AUSTIN, Texas AP - Democratic lawmakers tried to build a case Friday that Republicans in Texas have engineered a rushed and unfair process for redrawing the state's congressional districts in response to a push by President Donald Trump to win more GOP seats that Democrats fear will spread to other states.
Democrats in the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature delayed the start of public testimony during a hearing of a state House Committee on Redistricting by peppering its chair with pointed questions about how quickly GOP lawmakers planned to move and whether the public is getting enough of an opportunity to weigh in. The Republican proposal would give the GOP five more winnable seats in next year's elections, which would make it easier for the party to keep its slim U.S. House majority.
Chair Cody Vasut told the committee that he expected it to vote later Friday or Saturday on the bill, which Republicans unveiled Wednesday. He said he expected the full state House to debate the measure Tuesday.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called the Legislature into a 30-day special session and put congressional redistricting on the agenda after Trump called for Texas to redraw lines that Republicans approved in 2021. Republicans hold 25 of the state's seats, to 13 for Democrats, and the plan would create 30 districts that Trump would have carried by at least 10 percentage points had they been in place in 2024.
Democratic state Rep. Jon Rosenthal called the public redistricting hearings "a sham." The committee quietly released the plan after several public hearings that drew hours of public testimony and scrutiny from residents concerned about new maps they hadn't seen.