Democrats bash Trump over Texas redistricting: ‘Act of desperation’ to ‘cling to power’

House Democrats are hammering President Trump and his GOP allies for pushing to alter Texas’s congressional lines ahead of the midterms, accusing the Republicans of rigging the system to stay in power. 

“It’s painfully clear why Republicans are doing this: They know they are going to lose the majority next year,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, told reporters Tuesday on Capitol Hill. “Republicans know they can’t win on their failed agenda, so they’ve hatched a scheme to rig the Texas map to try to save their microscopic majority.”

In a rare mid-decade redistricting effort, Texas state lawmakers are expected to consider new congressional lines during a special session of the Texas legislature, which was called by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The effort to redraw the Texas map has come at the request of President Trump, who wants to pad the GOP’s thin House majority to ensure that Republicans keep control of the lower chamber during his final two years of his second term. 

In a call to Texas Republicans on Tuesday morning, the president urged lawmakers to draw the districts in such a way that Republicans will be able to flip five Democratic seats to the GOP, according to Punchbowl News.  

Democrats have bashed the effort, noting that Texas is still reeling from the massive floods that hit the Hill Country region of the state on the July 4 weekend. The floods killed scores of people, including young girls attending a popular summer camp. Democrats say Republicans should be focused on efforts to recover from that crisis, and examine the possible causes, including recent cuts to the National Weather Service championed by Trump. 

“Instead of addressing the serious crisis that has affected tens-of-thousands of lives in unthinkable ways, Donald Trump, House Republicans here in Washington and Gov. Abbott are conspiring to rig the Texas congressional map as part of an effort to disenfranchise millions of people in Texas,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said. 

“In this country, public servants should earn the votes of the people that they hope to represent,” he added. “What Republicans are trying to do in Texas is have politicians choose their voters.”

Jeffries declined to say if he supports having blue states, like New York and California, pursue their own mid-district redistricting efforts to counter the efforts of Texas and North Carolina. He deferred to the governors of those states. 

But he also left the door open to that strategy, and suggested there might be developments on that front coming soon. 

“Stay tuned,” Jeffries said. 

The justification for drawing the new lines has done little to appease the Democratic critics. 

In a recent letter to Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s Justice Department said a new map was needed to remedy four existing districts it deems unconstitutional because they were drawn with racial considerations in mind. Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, urged state Republicans “to rectify these race-based considerations.”

Texas Democrats say Dhillon’s reasoning is ludicrous, since state Republicans had drawn the existing map just four years ago. 

“The absurdity of the justification for this redistricting is that a Republican-controlled legislature, led by President Trump’s campaign manager in the Senate, signed by his loyal follower Gov. Abbott —  that that Republican redistricting plan discriminated against white people in Texas,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas.) said. 

“Not a big problem that we’ve ever had down there in my lifetime.”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), said Texas has a long history of pushing discriminatory policies in order to undermine the power of minorities, even as they represent a majority of the population. The new redistricting effort, she said, is just the latest iteration of that campaign. 

“They are specifically deciding to splinter the communities of common interest as well as just blatantly say: We’re going to dilute the minority voices,” Crockett said. 

It’s not the first time in recent years that Republicans have leveraged power on the state level to tilt the congressional map in their favor, even when it disenfranchised millions of voters. In 2022, Republicans who controlled North Carolina’s state house adopted new districts all but ensuring the GOP would pick up seats in Congress. The map was shot down by the state Supreme Court when it was controlled by Democrats. But after Republicans took power on the court, they reversed the earlier decision and allowed the map to take effect. 

As a result, Republicans picked up three Democratic seats in the 2024 elections, swinging an evenly divided delegation — featuring seven Republicans and seven Democrats — sharply in the favor of Republicans, who now hold a 10-4 advantage in a state where party affiliation is roughly split.

“They know that we would be in the majority today if North Carolina hadn’t egregiously redistricted and eliminated three Democratic seats,” said Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the Democratic whip. 

“This is a voter suppression effort,” she added. “This is an effort to take away voices when Texans need the help of fellow Americans.”

DelBene warned that the Republicans’ redistricting might backfire on the GOP, diluting the comfortable advantage of some Republican incumbents to the advantage of Democrats hoping to pick those seats up. 

“Republicans should be careful what they wish for,” she said. 

Jeffries seconded that warning. 

“I have no expectation that they’re going to show any political courage. Texas Republicans are likely to continue to act like political punks and bend the knee to Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” he said. “In doing so, they will jeopardize their own electoral careers.”