Garrison Hayes/Mother Jones Illustration
We’re well into the second week of the Texas redistricting showdown. Far from home, these Texas Democrats are resolute. In an undisclosed location, I sat down with them to talk about their decision to leave their home state to stand up for democracy.
WATCH:
More than 50 Texas House Democrats fled the state en masse earlier this month, with many holing up with their blue state brethren in Illinois and New York, to block a GOP-led attempt to redraw congressional maps that could yield Republicans up to five additional U.S. House seats—part of a radical Trump-inspired scheme to help Republicans keep control of the US House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections.
The current special session of the Texas chamber may adjourn if a quorum isn’t met, but Texas Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to call successive special sessions until the redistricting plan is passed. He’s also signed civil arrest warrants for absent Democrats and invoked a nonbinding opinion from the scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton regarding their possible removal from office; any such action would ultimately require court rulings. My colleague Tim Murphy found one prominent Democrat holed up somewhere outside Chicago last Thursday, just hours after Sen. John Cornyn announced that the Trump administration would assign FBI agents to help “hold these supposed lawmakers accountable.” I explained the basics of the big stand off in a video posted last week:
In the Texas Senate, Democrats also staged a symbolic walkout but failed to break quorum, allowing GOP legislators to advance the redistricting proposal in the chamber. Still, for the map to become law, both the House and Senate must pass it, and the governor must sign it, meaning the standoff continues.