ABC13 has confirmed with multiple sources that House Democrats will return to Texas.
Eyewitness News has not confirmed the date, but we do know that Democrats believe they’ve accomplished their mission by killing the first special session and by raising national awareness about the mid-decade redistricting effort.
It is unclear which day they will be in Austin at the Capitol, but they stress that they will push for Hill Country flooding relief to be the priority.
Category Archives: redistricting
Good Government Group Common Cause Will Bless Time-Limited Mid-Decade Re-redistricting, with Conditions
Announcement via email:
Common Cause today reaffirmed its commitment to fair, people-powered democracy, making clear that independent redistricting commissions remain the gold standard for ending partisan gerrymandering.
However, as political leaders in states like Texas are imposing mid-decade partisan maps to distort the will of the people ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the organization announced it will closely evaluate, but not automatically condemn, countermeasures to these actions….
Common Cause’s position follows decades of advocacy against partisan gerrymandering, including taking Common Cause v. Rucho to the Supreme Court, drafting provisions in the Freedom to Vote Act to ban partisan gerrymandering, and championing independent redistricting commissions nationwide.
Common Cause’s Six Fairness Criteria for Mid-Decade Redistricting
- Proportionality: Any mid-decade redistricting should be a targeted response proportional to the threat posed by mid-decade gerrymanders in other states.
- Public participation: Any redistricting must include meaningful public participation, whether through ballot initiatives or open public processes.
- Racial equity: Redistricting must not further racial discrimination or dilute the political voice of Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander, or other communities of color.
- Federal reform: Leaders pursuing mid-decade redistricting must publicly endorse the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, including provisions banning mid-decade redistricting and partisan gerrymandering.
- Endorsement of independent redistricting: Leaders pursuing mid-decade redistricting must publicly endorse citizen-led independent redistricting commissions as the long-term solution.
- Time-limited: Any new redistricting maps must expire following the 2030 Census, which counts all people in our country, and be replaced through the regular decennial redistricting process.
“Texas Republicans dare Democrats to stay out of state another month”
Texas Republicans said Tuesday that they would kick off a second special legislative session Friday to redraw the state’s congressional maps in favor of the GOP, putting pressure on absent Democrats to quickly return to the state or commit to remaining away for another month.
Dozens of Democrats in the Texas House fled the state last week to block a Republican plan to shift five congressional districts sharply to the right ahead of next year’s midterm elections. They have said they are committed to staying away long enough to kill the measure during a special session slated to last until as late as Aug. 19.
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) said Tuesday that if Democrats do not return by Friday, Republican lawmakers will end the special session that day. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said he would immediately call a new 30-day special session, which Burrows would gavel in later Friday.
The move essentially restarts the clock, forcing Democrats to decide whether they’re willing to stay away for another four weeks — or longer. Democrats have not said whether they would stay away beyond the current special session. Abbott said Tuesday that he will keep calling special sessions until the Democrats come back….
“Why a gerrymandering critic wants to toss out California’s maps”
Sara Sadhwani is proud of her work on California’s independent redistricting commission, but now she wants voters to tear up the maps she and her colleagues spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours crafting.
The Pomona political science professor grabbed political insiders’ attention when she backed state Democrats’ move to counter Texas Republicans’ planned gerrymander with one of their own.
Sadhwani, one of the commission’s Democratic members in 2020, believes partisan gerrymandering should be outlawed nationwide. But she argued democratic institutions have been so weakened by President Donald Trump’s administration that slanting California’s maps toward Democrats is necessary to push back on a Republican power grab — which is why she’s inviting voters to override her own work.
“These are extraordinary times,” she told Playbook. “At this moment, I’m not so worried about California’s democracy.”
You got a lot of attention for calling for the maps to be redrawn. Can you talk me through your thinking?
First of all, I’ll say that I stand by the maps that the commission drew. They are fair, they are competitive, and those are the kinds of maps that we should have for congressional districts across the nation. We expanded opportunities for Latinos, in particular, to elect their candidates of choice in ways that the Legislature never bothered to do in California. I’m incredibly proud of the work that we did in the largest state in the nation.
That being said, not all of the states are playing by the same set of rules. Certainly, we see the showdown happening in Texas. President Trump has talked about getting the FBI involved to get Democratic members back to the Texas Legislature. These are extraordinary times. At this moment, I’m not so worried about California’s democracy. We have strong democratic institutions here in the state of California, but I’m also a political scientist, and at the national level, what we’ve seen over the last 10 or even 20 years is a backsliding and a decay of our institutions that should worry all of us….
