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Redrawn congressional maps proposed by Texas Republicans on Monday would bolster the GOP's waning control and support their two dozen or so U.S. House members, not to mention add new districts in Austin and Houston.
Texas saw major growth over the past decade, according to the 2020 Census, much of which was driven by 2 million new Hispanic residents. It was the only state awarded two additional congressional seats, which means the state now has 38 altogether.
While those demographic changes pose a threat to Republican control in Texas, the redistricting process has proven to be a stabilizing force for existing GOP seats and advantage rather than steal more seats from Democrats.
The districts revealed by GOP mapmakers are the rough drafts and are expected to changes before landing on Republican Governor Greg Abbott's desk for final approval.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below:
One exception is along the Texas-Mexico border, where—encouraged by former President Donald Trump's strong showing in 2020—Republicans could make it harder for Democrats to hang onto a longtime stronghold currently held by Representative Vicente Gonzalez.
Latino advocates and officeholders believed the numbers demanded at least one new Latino-majority congressional seat in Texas, around the Dallas area, but none was included in the Republicans' first pass.
Booming suburban districts in Texas, which include four of the 10 fastest-growing and rapidly diversifying cities in the U.S., would be fortified with more voters pulled from surrounding rural areas.
Republicans currently have 23 House seats in Texas, while Democrats have 13.
The maps are the product of Texas Republicans wielding a newly freer hand to reengineer political boundaries: For the first time in more than 50 years, Texas is starting the redistricting process without federal oversight. A Supreme Court ruling in 2013 removed mandatory federal approval of new maps for Texas and all or parts of 15 other states with a history of discrimination in voting.
Republicans in America's biggest red state want to expand their political advantage as their typically commanding victories in Texas have become thinner. Last year, Trump carried Ohio by a wider margin than Texas, and Republicans got a scare in 2018 when Democrats flipped a dozen statehouse seats and Beto O'Rourke nearly ousted Senator Ted Cruz.
But Republicans held their ground in Texas in 2020, emboldening them to mount an aggressive agenda of hot-button conservative policymaking, and gains along the predominately Hispanic southern border have spurred the GOP into trying to expand their reach.
In every decade since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, courts or the Department of Justice have ruled that Texas' redistricting plans violated federal laws—partly by scattering Democratic-leaning Latino voters among multiple districts dominated by non-Latino white residents who lean Republican.
