That sure was fast. Good thing all those hearings are over.
Texas GOP lawmakers released their first draft of the state’s new congressional map Wednesday, proposing revamped district lines that attempt to flip five Democratic seats in next year’s midterm elections.
The new map targets Democratic members of Congress in the Austin, Dallas and Houston metro areas and in South Texas. The draft, unveiled by Corpus Christi Republican Rep. Todd Hunter, will likely change before the final map is approved by both chambers and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Democrats have said they might try to thwart the process by fleeing the state.
This unusual mid-decade redistricting comes after a pressure campaign waged by President Donald Trump’s political team in the hopes of padding Republicans’ narrow majority in the U.S. House.
Currently, Republicans hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats. Trump carried 27 of those districts in 2024, including those won by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen.
Under the proposed new lines, 30 districts would have gone to Trump last year, each by at least 10 percentage points.
The districts represented by Cuellar and Gonzalez — both of which are overwhelmingly Hispanic and anchored in South Texas — would become slightly more favorable to Republicans. Trump received 53% and 52% in those districts, respectively, in 2024; under the new proposed lines, he would have gotten almost 55% in both districts.
Also targeted are Democratic Reps. Julie Johnson of Farmers Branch — whose Dallas-anchored district would be reshaped to favor Republicans — and Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, whose nearby district would remain solidly blue but drop all of Fort Worth — Veasey’s hometown and political base. That seat — now solely in Dallas County — contains parts of Johnson’s, Veasey’s and Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s current district, raising the prospect of a primary between Veasey and Johnson.
The map’s newly proposed GOP seat in Central Texas also triggers the prospect of Austin Democratic Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett facing each other in a primary for the area’s lone remaining blue district. To avoid that scenario, one of the two would have to step aside or run an uphill race for a new Central Texas district, based in San Antonio, that Trump would have won by 10 points.
In the Houston area, the proposed map would remake four Democratic districts. The biggest upheaval would be in the 9th Congressional District, a majority-minority seat represented by Rep. Al Green that currently covers the southern part of Harris County and its direct southern neighbors. It would shift to the eastern parts of Houston, where no current member of Congress lives. Instead of being a seat that Vice President Kamala Harris won by 44 percent under the current boundary, Trump would have won it by 15 percent.
[…]
To pick up new seats, Republicans have proposed to pack more Democratic voters into districts in the state’s blue urban centers, giving Democrats even bigger margins in districts they already control, such as those represented by Crockett, Rep. Joaquin Castro in San Antonio and Rep. Sylvia Garcia in Houston. And they’re looking to disperse Republican voters from safely red districts into several districts currently represented by Democrats, such as the ones held by Johnson and Casar.
No Republican incumbents’ districts were made significantly more competitive.
The map-drawers managed to move more Republican voters into Democratic districts around Dallas and Houston without imperiling the nearby seats of GOP Reps. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving and Troy Nehls, R-Fort Bend. Both faced competitive races in 2020 before their districts were redrawn in 2021 to become solidly Republican, and neither was made to sacrifice those gains in the state House’s initial map.
:quality(70)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/0dd59a5a1a3bf9a1cc750e6d4146ea00/REP%20HUNTER%20STWD%20CONGRESS%20PROPOSAL%2089%201%20HB4-INTRO.jpg)
There’s a lot to unpack here and we still have limited data. The Chron has a nice embedded map that shows what the 2024 Trump margins were in each of the proposed and current districts. What data we do have about the new map is here. El Paso Matters, the Fort Worth Report, and the Current have some local angles; there’s plenty of other coverage about this but I’ll leave that for now, there’s going to be tons more to come. For now, a couple of high level notes:
– I have to say, this map is not nearly as ugly and convoluted as I thought it would be. Compared to the first map, which was submitted by some random dude, it’s practically clean. The ugliness is under the covers, not on the surface.
