Texas Senate Blocks Filibuster to Send Trump’s Theft of Voting Power to Abbott
AUSTIN, Texas — Early Saturday morning, the Texas Senate voted along party lines to procedurally block a planned filibuster by a Senate Democrat against a rigged congressional redistricting map demanded by President Trump, giving final passage to the extraordinary Texas Republican effort to protect the president by redrawing districts in the middle of the decade. The map now goes to Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it. The new district lines will be in place for next year’s midterm election unless a court challenge promised by Texas Democrats is successful.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement:
“It’s almost fitting that an opaque, rushed process came to an end when Texas Senate leadership paused for a late-night three-hour dinner break that pushed final passage of this shameless theft of voting power into the cover of the early morning darkness. Following the 2020 elections, officials in Georgia bravely avoided a crisis when they rejected Trump’s pressure campaign to find him more votes in an election he lost fair and square. When Trump called on Abbott and Texas Republicans to find him five more congressional seats, they were quick to cave to the pressure and go to extraordinary lengths to make it happen. The new map becomes a symbol of the Trump era, in which fealty to one person matters more than the rights and voting interests of millions of Texans, and it’s an implicit blessing of the president’s corruption. Redistricting in this way is damaging for Democracy, but the complicity of Abbott and his legislative allies gives other states no choice but to retaliate.”