Texas Republicans will again try to convene the state Legislature Monday for a vote on redrawing congressional maps in their party’s favor, an effort that already sparked a national political brawl and prompted Democratic lawmakers to leave the state to deny Republicans the quorum they need.
The Republican majority is seeking to redraw five U.S. House districts at President Donald Trump’s urging as he tries to avoid a replay of the 2018 midterms. Those elections installed a new Democratic majority in the U.S. House that stymied the president’s agenda and twice impeached him.
Now, Democratic-controlled states including California, New York and Illinois are threatening to retaliate against Texas and Trump by proposing their own redistricting, putting the nation on the brink of a tit-for-tat overhaul of congressional boundaries that are typically redrawn only once a decade.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he’ll call lawmakers back to the Statehouse again and again until enough Democrats show up to reach the 100-member threshold required to vote on the bill. Democratic leaders in other states are planning out their retaliatory redistricting plans if Abbott succeeds.
“Texas, knock it off. We’ll knock it off. Let’s get back to governing,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on “Fox News Sunday.”
As for the Democratic lawmakers who bolted from Texas — some of whom have been appearing alongside the likes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker at news conferences — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the state’s Supreme Court to remove some of them from office or give them a 48-hour warning to return.
“If they show back up in the state of Texas, they will be arrested and taken to the Capitol,” said Abbott on “Fox News Sunday.”
When pressed about blue states’ threats to retaliate — such as Newsom’s proposal to effectiveely cut five GOP-held seats in California — Abbott argued that many had already squeezed the juice out of their gerrymandering and would be hard-pressed to push it further.
Democratic leaders say Abbott’s plans are nothing more than a power grab.
“They know that they’re going to lose in 2026 the Congress, and so they’re trying to steal seats,” Pritzker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Past attempts by Texas Democrats to halt votes by leaving the state were typically unsuccessful, and several of the blue states face more hurdles to redistricting than Texas does.
California, for example, has an independent commission that runs redistricting after each decade’s census. Changes require approval from both voters and state lawmakers, who have said they plan to call a special election in November to set the process in motion.