Democratic lawmakers from Texas are doubling down on their refusal to return to Austin to vote on a highly controversial redistricting map, even after threats from Governor Greg Abbott.
Abbott has threatened to remove the lawmakers from office if they do not return to vote on the Trump-backed redistricting of the state. The governor also suggested that the lawmakers have committed felonies by fundraising to pay off their $500-a-day fees for not being present.
“This truancy ends now,” Abbott said in a letter sent to each of the departed members. “The derelict Democrat House members must return to Texas and be in attendance when the House reconvenes at 3:00 PM on Monday, August 4, 2025.”
In response, the Texas House Democratic Caucus issued a four word response: “Come and take it.”
The 51 lawmakers who left the state have gone to Illinois and New York to speak out against the governor and their Republican colleagues.
State Rep. Chris Turner called the Republican gerrymandering plan a “discriminatory Congressional map demanded by Donald Trump” in a statement posted to X.
“This doesn’t stop with Texas,” state Rep. Mihaela Plesa, vice-chair of the House Democratic caucus, said on Monday. “If Trump and Abbott succeed, it will give them five seats. But then where else do they go? Ohio, Missouri, any other Republican legislature with Democratic Congress people. They’re on the chopping block, too.”
The top Democrat in the Texas legislature, state Rep. Gene Wu called the proposed map “racist” and “gerrymandered.”
“Governor Abbott is doing this in submission to Donald Trump,” Wu said at an Illinois press conference on Sunday. Wu said that Trump wants to “steal” votes from Democratic communities in Texas. “We will not be complicit in the destruction in our own communities,” Wu said.
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Republicans, meanwhile, are threatening consequences if Democrats do not return. State Rep. Dustin Burrows, the Republican speaker of the Texas House, earlier issued a vague threat to his Democratic colleagues.
“The Texas House will be convening at 3:00pm tomorrow,” Burrows said in a Sunday post on X. “If a quorum is not present then, to borrow the recent talking points from some of my Democrat colleagues, all options will be on the table. . .”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton likewise called on the government of Texas to “use every tool at our disposal to hunt down” the errant lawmakers. “Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately,” Paxton said on social media.
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