In 2025, Texas Republicans, pushed by President Donald Trump, redrew the state’s congressional map before the midterms, converting five Democratic-held districts into ones Trump would have carried by at least 10 percentage points.

The move backfired: GOP candidates lost four of five seats their new congressional map was designed to flip and lost two of their own.

That means Texas Republicans will head to Washington in January with 24 U.S. House seats, one less than they had at the start of the current Congress. When the state Legislature in Austin pursued the controversial mid-decade gerrymander, Republicans had hoped for a 30-8 split in the delegation but will end up instead at 24-14. 

In South Texas, moderate Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen both won reelection, surviving the redraw that put more Trump voters in their districts. Republicans also lost ground in the lone Rio Grande Valley district they already held, as Tejano musician Bobby Pulido ousted two-term Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg.

Democrats picked up another seat with Katy Padilla Stout’s win over YouTuber and gun-rights activist Brandon Herrera in the 23rd Congressional District, a sprawling seat covering San Antonio to the outskirts of El Paso. The district has been vacant since former GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned in April over a sex scandal with a staffer. Despite the district’s 15-point lean for Trump, Padilla Stout, a San Antonio attorney and former teacher, made it onto the radar of national Democrats who saw opportunity in the district’s majority-Hispanic status and Herrera’s history of edgy, controversial comments.

Democrats held fast to districts elsewhere, despite their incumbents being displaced due to the redraw. In the San Antonio area, Bexar County sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia beat Republican Carlos De La Cruz, the brother of Monica De La Cruz, in the newly crafted 35th Congressional District, a GOP target that Trump carried by 10 points. 

In Houston, the grassroots campaign of Democrat Leticia Gutierrez topped Army veteran and former investment banker Alex Mealer, despite being vastly outspent in a district that Trump won by 20 percentage points two years ago. Gutierrez raised just a fraction of Mealer’s $2.8 million haul over the midterm cycle, as of mid-October, according to Federal Election Commission filings. 

Republicans had high hopes for the redraw, which Democrats fought by fleeing the state, keeping the map in limbo by temporarily denying Republicans the headcount to pass it. But the new lines could not withstand the blue wave that swept through much of the country Tuesday, driven in part by the leftward swing of Latino voters. Texas’ new map banked on the GOP holding most of Trump’s 2024 gains with Latino Texans, who made up a majority of the eligible voting population in four of the five targets.

Nor did the redraw deliver what the White House wanted from it: a buffer that would preserve Republicans’ slim U.S. House majority. Trump’s push for the Texas map kicked off a tit-for-tat redistricting war across the country, producing similarly skewed maps in a number of states. 

After Texas, Republicans were most hopeful to flip four Democratic seats they redrew in Florida. Three of them stayed blue, and the other was within a one-point margin. In California, where Democrats retaliated with new congressional maps of their own, they had picked up three of the five they targeted and were leading in the remaining two. 

With GOP-leaning congressional maps powerless in the face of the blue wave, Democrats won the U.S. House and are set to have a substantial majority.The party has also wrested control of the U.S. Senate, leaving Trump to reckon with a Congress under full Democratic control for his last two years in office. 

New faces

Under less dramatic circumstances, a number of new faces will join the ranks of Texas’ congressional delegation to replace ten U.S. representatives who are either retiring, gave up their seats to run for other offices or lost their primaries for reelection. Most of the races were in noncompetitive general election districts.

Two sitting representatives ran for U.S. Senate but lost in their respective primaries: Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, fell to James Talarico while GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, finished behind Sen. John Cornyn and Ken Paxton. 

Reverend Frederick Haynes III won Crockett’s endorsement to succeed her in the heavily Democratic 30th District. A Dallas native, Haynes has been pastor of the city’s Friendship-West Baptist Church for more than 40 years. He sailed his way into Congress in the deep blue district Tuesday. 

Mortgage loan officer Jon Bonck will succeed Hunt in the safely red 38th District. Bonck received endorsements from Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and other influential Republicans leading up to his victory in the general election. 

The tenure of Rep. Chip Roy will also come to an end in January after the congressman ran for Texas attorney general, a contest he lost in a primary runoff to Mayes Middleton. This election left the staunchly Republican 21st District in the hands of Mark Teixeira, a former professional baseball player who started his 14-season Major League career as the fifth overall draft pick for the Texas Rangers in 2001. 

And one incumbent, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, was forced into an early exit from his safe Republican seat by his primary rival, state Rep. Steve Toth of Conroe. The business owner defeated investment banker and Democratic nominee Shaun Finnie, and will be joining the U.S. House after five total terms, including the last eight years, as a state legislator.

Among the six soon-to-be retirees, two are Democrats. The seats of Reps. Lloyd Doggett and Marc Veasey will be filled, respectively, by Rep. Greg Casar, who ran for Doggett’s Austin seat after his own district was scrambled, and former Rep. Colin Allred. Both are returning to Congress — Allred after two years out of office — in new districts. 

A new cast of Republicans will take over in four other safe districts.

Five-term Rep. Jodey Arrington will leave his seat to Tom Sell, who worked in the office of former Rep. Larry Combest. Sell worked at a law firm he founded with Combest before running for the U.S. House. 

Rep. Michael McCaul will be succeeded by Chris Gober, who, before running for office, worked as the chief lawyer of Elon Musk’s America PAC that has channeled $216 million toward Republicans this cycle.

Rep. Morgan Luttrell also chose not to run for reelection after two terms. That opened the door for Jessica Steinmann, an attorney who previously worked in Cruz’s office as well as in the first Trump administration’s Department of Justice. 

And a deceptively familiar face will replace Rep. Troy Nehls – that of his identical twin brother, Trever Nehls, who served in the U.S. Army for more than three decades and retired from the military as a Colonel. He’ll represent the Houston-area 22nd Congressional District.