Following is a statement by Tianna Mays, legal director at Democracy Defenders Action, regarding the Texas Legislature passing a mid-cycle electoral map on a party-line vote. The gerrymander is expressly intended to give the GOP five more seats in Congress.

“We must name what just happened in Texas. Texas lawmakers at the behest of the White House passed a deeply partisan and racially discriminatory redistricting plan to entrench political power for the few. This is what dictators do. Texas’s new map is a failure and sabotage of democracy.

“Texas lawmakers engineered the new electoral map to silence voters—especially Black, Latino, and other historically marginalized communities—while giving disproportionate power to a political minority. It stomps all over the principle of equal representation.

“But now is not the time for handwringing. We must use every democratic tool still available to fight this assault. And we must be honest about how we got here.

“This crisis is years in the making. It’s the result of years of attacks on voting rights and fair elections. In 2013, the Supreme Court upended key protections from the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, allowing states like Texas to change voting laws and redraw districts without any federal checks. Then in 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court declared partisan gerrymandering “beyond the reach” of federal courts. These rulings opened the floodgates to unchecked redistricting abuse and voter suppression laws.

“By asking Texas to redraw its map to cement GOP control of Congress, President Trump is exploiting the cracks in a system already weakened by the courts. Texas redistricting is part of a coordinated national effort to reshape democracy in Trump's image: one where dissent is punished, history is rewritten, and political power is hoarded by the elite few.

“Just yesterday, the president criticized the Smithsonian for focusing "too much" on slavery. Delegitimizing historical facts is a way to control the narrative. If slavery—in a gross retelling of history--wasn’t so bad, and Jim Crow didn’t have long-term effects on the social fabric of society, then there is no need for legal or policy remedies to prevent discrimination and safeguard against racially motivated gerrymandering. The administration and its allies are rigging the system so they alone can determine which voices are allowed to count and which stories are allowed to be told.

“We commend the Democratic lawmakers in Texas who walked out earlier this month to avoid quorum rather than lend legitimacy to a rigged process. Their action was a necessary act of resistance. When elected officials abuse their office to entrench their own power, the very foundation of our democracy is at stake–and silence is complicity.

“At Democracy Defenders Action, we will fight Texas’s suppressive gerrymander and the movement behind it with every legal and strategic tool we have. That means litigation. That means mobilization. That means defending not only voting rights, but truth, history, and the idea of a future where every American has a voice.”

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Democracy Defenders Action brings together a nonpartisan team to work with national, state and local allies across the country committed to upholding the rule of law, fighting against autocracy and defending the Constitution.