{"id":394609,"date":"2025-11-21T12:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T12:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/394609\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T12:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T12:25:11","slug":"abbott-lawmaker-comments-helped-doom-texas-new-voting-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/394609\/","title":{"rendered":"Abbott, lawmaker comments helped doom Texas\u2019 new voting map"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In mid-August, amid Texas\u2019 high-profile redistricting fight, CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper pressed Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> on why the state was suddenly redrawing its congressional map.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are doing this to give Trump and Republicans in the House of Representatives five additional seats, right?\u201d Tapper asked. \u201cThat\u2019s the motivation, is to stave off any midterm election losses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abbott pushed back, citing a recent 5th Circuit ruling that barred Black and Hispanic voters from joining together to bring voting rights lawsuits. <\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, to be clear, Jake, the reason why we are doing this is because of that court decision,\u201d Abbott said. \u201cTexas is now authorized under law that changed that was different than in 2021 when we last did redistricting.\u201d <\/p>\n

This insistence, which Abbott repeated across several news interviews and was initially echoed by Republican lawmakers, is one of the key allegations that led a federal court to this week strike down Texas\u2019 new congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander. <\/p>\n

If Abbott had stuck with the story that this was purely political gamesmanship, the court would likely have allowed the redraw to stand, based on Supreme Court precedent effectively sanctioning partisan gerrymanders. But by repeatedly tying the process to a court ruling that changed the racial makeup of who can bring legal challenges under the Voting Rights Act, Abbott \u201cexplicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race,\u201d Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote in the ruling that blocked Texas\u2019 new map.<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s 160-page opinion also sharply criticized Republican legislators for unduly tethering the process to race, and specifically condemned state Sen. Phil King<\/a>, chair of the Senate redistricting committee, as untruthful and inconsistent on the stand.<\/p>\n

In a scathing dissent issued the day after Brown\u2019s ruling, 5th U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith wrote that none of Abbott\u2019s or the lawmakers\u2019 comments indicate they brought a racial lens to redistricting. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge faced by these plaintiffs and Judge Brown is to explain how it could be that the Republicans would sacrifice their stated goal of political gain for racial considerations,\u201d he said, calling the ruling\u2019s conclusions \u201cboth perverse and bizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ruling, issued Tuesday, has already been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to act quickly. Candidates have until Dec. 8 to formally declare which seats they are running for in 2026, putting the onus on the courts to soon clarify which map will be used in that election. <\/p>\n

Abbott\u2019s comments<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing everyone involved can agree on, it\u2019s that the letter was a mistake. <\/p>\n

While Trump was pressuring Texas Republicans to take up redistricting, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent a letter to Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, alerting them that four of the state\u2019s congressional districts were unconstitutional. <\/p>\n

Dhillon pointed to a recent ruling from the 5th Circuit, in a case titled Petteway v. Galveston County, that said different racial groups cannot band together to bring voting rights complaints. As a result of that ruling, Texas needed to redraw four of the majority non-white congressional districts it had crafted in 2021, Dhillon wrote. <\/p>\n

The state had just concluded a monthlong trial in which its lawyers argued repeatedly that the 2021 maps were drawn blind to race<\/a>. Paxton responded to Dhillon\u2019s letter reiterating that defense, but noting that the state still might undertake redistricting to shore up Republican strength in the state. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose behind his letter appears to have been to refocus the redistricting dialogue toward permissible considerations like partisanship, politics, and traditional districting criteria \u2014 and away from legally fraught considerations like race,\u201d Brown wrote in his ruling. \u201cIf that was the letter\u2019s purpose, it didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abbott continued to draw from Dhillon\u2019s letter, directing the Legislature to redistrict \u201cin light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cBy incorporating DOJ\u2019s race-based redistricting request by reference, the Governor was asking the Legislature to give DOJ the racial rebalancing it wanted \u2014 and for the reasons that DOJ cited,\u201d Brown wrote. <\/p>\n

The governor then went on a media blitz, telling several different outlets, including CNN, that the redraw was because of these constitutional concerns. In eliminating coalition districts<\/a>, Abbott told Tapper, the new map \u201cturned out to provide more seats for Hispanics \u2026 It just coincides it\u2019s going to be Hispanic Republicans elected to those seats.\u201d <\/p>\n

Abbott later changed tact, removing references to the DOJ letter when he called lawmakers back for a second special session, after Democrats returned from their quorum break<\/a>. But that doesn\u2019t suffice to have \u201ccleansed the first proclamation\u2019s racial taint,\u201d Brown said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe map that the Legislature passed during the second session was largely identical to the first, indicating that racial considerations had already infected the map by the time the Governor issued the second proclamation,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n

Smith, the dissenting judge, said the fact that Abbott\u2019s comments about Hispanic districts came after the first version of the map was drawn show that he had \u201cadjusted his rhetoric to defend the map in a forward-facing capacity,\u201d rather than directing the Legislature to redraw based on a race-based premise. <\/p>\n

