Texas Senate Democrats Walk Out Of Senate In Protest Of Redistricting Efforts

Democrats in the Texas Senate walked out ahead of a vote on redistricting.

Transcript

00:00Senator King is recognized for a motion to suspend the regular order of businesses on

00:21SB 4. Thank you, Mr. President, members. I know that there's been a lot of discussion about this

00:35bill coming forward today, and everyone has different perspectives on it. I would like to,

00:41with your permission, though, and patience, there are some things I know we have a lot of people

00:46watching online that haven't been watching the hearings or keeping up with it like we have,

00:54and then there's just some things that kind of need to get on the record, so I'd like to take

00:58a little bit of time to walk through this to make sure that every member knows how we got to where

01:04we are and where I think this is going. And then after that, I'll be happy to answer any questions

01:11I can, and I'll just try to answer them as truthfully and as thoroughly as I can. So with

01:18that, just by way of where we, the process to date, I introduced SB 4 and our select committee on

01:26Monday, August the 4th. SB 4 is the companion to HB 4, line for line, which passed out of the House

01:36committee on August 2nd, 2025. There had been discussions of waiting for the House bill to

01:44get here, but just like each of you have done a hundred times on different bills, when you have

01:50a companion and it stalls in one body, you try to do what you can to get it moving in the other body,

01:55which is why we went ahead, or I went ahead and filed the companion and began with hearings. As I said,

02:02I want to take a moment to discuss the process to date, specifically the public input we've received

02:09on SB 4 and redistricting in general. First, this plan is based on the 2020 census data, not any annual

02:21estimates. Since 2020, the Senate has held 21 regional and other public hearings, and the House has held just

02:32as many. Those hearings have afforded the Legislature an abundance of opportunities to hear the public's

02:43thoughts about the 2020 census data and redistricting as a whole. During the 2020 census data and redistricting as a whole.