By JOEY CAPPELLETTI and NICHOLAS RICCARDI, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps to create more House seats favorable to his party, part of a broader effort to help the GOP retain control of the chamber in next year’s midterm elections.
The president’s directive signals part of the strategy Trump is likely to take to avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House just two years into his presidency. It comes shortly before the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature is scheduled to begin a special session next week during which it will consider new congressional maps to further marginalize Democrats in the state.
Asked as he departed the White House for Pittsburgh about the possibility of adding GOP-friendly districts around the country, Trump responded, “Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five.”
Trump had a call earlier Tuesday with members of Texas’ Republican congressional delegation and told them the state Legislature would pursue five new winnable seats through redistricting, according to a person familiar the call who was not authorized to discuss it. The call was first reported by Punchbowl News.
Congressional maps drawn after the 2020 census were expected to remain in place through the end of the decade. If Texas redraws them at the behest of Trump, that could lead other states to do the same, including those controlled by Democrats. In response to the Texas plan, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on social media: “Two can play this game.”
Still, Democrats may have their hands at least partly tied. Many of the states the party controls have their state legislative and congressional maps drawn by independent commissions that are not supposed to favor either party. That’s the case in California, where Newsom has no role in the redistricting game after voters approved the commission system with a 2008 ballot measure.
Redistricting is a constitutionally mandated process for redrawing political districts after the once-a-decade census to ensure they have equal populations. But there is no prohibition against rejiggering maps between censuses, and sometimes court rulings have made that mandatory. The wave of voluntary mid-decade redistricting that Trump is encouraging, however, is unusual.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries wouldn’t comment Tuesday on whether nonpartisan systems such as California’s should be rolled back, instead saying Trump’s push will “undermine free and fair elections.”
“Public servants should earn the votes of the people that they hope to represent. What Republicans are trying to do in Texas is to have politicians choose their voters,” Jeffries said at a news conference.
Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, whose district includes part of Austin, also criticized Texas Republicans for focusing on redistricting after July Fourth holiday floods killed at least 132 people, and with more still missing.
“There’s no doubt there were the failures at every level of government. The county, the state of Texas, the federal government. What the special session should be about is doing something to correct those failures,” said Doggett. “Redistricting, this scheme, is an act of desperation.”
The special Texas legislative session scheduled to start Monday is intended to primarily focus on the aftermath of the deadly floods.
An agenda for the session set by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott put forth plans to take up “legislation that provides a revised congressional redistricting plan in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
Republicans in Ohio also are poised to redraw their maps after years of political and court battles over the state’s redistricting process. The GOP-controlled legislature there is considering expanding the party’s lead in the congressional delegation to as much as 13-2. It currently has a 10-5 advantage.
Still, there are practical limits as to how many new seats any party can squeeze from a map. That’s why some Texas Republicans have been hesitant about another redraw. In 2011, the party’s legislators drew an aggressive map to expand their majority, only to find seats they thought were safe washed away in the 2018 Democratic wave election during Trump’s first term.
In response, the map in 2021 was drawn more cautiously, mainly preserving the GOP’s current outsized majority in its congressional delegation. There are 25 Republican House members from the state compared to 12 Democrats and one Democratic vacancy that is scheduled to be filled by a special election.
Any effort to expand the number of GOP seats will mean redistributing Democratic-leaning voters from those blue districts into Republican ones. That could tip previously safe GOP districts into the Democratic column, something Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Suze DelBene predicted at a Tuesday press conference.
“Any new map that Texas Republicans draw will almost inevitably create more competitive districts,” she said. “This scheme to rig the maps is hardly going to shore up their majority. It is going to expand the battleground in the race for the majority.”
Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn was more bullish on a mid-cycle redistricting, noting that Latino voters in Texas have been trending toward Republicans in recent elections. He said redrawing the map this year “will mean significant gains for Texas Republicans.”
Associated Press Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington and writer Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
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