‘Five-Alarm Fire': Texas Dem Sounds Off on Trump's Bid to Gerrymander Midterms
Last week, The New York Times reported that Trump and his allies have been encouraging Texas Republicans to break with established redistricting laws mandating a census-based reevaluation of the state's electoral map at the beginning of every decade, and instead jerry-rig five new Republican-majority congressional districts before the midterms.
'This is a five-alarm fire, what's happening in Texas,' Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tells Rolling Stone. 'Donald Trump has already said that if he does this to Texas, he wants to do this all across the country.'
It's unclear at the moment if Casar's district — Texas-35 — would be affected. It is already severely gerrymandered, stretching in an awkward wedge for putting wedged-shaped creation that stretched over 100 miles between San Antonio and Austin. 'I don't know, and virtually no members of Congress know,' Casar said of the possibility that his own district may be reshaped. 'Even the Republican members say they have not seen these maps and that it makes them nervous.'
'If you look at Texas' map, it's already illegal and gerrymandered,' Casar adds, referencing ongoing litigation against the map produced by Republican-led redistricting efforts in 2021. 'What Donald Trump wants to do by trying to gerrymander five more seats in Texas [is to] essentially end the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as we know it.'
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he was only looking for 'a very simple redraw — we pick up five seats. A couple of other states where we will pick up seats also.'
The play is a gamble for Trump and a potential self-immolation for Texas Republicans. Chopping up safe Republican enclaves to eke out a few more seats could make them too small to overcome a mass mobilization by Democratic voters. Essentially, the redraw could up the number of battleground districts in 2026, and hand Trump and the GOP additional losses.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called a special session of the Texas legislature to take place on Monday, July 21. The session will address redistricting, among other issues. Democrats in Texas are working with an extremely narrow set of options in order to prevent the Republican majority from unilaterally redrawing the electoral map, the most powerful of which is the ability to deny the special session an operational quorum by outright leaving the state.
'Democrats need to have every option on the table,' Casar insists. 'That includes quorum breaks, filibusters, marching in the street, pressure on the Speaker of the House, [and] well-funded campaigning against every Republican member of Congress who goes along with this.'
In the aftermath of a 2021 quorum break — in which Texas Democrats left the state for 38 days in an attempt to prevent the passage of a law restricting vote by mail and implementing criminal penalties on voting-assistance — Republicans codified penalties against lawmakers who would attempt similar tactics. These include hefty daily fines, and the potential of reprimand or expulsion from the legislature.
In Casar's view, the party should ignore such intimidation tactics. 'To me the penalties are clearly unconstitutional and unenforceable,' he says. The risk is probably worth it. 'This is about something much greater than any one congressional district,' he says. 'We're talking about the future of voting rights for Texas and for the entire country.'
'If Trump gets his way and radically redraws the entire Texas map, then Texas Republicans could start representing a completely different area of the state in a couple weeks than they represent today,' Casar continues. He points to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits the abridgement of voting rights 'on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' Section 2 has been interpreted by the Supreme Court as barring the dilution of voting power among groups through gerrymandering schemes.
'The Voting Rights Act is written to try to make sure that Hispanic and Black Americans do not have their neighborhoods chopped up into tons of little slices, so that their voting power is completely diluted,' Casar explains. 'In order for Trump to get four or five more seats out of an already gerrymandered Texas, I think they would most likely have to completely disenfranchise black and Latino neighborhoods all across the state.'
Congressional Democrats held a call on Monday to discuss potential options. 'The mobilization isn't happening fast enough yet. Trump is trying to get all of this done in the next week or two,' Casar adds. 'He doesn't want Republican members of Congress to really get a chance to look at these new maps. He certainly doesn't want the American people to get a chance to look at these maps.'
'We need the mobilization to happen much quicker. This is a five-alarm fire that people are just now starting to notice,' he says.
Casar suggests that not only does the Democratic response require a full court mobilization of their own, but an appeal to Republicans over the reality that they may inadvertently fuck themselves over if they follow through on Trump's request.
They 'could be vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right and an insurgent Democrat from the left. So Democrats need to have a campaign operation ready to go to take on any Texas Republican whose seat is now more vulnerable,' Casar says. 'We have to be ready to go to win back the Democratic seats, even if they make them even more gerrymandered. And we need to have every legislative tool on the table, from filibusters to quorum busts to marches in the streets of Austin, every option on the table.'
'The question that is before Texas Republicans today,' Casar says, 'is will they stand up for themselves and their own constituents, or are they just water boys for Donald Trump.'
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