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Democrats rally in El Paso after Texas House approves GOP redistricting plan [1]

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Date: 2025-08-20

Hours after the Texas House passed a congressional redistricting bill Wednesday to give more power to Republicans, four leading Texas Democrats urged a rally of more than 900 El Pasoans to fight back and avoid falling victim to despair.

“They want us to think that what’s happening right now is inevitable and impossible to stop. That’s how these people win power, hold on to power, grow that power and leave the people completely out of power,” former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke told the crowd.

He was joined at the event at The Elmont, a West El Paso event venue, by three current Democratic members of Congress – Veronica Escobar of El Paso, Jasmine Crockett of Houston and Joaquin Castro of San Antonio.

O’Rourke said the redistricting plan was part of a plan by President Donald Trump to consolidate and hold power. He compared Republican efforts since Trump took office in January to Adolf Hitler’s swift consolidation of power after being elected German chancellor in 1933.

“If he’s unable to maintain control of the House of Representatives in 2026, if he can steal that election now in the summer of 2025, then there will be no check on his lawlessness. There will be no accountability for his crimes and his corruption,” said O’Rourke, who is considering a 2026 run for the Texas Senate seat now held by Republican John Cornyn.

A crowd of about 900 people listened as Beto O’Rourke and other Democratic leaders urged them to fight what they called Republican efforts to consolidate power and undermine democracy. The rally was at The Elmont in West El Paso on Wednesday, Aug. 20., 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

The Texas redistricting plan was the backdrop to Wednesday night’s rally. A Democratic walkout to prevent a quorum slowed the redistricting plan by a couple of weeks, but the Texas House of Representatives approved the plan on a party-line vote Wednesday afternoon. The bill now goes to the state Republican-controlled Senate, where it will almost certainly pass.

“While Democrats shirked their duty, in futility, and ran away to other states, Republicans stayed the course, stayed at work and stayed true to Texas. I will sign this bill once it passes the Senate and gets to my desk,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement Wednesday.

The redistricting bill would make Republicans favored to win 30 of Texas’ 38 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, up from the current 25. Democrats in California and Illinois are discussing their own redistricting efforts to offset the GOP’s Texas gains, but Republicans in states such as Missouri and Indiana also may redraw boundaries to make it likely their party would gain more seats.

Republicans currently have a narrow majority in the House, and Democrats see retaking control of the chamber in 2026 as their primary means of checking Trump’s power.

Veronica Escobar, representative for Texas’s 16th Congresional District, asks hundreds of El Pasoans to get involved in political groups after the Texas House passed a redistricting measure, Aug. 20, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

The speakers in El Paso praised Texas Democrats for their quorum break, saying they raised national awareness of an effort in Texas to redraw political boundaries in a way to consolidate GOP power.

“We know that the big issue right now is redistricting, and we know why it’s happening,” Escobar said. “Donald Trump knows that his big ugly bill is hated by American voters. He knows that the more that Americans learn about how he and Republicans have cut your health care, have cut nutrition programs, are targeting hardworking Americans, they know we don’t like that.

“And because he knows that Republicans can’t compete fairly after what they’ve done to us, that they’ve got to rig the next election in order to prevent what we want to do, which is kick them all out of office,” she said.

Crockett, a rising Democratic star serving her second term in Congress, said redrawing Texas political boundaries is designed to strip Black and Hispanic voters of power.

“But if for some reason, this map ends up becoming law, do you understand that if you are, say, Latino in the state of Texas, then your vote is basically one-third that of your Anglo neighbor? If you are an African American in the state of Texas, then your vote is one-fifth that of your Anglo neighbor,” Crockett said.

“Listen, we’re not looking for handouts. We’re looking for representation. We’re looking for people that will show up and represent for us, all of us, in Texas,” she said.

Jasmine Crockett, representative for Texas’s 30th Congressional District, urges voters to build relationships and communities to fight against hate. She spoke at a rally Wedneday, Aug. 20, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

All four speakers denounced Republican policies on health care, taxation, immigration and other issues. They said the redistricting in Texas was part of a Republican effort to cement those policies going forward.

“I don’t want five more people who are going to vote against cancer research,” said Castro, who told the audience of his personal battle with cancer. “I don’t want five more people that are going to vote against health care. I don’t want five more people that are going to take away people’s Medicaid and Medicare.”

Joaquin Castro, representative for Texas’s 20th Congressional District, said Republican policies will undermine people’s health. He spoke at a West El Paso rally on Wednesdy, Aug. 20, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

While all the speakers were cheered by the partisan Democratic audience, the loudest applause was for O’Rourke, whose political action committee Powered by People put on the event.

Acknowledging that many Democrats feel hopeless after seven months of the second Trump presidency, he said a consolidation of power by Trump isn’t inevitable.

“We can do this, right? Now, they don’t want us to believe that we can. They want to intimidate us. They want to leave us hopeless. They want us to think that this is inevitable. It is up to us to decide differently,” O’Rourke said.

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[1] Url: https://elpasomatters.org/2025/08/20/beto-orourke-jasmine-crockett-joaquin-castro-veronica-escobar-el-paso-rally/

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