00:00Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher. I'm proud to
00:04represent Texas' 7th Congressional District in Houston and to chair the Texas Democratic
00:09delegation in Congress in the 119th Congress. It is my honor and great privilege today to welcome
00:16back to the great state of Texas our House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries. Today,
00:22my colleagues and I stand alongside our fellow Texas Democrats here in Austin.
00:27We are grateful to House Democratic leader, Gene Wu, and Senate Democratic leader, Carol Alvarado,
00:34who are standing here with us, and to the committed Texas Democrats from across the state who are
00:39standing here this morning representing the true voices of Texans and the priorities of Texans.
00:47Thank you so much for your leadership and for being with us today. Before we begin,
00:53I want to express on behalf of all of us our deepest sympathies for the thousands of families
01:00who are grieving the losses brought by the Independence Day floods in the Hill Country.
01:06Our hearts are broken with yours. Today, one month later, the first day that survivors have had the
01:15chance to address the lawmakers about the floods at a public hearing. We will be listening, and we,
01:23Texas Democrats gathered here, will do all we can to help in the recovery and the rebuilding.
01:31But it is not lost on us that the hearing on this tragedy follows a week, a frenzied week,
01:39with a rush of seven hearings redrawing Texas' congressional map, hearings where thousands
01:45and thousands of Texans showed up in opposition, and where Republicans really said almost nothing
01:53and refused to let any of them see a map. I've been there, and I can tell you, you can count on one
02:01hand the number of Republicans who spoke up, who've testified or even uttered a word in support
02:08for this redistricting. This redistricting effort is what is wrong with politics today,
02:14and the people of Texas know it. People get it. Elections have consequences, but so do your votes
02:22on the floor. The votes you take as a representative have consequences too, and politicians who don't
02:29want to face the consequences of their votes and their choices can't just change the rules of the game
02:35in the middle of it. It is wrong, and Texans know it. But President Trump knows that people are seeing
02:43what his administration and the Republican Congress are doing, and they hate it. Taking health care away
02:50from 17 million Americans? Very unpopular. Adding trillions of dollars to our national debt so that they
02:58can transfer trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and perhaps the wealthiest
03:05people ever to have lived, and sticking us with the bill? Very unpopular. Hiding the Epstein files?
03:13Very unpopular. President Trump can see the writing on the wall, so he's demanded a rigged map, and he told
03:21Governor Abbott to make it happen. Texans are in an ongoing crisis, filled with grief and loss, and instead,
03:31our leaders are focused not on relief, but on redistricting. Now, Texas already has the most
03:40racially gerrymandered congressional map in the country, and it's important to know that of Texas' 38
03:47congressional districts in a state with the majority-minority population, where the population
03:52of the state is more than 60 percent minority. Only 13 districts allow voters of color to regularly and
04:02consistently elect their candidate of choice. And this new map cuts that number down to just eight.
04:10The map that Republicans put out yesterday, in that map more than one-third of Texans, more than 10
04:18million people, will be in a new congressional district. More than two-thirds of those Texans
04:26that are moved to new district are voters of color.
04:32The good news is Texans are not alone in this fight. We have the support of people across our country,
04:39because they see, as we do, how wrong this is. And today, we have a tremendous fighter who's joined us
04:46here in Austin to demonstrate support for Texas and for Texans. We are grateful for his leadership.
04:54We are grateful for his leadership of the United States House of Representatives Democratic Caucus,
05:00and we are so pleased to welcome him here to Austin.
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