What Texas redistricting fight means as FBI joins hunt for absent Democrats
A battle over future control of the U.S. House of Representatives has spilled out of Texas into the rest of the country, with the FBI now potentially getting involved.
Dozens of Democratic state legislators left Texas last week, preventing a vote on redrawing Texas’ congressional map that would give Republicans five more seats in Congress — a move pushed by U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said Thursday the FBI had granted his request to “assist Texas law enforcement in locating members of the Texas House of Representatives who have fled the state in a shameful attempt to thwart the legislative process.”
“We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Cornyn said in a statement that called the Texas Democrats “supposed lawmakers.”
The FBI declined to comment when asked by Global News to confirm Cornyn’s statement.
The Texas fight could also fuel more frequent and partisan redistricting across the U.S., with Trump urging other Republican-led states to redraw their own maps and Democrats saying they will follow suit.
“This is contrary to the U.S. Constitution in all sorts of ways,” said Matthew Lebo, a political science professor at Western University who studies American politics.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called a special session of the state legislature in July to consider a new congressional map that would redistribute voters to create five more likely Republican seats in the U.S. House. The party currently controls 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats.
Trump confirmed to White House reporters last month that he was pursuing the same strategy in Republican-leaning states across the country, calling Texas “the biggest one.” He told CNBC on Wednesday that Republicans were “entitled” to additional seats, accusing Democrats of doing the same thing.
A majority of Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives left the state on Sunday after a state House committee approved the new map, clearing it for a final vote.
Their absence prevented such a vote from taking place, which requires a quorum of two-thirds of members of the Republican-led chamber, where Democrats hold 62 out of 150 seats.
Many of the lawmakers who fled went to Illinois and New York, whose Democrat leaders have offered support to the Texans.
The special session was also set to consider flood and natural disaster prevention measures, among other issues, leading both Republicans and Democrats to accuse each other of holding up assistance for victims.
The Republican Texas House speaker has filed civil arrest warrants to compel the legislators to return, but those are not considered enforceable outside Texas.
Abbott has ordered criminal investigations into the lawmakers, accusing them of taking bribes in the form of donations from Democrat supporters in Texas and other states.
The governor on Tuesday also asked the Texas Supreme Court to remove Democrat House Caucus Chair Gene Wu from office over an untested legal theory that claims legislators who leave the state have effectively forfeited their seats — a charge Wu called “pure insanity.”
“What we’re looking at is a governor who is conspiring with a disgraced president to use unconstitutional, illegal racial gerrymandering to destroy our communities,” he told CNN. “I have a duty to respond to that.”
In the U.S., states typically redraw their congressional maps every 10 years after the U.S. Census is completed. Districts are drawn based on population totals to ensure equal representation in the U.S. House, as well as voter registration data.
Canada also follows a 10-year timeline for updating its federal ridings for the House of Commons following a census. Electoral boundaries were last updated in 2023 and took effect in the 2025 election.
Unlike the U.S., however, redistribution and boundary changes in Canada are done by independent commissions in each province following a census data review by the Chief Statistician of Statistics Canada and the Chief Electoral Officer of Elections Canada — each of whom is also independent from the government.
The commissions then develop proposals on how to adjust riding boundaries during a process of public consultations and input from members of Parliament, before the plans are submitted to the chief electoral officer of Elections Canada and then to the Speaker of the House.
Members of Parliament can review and object each province’s report and recommendations during that process, but the commissions “are not compelled to make any changes as a result of the objections,” according to the House of Commons’ official rules of procedure and practice.
The resulting changes from the commissions are lastly sent to government and come into force through a proclamation from the governor-in-council. They are considered final and cannot be changed after being submitted.
While independent commissions have been established in some American states, in most others —including Texas — redistricting is controlled by state legislatures and has long been subject to partisan attempts to “pack” voters in districts to favour one party or another, a practice referred to as gerrymandering.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it has no authority to weigh in on the legality of gerrymandering, saying states have the final say over elections and how they’re run. However, some state courts have also said they can’t rule on partisan challenges to redistricting.
Congressional maps have been ordered by the courts to be redrawn after upholding challenges on racial grounds, however, including recently in Alabama and Louisiana. Such instances are typically the only times when maps are redrawn outside the 10-year timeline.
States last redrew their maps ahead of the 2022 midterms, making the Texas case unusually early, though not illegal. Yet the move could reduce the possibility of Democrats retaking control of the U.S. House next November.
Republicans currently hold a narrow 219-212 majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, with three Democratic-held seats vacant after deaths — including one Texas seat — and one Republican hold vacant after a member resigned.
A stronger Republican majority in the House would enable Trump to further advance his agenda if Republicans retain control of the U.S. Senate.
Trump’s push for more seats in Texas has inspired other Republican-led states to consider doing the same.
U.S. Vice-President JD Vance travelled to Indiana on Thursday to discuss redistricting with Republican state leaders. Republicans hold a super-majority in the state legislature, meaning Democrats — who only hold two of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats — could not stop a redistricting vote by refusing to attend.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said last week he is considering early redistricting and “working through what that would look like.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said Monday he will call a special election in November on an early redistricting plan that would cut five Republican-held congressional seats if Texas follows through.
In New York, state Democrats have introduced legislation to allow mid-decade redistricting, and Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul said if Texas proceeds, “we must do the same.”
Both New York and California have independent commissions that limit redistricting to every 10 years. Texas’ push for a new map has led to increasing calls from Democrats to do away with such commissions, despite previously demanding them across the country.
“We are well, well down the slippery slope, and sliding at an accelerating rate,” Lebo said.
He said Democrats’ previous efforts to remove partisanship from the redistricting process was “like playing chess against someone who cheats, and you decide you’re just going to follow the rules and hope that they learned from you that they should play by the rules.”
“Where does it go when both people are cheating?” he asked. “It doesn’t fix the game.”
Texas Democrats have acknowledged they cannot permanently prevent the redistricting vote if Republicans stick to their plans. The last time state lawmakers refused to show up during a 2021 fight over voting law changes, they ultimately returned over a month later.
Lebo said the fight in Texas, and the redistricting push by other Republican states, is further evidence of Trump’s outsize influence on his party at both the federal and state levels.
Cornyn — the U.S. senator who called in the FBI — is in a fierce primary battle with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that may threaten his re-election chances. Both are seeking Trump’s potentially decisive endorsement in the race.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Texas are continuing to pursue their redistricting plan, with the state senate holding hearings this week.
Many people in Texas are urging their legislators to uphold the state’s independence and not do Trump’s bidding.
“There are far more pressing needs in Texas,” Dillon Fleharty, a U.S. congressional candidate, told a state senate special committee Thursday.
“This isn’t democracy. You’re not allowing us to choose our representatives, you’re choosing your voters.”
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