President Donald Trump wants Texas to squeeze out five more Republican seats in the U.S. House to shore up the GOP majority ahead of the midterms.
AUSTIN, Texas — State lawmakers in the Texas Senate held their final scheduled public hearing on congressional redistricting on Tuesday.
The Senate committee gathered in Austin, but only allowed virtual testimony about the idea of redrawing congressional district boundaries in Texas.
Republicans are under pressure from President Donald Trump to gain five more seats in Congress in 2026, thereby maintaining control. Democrats call it gerrymandering.
“If we move forward with withdrawing our congressional maps, we risk further marginalization of minority voters and setting the state for lengthy and costly litigation that will burden Texas taxpayers for many years,” state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen) said. “More concerning, we’re undermining our democratic principles for the benefit of one individual and one administration.”
The issue is now gaining national attention, with leaders of blue states saying they may consider redrawing their maps if Texas follows through with the plan. KVUE learned that U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will head to Austin to meet with Democratic state lawmakers on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice raised concerns about the current map, stating that four majority-minority districts were drawn based on race. However, the Republican-led state and attorney general have defended the current map in court, saying it was drawn fairly.
King said on Tuesday he believes the current maps are legal, but lawmakers have the right to take up redistricting at any time they choose to do so.
“I don’t think the map that is in place for Congress today is discriminatory,” King said. “I don’t agree with the DOJ letter, but I have not seen their underlying facts to it.”
More than 130 people signed up to speak virtually at Tuesday’s Senate committee hearing, which focused on West Texas and El Paso, but was open to speakers from across Texas.
“West Texas is growing. It’s growing rapidly,” state Sen. César Blanco said. “It’s increasingly Latino, making it even more critical that our representatives in Washington reflect the diversity in the future.”
Blanco represents the El Paso area in the Texas Senate.
“As we draw the lines that are going to shape that representation for the next decade, we must keep these communities of interest together,” Blanco said. “We have to ensure that rural voices are not drawn out, that urban centers are not carved apart, that border communities are given fair representation.”
More people spoke in favor of redistricting on Tuesday than in previous hearings, in part because of Congressional District 23, which covers all or part of 29 counties between San Antonio and El Paso. Some say this area is so large that the people who live there don’t get adequate representation. However, it is worth noting that this is not one of the districts the DOJ thinks need to be redrawn.
“I am in favor of redistricting,” Minerva Torres Shelton said. “Right now, these communities are represented by a congressional candidate who’s out of San Antonio, which is too far from them. Many feel disconnected from their representation.”
Political maps must be redrawn once every decade after the U.S. Census is taken, although no federal law prohibits those maps from being redrawn mid-cycle. The Texas Constitution allows the maps to be redrawn at the discretion of the governor and the Legislature.
The Trump administration wants Texas to redraw its maps to carve out more Republican seats, thereby increasing the GOP’s advantage in the U.S. House, which they currently control by a slim margin of 220-212. Republicans hold 25 of the state’s 38 congressional seats. Democrats hold 12 and are expected to pick up another vacant seat in a special election this November.
Adding five more GOP seats in Texas would give Republicans control of 80% of the Texas delegation in the U.S. House. However, it is not clear how Republicans plan to create those five new seats.
Asked if the redrawing of districts will focus on just a few specific districts or the entire state, King said he could not say.
“I believe if there’s any interest on the Republican side, it would be in trying to create more Republican districts to add support to the Republican majority in the U.S. Congress so that some of the really good policies that we’ve seen implemented in the last seven months could continue and be furthered,” King said.
King took exception to some of the criticism that has been leveled at Texas Republicans during hearings over the last several days, taking time out of the hearing on Tuesday to respond. He specifically mentioned how Republicans have been called a racist party, the party of Jim Crow and the party of pedophiles. In particular, he mentioned Chaplain Rich Stoglin, who was heavily booed during the House Redistricting Committee’s in-person hearing in Arlington on Tuesday night while speaking in favor of redistricting.
“We all need to be very careful about the rhetoric we use,” he said.
King also took exception to some of the criticism of Trump, which he called “deriding and simply ugly remarks.”
“I’ve always believed that even if you don’t like the person, you respect the office,” he said. “The references yesterday that were made and have been made all three days, I think, are just inappropriate in any public setting.”
State Sen. Borris Miles, (D-Houston), fired back, saying he was “thoroughly disappointed” in King’s comments.
“These witnesses have every right to call the process racist because it is racist, Mr. Chairman. Four minority districts were targeted to be redistricted,” Miles said. “You have no right to admonish them as you did this morning about how they feel about their actions from being, that are being taken, their communities being taken away and divided up.”
“You, as a white man in America and Texas, have no right to tell me or anyone else, a Black man in America and Texas, that this process is not racist or discriminatory,” Miles added.
Democrats on the Senate committee also criticized the decision to take testimony virtually and before a new map has been drawn. No new map has been introduced in the House or Senate, though new proposed congressional districts are expected to emerge soon.
King said he expects one or more maps to be filed shortly. He said he will share any map with the committee once he sees one, and there will be more public hearings at the Capitol when or if a revised congressional district map is proposed.
At the request of several Democratic lawmakers, both the House and Senate Redistricting Committees have invited DOJ attorney Harmeet Dhillon to testify before the committees. She is the one who wrote the letter raising concerns about the current map.
Democrats have asked the committee to subpoena her, but Chair King said he needs to consult legal counsel before they do that. King said they will consider issuing a subpoena for Dhillon at a meeting on Wednesday.
Unlike State House and Senate districts, which have stricter rules, congressional districts are more like a math formula. In the Texas House, a county with sufficient population for one district must be formed into a single district. A county with a population smaller than needed for a whole district needs to be kept whole and combined with one or more contiguous counties to form a district. A county that has sufficient population for two or more whole districts must be divided into that number. Each county with an adequate population to one or more whole districts plus a fraction of another district must be divided into that many whole districts, with the excess population added to one or more contiguous counties.
“You don’t have those restrictions for communities of interest for not splitting counties,” said Sherri Greenberg, a former state representative who is now the assistant dean for state and local government engagement at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s strictly a numbers game.”
Congressional districts are required to be as equal in population as possible, although some deviations are allowed. In Texas, congressional districts must have a population of approximately 766,987. The ideal population is obtained by dividing the state’s population by the number of congressional districts, 38. That’s why some, like District 23, which stretches from El Paso to San Antonio, are huge, while others in big cities are small.
“You could see the Austin area divided up like a pie, maybe slivers going out, dividing up Austin among different U.S. House districts,” Greenberg said.
The current map is favorable for Republicans, and Democrats argue that it is not reflective of the state’s growing population. Changing the maps in the way Republicans have signaled they want to would exacerbate that. The current map includes very safe seats, and there aren’t many competitive districts.
“This can set up a real, divisive situation even among Republicans,” Greenberg said.
To create new Republican seats, Republicans may have to dilute and stretch GOP voters thin, turning safe districts into swing districts. It is known as a “dummymander,” and it could make incumbent Republicans more vulnerable, particularly in a midterm election environment, if Republicans are not careful in how they draw the new districts.
“There also could be a risk that you make the margin of Republicans so thin in some of these districts that it’s difficult to win,” Greenberg said.
People can submit comments about redistricting and supporting documents online here. That link will be active throughout the special session.