News from the South - Texas News Feed
Texas GOP’s past mistakes loom ahead of redistricting push
“As Texas Republicans prepare for mid-decade redistricting, cautionary tales loom from the past” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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As Texas Republicans prepare to redraw the state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, cautionary tales loom from past redistricting efforts that saw the state’s rapid demographic change collide with far-reaching partisan gerrymandering.
The move to carve out more GOP seats in Texas was unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Greg Abbott, who included redistricting in a sweeping 18-item agenda for the Legislature’s upcoming special session. The announcement ended weeks of speculation over whether Texas Republicans would follow through on demands from President Donald Trump’s political advisers, who have been pushing for the rare mid-decade redistricting gambit to improve the GOP’s chances of retaining its slim majority in Congress.
Some Republicans, including members of Texas’ congressional delegation, oppose the idea over concerns about jeopardizing their own seats if they miscalculate with the new districts.
A recent test case unfolded after the 2010 U.S. Census, when Republicans who controlled the Texas Legislature looked to maximize their party’s seats across the map by drawing reliable GOP voters into nearby Democratic districts and turning them red.
But by 2018, a Trump midterm election year, that aggressive approach came back to bite them. With a favorable national climate and explosive population growth driven almost entirely by people of color, Texas Democrats picked up 12 seats in the state House, ousted two longtime GOP members of Congress and narrowed their losing margins in statewide races.
“What looked like a solid gerrymander by the end of the decade had become almost a dummymander,” Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said. “The lesson from 2010 is that you can stretch yourself too thin, that you can be too smart for your own good. And when the politics change, you get bitten in the you-know-where.”
The Texas Legislature last redrew the state’s maps in 2021, this time with an emphasis on shoring up Republican support in already red districts. Each state’s political maps must be redrawn once a decade after the U.S. census to account for population changes and to ensure each congressional and legislative district encompasses roughly the same number of people.
But with a minuscule margin in the U.S. House and anticipated midterm backlash against the party in power next year, Trump’s political team wants to buttress the Republican majority against losses across the country by creating up to five new GOP seats in Texas — a proposal that critics say would almost certainly dilute the voting power of communities of color, and that Republican skeptics worry could stretch GOP voters too thin.
That was what happened several years ago in Dallas County, where Republicans in 2011 opted to extend the number of GOP seats instead of creating a Black and Hispanic majority district and reinforcing their support in red districts. GOP lawmakers may look to avoid similar overreach when they redraw Texas’ maps this year, but they will have to do so with outdated and less reliable data than the fresh census figures they typically use at the start of each decade, further complicating their efforts.
“History gives a lot of flashing red light signals about how this might not be wise,” Li said. “It’s not wise both for political reasons but also for legal ones.”
Under the current maps, Republicans hold 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats, most of which lean heavily to the right. The 2021 state legislative and congressional maps are still on trial in El Paso in a long-running challenge arguing that the maps intentionally discriminate against some Black and Latino voters.
Some Texas Republicans are nervous about trying to squeeze more red seats out of the map by moving their voters to now-Democratic districts. Instead of flipping Democratic seats, those members fear the new lines could create an opening for Democrats and threaten Republican incumbents by taking away too many GOP voters — as played out in 2018.
“I don’t know how you create five districts out of that,” said one Texas Republican member of Congress, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the Trump advisers’ redistricting push.
“I think it’s a bad idea myself, personally,” state Rep. Drew Darby, a San Angelo Republican and former chair of the House Redistricting Committee, said at an event last month hosted by The Texas Tribune. “We did it according to the law, and I think we need to live with it and the effects until we have the next census.”
Still, responding to follow–up questions this week, Darby acknowledged he could see some merits in the idea, noting that redistricting could reflect recent gains Republicans have made statewide and correct any legal issues with the existing maps.
“The main takeaway is that redistricting is always a political fight — contentious, personal, and hard to get done,” he said in response to written questions. “This year will be no different.”
The 2011 cycle, for some, offered lessons that mapmakers should heed this year.
“You can’t cut the districts so thin that it gets you through 2026 but puts those seats in jeopardy for the future,” said John Colyandro, a former senior adviser to Abbott and the former executive director of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, a public policy think tank. He called 2011 “the cautionary tale.”
Still, he argued that there were a few Republican seats to be gained in a mid-decade redistricting effort.
“The important thing is to be prudent about it,” he said. “Texas can certainly have a bit of a firewall against losses elsewhere.”
Experts said that maximizing a certain party’s seats over several election cycles becomes more challenging in the middle of the decade, when lawmakers will have to rely on likely outdated and less reliable data, and in a fast-changing state like Texas.
