I'm a Texas lawmaker, and this is why I left the state
Still, I went to work, believing state leaders would ultimately focus on the disaster. My office drafted solutions to respond to the Kerr County tragedy and to protect our most vulnerable Texans, our seniors, from the dangers of power outages and flooding, an ongoing issue the state refuses to address. I filed one bill to strengthen emergency preparedness at youth camps and, shortly after, another one to require senior retirement communities to maintain backup power and safe refuge areas during outages. But to my shock, leadership prioritized and rushed redistricting first. Even now, neither of my bills, both offering real, life-saving solutions, has been acted upon.
Advertisement
For weeks Republicans held hearings about redistricting without maps, while thousands of Texans spoke out in opposition. They unveiled the secret maps at the last moment, fueling an even stronger backlash. This plan would move five congressional seats into Republican hands for Trump. On Aug. 3, my colleagues and I faced a choice: Remain and legitimize an extreme, mid-decade map redistricting that many Texans reject or leave the state to deny a quorum to defend our constituents' voices. We chose to leave.
Advertisement
Leaving Texas was not easy. I left my livelihood, my legislative staff, and, most painfully, my family. But my absence is the only way to prevent a greater one: the absence of my community's representation in Congress.
Since then, state leadership has escalated its threats,
They reflect an unchecked, extreme wing of the Republican Party that has turned what was once mostly campaign-trail rhetoric into governing practice. Now these tactics threaten a constitutional crisis.
The party's targets are not just elected officials; they are also the communities we represent. Silencing a district for standing up for itself proves why representation matters.
Do I believe we will prevail? Yes. To me, victory is in raising awareness, building allies, and speaking truth to power. As the late congressman John Lewis taught us, sometimes we must make 'good trouble, necessary trouble.' In medicine, we disrupt the body to heal it; in public service, we sometimes disrupt the process to protect it.
Advertisement
What comes next?
The road ahead will be difficult, but as I have learned in both medicine and public service, healing begins with honestly confronting the reality.
I will continue fighting for my community's well-being and treating the ailing systems of our state with the same urgency I bring to any patient in crisis. This is not about me; it is about the people of House District 76 and the millions of Texans whose voices are worth crossing state lines to defend.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
End the gerrymandering wars by enlarging the US House
Meanwhile, national Democratic Party leaders are Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up There are no saints or villains in this saga. Republicans and Democrats are engaging in a bare-knuckled fight for power, and what each side condemns is Advertisement The cause of all this drama is not inherent Republican or Democratic perfidy. It is an institutional flaw: With only 435 seats, the US House is far too small — which means each congressional district is far too large. The average district now encompasses nearly 760,000 people. That is a constituency vastly greater than any member of Congress can effectively or fairly represent. And because congressional districts are so large, each one is a political prize well worth gerrymandering. When each district must corral so many people, a single line on the map has an outsize political impact. Under such circumstances, partisan cartography becomes irresistible — and bitter, recurring fights like the one in Texas are inevitable. Happily, there is a structural remedy that would dramatically curtail the constant court fights, political retaliation, and vicious maneuvering surrounding redistricting. Congress ought to expand the size of the House from the current 435 members to 1,500. No constitutional amendment would be needed — it would require only a simple statute to restore each House district to a more manageable size, and thereby make gerrymandering far less tempting. That would be a return to what the framers of the Constitution intended. The House of Representatives was conceived as Advertisement And there it froze. Congress didn't expand the House following the 1920 census, because of a political standoff. Many members resented the A House of 435 might have been workable during the Hoover administration. It makes no sense now. If the House were expanded to 1,500 members, the average congressional district would have about 225,000 people — still larger than its counterparts in many other modern democracies, but far more manageable than today's bloated mega-districts. Granted, that would require more chairs in the House chamber and perhaps smaller offices and staffs for each member. But the payoff would be enormous: Not only would the House be more representative, it would also be less susceptible to gerrymandering. Here's why: When each congressional district contains three-quarters of a million seats, a carefully crafted border can determine the balance of thousands of votes — enough to flip a seat. That makes each boundary line a powerful political weapon. But when districts are a third or a quarter of that size, no single line carries as much weight. Shifting a few neighborhoods or towns from one district to another would affect far fewer voters, making it harder for mapmakers to engineer outcomes with surgical precision. Smaller districts mean smaller levers — reducing the scope for mischief. Advertisement And the more districts there are, the less potent those engineering tactics become. Gerrymandering works best when the map has fewer, larger pieces — which makes it easier