A confrontation in Texas could reshape the congress

Dozens of Democrats in Texas have secretly left the state in a dramatic effort to prevent the Republicans from holding a vote that could determine the balance of powers at the US Congress.

Republican governor Greg Abbot has made the orders arrested for them – and sentenced to a fine of $ 500 per day. He also threatened to expel them from his duties.

The Democrats left because at least two thirds of the legislative body of 150 members must be present to vote on the revaluation of the Texas electoral card. The plan would create five other republican seats in the House of American Representatives.

This battle with high issues may seem both bizarre and confusing – but it could spread to other states before the national mid -term elections next year. In its heart, it is a bare struggle on political power, which can most effectively handle it and which can keep it.

The House of Representatives of the United States is made up of 435 legislators elected every two years. They represent districts with determined boundaries in the processes set by their governments of the States.

Who traces the lines and how can help shape the ideological inclination of the district and the probability that it elects a democrat or a republican.

Currently, the room is based on a knife with 219 Republicans and 212 Democrats. There are four vacant posts likely to be filled by three Democrats and a Republican in special elections later this year.

It would not take much change in political winds for the Democrats to regain control of the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections next year. And the party which controls the room of the lower congress has powers which extend far beyond the simple implementation of the legislative program for the next two years, as important as it may be.

House leaders can launch radical investigations into presidential actions, as the Democrats have done in the second half of Donald Trump’s first mandate and the Republicans have done so in the last two years of Joe Biden. They can also dig on political issues and trigger government closings. They can even vote to dismiss a president, as the Democrats did in December 2019 and the Republicans envisaged during the presidency of Biden.

Trump seems concentrated on taking measures to improve his chances of avoiding a fate similar to his second mandate. He would be obsessed with mid-term races and would have encouraged Texas legislators to draw new Congress cards which could increase the probability that Republicans earn more seats at home from there.

The district lines are generally redesigned every 10 years, after a national census, to reflect changes in the population inside and between states. The most recent regular redistribution took place in 2021.

In some states, the process is fixed by independent commissions, but in others, state legislatures are responsible for line drawing – and results can frequently be manufactured by the ruling party to give their side a distinct advantage.

In North Carolina, for example, the republican drawing lines gave their party 10 of the 14 seats of the State House in the national elections from last year, even if Trump won the state only with a thin margin.

Illinois Democrats hold 14 of the 17 seats in the State Chamber, while former vice-president Kamala Harris won the state with 54%. If Trump has its way and the cards lead to a gain of five places next year, the Republicans would control 30 of the 38 seats of the State. Last year, he won Texas with 56%.

The republican thrust in Texas has leaders in states controlled by democrats calling for an answer, which could trigger a “arms race” of redistribution which spreads across the country.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, for example, asked the legislators of his state, where Democrats control 43 of the 52 seats, to find ways to increase their advantage. Governors Kathy Hochul in New York and JB Pritzker in Illinois have published similar calls.

“Everything is on the table,” wrote Pritzker in an article on social networks. “We have to do our best to get up and retaliate – we did not sit down and we complain about the key line when we have the capacity to stop them.”

Basic Democrats, many of whom have been frustrated by the inability of their party’s national political leaders to block the Trump administration’s political agenda, can accommodate such conflictual language. States like California and New York have laws which require that the congress districts be drawn by a bipartite commission to create compact and equitable constituencies.

Such efforts are the result of pressure to withdraw political considerations from the redistribution process, but now certain Democrats consider these movements as a unilateral disarmament which has given the Republicans an advantage in the fight for a majority of the house.

“I am tired of fighting this fight with my hand attached behind my back,” said Hochul to journalists at the New York Capitol in Albany on Monday. “With all the respect due to good government groups, politics is a political process.”

She said that the “playground” had radically changed during Trump’s second term and that Democrats have to adapt.

Democrats may not have the last word. Republicans are already looking beyond Texas for more places to collect seats. Vice-president JD Vance would consider a trip to Indiana later this week to put pressure for new district lines in this state. Florida governor Ron Desantis recently said that his state dominated by the Republicans could start a similar process.

Despite his explicit political conceptions, all of this is an equitable game within the framework of the American Constitution – at least the way in which a close majority of the Supreme Court of the United States interpreted it in a historic case of 2019.

The partisan “gerrymandering”, as the process is sometimes called, has a long tradition in American politics – which frequently creates strange constituencies which extend over kilometers to include or exclude voters according to their political affiliations, all in order to give a party an electoral majority.

The republican move to Texas is not even unprecedented. In 2003, Republican leaders redid their congress cards to increase their electoral advantage.

State Democrats even responded in a similar way – leaving the State to delay the legislative procedure. The redistribution finally passed after enough democrats returned.

There is a risk in all of this, even for the party that makes the line drawing. Although the objective is to maximize the number of seats where victory is likely, during an election where a team exceeds expectations, even apparently safe seats can return the sides.

Texas, and other redistribution states, could create an electoral card that does not survive a political deluge, causing otherwise avoidable losses in the ballot boxes.

In a narrow election, however, each seat counts. And if the mid -term elections of next year are continuing the recent trend of closely decided political battles, what is happening in the legislatures of the States in the coming months could have dramatic political consequences in Washington DC – and, therefore, through America.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with Trump’s newsletter, the correspondent of North Correspondent Anthony Zurcher. Readers of the United Kingdom can register here. Those outside the United Kingdom can register here.