Governor Abbot called a special session of the Texas Legislature to “redistrict” the Texas federal representative districts, based on a demand for “5 new seats” from the white house.

What the deal with the redistricting? Long story short, the executive branch is demanding 5 new MAGA representatives out of Texas. Since they anticipate the democratic party “flipping seats” in the midterms (2026 elections) based on how wildly unpopular their authoritarian behavior is in Texas, they are demanding that the Texas state legislature re-draw the districts to “gain” 5 new seats for the MAGA/GOP party.

1. Does he have to do this? Absolutely not. This is highly unusual, authoritarian and fascist behavior from the executive brand and from the Texas governor. Other states are refusing to redistrict or threatening to re-district to balance the new MAGA/GOP seats that the regime may “pick up” from “successful” Texas redistricting.

2. Is this normal? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Redistricting is done every 10 years when the federal government completes a new census (AKA trying to count everyone in the country) and we have new data to justify drawing new lines.

3. What’s their excuse, then? The TX GOP’s excuse for mid-decade redistricting? “Our current maps are racist!” Who drew the current maps? Mostly the Texas GOP.

Spark notes: The Executive Branch has instructed the TX state-level GOP party to use their elected representatives currently in the TX LEGE special session to re-draw the maps that determine how many party-affiliated representatives are in federal congress… so that Democrats have less power to block the white house’s agenda for the whole country. This is a make or break moment for representative government.

51 Texas House Democrats left the state to “break quorum” AKA take away enough elected officials so that redistricting is unable to legally pass the TX House. You can find a list of who in the House and Senate broke quorum (the house succeeded and the senate failed when 2 Democratic party senators refused to walk with the rest of their party) here.

August 15, the quorum-breaking Democrats announced that, because some of them had decided to return, the quorum break was over and most headed home to “relying on the courts” to injunct (stop) the maps after the governor signs the new maps into law. This is going to throw the midterms into chaos.

This was a dangerous decision by some of the democrats, and an abdication of their legislative responsibility. Relying on the courts to do the job of legislators is an insecure solution. The courts are the last resort to stop unconstitutional legislation, they are not the solution. We deployed a petition to tell the 51 democrats to stay out of TX until we are safe from racist, further-gerrymandered maps.

8/19 1 AM: Rep Nicole Collier (Democrat) was being held against her will by DPS in the TX House Chamber overnight because she did not consent to sign a “permission slip” form consenting to DPS following her everywhere for the reminder of the special session. HOCTX deployed a rapid-response protest to demand her release on Mon Aug 18 at 7 PM and Tuesday evening Aug 19, demanding the governor drop the DPS escorts of democratic senators and do not use our Texas law enforcement to control and intimidate our elected officials.

Update 8/27: The maps have passed both houses of government, and the NAACP has sued to injunct them. Stay tuned to see which maps we’re using for the midterms.