The Texas redistricting fight spurring a legislative standoff: What you need to know

A draft of the new map released in late July proposes to reshape a handful of districts in Texas’ major metro areas to be more favorable to Republicans, while pitting a few Democratic Congress members against each other in next year’s elections:

• South Texas: The districts currently held by U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen would become slightly more favorable to Republicans.
• Dallas-Fort Worth area: U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson’s Dallas-anchored district would be overhauled to favor Republicans. U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey’s would remain solidly blue but drop all of Fort Worth — Veasey’s hometown and political base. This could set up a primary between Veasey and Johnson.
• Austin area: A proposed GOP seat could trigger U.S. Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett to face each other in a primary for Central Texas’ lone remaining blue district. Otherwise, one of the two would have to step aside or run an uphill race for Casar’s new district, based in San Antonio and the solidly red outlying counties east of the city, that Trump would have won by 10 points.
• Houston area: Four Democratic districts would be altered. The biggest change would be in the 9th Congressional District, represented by Rep. Al Green, that would shift to the eastern parts of Houston and Harris County, where no current member of Congress lives. Under that proposed change, Trump would have carried the district by 15 percentage points.

Currently, Republicans hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats. The proposed map could help Republicans pick up five more. The plan would dismantle four congressional districts that the U.S. Department of Justice said unconstitutionally combined Black and Hispanic voters. The state has disputed that charge in an ongoing lawsuit, arguing the lines were drawn without an eye toward race.

The draft advanced by a House committee would have likely faced changes before getting final approval from both chambers of the Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott, but Texas Republicans made their partisan intentions clear.

Setting aside the legal justification offered by the DOJ, state Rep. Todd Hunter, the Republican state lawmaker championing the redistricting legislation, said the proposed “five new districts are based on political performance”.

While the newly drafted district lines almost certainly assure Republicans at least some new seats, an analysis of the tentative redistricting plan suggests the GOP is far from guaranteed to gain all five seats.

Most of the House Democrats fled to the Chicago area, where they held a press conference with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Aug. 2.

Others headed to New York for at least a day to meet with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has condemned Texas’ mid-decade redistricting effort and entertained the idea of retaliating with new maps in her state. A third contingent of lawmakers departed for Boston to attend the National Conference of State Legislatures' annual legislative summit, alongside some Texas Senate Democrats, according to a source familiar with the senators’ plans.

At a press conference, state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters that they were taking the redistricting fight “day by day” and he wasn’t sure exactly what the caucus' next steps would be amid financial strains.

“We’re all away from our families that we’ve already been away from for six months,” he said, referring to the 140-day legislative session that ended in early June. “We’ve been away from our jobs. We’ve not earned a lot of income this entire year. ... This is not a decision that we take lightly.”

Before Democrats in the Texas House decamped, members of Congress were encouraging deep-pocketed donors in the party to help cover expenses, which include not only lodging and other travel costs, but also $500-a-day fines adopted by House Republicans after Democrats fled in 2021 in an unsuccessful bid to stop Republicans from passing an overhaul of the state’s election laws.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday that members could face felony charges for “soliciting funds” to pay the fines, which he argued could amount to violations of the state’s bribery laws.

Abbott threatened to initiate legal action to remove the Democrats who fled from office if they did not return to the Texas Capitol.

This could kick off a lengthy and complicated legal process that would require the Texas attorney general or a local district attorney to file a lawsuit against each state lawmaker asking a judge to remove them on the grounds that they have abandoned their office.

But the removal would not be guaranteed as legal experts say there would be no grounds for a judge to rule that participating in a quorum break warrants removal from office. After Texas House Democrats broke quorum in 2021 to block restrictive voting measures, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court acknowledged that the Texas Constitution allows for members to deprive the state House or Senate of a quorum.

After the majority of the remaining House members voted to compel the absent Democrats back, House Speaker Dustin Burrows said he would immediately sign civil warrants for each of the legislators, empowering the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms and state troopers to arrest and bring them to the Capitol.

They will not face civil or criminal charges from the arrests. The warrants apply only within state lines, making them largely symbolic as most of the legislators in question decamped to Illinois, New York and Massachusetts to forestall passage of the GOP’s proposed redraw of Texas’ congressional map.

History and political scientists suggest that quorum breaks are largely symbolic and have limited success blocking legislation.

While the Democrats technically can prevent the GOP’s redistricting effort by breaking quorum, it would require the entire delegation to stay out of the state until at least November, which political scientists say is unlikely given historical precedent.

Texas Democrats’ 2021 quorum break collapsed after six weeks when internal divisions fractured Democratic unity and three Houston Democrats returned citing the COVID-19 pandemic. That allowed the controversial legislation to pass.

Democratic leaders across the country, particularly in New York and California, have also vowed to fight back by redrawing Congressional district lines in other states. California Gov. Gavin Newsom told aides he will move forward with a plan to redraw his state’s congressional lines to install more Democrats if Texas Republicans pass their own updated map, according to a person with direct knowledge of Newsom’s thinking. The move would set up a national fight.