Republicans in the Texas House were poised on Wednesday to approve an aggressively partisan redistricting, overcoming Democratic protests and delivering to President Trump the congressional map he called for, designed Republicans to pick up five U.S. House seats.
The redrawing of Texas’s maps was only the first battle in what is likely to be a bruising and protracted coast-to-coast clash over redistricting between states led by Republican and those led Democrats over the coming months. The California legislature is expected to vote Thursday on a newly drawn congressional map designed to flip as many as five Republican-held seats to the Democrats, an exact counterweight to Wednesday’s vote in Texas.
If the fight broadens significantly, the outcome of the redistricting war could help determine control in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a slim majority, even before a single vote is cast in what were expected to be very close midterms elections in 2026.
Already, Mr. Trump and his allies have been looking beyond Texas to other Republican states, including Indiana, Missouri and Florida. Beyond California, Democratic state leaders are looking at Illinois and Maryland ahead of the 2026 midterms, and New York ahead of the 2028 presidential election, vowing to embark on their own mid-decade redistricting efforts.
For Democrats, however, the fight is proving harder. The California effort will require working around the state rules that give an independent commission responsibility for redistricting. A temporary map up for passage in the state legislature on Thursday would have to be approved by voters in a special election in November.
The path to passage in Texas has been far simpler, despite sustained Democratic opposition.
Wednesday’s vote on the map had been delayed by more than two weeks by dozens of Democratic state representatives, who left the state to halt its passage by denying the House enough members to meet.
But as soon as they returned on Monday, Republicans lawmakers moved swiftly to ensure its passage, passing an updated version out of two committees in rapid succession, and ensuring Democrats could not leave again by assigning each of them a state police chaperone.
On Wednesday, lawmakers convened at 10 a.m. local time to discuss of the map, consider amendments and finally take a series of votes, with final passage was expected late in the day.
“The underlying goal of this plan is straight forward: improve Republican political performance,” said State Representative Todd Hunter, a Corpus Christi Republican, on Wednesday in his introduction of the map legislation, known as House Bill 4.
“According to the U.S. Supreme Court, we can use political performance” in drawing congressional districts, he said. “And that is what we’ve done.”
As debate began, chants and cheers could be heard through the closed doors from dozens protesting in the Capitol rotunda against the redistricting.
“House Bill four is an illegal and racially discriminatory congressional map that this body has no business passing,” said State Representative Chris Turner, a Dallas-area Democrat. “This illegal and rigged mid-decade redistricting scheme is dividing our state and our country.”
The map under considered was revised by Republicans since it was originally introduced last month. It would still aim to flip the five seats that Mr. Trump has publicly called for, but it had been reworked slightly in several areas to place additional Republican voters in the districts where Republicans already hold House seats.
“Please pass this map ASAP,” Mr. Trump urged on social media on Monday. “Thank you, Texas!”
If approved in the State House, the map would go to the State Senate, where Republican leaders have an even stronger hand. A vote there was scheduled for Thursday.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has been forceful in his support for the map, was expected to sign it soon after passage.
The actions by Texas and California this week will likely narrow the battlefield for control of the U.S. House next year, a critical fight that will shape the remainder of Mr. Trump’s term. Even so, with the House so narrowly divided, the expanding fight over redistricting is not likely to determine control of the chamber.
Some of the districts being redrawn in the two states could remain competitive in a nonpresidential election, and even without the states most likely to redistrict — Texas, California and Ohio — 27 House seats remain that were decided in 2024 by fewer than five percentage points in states unlikely to redraw their maps. Of those 27, 14 are held by Republicans, 13 by Democrats. Narrow as the battlefield may be, it is still likely to be big enough to determine control.
Still, Texas is the biggest prize available for Republicans, Mr. Trump has said.
And tensions have been rising State Capitol this week.
When the House chamber officially opened for Wednesday’s proceedings, arriving lawmakers were greeted by the unusual presence of several of their Democratic lawmakers already inside after spending the night there in protest.
The lawmakers objected to being forced to sign a permission slip and have a state police officer assigned to follow them, as a condition set by the Republican speaker for allowing them to leave the Capitol, after they returned from their walkout.
The protest grew from the actions of a state representative, Nicole Collier of Fort Worth, who refused to sign a permission slip. She slept in the brown leather chair at her legislative desk on Monday, along with two others who joined her. On Tuesday, the group had grown to about a half dozen, as several members tore up the slips they had signed and went into the chamber.
The protest drew national attention, as had Democrats’ two-week walkout this month. But neither action could undo the political reality that Republicans in the Texas House far outnumber Democrats, 88 to 62, and passage of the map there could be passed on a party-line vote.
The strict attendance rules imposed by the House would expire after the passage of the map, the House speaker, Dustin Burrows, said on Wednesday. No member was permitted to leave the House chamber without a permission slip, he said.
The vote on Wednesday was taking place during a 30-day special legislative session, the second such session called by Mr. Abbott to address redistricting and also measures related to the deadly July 4 floods in the Texas Hill Country. (The first session expired without any action because of the Democratic walkout.)
No votes have taken place on the House floor related to flood recovery. That was set to be handled later, after redistricting.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
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