Fight the Redistricting Power Grab (UPDATED 8/15)

Texas state residents: visit our Texas special session page for targeted state-level calls

Updates

August 15, 2025: The first special session in Texas has ended, but Governor Abbott has immediately called a second special session. Continue calling your legislators to keep momentum and pressure high.

August 14, 2025: Texas Governor Abbott has threatened to call a second special session if the state legislature does not pass new district maps by the end of the current special session. In response, California Governor Newsom is preparing efforts to redraw maps in California to “offset the rigging of maps in red states.”

Prompted by the Trump administration’s call for more Republicans in the House of Representatives, the Texas legislature is beginning a redistricting process. Texas Republicans are proposing a new Congressional district map. Their proposal redraws districts that are currently majority racial and ethnic minorities in order to gain five new House seats for Congressional Republicans. Every decade since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, courts have found that Texas’ district maps illegally diluted the voting power of minorities, a problem Texas Republicans now seek to worsen. What happens in Texas will affect redistricting plans across the country and affect the balance of Congressional power after the 2026 midterm elections.

States typically redistrict once each decade, after a US Census. Rather than continue to use the 2021 district map, drawn by Republicans after the 2020 census, Texas Republicans are attempting a mid-decade redistricting process. Texas Republicans in the legislature and executive branches have argued in sworn testimony that the current maps are legal, and those same Republicans are now arguing that the same maps are illegal and urgently in need of redrawing.

The precedent established by a partisan mid-decade redistricting cycle could lead to a race to the bottom. Many states would gerrymander districts to gain seats for the party in power. Governors of all states must pressure Texas to halt this redistricting process and blatant power grab. But if Texas proceeds, Governors of states with full Democratic control of the legislature must not sit idly by; they must be prepared to respond with reciprocal redistricting to ensure Congress’s ability to end the practice of partisan gerrymandering for good.

States with a Democratic Trifecta of government control: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington.

Texas state residents: visit our Texas special session page for targeted state-level calls