“Republican Party of Texas sets stage to censure members who stepped out of line in likely bid to block them from primary ballot”
The executive committee of the Republican Party of Texas was in Austin on Saturday to finalize its first-ever legislative review, outlining a list of censurable offenses that some within the Texas GOP want to use to block certain House Republicans from the 2026 primary ballot.
Those Republicans, made up of delegates chosen by county parties, want to use the list to hold their elected officials to the state party’s priorities. But others see it as an illegal effort to deny officials from the primary ballot if they don’t follow the most fervent conservative activists’ aims 100% of the time.
Texas GOP Chair Abraham George told The Blast that he and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, who spoke to members of the SREC at a separate meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott earlier Saturday morning, have not discussed the party’s censure effort, a new “accountability” mechanism the state party approved at its 2024 convention. Still, Burrows likely knew the SREC members would be approving a hit list that could be used to keep “RINOs” from the ballot….
“How Alabama’s historic congressional map still faces uncertainty amid redistricting battles”
In this sweltering political August, redistricting has become the hot fight of the moment.
It’s driving Texas Democrats to flee their state, hunkering down in Illinois while Republican Gov. Greg Abbott threatens to have lawmakers removed from office. It’s throwing a Black-majority district in Louisiana into limbo, igniting fears that the U.S. Supreme Court could soon unravel what remains of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
And in Alabama, after years of courtroom showdowns, a long-fought redistricting battle appears to have reached a moment of resolution — at least for now. A three-judge federal panel last week ruled unanimously that Alabama must use the map drawn up by a court-appointed special master until 2030.
While it is unclear whether Alabama officials will appeal the latest ruling, it marked the second time the same Alabama Northern District panel ruled that the GOP-drawn map, with just one majority Black district, was unconstitutional and in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
The legal fight may not be over and experts warn that a Supreme Court decision in a Louisiana case could still send ripples through Alabama….
The Louisiana case has the potential to affect Alabama where Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act remains a key force that led to a redrawn 2nd district.
“It would not surprise me to see the Supreme Court hold any further appeals in the Alabama redistricting litigation pending a decision in the Louisiana case,” said Richard Hasen, a political science professor and election law expert at the UCLA School of Law, said before Thursday’s ruling by the three-judge panel in the Alabama case. “If Section 2 falls or is limited in the Louisiana case, it would affect the rights and remedies in Alabama as well.”…
Jeff Wice, chair of the New York City Bar Association Election Law Committee and a professor at New York Law School, said he believes the Alabama case is different from Louisiana and from Texas. He said that in Alabama, the conservative court ruled that the state’s congressional map clearly diluted the Black population’s vote.
“In Louisiana, they redrew their congressional map to also satisfy a requirement to create a second Black (majority) district,” Wice said. “But by doing so, the legislature created other districts that seemed to separate white votes from Black votes, and to be able to protect the incumbent Republicans including (U.S. House) Speaker Mike Johnson.”
He added, “the question there is becoming – to what extent is the use of race required if the prevailing factor is politics? Louisiana would not be having this problem if politics were not playing a role and if they simply did as Alabama’s court did in simply drawing two Black majority districts without politics getting in the way.”…
“How did we get all this gerrymandering? A short history of the Republican redistricting scheme”
Dave Daley in The Guardian.
“Inside Democrats’ risky gambit to ‘fight fire with fire’ over election maps”
Their exodus, coordinated with top Democrats outside Texas, is the latest flash point in a rapidly spreading fight over election maps — embodying Democrats’ newly combative posture on redistricting. After Texas Republicans initiated an unusual mid-decade effort to redraw their maps at President Donald Trump’s urging, state Democrats have staged a high-profile protest; liberal governors have moved to retaliate with new maps of their own; and many onetime gerrymandering critics have joined the cause. “Fight fire with fire,” as many Democrats have recently put it.
But the party is facing an uphill climb and risks of a letdown. Texas Democrats are likely to stall but not ultimately prevent Republicans from enacting a new map that would add five new U.S. House seats that voted for Trump by double-digit percentages. In several blue states, Democrats must clear legal hurdles that their red-state counterparts don’t face as both parties try to overhaul election maps beyond Texas.
“Fundamentally, this has the potential to be the gerrymandering apocalypse that may have been inevitable given that for both parties, the ends have increasingly justified the means,” said David Wasserman, senior elections analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Republicans are more likely to get their way, Wasserman said, even if Democrats are able to offset GOP gains in Texas.
The outcome could have major implications for 2026 and the final two years of Trump’s term. Republicans are defending a 219-212 House majority, with four vacancies, and even marginal shifts could be pivotal….
Alabama Dodges Bail-in
Yesterday, the three-judge district court in the Alabama congressional redistricting litigation declined to bail-in the State to the VRA’s preclearance regime. You can find the district court’s decision here.
