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texas
Alito Temporarily Reinstates Texas' Trump-Requested Redrawn Maps
Alito's order came in response to a ruling from a federal court in Texas on Tuesday, which blocked the new congressional maps on the basis that they were "racially gerrymandered."
Nov 22, 2025
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday temporarily restored a controversial Trump-backed Texas redistricting plan that could grant Republicans an extra five seats in the House of Representatives.
Alito's order came in response to a ruling from a federal court in Texas on Tuesday, which blocked the redrawn congressional maps on the basis that they were "racially gerrymandered."
"It is ordered that the November 18, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, case No. 3:21-cv-259 is hereby administratively stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court," Alito wrote around one hour after Texas appealed the district court's ruling.
Alito was the justice to issue the stay because he handles emergency requests from the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas.
"Well, the Supreme Court fucked us yet again."
Friday's ruling is not the final say on the fate of Texas' new maps, but allows the state to continue preparations for the 2026 midterm elections under the redistricting while the full Supreme Court considers the case. Texas has asked for a ruling by December 1, one week before the December 8 filling deadline for congressional races. The state is set to hold primary elections in March.
Alito has asked the civil rights organizations fighting to block the maps for more materials by Monday, November 24—a sign, according to Politico, that he planned to put the case "on a fast-track."
Texas was the first state to heed President Donald Trump's request to redraw its maps in order to give Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections and attempt to prevent the Democrats from retaking the House. In response, Missouri and North Carolina also redrew their maps to give the GOP one extra seat each. However, California voters then retaliated by approving a proposition to redistrict in a way that would see an additional five Democrats elected. All of these plans now face legal challenges.
As the fight for control of the House continues through maps and courts, Texas Democratic activists haven't given up on voters.
"Well, the Supreme Court fucked us yet again," said Allison Campolo, who chairs the Democratic Party of Tarrant County, Texas, on social media Friday, "but—We in Texas know the cavalry doesn't come for us. We save ourselves."
"100 people came out to our party headquarters tonight and we were absolutely PACKED with candidates running for every seat and bench from the top to the bottom of the ticket," Campolo continued. "Texas Democrats are here to save our county, our state, and our country. We'll be seeing you at the polls."
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'How Many More Have to Die?' Asks Democrat as Another Texas Woman's Death Blamed on Abortion Ban
"Let's be very clear: Republicans are killing women," said one abortion rights advocate. "Democrats need to start calling them murderers loudly and often."
Nov 20, 2025
After new reporting detailed the latest known woman who died because doctors would not provide her with abortion care under Texas' ban, the Democratic lawmaker who authored the Women's Health Protection Act condemned Republicans in Congress for refusing to "protect women’s basic freedom to survive their own pregnancies."
"It would take only six Republicans in the House to join with us and pass this vital legislation to restore bodily autonomy to every person in this country, regardless of their state or zip code," said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), whose bill would create a new legal protection for the right to provide and obtain abortion care.
Chu's call came as ProPublica reported on the death of Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old pregnant mother of a teenage son who asked doctors to terminate her pregnancy in October 2024 after she experienced seizures and feared she would develop preeclampsia, a life-threatening complication that had led to the stillbirth of her twins a few years earlier.
“Wouldn’t you think it would be better for me to not have the baby?” Walker asked doctors at Methodist Hospital Northeast in San Antonio.
The medical staff assured her there was nothing wrong with her pregnancy and blamed her symptoms on pre-existing conditions including diabetes and high blood pressure—but more than a dozen OB/GYNs reviewed her case and told ProPublica doctors had not followed standard medical practice, which would have been to advise Walker early on in the pregnancy that her health conditions could lead to complications and "to offer termination at any point if she wanted."
Had doctors done do, all of the medical experts said, Walker would not have died at 20 weeks pregnant on her 14-year-old son's birthday last December.
"Her death was preventable, and it was caused by a law written by Republicans to control women’s bodies, no matter the consequences. This is the disgraceful reality of Republican abortion bans that criminalize care and sacrifice women’s lives," said Chu.
Walker found out she was five weeks pregnant in September 2024 after experiencing a seizure. Doctors also noted she had "hypertension at levels so high that it reduces circulation to major organs and can cause a heart attack or stroke," which put her at increased risk for preeclampsia.
But instead of warning Walker of the risks, the medical staff sent her home, where she continued having seizures through her first trimester and her fiance and aunt took turns watching over her.
Texas law prohibits medical providers from "aiding and abetting" abortion care, with doctors facing the loss of their medical license and up to 99 years in prison if they provide an abortion. Abortions are ostensibly permitted in cases when a pregnant person's life or major body function is at risk—but Walker's case demonstrates how medical exceptions within abortion bans often do nothing to ensure a dangerous pregnancy can be terminated to protect a woman's life.
At least one of the more than 90 doctors—including 21 OB/GYNs—who became involved in Walker's care last year, when she was repeatedly hospitalized, acknowledged in a case file that she was at "high risk of clinical deterioration and/or death."
But none of them ever talked to her about terminating the pregnancy.
As Walker's pregnancy progressed, she developed a blood clot in her leg that didn't respond to anticoagulation medicine, and her seizures and high blood pressure remained uncontrolled.
She was diagnosed with preeclampsia at 20 weeks pregnant on December 27—but doctors did not even label her condition as "severe" in her files, let alone provide her with the standard care for the condition at that point in pregnancy, which is an abortion.
Instead, they gave her more blood pressure medication and sent her home, where her son, JJ, found her dead days later.
