2022 Texas State House election, showing the result in each district. PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA

Washington (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps to create more House seats favorable to his party, part of a broader effort to help the GOP retain control of the chamber in next year’s midterm elections.

The president’s directive signals part of the strategy Trump is likely to take to avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House just two years into his presidency. It comes shortly before the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature is scheduled to begin a special session next week during which it will consider new congressional maps to further marginalize Democrats in the state.

Asked as he departed the White House for Pittsburgh about the possibility of adding GOP-friendly districts around the country, Trump responded, “Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five.”

Trump had a call earlier Tuesday with members of Texas’ Republican congressional delegation and told them the state Legislature would pursue five new winnable seats through redistricting, according to a person familiar the call who was not authorized to discuss it. The call was first reported by Punchbowl News.

Some Texas Republicans have been hesitant about redrawing the maps because there’s only so many new seats a party can grab before its incumbents are put at risk. Republicans gain new seats by relocating Democratic voters out of competitive areas and into other GOP-leaning ones, which may then turn competitive with the influx.

“There comes the point where you slice the baloney too thin and it backfires,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Democrats will have a hard time retaliating Congressional maps drawn after the 2020 census were expected to remain in place through the end of the decade. If Texas redraws them at the behest of Trump, that could lead other states to do the same, including those controlled by Democrats. In response to the Texas plan, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on social media: “Two can play this game.”

Still, Democrats may have their hands at least partly tied. Many of the states the party controls have their state legislative and congressional maps drawn by independent commissions that are not supposed to favor either party. That’s the case in California, where Newsom has no role in the redistricting game after voters approved the commission system with a 2008 ballot measure.

“There isn’t a whole lot Democrats can do right now,” said Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice. “In terms of doing tit-for-tat, they’ve got a weaker hand.”

Li noted that Democrats are backing lawsuits to overturn some GOP-drawn maps, and there’s a chance some of those could be successful before the midterm elections. That includes in Wisconsin, where the new liberal majority on the state supreme court declined to immediately overturn the state’s GOP-drawn congressional maps earlier this year. Democrats and their allies have filed suit in a lower court hoping to beat the clock and get new maps in place by next year.

Democrats also have litigation in Utah and Florida.