ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Republicans took the first step Wednesday toward approving a new congressional map that would give their party as many as five new seats in the House of Representatives, spurring what's likely to be a national battle over redistricting.

The approval by the Texas House of Representatives came at the urging of President Donald Trump, who pushed for the extraordinary mid-decade revision of congressional maps to give his party a better chance at holding on to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections.

The map needs to be approved by the GOP-controlled state Senate and signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott before it becomes official. But the Texas House presented the best chance for Democrats to derail the redraw.

Texas state legislative Democrats delayed the vote by two weeks by fleeing the state this month in protest, and were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring upon their return to ensure they attended Wednesday's session.

The approval of the Texas map on an 88-52 party-line vote is likely to prompt California's Democratic-controlled state Legislature to approve a new House map this week creating five new Democratic-leaning districts. Unlike in Texas, the California map would require approval by voters in November before it becomes official.

Democrats also vowed to sue to challenge the new Texas map and complained that Republicans made the political power move before passing legislation responding to deadly floods that swept the state last month.

State Rep. Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation formally creating the new map, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed politicians to redraw districts for nakedly partisan purposes.

"The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance," Hunter, a Republican, said on the floor. After nearly eight hours of debate, he took the floor again to sum up the entire dispute as nothing more than a partisan fight. "What's the difference, to the whole world listening? Republicans like it, and Democrats do not."

Democrats said the disagreement was about more than partisanship.

"In a democracy, people choose their representatives," State Rep. Chris Turner said. "This bill flips that on its head and lets pols in Washington, D.C., choose their voters."

State Rep, John H. Bucy blamed the president.

"This is Donald Trump's map," Bucy said. "It clearly and deliberately manufactures five more Republican seats in Congress because Trump himself knows that the voters are rejecting his agenda."

California to respond

The Republican power play already triggered a national tit-for-tat battle as Democratic state lawmakers prepared to gather Thursday in California to revise that state's map to create five new Democratic seats.

"This is a new Democratic Party, this is a new day, this is new energy out there all across this country," California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said on a call with reporters Wednesday. "And we're going to fight fire with fire."

A new California map would need to be approved by voters in a special election in November because that state normally operates with a nonpartisan commission drawing the map to avoid the very sort of political brawl that is playing out.

Newsom himself backed the 2008 ballot measure to create that process, as did former President Barack Obama. But in a sign of Democrats' stiffening resolve, Obama on Tuesday night backed Newsom's bid to redraw the California map, saying it was a necessary step to stave off the GOP's Texas move.

"I think that approach is a smart, measured approach," Obama said during a fundraiser for the Democratic Party's main redistricting arm.

The incumbent president's party usually loses seats in the midterm election, and the GOP controls the House of Representatives by a mere three votes.

Trump is going beyond Texas in his push to remake the map. He's pushed Republican leaders in conservative states like Indiana and Missouri to also try to create new Republican seats. Ohio Republicans already were revising their map before Texas moved. Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland's and New York's maps as well.

However, more Democratic-run states have commission systems like California or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do, leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. New York, for example, can't draw new maps until 2028, and even then, only with voter approval.

Challenge plan

In Texas, there was little that outnumbered Democrats could do other than fume and threaten a lawsuit to block the map. Because the Supreme Court blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing it violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority communities together so they can select representatives of their choice.

Democrats noted that, in every decade since the 1970s, courts found that Texas' legislature violated the Voting Rights Act in redistricting, and civil rights groups had an active lawsuit making similar allegations against the 2021 map that Republicans drew up.

State Rep. Ron Reynolds noted the country just marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act's passage and warned GOP members about how they'd be remembered if they voted for what he called "this racial gerrymander."

"Just like the people who were on the wrong side of history in 1965, history will be looking at the people who made the decisions in the body this day," Reynolds, a Democrat, said.

House Speaker Dustin Burrows announced as debate started that doors to the chamber were locked and any member leaving was required to have a permission slip before exiting.

One Democrat who refused the 24-hour police monitoring, State Rep. Nicole Collier, refused to agree and was confined to the House floor since Monday night.

Some Democratic state lawmakers joined Collier on Tuesday night for what Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez dubbed "a sleepover for democracy."

Republicans issued civil arrest warrants to bring the Democrats back after they left the state Aug. 3, and Abbott asked the state Supreme Court to oust several Democrats from office. The lawmakers also face a fine of $500 for every day they were absent.