AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday signed into law a new congressional voting map designed to help Republicans gain more seats in the 2026 midterm elections, delivering a win for President Donald Trump and his desire to hold onto a slim GOP majority in the U.S. House.
The Texas map drafted in rare mid-decade redistricting prompted fierce protests from Democrats and sparked a gerrymandering tug-of-war for voters in states across the country.
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“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” Abbott said in a video he posted on X of him signing the legislation.
Before Texas lawmakers passed their new map, California passed a bill asking voters to approve new Democratic-leaning districts to counter any Republican gains in Texas.
The incumbent president’s party usually loses congressional seats in the midterm election. On a national level, the partisan makeup of existing districts puts Democrats within three seats of a majority.
Texas Democrats have vowed to challenge the new map in court. They delayed a vote by two weeks by leaving Texas on Aug. 3 in protest and to rally support nationally. Upon their return, they were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring to ensure they showed up for debate.
But the large Republican majority in the Texas Legislature made its ultimate passage all but inevitable.
The head of Texas’ Democratic Party criticized Abbott, saying he and Republicans “effectively surrendered Texas to Washington” with the new map.
“They love to boast about how ‘Texas Tough’ they are, but when Donald Trump made one call, they bent over backwards to prioritize his politics over Texans,” state Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder said in a statement. “Honestly, it’s pathetic.”
Because the Supreme Court has blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing in court that it violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority communities together so they can select representatives of their choice.
Republican leaders have denied the map is racially discriminatory and contend the new map creates more new majority-minority seats than the previous one. They have also been explicit in their desire to draw a new map for a goal of electing more Republicans.
This version corrects when Democrats left Texas to Aug. 3 instead of July.
A Coon Rapids man was killed Thursday night when his motorcycle crashed into a Volkswagen sport utility vehicle on Snelling Avenue near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in Falcon Heights.
The Volkswagen Touareg was traveling southbound on Snelling Avenue, which is also Minnesota 51, and turned to go eastbound on Garden Avenue around 10:20 p.m. when it was struck by a Yamaha MT09 operated by 27-year-old Jacob Isaac Lewer, according to Minnesota State Patrol.
Lewer was declared dead. His passenger, a 25-year-old Scandia woman, suffered non-life threatening injuries. Road conditions were dry and it is unknown if alcohol was a factor in the crash.
Roseville Police, St. Anthony Police and the St. Paul Fire Department EMS also responded to the scene. The driver of the SUV, a 28-year-old Roseville woman, was not injured and showed no evidence of alcohol impairment, according to State Patrol.
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A measure that would allow nearly any private citizen to sue out-of-state prescribers and others who send abortion pills into Texas has won first-round approval in the state House.
It would be the first law of its kind in the country and part of the ongoing effort by abortion opponents to fight the broad use of the pills, which are used in the majority of abortions in the U.S. — including in states where abortion is illegal.
The bill passed in the House on Thursday and could receive a final vote in the Republican-dominated state Senate next week. If that happens, it would be up to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, to decide whether to sign it into law.
Here are things to know about the Texas legislation and other legal challenges to abortion pills.
The Texas measure is a new approach to crack down on pills
Even before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed state abortion bans, pills — most often a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol — were the most common way to obtain abortion access.
Now, with Texas and 11 other states enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, and four more that bar most of them after the first six weeks or so of gestation, the pills have become an even more essential way abortion is provided in the U.S.
“We believe that women need to be protected from the harms of chemical abortion drugs,” said Amy O’Donnell, a spokesperson for Texas Alliance for Life, which supports the bill. “They harm women and their intent is to harm unborn babies.”
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Under the bill, providers could be ordered to pay $100,000. But only the pregnant woman, the man who impregnated her or other close relatives could collect the entire amount. Anyone else who sues could receive only $10,000, with the remaining $90,000 going to charity.
The measure echoes a 2021 Texas law that uses the prospect of lawsuits from private citizens to enforce a ban on abortion once fetal activity can be detected — at about six weeks’ gestation. The state also has a ban on abortions at all stages of pregnancy.
The pill bill also contains provisions intended to keep those with a history of family violence from collecting and barring disclosure of women’s personal or medical information in court documents.
Anna Rupani, executive director of Fund Texas Choice, a group that helps women access abortion, including by traveling to other states for it, said the law is problematic.
“It establishes a bounty hunting system to enforce Texas’ laws beyond the state laws,” she said.
A law could open the door to further battles between states
While most Republican-controlled states have restricted or banned abortions in the last three years, most Democratic-controlled states have taken steps to protect access.
And at least eight states have laws that seek to protect prescribers who send abortion pills to women in states where abortion is banned.
There are already legal battles that could challenge those, both involving the same New York doctor.
Louisiana has brought criminal charges against Dr. Maggie Carpenter, accusing her of prescribing the pills to a pregnant minor. And a Texas judge has ordered her to pay a $100,000 penalty plus legal fees for violating that state’s ban on prescribing abortion medication by telemedicine. New York officials are refusing to extradite her to Louisiana or to enter the Texas civil judgement.
If the Texas law is adopted and use, it’s certain to trigger a new round of legal battles over whether laws from one state can be enforced in another.
“Its very different from what’s come before it,” said Greer Donley, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who studies the legal landscape of abortion.
