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In states like Texas, California, Kansas, and beyond, politicians are fighting to redraw congressional maps that could shape power in America for years to come.

The question many are asking is whether 2025's redistricting efforts are about upholding democracy or diluting representation.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Monday, November 24, 2025.

The battle for control of Congress has played out at the ballot box, state legislatures, and in the courts.

Where are all of these efforts today? USA Today chief political correspondent, Philip and Bailey, and USA Today Politics Reporter,

Catherine Palmer, are here to hash out what the implications are for the 26 midterm elections.

It's good to have you both on.

Hey, Dana. How are you?

Thank you for having us.

Catherine, let's start with Texas.

There was a recent federal court ruling on the new congressional map. Can you break that down for us here?

On Tuesday, we had a federal court block Texas from using these brand new congressional maps for its 2026 midterms.

And these are the new districts that sparked what has become this like nationwide arms race

of redistricting. They were passed in August of earlier this year. And this is when you saw

Texas Democrats kind of flee the state and sparked this whole really nationwide saga that

we're still grappling with right now. So we had this court

found what they called substantial evidence that Texas lawmakers racially gerrymandered the map,

meaning that they drew district lines in a way that sorted voters by race, which they contend would

violate the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

And where does Republican Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP go from here?

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