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Politics|Texas State House Panel Advances Gerrymandered Congressional Map
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/us/politics/texas-redistricting.html
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The full Texas House will now vote next week on a map drawn to flip five House districts to the G.O.P., but Democrats might walk out to deny Republicans a quorum.
Aug. 2, 2025Updated 11:06 a.m. ET
A Republican-led committee of the Texas House voted on Saturday to advance a new congressional map drawn to flip five Democratic House districts in favor of Republican candidates, setting up a showdown over redistricting next week.
The vote came after a marathon 15-hour hearing on Friday in which the committee heard public testimony, almost all of it firmly against the aggressive changes that affect districts in Houston, Dallas and Austin, and along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Several Democratic members of Congress came to Austin to testify, arguing that the proposed map would diminish the power of Black and Hispanic communities across Texas and violate the federal Voting Rights Act. Al Green, a congressman from Houston, said the map was “racist.” Jasmine Crockett, a congresswoman from Dallas, vowed to immediately challenge it in court.
But in the end, the Republicans on the committee voted to deliver the map that had been called for by President Trump, who said last month that he hoped to get five more Republicans in the House. Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats.
Todd Hunter, a Republican state representative of Corpus Christi who sponsored the legislation for the map, said the new lines had been drawn “for partisan purposes,” not based on race, and that the resulting map was “completely transparent, and it’s lawful.”
The map now must be considered in a committee on calendars, which was set to meet on Sunday. A first vote by the full Texas House could come as early as Monday or Tuesday.
