Texas Republicans Ready to Pass New Redistricting Maps, Just as Trump Wanted

Republicans in the Texas House were poised on Wednesday to approve an aggressively partisan redistricting plan, overcoming Democratic protests and delivering to President Trump the congressional map he called for.

The redrawing of Texas’s maps, designed for Republicans to pick up five U.S. House seats, is likely only the first redistricting battle in what could be a bruising and protracted coast-to-coast clash over the coming months between states led by Republicans and those led Democrats.

The outcome could effectively determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold onto a slim majority, before a single vote is cast in the 2026 midterms elections.

Already, Mr. Trump and his allies have been looking beyond Texas to other Republican states, including Indiana, Missouri and Ohio, with redistricting in mind. Democratic state leaders in Illinois, New York and California have vowed to embark on their own mid-decade redistricting efforts if Texas succeeded in redrawing its districts.

This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers in California have been pushing forward a measure to redo the state’s congressional map with the goal of flipping five Republican seats there.

But the California effort, which the legislature is expected to approve on Thursday, has proved far more difficult than the one in Texas. It involves working around state rules that require an independent commission to handle redistricting. And the proposed measure would have to be approved by voters in a special election in November.

The path to passage in Texas has been far simpler, despite sustained Democratic opposition.

The expected vote on the new map on Wednesday was delayed by more than two weeks by dozens of Democratic state representatives, who left the state to prevent its passage by denying the House enough members to meet.

But as soon as the Democrats returned on Monday, Republican lawmakers moved swiftly, passing an updated version out of two committees in rapid succession, and ensuring Democrats could not decamp again by assigning each of them a state police chaperone.

Lawmakers were set to convene on Wednesday at 10 a.m. local time to begin consideration of the new map, consider amendments and take a series of votes, with final passage expected late into the evening.

“It’s going to be a long day,” said State Representative Charlie Geren, a Republican from Fort Worth.

The map has been revised by Republicans since it was originally introduced last month. It would still flip the five seats that Mr. Trump has publicly called for, but was reworked slightly to place additional Republican voters in the districts where Republicans already hold House seats, to make them safer for the incumbents. Republicans hold 25 of the state’s 38 seats.

“Please pass this map ASAP,” Mr. Trump urged on social media on Monday. “Thank you, Texas!”

If approved in the State House, the map would go to the State Senate, where Republican leaders have an even stronger hand. A vote there is scheduled for Thursday.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has been forceful in his support for the redrawn map, is expected to sign it soon after passage.

Democrats and civil rights groups have said they would challenge the maps in court as soon as they were adopted. (The state’s current political maps, designed by Republicans four years ago, are already the subject of a court case, with a ruling expected in the fall.)

The push for redistricting in Texas is part of a wider strategy by Mr. Trump and his Republican political advisers to maintain control of the U.S. House, where the party has a razor-thin margin. Midterms have historically favored the party out of power, and Mr. Trump has been eager to prevent Democrats from winning a majority in the House that could stymie his agenda and lead to investigations.

Texas would be the biggest prize for Republicans, Mr. Trump has said.

And tensions have been rising at the State Capitol this week.

On Tuesday evening, the state police removed scores of protesters from inside the Capitol, and closed the grounds citing a threat made on social media. As night fell, a crowd of more than a hundred remained outside the gates chanting before marching to the governor’s mansion.

Inside the Capitol, several Democratic lawmakers were spending the night in the House chamber to protest Republican tactics to pass the bill.

On Monday, the Republican speaker used state House rules to force Democrats who had walked out to sign permission slips promising to return for the next meeting of the House and agreeing to have state police officers follow them. Only with the permission slips were Democrats allowed to exit the House chamber.

A state representative, Nicole Collier of Fort Worth, refused to sign a slip. She slept in the leather chair at her legislative desk that Monday night, along with two others who joined her. By Tuesday night, the group had grown to about a half dozen Democratic legislators, with several tearing up their signed permission slips.

Their protest drew national attention, as had Democrats’ two-week walkout this month. But neither action could undo the political reality that Republicans in the Texas House far outnumber Democrats, 88 to 62, and that the new map there could be passed on a party-line vote.