Even though the legal battle over the Texas GOP’s gerrymandered congressional district maps continues, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the state can move forward using the new maps.
As the Texas Tribune notes, with the candidate filing deadline for the 2026 midterm election coming up on Monday, Dec. 8, those midterms will be held under the racially gerrymandered map Trump demanded that Texas Republicans deliver to him.
That means that Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, one of the LGBTQ+ community’s staunchest allies, no longer lives in the redrawn District 30, the district she was elected to represent. And Congresswoman Julie Johnson, the first openly LGBTQ+ elected to Congress from a Southern state, will be running in a district stretched drastically to the east to include a much more right-leaning population.
Today’s ruling also makes it much more likely that Crockett’s “special announcement” she has set for Monday will be that she is going to run for the U.S. Senate in the midterms. Former Congressman Colin Allred, state Rep. James Talarico and former astronaut Terry Virts have already joined the race for the Democratic nomination for the Senate, with former U.S. Rep. and former Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke also a possible contender.
On the GOP side of the race, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
— Tammye Nash
Related