– Obviously, the Republicans either had the map itself or full knowledge of it before the three now-conducted hearings. It’s ludicrous to think otherwise. They have a long history of hiding the ball in these matters, partly to deflect heat and partly to limit the record for future litigation.
– There will be at least one more hearing, this Friday at the Capitol. Expect that to be an all-day affair.
– On the matter of what they knew and when they knew it, this sums it up:
Texas House Redistricting Committee, June 24th:
@ChrisGTurner: “(Have you communicated with) a gentleman named Adam Kinkaid?”
Chair Vasut: “I honestly have no idea who that is”
#txlege
— Cara Santucci (@CaraSantucciTX) 3:20 PM – 29 July 2025
Yeah, now pull the other one.
– So far everything is being cast in terms of 2024 election data. That is the most recent election, but it was a Presidential election while 2026 will be a midterm – Trump’s second midterm, in fact – and it’s fair to say that the political climate is different now. What I want to see is the data from 2018, not so much because I think 2026 will be exactly like 2018 but because I want to see what a possible range for the data might be.
– Here’s a side matter of interest:
A debate over Texas’s 2021 congressional redistricting map intensified Tuesday as Senate Democrats pushed for a public vote to subpoena Trump DOJ official Harmeet Dhillon, who earlier this year raised federal concerns about potential Voting Rights Act violations in the map approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature. Dhillon, now Assistant Attorney General, wrote to Gov. Greg Abbott in July warning of “serious concerns” about racial discrimination in the maps.
According to the Quorum Report, Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, urged Senate Redistricting Committee Chair Phil King, R-Weatherford, to hold a livestreamed vote on the subpoena, arguing that the committee has the power to issue one even if enforcement is uncertain.
Chair King said he does not agree with the DOJ’s assessment of the map, aligning with Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Republican testimony from a recent federal trial in El Paso. “I don’t think the map that is in place for Congress today is discriminatory,” King said, “I believe the map I voted for…was a legal map. I think that testimony that I’ve seen in trial supports that. I certainly believe the testimony of Sen. Huffman supports that. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to take up redistricting if we choose to do so.”
While open to a public vote, King said he is waiting on a legal opinion from the Texas Legislative Council on whether the committee has the authority to subpoena a federal official from out of state. Alvarado stressed the urgency, citing a July 7 letter from DOJ with an August 7 deadline, and called for the process to be as transparent and timely as possible.
The disconnect between what the Trump Justice Department asserted about the 2021 map – drawn entirely by Republicans – and what Republicans have testified in federal court under oath about that map really is glaring. Greg Abbott used that pretext as a reason for the re-redistricting process, while Ken Paxton is out there saying the Justice Department got it all wrong. The list of Things That Would Be A Big News Story If They Happened Under Literally Any Other President Ever is a billion items long now, and maybe the best we can do is document them. But this is still weird and should be investigated.
– We’ll see what national Dems do in response to this. Califonia has already made its intentions clear.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has told aides he will move forward with a plan to redraw his state’s congressional lines to install more Democrats if Texas Republicans pass their own updated map, according to a person with direct knowledge of Newsom’s thinking.
The Texas proposal, backed by President Donald Trump, looks to flip five seats held by Democrats, according to a draft unveiled Wednesday in the state House. The California proposal would aim to do the same, with lawmakers set to advance a map targeting five Republican incumbents, according to two people who have spoken to Newsom or his office about it. They were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private conversations.
Map makers are looking at options that would target Republican Reps. Ken Calvert, Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley, Doug LaMalfa and David Valadao, according to a person associated with Newsom’s redistricting efforts.
Once approved by the Democratic-controlled California Legislature, where Newsom has been successfully lobbying lawmakers for weeks, the maps would likely be put to California voters in a statewide ballot measure. The referendum plan is subject to change and has yet to receive final approval from Newsom, who has also publicly suggested the Legislature could change the maps without voter approval.
