President Donald Trump asked Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) to call the state legislature in for a special session where they could approve new Congressional maps that would redraw district lines in favor of Republicans. That kicked off a partisan back-and-forth, with Democratic states such as California and New York threatening to redraw their maps in favor of Democrats. The process of redistricting is complicated and time-consuming, and not every state that has floated mid-decade redistricting is legally allowed to do so. This Washington Examiner series, “Power Lines,” will investigate the process, its local implications, and the hurdles that the mid-decade redistricting effort helmed by national political figures will face in court. Part 1 is an in-depth look at how redistricting works in different states.
President Donald Trump’s redistricting order to Republicans has sent the nation into a politically charged congressional map-drawing frenzy.
The redistricting process is a critical one in the United States’ elections. Including one part of a city that holds more Democratic voters, or a part of a rural area that’s deep-red, could mean enough to flip a House seat.
Trump’s initial call to Texas Republicans was to solidify vulnerable Republican seats in the Lone Star State, and ensure they maintain their slim House majority after the 2026 midterms. The map laid out by the Texas state legislature last week would target five Democratic-held seats. Now, Democrats are ready to counter Republicans with their own redistricting processes in blue states like California, potentially kicking out Republican incumbents to even the score.
If the Texas mid-decade redistricting effort passes, it could kick off a partisan map-drawing process that prioritizes political advantages instead of fairness in a tit-for-tat race.
Here’s more information on how states redraw congressional maps across the U.S.
What are the steps in different states?
The U.S. Census, conducted every decade, is used to redraw districts across the country. New districts can be drawn when there is population growth or decline. Each district needs to have a similar number of citizens, which was roughly around 760,000 per district in 2020.
There are 44 states in which redistricting is relevant; six states, such as Alaska and Wyoming, only have one congressional district. Of the 44, 13 have 10 or more congressional representatives.
The exact process from state to state varies widely, but generally maps are drawn by either a commission or the state legislature after a census. Public hearings may be held to involve citizens in the redistricting process before the maps undergo further review. Maps are often subject to a judicial review process, which can be brought if a person files a lawsuit against the adopted state maps.
People may file lawsuits against maps with issues such as racial gerrymandering, the process of drawing maps with race in mind. Racial gerrymandering is illegal, and Louisiana is under ongoing litigation after a group accused the state legislature of such activity.
After all challenges are resolved, state maps are enacted, and new lines are officially drawn.
States with a larger number of congressional districts, like California (52) and Texas (38), are among the most-talked-about in the redistricting fight. While Texas has appeared to be the main catalyst for redistricting talk as the largest Republican dominated state, California has fought back with the weight of its Democratic power.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), who is jockeying to be a 2028 presidential contender, says the state is considering its options and said last week the state plans to call a November special election to ask voters to approve congressional maps that favor Democrats.
“I’m not going to sit back any longer in the fetal position, a position of weakness, when in fact California can demonstrably advance strength,” Newsom said at an unrelated news conference.
“We’re not here to eliminate the [independent redistricting] commission,” Newsom said. “We’re here to provide a pathway in ’26, ’28, and in 2030 for congressional maps on the basis of a response to the rigging of the system of the president of the United States.”
But the effort, if Newsom does call a special election, is expected to be enormously expensive, and Democrats will have little time to inform voters before November.
California has less power to fight back against Republicans because of its redistricting rules. Most states’ congressional lines are drawn by their state legislatures every 10 years, unlike California and a handful of other states, which use independent redistricting commissions.
These commissions are designed to be non-partisan; the census and court rulings decide when to redraw districts, rather than the partisan process in Texas. Some states, including California, use citizens instead of politicians on the commissions.
States with independent commissions that draw congressional districts include Michigan, Arizona and Colorado. There are also “hybrid” states, such as New York and Virginia, which use both the state legislature and a commission to redraw congressional lines.
Maps face a few different requirements: districts must have around the same population, properly represent minorities without discrimination, and be contiguous, meaning someone would not cross out of the district during the duration of their travel to any point of it.
Districts must also follow the political boundaries of cities or counties, be compact, preserve “communities of interest” that involve people with common interests, and avoid partisan impacts.
Other states being floated for redistricting ahead of 2030 beyond Texas and Ohio include Florida, New York, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, and Maryland among others.
Maryland could push out its sole Republican Representative, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), with new congressional lines. Missouri and Indiana Republicans could target Reps. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) and Frank Mrvan (D-IN), respectively. Florida may follow in Texas’ footsteps to use its state legislature to draw a Republican-dominated map, while Illinois and New York may respond with their own maps to combat Republican efforts.
Presidents don’t usually direct redistricting efforts
President Donald Trump urged the Texas legislature’s Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps on July 15 in hopes of grabbing 5 House seats out of the effort. The effort is an attempt to avoid a repeat of the 2018 midterms during Trump’s first term in office, in which Republicans lost control of the House.
