President Donald Trump’s plan to rig the 2026 midterm election by pressuring states to create more Republican congressional seats will face a major test in a federal courtroom in El Paso, Texas starting Wednesday, as a panel of judges considers whether to block the state’s new gerrymandered map.
At stake in the hearing, scheduled for ten days, are as many as five congressional seats — perhaps enough to determine control of Congress in next year’s midterms — as well as millions of Black and Brown Texans’ hopes for fair representation.
The Texas gerrymander has set off a larger nationwide fight. California lawmakers responded with a plan to create five more Democratic congressional seats, while Missouri Republicans passed their own map that could add one more GOP district. More states are considering entering the fray.
In July, Texas Republicans called a special session to ram through an extreme gerrymander. The rare mid-decade redistricting came after pressure from Trump to create more GOP seats and boost the party’s chances of retaining control of Congress next year.
Trump publicly rewarded Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) and other House Republicans with endorsements just as the special session was announced.
Minority voters* and voting advocates who were already challenging Texas’ existing map as a racial gerrymander quickly filed motions seeking a preliminary injunction against the new map.
They argue that the new map, too, is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that intentionally dilutes minority voting strength. And they’ve marshaled a slew of evidence to make that case.
All eight of the districts most impacted by the map’s changes had majority-minority populations, according to a recent filing.
Ahead of the hearing, experts with the UCLA Voting Rights Project analyzed the new district lines and submitted their findings in court filings. They concluded the map dismantles majority-minority districts that were working to elect candidates preferred by minority voters. Now, minority voters in those areas will not be able to elect their candidates of choice, the UCLA team found.
They also concluded the mapmakers “relie[d] heavily on race” in creating the new districts. And they found it would be statistically impossible for the state to have drawn the map it did without intentionally targeting racial minorities.
The events leading up to the special session also may bolster the plaintiffs’ case.
In announcing the redraw, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) cited “constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice” – a reference to a letter sent two days earlier by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). That letter urged the state to dismantle four majority-minority congressional districts that it claimed had been impermissibly created using race.
Democrats and voting advocates have pointed to the letter as striking evidence that Republicans redrew the map to reduce the voting power of minority Texans.
By the time Abbott announced a second special session to pass the map, he left off any reference to the DOJ’s “constitutional concerns.”
And this week Texas went further, submitting a new filing that called the letter a “mistake” containing “ham-fisted legal conclusions.” Abbott was merely using the letter as “political cover” for the true, partisan motivation behind the redistricting, the filing now claimed.
While racial motivations in redistricting would violate federal law, partisan ones would not.
If the court allows Texas to use the new map in 2026, minority communities will be seriously impacted. Minority voters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the San Antonio-Austin area and the Houston area will each lose one district where they were able to elect their candidate of choice. In South Texas, minority voters could lose two such districts.
Residents in Houston’s majority-minority District 18 are facing perhaps the most glaring upheaval. They’ve had little congressional representation for the past two years, after their Democratic member of Congress, Sheila Jackson Lee, died in July 2024 and her successor Sylvester Turner died in March. Abbott has left residents without representation for months – to the benefit of Republican leadership in Congress – delaying a special election for the vacant seat until November. In the next few weeks, District 18 voters will head to the polls – if they can figure out which district they currently live in. The winner then could face a challenge from Rep. Al Green (D), whose District 9 is eliminated under the new map.
It’s unclear when a ruling is expected, but a decision must be reached for Texas to proceed with upcoming 2026 election deadlines. Currently, the first day for Texas candidates to file to be on the primary ballot is Nov. 8, and the deadline to file is Dec. 8.
In 2012, Texas primary election dates were moved repeatedly due to redistricting litigation before the primary was held on May 29.
A panel of three federal judges will hear the case, including Senior U.S. District Judge David C. Guaderrama, an appointee of President Barack Obama; U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan; and U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump appointee.
In 2023, Brown struck down the map in a redistricting lawsuit in Galveston County, calling the county’s gerrymander a “stark and jarring” violation of the Voting Rights Act.
If the judges rule to block the map, the plaintiffs have asked for Texas to use its previous 2021 map for the 2026 election and a later trial will determine the maps for future elections.
*Some Texas voters are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.