Texas Republicans expressed shock and dismay Tuesday after a three-judge federal panel blocked the state's new congressional map, which party leaders had carefully drawn for the sole purpose of securing five additional House seats while coincidentally reducing minority voting power from 16 districts to 14.
Governor Greg Abbott, who had explicitly directed the Legislature to redraw the map based on a Department of Justice letter about racial concerns, reportedly could not understand how judges determined the redistricting was racially motivated. Republicans had repeatedly stated during legislative debates that they were redrawing districts solely to help Republicans win more seats, making the court's racial gerrymandering finding all the more baffling to party officials.
The decision, authored by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump nominee, concluded that "substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map," despite Texas Republicans' meticulous documentation proving they only wanted to disenfranchise Democratic voters, not specifically Black and Hispanic ones.
The new map, which would have increased Republican-held districts from 25 to 30 out of 38 total seats, was part of President Trump's nationwide redistricting push to preserve the GOP's slim House majority. Party officials insisted the mid-decade redrawing—conducted outside the normal once-per-decade Census cycle—represented a completely routine democratic process and definitely not a desperate power grab.
"This is a dark day for partisan gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court explicitly said was fine," lamented one state senator, apparently unaware that racial gerrymandering remains illegal even when you really, really want more congressional seats.
Texas Republicans announced they would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court, where they remain optimistic that conservative justices will appreciate their creative interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.
