A three-judge panel in El Paso is deciding whether Texas Republicans broke the law when redrawing the state's election maps.
A three-judge panel in El Paso is deciding whether Texas Republicans broke the law when redrawing the state’s election maps. Credit: Shtterstock / Merch Hub

Talk about wanting to have it both ways. 

As federal judges in El Paso consider whether Republicans broke the law in drawing Texas’ new election maps, attorneys for the state have bent over backwards to insist the gerrymandered districts don’t discriminate against Black and Brown voters.

Yet in the same courtroom, the Texas legal team has fought vehemently to share as little information as they possibly can about the process used to create the maps, voting-rights news site Democracy Docket reports. 

A three-judge panel is hearing the case about whether the controversial mid-decade redistricting ordered up by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott at the behest of President Donald Trump is racially discriminatory. 

Following a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, federal judges can’t shut down partisan gerrymandering. However, districts redrawn to suppress minority voters remain illegal and must be thrown out. 

So, if Texas lawmakers didn’t racially discriminate when creating the new maps, as the state’s attorneys insist, seems like they’d be happy to shine a light on their legal and completely above-board processes, right?

Wrong. 

The Texas legal team has repeatedly shot down attempts to peek under the hood, according to Democracy Docket. 

Much of the information the state’s attorneys reportedly sought to keep out of the courtroom related to Adam Kincaid, director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust and the creator of the state’s map. 

In one alarming detail revealed by Democracy Docket, the judges allowed the state to present Kincaid as a lay witness rather than an expert. By doing so, he was able to testify without turning over any of the detailed documents that could have contradicted his claims that the maps were created without the intent of suppressing Black and Brown voters.

Further, Texas’ lawyers blocked Kincaid from answering numerous questions during the court proceeding, according to Democracy Docket. Those reportedly included “what instructions he received from the White House when he drew the map, the requests he received from the GOP congressional delegation about redistricting, and what was said when he discussed the DOJ letter with Abbott.” 

Considering the case’s high stakes — whether Texas’ congressional delegation swings to the GOP by as many as five additional seats — it seems like the judges shouldn’t be in such a goddamned hurry to let the state wriggle out from revealing vital details about its map-creation process. 

After all, if these gerrymandering assclowns have nothing to hide, their records should be an open book.  

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This article appears in Oct. 2-15, 2025.

Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...