Greg Casar Calls Emergency March and Picket Outside Texas Governor's Mansion

The chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Monday called for an emergency march and picket outside the mansion of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to protest his radical redistricting plan that would shift as many as five seats currently held by Democrats to the Republican Party.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), whose district would be merged with the district of Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) under a Texas GOP plan that was drawn up at the urging of U.S. President Donald Trump, announced on his Facebook page that the rally would take place at 5:30 pm at the governor's mansion in downtown Austin.

"For the first time in the history of Texas, the governor is threatening to make us a one-party state," stated the post. "After Democratic legislators went around the country to rally voters against Abbott and Trump's extreme redistricting scheme, Abbott is now threatening to illegally expel all these Texas Democrats from elected office through a court order."

During a recent appearance on MSNBC, Casar outlined the dangers posed to democracy in the United States if Texas Republicans' plan should come to pass.

"If Donald Trump succeeds in ending the protections of the Voting Rights Act for people of color here in Austin, then pretty soon he could succeed in ending those protections for people across America," he said. "My current district in East Austin... is a Voting Rights Act-protected district to give Latinos in this area voting power. That's part of what MLK marched for when he pushed for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And what they're trying to do here in Austin, as a test case, is to get rid of that. And they wouldn't stop in Austin or in Texas."