Politics
NEW: Supreme Court Approves Red State Congressional Map That Could Decide Midterm Elections
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday indicated that Republican-dominated Texas will be allowed to use its recently-crafted congressional maps that will likely net the GOP five additional seats in next year’s midterm elections.
In a brief order, the high court determined that a lower court misread evidence and ignored required legal inferences in blocking the map from taking last month. The order, which keeps the GOP-adopted maps in place for now, found that the district court failed to apply the presumption of legislative good faith when considering disputed evidence, Fox News reported.
The high court also found that the lower court made a second major error by failing to draw a near-dispositive inference against challengers who offered no alternative map that met Texas’ goals.
The stay is temporary while the merits of the case proceed, though liberal Justice Elena Kagan conceded in her dissent that the ruling effectively locks in the contested districts for the 2026 midterm elections due to looming state deadlines.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott
“This Court’s eagerness to playact a district court here has serious consequence,” Kagen said. “The majority calls its ‘evaluation’ of this case ‘preliminary.’.. The results, though, will be anything but.”
“This Court’s stay guarantees that Texas’s new map, with all its enhanced partisan advantage, will govern next year’s elections for the House of Representatives. And this Court’s stay ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race,” Kagen continued. “And that result, as this Court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the Constitution.”
Texas’ new map draws out five congressional districts currently held by Democrats by making them radically more-Republican leaning, an effective net gain of five seats. This has already been offset by California’s Proposition 50, however, which draws in five new Democrat-controlled districts and makes the Golden State the most gerrymandered in the country.
Texas moved forward with its new maps this past summer after the Trump Administration raised concurs about race-based districts and census “errors” that overcounted several Democrat-controlled states and undercounted Republican ones, including Texas.
The Lone Star State’s moves kicked off a nationwide redistricting war that saw Democrats directly counter it with Proposition 50, while GOP-controlled Missouri and North Carolina each redrew their own congressional maps to draw in one additional Republican-controlled seat each.
Democrats have vowed to retaliate further by drawing out additional Republican-controlled districts in Virginia and also Illinois, which could prove difficult in the latter state due to current district boundaries and sizable Republican vote share. President Trump is also lobbying state senators in Indiana to vote in favor of new maps that would draw in two additional Republican-controlled districts.
