Gerrymandering and flood response continued to dominate the Texas Legislature this week, culminating Wednesday in a split screen between parents of flood victims pleading to senators for new laws as the House used its opening votes to advance partisan redistricting.
For hours, Democratic and Republican lawmakers traded barbs on the state House floor over a plan to redraw Texas’s congressional districts to give the GOP a better shot of keeping control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections. Meanwhile, a Senate committee heard tearful testimony from parents of girls who died from flooding at a summer camp; they urged the state to beef up disaster planning for youth camps.
The parents said they were shocked that Camp Mystic, which was among the first places struck by the July 4 flood on the Guadalupe River, didn’t have an adequate evacuation plan. Testimony at two previous hearings has highlighted a string of mishaps at the state and county level.
More than 130 people died, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic. The body of one girl, 8-year-old Cecilia Steward, is still missing. She was the third generation of her family to attend Camp Mystic and had been at the camp five days when the flood struck.
