Updated August 5, 2025 at 1:41 PM CDT
The Texas House of Representatives remains at a standstill for the second day running after Democrats fled the state over the weekend to prevent a vote on a bill to redraw Texas's congressional maps. The bill heavily favors Republicans with five new GOP-leaning districts, something President Trump has openly advocated for.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that the quorum-breaking Democrats should "behave like adults, rather than going AWOL," and should be expelled from office.
On Monday, after the failed House session, he said he had 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."
The governor's options are limited, though, as state troopers don't have jurisdiction outside of Texas.
Republicans control the Texas House by a wide margin, but without Democrats present, their 88 members alone fall short of the 100-member quorum required to conduct business.
"To be absolutely clear, leaving the state doesn't stop this House from doing its work, it just delays it," Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows told the members in the chamber after failing to reach a quorum on Monday.
The House will attempt to reconvene again on Friday.
Where are Democrats?
Many of the missing lawmakers fled to Democratic strongholds such as New York and Illinois rather than show up in the Texas Capitol in Austin for a vote they were certain to lose.
"This is like two football teams coming out of the locker room at halftime and the team that's ahead says they want to change the rules for the second half because they want to win the game," State Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin) told NPR from Illinois, where he is waiting out the quorum-break.
"I mean, we all recognize that as cheating, plain and simple. And if the Republicans are going to cheat, Texas Democrats are not going to play."
Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat, told The James Show podcast on Monday that "We can arrest them," but added that it would be a challenge to get cooperation from local law enforcement in the "very liberal Democratic states" where lawmakers fled.
Other options, Paxton said, would be to file lawsuits against each lawmaker and try to remove them from office, or to escalate the waiting game by calling more special sessions until Democrats break.
"Eventually, guess what, people have to come home, they have jobs, they have families. So, waiting them out in the end always works."
Two Texas lawmakers attending the National Conference of State Legislatures in Boston spent Monday, Rep. Ana Hernandez and Armando Walle, told reporters that they plan to stay out of Texas until the special session ends Aug. 19.
"It's Texas now, but it's going to continue through the rest of the states, and it's going to kill our democracy," Rep. Hernandez warned her colleagues in other states.
In New York, where several of the Texas Democrats decamped to avoid arrest, Gov. Kathy Hochul held a press conference in support of the lawmakers Monday, indicating that her majority-blue state would explore redrawing its own electoral map. Given the state's constitution, that may not be likely until 2027 or beyond.
"If Republicans are willing to rewrite these rules to give themselves an advantage, then they're leaving us no choice; we must do the same," Hochul stated.
Why now?
Redistricting usually occurs after a census, and mid-decade redraws like this one in Texas are rare, but other states, including California and Missouri, are pushing for redistricting in their own attempts to lock in partisan advantages. Ohio, which went heavily for Trump, is redistricting this year due to a 2018 state law.
This attempt by Texas Republicans was inserted into a special legislative session called by Gov. Abbott to address the deadly Hill Country floods that killed at least 136 people last month, which Texas Democrats decry as a bait-and-switch.
"Gov. Abbott has used this tragedy, taken these families who are grieving, taken these communities who are struggling to recover, and used them as hostages in a political game," said state House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu.
"When a majority uses its power not to govern, but to erase the voices of its fellow citizens, it forfeits its legitimacy."
The fight over the newly proposed congressional map may just be getting started. A plan must pass the state House before the state Senate has its say.
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