Updated July 25, 2025 at 8:23 AM PDT
You could call it re-redistricting.
This week's start of a controversial, Republican-led special session of the Texas legislature has highlighted this often-overlooked phenomenon of U.S. democracy.
What for most states is a once-a-decade process for redrawing the lines of congressional voting districts after a census can sometimes happen again (and again) before the decade is up.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott says he added redistricting for the U.S. House of Representatives to the session's agenda in response to concerns raised by a letter from two Trump administration appointees at the Justice Department. It claims that four of the 38 districts that Abbott and the GOP-controlled legislature approved in 2021 are "unconstitutional." All four districts are currently Democratic-leaning.
Many legal experts are skeptical of the letter's reasoning, and the Texas Republican Party has been explicit that the state's mid-decade redistricting effort is "an essential step to preserving GOP control in Congress" and advancing President Trump's agenda. Trump himself has been vocal on wanting a "very simple redrawing" in Texas that he says will help his party pick up five more seats in the narrowly divided U.S. House.
"There could be some other states. We're going to get another three or four or five in addition," Trump told reporters last week outside the White House. "Texas would be the biggest one, and that will be five."
The GOP gambit in Texas has prompted some Democrats to say their party needs to counter with their own partisan redo of congressional redistricting in key states. But lawmakers in certain places would face legal hurdles. Under California's constitution, for instance, the state's independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, not the legislature, is responsible for redrawing the state's congressional map. And under New York's constitution, mid-decade redistricting is not allowed unless it's ordered by a court.
But some prominent Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, say they still want to fight back.
"We're going to push back legislatively. We're going to push back in terms of our messaging and communication. We're going to push back in terms of our organizational capacity on the ground," House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said Wednesday on a call with supporters organized by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, adding that Democrats are also preparing to file lawsuits.
A number of ongoing redistricting lawsuits means that Texas is not the only state that may end up voting in 2026 with new congressional maps. Court rulings in those cases, as well as any other re-redistricting efforts over the next few months, could play a key role in determining whether Republicans or Democrats control the House in the next Congress.
It all lays bare the fact that in many states, the outcome of next year's midterm election may be essentially preset by whoever ends up redrawing district lines months before voters get their ballots.
Where re-redistricting for Congress may happen before the 2026 midterm election
While Texas Republicans plot a new congressional map, the state's current one is the subject of ongoing litigation.
And besides Texas, a handful of other states in the South have congressional maps that are in the middle of legal fights, including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina. A trial for a federal lawsuit over Florida's map, which was upheld this month by the state's highest court, is set to start in January.
Court challenges in Utah and Wisconsin could also result in new redistricting plans for next year's midterm election. And Ohio has an expiring congressional map, and the state's constitution requires a new one by Nov. 30.
Each decade, it's not unusual for some states' congressional maps to get caught up in lawsuits that drag on for years.
The Republican push to draw a new congressional map in Texas stands out to Michael Kang, a redistricting expert at Northwestern University's law school, because it's not driven by a court or change in law.
"It's simply because Republicans think that they can win more seats by re-redistricting Texas, and there's nothing stopping them," Kang says. "And so why wouldn't they do it?"
Texas Republicans did it before, in 2003, when then-U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader at the time, led the state's second redistricting for Congress after the 2000 census.
Any redo of district lines comes with risks, however. Linedrawers could be making out-of-date assumptions about where voters are and how they vote by using census data produced at the beginning of the decade. And in seeking new seats, a party could make other districts more competitive and cost its incumbents — a political occurrence known as a "dummymander."
Whether re-redistricting and partisan gerrymandering are legal depends on where you live
This decade is notable because it's the first redistricting cycle since two major decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority.
In 2013, the court effectively dismantled key requirements under the Voting Rights Act for certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to get their maps approved by the Justice Department or a federal court. And in 2019, the court ruled that resolving questions over maps drawn to favor one party over another is "beyond the reach of the federal courts," leaving it up to the states to decide whether partisan gerrymandering should be allowed.
"We are in many ways in uncharted territory. And because of that, I think a lot of linemakers, partisan or not, are sort of making their way to try to test the limits," says Kareem Crayton, a vice president at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school, who previously served as a redistricting consultant for Alabama Democrats on their state's congressional map.
There have been efforts, at the federal and state levels, to curb partisan gerrymandering and establish more nonpartisan, independent redistricting commissions to get politicians out of the mapmaking process.
And this month, Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey of Texas — who represents one of the four House districts the Justice Department letter claims are unconstitutional — introduced a bill that would limit congressional redistricting in all states to once a decade, unless a court finds a map to be illegal or unconstitutional.
Veasey acknowledges his proposal would restrict his own party in directly counteracting the GOP re-redistricting push.
"I want there to be rules for everyone, because it's clear that unless you have rules for everyone, then our democracy is at stake," Veasey says. "Everybody needs to go and play by the same rules. Period. End of story. We don't need to have a tit-for-tat democracy."
For now, though, the U.S. remains a state-by-state patchwork of policies on whether re-redistricting for Congress and partisan gerrymandering are legal.
For voters, Northwestern University's Kang argues, it's better to redraw voting maps at the beginning of the decade and then, if there are no legal issues, "just leave them alone."
"This kind of redrawing constantly over the course of the decade is just really, really prone to mischief and trying to avoid what the voters want, which can change over a decade," Kang says. "When you can adjust the districts to make your side safer and the other side more vulnerable multiple times over a decade, it becomes hard to hold these guys accountable."
Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright 2025 NPR
