The Republican attorney general of Texas on Friday asked the state supreme court to vacate the seats of 13 Democratic legislators who have left for blue states, hours after their absence once again delayed a vote on a redrawn congressional map sought by Donald Trump.
Republican leaders in Texas had set a Friday deadline for Democrats to return to the state capitol in Austin or face punishment, including arrest and possible removal from office. Dozens of Democrats left the state over the weekend to prevent a Republican redistricting effort, requested by the president, to redraw the Texas maps mid-cycle, as part of an effort to secure a Republican House majority in the 2026 midterms.
The aggressive redistricting effort has set off a chain reaction in other states, including California, where the governor has vowed to retaliate with a congressional map that would “nullify” the Republican effort to redraw five Democratic-held districts in Texas.
On Friday, the Democratic leaders of the California state legislature said they were prepared to move forward with a ballot measure asking voters to redraw the state’s House map in November should Texas follow through with its proposed redistricting plan.
“We don’t move unless they move,” California governor Gavin Newsom said at a news conference in Sacramento, where he was joined by a delegation of Democratic state representatives from Texas. “But we’re not going to unilaterally disarm.”
The California appearance capped a dramatic day, as the quorum-breaking Democrats faced a flurry of new legal and financial threats from Texas Republicans.
On Thursday John Cornyn, the Texas Republican senator, said the FBI had agreed to assist in locating the Democrats, but the FBI declined to comment and it is unclear what authority federal law enforcement would have, as they are not charged with federal crimes.
On Friday morning, police responded to a second bomb threat at the suburban Chicago hotel housing several Texas Democrats who sought refuge in Illinois.
Yet the Democrats have remained defiant.
“Make no mistake about it, we are running from nothing,” Ann Johnson, a Democratic state representative from Texas, said during the news conference with Newsom. “We see the danger that is coming, and we are running straight for it.”
During the short house session on Friday, the Texas house speaker, Dustin Burrows, said state authorities were working to make civil arrest warrants against the Democrats enforceable outside Texas. He also said the legislature was withholding the Democrats’ direct-deposit payments, requiring absent members to pick them up in person at the capitol in Austin.
“Each one of you knows that eventually you will come back,” he said, addressing the absent Democrats from the chamber floor. “But with each passing day, the political cost of your absence is rising, and it will be paid in full.”
It came after Burrows moved to enforce arrest warrants in other states and as Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, warned in an interview with NBC News that he was prepared to “arrest Democrats who may be in Texas, may be elsewhere”.
In a statement, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a far-right ally of the president, argued that 13 absent Democratic lawmakers should be removed from office for having “deliberately sabotaged the constitutional process and violated the oath they swore to uphold”.
Paxton also announced on Friday that he was suing the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke for “unlawful fundraising activity” on behalf of the out-of-state lawmakers. On X, O’Rourke said that his political group, Powered by People, had responded by suing Paxton in state court.
Late on Friday, a Texas judge, Megan Fahey, granted Paxton’s request to issue a temporary restraining order barring O’Rourke and Powered by People from covering the personal expenses of the Democratic lawmakers, including fines, ruling that the state would be “irreparably injured” if funds raised raised for political spending were used for “non-political purposes”.
The elected state judge, who was first appointed by Abbott, is also the president of the Fort Worth Republican Women’s Club and a member of the conservative Federalist Society.
The Texas lawmakers have seen a surge of support from fellow Democrats and donors across the country, who have praised them for holding the line against the president’s attempted “power grab”. While declining to say how long they were prepared to hold out, several members insisted they remained fully committed to blocking what Johnson called an “off the rails” Republican majority from succeeding with its redistricting plan in Texas.
But Abbott has said that they would have to stay away for years to be successful. The current special legislative session, called by the Texas governor, lasts until 19 August, but Abbott has vowed to call “special session after special session after special session”.
“But I’ll tell you this also, Democrats act like they’re not going to come back as long as this is an issue,” Abbott said in the NBC News interview. “That means they’re not going to come back until like 2027 or 2028, because I’m going to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.”
In a separate interview, he said he might push for more than five seats.
“What I’m thinking now is that if they don’t start showing up, I may start expanding,” he said. “We may make it six or seven or eight new seats we’re going to be adding on the Republican side.”
Tensions have escalated dramatically since the Democrats left Texas and sought refuge in Democratic states. Abbott also took the extraordinary step of filing a lawsuit with the state supreme court that seeks to remove Gene Wu, the house Democratic leader, from office.
In a legal filing responding to Abbott’s emergency petition, attorneys for Wu emphasized the “long history” of quorum-breaking in Texas, and argued that request to remove an elected official from office is not a question for the courts under the state constitution.
“So much in our politics seems to be about power for its own sake, whatever the cost,” Wu’s attorneys wrote in the brief. “That cost may finally be too high today. This court should refuse to pay it.”
Burrows said on Friday: “For those who have fled to Illinois or California, be reminded that the FBI’s assistance has reportedly been enlisted and their powers are not confined to a single state’s boundaries.”
One Democratic member of the Texas state house, Claudia Ordaz, said in a statement that state troopers had showed up at a relative’s home looking for her, even though she had stated publicly she was dealing with a “personal health matter”.
In the statement, which Ordaz said she was sharing from a hospital waiting room, she denounced the officers’ visit as a “deliberate abuse of power and an intimidation tactic”. She also criticized those she said had “falsely accused” her of being present in the chamber to help Republicans make a quorum.
In Sacramento on Friday, US congresswoman Zoe Lofgren said every Democratic member of the state’s congressional delegation supported the California ballot initiative.
“We cannot stand here and just shrug as Trump and the Republicans try and rig the rules so they can avoid responsibility for the damage that they have done to this country,” she said. “We need a break on them, and we can get it in the midterm elections.”
