Texans, Democrats condemn GOP redistricting plans at first public hearing

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

Speaking to two dozen state lawmakers, a packed hearing room, two overflow rooms and a robust virtual waiting room, Texans condemned the Legislature’s plan to redraw the state’s congressional map at the House redistricting committee’s first public meeting on Thursday.

“When I saw what you folks were doing up here in the Legislature, I got screaming mad,” said Christy Stockman, from Corpus Christi. “It’s a good old fashioned bait-and-switch, with a power grab added in.”

At the first of seven public hearings, Democratic lawmakers echoed these calls, pressing their Republican colleagues on why redistricting was being pushed through during an overtime special legislative session.

“The effort to change these districts at this time has nothing to do with representing people better,” said Rep. Jon Rosenthal, a Houston Democrat and vice chair of the House committee in charge of redistricting. “It's the opposite of that. It's a power grab at the expense of Black and brown communities.”

The unusual attempt to redraw the congressional map in the middle of the decade comes after pressure from President Donald Trump, who wants to pad Republicans’ narrow majority in the U.S. House ahead of a potentially tough midterm election.

The Legislature has not yet revealed any proposed revisions of the existing map, which was drawn in 2021 and has since reliably yielded 25 seats for Republicans, and 13 for Democrats. Rep. Cody Vasut, the Angleton Republican chairing the House redistricting committee, said the information gathered at the hearings will shape whether and how the maps are redrawn.

“I’ve never gone to a hearing where I didn’t leave thinking about something a little differently,” Vasut told The Texas Tribune on Thursday. “We really want to hear from people on this, and we are listening.”

But many at the hearing, including Democratic lawmakers, condemned the hearings as a sham, saying the map has likely already been drawn by Trump’s political team.

“That's what's at stake here, whether you all are going to work for the people of Texas, as we used to do, to try to do, or whether you take your commandments from Donald Trump and the White House,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat. “I hope that you all will choose to do the business of the people of Texas, as this body has a history of being independent from the federal government.”

Texas, like all states, redraws its electoral lines every ten years, after the census shows who has moved where over the intervening decade. While there’s no law against redrawing the lines more often, it’s uncommon — the last time Texas did a midcycle redistricting was 2003, after Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.

This time, it appears the impetus is coming from the federal government. A few weeks after Trump reportedly began pushing this idea, the Department of Justice issued a letter telling Texas leaders that four of the state’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally drawn based on race. Gov. Greg Abbott added redistricting to the special session agenda, citing “constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice,” even as Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed in a letter to the DOJ that the districts were drawn race blind.

Representatives for the state have repeatedly used the same argument to defend the current maps in court.

At a rally outside the Capitol before Thursday’s hearing, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke accused Trump and Abbott of being “thick as thieves.”

“In order to continue this consolidation of authoritarian power and to destroy this democracy once and for all, [Trump] has to retain control in the United States House of Representatives, where he currently has a very narrow majority,” said O’Rourke, a Democrat from El Paso. “And it turns out that the policies and the programs that he pursues are deeply unpopular with the American people.”

Trump has reportedly asked Texas lawmakers to try to add five additional GOP seats, which will necessarily involve slicing up existing Democratic districts, many of which are made up of mostly Black and Hispanic voters.

Gabriel Rosales, with the League of United Latin American Citizens, told lawmakers that this is part of Texas’ long history of disenfranchising Hispanic voters.

“It's very demoralizing that we can do as much as we can to contribute … but we don't have representation on water boards, on school boards and city councils across the state,” Rosales said. “And then people ask why Latinos don’t vote.”

Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP, said the state’s current maps already under-represent Latino voters, and this proposed switch will likely worsen it. He said it felt like lawmakers were just “checking the box” with the hearings before pushing forward with the maps Trump wanted to see.

“There's no real consequence to what we say and, no disrespect, but we have been disregarded in the past,” Bledsoe said.

Democrats have vowed to do what they can to thwart the process, so far dragging out debate over the rules and meticulously questioning each witness at Thursday’s hearing. It took almost 45 minutes to get through the first three of over 170 registered witnesses.

They also grilled Vasut on why Republicans were moving to redraw district lines now. Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, the House Democratic Caucus chair, asked Vasut whether he knew of any member of the Texas Legislature who had asked Abbott to take up mid-decade redistricting. Vasut said he was not personally aware, but said it was “prudent and proper” for lawmakers to follow the governor’s special session agenda.

“There is no obligation for us to do this at all — at all,” said Rep. Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat.

Thursday was the first of three House redistricting hearings, each slated to last no more than five hours. The next will take place Saturday in Houston, followed by a Monday hearing in Arlington. Vasut encouraged people to submit comments through an online portal.

The Senate has scheduled four hearings, all virtual, starting Friday at 10 a.m.

---

The lineup for The Texas Tribune Festival continues to grow! Be there when all-star leaders, innovators and newsmakers take the stage in downtown Austin, Nov. 13–15. The newest additions include comedian, actor and writer John Mulaney; Dallas mayor Eric Johnson; U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota; New York Media Editor-at-Large Kara Swisher; and U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso. Get your tickets today!

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.