Recall that the district court had previously found that Alabama’s 2023 defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan constituted intentional discrimination. Based on the district court’s obvious frustration with Alabama’s recalcitrance, it appeared that the State was a prime candidate for bail-in under Section 3(c) of the VRA. Moreover, plaintiffs’ bail-in request was limited: only for congressional redistricting and only through the post-2030 redistricting map. Bail-in was designed to stop the game of whack-a-mole that was Southern defiance of federal court decrees. Unfortunately, Alabama dodged the hammer once again.
For prior analysis of bail-in in this case, see here, here, and here. Here’s some takeaways from the district court’s opinion and recent bail-in litigation overall:
1. The district court’s fifteen-page opinion is mostly a summary of the litigation and last week’s bail-in hearing. Its analysis of the bail-in issue is cursory. The court sidestepped contentious questions about whether multiple constitutional violations are necessary for bail-in; whether Shaw violations count; and whether constitutional violations by political subdivisions are part of the inquiry. Instead, the district court relied heavily on its retention of jurisdiction over the case through the 2030 redistricting cycle and its injunction that Alabama must use the Special Master’s remedial maps. It observed that this “largely obviate[d]” the need to delve into the “intrusive waters” of preclearance. Indeed, the district court’s approach recalls the Fourth Circuit’s minimal analysis of the bail-in question in McCrory, the North Carolina voter-suppression case.
Furthermore, the district court appears to conflate the question of retaining jurisdiction and bail-in. For example, the district court’s opinion could be read to express concern about dealing with the case through the entire 2030 redistricting process—that is, through 2041. But that is emphatically not how bail-in under Section 3(c) would have worked. Alabama would have been required to preclear the first map that it drew after the 2030 Census. So long as Alabama met its burden to show by a preponderance of the evidence that it had not intentionally discriminated and had not retrogressed Black voting strength, the bail-in would have ended. Any Section 2 or Shaw claims would have been heard by a separate court. And the bail-in would not have applied to a 2030 mid-decade redistricting either.
To be clear, some of this confusion could be attributable to plaintiffs’ back-up request for the court to retain jurisdiction. But the substantive standard and process for how preclearance would work under Section 3(c) is distinct from how the same court hearing a potential Section 2 case in the 2030s would work.
2. Although the district court declined to bail-in Alabama, it did mandate that it use the Special Master’s remedial map until the 2030 redistricting cycle. Thus, for now, Alabama cannot take part in the potential wave of mid-decade redistricting that might occur. However, Alabama has appealed the underlying merits determination to the Supreme Court, and with the Callais re-argument next Term, it is possible Alabama may be freed from this permanent injunction.
3. The lightning bolt of the Callais re-argument order looms large here. The short time frame between last week’s hearing and yesterday’s decision hints at a district court that thinks it’s gone as far as it can go without being rebuked by the Supreme Court.
4. Finally, one cannot help but wonder what might have been in these post-Shelby County bail-in suits if the Supreme Court had not become considerably more conservative during the first Trump administration. Put differently, if the Senate had not successfully blockaded Merrick Garland or if Justice Ginsburg had retired in a timely manner, the preclearance regime might have been partially rebuilt. We have seen district courts issue intentional discrimination findings against two States that were previously fully covered (Alabama and twice against Texas) and two States that were previously partially covered (Florida and North Carolina). But when it came to pull the trigger on Section 3(c) relief, the lower courts blinked.
Perhaps one upshot of yesterday’s decision is that bail-in’s constitutionality will continue to escape Supreme Court review. Although I still believe that this is the best post-Shelby County vehicle for addressing Section 3(c)’s constitutionality, one need not look far for other voting/civil rights cases—such as Brnovich—in which an aggressive litigation posture ended up backfiring. We will have to wait and see what remains of the Voting Rights Act after next Term, which is shaping up to be monumental.
I Was on the Bloomberg Law Podcast with June Grasso: “The Voting Rights Act Is in Jeopardy”
The Media’s Unfortunate Greater Interest in the Texas Redistricting Car Wreck than the Supreme Court’s Slow Poisoning of the Voting Rights Act
I’ve written about two big election stories this week, the newly ignited redistricting wars starting in Texas and the Supreme Court’s strong signal that it could kill off the Voting Rights Act Section 2 by next June. Judged by my conversations with those in the media, Texas redistricting is the bigger story, but I think the VRA is—especially coming on the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Act.
It’s not surprising that the media is more attracted to the Texas story. It happens right now with great visuals of fleeing legislators and threats to bring in the FBI, and Democratic governors vowing to engage in tit-for-tat warfare. The harms to democracy are easy for everyone to see.
