Texas Legislature Gives Final Approval to Redistricting Map Favoring Republicans

The Texas Legislature gave final approval on Saturday to an aggressively redrawn congressional map that kicked off a redistricting race between the parties that is likely to affect the fight for Congress long before any ballots are cast in the 2026 midterm elections.

Gov. Greg Abbott has said he would sign the map into law once it reaches his desk.

The State Senate passed the map in a party-line vote just days after it was approved by the Texas House on Wednesday. The new lines on Texas’ congressional districts were drawn to deliver Republicans up to five U.S. House seats and help preserve the party’s thin majority.

“I’m convinced that if Texas does not take this action, that there is an extreme risk that that Republican majority will be lost,” said State Senator Phil King during the floor debate on Friday. He said at several points that he did not “look any racial data.”

“This map is legal in all respects,” Mr. King said.

Texas Democrats, who temporarily blocked the passage of the map with a walkout in the State House, said the newly drawn lines illegally diminished the voting strength of Black and Hispanic Texans. They have vowed to file suit against the map after it is adopted.

After more than eight hours of debate on Friday, the adoption of a procedural motion by the Republicans denied the Democrats a chance to filibuster, moving the chamber to the final vote. The motion argued that a Democratic state senator who had planned to filibuster, Carol Alvarado, had promoted it as a campaign fund-raising event.

The bill passed on a vote of 18 to 11 just after 12:30 a.m. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called for people in the gallery — who were shouting “shame” and “fascist” — to be removed. The Senate adjourned until Tuesday at 3 p.m.

The repercussions of the push for redistricting in Texas have proved dramatic. President Trump first broached the Texas gerrymander months ago to initially skeptical Republicans, hoping to stave off Democratic victories in U.S. House elections that would cost his party control of the chamber in 2027. Since then, mid-decade redistricting — once a rarity in American politics — is threatening to reverse decades of movement toward less partisan political mapmaking.

On Thursday, Democratic lawmakers in California approved a new map of their state designed to swing five Republican seats to Democrats, a numerical counter to Texas that is likely to go before California voters in a November referendum. Mr. Trump is also pressing Republican legislators to counter in Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, where more Republican seats could be squeezed out of maps that already favor the G.O.P. Florida’s Republican House speaker has also vowed to enter his state into the race.

The hours of discussion in the Texas Senate on Friday included some details on how the effort had been organized behind-the-scenes.

Mr. King said that the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which helps coordinate the party’s redistricting strategy, had been involved in Texas’s redistricting. He had spoken to its executive director, Adam Kincaid, early in the state’s process and as recently as Monday.

“I know he has been involved in some of the early map drawing,” Mr. King said at one point while engaging with a Democratic colleague on Friday. “Everyone knows, senator, that he has been involved since the beginning.”

Mr. Kincaid did not respond to a request for comment.

The results of the nationwide redistricting push might not save Republican control of the U.S. House, where the party currently holds a slender four-seat majority.

Off-year elections almost always favor the party out of power in the White House. Even without the states most likely to redistrict — Texas, California, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio — 27 House seats that were decided by fewer than five percentage points in 2024 will remain in play; 14 of them are held by Republicans.

But the spasm of mid-decade redistricting could make the House even more fiercely partisan than it is now, as both parties move to take seats from their rivals.

Regardless, the Texas map’s passage was a major victory for Mr. Trump. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California may have numerically nullified the president’s gains in Texas, but he still faces a campaign to get his maps approved by voters who overwhelmingly backed the nonpartisan redistricting commission that the new map would temporarily supplant.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul met with state Democratic leaders on Thursday, but they still face legal impediments that are likely to stop any redistricting there before 2026. Other Democratic states, such as Maryland and Illinois, are running into similar hurdles.

No such impediments faced Texas, where the Republican-dominated State Legislature completely controls the process around redistricting. The redrawing of congressional districts usually happens only after the decennial U.S. census, in order to account for changes in population over time.

“Partisanship, political performance, pro-Republican is fine. It’s legal,” said State Representative Todd Hunter, a Republican, as he defended the map during eight hours of floor debate in the Texas House on Wednesday.

Even before the lines are signed into law, they were already having a political impact. U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Austin in his 30th year in the House, said in a statement on Thursday that he would not seek re-election if his redrawn district — which would merge with the district of another Democrat, U.S. Representative Greg Casar — survived a court challenge.

Instead, he would step aside for Mr. Casar, a 36-year-old leader of the party’s youthful progressive wing.

“If Trump extreme gerrymandering prevails, I wish Congressman Casar the best,” said Mr. Doggett, 78, who would join other older Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate planning to retire to give way to an eager next generation.

John Yoon contributed reporting.