What happened

A panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 Tuesday that the new Texas congressional map drawn up at the behest of President Donald Trump was likely an illegal racial gerrymander. Texas Republicans engineered the map to add five GOP seats to their slim House majority, setting off a nationwide redistricting fight. The court ordered Texas to use its 2021 congressional map in next year’s midterm elections.

Who said what

Texas Republicans said publicly they were drawing the new districts for partisan reasons, as allowed by the Supreme Court, but “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump appointee, said in his 160-page opinion. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the GOP-led state Legislature adopted “rac

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