Two key states seek to get into anti-mifepristone legal battle
Texas and Florida — the second and third most populous states in the country — asked a court last week to let them join a lawsuit filed last year by the Republican attorneys general of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to make mifepristone harder to access.
Those states contend — as many abortion opponents do — that mifepristone is too risky to be prescribed via telehealth and that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should roll back approvals and tighten access.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year unanimously rejected a case making similar arguments, saying the anti-abortion doctors behind it did lacked the legal standing to take up the case.
This week, more than 260 reproductive health researchers from across the nation submitted a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration affirming the safety record of the abortion medication mifepristone. In the letter, the researchers urge the FDA not to impose new restrictions on the drug and to make decisions based on “gold-standard science.”
The FDA is also facing a lawsuit from a Hawaii doctor and heath care associations arguing that it restricts mifepristone too much
Associated Press Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this article.
By JACK BROOK, Associated Press/Report for America
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast with catastrophic storm surge and flooding, New Orleans marked the storm’s anniversary Friday with solemn memorials, uplifting music and a parade that honored the dead, the displaced and the determined survivors who endured and rebuilt.
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Dignitaries and longtime residents gathered under gray skies at the memorial to Katrina’s victims in a New Orleans cemetery where dozens who perished in the storm but were never identified or claimed are interred.
“We do everything to keep the memory of these people alive,” said Orrin Duncan, who worked for the coroner when Katrina hit. He comes to the memorial every year, opening the cemetery gate and making sure the grass is cut.
A Category 3 hurricane when it made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina inflicted staggering destruction. The storm killed nearly 1,400 people across five states and racked up an estimated $200 billion in damage, flattening homes on the coast and sending ruinous flooding into low-lying neighborhoods.
Two decades later, it remains the costliest U.S. hurricane on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The failure of New Orleans’ federal levee system inundated about 80% of the city in floodwaters that took weeks to drain. Thousands of people clung to rooftops to survive or waited for evacuation in the sweltering, under-provisioned Superdome football stadium.
Mayor says New Orleans came back ‘better and stronger’
At the cemetery memorial, revered jazz clarinetist Michael White played “When the Saints Go Marching In” as a procession carried several wreaths to lay beside mausoleums of the storm victims. Mayor LaToya Cantrell recalled the city’s sacrifices and projected optimism for its future.
“New Orleans is still here; New Orleans still stands,” Cantrell said. “New Orleans came back better and stronger than ever before.”
Another ceremony was planned in the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly Black community where a levee breach led to devastating flooding that was exacerbated by a delayed government response. Organizers said they also intended to draw attention to the sinking city’s poor infrastructure, gentrification and vulnerability to climate change.
Jasminne Navarre hugs Constance Osum, left, during a wreath laying event to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, at the Hurricane Katrina Memorial in Charity Hospital Cemetery in New Orleans, Friday, Aug. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
And thousands were expected to join a brass band parade known as a second line. The beloved New Orleans tradition has its roots in African American jazz funerals, in which grieving family members march with the deceased alongside a band and trailed by a second line of dancing friends and bystanders.
A parade has been staged on every Katrina anniversary since local artists organized it in 2006 to help neighbors heal and unite the community.
“Second line allows everybody to come together,” said the Rev. Lennox Yearwood of Hip Hop Caucus, an organizer of the anniversary events. “We’re still here, and despite the storm, people have been strong and very powerful and have come together each and every year to continue to be there for one another.”
City leaders are pushing for the anniversary to become a state holiday.
FILE – Arnold James tries to keep his feet as a strong gust nearly blows him over as makes his way on foot to the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Aug. 29, 2005. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File)
FILE – Evelyn Turner cries alongside the body of her common-law husband, Xavier Bowie, after he died in New Orleans, Aug. 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
FILE – Rhonda Braden walks through the destruction in her childhood neighborhood in Long Beach, Miss., Aug. 31, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the area. (AP Photo/Rob Carr, File)
FILE – A military helicopter drops a sandbag as work continues to repair the 17th Street canal levee in New Orleans, Sept. 5, 2005. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, Pool, File)
FILE – A second-line parade makes its way past homes built by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, in the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, Aug. 29, 2015. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
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FILE – Arnold James tries to keep his feet as a strong gust nearly blows him over as makes his way on foot to the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Aug. 29, 2005. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File)
The population of New Orleans, nearly half a million before Katrina, is now 384,000 after displaced residents scattered across the nation. Many ended up in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.
In the aftermath, the levee system was rebuilt, public schools were privatized, most public housing projects were demolished and a hospital was shuttered. About 134,000 housing units were damaged by Katrina, according to The Data Center, a nonprofit research agency.
The storm had a disproportionate impact on the city’s Black residents. While New Orleans remains a majority Black city, tens of thousands of Black residents were unable to return after Katrina. A botched and racially biased federal loan program for home rebuilding, coupled with a shortage of affordable housing, have made it harder for former residents to come back.
New Orleans resident Gary Wainwright said never misses the cemetery memorial service on Katrina’s anniversary. On Friday he wore a frayed red necktie, covered with the phrase “I love you.” He salvaged it from his battered home in the storm’s aftermath.
“It’s a little bit tattered, like the city,” Wainwright said. “But it’s still beautiful.” he said.
Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
