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The state could become “the canary in the coal mine” when it comes to using nondecennial census data that way, said Jay Young, the executive director of Common Cause Illinois. Young and others say that route is rife with potential legal challenges. It also undercuts the investment the state made financially and in outreach to underserved communities to get a good census count. Change Illinois, Common Cause and other groups nationwide have pushed legislatures to engage the public in the redistricting process.

"This is 100% partisan driven," Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the voter advocacy group Common Cause Texas said in an interview with Salon. "The political party they don't like is winning too many districts, so they just want to change them so that can no longer happen," Gutierrez testified at Thursday's hearing. "They went out of their way to really innovate gerrymandering in Texas, which is hard to do but they figured out a way. But this is one that I feel harms so many different communities," Gutierrez said, predicting that the impact on traditionally Republican areas of the state could doom the bill in committee.

Despite those warnings, Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group, said that Democrats needed to keep every option on the table. “Senate Democrats have the majority and they need to have the ability to govern,” he said. “This idea that it can be costless to filibuster, that you can essentially raise your hands behind closed doors and grind everything to a halt, is unacceptable.”

Voter suppression efforts are escalating in 43 states, as are Republican efforts to block passage of H.R. 1, the massive voting rights bill just passed by House Dems. The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes and Stephen Spaulding of Common Cause help Mehdi understand what's in the bill and what's at stake.

“It means a state can engage in midnight gerrymandering and essentially evade court review, run elections with those gerrymandered maps and get away with it until the next election,” said Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s redistricting director.

And so have national advocacy groups. Common Cause runs weeknight phone banks recruiting backers for the bill, and says it has generated 700,000 text messages supporting it. “It’s been a pretty incredible outpouring of support, because we all know what this moment means,” said Izzy Bronstein, the group’s national campaigns manager.