Push for State House Redistricting Could
Be Tactic Aimed at Giving Burrows Boot
Capitol Inside
August 28, 2025
More than one-third of the Texas House Republicans are pressing Governor Greg Abbott to call a third special session for redrawing Texas House districts for the 2026 election after devoting the summer to congressional redistricting.
Thirty-one GOP representatives made the request for a state House redistricting effort in a letter that they signed and fired off to the governor this week. The lawmakers said they had the communique ready to go on August 8. "However, it quickly became clear that this was already your intention and we held this letter back," the Republicans said.
Abbott has not expressed any interest in a new state House map in public statements on the Legislature's work this summer. The governor had no plans to have legislators craft a new U.S. House map until July when President Donald Trump instructed the Republicans here to come up with five additional seats for the GOP. Abbott could have tipped his hand on legislative redistricting in private conversations if the House Republicans aren't putting words into his mouth in the letter that's dated August 24.
"If congressional house seats are unfair to Texans then so too are the state districts," the representatives said in the letter to Abbott. 'It logically extends that redistricting of the House districts should be done simultaneously with congressional redistricting."
Texas Senate districts would need to be reconfigured in a special session this summer or fall as well based on the line of reasoning in the letter.
The redistricting this summer marked only the second time in the history of the Lone Star State that legislators have redesigned the entire congressional map midway through a decade after the decennial Census count. The Texas Legislature has never attempted a mid-decade redistricting push to replace the state House and Senate maps.
The Republicans who want to stay in Austin for another special session contended in the letter to Abbott that a federal appeals court ruling on coalition districts in a case known as Petteway vs. Galveston County cleared the way for a new congressional plan that landed on the governor's desk on Wednesday in House Bill 4. The same principles apply to state House districts, the lawmakers asserted in the pitch to Abbott.
"This decision has permitted Texas to redistrict in a way that is more fair and impartial to all Texans," the GOP lawmakers argued.
The Republicans who signed the letter didn't mention the effect that their request could have on GOP Speaker Dustin Burrows' fate if Abbott acquiesced and added Texas House redistricting to a third session call. All of representatives who added their names to the letter opposed Burrows in the speaker's election in January when they backed State Rep. David Cook of Mansfield for the job instead as the GOP caucus nominee. Cook signed the letter himself.
The GOP legislators who penned the request for statehouse redistricting were unhappy with the speaker and his lieutenants this week after the caucus rejected an array of punitive measures that were proposed for Democrats who broke quorum for two weeks with a walkout that prevented a vote on the reconfigured U.S. House map in the initial summer session.
Forty-four House Republicans backed a motion to punish 55 Democrats who broke quorum retroactively with the stripping of committee chairs and vice-chairs and individual office budget reductions. But the proposal needed two-thirds support and died when 27 GOP representatives voted against it.
A map that culminated in more Republican seats in the Capitol's west wing could give conservatives a better shot to replace Burrows in the dais based on the fact that he depended significantly on the minority party's members to win the gavel for the first time this year.
more to come ...
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