What to know about redistricting fights as Texas Democrats return and California starts work

Republicans can move ahead with redrawing Texas’ congressional districts now that Democratic lawmakers have returned to the state. Efforts to thwart President Donald Trump’s push to tilt the political map for next year’s midterm elections in his favor shifted to California.

Dozens of Texas Democrats ended a two-week walkout Monday after Democrats in California heeded Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call to counter the GOP effort in Texas.

In California, the Democratic-supermajority Legislature faces right deadlines, and a plan would have to be approved by voters in November.

Republicans have more options for mid-decade redistricting than Democrats because they control more statehouses, and they’ve talked about redrawing districts in Florida, Indiana and Missouri.

Here’s what to know.

Trump is trying avoid a congressional check on him

Both Trump and the Democrats are looking ahead to the 2026 midterms knowing that they often go against the president’s party, as they did during Trump’s first term in 2018. Republicans currently have a seven-seat majority in the 435-member House.

State legislatures draw the lines after each U.S. census in most states — including Texas — and only a few dozen House districts are competitive.

In Texas, Republicans hold 25 of 38 seats, and they’re trying to increase that to 30. In California, Democrats have 43 of the 52 seats, and they’re trying to boost that to 48, to wipe out the advantage the GOP would gain from redrawing lines in Texas.

California is more complicated for Democrats

In some ways, the nation’s most-populous state, California, is a reverse-mirror image of the nation’s second most-populous state, Texas. Democrats are even more firmly in control of state government there than Republicans are in Texas, with Democratic supermajorities in both California legislative chambers.

But California’s districts were drawn by an independent commission created by a statewide vote in 2008 after years of intense partisan battles over redistricting.

Democrats are trying to avoid legal challenges to a new map by asking voters to approve it as an exception to the normal process, which would require a special election in November. Texas has no such commission, so its Legislature doesn’t have to seek voters’ approval for its maps.

California lawmakers were returning Monday to the state capital from a summer break. They are scheduled to remain in session through Sept. 12.

Why a walkout stalled Republicans in Texas

Republicans have solid majorities in both chambers of the Texas Legislature, and a Democrat hasn’t won statewide office there since 1994. But Texas is among a handful of states where two-thirds of each chamber must be present to conduct business, and the GOP majorities are not that large.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott already had called a special legislative session when Trump began pushing for a new congressional map, but GOP lawmakers could not conduct business after most Democratic lawmakers left for blue states, including California, Illinois and Massachusetts.

But there were pressures on Democrats against holding out longer. They were away from their families and nonlegislative jobs, and their walkout also prevented lawmakers from providing relief to the Texas Hill Country ravaged by deadly flash flooding in July. They also faced fines of $500 per day, as well as efforts to oust some of them from office.