Congressional District, which stretches across a wide swath from El Paso to western San Antonio and is currently represented by Republican Tony Gonzales. It also would have to involve placing more rural voters outside El Paso into Escobar’s district, which is currently entirely within the boundaries of El Paso.
“Texas Republicans are about to engage in mid-year redistricting at the behest of Donald Trump. Make no mistake about it, Donald Trump knows his ‘big beautiful bill,’ which cuts health care and nutrition programs in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy, has made Republicans all over the country vulnerable to the ire of their voters,” Escobar said in a statement to El Paso Matters.
“So to compensate, Trump wants to stack the deck and further gerrymander Texas House seats, adding five more seats for Republicans. And unfortunately, Texas Republicans are so compliant that they are willing to do anything to please Trump. But this is bigger than Texas elections and is a sign of everything Trump will do in order to stay in power and rig the system in his favor. It is not hyperbole to say that our democracy in America is on the line right now, and Texas is central to protecting it.”
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Including El Paso in any Republican redistricting plan could create numerous challenges, including complying with current court guidelines for drawing political lines, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
“Because of population locations and geographic boundaries, it would be pretty hard to cut up Congressional District 16. The more ways that mapmakers carve up the state, the more legal challenges they’ll face. CD 16 is a good example of a district that, if changed, could end up as an exhibit of problematic line drawing,” Rottinghaus told El Paso Matters.
“El Paso’s geographic isolation makes it a challenge to be part of a ranging district that includes large stretches of rural areas and still keeps it mostly compact. It’s a logistical and legal problem for mapmakers,” he said.
I thought CD16 could be a target as soon as the news of this bizarre campaign came out. Based on 2024 results, it’s within plausible parameters, though going by any other year it would be much more of a stretch. But Trump isn’t operating on 2024 levels of support, and, well, that’s not my problem. Greg Abbott may have put his focus on the Houston area, but it would take a lot more than that to get to five possibly winnable new seats for the Republicans.
The main challenge for them is apparent in the current map. You can’t carve up CD16 without heavily involving CD23, which up until 2024 was the epitome of a swing district. Tony Gonzales won by a bigger margin in 2024 than Veronica Escobar did, but he did it against a placeholder opponent, and only after barely surviving the Republican primary; he won a runoff against a MAGA true believer by 1.2 percentage points. Weakening CD23 with Gonzales as your candidate is one thing. Weakening it with a non-incumbent wingnut who spent millions of wingnut billionaire money to take out Tony Gonzales is another thing. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Maybe they can figure out a way to stretch the deep red CD11 or CD19 into the picture. They could take the addition of Democrats more easily than CD23 can, but adding them into the mix means disrupting more districts and thus adding to the chaos. It also may require drawing maps so non-Euclidean that they violate other principles, like compactness. I know, I know, don’t expect much from SCOTUS if and when this ever gets to it. We still haven’t seen a map and are mostly reacting to Trump’s assertions that the Lege could easily find five more districts for him. Until we see something on paper, all we can do is speculate wildly. The San Antonio Report, which focuses on CD28, Lone Star Left, which does some quorum-busting math, and Mother Jones, which lays all of this at John Roberts’ feet, have more.