Texas Republicans’ Attempt to Mangle the Congressional Map is Getting Tense

By Dave Levitan | August 4, 2025 | 8:56am

Photo via Department of Homeland Security/Wikimedia Commons

Congress Texas

Texas Republicans’ Attempt to Mangle the Congressional Map is Getting Tense

More than 50 Democratic state representatives in Texas fled the state over the weekend, in an attempt to block the Republican move to carve up districts to give the party five more seats in Congress. By leaving town they deny the two-thirds quorum required to vote on the new maps; they’ll stay away, barring some new development, for at least the two weeks remaining in a special session of the state legislature.

In response to this “truancy,” governor Greg Abbott has threatened to try and “remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House,” according to a letter he posted and sent them on Sunday. His justification for that comes straight from the other embarrassingly awful Texas leader, Attorney General Ken Paxton, who in 2021 issued an opinion saying this sort of move can be considered “abandonment of office.”

Most Popular

The maps in question would mangle the districts in and around Houston, Austin, and Dallas, generally Democratic strongholds, in such a way to basically guarantee five more Republicans heading to Washington. Thanks to a 2019 Supreme Court ruling that basically gave the green light to partisan gerrymandering, the Texas GOP isn’t even pretending this is anything else: “I’m not beating around the bush,” one Texas rep said, according to the Texas Tribune. “We have five new districts, and these five new districts are based on political performance.”

It would effectively remove the voting power of many Black and Hispanic voters. In a state where Donald Trump won 56 percent of the vote in 2024, the new maps would jump the GOP delegation from 66 percent of their 38 House seats to 79 percent. Abbott’s threat to remove the lawmakers, one Democrat told the Washington Post, would be “in keeping with a governor who is trying to silence the will of the voters.”

It’s unclear what the endgame for the fleeing Democrats is, since Abbott can just keep calling more special sessions when the current one ends. The absent members face a $500 daily fine; they make $7,200 per year as state reps. Democratically led states, including California with its 52 districts, have threatened to counter the Texas ratfuckery with their own gerrymanders. That’s an arms race that could get very ugly.

This all started, of course, because much like the president asking a Georgia official to “find” votes to help him overturn an election, he asked Texas to find some extra House reps. Nothing the big guy likes more than cheating, at golf or elections, and it is not at all clear if Democrats attempts to foil this go at it will succeed.