We’re just going through the motions at this point.
The Texas redistricting map unveiled this week was drawn for the express purpose of boosting Republican strength in Congress, the House sponsor of the measure said Friday during the first, and perhaps the only, public hearing on the most controversial measure being considered in the special session of the Legislature.
“These districts were drawn primarily using political performance,” state Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, told the House Redistricting Committee. “And I want everybody to know that.”
The bill reshaping 37 of the state’s 38 congressional districts would provide five additional winnable districts for Republicans. If the map is approved by the Legislature and signed into law, it could give the Texas GOP 30-8 majority after the 2026 midterm elections.
The unusual overhauling of the congressional districts in the middle of the decade has angered Democrats and has again put Texas in the national political spotlight. Democrats in Texas and in Washington have urged Democratic governors in other states to redraw their congressional districts in an effort to offset any Republican gains under the proposed new maps.
As the author of House Bill 4, the legislation that would enact the new map, Hunter was the first Republican lawmaker to offer an expansive defense of redrawing the districts adopted by the GOP-led Legislature in 2021.
When asked in past hearings why the matter was back before lawmakers, redistricting committee chairman Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, and Republican state Sen. Phil King of Weatherford, who leads the committee in the upper chamber, have said they were simply following the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott. The Republican governor called the 30-day special session that ends Aug. 19 and put redistricting on the agenda.
Hunter, who started his career as a Democrat and is now one of the most senior members of the Texas House, brushed aside arguments that Abbott and the Legislature are abusing the political process by revisiting redistricting with no new census data or court order compelling them to do so.
“It is important to note that when it comes to redistricting, it can be at any time,” he said.
Hunter also sidestepped questions about President Donald Trump’s influence over Texas redistricting, saying he is aware of the president’s interest in the matter but that he was not taking orders from the White House.
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By Rep. Hunter’s logic, we could redistrict after every election. I say that with the intention of showing how ludicrous it would be, but I’m quite certain there are people out there who would nod in agreement. This is what you get with a SCOTUS that cares more about power than anything else.
I don’t have the energy to dwell on this. The map is out and the Republicans are gonna do what they’re gonna do. They may twist the meaning of a recent Fifth Circuit ruling to bolster their case or they may just ignore it, they don’t care. Maybe other states will get involved as well and maybe not. Maybe someday we’ll have more rules in place to restore a bit of order and reduce the farcical nature of what we’re doing now, but today is not that day.
The House committee on redistricting has now voted out HB4, with the full House expected to take it up on Tuesday. That means that if there is to be a quorum break, it would need to happen before then, at least if it’s on the House side where the break occurs. The Senate hadn’t scheduled a committee hearing as of Saturday afternoon for HB4, so a Senate quorum break could occur later. The Trib and Lone Star Left have more.
Rep Hunter repeatedly employed legal dodges when asked about the origin, timing, and author(s) of the map. There seems to have been some kind of secret handoff system for the map and 157 detailed files associated with it so that Rep Hunter could claim no knowledge of prior history. Growing frustrated with the questioning by committee Democrats, he said that redistricting had been an open secret in Austin since the spring.
That changes my view of how this happened. I now believe that the map has existed for a couple of months, and the R cabal responsible decided to put it on the special session, and informed Trump when to make the announcement. They have had this in their back pocket all along.
J: Maybe. Or maybe there are some rules about how the lines are supposed to be drawn, and he doesn’t want to discuss the details openly. It would take literally seconds for redistricting software to create this. Not like they needed time to sort it out.