The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Monday said it will deploy 30,000 phone bank volunteers to call “persuadable Republican Texas voters” as the fight intensifies against Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps before the midterms.
At the behest of President Donald Trump, Abbott hopes to remake Texas’ political maps so five House districts move into Republican hands and stave off deep losses brought on by the president’s unpopularity. Ordinarily, the state only undertakes a redistricting once a decade, but Abbott’s scheme would come just five years after the last reshuffling of congressional districts.
“The DNC is all hands on deck to hold Donald Trump and Greg Abbott accountable for their scheme to use the tragic Texas floods as cover to redraw the Texas maps in a last-ditch effort to save the Republican majority,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement.
The DNC’s press release said it’s already fired off 250,000 text messages recruiting Texans to turn out for House hearings. The organization also is taking a page from the Republican National Committee’s playbook and mobilizing an army of left-leaning political content creators for increased coverage, officials said.
The Dems’ aggressive moves comes after hundreds of protesters and concerned citizens converged on the University of Houston’s campus Saturday to oppose Abbott’s redistricting plan.
The Republican governor added the item to the special legislative agenda after the U.S. Department of Justice, in a letter, alleged that four of Texas’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally based on race.
To be sure, the issue of race was front and center during the Texas House’s Houston hearing. Three of the proposed districts up for redrawing are located in the Bayou City, all either majority Black or Latino.
During public testimony, in which 750 people spoke for five hours, State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, argued that the districts in question are “being targeted for the simple reason that they want to do away with minority representation.”
Another concern among those who signed up to speak in Houston over the weekend was that state lawmakers haven’t yet released what the proposed redrawn maps would look like.
“I just want to advise the public that they would not be testifying on a revised congressional redistricting plan, because there is no revised congressional redistricting plan,” state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, told the Texas Tribune prior to her testimony.
During a separate Texas Senate hearing held Friday, University of Michigan legal professor Ellen Katz testified told lawmakers the process is entirely unconstitutional.
“What [the DOJ] letter is instructing Texas to do — were Texas to do it — would be illegal,” Katz said.
Katz argued that the state would be “injecting race-based considerations into what it says was a race-neutral process” and “intentionally drawing district lines to destroy effective coalition districts.”
In an interview with WFAA-TV’s Inside Politics over the weekend, State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Arlington, speculated Texas lawmakers haven’t released the proposed redrawn maps due to fear of public backlash.
“I believe there is a map out there somewhere,” Turner told the Dallas TV station. “I think it’s been drawn in the White House or by DC political operatives. And it’s probably been sent to the governor. But we haven’t seen it. So, they’re hiding the ball from not only the Legislature, but from the public, from Texans. And that’s wrong.”
The House subcommittee on redistricting will hold its third public hearing at the University of Texas-Arlington’s campus at 5 p.m. Monday. More than 700 people have already signed up to testify, according to the Dallas Morning News.
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This article appears in Jul 23 – Aug 6, 2025.
