The towering rotunda of the Texas State Capitol echoed with the sound of protests on Friday during the first and only public hearing on a proposed congressional map pushed by President Trump and drawn to flip five Democratic U.S. House seats in favor of Republicans.
Hundreds of people gathered to oppose the map in a tense, daylong hearing that included forceful and frustrated testimony from several Democratic members of the U.S. House whose districts were being moved, eliminated or dramatically redrawn in a map that was unveiled on Wednesday.
“It is not only racial, it is racist,” said U.S. Representative Al Green, a Democrat and vocal critic of Mr. Trump. His Houston district was shifted from south of downtown to a Republican area east of the city. “We are losing representation, and I’m going to stand against it.”
The hearing before a Texas House committee was part of a fast-track legislative process for the new map. The Texas gerrymandering effort is the first in what could become a cascading series of warring redistricting efforts between Democratic and Republican states, initiated by the president’s push to secure as many seats as possible ahead of midterm elections that almost always favor the party out of power in the White House.
The newly drawn lines were expected to pass the committee, possibly late Friday, and could come up for a full vote in the Republican-dominated body as soon as Tuesday.
“This is going to create a ripple effect around the country,” said State Representative Jon Rosenthal, a Houston Democrat and the vice chairman of the committee.
The redrawing of House maps is supposed to happen at the beginning of each decade, mandated by population shifts recorded in the decennial census. Mid-decade redistricting is rare and almost always contentious, and the accelerated timeline pursued by Republicans in a special session of the Texas legislature has frustrated the state’s Democrats, who have few means of preventing it from going forward.
Democrats will soon have to decide whether to take the drastic step of walking out on the legislative session entirely, a move that would deny Republicans a quorum and halt the process, at least temporarily.
Texas Republicans, who had remained mostly silent in defense of redistricting before the map was made public on Wednesday, seemed confident on Friday for the first time since Mr. Trump’s desire for a mid-decade redistricting began circulating in Austin months ago.
Several spoke in favor of the lines, even as they disclaimed much knowledge about who was involved in its creation.
Representative Todd Hunter, a Corpus Christi Republican and the sponsor of the map legislation, said he had gotten the map from the Austin law firm of Butler Snow. He added that he believed many lawyers and consultants were involved, and that the firm worked on past redistricting in Texas.
“You didn’t ask them where they got the map?” asked State Representative Christian Manuel, a Beaumont Democrat.
Mr. Hunter said he did not know who had drawn the lines. But he strongly defended them. He said the districts were more compact in their shapes, drawn with partisan, not racial, considerations in mind, and would be found to be legal if challenged in court, as Democrats have promised to do.
“These districts were drawn primarily using political performance — that criteria from the United States Supreme Court,” he said, referring to a 2019 decision by the high court, which said federal courts are powerless to hear challenges to partisan gerrymandering.
Mr. Hunter said four of the five seats now occupied by Democrats would be majority Hispanic in their redrawn form, defending the new map against charges that it violates the Voting Rights Act, which was passed to defend minority representation.
Several Republican lawmakers highlighted the district represented by U.S. Representative Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat, which stretches from San Antonio to Austin, with a narrow strip connecting them.
State Representative Carl Tepper, a Lubbock Republican, said the proposed map was “much more cohesive, the districts, than they were previously.”
Democrats and some redistricting experts have questioned that assessment. For example, the 32nd House district, now an urban seat around Dallas held by U.S. Representative Julie Johnson, a Democrat, would be reshaped into an elongated tadpole with its narrow tail in suburban Dallas and its bulbous head 120 miles to the east in rural Gilmer.
The Democratic members of Congress who testified said the map was drawn to go after Black and Hispanic representatives and to disadvantage minority voters, in what they said was illegal under federal law.
U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Dallas Democrat, said she would go to court as soon as possible to seek an emergency injunction to block the map.
Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Austin Democrat, began his testimony by saying he had never appeared at a redistricting hearing during 30 years in office. But, he said, the proposed map was not crafted by Texans but rather by the White House, and he had to fight it.
“This is a Trump map,” he said.
In the new map, he would be forced to compete with Mr. Casar, whose proposed district would be located in a Republican area east of San Antonio.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
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