Texas and California Moving the Nation
Toward All-or-Nothing Congress Maps
Capitol Inside
August 14, 2025
The GOP could guarantee itself a victory in a monumental political arms race that the Texas Republicans ignited if President Donald Trump could get every state where the party controls the legislature and governor's office to eliminate every single Democrat on their congressional maps.
With California preparing to redraw its own U.S. House districts for the sake of flipping more seats than the GOP does here in the 2026 election, Texas Republicans would have to pick up at least 10 seats to be assured of coming out in the head-up competition with the Democratic Party in the nation's largest state.
Texas GOP lawmakers will get a second shot in a new special session that starts on Friday to pass a map that targets five congressional districts that are currently represented by Democrats. California Governor Gavin Newsom has threatened to have fellow Democrats there draft a map that would put their party in position to convert six districts from red to blue.
But the Democrats would be destined to lose the war over redistricting if every state with governors from the same party that controls both chambers of their legislatures passed plans that would give the majority parties every single seat in their respective delegations to Congress.
Republicans would have a chance to pick up 43 U.S. House seats in 10 states under such a scenario with Texas has the most lucrative with 12 districts that are currently controlled by Democrats and another that's heavily-Democratic and open in the Houston area. Democrats in contrast could flip 30 districts if they eliminated every Republican on congressional maps in seven states that have Democratic governors and legislative majorities.
The Republicans would expand their current majority in the U.S. House by 13 seats if such a strategy was successful in every state with governors and majorities in legislatures from the same party. The GOP in Texas could declare victory over Newsom and the Democrats in California with a net gain of 4 if the majority parties in the two largest states found ways to take control of every seats on their congressional maps.
The partisan wipeout approach could be leading the country to a day when there would be no need for gerrymandering any longer if the majority party in every state could have monopolies in the congressional delegations similar to the way presidential candidates are entitled to all of the electors from states they win regardless of margins.
Redistricting would be required before every election with U.S. House seats on the ballot. Legislators from the party that has the most votes in congressional races in individual states would face the task of dividing delegations to the U.S. House among their own members with a winner-take-all system in place.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz raised the specter of partisan wipeouts in Texas and California in a post on Thursday morning on X.
"If California gerrymanders from its current 43-9 Dem advantage (83%) to a 52-0 Dem advantage (100%)...then Texas should go from a 24-14 GOP advantage (63%) to 38-0 (100%)," Cruz said.
Texas for the record had 25 Republicans in the U.S. House at the start of 2025 along with 13 Democrats. But while the state's junior senator got the individual party counts wrong, Cruz was on the mark about the Texas and California congressional delegation totals.
Governor Greg Abbott said he would push to have Republicans double their projected take in Texas with a map that's drawn for the GOP to pick up 10 seats instead of five in the plan in House Bill 4 and an identical Senate measure that cleared the upper chamber on Tuesday. Nine would be the maximum for the Democrats in California.
The Republicans could pick up eight U.S. House seats in Florida and five more in both Georgia and Ohio if the all-or-nothing system was in place for the 2026 vote. Under such an approach, the GOP could zero in on two seats that are currently held by Democrats in Indiana, two more in Louisiana, two in Alabama and two more in Missouri.
Democrats could counter with a plan to flip seven seats that Republican represent in New York, four in Colorado, three in Illinois, three in New Jersey, two in Washington and one in both Maryland and Oregon.
Twelve states have governors and legislative majorities in one or both chambers from both major party - making mid-decade redistricting efforts highly unlikely. Twenty-one states have U.S. House delegations that are all Republican or Democratic.
One of those - New Hampshire - has a Republican governor and GOP majorities in its legislature with two Democratic U.S. representatives and two senators from the Democratic Party. That means that state lawmakers could try to reconfigure the state's congressional map with two seats for the GOP. But New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte has said that the timing isn't right for another round of redistricting there.
The Texas Republicans' redistricting quest was a bust in the first called session of the summer in 2025 when 55 House Democrats blocked a vote on HB 4 with a walkout that they plan to end after a dozen days on Friday when the second summer gathering gets under way.
So the question now is whether the Republicans will be satisfied with a mere five additional seats in Congress or decide to up the ante to counter the California Democrats with a map that targets anywhere from six to 13 for conversions to the GOP at the polls next year.
more to come ...
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