Texas Democrats escalate fight against Republican-led redistricting efforts with Pritzker, Newsom meetings
Texas Democrats on Friday traveled to California and Illinois for meetings with Democratic governors who have criticized Republicans' plans to redraw the Texas congressional map to protect the GOP House majority.
The day of meetings with Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois comes as Texas Democrats are weighing a walkout from the ongoing special legislative session where redistricting could be considered in Austin - in a bid to obstruct and delay the efforts.
"They're changing the rules in the middle of the game… this is cheating," Pritzker said on Friday of the GOP-led effort in Texas. "Everything is on the table."
Texas state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, told ABC News she was hoping to receive guidance on how to navigate the redistricting situation from Newsom, who has frequently sparred with the Trump administration.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, proclaiming a special legislative session that focused largely on flood relief, included redistricting on the agenda "in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice."
In a letter earlier this month, the Trump Justice Department told Texas that four majority minority districts represented by Democrats needed to be redrawn, citing a recent federal court decision and arguing they were now "unconstitutional racial gerrymanders."
President Donald Trump has rubber-stamped the Texas effort, saying he wants his party to pick up five seats if Texas redraws its congressional maps. (States redo their maps every decade with new Census data, and rarely attempt to do so absent a court order mid-decade.)
Taken with Republican-led redistricting efforts in Ohio and other GOP-controlled states, the changes to Texas' map could help Republicans insulate their fragile House majority from the historic midterm backlash presidents traditionally face from voters.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday suggested his state could revisit its map, which Republicans remade after the 2020 Census, because, in part, of "the way the population has shifted around Florida just since the census was done in 2020 -- I think the state is malapportioned."
In response, Democratic leaders in states like California, Illinois and New Jersey have raised the possibility of revisiting their maps if Texas moves forward, though some states face more legal and constitutional restrictions than Texas to do so.
While there has been speculation that Texas Democrats could interrupt the special session by walking out or breaking quorum, the travels on Friday do not break quorum and members are not framing it as a walkout.
In the state House, Democrats would need 51 members to agree to break quorum, and they'd all risk fines for doing so. The effort, which Democrats have attempted in the past, would be unlikely to do more than delay Republicans' efforts to redraw the maps.
"I am more than willing to participate in a quorum break," State Rep. Gina Hinojosa told ABC News on Friday while cautioning that discussion of one is premature.
Some Democrats, who for years have advocated for nonpartisan redistricting, say the party should respond in kind to GOP efforts.
"I think one of the things we can say while maintaining a reform principle is that we believe in an independent commission and independent redistricting, but that should only kick in when Texas agrees to it, or when Florida agrees to it," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
The chair of the Texas redistricting committee, Republican state Rep. Cody Vasut, said during a Thursday hearing that "it is prudent and proper" for the committee to deal with items the governor put on the agenda, and that "we have no plans to change any particular district."
Others are waiting to see if Texas actually moves forward with changes to its map.
"We have to think about what should our response be, and how do we make sure that we have a response that's actually meeting voters with what they're hoping for, instead of actually making a system worse for voters," Gov. Wes Moore, D-Md., told ABC News.
Experts have told ABC News that either party could risk backlash from voters or in court, depending on how they redraw their state maps. And efforts to make Democrat-held districts in Texas more friendly to GOP pickup could weaken Republicans' hold on neighboring red districts.
