Texas Democrats return home after redistricting row

Democrats who fled Texas in order to slow Republicans’ plans to redraw voting maps say they have returned to the state capital “victorious”.

After a weeks-long standoff, the lawmakers said on Monday they are now “more dangerous to Republicans’ plans than when we left,” and they will “build the legal record necessary to defeat this racist map in court”.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has already called another session where legislators are expected to approve plans aimed at shoring up the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives in the 2026 election.

But Democrat-led states are now pushing to redo their maps in the hopes of offsetting those gains and possibly taking the majority.

Abbott had said that in “running and hiding from a fight”, Democrats also walked away from voting on other issues important to Texas, such as relief funds for areas hurt by deadly floods earlier this summer.

“Texans deserve leaders who show up, not ones who abandon their duties,” he said.

Gene Wu, chairman of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, said that he had upheld his duties in leading Democrats out of the state. That broke the quorum of lawmakers needed to hold a vote on the Republican plans.

The likelihood of them halting those plans entirely was always low, but Democrats had said they would return to the Republican-majority state if two conditions were met: ending the special session and raising national awareness about the redistricting plan.

“We killed the corrupt special session, withstood unprecedented surveillance and intimidation, and rallied Democrats nationwide to join this existential fight for fair representation — reshaping the entire 2026 landscape,” Wu said in a statement.

He also said his party is prepared to launch the next phase in their fight against gerrymandering- the redrawing of electoral boundaries to favour a political party.

Democrats contend that the new Texas maps go against the 1965 Voting Rights Act, meant to prevent racial discrimination in voting, and the US Constitution. They say they are preparting to demonstrate that the Texas map violates federal law and should be overturned. The Republicans’ map, they argue, erases decades of hard-fought gains for Black and Latino voters.

Each member of the US House represents a district in their home state. The districts are typically set after after the US Census conducted every decade to account for the states’ population changes. But Republicans and Democrats are now fighting to redraw the maps mid-decade, either to help or block President Donald Trump’s agenda.

California, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Maryland are among the Democrat-led states prepared to launch countermeasures to the Texas plan.

Last Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom said he will ask voters in his state to approve new maps ahead of the midterm elections at the end of 2026,

In California, voting maps are typically drawn by an independent commission but Newsom’s plan, if approved, is expected to give at least five additional congressional seats to Democrats, nullifying the five seats Abbott and Trump hope to gain in Texas.

By BBC News