A special session of the Texas House opened this week to push through a mid-decade congressional map designed to give Republicans five additional U.S. House seats before the 2026 mid-term elections. Acting at the urging of President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled chamber lacks the two-thirds quorum required to act after dozens of Democratic lawmakers left the state. House Speaker Dustin Burrows has signed civil arrest warrants for the absentees, and Governor Greg Abbott has ordered the Department of Public Safety to bring them back to Austin. Democrats say the proposed lines illegally dilute minority voting power and have pledged to stay away until the 30-day session expires on 19 August. Republicans counter that nothing in federal law bars mapmaking between censuses, insisting the changes are necessary to reflect political realities in the fast-growing state. The standoff follows an unrelated federal appeals-court ruling that upheld Texas’s SB1 requirement for voters to include a state-ID or partial Social Security number on mail-in ballots, a decision Trump called “great news.” The clash is reverberating well beyond Texas. California Governor Gavin Newsom said his state could advance a new map aimed at trimming as many as five Republican seats if Texas presses ahead, and leaders in Illinois, New York and other Democratic strongholds are weighing similar steps. Election-law experts warn that the tit-for-tat tactics risk a nationwide “gerrymander war,” noting that Congress—rather than the courts—possesses the constitutional authority to ban mid-cycle redistricting or impose uniform standards.