On Thursday evening, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order in the case of LULAC v. Abbott relating to Texas’ recent redrawing of our congressional map. The ruling permits the state of Texas to use the new congressional map enacted this fall for next year’s elections while the lawsuit challenging the map proceeds in court.
What does this mean for TX07? It means our district—like districts across Texas—will have new district boundaries beginning in 2027. Some current residents of TX07 will now find their homes are in neighboring districts and some of our neighbors will now find their homes are in TX07. You can find a link to the new map here.
I think the Supreme Court got it wrong. The district court in Texas heard evidence on the new Texas map for nine days and found overwhelming, clear, and direct evidence of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in a 160-page well-reasoned opinion. The district court ordered Texas to use the congressional map currently in effect for the 2026 elections while the case challenging the new map moves through the courts. That is the most practical and fair path forward. But the Supreme Court rejected that ruling. As Justice Kagan explained in her dissenting opinion, the Supreme Court’s order “disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge—that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right…[and] disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race. [t]his Court’s precedents and our Constitution demand better.” I have said consistently that the Texas map that the Supreme Court has now permitted to go into effect for the 2026 elections betrays the fundamental principle that all Texans should have a say in our government. |
Once again, there was a lot going on in Washington, across the country, and around the world this week on the minds of people in the Capitol, including:
U.S. Military Strikes Off Coast of Venezuela Congress responded to recent reporting concerning the U.S. military strikes off the coast of Venezuela. Since September 2, the United States has carried out more than 20 attacks off the coast of Venezuela, killing more than 80 people that the Trump administration alleges have been trafficking drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean. On Thursday, leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees received a classified briefing about the Trump administration’s strikes on Venezuelan boats suspected of smuggling drugs. Following the briefing Democratic leaders issued a statement condemning the secondary strike, calling for the release of the video of the second strike, and raising important questions: Are Americans OK with this enormous expansion of the President’s power to kill people without due process? And, how does the purported justification for actions in the Caribbean how does this match up with President Trump’s pardons of people like Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of laundering billions of dollars selling drugs on the dark web, and Honduran President Juan Hernandez, a convicted drug smuggler who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for trafficking illicit drugs into the U.S. (You can read the full statement here.)
One-sided Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal Concerns continue over the Trump administration’s recent proposal for an initial peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that appears to have been first drafted in Russian and advanced by real estate developer and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The one-sided deal alarmed many, including Ukraine and European allies, by proposing that Ukraine cede its territory while delivering Russia several incentives. Reports of Steve Witkoff repeating Putin’s talking points and being scrutinized for his close ties to Russia concerns many of us in Washington. The Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration has been pursuing major commercial and economic deals with Russia, including oil-and-gas exploration mining rare earth minerals in the Arctic, which would directly benefit President Trump and his business partners.
Shooting of National Guard Members in Washington People in Washington continued to mourn National Guardsman Sarah Beckstrom and to keep in our thoughts National Guardsman Andrew Wolfe, who were shot near White House on the day before Thanksgiving. The Department of Justice this week charged an Afghan national who served alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was evacuated after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, and was granted asylum in the U.S. earlier this year. Last Friday, the Trump administration paused all asylum decisions and stopped issuing visas to applicants from Afghanistan, including those who assisted in the U.S war effort. This week, the administration went further, pausing all immigration processing—including asylum, green card, and citizenship applications—for 19 countries facing restrictions under President Trump’s travel ban issued in June. Many Afghan allies seeking asylum assisted and fought with U.S. servicemembers for nearly two decades during the war in Afghanistan and fled out of fear of persecution by the Taliban. Many Afghan refugees and families who have resettled in the U.S. have chosen Houston as their home, and I continue to support legislative efforts to protect the tens of thousands of Afghan allies who were granted parole status and are rebuilding their lives and families. |
With the end of the year just a few weeks away, the House has a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, the House did not consider any legislation related to government funding or addressing health care costs this week. Instead, it considered the following bills relating to small businesses and education.