The 2020 U.S. Census remains the most precise data set that mapmakers can use, experts said, with more recent numbers from the 2024 election outcomes and the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey offering less durable and less specific insights.
“When you gerrymander, you’re making a bet on what the politics of the future look like,” Li said. “Predicting the politics of the future is really hard in a state like Texas. … You hope that those margins that you’ve left yourself with are big enough, but they may not be.”
Redistricting this year will likely home in on South Texas, where Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen won reelection in 2024 by narrow margins. Both represent districts centered on the border and made up of Hispanic-majority populations that swung to the right in 2024 — gains that the GOP hopes are enduring, but that Democrats are desperately trying to claw back.
A more aggressive redistricting approach would almost guarantee legal backlash and spark concerns that communities of color, which are driving population growth in Texas, would see their voting power diminished.
“It’s very hard to maximize seats without undermining the political power of communities of color,” Li said. “That is especially hard now that Texas is that much more diverse.”
Overhauling the state’s maps this year is unusual for another reason, too: Republicans were the ones who crafted the existing districts. Some insist they already maximized their advantage when they drew the maps five years ago, having exhausted avenues to add any GOP seats beyond the current 25.
“If we could have done it in 2020, we would have,” former state Sen. Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican who chaired the Senate Redistricting Committee in 2011 and left office in 2023, said. He noted that some may now see an opportunity to push more aggressive maps past the courts, whose benches have been reshaped by Trump.
The last time Texas redrew its maps later in the decade was 2003, when the state’s politics were shifting in favor of Republicans and then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Sugar Land Republican, launched a multistate redistricting plan to amass GOP seats.
The bold move to consolidate GOP power came two years after the Texas Legislature — then split between a Democratic-controlled House and Republican-majority Senate — left it up to the courts to draw new lines following the 2000 census. When Republicans won a majority in the lower chamber in 2002, giving them full control of the Legislature, DeLay moved to scrap the court map in favor of one that would cement the Texas delegation’s GOP majority.
Democrats fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum, and decried the effort as a partisan power grab. A Democratic senator later defected, arguing that the caucus did not have an “exit strategy.” The Legislature eventually passed new maps favoring Republicans.
“We felt we had no alternative to just hold it up so that people could get a better look at what’s going on,” former state Sen. Gonzales Barrientos, an Austin Democrat who decamped to New Mexico at the time, said. “We were using the rules. And underneath the rules is representing the people who elected you.”
Democrats have denounced the Trump administration’s redistricting push this year, with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Democrats’ national arm to contest state GOP mapmaking, calling the proposal “yet another example of Trump trying to suppress votes in order to hold onto power.” California Democrats are weighing a retaliatory redrawing of their maps if Texas goes through with the effort.
It was unclear if there was appetite among state Democrats to break quorum this year, especially with flood infrastructure and recovery on the agenda after the devastating flash floods that killed over 100 people in the Hill Country this month.
Some Democrats pointed to a potential upside if Republican mapmakers spread their voters too thin and created swing seat opportunities for Democrats.
“The way in which the Texas map has been drawn is already an extreme partisan gerrymander,” U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader from New York, said last month. “There are several Democrats who have looked at it who perhaps may welcome changes.”
He added: “Be careful what you wish for.”
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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-redistricting-congressional-districts-past-mistakes-overreach/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
The post Texas GOP’s past mistakes loom ahead of redistricting push appeared first on feeds.texastribune.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This article maintains a generally factual and balanced tone while covering a highly partisan issue: Texas Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts to favor their party. It reports both Republican perspectives advocating cautious redistricting to maintain seats and Democratic concerns about vote dilution and partisan gerrymandering. The inclusion of critiques from experts and Democrats alongside Republican voices, as well as the framing of redistricting as contentious and legally fraught, suggests a slight tilt toward highlighting the challenges and risks of GOP strategies. However, it refrains from overt editorializing, maintaining a mostly neutral stance with subtle Center-Left lean due to the emphasis on voting rights and demographic impact.
News from the South - Texas News Feed
6-year-old boy survives near-drowning, witnesses angels in heaven
SUMMARY: On July 4, Krista Parker’s 6-year-old son, DJ, nearly drowned at Paragon Casino Resort in Louisiana. Despite DJ’s fear of water, he suddenly went lifeless by the pool. Krista and her husband performed CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, eventually reviving him as water was expelled from his lungs. DJ was taken to Rapides Women’s and Children’s Hospital, where he recounted a near-death experience of seeing angels and God, strengthening his family’s faith. He now wants to be named Avir, meaning “air” in Hebrew, reflecting his experience. DJ suffered no lasting physical harm, emphasizing the importance of CPR training and water safety.
