Watch live: Texas House to take up GOP congressional map delayed by Democrats' walkout
The Republican-led Texas House on Wednesday was set to advance a new congressional map crafted to hand five additional U.S. House seats to the GOP over fierce opposition from Democrats, who cast the plan as an attempt by President Donald Trump to stack the deck in next year's midterm election.
[Texas Republicans' redistricting map: How the GOP could increase its stronghold.]
Republican lawmakers are pursuing the unusual mid-decade redistricting plan, which has set off a national map-drawing war, amid pressure from Trump to protect the GOP's slim majority in Congress. The effort comes just four years after the Legislature last overhauled the state's congressional map following the 2020 Census.
Democrats in the Texas House staged a two-week walkout over the plan in a bid to stall the map's passage and rally a national response among blue states, where lawmakers could launch their own retaliatory redistricting efforts. The roughly two dozen Texas Democrats who returned to Austin on Monday said they were starting the next phase of their fight: putting the screws on their Republican colleagues and establishing a record that could be used in a legal challenge to the map.
Among the first points Democrats sought to make Wednesday was that the congressional map was the first piece of legislation the House was voting on, rather than flood-related bills responding to the devastating Hill Country floods. Several Democrats wore dark green in honor of the flood victims.
"Why was House Bill 1, the flood relief bill that is the House's answer to the deadly July 4 flooding that killed over 135 people, not the first order of business of this special session for the Texas House?" Rep. Gina Hinajosa, D-Austin, asked on the floor.
Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi and the map's sponsor, emphasized in laying out House Bill 4 that Republicans were legally permitted to pursue redistricting in the middle of the decade and to maximize partisan gain.
'Redistricting can be done at any point in time,' he said. 'The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance.'
House rejects amendment saying the map complies with the Voting Rights Act
The House voted down an amendment offered by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, to add a section to the bill saying that the map complies with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination against voters on the basis of race.
The vote to reject the amendment was 87 to 51, along party lines.
Rep. Todd Hunter, the map's Republican sponsor, opposed the amendment, saying that the bill already complies with the Voting Rights Act.
'It's unnecessary, and guess what? It's incorporated in this bill,' he said.
The debate over the amendment grew heated at times, as Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D-San Antonio, pressed Hunter on the lack of public input allowed on the map and its impact on Black and Latino voters.
'You own the walkout,' Hunter said to applause from Republicans, referring to Democrats' two-week departure from the state to block action on the map. 'But don't come into this body and say we didn't involve you. You left for 18 days, and that's wrong.'
Martinez Fischer argued that if the map's proponents were certain it complied with the Voting Rights Act, they should have no problem voting in favor of the amendment.
'It just says that we are going to follow Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,' he said. 'That's it. There are no tricks. There are no hidden words. That's all it does. It shouldn't be controversial.'
Protesters gather in Capitol rotunda
As the Texas House began its anticipated and delayed debate on congressional redistricting, dozens of protesters gathered in the Capitol rotunda and their chants at times seeped into the chamber, albeit faintly.
The demonstrators rallied support for Rep. Nicole Collier, a Fort Worth Democrat who has been on the floor of the Texas House since Monday afternoon after she refused to sign a permission slip allowing members to leave the chamber only if they agreed to be shadowed by state law enforcement officers.
Collier is among the Democrats who participated in a two-week walkout to delay passage of a new congressional map that aims to give the GOP five additional seats in the 2026 midterms.
"Let her out," the protesters chanted, some holding a giant banner that read "Put Texans First."
Wu to propose amendment making map conditional on Trump's release of Epstein files
Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, intends to try blocking the new congressional map from going into effect until President Donald Trump releases the files of disgraced billionaire and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The lower chamber is expected to vote later Wednesday on the proposed map pushed by Trump, which redraws districts with the aim of getting the GOP five more seats in the U.S. House. In a statement, Wu said he plans to introduce an amendment that would make the maps conditional on Trump releasing all "investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters" related to Epstein. The goal, Wu said, is to force Republicans "to choose between their loyalty to Trump and their obligation to expose sexual predators.'
The files related to Epstein, who died in federal prison while awaiting trial, have long been the source of conspiracy theories. The Trump administration was expected to release them, but reversed course this summer. Trump's name was reportedly mentioned in them, though it is not clear exactly in what context.
'Trump is in those files, and that's why he's fighting to keep them hidden,' Wu said.
Republicans trying to gain five U.S. House seats
Republicans have said the new districts were drawn purely to maximize their partisan advantage, arguing that the GOP's margins of victory in 2024 supported new lines that entrenched their hold on power. They have also framed the effort as a response to Democratic gerrymandering elsewhere.
'In the context of balancing what Democratic states have already done, what Texas is doing is eminently fair,' Rep. Cody Vasut, R-Angleton and chair of the House's redistricting committee, said this month. 'This is about making sure that when we go into the congressional election in [2026], Republicans are on a level playing field to be able to compete with Democrats.'
To create up to five Republican pickup opportunities, the map dismantles Democratic strongholds around Austin, Dallas and Houston and makes Democrat-held seats in South Texas redder — all without seriously jeopardizing any of the 25 districts Republicans already control.
'I'm not beating around the bush,' Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi and the map's bill sponsor, said during an Aug. 1 committee hearing. 'We have five new districts, and these five new districts are based on political performance.'
Democrats say map diminishes power for voters of color
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that states can draw electoral maps on partisan grounds. But under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the map cannot diminish the voting power of people of color.
Democrats have condemned the plan, arguing it widens Republicans' partisan edge by unconstitutionally packing people of color — who are driving almost all of Texas' population growth — into some districts while spreading them throughout others to reduce their ability to elect their preferred candidates.
'These illegal maps are based on already racist and unconstitutional maps that were litigated just barely a month ago,' Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said Monday, referring to an ongoing legal challenge to Texas' current map. 'It can only get worse from there. This is probably — from the experts that we've talked to — the worst racial discrimination in redistricting since the Jim Crow era.'
The proposed map also would push a handful of Democratic members of Congress into seats already represented by other Democrats, setting up possible primary battles between long-serving members of the Texas delegation and younger newcomers.
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