Texas House approves GOP congressional map after two-week delay from Democrats’ walkout

A Senate panel Thursday morning advanced the new congressional map passed a day prior by the Legislature's lower chamber, moving the partisan map one step closer to the governor's desk.

The Special Committee on Congressional Redistricting approved the map on a 5-3 vote following a roughly hourlong meeting. The passage was expected as the Senate has repeatedly green-lit the map designed to give the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House. The move clears the way for the redistricting plan to reach the full chamber, which could take up the map as soon as Thursday evening.

While Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to eventually sign the map into law, Democrats who oppose the plan have vowed to continue their fight against it in the courts, characterizing the Legislature's ratification as the first chapter in what is all but certain to be a protracted legal battle.

Republicans shot down 12 Democrat-proposed amendments Wednesday, including measures to block the map’s implementation until the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, until the establishment of an independent redistricting commission and until a federal court found that the plan would not suppress the vote of people of color.

The GOP-led House also rejected amendments to use the state’s current congressional map if the new lines are held up in court, and to only implement the new map within two years of the decennial census.

In proposing each amendment, Democrats sought to stretch out the debate and press their Republican colleagues on how race was considered in drawing the lines, in an effort to establish a record that they could bring to court in challenging the map on constitutional grounds.

Democrats tried to highlight the plan’s possible impact on people of color — who they argued will see their vote diluted under the new lines — and the fact that Republicans were redrawing the map in the middle of the decade, using five-year-old census data.

The map is “a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution,” said Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, after raising an amendment to sink the map. “This body has no business passing this bill. We need to kill it and get on with the real business of the people of this state.”

An amendment from Democratic Rep. Gene Wu of Houston that sought to tie the implementation of the new congressional map to the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files was found to be not germane to the redistricting bill after another representative contested it, effectively killing the attempt to put Republicans in a political bind.

Wu said Wednesday morning he planned to introduce the amendment to force Republicans "to choose between their loyalty to Trump and their obligation to expose sexual predators." But members ultimately did not debate the amendment or vote on it following the procedural challenge from Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, that was sustained by the House parliamentarian.

“The bill changes the composition of districts for the election of members to the United States House of Representatives," Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows said, reading the parliamentarian's ruling. "The Wu amendment makes the effective date of the bill contingent on a matter that is not even remotely related to the congressional redistricting.”

Republicans have successfully quashed all 11 amendments Democrats have so far tried to tack onto the bill.

The House voted down an amendment offered by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, to add a section to the bill saying that the map complies with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination against voters on the basis of race.

The vote to reject the amendment was 87 to 51, along party lines.

Rep. Todd Hunter, the map’s Republican sponsor, opposed the amendment, saying that the bill already complies with the Voting Rights Act.

“It’s unnecessary, and guess what? It’s incorporated in this bill,” he said.

The debate over the amendment grew heated at times, as Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D-San Antonio, pressed Hunter on the lack of public input allowed on the map and its impact on Black and Latino voters.

“You own the walkout,” Hunter said to applause from Republicans, referring to Democrats’ two-week departure from the state to block action on the map. “But don’t come into this body and say we didn’t involve you. You left for 18 days, and that’s wrong.”

Martinez Fischer argued that if the map’s proponents were certain it complied with the Voting Rights Act, they should have no problem voting in favor of the amendment.

“It just says that we are going to follow Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” he said. “That’s it. There are no tricks. There are no hidden words. That’s all it does. It shouldn’t be controversial.”

As the Texas House began its anticipated and delayed debate on congressional redistricting, dozens of protesters gathered in the Capitol rotunda and their chants at times seeped into the chamber, albeit faintly.

The demonstrators rallied support for Rep. Nicole Collier, a Fort Worth Democrat who has been on the floor of the Texas House since Monday afternoon after she refused to sign a permission slip allowing members to leave the chamber only if they agreed to be shadowed by state law enforcement officers.

Collier is among the Democrats who participated in a two-week walkout to delay passage of a new congressional map that aims to give the GOP five additional seats in the 2026 midterms.

"Let her out," the protesters chanted, some holding a giant banner that read "Put Texans First."

Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, intends to try blocking the new congressional map from going into effect until President Donald Trump releases the files of disgraced billionaire and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The lower chamber is expected to vote later Wednesday on the proposed map pushed by Trump, which redraws districts with the aim of getting the GOP five more seats in the U.S. House. In a statement, Wu said he plans to introduce an amendment that would make the maps conditional on Trump releasing all "investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters" related to Epstein. The goal, Wu said, is to force Republicans "to choose between their loyalty to Trump and their obligation to expose sexual predators.”

The files related to Epstein, who died in federal prison while awaiting trial, have long been the source of conspiracy theories. The Trump administration was expected to release them, but reversed course this summer. Trump's name was reportedly mentioned in them, though it is not clear exactly in what context.

“Trump is in those files, and that's why he's fighting to keep them hidden,” Wu said.