Just before midnight on Friday, August 22nd, insects circled the bright lights outside the Texas state capitol and sprinklers watered the lawn. Inside, lawmakers milled around the Senate chamber as a long day threatened to be prolonged.

A few weeks earlier, at the behest of President Donald Trump , Texas Republicans had introduced a mid-decade redistricting bill, redrawing the congressional map to give the party the likelihood of five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Without the proposed changes, Republicans were at an “extreme risk” of losing the House, Ken King, a representative from the Texas Panhandle and the bill’s author, said. The bill was a shoo-in in the Republican-dominated Texas legislature. To protest it, a contingent of more than fifty Democrats in t

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