Texas has redrawn its voting map as part of US President Donald Trump’s plan to pick up more Republican seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
Published November 22, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower court’s ruling that found Texas’ 2026 legislative redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race.
The order, signed by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday, will remain in place for at least the next few days as the court considers whether to use the new maps favoring Republicans in next year’s U.S. midterm elections.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praised the decision, which granted an “administrative stay” and temporarily halted a lower court’s “injunction against Texas’ maps.”
In an earlier social media post, Paxton said: “Radical left activists are trying to exploit the judicial system to derail Republican policy and steal the Democratic House of Representatives from the United States. I am fighting to stop this blatant attempt to overturn our political system.”
Texas redraws its congressional maps in August as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections, starting a national redistricting battle between Republicans and Democrats.
Texas’ new redistricting map was designed to give Republicans five more House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso on Tuesday ruled 2-1, saying civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of black and Hispanic voters are likely to succeed.
The court found that the redrawn map was likely to be racially discriminatory, violating U.S. Constitutional protections.
The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization, said the state would temporarily revert to using the 2025 Congressional map for voting because the Supreme Court has not yet decided which map Texas should ultimately use and the “legality of the map” will be challenged in court over the coming weeks and months.
Texas became the first state to comply with President Trump’s redistricting demands. Following Texas’ lead, Missouri and North Carolina each created new redistricting maps that added Republican seats.
To counter those moves, California voters approved a voting plan that would give Democrats five additional seats.
Redrawn voter maps are currently being challenged in court in California, Missouri, and North Carolina.
Republicans currently hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, and losing control of the House or Senate to Democrats in the November 2026 midterm elections would jeopardize President Trump’s legislative agenda for the second half of his latest term.
Legal battles have raged in the Supreme Court for decades over a practice known as gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing district lines to alienate certain voters and increase the influence of others.
In 2019, the court issued its most significant ruling on the issue to date, declaring that gerrymandering for partisan reasons, aimed at increasing one’s own party’s electoral chances and weakening political opponents, cannot be challenged in federal court.
But gerrymandering, which is primarily based on race, remains illegal under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, and the 15th Amendment, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
