Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state Sunday in a bid to block passage of a new congressional map designed to give the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House next year, raising the stakes in what’s poised to be a national fight over redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm election.
The maneuver, undertaken by most of the Texas House’s 62 Democrats, deprives the Republican-controlled chamber of a quorum — the number of lawmakers needed to function under House rules — ahead of a scheduled Monday vote on the draft map. The 150-member House can only conduct business if at least 100 members are present, meaning the absence of 51 or more Democrats can bring the Legislature’s ongoing special session to a halt.
“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement, in which he accused Gov. Greg Abbott of “using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal.”
Most House Democrats left Texas Sunday afternoon en route to Chicago, with some also headed to New York to meet with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has condemned Texas’ mid-decade redistricting effort and entertained the idea of retaliating with new maps in her state. A third contingent of lawmakers also departed for Boston to attend the National Conference of State Legislatures’ annual legislative summit.
There are just over two weeks left of the Texas Legislature’s special session, during which Abbott has also asked lawmakers to take up measures responding to the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods, stiffer regulations for consumable hemp, and contentious GOP priorities such as cracking down on abortion pills and the bathrooms transgender people can use. The prospects for those items, along with the new redistricting maps, were immediately thrown in doubt by the Democrats’ departure.
In his statement, Wu said Democrats “will not allow disaster relief to be held hostage to a Trump gerrymander.”
“We’re not walking out on our responsibilities; we’re walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent,” he said. “As of today, this corrupt special session is over.”
[…]
Preventing a quorum was the nuclear option, coming just before the map was set to reach the House floor. Republicans advanced the redistricting plan out of a House committee Saturday morning and later scheduled it for a floor vote Monday. Democrats could skip town long enough to run out the clock on the current session — which began July 21 and can last up to 30 days — but Abbott can continue calling lawmakers back for subsequent sessions.
Texas House rules adopted by Republicans in 2023 impose a threat of arrest and a $500-per-day fine on each lawmaker who absconds from the state. House rules also prohibit lawmakers from using their campaign funds to pay the fines, making the decampment a potentially expensive move. But Democrats have been raising money in recent weeks in anticipation of the quorum break, and those involved in the fundraising say they have found a way to circumvent the campaign restrictions.
Among those fundraising to support Democrats is Powered by People, a political group launched by former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke in 2019. The group raised over $600,000 in 2021, the last time Democrats deprived the House of a quorum, to help cover the costs associated with staying out of state, and an O’Rourke spokesperson confirmed the group is again supporting this year’s effort.
The new punishment rules came in response to the 2021 episode, when Democrats fled Texas in an unsuccessful attempt to block new voting restrictions. That effort failed after Democrats on the lam splintered, and enough returned to Austin and granted Republicans the numbers needed to resume business.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has said his office would assist federal, state and local authorities “in hunting down and compelling the attendance” of any Democrat who flees the state.
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There’s obviously a lot going on here. That first vote on HB4 was as far as I know originally scheduled for Tuesday, so it may well be that it was moved up a day in an attempt to make it harder for Dems to break quorum. But here we are. I’ve just read all this on Sunday afternoon and I’m sure there will be tons more to come, but a few opening thoughts:
– How this actually plays out is mostly a function of communications at this point. Dems have some advantages, in that the redistricting effort was demanded by Trump for his political gain – Republicans have at least done them the favor of being honest about that part – and I would think that public opinion would lean in their favor on this matter, given where other polling is now. Republicans can and will complain that this means the Lege won’t be able to deal with flooding issues, but they’re in charge of the agenda and they put redistricting first, so that kind of falls flat. But again, this is all a function of messaging. Be clear, be consistent, be loud, and hope for the best.
– One thing that may perversely help Dems is that Trump and the likes of Paxton are almost certainly going to overreact to this. Republicans have time on their side here – Dems can only do this for so long, Abbott can call as many special sessions as he needs to, all they have to do is wait and act like they’d really love to do some Serious Legislating but they can’t because the Dems aren’t there. I’ve alluded to this before, but would anyone be shocked if Trump sics the FBI, Homeland Security, federal marshals, the TSA, even ICE on the Dems? Given how people have soured on other displays of federal force against people Donald Trump doesn’t like, I think this kind of response could boost the Dems in the public’s eyes.
– It could also, let’s be very clear, get extremely ugly and maybe violent. I’d rather not speculate any more than that.
– Again, let’s be clear that all the Republicans have to do is wait. There’s no good endgame for the Dems, unless they’re willing to stay out of state for several months at least. Legislators have jobs, spouses, kids, all kinds of personal obligations. How would your life be made more difficult if you suddenly had to hole up in a hotel in Illinois for four or five months, with just some basics packed? They can last till the end of this session. Maybe, maybe, they can hold out for another 30 days, if Abbott calls another session right away. But as with 2021, at some point it becomes impossible to maintain.
– And Abbott doesn’t have to call another session right away. He could stay quiet until enough of the wayward Dems come back, and then call it after getting Texas law enforcement involved to drag people to Austin. The Republicans have all the advantages.
– The other thing about that is that it will be easy for Dems to turn on each other as soon as there’s any sign of people returning, for whatever the reason and after however much time. That happened in 2021 and in 2003, mostly with the Senate quorum break.
I’m just trying to maintain some perspective here. What the House Dems have done is brave and principled and comes at a high personal cost, and we should laud them for that. And then we should cut them some slack when it inevitably crumbles, because it is impossible to sustain over any kind of long term. Enjoy the high you’re feeling today, because it will end and we will have to deal with it. The Chron, Lone Star Left, the Lone Star Project, and the Senate Democratic Caucus have more.
UPDATE: The overreactions and freakouts have begun. Buckle up.
Give them a couple of weeks, and they will surrender and return with their tails between their legs.
The Texas Dems aren’t hiding and they are showing courage. The Dem messaging this morning is impressive. Talarico is a gifted communicator and his words this morning are clear and persuasive.
“ “My Democratic colleagues and I have just left our beloved state to break quorum and stop Trump’s redistricting power grab,” Texas state representative James Talarico said in a video posted to social media. “Trump told our Republican colleagues to redraw the political maps here in Texas in the middle of the decade to get him five more seats and protect his majority in Congress. They’re turning our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want in the 2026 elections. If this power grab succeeds, they will hang on to power without any accountability from the voters. But Texas Democrats are fighting back. We’re leaving the state, breaking quorum and preventing Republicans from silencing our voices and rigging the next election. We are not fighting for the Democratic Party. We are fighting for the democratic process, and the stakes could not be higher. We have to take a stand.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/august-3-2025?r=8u0oe&utm_medium=ios
Trump and Abbott have created an opportunity for millions of Americans to see this bs for what it is. The Dems are doing great.