It’s more than a redistricting fight. It’s about the future of democracy and education.
Some people may wonder why the Texas State Teachers Association is siding with the Democratic legislators from Texas who fled the state in the fight over a congressional redistricting map. What does this have to do with education?
TSTA is backing the Democrats because this is more than just a matter of routinely redrawing political boundaries. It is an effort by the president of the United States to rig the 2026 midterm elections that will determine the future control of the U.S. House of Representatives and, in turn, the future of our democracy and the education system that is dependent on it.
Since inauguration day, both democracy and education have been under attack by President Trump, a me-first, autocratic leader who believes the Constitution doesn’t apply to him and who is aided and abetted by a lapdog, rubber-stamp congressional majority that refuses to exercise its constitutional role to rein him in. Members of that majority are a combination of Trump accomplices, political cowards and individuals who, in the pre-Trump era, wouldn’t have qualified to be Capitol tour guides, much less policymakers.
Some federal judges have tried to apply the brakes to Trump’s abuses – including deep cuts to public education and health care and excessive, sometimes illegal enforcement of immigration laws — but with limited success. His minions have lied to some judges and ignored others, while so far, the U.S. Supreme Court has mostly stayed out of the president’s way.
The current Republican majority in the U.S. House is narrow, 219-212, with four vacant seats. Three of the vacant seats were most recently held by Democrats, and one by a Republican. All these seats, including vacant ones, will be on November 2026 ballots in the various states.
These numbers plus Trump’s rising unfavorable ratings mean Republicans may lose their House majority. If they do, a new Democratic majority will gain control over the House’s oversight powers and use them to challenge and investigate the administration’s attacks on democracy and maybe impeach the president for the third time, all of which Trump fears.
So, to protect himself, he is trying to rig the election. He started by asking Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional district lines to add five more Republicans to the U.S. House and increase the chances of the GOP keeping its majority. So, Gov. Greg Abbott – one of Trump’s Texas lapdogs – added congressional redistricting to the Legislature’s special session agenda.
When Republican leaders produced a new map that ignored voting rights protections for minority Texans and took five congressional seats from Democratic incumbents to create new districts favoring Republicans, more than 50 Democratic legislators left Texas to break a quorum and keep the House from passing the new redistricting bill before the special session adjourns Aug. 19.
Democrats may maintain their session boycott until then, but Abbott remains in control because he can keep calling special sessions of 30 days each, making it likely Democrats ultimately will return, and the Republican majority will pass the new redistricting bill.
With the Texas redistricting walkout receiving national attention, the fight is likely to continue in other states. If Trump gets his way in Texas, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California vows to pursue mid-decade redistricting to add five Democrats at the expense of five Republicans to his blue state’s congressional delegation, and governors of other Democratic states may follow suit. Meanwhile, urged on by Trump, other Republican states may follow Texas’ lead.
“It’s existential now,” U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., told the Axios news site. “I think there’s broad agreement by Democrats that…we simply can’t stand by and let the Republican Party completely ruin the map.”
Bare-knuckled partisanship isn’t pretty. Neither is Trump’s presidency, and the midterm elections are crucial.