to 'pack' opposition voters into a handful of districts, and to 'crack' the rest among multiple other districts, thinning out their numbers to ensure that they lose everywhere else. But multiply the number of districts, and that strategy loses force. The cartographer's advantage fades as the map gets more granular. When each puzzle piece covers a smaller slice of territory, the lines become less predictable and harder to weaponize. Last but definitely not least, in a 1,500-member House, voters would be likelier to know their elected representative — and to be known in return. In districts limited to 225,000 constituents, there would be room for more local voices, more diversity of all kinds, more candidates who reflect the communities they serve. Much smaller districts means much less expensive campaigns — and lower barriers to entry for challengers. It also encourages lawmakers to stay grounded in the concerns of their neighbors rather than the noise of national partisanship. Congress blundered badly when it froze the House at 435 seats. The chaos emanating from Texas is only the latest consequence of that blunder. Advertisement It doesn't have to be this way. Enlarging the House to 1,500 members would end the gerrymandering wars. Better still, it would revive the ideal of a legislature that truly speaks for the people — restoring the people's House to its constitutional roots. Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
A brief history of Trump pretending not to know things
Less than a week after the Justice Department took the highly unusual step of sending Todd Blanche, deputy attorney general and Trump's former personal lawyer, to interview Maxwell for more than nine hours over two days, she was quietly moved from a federal minimum-security prison in Florida to a less-restrictive facility in Texas. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up But according to Trump, that decision was news to him. Advertisement Perhaps the president really has no clue as to what's happening in his administration. But Trump's pleas of ignorance are an escape hatch he has deployed for years. Here's a brief history of notable moments in Trump's performative ignorance. The David Duke endorsement (2016): After Trump launched his first presidential campaign by excoriating Mexican immigrants and later promising to enact a Advertisement James Comey's firing (2017): Months into his first term, Trump dumped James Comey as FBI director. At the time, White House officials claimed that Trump fired Comey solely on the recommendation of deputy attorney general Hush money paid to Stormy Daniels (2018): Trump Advertisement Project 2025 (2024): At a Heritage Foundation event in 2022, Trump said the conservative group 'would lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.' Two years later, Trump Trump seems to treat ignorance — saying 'I don't know' or 'I didn't know'— as evidence of his innocence. He's testing that theory again as his self-inflicted Epstein scandal refuses to go away. But whether this tactic will allow him to dodge accountability this time, no one knows. Advertisement Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at
UPI
an hour ago
- UPI
On This Day, Aug. 10: Founding Fathers propose 'E pluribus unum' as U.S. motto
1 of 6 | On August 10, 1776, a committee of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson suggested the United States adopt "E pluribus unum" -- "Out of many, one" -- as the motto for its Great Seal. File Photo by Chris Kleponis/UPI | License Photo Aug. 10 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1776, a committee of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson suggested the United States adopt "E pluribus unum" -- "Out of many, one" -- as the motto for its Great Seal. In 1920, Francisco "Pancho" Villa surrendered to Mexican authorities -- and drowned his sorrows in a bottle of cognac. In 1962, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and three other civil rights leaders were found guilty of disorderly conduct charges in Albany, Ga. Judge Adie Durden fined each $200 and sentenced them to 60 days in jail, but immediately suspended the sentences and placed King and his associates on probation. UPI File Photo In 1977, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested and charged with being the "Son of Sam," the serial killer who terrorized New York City for more than a year, killing six young people and wounding seven others. Berkowitz was sentenced to life in prison. In 1980, Hurricane Allen made landfall along the Texas coast, killing 24 people there and in Louisiana. The storm killed a 269 people through the Caribbean, Mexico and United States. In 1991, China agreed in principle to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as the U.S. Supreme Court's 107th justice. In 1993, three ships collided with one another in Tampa Bay, Fla., spilling 336,000 gallons of fuel oil into the water. No one was killed. The incident marked the first time officials used a computerized trajectory model to track the location of an oil spill. In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole selected former congressman, Cabinet secretary and NFL quarterback Jack Kemp as his running mate. File Photo by Ezio Petersen/UPI In 2003, more than 80 inmates tunneled their way out of Brazil's Joao Pessoa prison, one of the nation's top security facilities. In 2017, President Donald Trump said opioid addiction "is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had" and declared a national emergency over the crisis. In 2021, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation in the wake of a damning attorney general's report that found he'd sexually harassed nearly a dozen women in recent years. In 2023, a non-profit rescue team recovered 17 bodies while 33 remained missing after a boat carrying Rohingya Muslims capsized near Myanmar while sailing to Malaysia.
