Dominating state political news are the efforts of Texas’s state legislature to redraw congressional district lines to produce 5 more GOP-dominated congressional seats. They may well produce a plan this summer, but nobody will know if it actually produces the desired 5 seats until next year’s congressional elections. And the elections may show that the GOP plan backfired—possibly quite badly.
Texas is entitled to 38 seats in the U. S. House of Representatives. Currently, 25 of its representatives are Republicans. President Trump and Governor Abbott want more. To that end, Governor Abbott has directed the legislature, now in special session, to redraw congressional district boundary lines to have the 2026 elections produce 5 more Republicans in Texas’s delegation to the House.
Republicans are especially concerned because they fear—rightly—that the 2026 elections may produce a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. After all, it is usually the case that the party which holds the White House loses seats in Congress in the midterm elections, as voters dissatisfied with the president’s performance take out their anger on members of his party. In fact, in only 3 off-year elections since 1900—the elections of 1934, 1998, and 2002—has the president’s party made net gains in Congress, when voters chose to express their approval of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, their disapproval of Republican efforts to impeach President Clinton, and their approval of President Bush’s handling of 9/11.
But Republicans this year are beginning to become worried about next year, given voter concerns over inflation, seemingly harsh ICE policies, and a possible Trump-Epstein linkage closer than what is already known. Unfortunately for the GOP, the public is not yet concerned over the autopen case.
Currently, the House of Representatives consists of 219 Republicans, 212 Democrats, and 4 vacancies. So the loss of just a handful of Republican-held seats can produce a Democratic majority, and all that comes with it, including:
- The House speakership;
- The House majority leadership;
- The chairmanships of all House committees and subcommittees;
- Majorities on all House committees and subcommittees (except the House Ethics Committee, which must always have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans).
Normally, whichever party controls a given chamber of Congress determines what legislative proposals that chamber may consider and pass, which is why President Biden, for example, insisted the Democratic-dominated Congress consider and pass so much legislation in the first half of his term. He knew the 2022 midterm elections would probably produce at least one GOP-dominated chamber, and that would spell the end of his legislative ambitions. As it happened, the Democrats kept the Senate but the Republicans took back the House. So much for Biden’s legislative program.
But for President Trump, the stakes are greater. Should the Democrats win back the House in 2026, not only will his own program be imperiled, but he will once again be impeached. Exactly what charges will be brought against him this time remains to be seen, but given the Democrats’ practice of impeaching Trump whenever they win a House majority, his impeachment in 2027, should the Democrats take back the House in 2026, must be considered a foregone conclusion.
So can the our state legislature’s efforts to save a GOP majority in the House even after 2026 reduce the probability of a Democratic takeover and a subsequent Trump impeachment? Possibly. There is precedent:
The 2002 Texas state elections were historic. For the first time since Reconstruction, the GOP won majorities in both houses of the legislature while winning, as it had in 1998 and 2000, all statewide executive and judicial offices. But nonetheless, the Democrats still won a majority in our congressional delegation. Therefore, the state legislature redistricted the congressional seats to produce more Republicans for Congress. So if it happened once, it could happen again. Maybe.
But there are at least 2 ways in which the legislature’s redistricting efforts could backfire against the GOP and its efforts to strengthen its control of the U. S. House.
First: To create more Republican-leaning districts, the Texas Legislature must redraw current election district boundaries to move Republican voters out of GOP-dominated districts and merge them into Democratic-dominated districts in the hopes that the new GOP enforcements will help flip the districts to the Republican column. But in doing so they may make the current GOP-dominated district less Republican and therefore easier for the Democrats to capture.
Second: Republican efforts in Texas are provoking Democrats in blue states, including California, New York, and New Jersey, to implement their own redistricting schemes to increase the number of Democrats in the House following the 2026 midterms. California’s congressional delegation, for example, currently consists of 43 Democrats and only 9 Republicans. But California Democrats think they may be able to flip up to 6 GOP-held seats to the Democratic column. No doubt other legislatures in sapphire-blue states are developing similar plans to neutralize whatever gains the GOP in Texas and other ruby-red states hope to achieve. And if they’re successful, the Democratic gains in the House next year may be greater than they might have been if the GOP left redistricting well enough alone.
So, memo to the Republicans in the Texas legislature: You’re well within your rights to redraw Texas’s congressional districts to strengthen the GOP in the U. S. House of Representatives. But whether you’ll succeed and whether you’ll like your results will by no means be certain. Be careful what you wish for: You may get it, and with it a whole lot more, or a whole lot less.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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