The day has arrived: Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the redistricting bill into law.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law a Republican plan to make the state’s congressional district map “more red” ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“Today, I signed the One Big Beautiful Map into law,” Abbott announced in a Friday afternoon video post on X.
The Republican redistricting plan adds five new GOP-opportunity congressional districts.
Republicans currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 U.S. House seats.
Recent legal decisions cleared the way for Texas Republicans to redraw district boundaries based on partisan political performance and increase the party’s advantage in future elections to reflect voting shifts seen in 2024, when President Donald Trump won support from unprecedented numbers of minority voters.
To explicate those “recent legal decisions” for readers coming into this story tableau rasa: Democrats launched the Petteway v. Galveston County lawsuit trying to save one Galveston County commissioner’s seat, whereupon the Supreme Court ruled that those black/Hispanic coalition minority districts carved out to benefit the Democratic Party were unconstitutional. So Democrats have hoist themselves on their own petard, and nobody should have the slightest bit of sympathy for them.
Abbott said the new map “ensures fairer representation.”
The governor also thanked “all of the legislature who stayed in the Capitol and got this law to my desk.”
Texas lawmakers passed the Republican redistricting plan last week on party-line votes, after House Democrats delayed the inevitable by breaking quorum for two weeks.
Thrice Democrats have used the quorum break tactic in an effort to thwart redistricting, and thrice they have failed. Other than vainglorious virtue signaling, you wonder what they get out of the tactic and why they keep deploying it.
“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” said Abbott after signing the measure, known as House Bill 4.
Several Democrat-aligned groups filed legal challenges to the new congressional map before it was signed into law.
Organizations suing include the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC). A group of Texas residents is also suing.
Plaintiffs claim the new map is racially gerrymandered to eliminate majority-minority districts required by the Voting Rights Act, unconstitutionally diluting the voting strength of minority voters, and is “intentionally discriminatory.”
The author and sponsor of HB 4, State Rep. Todd Hunter (R–Corpus Christi) and State Sen. Phil King (R–Weatherford), assured lawmakers that the map is “legal under all applicable law” and meets the requirements of “one person, one vote” and compactness.
Both Hunter and King repeatedly emphasized that the new district lines were drawn based on partisan political performance, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled permissible, not racial data.
State Sen. Adam Hinojosa (R–Corpus Christi) said the map represents a political shift in the state, including South Texas, which he represents.
“This is not a racial shift. This is a values shift, and no amount of shouting ‘racism’ is going to change that,” argued Hinojosa on the Senate floor.
Despite all the talk of lawsuits, Democrats are already announcing which of the new districts they’ll be running for, and the chances of lawsuits overturning them, the occasional rogue judge notwithstanding, would seem to be extremely slim. Indeed, the Supreme Court seems more likely to sweep away all creaky Voting Rights Act considerations of race as unconstitutional than to toss districts drawn in a colorblind manner aside because they don’t elect enough Democrats.
If Democrats continue to cling to the the same radical social justice politics that got them thumped in 2024, they shouldn’t expect their 2026 to turn out any better, no matter the district lines.
Tags: 2026 Election, Adam Hinojosa, Democrats, Elections, Greg Abbott, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF), Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC), NAACP, Petteway v. Galveston County, Phil King, Redistricting, Supreme Court, Texas, Todd Hunter
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“Democrats launched the Petteway v. Galveston County lawsuit trying to save one Galveston County commissioner’s seat, whereupon the Supreme Court ruled that those black/Hispanic coalition minority districts carved out to benefit the Democratic Party were unconstitutional.”
It is gratifying to witness a greedy dog’s loss:
A Dog was carrying a piece of meat in his mouth to eat it in peace at home. On his way he had to cross a bridge across a brook. As he crossed, he looked down and saw his own reflection in the water. Thinking it was another dog with another piece of meat, he made up his mind to have that also. So he made a snap at the shadow in the water, but as he opened his mouth the piece of meat fell out, dropped into the water and was lost.