Republicans have moved to tighten their
grip on power in Texas after a late-night vote in the state’s legislature
approved an early sign-off to new congressional boundaries at the expense of
communities of color.
The Republican-led effort will give the
party powers over redrawn US House maps and shore up its eroding dominance
in Texas, whose
demographics are becoming less white in a shift that most experts see as
favoring Democrats.
The redrawn congressional districts would
make it easier for many Republican incumbents to hold their seats, but
critics say they also threaten Black and Hispanic communities’ political
influence.
He made it, ultimately, to Kent and was
rowed from there to France in the first days of November.
In exile, he would need money, so before
leaving Northampton, The district map contained in Senate
Bill 6 is expected to strengthen Republican numbers in the state’s
delegation to Washington from the current 23-13 split in favor of Republicans
to a 24-14 or 25-13 advantage, according
to the Austin American-Statesman.
Republicans say the districts, which were
drawn by the Texas state senate, adhered to federal voting rights law.
Texas Democrats objected to the proposed
districts, arguing that Republicans had failed to respect or reflect the sharp
increase in Latino, Black, and Asian populations who make up more than half of
the nearly 4m new Texans over the past decade. The increase gave Texas two
seats in Congress last year.
“This map
is a bad map,” said Democratic Representative Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, a
city in Dallas County. “It’s a map that does not reflect that the tremendous
growth of our state is 95% attributable to Texans of color. It gives the two
new districts that Texas received to Anglos.”
Another
Dallas-area democrat, Rafael Anchía, said that
SB 6 would increase Anglo-majority districts from 22 to 23, while districts, where Hispanics make up the majority of voters, would be reduced from 8 to 7.
The state’s sole majority-Black district would disappear.
“That
doesn’t work morally, it doesn’t work mathematically, and it shouldn’t work in
redistricting,” Anchía told
the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.
But
Houston senator Joan Huffman, the Republican author of SB 6, has said that she
created a redistricting plan “blind to race” that meets the requirements of the
Voting Rights Act.
The
redistricting maps still face final negotiations between the Texas upper and
lower chambers before being sent to Governor Greg Abbott, a
Republican, who is expected to sign them.
The measures
are expected to trigger court challenges by Democrats and voting rights
advocates in what could be another high-profile, high-stakes legal battle that
has already made Texas the center of abortion rights and immigration battles.
Republicans, who control both chambers,
have nearly complete control of the map-making process and are working off maps
that the courts have already declared as tilted, or gerrymandered, in their
favor.
Representative Van Taylor, for example,
whose district in Dallas’ exurbs went for Donald Trump by a single percentage
point last year. Under the new maps, reports the Associated Press, Trump would
have won the district by double-digits.
Michael McCaul, representative of Texas’
10th Congressional District, stretching from Austin to Houston could now
represent a solidly pro-Trump district after Houston’s exurbs were peeled
away.
Furthermore, the district stretching from
the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio that President Joe Biden won by just over
2% would now slightly tilt toward Trump voters.
But some incumbent Democrats, too, came
away with advantages by changing the configuration that placed two Democratic
African-American representatives, Sheila Jackson Lee and US Representative Al
Green, in the same Harris county district. Another Democratic amendment
returned Fort Bliss to the district based in nearby El Paso.
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