Ana Faguy and Max Matza
BBC News
Republicans in Texas voted to hunt down and arrest dozens of Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to block a plan to redefine the electoral borders in support of Republicans.
After the vote, Republican Governor Greg Abbott ordered state police to “find, arrest and return to the House of Representatives, any member who has waived his duties to Texans.”
Abbott also threatened to bribe absent Democrats if they raised public funds to pay the daily fines for boycotting the conference hall.
The redrawn congressional map will create five more Republican tilted seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., where Republicans have a slim majority.
At least two-thirds of the state legislature in Texas, a 150-member state, must be voted. The quorum becomes unrealized after more than 50 Democratic lawmakers leave the state.
Most Democrats fled to Illinois, and Gov. JB Pritzker said he “will do his best to protect each of them” as threatened by Abbott’s arrest.
Democrats say they plan to stay away from Texas for two weeks until the special legislative session ends.
Monday’s vote was mostly symbolic because these warrants were only available within Texas.
The move allowed sergeants and state soldiers in the conference hall to authorize the arrest of absent lawmakers and transport them to the State Capitol building in Austin.
They will not face any civil or criminal charges due to the warrant.
Democratic lawmaker Ron Reynolds told Chicago’s BBC News on Monday that the arrest threat was “less than a tactic of intimidation.”
Members of the Texas House of Representatives do not show up for $500 (£377) every day.
Governor Abbott warned that those who refuse to return to vote could face charges.
“If any legislator takes money to perform or refuses to enforce actions on the legislature, it would be a bribe,” Abbott told Fox News on Monday.
“These reports are those legislators who both seek money and provide money to skip the vote, leave the legislature and take legislative actions. It would be bribery.”
After lawmakers voted to issue an arrest warrant for Democrats, Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to “position, arrest and return to the House of Representatives, any member who has waived his duties to Texans.”
He added that his orders will remain in effect “until all missing Democratic House members are occupied and taken to the Texas Capitol.”
Rep. Brian Harrison, Republican of Texas, slams Democrats’ argument that constituencies are redefining along racial lines.
Harrison told BBC News: “Rich, cynical, dishonest, total nonsense.”
He added that “these Democrats need to be arrested” and that they “need to be subject to various other punishments.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Republicans also threatened to arrest absent Democrats.
Paxton, who runs for the U.S. Senate, wrote on X that the nation should “use every tool we have to pursue those who think they are beyond the law.”
Texas Republicans currently have 25 out of the state’s 38 congressional seats.
They hope the new map can increase that number to 30 — a constituency that President Donald Trump won with at least 10 points last November.
Texas’ re-division could help with a slim Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives-Stock House of Commons.
Princeton Gerrymandering Project said Democrats have manipulated the electoral borders, just like Republicans, in states dealing with the redistricting process, such as Illinois, New Mexico and Nevada.
However, other democratically controlled countries (such as New York, California, Colorado and Washington) will be reassigned to nonpartisan, independent commissions, rather than state legislatures.
Some Democratic leaders in other states have suggested they could redraw their own legislative maps to deal with the proposed losses of Texas seats.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she is exploring a constitutional amendment to raise the timeline to re-establish legislative lines in his state.
When the voting map is remarked to explain population changes, states usually re-divided every 10 years.
The most recent U.S. census was in 2020. In the mid-tenth, re-demarcation of areas was unusual.
