Texas GOP Starts Redistricting Hearings Amid Democratic Backlash

The first hearing on the plan to redraw Texas' congressional boundaries got under way Thursday with no proposed new map for the public to comment on and no compelling reason to scrap the plan enacted just four years earlier, other than the fact that Gov. Greg Abbott ordered it up in the special legislative session.

State Rep. Cody Vasut, the Angleton Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on Redistricting, acknowledged that he did not ask for a rare, mid-decade overhaul of the congressional map. But he did tell the panel that it would be "prudent" to take up the matter because the governor sets the agenda for special sessions and that the process will be fair.

"We're going to follow the Voting Rights Act. We're going to follow the law," Vasut told the committee.

Democrats in the GOP-controlled Legislature have been adamant that the redistricting pushed by President Donald Trump and designed to add as many as five new Republican seats in Congress is unnecessary. Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, who leads the House Democratic Caucus, said he found the whole matter puzzling.

"I'm personally very confused about why exactly we're here doing this," he told Vasut. "I only know what I know, you only know what you know. And between the two of us, I don't think either one us knows anything about why we're here."

Trump has called for Texas Republicans to draw up five more winnable districts ahead of the midterm elections, which could give them control of 30 of the state's 38 congressional districts. The theory is that they would move Republican voters from deep red districts into blue ones to tilt them toward the GOP.

Vasut said no map will be filed until after the public hearings in Houston on Saturday and in Arlington on Monday are completed. And, he added, before the panel votes on any map, at least one additional public hearing will be held.

Whatever the redistricting process yields during the monthlong session in Austin could have consequence that could reach far beyond the borders of Texas. Republicans presently hold a slim seven-seat majority in the 435-member House going into the 2026 midterm elections. That means if Democrats pick up just four seats next year, they would take control.

Testimony was given by three Democratic members of Congress — Sylvia Garcia of Houston, Joaquin Castro of San Antonio and Greg Casar of Austin. Each of them said mid-decade redistricting would likely harm constituent service.

"It would be incredibly disruptive," Castro told the panel.

Garcia said the reason the Legislature is engaged in scrapping the GOP-drawn maps that were signed into law by Abbott is because the governor is "playing political games to appease" Trump.

"And now we are pretending that the very maps he's now insisting to be changed," Garcia said.

Casar said his district, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio, was drawn to provides representation for Hispanics.

"Texas' 35th congressional district was drawn by the body. It was constitutionally mandated to be drawn, and it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and the conservative justices on that court as a promise to Latino communities in Central Texas to make sure they had meaningful participation," Casar said.

Former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, who is among more than two dozen candidates hoping to win the special election in November for the congressional seat left vacant when U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner died in March, said the redistricting threatens to dice up the predominantly Black district because no incumbent is in place to defend it.

"We're talking about a district that will have gone without a voice, gone without an advocate, an advocate for federal funding, for a period of over 18 months by this time this special election and the runoff are resolved," Edwards said in an interview outside the hearing room. "And now to add insult to injury, you literally put them on the chopping block when they have no voting member to advocate on the district's behalf.

"There are 800,000 people that live in the 18th congressional district, and they have no voice."

Isaia Martin, another candidate for the open seat, was forcibly removed after shouting "Shame!" to the committee and ignoring Vasut's instructions to quiet down. Several security officers tackled him as he resisted effort to have him removed. He was than taken out of the Capitol.

At the rally ahead of the hearing Thursday called "Fight the Trump Takeover," former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke called on governors in Democratic states like California and New Jersey to redraw their congressional maps to offset the seats Texas Republicans hope to pick up.

"We have to get off of defense and onto offense," the former candidate for governor and for the U.S. Senate told reporters after an outdoor rally on the Capitol grounds Thursday. "We have to quit waiting for them to hit first. We got to hit them first, and we got to hit them harder."

Other Democrats who spoke outside of the Capitol were focused on the daunting task of blunting the Republicans, who hold all of the levers of power in Texas.

"They're going to draw our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want," said state Rep. James Talarico of Austin, who is mulling a run for U.S. Senate next year. "And Texas is is the testing ground for this strategy. If they succeed here, they're going to do it in every red state across the country before the 2026 elections."

Democrats have sought to cast Abbott as the villain doing Trump's bidding in Texas to minimize any GOP losses in the midterms. Abbott, meanwhile, said in an interview earlier in the week that his goal is adopt a map that alleviates the concerns expressed by Trump's U.S. Justice Department that as many as four of Texas' present district were drawn with an illegal emphasis on race.

"I don't know what the map looks like (or) how many people in Congress it would add on the Republican side," the three-term Republican said. "But we will be working to ensure that we are going to draw maps that will provide the greatest opportunity for Texans to have the ability to vote for their candidate of choice. I have no preconceived information about what it would do to any district."

O'Rourke, who represented El Paso in the U.S. House from 2013 until 2019, said that trying to squeeze more Republican voters into Democrat-held districts could backfire.

"They're going to be at least five more vulnerable Republican-controlled districts that are going to be a little bit less of a lock for Republicans," O'Rourke said. "We got a field great candidates there. So, so what if we went from a scenario where we're dreading losing five seats to one where we're maybe picking up six or seven or eight? It sounds crazy, but look at Trump's first midterm election in 2018 we picked up 12 state House seats."