July 26, 2025
‘It is a shame,’ Martin yelled as he was being escorted out by the officer. ‘You should all be ashamed.’
Isaiah Martin, a candidate for Rep. Sylvester Turner’s former seat in Texas’s 18th District, was arrested on July 24 while protesting during the Texas House Redistricting Committee hearing, a move that spotlights the Texas Democratic Party’s opposition to Gov. Greg Abbott’s controversial plan to redraw the district’s boundaries in a way that could dilute minority voting power and favor Republicans.
According to KVUE, the 27-year-old Martin was arrested after Texas State Rep. Cody Vasut (R-Angleton) took offense to Martin’s disruption of the hearing by going over his allotted time at the House Redistricting Committee hearing and told the sergeant-at-arms to arrest Martin.
“It is a shame,” Martin yelled as he was being escorted out by the officer. “You should all be ashamed.”
A day later, the Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed that Martin was arrested by their officers, then booked into the Travis County Jail where he was charged with criminal trespass, disrupting a meeting or procession and resisting arrest, and a Travis County prosecutor later dismissed the criminal trespass charge.
Per a video posted to his official social media accounts, Martin was later released.
Texas Democrats do not have the votes to stop the Texas Republicans from redistricting certain districts according to the wishes of Donald Trump, who has estimated that redrawing Texas’ electoral maps would get the Republican Party five extra seats in Congress.
To that end, Rep. Ron Reynolds (D-Missouri City) told The Houston Chronicle that the party is exploring all options, including the nuclear option of refusing to show up so that the vote can’t take place.
“We know we don’t have the numbers. They can run over us. They are here to do Trump’s bidding. I would not be surprised to see President Trump send out the National Guard to come get us,” Reynolds said. “That’s the kind of vitriol we are facing now.”
Reynolds, and other Democrats in the state, have connected the push from Texas Republicans to the legacy of the civil rights movement and former leaders of the district like the late Rep. Barbara Jordan and Rep. Reynolds indicated that he was committed to not conceding to conduct business as usual because of what’s at stake for the voters of District 18.
Abbott’s plan, per reporting from The Texas Tribune, is also deeply unpopular with rank-and-file voters, who aired their grievances at the Legislature’s first public meeting.
“When I saw what you folks were doing up here in the Legislature, I got screaming mad,” said Christy Stockman, a resident of Corpus Christi. “It’s a good old-fashioned bait-and-switch, with a power grab added in.”
After the hearing, former U.S. Rep Beto O’Rourke made pointed comments outside of the Texas Capitol building about the nature of the relationship between Abbott and Trump, at one point calling the pair “thick as thieves.”
“In order to continue this consolidation of authoritarian power and to destroy this democracy once and for all, [Trump] has to retain control in the United States House of Representatives, where he currently has a very narrow majority,” O’Rourke said. “And it turns out that the policies and the programs that he pursues are deeply unpopular with the American people.”
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