In a statement after the ruling, Abbott said it was \u201cabsurd\u201d to say the maps were discriminatory. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen a judgment, an opinion so erroneous in his writing,\u201d he added on Fox News on Thursday. \u201cIt looked like Judge Brown geared his writing to try to achieve a result, and that\u2019s something that the United States Supreme Court, I think, is just not going to tolerate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Legislators\u2019 comments<\/p>\n

As all three judges acknowledge, Abbott\u2019s comments matter a lot less than what the Legislature did based on them. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that when trying to separate out partisan gerrymandering from racial influence, courts should generally give legislatures the benefit of the doubt. <\/p>\n

But Brown found \u201cdirect evidence\u201d that \u201ckey legislators \u2026 had the same racial objectives as DOJ and the Governor.\u201d He pointed to a press release from House Speaker Dustin Burrows that said the chamber had \u201cdelivered legislation to redistrict certain congressional districts to address concerns raised by the Department of Justice,\u201d as well as interviews from lawmakers where they pointed to the Petteway ruling as the impetus for the redraw. <\/p>\n

Burrows said in a statement that he disagrees with the ruling, and expects it to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court \u201cin short order.\u201d <\/p>\n

Brown also dug into comments from state Rep. Todd Hunter<\/a>, the Corpus Christi Republican who carried the bill that enabled the map. Upon presenting the bill on the floor of the Texas House, Hunter walked through the racial makeup of each district, volunteering \u201cwithout prompting,\u201d Brown noted, that the new map increased the number of Hispanic and Black majority districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cChairman Hunter\u2019s floor statements and exchanges with other legislators suggest that he and the bill\u2019s joint authors viewed the plan\u2019s racial numbers not merely as raw statistical facts, but as selling points of the bill,\u201d Brown wrote. \u201cHe said it was \u2018good,\u2019 \u2018great,\u2019 and a \u2018strong message\u2019 that those four districts were majority-Hispanic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown also flagged the increase in districts where Black or Hispanic voters made up \u201cjust barely a majority\u201d of the eligible voting population.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bill\u2019s main proponents purposefully manipulated the districts\u2019 racial numbers to make the map more palatable,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThat\u2019s racial gerrymandering.\u201d <\/p>\n

Smith vociferously disagreed, saying none of Brown\u2019s arguments overrode the presumption of good faith that should be awarded to legislators. He took special umbrage at Brown\u2019s interpretation of Hunter\u2019s comments. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor Judge Brown to insist that [Hunter] harbored inward racial animus on this ambiguous fact pattern unfairly paints Hunter, a former democrat, as an unreformed, unrepentant racist maintaining a flagging veneer of partisan nastiness over Strom Thurmond-like segregationism,\u201d Smith wrote. \u201cThis upside-down fantasy entertained by Judge Brown is plain error and justifies reversal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunter did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n

Several lawmakers made comments that bolstered the partisan argument that the state now argues in court, including House Redistricting Committee Chair Cody Vasut<\/a>, R-Angleton. Smith said those comments should be held in equal weight to any comments from other members of the Legislature, but Brown disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe conclude that the contemporaneous statements of legislators involved in the 2025 redistricting are more indicative of racial motives than partisan ones,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Kincaid v. King<\/p>\n

King, the Senate redistricting committee chair, is among the legislators who repeatedly claimed the process was motivated by pure partisan goals. But Brown dismissed his comments on the grounds that he was not as involved in the process as Hunter, and because Brown deemed him to be an unreliable witness after he contradicted himself and other witnesses on the stand. <\/p>\n

At issue are King\u2019s communications with Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, who drew the map on Texas\u2019 behalf. King and Kincaid met at a conference before redistricting began. By King\u2019s retelling, he explicitly told Kincaid he didn\u2019t want to talk about redistricting and never asked how many seats Republicans might gain; Kincaid said King spoke openly with him about the process at that meeting, including asking how many seats the GOP could get. <\/p>\n

There were other inconsistencies between King and Kincaid\u2019s testimonies, which Brown said indicated one of the two was incorrect, and raised the question of \u201cwhether anything happened during that meeting that would betray an unlawful legislative motive.\u201d <\/p>\n

Smith agreed that King was the less reliable narrator, writing that \u201cKincaid\u2019s remarkably lucid, rapid-fire, and forthright demeanor on the stand \u2014 compared to King\u2019s calculated demeanor\u201d made it \u201cobvious\u201d that Kincaid was telling the truth. <\/p>\n

King did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":394610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[7373,90,5026,50,22204,7376,47027,67,132,68,168943],"class_list":{"0":"post-394609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-2026-elections","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-greg-abbott","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-redistricting","14":"tag-texas-legislature","15":"tag-u-s-supreme-court","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-well-a-homepage"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115587679916187515","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}