A federal court ruled that Texas cannot use its recently passed congressional map for the 2026 midterm elections and will instead have to rely on a previous map from 2021. Texas Republican state legislators over the summer pushed for a new congressional map that could garner the GOP five additional House seats. In his ruling striking down the new congressional map, Trump-appointed Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote, “The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton vowed to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the ruling.