Democrats question redistricting bill in Special Senate Committee meeting

AUSTIN, Texas - The Texas House passed its redistricting bill Wednesday night, with a 88-52 vote. 

The map is designed to add five Republican-leaning seats in the U.S. House. Now it goes to the Senate. 

The Special Senate Committee met on Thursday morning. 

Democrats question redistricting bill

What they're saying:

The committee had already voted the bill out for the full Senate to discuss. Thursday's hearing was largely Democrats questioning the chairman on the process up to this point.

The hearing started with Chairman Sen. Phil King (R-Weatherford) talking about what he wants to accomplish with a new map.

"Those goals include one, complying with applicable law, two, strengthening Republican congressional performance, and three, maintaining compact districts," he said.

Sen. Carol Alvarado (D-Houston) questioned why redistricting was on the special session agenda to begin with.

"It seems like in the regular session nobody was even contemplating this. Would you agree?" Alvarado said.

"I heard discussions of it before we adjourned, before we sine died from the regular session," King said.

"I don't recall any discussion until President Trump talked about it," Alvarado said.

The hearing was only about an hour long. It had no public testimony. King says they already had over 200 people testifying at previous meetings.

"Would you agree with me that we're not allowing constituents to comment on the differences that you just agreed that we're making?" State Sen. Borris Miles (D-Houston) said.

"No, I think anybody, the public portal is still open, anyone can still file comments about it," King said.

The House and Senate versions of the bill have slight differences, particularly in Houston's Congressional District 9.

"Mr. Chairman, a 28.4% drop in Black population and the redo of District 9, it doesn't, it's just coincidental and you're saying that this is not race-based," Miles said.

"Again, I haven't looked at any racial data, and I have tried very hard to not do anything that was race-based," King said.

The current Texas delegation in Congress has 25 Republicans and 13 Democrats.

Democratic committee members were concerned about that number being even lower and about communities being split apart on the map.

"Now it's going from 13 to eight. I'm just saying, you know, when is enough, enough?" Alvarado said.

"I was very concerned and disturbed with what was done during the Biden administration and I'm very concerned that if the Republicans lost the majority in the U.S. House, that the next two years following the midterms could be very harmful to Texas and to the United States," King said.

Dig deeper:

The committee voted 5-3 for the bill to go to the full Senate. However, this lays the groundwork for a lawsuit Democrats plan to file.

"We're going to take this to court," State Rep. John Bucy III (D-Austin) said. 

Democrats initially broke quorum to protest redistricting, though it still passed the House Wednesday night.

"Do you think leaving the state and breaking quorum was kind of for nothing?" FOX 7 asked.

"What we did by breaking quorum, we started an American conversation," Bucy said.

Gov. Greg Abbott added new agenda items for the session, asking lawmakers to come up with penalties for themselves when they don't show up.

"We're going to keep serving our constituents and fighting back," Bucy said.

The Senate meets at 7 p.m. Thursday.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing for redistricting to create five more Democratic seats.