The post 6-year-old boy survives near-drowning, witnesses angels in heaven appeared first on www.kxan.com
“Did fiscal conservatism block plans for a new flood warning system in Kerr County?” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
In the week after the tragic July 4 flooding in Kerr County, several officials have blamed taxpayer pressure as the reason flood warning sirens were never installed along the Guadalupe River.
“The public reeled at the cost,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters one day after the rain pushed Guadalupe River levels more than 32 feet, resulting in nearly 100 deaths in the county, as of Thursday.
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A community that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, Kerr County constructed an economic engine on the allure of the Guadalupe River. Government leaders acknowledged the need for more disaster mitigation, including a $1 million flood warning system that would better alert the public to emergencies, to sustain that growth, but they were hamstrung by a small and tightfisted tax base.
An examination of transcripts since 2016 from Kerr County’s governing body, the commissioners court, offers a peek into a small Texas county paralyzed by two competing interests: to make one of the country’s most dangerous region for flash flooding safer and to heed to near constant calls from constituents to reduce property taxes and government waste.
“This is a pretty conservative county,” said former Kerr County Judge Tom Pollard, 86. “Politically, of course, and financially as well.”
County zeroes in on river safety in 2016
Cary Burgess, a local meteorologist whose weather reports can be found in the Kerrville Daily Times or heard on Hill Country radio stations, has noticed the construction all along the Guadalupe for the better part of the last decade.
More Texans and out-of-state residents have been discovering the river’s pristine waters lined with bald cypress trees, a long-time draw for camping, hiking and kayaking, and they have been coming in droves to build more homes and businesses along the water’s edge. If any of the newcomers were familiar with the last deadly flood in 1987 that killed 10 evacuating teenagers, they found the river’s threat easy to dismiss.
“They’ve been building up and building up and building up and doing more and more projects along the river that were getting dangerous,” Burgess recalls. “And people are building on this river, my gosh, they don’t even know what this river’s capable of.”
By the time the 1987 flood hit, the county had grown to about 35,000 people. Today, there are about 53,000 people living in Kerr County.
In 2016, Kerr County commissioners already knew they were getting outpaced by neighboring, rapidly growing counties on installing better flood warning systems and were looking for ways to pull ahead.
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During a March 28 meeting that year, they said as much.
“Even though this is probably one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state where a lot of people are involved, their systems are state of the art,” Commissioner Tom Moser said then. He discussed how other counties like Comal had moved to sirens and more modern flood warning systems.
“And the current one that we have, it will give – all it does is flashing light,” explained W.B. “Dub” Thomas, the county’s emergency management coordinator. “I mean all – that’s all you get at river crossings or wherever they’re located at.”
Kerr County already had signed on with a company that allowed its residents to opt in and get a CodeRED alert about dangerous weather conditions. But Thomas urged the commissioners court to strive for something more. Cell service along the headwaters of the Guadalupe near Hunt was spotty in the western half of Kerr County, making a redundant system of alerts even more necessary.
“I think we need a system that can be operated or controlled by a centralized location where – whether it’s the Sheriff’s communication personnel, myself or whatever, and it’s just a redundant system that will complement what we currently have,” Thomas said that year.
By the next year, officials had sent off its application for a $731,413 grant to FEMA to help bring $976,000 worth of flood warning upgrades, including 10 high water detection systems without flashers, 20 gauges, possible outdoor sirens, and more.
“The purpose of this project is to provide Kerr County with a flood warning system,” the county wrote in its application. “The System will be utilized for mass notification to citizens about high water levels and flooding conditions throughout Kerr County.”
But the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which oversees billions of FEMA dollars designed to prevent disasters, denied the application because they didn’t have a current hazard mitigation plan. They resubmitted it, news outlets reported, but by then, priority was given to counties that had suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey.
Political skepticism about a windfall
All that concern about warning systems seemed to fade over the next five years, as the political atmosphere throughout the county became more polarized and COVID fatigue frayed local residents’ nerves.
In 2021, Kerr County was awarded a $10.2 million windfall from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, which Congress passed that same year to support local governments impacted by the pandemic. Cities and counties were given flexibility to use the money on a variety of expenses, including those related to storm-related infrastructure. Corpus Christi, for example, allocated $15 million of its ARPA funding to “rehabilitate and/or replace aging storm water infrastructure.” Waco’s McLennan County spent $868,000 on low water crossings.
