Texas Democrats stalled an attempt to redraw voting maps. What's next?

Here & Now Anytime

NPR

News

4.1 • 953 Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Democratic lawmakers in Texas left the state to prevent a vote on redrawing the state’s congressional maps. The redrawn maps would create five more winnable U.S. House districts for Republicans. Democratic Texas state Rep. Armando Walle talks about where Democrats go from here.

And, as the school year is about to start back up, Michigan’s education budget and federal funding changes are creating uncertainty for districts in the state. Katy Xenakis-Makowski, superintendent of Johannesburg-Lewiston Area Schools, shares more about how uncertainty is impacting her district.

Then, Martha Barnette — co-host of “A Way with Words” — joins us to talk about her new book “Friends with Words,” where she explores word origins and her own love of language.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for here and now anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design.
0:09.2	MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at MathWorks.com.
0:17.4	WBUR Podcasts, Boston.
0:22.6	Look, the reality is that Republicans control every lever of government in the state of Texas.
0:28.3	We know we're outnumbered, but just because you're outnumbered, you don't stop fighting and using the tools that are available to you to fight.
0:38.5	Texas Democrats temporarily stalled an attempt to redraw voting maps.
0:43.4	They say they're not giving up yet.
1:01.8	It's August 5th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston.
1:03.5	I'm Kalyani Saxana.
1:10.0	Today on the show, it's almost time for kids to return to school.
1:15.0	But in Michigan, lawmakers still haven't passed an education budget.
1:19.8	We'll hear from one superintendent in a rural part of the state about the uncertainty.
1:26.3	What's most concerning is that the budgets that have been introduced are so far apart,
1:29.5	that we can't even gauge where we might be going and makes it really hard to plan for staffing and students. And we'll hear about a new book
1:35.2	exploring all the reason society is obsessed with language. There's so much more to talk about.
1:41.8	Word origins and regional dialects and slang and that weird thing
1:46.0	your grandma used to say. I mean, and often when somebody is criticizing somebody else's language,
1:52.6	they're not right. But first, Texas Democrats who fled the state still haven't returned home after successfully preventing House Republicans on Monday from gerrymandering the state's congressional maps.
2:09.8	But it's not over yet. House Republicans issued civil arrest warrants for the missing Democrats, and Governor Greg Abbott ordered state
2:18.6	troopers to arrest them. One tiny problem with that plan. State authorities don't have jurisdiction
2:25.5	over lawmakers outside the state's borders. So now what? Well, let's hear from Representative
2:32.9	Armando Wally. He's one of the Texas Democrats who left,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.