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What’s Happening in Texas?
With the 2026 midterm elections taking place in a little over a year, all federal House seats will be on the ballots. As it stands, Republicans have a slim majority in the House of Representatives, with 219 representatives out of 435. However, midterms could jeopardize this majority, with growing unpopularity for President Donald Trump and having previously lost the Republican majority in Congress during the 2018 midterms. President Trump seemingly has noticed these factors, as according to AP News, he ordered Gov. Greg Abbott (R) of Texas to redistrict his state before the 2030 Census to increase the possibility of maintaining a majority, which will help Republican policies get passed.
Redistricting in the middle of the decade is an odd decision. The redrawing of maps is based on what is found in the census distributed at the end of the decade, which shows states with growing or declining populations, determining whether they gain or lose representatives in Congress. In the new map, five seats were created, which the Republicans could pick up in the midterms. This was done through gerrymandering, or the redrawing of district lines to benefit a political party, and through cracking and packing tactics so districts can still be drawn to be equal in population, as required by Census.gov.
With packing, the majority of a party’s voters are placed in one district, preferably one they already control, as seen with Democrats in Dallas, Austin and Houston, leaving less Democrat voters in outside districts, according to the Texas Tribune. With cracking, the remainder of the party’s voters that haven’t been packed are put in districts where the other party has a majority of voters, giving that party a higher chance of winning congressional seats. This is seen in areas surrounding Houston and Dallas, where Republican voters were moved to these originally Democrat-controlled areas. Under this new map, 30 out of Texas’ 38 congressional districts would have voted Republican in the 2024 Presidential Election.
When the map passed in the Texas House of Representatives, President Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!! Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself. Texas never lets us down.” Gov. Greg Abbott signed off on the map on Aug. 29, after the map passed in the state Senate, as seen in a video on X. In this post, he states that this map “ensures fairer representation in Congress” and that “Texas will be more RED in Congress.”
California’s Response & Other State Action
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is leading countermeasures against Texas’ decision, stating in a YouTube interview with historian Heather Cox Richardson, “Well, we’re fighting fire with fire: the equivalent of five seats to neuter and neutralize what’s happening in Texas on a temporary basis.” On Aug. 21, Gov. Newsom signed a Democrat-led congressional redistricting plan into law, which shifts five out of nine California Republican seats in the House to favor Democrats. The 1st, 3rd, 22nd, 41st and 48th districts will be redrawn to include predominantly Democrat areas like Sacramento and Fresno County or split apart to redistribute voters into Democrat areas like San Diego. However, due to Article XXI in California’s constitution, the map must win voter approval. On Nov. 4, a special election will be held where citizens can review the maps and vote for a constitutional amendment to allow independent redistricting before the Census, according to Newsom.
This isn’t solely happening in Texas and California, though. For example, according to the Palm Beach Post, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has also expressed interest in redistricting, specifically the 20th district, a seat which is currently being held by a Democrat. Out of Florida’s 28 representatives, 20 are Republicans, but, according to Fox 35 Orlando, an additional seat can prove helpful to secure federal funding and increased influence in the electoral college. On his Facebook page, State Senator Clarence Lam (D) of Maryland stated that he proposed a bill that would redistrict the state to favor Democrats, but this could only gain one seat in the 1st District if the bill goes through. This seat is the only congressional district out of Maryland’s eight districts to be held by a Republican. According to Maryland Matters, Sen. Lam said this bill was intended to send a message to Republicans: if they continued redistricting efforts, Democrats would fight back.
What Could it Mean for Pennsylvania?
Dr. John Kennedy, a political science professor at West Chester University, provided insight on where Pennsylvania stands in this situation. He used his experience as an expert witness in the 2018 League of Women’s Voters of Pennsylvania v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania case, which ruled that the 2011 Pennsylvania congressional map was gerrymandered in favor of Republicans and violated Article I, Section 5 in the state constitution. When asked if Pennsylvania could be among the states to redistrict in party favor, Dr. Kennedy said, “To manage this [redistricting] you have to have control of the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature. So, right now the Governor is a Democrat, the state house is … Democrats [are] hanging on by one vote, but they control that state house, but the Republicans have a majority in the Senate. So, right now, there’s no way either party is going to support losing seats.”
He elaborated on one party potentially holding the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature and if they could then go on with redistricting efforts, “They could not, because in 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the case of League of Women Voters v. Pennsylvania, the court decided for the first time in U.S. history that political gerrymandering was a violation of the state’s constitution.” For now, according to Dr. Kennedy, “Pennsylvania, […] is immune from this kind of political chicaner…because neither party has a trifecta, and even if it did, the current Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which is essentially the same court that we had in 2018, struck down that gerrymandered map, would be highly unlikely to allow it now. So, I think we’re safe, at least in the short term.”
Jack Snock is a fourth-year Political Science major with a Journalism minor. AS993182@wcupa.edu.