Texas Democrats are exploring other ways of undoing the Republican-led efforts to redistrict the state. This comes as the Texas House of Representatives prepares to vote on the matter. Kayla Guo, a politics reporter for The Texas Tribune, joins CBS News with the latest.

Texas

Texas state lawmakers are voting on a controversial redistricting bill that would alter the state's congressional maps, potentially reducing the number of districts represented by Democrats. Currently, Democrats hold 12 congressional seats in Texas, while Republicans hold 25. The proposed new map would further shrink Democratic representation, particularly affecting areas with significant Black and Latino populations. 

Democrats argue that the new map dilutes the voting power of communities of color, while Republicans maintain the changes are aimed at maximizing partisan advantage. The bill's advancement follows a reported push from former President Trump, who encouraged Governor Greg Abbott to prioritize redistricting. Democrats are preparing to challenge the new maps in court, aiming to block their implementation before the next election.

Texas Democrats seek ways to undo Republican redistricting effort

Let's turn our monitors back to Texas because happening right now, state lawmakers are in the process of voting on the highly controversial redistricting bill that would change congressional maps. The man who introduced that bill just answered questions from lawmakers right before the vote. But a reminder for our viewers, Democrats, they hold just 12 seats in Congress to represent the state of Texas, and that puts them in the super minority. Meanwhile, 25 Republicans hold seats in Congress for Texas. Now this is where the congressional map stands right now. To your left, you can see what the existing map looks like with most of the blue in the middle of the state. To your right, this is what the new map will look like. Those blue, small blue dots rather, they shrink even further, marking a loss for Democrats. So let's bring in the Texas Tribune politics reporter Kayla Guo for much more on this. Thank you, Kayla, for joining us on 24-7 today. You're inside the Capitol building right now. What are you seeing? What are you hearing out there? I mean, it's a crowded space right now. There are a lot of reporters, and I think there's a lot of anticipation about when this vote is going to happen. They're trying to push through the map on final passage today. Democrats are trying to put the screws on their Republican colleagues, try to get them to admit something that they can use as a legal record in raising a legal challenge to this map. So there's a lot of back and forth right now. I think we're expecting a vote in the next few hours, though. Yeah, and we are hearing these intense exchange over how these maps will affect certain groups of voters. So, Kayla, can we talk about how this map affects Black and Latino voters in the state of Texas? I think you'll hear Democrats argue that the map unconstitutionally packs and spreads voters of color across districts, making it less likely for them to be able to select their preferred candidate. Republicans will tell you that this map was drawn purely to maximize partisan gain. It does create one additional Hispanic-majority seat and two additional Black-majority seats in addition to two majority-white seats. So I think that question of whether it unconstitutionally dilutes the voting power of communities of color is sort of up in the air, but certainly there are two different takes on that. What's ahead for Democrats? What comes next for them once this bill goes through? Once this bill goes through, there's a bunch on the agenda remaining for both parties to address in the rest of this special session, but I think you've heard Democrats say that they're ready to take this fight into their next phase, which is going to be in court. So I think they're working on establishing this legal record right now that they can bring to court, and their goal would be to kill the map before the midterm election next year. And, Kayla, I have to ask you, what are the people of Texas, what are they saying about this? If we heard from them and this goal of Republicans to basically move forward with this redistricting efforts, what are the people of Texas saying about it? We heard hundreds of Texans come and testify against the maps during the few hearings, the public hearings that lawmakers held on this. Those were, of course, very motivated people to come out and testify. I think we saw a couple people say they were in favor of it. Definitely we've seen Republicans say that, you know, given their margins of victory in 2024, that they are, you know, should be allowed to maximize their seats this time around. And Kayla, can you talk to us about exactly how we got here in the first place? I believe this is something that President Trump was pushing for, and that's how this started. It wasn't necessarily something that Texas Republicans had in mind in the first place. No, there was no redistricting bill brought during the regular session earlier this year, although there were sort of rumors around April that this might happen. I think what the Texas Tribune has reported is that President Trump placed a call to Governor Greg Abbott. Up until that point, the governor and other state Republicans have been sort of reluctant to take up this effort. But once Trump called, that sort of, you know, pushed the governor to say, OK, I'll add this to the call. And so Republicans have been pursuing this for the past few weeks. And this is this is what Trump has demanded, is five additional pickups in Texas to help add the Republican majority in the House next year. All right. Kayla Guo, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your insight.

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