Texas Democratic legislators flee state to protest GOP’s redistricting plan

Democratic state legislators fled Texas on Sunday in an attempt to deny a quorum to Republicans hoping to vote on a new congressional map that heavily favors the GOP even more than current districts. 

“For two weeks, while families in the Hill Country mourned the loss of over 130 Texans in catastrophic floods, Democrats fought to make their relief the legislature’s top priority. Instead, Governor Abbott and Republican leadership used the tragedy as political cover,” Texas House Democrats said in a statement Sunday. 

“… Governor Abbott has turned the victims of a tragedy into political hostages in his submission to Donald Trump. We will not allow disaster relief to be held hostage to a Trump gerrymander. As of today, this corrupt special session is over,” the statement said.

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement, “For too long, Donald Trump and Republicans have tried to get away with rigging the system, breaking the rules, and scheming to hold onto power. It’s time to fight back.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday night said the lawmakers had until 3 p.m. Monday, when the Texas House is set to reconvene, to return.

“For any member who fails to do so, I will invoke Texas Attorney General Opinion No. KP-0382 to remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House,” Abbott said in a statement.

“The absconded Democrat House members were elected to meet and vote on legislation—not to prevent votes that may not go their way,” Abbott wrote. “Every session, legislators on both sides of the aisle find themselves on the losing side of a legislative vote. And every session, most of those legislators find a way to disagree agreeably and behave like adults, rather than going AWOL.”

Republicans unveiled the new maps last week as part of a mid-decade redistricting in an attempt to protect the GOP’s razor-thin U.S. House majority. President Trump said in July that he believes Republicans could win five more seats in Texas with different districts.

Abbott included redistricting to be addressed in a special legislative session, along with other high-profile topics like approving disaster relief for the deadly Texas floods and a THC ban. 

“For weeks, we’ve been warning that if Republicans in Texas want a showdown — if they want to delay flood relief to cravenly protect Donald Trump from an inevitable midterm meltdown — then we’d give them that showdown,” Martin said.

Both houses of the Texas legislature are controlled by Republicans, but if most Democratic lawmakers leave the state, they could deny the state House and Senate the two-thirds quorum that they need to vote on the new congressional maps.

At least 51 Texas Democrats have fled the state for Chicago. Politico was first to report the lawmakers had left the state.

“We’re not here to have fun. We’re not here because this is easy, and we did make a decision to come here today — we did not make a decision lightly,” Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu said after arriving in Illinois. “But we come here today with absolute moral clarity that this is absolutely the right thing to do to protect the people of the state of Texas.”  

Republicans in Texas currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 congressional seats. The party hopes the new maps could bring that number up to 30, and all of those new 30 seats were won by Mr. Trump in November by at least 10 points.

The five seats come from redrawing Rio Grande Valley districts — where Mr. Trump has made gains in what were once Democratic strongholds — and combining Reps. Lloyd Doggett and Greg Cesar’s districts in Austin. In North Texas, Rep. Julie Johnson’s suburban 32nd District would be reshaped to stretch from the Dallas area to rural Republican strongholds, and Rep. Marc Veasey would be moved out of Tarrant County entirely, which would leave only a small portion of the county represented by a Democrat. All four Houston-area seats were redrawn, with Rep. Al Green’s being the most dramatic.

“They’re turning our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want in the 2026 election,” Democratic state Rep. James Talarico said in a message posted to social media. “If this power grab succeeds, they will hang on to power without any accountability from the voters.”

Wu said Texas Republicans are “using is a racist, gerrymandered map, a map that seeks to use racial lines to divide hard working communities who have spent decades building up their power and strengthening their voices, and Governor Abbott is doing this in submission to Donald Trump.”

Democrats have fought back against the new districts, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries traveling to Austin on Thursday to pledge national support. 

“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,” Talarico added.

Martin said in an appearance Sunday on MSNBC, “I’m proud of the Texas Dems for actually breaking quorum here. Our democracy is literally under assault by Donald Trump, Greg Abbott and the Republicans, who know that they are on a track to lose the House majority next year. So what do they do? They cheat. They rigged the system. That’s all they have left.”

“We’re certainly going to be standing with folks who will be litigating this in the courts,” Martin added. “We will continue to organize on the ground in Texas, and we will continue to support the House Dems, as they have broke quorum right now.”

This is not the first time Democrats have left the state to deny Republicans a quorum — and not the first time they have done it to protest redistricting. During the landmark 2005 mid-decade redistricting, Texas Democrats fled during two separate special sessions to stop the redistricting. But the redistricting eventually did go through. And in 2023, Republicans passed legislation that levies a $500-a-day fine on lawmakers who leave the state. 

The last significant quorum break in the Texas House was in 2021, when Democrats fled the state to prevent a restrictive voting bill from passing.  

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to assist police in “hunting down and compelling the attendance” of any Democratic lawmakers who leave the state to block votes during the special session.

“If Democrats ignore their duty to their constituents by breaking quorum, they should be found and arrested no matter where they go,” said Paxton, who is also running for the GOP nomination in next year’s Senate race.

Abbott on Sunday said that “Any Democrat who ‘solicits, accepts, or agrees to accept'” donations to help cover any fines they may be subjected to under Hous rules for skipping votes, “may have violated bribery laws.”