The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday gave the green light for Texas to use its new electoral maps, drawn and approved this summer at the order of President Donald Trump, to favor the Republican Party ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, when the full House of Representatives will be renewed. The expected decision reverses a ruling issued by a federal appeals court a few weeks ago and reinforces Republicans’ efforts to tip the electoral balance in their favor and maintain their control of Congress by gerrymandering electoral districts in conservative states, a practice known as Cheating.
In a clearly divided vote, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority won 6-3 in its emergency response to block an appeals court decision that forced Texas to use 2021 maps, arguing that the new maps manipulated the distribution of voters by race. The ruling also sets a precedent for the moment when an appeal is filed over California’s new electoral map, which was filed in response to the Texas map and which, in principle, negates the five-seat gain for Republicans promised by the Texas map.
Such mid-decade redistributions are not uncommon; Usually, countries redraw their maps according to each new census, which is conducted every 10 years. However, in recent months, a few states have filed new maps after Texas sparked a gerrymandering battle when it used a special legislative session in August to pass a redistricting aimed at giving it five additional House seats. This partisan gerrymandering is supported by a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, and since most maps have already been subject to… Cheatingstates can usually scratch away only one or two additional seats. With this in mind, Texas’s redistricting and California’s response are very aggressive and carry some risks.
But given the country’s political polarization, which translates into razor-thin margins in both chambers of Congress, every seat is worth gold. Currently, Republicans have a 220 to 215 seat advantage, with two vacancies in the House; In the Senate, their advantage is 53-47. The ruling party usually loses seats in the midterm elections, when all members of the House of Representatives are re-elected, so President Trump is doing everything he can to stop this trend.
(Breaking news. Will be updated soon)