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More than one million Houstonians could have new congressional representation as early as next year under Gov. Greg Abbott's push to redraw the state's political maps.
Abbott has ordered the Texas Legislature into a special session beginning July 21 that includes redrawing the state’s congressional districts. In his order Wednesday, the Republican governor singled out Houston’s majority-minority areas like the Greater Fifth Ward and the East End, suggesting their boundaries could be reshuffled ahead of the midterm elections.
President Donald Trump's political team has been pressing lawmakers to redraw Texas' congressional districts to help Republicans pick up additional seats next November as they look to defend their U.S. House majority against a potential Democratic surge.
Right now, Texas Republicans control 25 seats in Congress, compared to 12 for Democrats. Former U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner's seat is vacant, but the Houston-area district leans heavily blue. Creating more potential pick-up opportunities for Republicans would mean making safely red districts more purple.
“They are completely out of control. It's all about a power grab,” said U.S Rep. Sylvia Garcia, whose Democratic, mostly Hispanic 29th Congressional District in Houston could potentially be reshaped. “They don’t really care who they hurt.”
In a proclamation ordering the special session, Abbott said he wants a “revised congressional redistricting plan in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
He was referencing a letter issued by the Justice Department on Monday that stated the 9th, 18th, and 29th Congressional Districts in Houston and the 33rd based in Fort Worth “currently constitute unconstitutional" districts because they were created to favor candidates from minority communities.
Even if there were at one point reasons to justify race-based districts, they cite a 2023 ruling from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that said “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”
The 18th Congressional District has its roots in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and was originally won by Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman from the South to be elected to Congress. More recently, it was represented by the late Sheila Jackson Lee and by Sylvester Turner, who died in March, leaving the seat vacant. U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat and former president of the Houston NAACP, represents the 9th Congressional District is represented by
Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas NAACP, said Republicans for a long time have been trying to go after the 18th Congressional District. By putting in writing their desire to target four specific districts, all represented by Black or Hispanic leaders, the message is clear.
“What this means is the intention is to disenfranchise African American and Latino voters,” he said.
Bledsoe said the end result will almost certainly mean fewer majority-minority districts, specifically in Houston. He said white voters constitute 40% of the state’s population, yet dominate 28 of the state’s 38 congressional districts.
“Now the governor wants to increase that number even more at the expense of Texans of color,” Bledsoe said.
But the redrawing wouldn’t be limited to just those four districts. As lawmakers redraw the districts, it affects other districts because all congressional districts have to be equal in terms of overall population. Each district in Texas had 766,987 people as of the last census, in 2020.
Garcia said she's meeting with other Texas Democrats in Congress, members of the Texas Legislature and national redistricting experts to figure out how they can fight the Republican effort. She said Republicans obviously have a dominating majority in the Texas Legislature and will try to muscle through whatever Trump's White House wants.
"We're going to fight like hell," she said in an interview.
To do what Republicans want in Houston will mean millions of people in the city potentially getting new members of Congress representing them as the Republicans look to create more seats that favor their party, Bledsoe said.
Abbott’s push to redraw the districts comes even as the NAACP and LULAC are still fighting the current redrawn congressional map in a federal court. They’ve argued in that trial, in El Paso, that despite the state’s growing Hispanic population, the maps Texas created after the 2020 census didn’t create additional districts in Congress or in the Texas Legislature that Hispanics would be favored in.
A ruling in that case is not expected until September, after the Legislature’s special session redrawing the maps would have concluded.
 | Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter |
Who's Up, Who's Down
A daily stock market-style report on key players in Texas politics.
Up: Donald Trump.
The president will make his first official visit to Texas on Friday to survey the damage from the floods in the Texas Hill Country. Earlier this week, Trump started his cabinet meeting by praising Gov. Greg Abbott and first responders for saving so many lives. More than 100 people are confirmed dead from the flooding.
Down: Ken Paxton.
State Sen. Angela Paxton on Thursday filed for divorce from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The McKinney Republican cited “recent discoveries” and “biblical grounds” in a statement on the social media site X. “I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation,” she wrote. “But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.” The divorce comes as Paxton is building a campaign to run against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
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Photo by: San Antonio Express-News
Gov. Greg Abbott was quick to request federal assistance last week after devastating floods hit the Texas Hill Country. But the Republican governor is simultaneously helping the Trump administration find ways to "wean off" of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has sent more than $7 billion to Texas over the last decade for natural disasters like the flooding that had left 120 people dead and dozens more missing as of Thursday. Abbott is on a Trump-appointed panel drafting recommendations for reforming the agency. He has criticized FEMA as ineffective, even as Texas has been one of the biggest recipients of the agency's largesse.
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