Now, we can’t say whether or not Vasut was lying at Monday evening’s hearing on redistricting, which was attended by hundreds at UT Arlington. But it seems mighty unlikely that less than 48 hours after that gathering, in which nearly every person who testified voiced opposition to a mid-decade redrawing of electoral lines, the map appeared out of thin air.
On Wednesday morning, Texas GOP lawmakers released the first draft of what could be the state’s new congressional map. In some aggressive reworking of boundary lines, the map seems to assure President Donald Trump that, come November 2026, Texas will add five additional Republicans to the congressional majority.
Dallas’ Democratic congressional members came under fire in the redrawing, a shot that was slightly expected thanks to a letter sent to Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month from the Department of Justice which accused CD 33, which spans from Fort Worth to Oak Cliff and is held by Democrat Marc Veasey, of packing racial minorities into an illegal coalition district. (At least, the DOJ’s interpretation of a recent appeals court ruling claims the district’s design is unlawful. Legal experts have called the department’s understanding of the ruling into question.)
“We don’t know what these maps will look like. No one has seen them,” a spokesperson for Veasey’s office told us just a few weeks ago. “The changes could be minimal, or they could be drastic. We don’t know.”
Now that we’ve seen a map, “drastic” seems an understatement.
What the Proposed Map Will Mean for North Texas
As it stands now, based on the maps drawn in 2021 by Republicans, approved by Republicans and defended in federal court by Republicans, Texas’ 38 Congressional seats are held by 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats, with one vacancy. Three of those Democratic seats are in North Texas: CD 33, held by Marc Veasey; CD 30, held by Jasmine Crockett; and CD 32, held by Julie Johnson.The new maps, if adopted, would see the Democratic support for Crockett’s seat strengthened. Bad news for that one guy on Twitter who swears he’s the Republican leader Southern Dallas needs.
But the redrawing of CD 32 and CD 33 is where Democrats will start to have issues, as now Johnson and Veasey will likely have to face each other in a primary for the 33rd district seat, while CD 32 goes red for the first time since 2016.
I loaded the Hunter redistricting proposal to DRA. Here's the Trump 2024 results for the proposed new Texas Congressional map: https://t.co/tzA8eJPuKW#txlege pic.twitter.com/epZeVvmn8q
— Brad Johnson (@bradj_TX) July 30, 2025
The proposed map turns CD 32, an urban hub that runs through Plano and East Dallas, into a skinny sliver through Richardson and Garland that bulges out east past Mineola. We couldn't say what Mineola, a town of 20,000, has in common legislatively with Richardson.
CD 33, a district created by court order in 2012 after the NAACP and LULAC argued that the compactness of Hispanic and Black populations in Tarrant and Dallas Counties warranted the creation of a new majority-minority coalition district, would become an H-shaped district confined to Dallas County only. Veasey, a Fort Worthian who has held the seat since it was created, would find himself booted from his hometown.
“Just imagine how you'd feel if you worked for Julie’s [campaign], and you work real hard and you block walked and phone banked and then, boop, now you're in Keith Self’s [district],” Darrel Evans, a communications chair with the Collin County Democratic Party, told the Observer. “You just feel so disenfranchised, I would imagine.”
A Glimmer of Hope for Democrats
So things don’t look great for Democrats in North Texas’ urban core.But Evans isn’t despairing just yet, and the source of his belief that Democrats can make this proposed map work is northern Collin County.
Part of what’s weird about this situation (other than the fact that the President of the United States is getting directly involved in a state issue and lawmakers are just letting him) is the fact that redistricting is typically done at the start of each decade, after new census data is available. This ensures that the people drawing the state maps know how many people are in each state, determining how much representation each state has, and where those people are.
The last census was conducted in 2020, and since that time, northern Collin County has been ground zero for some of the fastest growth in the entire country. Take Princeton, for example. Between July 2023 and July 2024, the town’s population grew nearly 31%. Celina, Anna and Melissa were also named some of the United States’ fastest-growing towns, and all are in Collin County.
Evans believes that the massive migration to these areas could give Democrats some new footholds, without Republicans ever seeing it coming. The growth in these areas has led to infrastructure issues like water shortages, understaffed emergency services and inadequate roads. Those aren’t issues Evans believes that establishment Republicans are prepared to face head-on, but they are issues that he thinks will drive voters to the polls, even if it's a Democrat running on the platform.
“[Republicans] are doing this, I want people to remember, without good data,” said Evans. “And I'm really hoping that they're going to make some errors, because I don't see the Texas GOP as being all that competent.”
