DemDaily: Battleground Texas!
August 4, 2025
57 Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives defiantly fled the state on Sunday, abandoning Austin for Chicago to deny Republicans a quorum in the chamber and temporarily block passage of new GOP-proposed congressional maps.
Texas House Bill 4 (HB 4), unveiled by House Republicans July 30, would carve up Democratic seats and gerrymander the state's 38 congressional districts -- in violation of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) -- to solidify five new Republican districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
| Redistricting is the process of redrawing the new electoral boundaries of all 435 US House seats and 7,386 state legislative seats across 50 states. New maps are based on the decennial count of the US population by the US Census Bureau and determine the geographic and political makeup of Congress for the next ten years. Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing or manipulating those district lines to the unfair political advantage of a particular party or group. |
Governor Greg Abbott called for a special session July 21 to propose the redistricted maps, under the guise of taking up response measures to the state's deadly July 4 Hill Country floods. The GOP controls all statewide offices in Texas, as well as both houses of the state legislature -- which draws the electoral map, subject to veto by the Governor.
If enacted, the new plan would give Republicans an immediate advantage in the fight to maintain their narrow 220-215 majority in the US House of Representatives.
The push for a rare mid-term redistricting came at the behest of President Donald Trump, who carried the state with 56% of the vote in 2024, and is using Texas as a critical first test of weaponizing his Department of Justice (DOJ) to trigger emergency redistricting plans in red states where they can manipulate the maps.
In a new tactic, Trump had his DOJ raise "constitutional concerns" about Texas's current map, which was drawn in 2021 and is the subject of ongoing litigation over violations of the VRA and the 14th Amendment. Texas has been sued and found liable for violating the Voting Rights Act every previous redistricting cycle since 1973.
The July 7 letter from Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon to Abbott and State Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that four of Texas’ Democratic-controlled districts -- CDs 9, 18, 29 and 33 -- were unconstitutionally drawn as "coalition districts" and urged the state to "rectify these race-based considerations" with a new redistricted map or risk legal action against the state.
| "This is bigger than Texas...If Donald Trump succeeds in ending the protections of the Voting Rights Act for people of color here in Austin, then pretty soon he could succeed in ending those protections for people across America." - Congressman Greg Casar (TX-35) |
In a statement Sunday, Lone Star State Democrats, who dispatched 40 members to Chicago, several others to New York, and some to Boston, said that they were using the "only tool available to stop this assault on our democracy," after the House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting on Saturday voted 12-6 along party lines to advance the GOP-gerrymandered congressional map to a full vote before the State House.
The fast-tracked vote -- expected this week -- came after thousands of Texans testified against the "corrupt political deal" in hearings across the state on Friday, said House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu, but "their pleas were ignored."
Of House members' plan to stay out of the state until the close of the special session August 19, Wu said, "This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” while also accusing Abbott of “using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans."
In an extraordinary escalation on Monday, the Republican-dominated House issued civil arrest warrants in an attempt to compel the return of the absconded legislators, and Abbott ordered state Troopers to “locate, arrest and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans.”
“There are consequences for dereliction of duty. Real Texans do not run from a fight. This truancy ends now,” stated the Governor, who had already threatened the lawmakers with arrest, expulsion, fines, and felony charges of bribery -- with no legal foundation.
Of the proposed 2025 map, DCCC Executive Director Julie Merz said.“Texas Republicans appear to have made what is already one of the country’s most racially discriminatory maps even worse.”
National Democrats have waged an aggressive offensive campaign, with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) already having deployed 30,000 volunteers to mobilize against Republicans’ map-rigging scheme and reach "persuadable" voters in key Republican districts, in person, by phone, online and in hundreds of thousands of text messages.
Despite the Republican chokehold on the state's politics, rapid population growth and shifting demographics have favored Democrats, who account for 46.5% of registered voters, followed by Republicans with 37.95% and 15.55% Unaffiliated, according to the Independent Voter Project.
| The Lone Star State: According to the US Census, from 2010 to 2020, Texas' resident population increased by 15.9% -- the largest numeric increase of any state in the last decade, with now 40 electoral votes. The second-largest state in the country has become more urban, suburban and diverse. In 2022, Latinos overtook non-Hispanic whites as the state's largest population group at 40%. In 2023, Texas led all other states in new Asian, Black and, in particular, Hispanic residents, who have been the key driver of growth, now the largest demographic group at approximately 40% of the state's population. |
The Map
Under the map approved by the House Redistricting Committee August 2, state Republicans are targeting 30 seats in Congress -- up from their current 25 -- by slicing up Democratic districts in and around Austin, Dallas and Houston, as well as two already endangered Democratic seats in south Texas districts that Trump carried last year.
The result yields five additional districts, three of which would have voted for Trump by at least 10% in 2024, and two by more than 15%.
Democratic members most affected are Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, who both represent heavily-Latino areas of the Rio Grande Valley, Al Green in Houston (CD-9), Greg Casar in San Antonio (CD-25), and freshman Julie Johnson in Dallas (CD-32). Some Democratic-controlled districts would be made even bluer in an attempt to create GOP-leaning districts elsewhere.
It only sets up one primary matchup, pitting progressives Casar and Lloyd Doggett against each other in one seat around Austin.
The traditional racial politics of redistricting have been somewhat disrupted by historic gains made by the GOP among Hispanic voters in 2024 -- a trend they are gambling on going into the midterms. Four of the five seats now occupied by Democrats would be majority Hispanic in their redrawn form -- which state Republicans are using to defend the new map against charges that it violates the VRA, which was passed to defend minority representation.
| Political Risk: A July 16-20, Texas-based Z to A Research poll for the DCCC of likely voters across 22 congressional districts potentially impacted by redistricting found that 63% of respondents -- including 41% of Republicans -- think the GOP's effort to redraw lines is unnecessary. 62% say the GOP’s prioritization of partisan gerrymandering over disaster flood relief makes them less likely to vote for a Republican candidate for Congress. This includes 67% of Independents and 21% of 2024 Trump voters (MOE: +/-2%). |
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Sources: Ballotpedia, Politico, Texas Tribune, The Guardian, Redistricting Data Hub, New York Times. CNN. KVUE
