Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Monday ordered the arrest of the Democrats who fled the Lone Star State in an effort to halt the advancement of new congressional maps that could benefit Republicans in next year’s midterms.
“Texas House Democrats abandoned their duty to Texans,” Abbott said in a statement. “By fleeing the state, Texas House Democrats are holding hostage critical legislation to aid flood victims and advance property tax relief. There are consequences for dereliction of duty.
“Speaker Dustin Burrows just issued a call of the Texas House and issued warrants to compel members to return to the chamber. To ensure compliance, I ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to locate, arrest, and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans. This order will remain in effect until all missing Democrat House members are accounted for and brought to the Texas Capitol.”
Democrats’ refusal to show up was part of a rapidly escalating political contest over a controversial attempt by the state GOP to pass a highly unusual mid-decade partisan redistricting plan aimed at giving Texas Republicans five additional seats in Congress — while destroying several Democratic districts.
In a separate statement, Abbott said he was also directing the Texas Rangers to investigate the Democrats over potential bribery in connection to donations they were allegedly receiving from donors to offset the $500 daily fines the lawmakers are facing.
“Today, I ordered the Texas Rangers to immediately investigate fleeing Texas House Democrats for potential bribery and any other potential legal violations connected to their refusal to appear for a quorum, conduct business, and cast votes,” Abbott said. “That investigation should extend to anyone who aided or abetted such potential crimes.”
Abbott’s comments followed House Speaker Dustin Burrows’s signature of an arrest warrant for any Democratic members that state troopers can locate.
In their remarks, neither mentioned redistricting, which Democrats describe as a naked power grab.
In comments on Monday, state Rep. Jolanda Jones (D) credited her party’s failure to stop a similar middecade effort in North Carolina with securing the margins needed for Republicans to pass Trump’s unpopular tax and spending bill, which is projected to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid to funnel tax cuts to the country’s wealthiest.
Instead of defending the redistricting push, Republican leaders avoided talking about it. Instead, they attacked Democrats for not being to be on hand to discuss other matters.
The redistricting campaign has been an elephant in the room for state Republicans, who have tended to describe the Democrats’ departure as though it were “dereliction of duty,” as Abbott put it — an attempt to sideline flood relief or the attempt to outlaw standardized testing.
Burrows, who holds his speakership as part of a coalition that is majority Democrat, also avoided discussion of redistricting in his comments following the signature of the arrest warrant, focusing instead on legislation around human trafficking, flood relief and the elimination of the STAAR standardized test.
Abbott, he said, had offered the state’s Department of Public Safety to “make sure we do what can be done to establish a quorum and do this special session,” he said.
“We will work with DPS to locate members. I saw, for instance, there is one member who said that they were doing a fundraiser here in Austin tomorrow, and I’ve sent that fundraising letter to DPS and said they should be invited to attend as well. We’ll see how that goes forward,” he said, to general laughter.
Not to be outdone, Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) — who is running to the right of Sen. John Cornyn (R) in the Senate primary — on Monday called Democrats “jet-setting runaways” and said it was “imperative that they be swiftly arrested, punished, and face the full force of the law for turning their backs on the people of Texas.”
Paxton in 2021 won a state Supreme Court ruling allowing the arrest of legislators — Democrats by definition of the state’s partisan mix — who broke quorum.
Updated: 6:25 p.m. ET
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