House GOP Chair Salutes `Big Beautiful Map'
after Select Panel Approves GOP Proposal
Capitol Inside
August 2, 2025
The Republicans on a special Texas House committee put a new congressional map on a fast track early Saturday morning when they approved House Bill 4 in a move that forces Democrats to decide without delay whether they will take the proposal hostage and leave the state to block a vote on the floor.
The 15-member Select Congressional Redistricting Committee voted exclusively along party lines for the controversial proposal after a marathon hearing that spanned 15 hours at the Capitol in Austin. HB 4 is designed to give the GOP five more seats in the U.S. House from Texas where it currently has a 25-13 edge over Democrats.
The House could debate the proposal on the floor as early as Monday or Tuesday. The Calendars Committee is expected to set a date for the fight on the floor in a meeting on Sunday. The calendars panel's chairman - GOP State Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi - is doing double-duty as the author of HB 4.
The select House committee's chair - Republican State Rep. Cody Vasut of Angleton - hailed the redistricting plan as the #BigBeautifulMap in a post on X on Saturday morning. "Onward to Calendars," Vasut exclaimed.
The moniker appeared to be a thinly-veiled tribute to President Donald Trump, who the Republicans on the committee steadfastly refused to acknowledge to be the sole instigator of the second mid-decade redistricting push in the Lone Star State since Republicans seized control of the Texas House in 2003.
Hunter rejected claims that the revised map was a product of racist gerrymandering - insisting repeatedly that it was based on "partisan performance" as the paramount criteria with a court case that he referred to as Petteway as a secondary factor. But Democrats on the panel portrayed the sponsor's analysis as partisan spin to mask the Republicans true motivations.
"The vote is a profound act of contempt for the people of Texas," House Democratic Caucus chair Gene Wu of Houston said in a social media post after the committee vote. "It is the final confirmation that to hold power, Republicans will gladly silence the voices of Black and Latino Texas who have fought for generations to be heard."
Democrats pointed to Governor Greg Abbott's official justification for the summer redistricting push with a letter from a U.S. Department of Justice official who called several Texas congressional seats unconstitutional as so-called coalition districts tailored for minority representation. But Hunter contended that the DOJ letter wasn't the trigger for the effort despite the governor's claims.
Hunter also disputed claims from the Democrats that the people of Texas are overwhelmingly opposed to the remap based on the fact that almost all of the people who participated in four hearings testified against it. Hunter said the Republicans could have turned out a substantial number of people who back the effort if they'd tried.
"A lot of people are for it," Hunter said.
The committee vote and timetable puts Democrats in position to make the call on a potential walkout that could delay if not kill the new Republican map for Congress.
House Republican appear poised to vote to have Speaker Dustin Burrows put a call on the chamber in a move that would allow them to keep Democrats inside the chamber from leaving and to put the Department of Public Safety on the tail of those who are missing in an attempt to bring them back. Some Republicans want Burrows to lock the chamber down immediately if a sufficient number of Democrats show up on the floor next week to pass the map. GOP members have called for Democrats who bolted to punished severely with every possible sanction including the possibility of being removed from the body.
But 51 of 62 House Democrats would have to be absent to deprive the Republicans of the quorum they need to take a vote. It's highly unlikely that the majority party's members would have the nerve to expel more than four dozen colleagues for maneuvering in a political feud.
But the Republicans plan to slap Democratic colleagues with a $500 fine for every day they miss in the special session with absences that are not excused. That could add up to a total of $45,000 or more per Democrat for those who attempt to bury the map by staying gone for at least three months.
Legislation in response to the July 4th flooding in the Hill Country would die as collateral damage along with property tax relief and other measures most Democrats support if they pull the plug on redistricting.
A walkout would be a replay in many ways to the vanishing act that House Democrats pulled off in 2003 when they fled the state to keep the Republicans from a vote on their first mid-decade congressional redistricting push here ever. The House Democrats blocked a vote on the map near the end of the regular session that year with a trip in the middle of the night to Ardmore, Oklahoma. Senate Republicans took the torch in a special session and flew to Albuquerque on a lunch break before returning in time for GOP colleagues to pass the plan that boost the Republicans' count in the U.S. House by four.
But the Democrats would have a better shot to succeed this time around than they did 22 years ago because the Republicans are getting a later start now. There's no guarantee that the new map would yield five seats as the Republicans expect based on the fact that the projections are based in large part on Trump's winning margins last fall before his approval ratings plunged 10 points or more between January and July.
more to come ...
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