Senate Democrats are pressing the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to investigate whether White House officials have violated the Hatch Act in their push for Texas and other Republican states to undertake a mid-decade redistricting effort.
In a letter dated Tuesday and addressed to OSC senior counsel Charles Baldis, the senators pointed to President Trump’s July 15 remarks from the White House, when he addressed Texas’s redistricting push and “stated that the purpose of the effort is to draw new district lines where ‘I think we’ll get five’ Republican House seats to replace current Democratic members of Congress.”
The lawmakers, also pointed to reporting that senior administration officials met with Texas House Republicans “to discuss a White House push to redraw its congressional map ahead of the midterms,” according to the letter, which was led by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and joined by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
The Hatch Act — which bars federal employees from participating in political activity while on duty or on federal property — does not apply to the president. But the Democratic senators said the administration officials could be in violation of the law and asked the OSC to investigate.
“While the President may not be subject to the Hatch Act’s restrictions on political activities, his senior officials at the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice are subject to its legal requirements,” the letter read. “Multiple reports indicate that White House officials are involved in a political pressure campaign to convince Republicans in Texas and other states to redraw district lines with the goal of providing an advantage to the Republican party in the 2026 midterm elections.”
“We believe an OSC investigation is warranted to determine whether senior White House officials are violating the law’s prohibition on impermissible partisan political activity,” the senators continued in the letter.
The senators raised similar concerns with a DOJ letter that they said “may violate the Hatch Act.”
They pointed to a letter sent from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Gates to Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on July 7, purporting to have “serious concerns regarding the legality” of the four majority-minority districts that Democrats control.
The senators said the letter contained contradictory legal arguments that “reveal that the DOJ letter is a pretext for the clearly partisan political effort that is already out in the open.”
“Given the White House effort, this letter and other potential actions by DOJ that may not be publicly known appear to be directed at the success or failure of a political party and designed to affect the results of upcoming congressional elections,” the senators wrote in the letter.
“We respectfully request that OSC investigate further whether senior White House and U.S. Department of Justice officials are violating federal law’s prohibitions on impermissible political activity,” they added.
An OSC spokesperson confirmed receipt of the letter and said, “the agency is in the process of reviewing it.”