California has an independent redistricting commission that was enshrined in the state’s constitution. But those close to the process believe maps passed by way of a ballot measure or the Legislature’s approval would withstand legal scrutiny because the independent commission is only tasked with drawing new lines once every decade — leaving the process for mid-decade redistricting open, supporters argue.
I don’t know what the law is there, but that’s not a problem to worry about now. I’m happy for California and other blue states to do their own re-redistricting as appropriate. The ideal would be for there to be substantive reform on this at a national level, but in the meantime there can’t be a different set of rules for each party.
– As for the quorum busting matter, at this point I have no official position on it. If there’s one thing we should have learned from the previous quorum breaks, they’re a big sugar high that is quickly followed by a lot of groping around for what to do next. The main problem is that there’s no clear end game. Waiting them out takes too long and is far too much to ask of people who have lives to live. I wish there were a better answer but the truth as ever is that we need to win more elections. And the next time we have full control of the federal government, we really really need to pass an updated and stronger Voting Rights Act while also clipping SCOTUS’ ability to weaken it. I don’t know what else to say. Lone Star Left, the Texas Signal, Reform Austin, the Lone Star Project, and Mother Jones have more.
UPDATE: Lone Star Left is also wondering why all of the quorum-breaking pressure is on House Dems while no one is talking about Senate Dems despite the fact that the $500-day-day fines only apply to House members, and I have to say that’s an excellent point.
J, what is a Stud?
Something is quietly happening in American politics: a noticeable number of traditional liberal men are drifting away from the Democratic Party. These aren’t far-right converts or angry trolls online. They’re everyday guys—teachers, tech workers, dads, artists—who once voted blue without hesitation. And now, many of them are either sitting elections out or reluctantly voting Republican. What changed?
At the heart of this shift is a growing discomfort with how masculinity is talked about on the left. For a while now, terms like “toxic masculinity” have dominated progressive conversations. The original idea behind it—critiquing aggressive or harmful male behavior—was fair and necessary. But somewhere along the line, the term morphed into a broader cultural critique that often paints masculinity itself as dangerous or outdated.
Many men who’ve identified with liberal values for years now feel like they’re being told that being male is an obstacle. Traits like confidence, competitiveness, risk-taking, or wanting to provide for a family—things that used to be seen as strengths—are now viewed by some progressive voices as relics of the patriarchy.
Furthermore, liberal men often feel unfairly generalized by prominent liberal women. Blanket statements like “Men are the problem,” ignore that many men face real financial, emotional, and social struggles. It’s left a lot of men asking: “If my identity and values are unwelcome here, why am I still voting for this party?”
Manny, interesting position, but appearing under the wrong Kuff post.
The post where it should appear happened some days ago, I am sure that J will read this post.
Under the map, it appears that we would keep one white female, two blacks, and one Hispanic, who could be a Republican, in District 9.
Main is correct about 29 becoming Black.
One irony is that the proposed map is in many aspects more compact than the current district map.
35 goes from a sliver of San Antonio tied to a sliver of Austin, to a fairly compact east San Antonio and whole counties east and north.
the Dallas Metroplex districts are generally more compact. The crazy 33 which used to go from west Fort Worth to central Dallas becomes a fully Dallas district.
In our Houston area 18, and 29 are quite a bit more compact than the prior versions of those districts. The new 9 is compact, but the old 9 was also fairly compact in the south part of greater Houston.
Someone just spilled a load of bollocks. And, there appears to be a troll gnawing on my leg …
And Friday, another delightful charade in Austin, will they have dogs and ponies? Be assured the Democrats will be questioning the fantastic assertion that the Republican Chair of the State Redistricting Committee did not know the President of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. They may make Chair Vasut repeat this claim until he catches on fire.
Texas now has a total of six Latino US Representatives, four Democrats and two Republicans. Given the way the districts are drawn, we could end up with six or more Latino US Representatives. As a Latino, I don’t find that to be a loss. As a person who finds Donald Trump and MAGAs disgusting, I do.