But when the Supreme Court acts, it’s very hard to make exciting for the public. A cryptic briefing order issued at the start of a summer weekend does not make good visuals. You don’t get sound bites from Justices Alito and Sotomayor. The action will take place in dense, technical briefs, over months.
So when the Supreme Court kills another aspect of democracy and does it with slow poison, it is much harder to get the public to pay attention. But the lasting cost to our democracy is likely to be far greater than the redistricting skirmishes happening in prime time.
Watch Video of My Appearance on the PBS News Hour Talking about the New Redistricting Wars and the Implications for the Voting Rights Act
My New One at MSNBC Opinion: “Trump started a redistricting war. Only Congress can stop it.”
I have written this piece for MSNBC Opinion. It begins:
A sudden war over redistricting has broken out in Texas and looks to spread across the country, with California, New York and elsewhere considering tit-for-tat Democratic partisan gerrymanders to negate the Republican hardball in Texas. Congress, rather than the courts, is in the best position to stop the upcoming race to the bottom. But even though it’s in everyone’s interest that Congress act, don’t hold your breath….
It is possible the courts will block some of these gerrymanders if it can be shown, for example, that they violate the Voting Rights Act. But the Supreme Court just signaled that it may further weaken or kill Voting Rights Act claims in redistricting cases. With that red flag, and with the court’s decision to allow unlimited partisan gerrymandering, the courts are not likely to get the country out of this vicious cycle.
Congress can stop the madness at any point. The Constitution gives Congress the power in Article I to “make” or “alter” state rules for running congressional elections, including redistricting. Congress could outlaw mid-decade redistricting, require the use of commissions, or set a standard barring the most egregious partisan gerrymanders.
In the current polarized atmosphere in Congress, and with Trump (who would have to sign such legislation) looking to impose “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” to preserve Republican power, a bipartisan deal to avoid a redistricting war seems most unlikely. But as the Cold War taught us, détente is better than mutually assured destruction for all the parties. Those who suffer the most are the voters, who should not be packed in or cracked out of districts simply because their party is in the minority.
My New One at Slate on the Supreme Court Potentially Killing the Remaining Pillar of the Voting Rights Act: “The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term”
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins:
Reading the tea leaves from cryptic Supreme Court orders can be perilous business because the justices are not bound by the questions they ask at oral argument, the offhand comments they make at a judicial conference, or even their monumental “shadow docket” rulings on emergency petitions that have become all too common. But a technical briefing order in a long pending case out of Louisiana, posted on the Supreme Court’s website after 5 p.m. on a Friday in August, was ominous. The order was likely intended to obscure that the court is ready to consider striking down the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2. Such a monumental ruling, likely not coming until June 2026, would change the nature of congressional, state, and local elections, all across the country, and likely stir major civil rights protests as the midterm election season heats up….
We waited weeks for the court to issue its rescheduling order and when it came this past Friday it was a doozy. The court pointed specifically to a set of pages in plaintiffs’ brief which argue that Section 2 is unconstitutional, at least as applied in this case, and that the Voting Rights Act cannot serve as a compelling interest to defeat a racial gerrymandering claim when race predominates. “The parties are directed to file supplemental briefs addressing the following question raised [in that brief]: Whether the State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.”
Although the court’s order did not explicitly mention Section 2 or even the Voting Rights Act more generally—unquestionably to obscure things further—there is no doubting what’s going on here. The court is asking the parties to consider whether Louisiana’s compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by drawing a second majority-minority district—as the earlier Ardoin case seemed to require—was unconstitutional under a view of the Constitution as requiring colorblindness.
If the Supreme Court moves forward with this interpretation it would be a sea change to voting rights law. A reading of the Constitution as forbidding race-conscious districting as mandated by Congress to deal with centuries of race discrimination in voting is at odds with the text of the Constitution, with the powers granted directly to Congress to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and with numerous precedents of the Supreme Court itself. It would end what has been the most successful way that Black and other minority voters have gotten fair representation in Congress, state legislatures and in local bodies. It would be an earthquake in politics and make our legislative bodies whiter and our protection for minority voters greatly diminished. Even if the court less drastically says that Section 2 could not be used to require the second congressional district in this case, such a superficially more minimal ruling would mean the quick unraveling of most Section 2 districts because if the facts in Louisiana don’t justify drawing a second district, most other Section 2 claims would fail too….
Court conservatives likely thought teeing up the issue of overruling Section 2 on a hot summer weekend would avoid public notice. But that’s a short term strategy. Come next June, any decision to strike down what’s left of the Voting Rights Act could kick off the start of a new civil rights movement and more serious talk of Supreme Court reform in the midst of crucially important midterm elections. A court fundamentally hostile to the rights of voters places the court increasingly at odds with democracy itself.