This week, the House considered two bills related to regulations for small businesses. The Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act of 2025, H.R. 2965, requires the Small Business Administration (SBA) to ensure any agency regulatory changes do not increase small business compliance costs for the fiscal year. Because this bill creates an arbitrary cap, disregards the potential benefits of new regulations, and blocks the SBA from issuing rules, I voted against it. The DUMP Red Tape Act, H.R. 4305, codifies the Office of Advocacy's “Red Tape Hotline,” which is intended to receive complaints from small businesses about the burden of complying with agency rules, guidance, or policy statements. While proposed as a useful tool, the anonymous reporting of hotline notifications to Congress, the restrictions of complaints to the actions of agencies and the duplication of a decades-old hotline currently managed by the General Services Administration, lead to a duplicative effort without proper vetting rather than a meaningful response to the actual concerns of small business owners. I voted against it, too. The bills passed the House by a vote of 223-190 and 269-146, respectively.
The House also considered three bills relating to public K-12 schools that impose administrative burdens without providing any additional resources or support, based on the claim that foreign actors are influencing K-12 schools in the U.S.: the Combating the Lies of Authoritarians in School Systems Act, H.R. 1005, to force school districts to implement new reporting mechanisms, monitoring procedures, and compliance structures; the Transparency in Reporting of Adversarial Contributions to Education Act, H.R. 1049, to require schools to give parents access to a range of materials, including curriculum and professional development resources purchased by “foreign entities of concern” (which parents already have a right to); and the PROTECT Our Kids Act, H.R. 1069, to disqualify public schools that participate in any cultural or student exchange programs receive financial contributions, materials, or other resources from China. With little evidence of need for these bills, and lots of potential harms, I voted against all three, but they passed the House by a vote of 242-176, 247-166, and 247-164, respectively.
The House also passed several bills without much debate, including a bill I cosponsored, the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act, H.R. 1262, to reauthorize the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s priority review voucher program, which will incentivize pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments for rare pediatric disease and to expand access to combination therapy trials to children with cancer. The House also passed the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, H.R. 4323, which establishes a process to vacate convictions and expunge arrest records for certain criminal offenses committed by victims of human trafficking that directly result from or relate to having been a trafficking victim, and the Improving Social Security’s Service to Victims of Identity Theft Act, H.R. 5345, which requires the Social Security Administration to provide a single point of contact for any individual whose Social Security number has been misused.
As a reminder, you can always find a list of all of the votes I have taken on my website. |
This week, and in recent weeks, I have cosponsored several pieces of legislation on issues important to our community, including: - the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, H.R. 6397, to end the inhumane conditions of detention centers and protect the civil and human rights of immigrants;
- the John Lewis Every Child Deserves a Family Act, H.R. 6181, to end discrimination in adoption and foster care;
- the Global Respect Act, H.R. 6151, to impose sanctions with respect to foreign persons responsible for violations of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) individuals;
- the 988 LGBTQ+ Youth Access Act, H.R. 5434, to require the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure there is sufficient funding for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline;
- the 911 Saves Act, H.R. 637, to reclassify 9-1-1 dispatchers as first responders;
- the International Human Rights Defense Act of 2025, H.R. 6056, to direct the State Department to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, to create a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities, and formally establish a Special Envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ politics across the State Department;
- the Gun Violence Prevention Research Act of 2025, H.R. 4821, to authorize $50 million per year over five fiscal years to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct firearm safety and gun violence prevention research;
- the Multiple Firearm Sales Reporting Modernization Act, H.R. 4270, to require all federal firearms licensees to report the sale of two or more long guns to an individual within a 5-day period;
- the Farmers Feeding America Act, H.R. 3784, to expand the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which provides low-income individuals with emergency food assistance;
- the College Athletics Reform Act, H.R. 6350, to establish a federal framework to regulate name, image, and likeness (NIL) by codifying athletes’ NIL rights into federal law and creating federal protections for college athletes; and
- the Original National Domestic Violence Awareness Month Resolution of 2025, H.R. 846, recognizing October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
This week, I joined my colleagues in sending letters to Congressional leaders and Trump Administration officials, including: - a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune demanding the repeal of the provision in the recent government funding bill providing for million-dollar payouts to U.S. Senators;
- a letter to Senate and House leaders urging them to oppose any effort to bar state and local governments from enforcing their own AI laws, in the National Defense Authorization Act which Congress will consider soon, or any other piece of legislation;
- a letter to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Andrea Lucas encouraging the EEOC Chair not to rescind or weaken harassment guidance; and
- a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding answers on how the Department of Justice (DOJ) is addressing hate crime prevention, response, and enforcement and urging the DOJ to prioritize its work to prevent, respond to, and prosecute hate crimes.
