Congressman Al Green Issues Statement Regarding Texas Redistricting
(Houston, TX)—On Saturday, July 26, 2025, Congressman Al Green issued the following statement:
RE: Unconstitutional Race-Based Congressional Redistricting of TX-09, TX-18, TX-29, and TX-33 Ordered by President Trump’s Justice Department
To Whom It May Concern:
Our state of Texas has a shameful history of unconstitutional racial discrimination against the voting rights of people of color - properly defined as racism. Texas held racist, white primaries until the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. Thereafter, racist white pre-primaries became a barrier to people of color voting until the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional.
Racist, unconstitutional schemes such as literacy tests and poll taxes have been used to thwart and prevent people of color from voting in Texas.
Given Texas disgraceful, racist, unconstitutional history of shameful voting rights violations against people of color, the targeting for elimination of four districts wherein people of color elect people of color, is consistent with the well- documented history of racist voting rights discrimination in Texas.
What’s unusual is when referring to congressional districts TX-09, TX-18, TX-29, and TX-33, President Trump’s Justice Department has published a communique to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declaring “the congressional districts in question are nothing more than vestiges of an unconstitutional, racially-based gerrymandering past, which must be abandoned, and must be corrected by Texas” (See Exhibit #1). Further, the communique states, “If the state of Texas fails to rectify the racial gerrymandering of TX-09, TX-18, TX-29, and TX-33, the Attorney General reserves the right to seek legal action against the state, including without limitation under the Fourteenth Amendment” (See Exhibit #1). Thereafter, the Attorney General for Texas responded in part in bold print with a July 21, 2025, communique stating, “The evidence at the trial was clear and unequivocal; the Texas Legislature did not pass race-based electoral districts for any of those three maps. Texas Senator Joan Huffman, who chaired the state redistricting committee testified under oath that she drew Texas districts blind to race…” (See Exhibit #2).
Too late, Mr. Attorney General, the racist intent to eliminate four congressional districts where people of color are doing constitutionally what white people do, that is, elect their candidate of choice, has been exposed.
Too late, Mr. Attorney General, President Trump’s Justice Department has exposed the race-based, unconstitutional intentionality to destroy four congressional districts that elect people of color. President Trump’s people are not as sagacious as Texas has been at perpetrating and perpetuating racism. Efforts in your letter dated July 11, 2025, to clean up by stating in essence, No! No! We don’t do it that way in Texas. In Texas, we disguise our unconstitutional racial gerrymandering by calling it lawful partisan gerrymandering.
Too late, you can’t carry out a Trump Justice Department racist order and later claim that Texas is now doing for partisan reasons what President Trump’s Justice Department has ordered you to do for unconstitutional, racial reasons. Targeting for racial reasons all or any one of the four congressional districts (TX-09, TX-18, TX-29, or TX-33) such that they cannot elect their candidate of choice will be evidence of the state of Texas honoring the racist demands of President Trump’s Justice Department. Allowing President Trump’s Justice Department to infuse racism into Texas redistricting policies is sadly allowing Republicanism to degenerate into racism. As is said in Texas, “that dog won’t hunt.”
Sincerely,
Al Green
Member of Congress
Scion of the Enslaved Africans –
Sacrificed to Make America Great
Progenitor of August and August 20th
as Slavery Remembrance Month and Day