The Texas Legislature returned Monday for a special session, with 18 items on the agenda. They include the redrawing of the state's congressional districts and a relief package for those impacted by deadly flooding earlier in July.

Texas

The Texas legislature has reconvened for a special session to address 18 agenda items, with redistricting and disaster relief as the primary focuses. The redistricting effort, encouraged by President Trump, aims to add five Republican seats to the state's congressional map, potentially impacting control of the US House after the next midterm elections.

Lawmakers are also considering a relief package for communities affected by recent deadly flooding, including improvements to emergency warning systems, funding for emergency responders, and support for devastated regions. The order in which these issues are addressed has become a point of contention, with Republicans prioritizing redistricting and Democrats pushing for immediate flood relief.

What the Texas Legislature has on its agenda for special session

The Texas legislature returned today for a special session 18 items and all are on the agenda They include the redrawing of the state's congressional districts and a relief package for those impacted by deadly flooding earlier this month President Trump has urged the legislature to redraw the state's congressional district map in a way that adds five Republican seats the move would help the GOP retain control of the US House after the 2026 midterm elections David Goodman joins us now. He's the Houston Bureau chief for the New York Times Thank you so much for joining us David with flood response and redistricting as the top two issues Why does the order in which they are addressed matter? well, the order actually is of critical importance here in the special session because The Democrats in the body have very few levers to pull to try and prevent this redistricting from happening but one of the things they can do is Deny a quorum to the whole proceeding essentially walk out on what's going on And so for Republicans, it's been important for them to strategize a way to avoid that from happening And so what they've hit upon here is they're gonna try and hold a vote on redistricting. We've been told before any vote on the flood response and in that way try and get the Democrats to stick around and You know pressure them into being there for those votes so that they aren't walking out on You know votes later on the flood. So that's the strategy at the moment. The Democrats have countered by saying, you know, this is The most important thing the most important thing in Texas right now is the flooding and not redistricting and they want that to happen first But they have very little power to make that happen Now there are four different matters related to the deadly flooding that the special session will consider walk us through what they hope to address and accomplish for future disasters Right. So there's a couple of different things. They're gonna look at they're going to look at emergency warning systems That's something that really came up after the flash flood that killed so many people in the Hill Country Their warning systems just weren't there or weren't effective at getting people You know alerted and out of the way of this of this deadly water And so they're gonna look at what can they do to make sure people a get the warnings and be heed those warnings And so they'll look at sirens that might be outdoors. I'll look at improving maybe cell phone Service in these areas. They're very there's lots of pockets where they don't have cell service there They're also going to look at increased funding for emergency Responders those communications because there are also problems with that kind of communication in this area And then they're gonna look at funding for the devastated Hill Country which really You know has a lot of need right now a lot of devastated communities there And so they're looking to the state government to help them out So a lot that they're gonna have to go over but focusing on that flooding Which is incredibly important when you just look at the amount of people that have been lost there David Goodman, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you Thank you for having me

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