Former President Obama joined a Zoom call with Texas state House Democrats on Thursday, calling the Republican redistricting effort in the state a “systematic assault on democracy.”
“What we all recognize is we can’t let a systematic assault on democracy just happen and stand by,” Obama said.
“And my hope is that rather than have a race to the bottom where every district is predetermined based on how it’s drawn, that over time, the American people, ideally with the help of the courts, realizes that there’s a better way,” he continued.
Texas Democratic state lawmakers fled the Lone Star State two weeks ago to break quorum and prevent a vote on a new redistricting map that would give the GOP five additional seats in the 2026 midterms.
Obama encouraged the Texas Democratic lawmakers to stay strong in the face of GOP threats to have them arrested or stripped of their state House seats.
He posted on social platform X, “I am so proud of the @TexasHDC and the work that they’ve done. Their willingness to put themselves on the line to highlight the current assault on our democracy has set an example for what all of us have to do.”
Democrats announced Thursday the conditions for their return. First, they said the Texas Legislature must adjourn Friday and end the special session meant to vote on the gerrymandered map. Second, the California Legislature must introduce its own map to counter the efforts of the Texas GOP.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called for a special election in November to bypass California’s independent redistricting commission. With a new map, California could offset the GOP’s gains by winning five more Democratic seats. Newsom is pressuring New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) to do the same.
The Texas House Democratic Caucus posted on X about Obama joining the call, “Your words reminded us why we broke quorum: Democracy isn’t self-executing. It requires us to stand up and fight for it.”
Obama said the current threats to democracy extended beyond the gerrymandering fight.
“We’re in a moment right now where not just gerrymandering, but efforts at voter suppression, efforts at questioning the results of elections, efforts at the executive branch, unilaterally doing things that bypass Congress and the people’s representatives, militarization of cities, politicization of our justice departments and our military,” he said on Thursday’s call.
“Those are trend lines that remind us this precious democracy that we’ve got is not a given.”
Obama has been outspoken about the risks to democracy under the new administration. In June, he told a crowd in Hartford, Conn., that the political environment under President Trump is “consistent with autocracies.”
“We’re not there yet completely, but I think that we are dangerously close to normalizing behavior like that,” he said at the time.
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