Author and abortion rights advocate Jessica Valenti said Republicans would likely respond to the news of Walker's death—as they have in the cases of other women who have died after being unable to get abortions in states that ban them—with claims that doctors were legally allowed to "intervene" or "treat" Walker.
"They won't say she could have had an abortion because they don’t believe in life-saving abortions," she said.
This year, in the months after Walker's death and following outrage over numerous similar cases, Texas lawmakers passed a law that Republicans claim would make it easier for women to obtain abortions in cases where they face life-threatening conditions in pregnancy; their conditions no longer need to put them in "imminent" danger for them to obtain care.
But doctors told ProPublica that hospitals in Texas are still likely to avoid providing abortions in cases like Walker's, even under the new statute.
“How many more women have to needlessly suffer?" asked Chu. "How many more have to die? How many more children have to grow up without their mother? How many more parents have to lose their adult daughters before Republicans in Congress finally do what’s right and protect women’s basic freedom to survive their own pregnancies?"
"This doesn't have to be our reality," she added.
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Trump Rebuked by Federal Ruling Against Unlawful Racial Gerrymandering in Texas
“The Trump-Abbott maps are clearly illegal, and I’m glad these judges have blocked them,” said Rep. Greg Casar.
Nov 18, 2025
In a direct rebuke to President Donald Trump's hopes that mid-decade redistricting in key states could help Republicans retain control of Congress in next year's midterm elections, a federal court Tuesday ordered Texas to halt the use of its new congressional maps, redrawn earlier this year as part of a GOP effort to maximize its advantage in the Lone Star State.
The unprecedented mid-decade power grab was expected to net Republicans an extra five seats in the House, which, in tandem with other redistricting efforts in Missouri and North Carolina, may have proven critical in their efforts to blunt a blue wave by Democrats in next year's midterms.
But those efforts ran into an unexpected obstacle when Tuesday's 2-1 ruling by a panel of three federal judges in Texas determined the maps were "racially gerrymandered," disempowering nonwhite voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). With a preliminary injunction, the court ordered the state to instead rely on the boundaries it drew in 2021.
In the majority opinion, District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote that while "politics played a role" in Trump's request for Texas to redraw its maps, the White House explicitly "reframed its request as a demand to redistrict congressional seats based on their racial makeup."
Specifically, Brown's decision cited a claim made in a letter to Texas officials from Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, that the existence of four "coalition districts," where no racial group had a 50% majority, in the 2021 map, was "unconstitutional." The DOJ threatened legal action against Texas if it did not immediately move to redraw these districts, which it promptly did at the direction of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
This is despite the fact that, as Brown points out, "attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General—who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration—describe the DOJ letter as 'legally unsound,' 'baseless,' 'erroneous,' 'ham-fisted,' and 'a mess.'"
"The governor explicitly directed the legislature to draw a new US House map to resolve DOJ’s concerns," Brown wrote. "In other words, the governor explicitly directed the legislature to redistrict based on race. In press appearances, the governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan objective and instead repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts."
"The legislature adopted those racial objectives," he continued. "The redistricting bill’s sponsors made numerous statements suggesting that they had intentionally manipulated the districts’ lines to create more majority-Hispanic and majority-Black districts. The bill’s sponsors’ statements suggest they adopted those changes because such a map would be an easier sell than a purely partisan one."
Republicans will almost certainly appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court. But as the Texas Tribune points out, "time is short," as "candidates only have until December 8 to file for the upcoming election," which means that the district lines must be determined before then.
Chad Dunn, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said: "It seems they’d have a limited chance of success at the Supreme Court because the evidence is so overwhelming. Everyone involved said they were drawing the lines on the basis of race. I don’t see how the Supreme Court sets that aside.”
The Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority has signaled that it intends to strike down Section 2 of the VRA entirely. But that case is currently scheduled for early next year and could not be brought onto the shadow docket in time to override the ruling blocking the Texas map for 2026.
While it could have major implications for future elections, likely allowing the GOP to net over a dozen additional seats, in the near term, Trump's gambit for aggressive racial gerrymandering may blow up in his and his party's face---at least temporarily.
Texas' maps kicked off a retaliatory gerrymandering push by Democrats to redraw maps to their advantage in blue states. That effort culminated in California voters' overwhelming passage earlier this month of Proposition 50, which overrode the state's independent redistricting commission and allowed the state legislature to draw maps that handed Democrats an additional five seats. Similar efforts may soon be underway in New York and Virginia.
With the cushion provided by Texas suddenly yanked away, Democrats now appear to be the clear winners of the gerrymandering war if things stand as they are. Instead of gaining the GOP five extra seats, Trump's gambit could end up costing it five.
"Today’s ruling is a rebuke of Texas Republicans who caved to Donald Trump and trampled the voting rights of their constituents," said Adrian Shelley, the Texas director of Public Citizen. "Gov. Abbott and his allies in the Legislature have forgotten their independent streak as Texans. Perhaps they can find the courage that Republicans in a few other states have to tell the president no.”
Meanwhile, Texas Democrats previously at risk of being gerrymandered out of their seats, rejoiced in the wake of Tuesday's ruling.
This includes Austin Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett, who, in anticipation of seeing their districts smushed into one, have spent the past several months engaged in a sort of shadow primary, which resulted in Doggett saying he'd retire if the maps were upheld. If Tuesday's ruling holds, both of their districts would remain intact.
"The Trump Abbott maps are clearly illegal, and I’m glad these judges have blocked them," Casar said after Tuesday's ruling. "If this decision stands, I look forward to running for reelection in my current district."
While he celebrated the ruling, he said, "no matter what, we must fight to pass a federal ban on gerrymandering once and for all."
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