Texas’ new congressional map means taxation without representation

Texas House Republicans unveiled their new congressional redistricting map today. It essentially means several million Democrats in Texas will now face taxation without representation.

But let’s back up to explain what’s going on here. In short, President Trump is facing a wave of opposition in the 2026 midterm elections. If the election is free and fair, he faces the loss of the U.S. House. Trump doesn’t want that, of course, so he asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott to call a special, mid-decade legislative session to redraw the state’s congressional map. This gerrymandering is intended to net Republicans an additional five seats in the U.S. House.

Today, Texas Republicans released their proposed map to do just that.

Here’s what the new map means: Residents of heavily Democratic neighborhoods in the center of Dallas will now be represented in Congress by a Republican in rural east Texas. Similar scenarios are set to play out in Houston, San Antonio and Austin.

Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder immediately said the new map was “illegally drawn in a way that silences the voices of minority communities across Texas.” He continued by saying, correctly, that, “Texas congressional districts should belong to Texans, who choose their representatives, but this proposed map lets the representatives pick their voters instead.”

Scudder and the party are right. But what they’ve left out is that this essentially becomes taxation without representation. And that’s a crucial point. When tens of thousands of residents in major Texas cities are represented by those who don't live in their cities — people who, in some cases, live hundreds of miles away — then I'm not sure how else to describe it. Their representation in Congress is only nominal. A technicality. Fake.

When you live in a major urban area and are unable to elect anyone from your city who shares your views and concerns, who faces the same daily experiences you do, and who will faithfully carry those concerns to the federal government, then you are not being represented. Of course, you’re still paying taxes.

This is taxation without representation. And it’s un-American in the most historical sense. As James Otis is credited with saying in early revolutionary America, “taxation without representation is tyranny.”

The line was potent then and it could be now. “No taxation without representation” became a rallying cry among those who opposed the Crown. It should be again, in Texas and wherever else fascists aim to engineer their own electorates.

Gerrymandering is a scourge, even when done defensively (as California and New York may soon do, justifiably). We should all be represented in Congress by those from our own communities. Anything less is tyranny. And tyranny should be met, once again, with serious and sustained opposition. Sic semper tyrannis.

Brandon Friedman is the founder of The McPherson Square Group and Rakkasan Tea Company. During the Obama administration, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and as the Director of Digital Strategy at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served two tours as an infantry officer in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan and Iraq. Follow him on Bluesky.