Texas’ congressional districts are already heavily gerrymandered. In fact, under the current map, Republicans in Texas tend to get roughly 55% of the vote but end up with roughly two-thirds of the state’s U.S. House delegation.
Donald Trump has decided that’s not good enough, and in a radical gambit, the president has directed the GOP-led state legislature to launch a mid-decade redistricting scheme. Under the White House’s vision, Republicans should hold 30 of the state’s 38 seats, instead of the current 25, which would give the party nearly 80% control over Texas’ delegation.
Partisan legislators are doing precisely what they were instructed to do. NBC News reported:
Texas Republicans released a proposed new congressional map Wednesday that would give the GOP a path to pick up five seats in next year’s midterm elections. The proposal, which follows President Donald Trump’s public pressing for a new map in the state, would shift district lines in ways that would target current Democratic members of Congress in districts in and around Austin, Dallas and Houston, as well as two already endangered Democrats representing South Texas districts that Trump carried last year.
As The Texas Tribune reported, this draft proposal is likely to change as the process continues to advance, but for now, it appears Republicans in the Lone Star State are on track to rig their district map — or more to the point, manipulate it more than it’s already been rigged — which in turn would make it even more difficult for Democrats to regain a U.S. House majority, even if it’s what voters want.
A couple of hours before Texas Republicans unveiled their draft map, JD Vance took the opportunity to weigh in on the debate — by, oddly enough, complaining about gerrymandering.
“The gerrymander in California is outrageous,” the vice president wrote via social media. “Of their 52 congressional districts, 9 of them are Republican. That means 17 percent of their delegation is Republican when Republicans regularly win 40 percent of the vote in that state. How can this possibly be allowed?”
So, a few things.
First, California’s map really isn’t that bad, as gerrymanders go, but in light of the Texas Republicans’ scheme, it might soon become a lot more slanted.








