It’s weird. Not unexpected – the Republicans have always loved some secrecy in the redistricting process – but weird.
The Texas House’s redistricting committee visited Houston on Saturday to hear out local residents’ concerns on the state Legislature’s plans to consider redrawing nearly a handful of congressional districts in Texas — all of which are held by Black or Latino Democrats, three in the Houston area.
But the testimony portion of the hearing, limited to five hours, had to wait while Democratic committee members spent the first hour grilling committee Chair Cody Vasut on why they were there in the first place. Testimony continued into late Saturday afternoon.
When Vasut, R-Angleton, welcomed the standing-room only crowd for the committee’s second “public testimony regarding a revised congressional redistricting plan,” state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, offered a correction.
“I just want to advise the public that they would not be testifying on a revised congressional redistricting plan, because there is no revised congressional redistricting plan,” she said.
The state has not publicly revealed proposed revisions of the state’s congressional district map, which was drawn in 2021 following the 2020 census. Critics of the mid-decade redistricting process raised questions about why the committee is hosting public hearings before maps are on the table.
State Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston, noted to Vasut that the hundreds of people who signed up to speak — residents who were either crowded in the University of Houston’s Student Center or waiting outside — were “unable to testify as to how they will be negatively or positively affected by any maps, because there are no maps filed for anybody to testify to.”
Jones asked Vasut if Texans will have the same opportunity to speak up once the maps were made public, to which he said: “1,000%… There is no proposed map pending before the committee at this time for which public testimony will be offered, but we will have a hearing if such a map is filed.”
“If” such a map is filed. I don’t know if Rep. Vasut is being cute here or if he is actually in the dark about what is going on. I mean, given everything we know about Donald Trump and his idiot staff, it’s not out of the question that there isn’t yet a map that they are willing to accept and think can stand up to scrutiny even by the debased federal standards that now exist. It would be hard to imagine, and yet somehow completely believable.
President Donald Trump’s administration recently pushed Abbott and state representatives to give Republicans a stronger footing in the U.S. House ahead of the 2026 midterm election.
The Department of Justice put out a legal rationale, alleging that four Texas districts, including the 9th, 18th and 29th congressional seats in Houston, constitute illegal racial gerrymanders. (The fourth district in question is the 33rd Congressional District, currently held by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth.)
DOJ lawyers in a letter argue that they’re coalition districts — when various racial groups are combined to constitute a majority — and do not qualify for federal protection under the Voting Rights Act.
[…]
Nine of Texas’ 38 congressional districts contain part of Harris County — four represented by Democrats, and five by Republicans.
But Democratic committee representatives on Saturday reminded Republicans that just a few years ago, they were content with the state’s congressional map.
They pointed to statements from Republican state leaders — including Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Sen. Joan Huffman, who chairs the Senate redistricting committee — who said in 2021, when the state’s current legislative maps were passed, that they drew the districts “race blind.”
That’s left Democrats confused about why Republicans are now alleging that the maps are unfair — maps Vasut voted in favor of in 2021.
“You’re aware that the Republicans drew this map that now the Republicans saying are now illegal,” said state Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston.
See here for some background. I mean, Republicans are asked every day to believe impossible things that Donald Trump tells them. I’m sure this one was no more difficult than any of the others. It may cause them some challenges in court, but that’s a problem for future them.
The Houston hearing was the second of three that were scheduled. The first one was in Austin, and it was more of the same.
The first hearing on the plan to redraw Texas’ congressional boundaries got under way Thursday with no proposed new map for the public to comment on and no compelling reason to scrap the plan enacted just four years earlier, other than the fact that Gov. Greg Abbott ordered it up in the special legislative session.
State Rep. Cody Vasut, the Angleton Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on Redistricting, acknowledged that he did not ask for a rare, mid-decade overhaul of the congressional map. But he did tell the panel that it would be “prudent” to take up the matter because the governor sets the agenda for special sessions and that the process will be fair.
“We’re going to follow the Voting Rights Act. We’re going to follow the law,” Vasut told the committee.
You might first want to figure out what you think the Voting Rights Act says. Someone’s giving you contradictory advice on that one. The Chron has more, including about the arrest of CD18 candidate Isaiah Martin following his testimony.
I went to the rally beforehand and watched the entire hearing on livestream. Many good speakers, with Rep. Jasmine Crockett especially standing out for her rally speech as well as her testimony with many references to the 2021 redistricting process. One business lady witness delivered a decisive takedown of the president’s supposed business acumen using business terms and metrics. During the hearing there were repeated complaints from Democratic committee members that witnesses had to register their testimony as ‘neutral’ rather than ‘against’; the chairman said that was required by the rules since there was no bill before the committee. In his introduction Chairman Vasut suggested that some of the witnesses for the Austin hearing were in favor of the proposed redistricting; he was later corrected by a Democratic committee member who said that these observations were expressions of unhappiness with the currently gerrymandered districts, rather that support for the proposal. In my observation of the Austin hearing not a single witness spoke in favor of the current redistricting proposal as requested by the DOJ. It was repeated pointed out in the hearing that Texas is about 40% white persons but the congressional districts were drawn in 2021 to be 66% majority white, with the two seats gained in the 2020 census both being drawn majority white even though the population gain was 96% minority.
As in Austin I did not hear a single witness who was in favor of the DOJ redistricting proposal. There were two Republicans who testified; one spoke in general terms in favor of fair districts and the other, a Latina running for CD 18, gave what was mostly a campaign speech with some references to the previous CD 18 reps not representing conservative Latinos.
I should say that I have not read the written witness comments that have been submitted which may have some statements supportive of the proposed DOJ redistricting.
One speaker (Gene Wu?) said he could not believe that the Republicans did not have map before them, I agree. Chairman Vasut stated that they did not but that means believing a Republican, which I don’t. I think they do have a map which was handed down from on high but is so awful and egregious that they have been unable to figure out how to spin it. I am afraid we will hear more comments like the Chairman’s introduction that misrepresent general witness comments about redistricting as being favorable to the proposed mid-cycle redistricting.