He also suggested there are more states he’s looking at for mid-decade redistricting. “There could be some other states we’re going to get another three, or four or five in addition. Texas would be the biggest one.” he said. “Just a simple redrawing, we pick up five seats.”
The public urging of redrawing a state’s congressional maps by an executive is unprecedented, and experts told the Washington Examiner they haven’t heard of presidents doing so in the past.
Dan Vicuna, senior policy director of voting and fair representation at Common Cause, said he hasn’t seen an executive pressure states to redistrict before. Common Cause is a nonpartisan policy-driven organization.
“This is obviously a transparent attempt to protect the party, [ahead] of the midterms,” he continued. “We’ve heard presidents speak out publicly [about] the problem with gerrymandering. Reagan, Barack Obama. But in terms of inserting themselves in a state process using a nonsensical legal argument designed to discriminate against voters of color, the whole thing is new.”
Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, who gained some national name recognition after Joe Rogan interviewed him, said state Democrats “have to emphasize how unusual this is.”
“We’re changing the rules in the middle of the game, right? It’s like coming out of halftime and one team that’s ahead decides they want to change the rules to make it easier to win the game,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Any football fan would recognize that as cheating.”
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) defended the effort in Texas, noting a letter from the Department of Justice called for redistricting in areas impacted by the Fifth Circuit court ruling in Petteway v. Galveston County, which reshaped implementation of the Voting Rights Act.
“We will maximize the ability of Texans to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Abbott said as the special session kicked off.
Some states could see new maps in play by midterms – but not all
The process varies from state to state. It depends on whether they use their state legislature to draw lines or if they use an independent commission as well.
Every state, except the ones with only one congressional district, redrew its congressional lines after the 2020 census. New congressional districts were also created and redrawn with the reapportionment of Representatives, customary every 10 years.
Any current active effort to redistrict right now is restricted to Texas and Ohio. Texas is redistricting at Trump’s direction, and Ohio is redrawing its maps because of its unique redistricting system. The Ohio redistricting system approved the map in 2022, which is Republican-controlled, but it expires in 2026 because it lacks Democratic support.
Ohio, in a potential move to make a 12-3 Republican map that Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) has said he favors, is expected to get its map done before the 2026 midterms.
Texas’ redistricting process is expected to be short as well. Talarico told the Washington Examiner last week that the process was expected to take just weeks, well before the 2026 midterms.
Other states haven’t given off any clear indication of when they will be done or if they will start mid-decade redistricting at all. Democratic-controlled states like New York, Illinois and California appear to be playing a wait-and-see strategy with Texas to see if they really go through with their proposed map.
If Texas does, Illinois should be the first state to try as the only state of the three with no significant roadblock to redistricting. California’s independent commission would normally delay efforts, and New York currently has every-decade redistricting enshrined in its constitution.
The special election for new maps, if approved by California voters, would hurry the process up relative to New York.
The Illinois state legislature is in control of drawing lines, though it would have a limited amount of seats to gain. Only three congressional Republicans represent districts in the state and all three have double-digit GOP advantages in their areas. Illinois’ maps are already heavily gerrymandered in favor of Democrats.
Another Republican state, Florida, is also looking to change its congressional maps with the help of its Republican governor and legislature. The red state already has seen a 20-t0-8 Republican advantage over Democrats there, but Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said he’s looking “very seriously” at asking the legislature to redraw maps.
A redraw of Florida’s maps could kick out Florida Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jared Moskowitz, Lois Frankel, Kathy Castor and Darren Soto. DeSantis has said the state got a “raw deal” in the 2020 census redistricting aftermath, gaining just one congressional seat.
New York and California would have to change their state rules to go forward with redistricting, though there are seats in both states that could flip with the proper congressional redrawing. If the states do try to redraw their lines, they’re subject to legal challenges that could extend the process further.
There’s also the possibility that court challenges could force any state to redraw its congressional lines again if the new map is found to be inadequate or illegal. Court challenges to new maps are common, around 54 claims were made against congressional maps adopted after the 2020 census.
But the states that could make the most impact — California, Ohio, New York, Florida and Texas — are expected to be among the states that move the quickest. “We’re looking at a handful of states that have been in the news,” Vicuna said. Common Cause analyzes maps for evidence of racial and other demographic forms of gerrymandering.
Ultimately, the process could be a domino effect, Vicuna said. If Texas enacts new partisan maps, states could speed up their processes to meet the 2026 midterm deadline. That would potentially erupt into a war of partisanship on the congressional map level.
“They are saying that there is no other purpose to this but partisan warfare to and that’s a very troubling development,” he said.
“It’s going to make it very difficult to have community-centered redistricting in these places, because they’re stating, very clearly, we don’t care about [and] this is all about the food fight between the parties,” he concluded.