One former high-ranking Texas Republican state legislator is now coming out forcefully against President Donald Trump's latest push to drastically redraw congressional districts in the Lone Star State.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott initially convened a special session of the legislature in order to address the deadly flooding in Kerr County, Texas. However, after Trump suggested that Texas Republicans use the special session as a means to conduct a mid-decade redistricting process in order to make the state's congressional map even more favorable to the GOP, Abbott assented.
In a Friday op-ed for the New York Times, former state representative Burt Solomons — who served in the Texas House of Representatives between 1995 and 2013 and chaired the redistricting committee — said he was "deeply alarmed" by his party's special session's redistricting effort. Solomons described the plan as "an apparent bid to rig the 2026 midterm elections long before the votes are cast."
"What Mr. Trump wants my former colleagues to do — redistricting now, years ahead of the usual once-per-decade time frame — would erode the public’s already flagging trust in government," he wrote. "The Legislature should stand up against it. The president should stay out of it."
Solomons admitted in his op-ed that one hallmark of politics was the party in power conducting the redistricting process in a way that gives them the best advantage until the next U.S. Census, and that he himself sought to expand Republicans' representation when proposing new maps. But he warned that Trump's effort was a bridge too far, saying that a state legislature acting on the whim of a president would "hasten the end of our federal and state balance of power and of the balance between the three branches of the federal government."
Trump's call to redraw Texas' U.S. House map has prompted calls from Democratic officials and activists to do the same in order to balance out any new seats Republicans give themselves, should the Texas legislature carry out Trump's wishes. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) promised to "go nuclear" in her home state should Republicans carve up Democratic seats in Texas. And former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas), who represented El Paso before leaving Congress in 2020, warned earlier this week that Democrats in reliably blue states would be participating in unilateral disarmament if they fail to counter what the GOP is doing. He praised California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) for threatening to gerrymander California's congressional districts in favor of Democrats in response to Texas' push, and opined he should move forward with it regardless of what Texas Republicans ultimately do in the ongoing special session.
“Not only do I think [Newsom] should do this, I don’t think he should wait for Texas,” O'Rourke told the Center for American Progress. "Why the f--- are we responding and reacting to the other side instead of taking offense on these things?”
Click here to read Solomons' full op-ed in the New York Times (subscription required).