Hakeem Jeffries Highlights Public Awareness in Texas Redistricting Fight

The top Democrat in the U.S. House met with state lawmakers seeking to fight the planned Republican-led overhaul of the Texas congressional map, but declined Thursday to divulge behind-the-scenes strategy for blocking the move.

He rejected the analogy that the outnumbered Democratic lawmakers in the Capitol are comparable to the defenders at the Alamo, fighting on their own with no hope of reinforcement.

"We’re going to do everything possible to support the Texas legislators," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York told reporters. "All options should be on the table to protect the people of Texans. But Texas Democrats are going to be the ones to decide that."

The appearance in a room outside of the Texas House chamber was the second of two events over two days Jeffries held with Texas Democrats in the Legislature and in Congress. On Wednesday night, he met privately for about 90 minutes with several dozen elected Democrats ostensibly to discuss ways they might somehow derail the unusual mid-decade redistricting orchestrated by the Trump administration to better position Republicans to hold their razor-thin majority in the U.S. House.

Jeffries, flanked by a cadre of state legislators and by six of the 12 Texas Democrats in Congress, sidestepped several questions about whether he was encouraging — and perhaps promising to the cover the costs — of a quorum break that would grind legislative work to a halt. Such a move would require 51 or more state House members leaving the state.

The one card that Jeffries and other Democrats who spoke at the news conference said they are playing is that of public relations.

"This special session should be about relief, recovery and resiliency in the face of a state government that failed the people of the Texas Hill Country. But it is not," Jeffries said in a reference to the deadly floods of the July 4 that claimed at least 138 lives.

Flood relief is part of the special session that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott convened July 21, and was the subject of a legislative hearing Thursday in Kerrville, but it has been largely overshadowed by the bitter and partisan redistricting battle.

Jeffries has a personal stake in the outcome in Texas. His party needs to flip only two GOP House seats next year for him to become speaker, which would put him behind Republican Vice President J.D. Vance in the line of succession to the presidency.

The maps unveiled Wednesday by state Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi could cost Democrats' five crucial seats in Washington. Lawmakers in the Texas House and Senate could vote perhaps as early as next week to enact that map before the 30-day special legislative session ends Aug. 19.

Jeffries and and others who spoke said depriving Democrat-leaning constituencies of the ability to elect a congress member of their choice can directly can have tangible consequences.

Redistricting, said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin, "has a direct impact on the lives of our fellow Texans. For a Texas veteran who needs help from the Congress member, a small business (person) who needs help with the SBA on taxes, under this map when they go to that congressional office, in many cases, they will find the door to shut."

Doggett, the senior Texan in Congress, is among Democrats who could be squeezed out by the new map. Much of his present district has been merged into the district now held by fellow Democrat Greg Casar. Another congressional Democrat at the news conference whose district was made virtually unwinnable was 20-year House veteran Al Green of Houston.

Green, who is Black, said the GOP map would disenfranchise voters of color. He won reelection in 2025 unopposed, and Trump lost the district in a wipe out. A Hearst Newspaper analysis shows in the newly drawn district, Trump would have won by 15 percentage points in 2024. Under the proposal, Most of Green's constituents would move to the vacant 18th Congressional District, which had been represented by U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, until his death in March.

Jeffries would not concede that the new map would be in place for the 2026 midterms. Even if it is enacted by the Legislature, he said the next stop would be in the courts, both within in the legal system and in the arena of public opinion.

"My response is simple. First and foremost, we have to make clear to the people of Texas what's taking place, because it's unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American," he said. "And as elected officials, we have that responsibility. That's not something we can just brush aside."