July 30, 2025 Story by: Publisher
Texas state Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a new congressional map that would give the GOP a clear path to flip five U.S. House seats currently held by Democrats—solidifying their grip on power ahead of the pivotal 2026 midterms.
The proposed map was filed by state Rep. Todd Hunter, who represents a coastal area in southeastern Texas and is a member of the state House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting created last week as part of the special legislative session called by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
But this time, with Republicans controlling both chambers of the Legislature and the Governor’s Mansion, they’re seizing the moment to expand their congressional majority from 25 to potentially 30 of the state’s 38 seats.
The GOP’s new map targets Democratic strongholds in Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and South Texas—reconfiguring districts to slice through liberal population centers and fold them into Republican-leaning suburbs and rural areas.
The new map targets Democratic-held districts in heavily urban metro areas—including Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and South Texas.
Major changes affect:
- Districts of Reps. Julie Johnson and Marc Veasey in the Dallas/Fort Worth region, reshaped to weaken Democratic bases. Rep. Marc Veasey, who represents a majority-Black district in North Texas, sees his district splintered into pieces that dilute Black voting power—sparking immediate backlash from civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers.
- The 9th and 18th districts in Houston, consolidating Rep. Al Green’s district with a vacancy and effectively shifting toward GOP voters. Rep. Al Green’s Ninth Congressional District in Houston would now be combined with the vacant 18th Congressional District to form a 61 percent Hispanic district in eastern Harris County, one that Trump would have won by 15 points.
- Districts held by Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez in South Texas—both heavily Hispanic and now projected to lean Republican under the new configuration.
- A projected new Austin–San Antonio swing seat, pitting Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett potentially against one another, leaving one Democratic district in the region
Under the proposed boundaries, Trump would have carried 30 districts in Texas in 2024 by margins of 10 percentage points or more—a key indicator of GOP electoral strength under these lines.
Four of the five newly drawn GOP seats would be majority-Hispanic, including parts of South Texas and Houston—evidence of shifting reputational strategies targeting Hispanic voters.
Republicans assert the map creates two majority-Black districts (in Dallas and Houston) and adds one additional majority-Hispanic district—though critics argue this is a pretext for voter dilution.
Among the new majority-Black districts is the 18th Congressional District, centered in Houston, which has been represented by a decades-long run of renowned Black Democratic members, including Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland, Sheila Jackson Lee and, most recently, Sylvester Turner, whose death in March left the seat vacant. The map proposes to pack even more Democratic voters into the solidly blue seat: Harris won the district with 69% in 2024 and would have carried it with 76% under the new boundaries.
The 18th District was among Texas’ four majority-minority congressional seats flagged by the U.S. Department of Justice as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, a charge Texas Republicans have interchangeably denied in court and cited as the basis for pursuing mid-decade redistricting.
Any new map will inevitably be challenged in court. Courts have found that at least one of Texas’ maps violated the Voting Rights Act every decade since it went into effect in the mid-60s. The current map is still being challenged in federal court in El Paso, with no verdict yet reached.
The 30-day special session called by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is scheduled to end on Aug. 19, which gives state lawmakers a few weeks to finish the process. The new map will get a committee hearing on Friday.
Source: Politico / Texas Tribune