Kerr County did not opt for ARPA to fund flood warning systems despite commissioners discussing such projects nearly two dozen times since 2016. In fact, a survey sent to residents about ARPA spending showed that 42% of the 180 responses wanted to reject the $10 million bonus altogether, largely on political grounds.
“I’m here to ask this court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House,” one resident told commissioners in April 2022, fearing strings were attached to the money.
“We don’t want to be bought by the federal government, thank you very much,” another resident told commissioners. “We’d like the federal government to stay out of Kerr County and their money.”
When it was all said and done, the county approved $7 million in ARPA dollars on a public safety radio communications system for the sheriff’s department and county fire services to meet the community’s needs for the next 10 years, although earlier estimates put that contract at $5 million. Another $1 million went to sheriff’s employees in the form of stipends and raises, and just over $600,000 went towards additional county positions. A new walking path was also created with the ARPA money.
While much has been made of the ARPA spending, it’s not clear if residents or the commissioners understood at the time they could have applied the funds to a warning system. Current Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, and Thomas have declined repeated requests for interviews. Moser, who is no longer a commissioner, did not immediately respond to a Texas Tribune interview request.
Many Kerr County residents, including those who don’t normally follow every cog-turn of government proceedings, have now been poring over the county commissioners meetings this week including Ingram City Council member Raymond Howard. They’ve been digging into ARPA spending and other ways that the county missed opportunities to procure $1 million to implement the warning system commissioners wanted almost 10 years ago, and to prevent the devastating death toll from this week.
A week ago, Howard spent the early morning hours of July 4 knocking on neighbors’ doors to alert them to the flooding after he himself ignored the first two phone alerts on his phone in the middle of the night.
In the week since, the more he’s learned about Kerr County’s county inaction on a flood warning system, the angrier he has become.
“Well, they were obviously thinking about it because they brought it up 20 times since 2016 and never did anything on it,” Howard said, adding that he never thought to ask the city to install sirens previously because he didn’t realize the need for it. “I’m pretty pissed about that.”
Harvey Hilderbran, the former Texas House representative for Kerr County, said what he is watching play out in the community this week is what he’s seen for years in Texas: A disaster hits. There’s a rush to find out who’s accountable. Then outrage pushes officials to shore up deficiencies.
It’s not that Kerr County was dead set against making the area safer, Hilderbran said. Finding a way to pay for it is always where better ideas run aground, especially with a taxbase and leadership as fiscally conservative as Kerr’s.
“Generally everybody’s for doing something until it gets down to the details paying for it,” Hilderbran said. “It’s not like people don’t think about it … I know it’s an issue on their minds and something needs to be done.”
Howard, the 62-year-old Ingram city council member, came to Kerr County years ago to care for an ailing mother. Although he has now been diagnosed with stage four cancer, he said he intends to devote his life to make sure that his small two-mile town north of Kerrville has a warning system and he already knows where he’s going to put it.
“We’re going to get one, put it up on top of the tower behind the volunteer fire department,” he said. “It’s the thing I could do even if it’s the last thing I do …to help secure safety for the future.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-commissioners-flooding-warning/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
The post Why Kerr County balked on a new flood warning system appeared first on feeds.texastribune.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
This article presents a mostly factual and balanced overview of Kerr County’s flood warning system challenges within a politically conservative community. It highlights the county’s strong conservative stance on limited government spending and skepticism toward federal aid, reflecting typical right-leaning priorities such as fiscal conservatism and wariness of federal involvement. The coverage is careful to present multiple perspectives, including official statements and local residents’ concerns, without overt editorializing or ideological framing. The tone and content suggest an objective report focused on local governance dynamics rather than promoting a partisan agenda, though the conservative context is clearly emphasized.
News from the South - Texas News Feed
Georgetown wildlife rehab caring for more than 500 animals, many taken in after Texas floods
SUMMARY: Devastating floods in Texas have caused significant damage and at least 120 deaths, with many still missing. Central Texas wildlife is struggling too. All Things Wild Rehabilitation in Georgetown is caring for over 500 animals affected by the floods, including orphaned, injured, and displaced wildlife. The nonprofit urgently needs donations, volunteers, and more land to continue its work. They have already admitted nearly as many animals in 2025 as all of last year, emphasizing the ongoing impact of extreme weather. All Things Wild provides extensive care and safely releases animals back into natural habitats. They encourage public support and offer guidance for reporting injured wildlife.
The post Georgetown wildlife rehab caring for more than 500 animals, many taken in after Texas floods appeared first on www.kxan.com
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