Texas Democrats grapple with legal, political, and personal pressure as they protest Republican efforts to rewrite the state’s congressional map before next year’s elections.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has threatened to remove 50 or so Democrats from the Texas House who traveled to Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York last weekend to deny a quorum for a vote on the map redrawn in the middle of the decadelong redistricting cycle at President Donald Trump’s request to help Republicans keep control of the U.S. House after the 2026 elections.
“Texans don’t run from a fight, they face it head on,” Abbott wrote Monday on social media. “These Texas Democrats that fled the state are not serving Texans. They are serving themselves.”
Abbott issued his first legal threat last Sunday during this month’s Texas special legislative session, citing the Texas constitution and a nonbinding, but potentially persuasive opinion from 2021 by state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Abbott ordered the arrest of the Democrats on Monday after they did not appear in the Texas House that afternoon. Over the weekend, he also threatened them and anyone who helps them pay their $500-a-day fine and other costs they may incur with criminal charges under the state penal code, including bribery.
Democrat Matt Angle, founder and director of research and communications firm the Lone Star Project, contended Abbott’s threats are “entirely empty” and that Paxton’s opinion has “no force of law in Texas.”
“It has no more authority than a tweet,” Angle told the Washington Examiner. “And, the AG opinion cited, along with the case they point to within it, do not at all apply to the members breaking quorum.”
For Angle, the right to break quorum is a part of the Texas Democrats’ legislative duties under the state constitution.
“The case Abbott cites requires showing a failure to perform a duty of office and a purposeful decision to relinquish office,” he said. “None of that applies to the current quorum break. That said, Abbott and Paxton are eagerly pandering to Trump so might file a lawsuit in an effort to intimidate Democrats and kiss up to Trump.”
David Froomkin, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center, agreed that the Texas Constitution “doesn’t give” Abbott “the power to create a vacancy,” only to “identify” that one “exists.”
“It’s pretty clear that a vacancy exists when an incumbent intends to create a vacancy when they intend not to continue holding their office,” Froomkin told the Washington Examiner. “That is not what has happened here. I assume that the position that the legislators who have left the state are taking is that they are using the prerogatives of their office. They’re exercising their office by trying to prevent the House from having a quorum in order to pass legislation that they find troubling.”
Abbott threatened lawmakers with criminal bribery charges for receiving help to pay the fines and getting other kickbacks, including fundraising. Froomkin underscored that Texas Democrats cannot use campaign funds to pay the levies and that to be found guilty of bribery, they would have to accept “a thing of value in consideration for failing to perform a legal duty.”
“Regarding whether legislators have a legal duty to be present, the governor has pointed to a provision of the Texas Constitution that says that the legislature shall meet at certain times,” he said. “That’s not language that, at least on its face, imposes an individual obligation on individual legislators to be present.”
The assistant professor added, “What consideration means is that legislators are taking some action as a consequence of something that they have been given. But it doesn’t seem like that’s what’s happening here. It seems like there was a decision already made to try to deny the House a quorum, and then a subsequent question about financing.”
Froomkin dismissed Abbott’s threat against the Texas Democrats’ supporters, arguing “if there’s no bribery, then neither the officials nor people who may donate money to them engaged in bribery.”
But Phillip Gordon, regulatory counsel and a civil litigator with Texas law firm Naman Howell, disagreed with Froomkin, asserting Abbott’s abandonment threat could be on “firm ground,” particularly for Democrats who have been open about the political reasons regarding why they departed Texas last Sunday on a private airplane.
“When you’re being like, ‘We don’t want to do our job because we might lose,’ that’s the argument of saying that is abandonment,” Gordon told the Washington Examiner.
Gordon predicted Democrats would countersue Abbott in federal court using the First Amendment, 14th Amendment, and due process, but that, like the governor’s abandonment threat, would lead to prolonged litigation.
Aside from legal pressure, University of Texas at Austin political Professor Daron Shaw emphasized political and personal pressures on the Texas Democrats, including because Abbott called the special legislative session, in part, to provide relief to Central Texas after the July 4 weekend flash floods and to introduce education reforms.
“To simply take a pass on those issues because of redistricting is not going to play well in the long run,” Shaw told the Washington Examiner. “Then school starts in late August here. So in the past, members have gone, and some of them have taken their families, but then their families need to go back. And even those who don’t have, who only took themselves, are going to want to go back.”
To prevent the map from becoming law, the Texas Democrats would have to continue breaking quorum until December, after the candidates’ deadline to file for next year’s primary elections. Previous quorum breaks have been roughly 60 days long.
Simultaneously, Govs. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) and Kathy Hochul (D-NY) have defended the Texas Democrats. Hochul on Monday described her party as being at “war” with Republicans over the map, which would create another five GOP House districts. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has only a three-seat majority. Pritzker is supplying the lawmakers in Illinois with logistics assistance.
Hochul and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) are considering conducting their own mid-cycle redistricting in response to that of Texas, but have encountered challenges posed by their states’ independent commissions, which are protected by their respective constitutions.
“I’m tired of fighting this fight with my hand tied behind my back,” Hochul told reporters on Monday during a press conference with some of the Texas Democrats. “Republicans take over the legislature? They can have at it. Until then, we’re in charge.”
Tom Pauken, a former chairman of the Texas Republican Party, endorsed Abbott’s threats against the Democrats, downplaying the idea that it is encouraging other states to undertake their own mid-cycle redistricting.
“It puts the Democrats in a bit of a bind,” Pauken told the Washington Examiner. “The irony is they went to Illinois, which is one of the most gerrymandered states by the Democrats in the country, and they’ve gerrymandered all over every Democratic state. Either let every state not be gerrymandered, or if we have an advantage, we need to take advantage.”
He continued: “Anybody who looks at this objectively knows that it’s like the inspector in the Humphrey Bogart movie Casablanca, saying, ‘I’m shocked to discover there’s gambling in here,’ as the waiter gives him his winnings. It’s going to be a battle for midterms, and I hope the Republicans get the new plan through because, really, quite frankly, they made a big mistake on the redistricting last time. They gave away a couple of congressional seats to protect state legislators.”
Trump implored Abbott to redistrict midcycle after Texas redrew its map in 2021, a map that has been criticized for racial and partisan gerrymandering by some and for not taking more advantage of the state’s suburbs and Hispanic communities becoming more Republican by others.
Texas last redistricted mid-cycle in 2003, prompting Democrats to react by breaking quorum then, too. Those Democrats also had warrants out for their arrest.