|
This week, the Energy & Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy held a hearing to examine the physical and cyber security risks facing our electrical grid. Cybersecurity threats to our energy infrastructure are becoming more common and more dangerous each year. The witnesses at the hearing shared important and alarming information with the committee, and I took the opportunity to ask them about how to improve coordination between grid operators and government, including utilizing our national labs’ expertise to analyze threats. You can watch my full remarks and questions below. |
The full Energy & Commerce Committee also met this week to consider and vote on legislation related to broadband deployment and energy efficiency standards—what we call a “mark up.” We passed several bills to address unnecessary delays in the permitting process related to broadband deployment. The Committee also approved a highly partisan bill from my Republican colleagues that puts arbitrary deadlines on state, local, and tribal governments to complete complicated permit reviews and removes local communities’ ability to protect historic and culturally significant sites. The committee also approved several bills related to energy efficiency standards for housing and appliances, most of which were silly and removed standards that keep utility costs down for consumers. During the hearing, I spoke in opposition to one of the bills that would limit state and local governments ability to create safety standards for energy delivery to our homes. You can watch my full remarks below. |
On Thursday, I ventured off the Hill to speak at the Progressive Policy Institute about trade, tariffs, and the disproportionate impact of tariffs on women in the U.S., which is the subject of my bill, the Pink Tariffs Study Act (H.R. 7927). The Pink Tariffs Study Act is the first bill ever introduced to address bias against women in the U.S. tariff system. For years, there has been talk about the ‘pink tax’—the price differences between women’s clothing and men’s, or between products like razors or shoes. But tariffs on women’s products are higher than men’s, meaning this gender bias happens well before products even make it onto the shelf. We had a great discussion about the bill, the need for research, tariffs more broadly, and the role of Congress in setting these policies and the dangers of Congress’ failure to do so this year. |
In Washington, Team TX-07 held more than a dozen meetings with constituents and groups advocating on their behalf. Back home in the district, our team was out and about across the district, hosting a constituent services pop-up at the new Montrose-Freed Neighborhood Library and attending events in the community, pictured below. |
Last week, Americans across the country were shocked to learn that the cost of a Thanksgiving meal had risen by nearly 10 percent since last year. |
|
|
| |
I want to hear from you: have your costs increased or decreased this year?
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Submit survey to sign up for updates.*
|
|
Early voting for Houston's City Council runoff election began this week, and continues through next Tuesday. Everyone living in the City of Houston should make a plan to vote. Click here for more information on elections in Harris County and Fort Bend County. |
This is the last week we are collecting holiday greeting cards to share with senior citizens in TX-07 this holiday season. Bring us cards to deliver and spread warm winter wishes. Sign up by clicking here or on the graphic below. |
The House will be back in for the next two weeks, and I will be back in Washington to represent our district. Right now, the House is scheduled to consider several bills from the Energy & Commerce Committee and the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee before the end of the year. I look forward to writing to you with an update at the end of next week.
Please remember you can call my office at (713) 353-8680 or (202) 225-2571 or email here at any time to ask for assistance or share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you. I am proud to represent you and I am here to help you.
Best wishes, |
|
