We’re more than a year out from the 2026 midterm elections, but the Republican Party is already starting to position itself for what will likely be a difficult election cycle.

Texas lawmakers have an unusual plan to redraw their maps early and eke out as many as five more likely Republican seats in the House of Representatives — and California Gov. Gavin Newsom is promising to respond by doing the same thing in California.

To find out more, I asked my colleague Christian Paz, who wrote about these efforts last week. We sat down to chat about his reporting for Vox’s daily newsletter, Today, Explained, and our conversation is below. You can also sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this.

What are Republicans trying to do ahead of the 2026 midterms?

Ahead of the 2026 midterms, when parties in power tend to lose seats in Congress, there is an expectation that Trump, who has a tiny two-seat majority in the House, could lose that majority, which would effectively render him a lame duck for the second half of his second term. In response, Trump has been pushing for Texas state Republicans to take advantage of the fact that the legislature in Texas controls redistricting and to redraw the maps in Texas in the middle of the decade, when it is not usually the norm.

Republicans could gain about five seats that are less competitive than the current map makes it out to be — essentially dividing up Democratic districts, mixing them with some Republican-leaning voters, and carving out five more seats that presumably Republicans would then win and be able to keep their majority in the House.

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