texas house

AUSTIN, Texas — A Democratic Texas lawmaker opted to spend the night in the state House chamber and remain there Tuesday rather than allow a law enforcement officer to shadow her while Republicans try to prevent further delays to redrawing U.S. House maps.

Rep. Nicole Collier overnight stay stemmed from Republicans in the Texas House requiring returning Democrats to sign what the Democrats called “permission slips,” agreeing to around-the-clock surveillance by state Department of Public Safety officers to leave the floor. Collier, of Fort Worth, refused and remained on the House floor Monday night.

A message seeking comment was sent Tuesday to the Department of Public Safety.

The Democrats’ return to Texas puts the Republican-run Legislature in position to satisfy Trump’s demands, possibly later this week, as California Democrats advance new congressional boundaries in retaliation.

Lawmakers had officers posted outside their Capitol offices, and suburban Dallas Rep. Mihaela Plesa said one tailed her on her Monday evening drive back to her apartment in Austin after spending much of the day on a couch in her office. She said he went with her for a staff lunch and even down the hallway with her for restroom breaks.

“We were kind of laughing about it, to be honest, but this is really serious stuff,” Plesa said in a telephone interview. “This is a waste of taxpayer dollars and really performative theater.”

Collier, who represents a minority-majority district, said she would not “sign away my dignity” and allow Republicans to “control my movements and monitor me.”

“I know these maps will harm my constituents,” she said in a statement. “I won’t just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination.”

2 states at the center of an expanding fight

The tit-for-tat puts the nation’s two most populous states at the center of an expanding fight over control of Congress ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The battle has rallied Democrats nationally following infighting and frustrations among the party’s voters since Republicans took total control of the federal government in January.

Dozens of Texas Democratic lawmakers left for Illinois and elsewhere on Aug. 3, denying their Republican colleagues the attendance necessary to vote on redrawn maps intended to send five more Texas Republicans to Washington. Republicans now hold 25 of Texas’ 38 U.S. House seats.

They declared victory Friday, pointing to California’s proposal intended to increase Democrats’ U.S. House advantage by five seats. Many absent Democrats left Chicago early Monday and landed hours later at a private airfield in Austin, where several boarded a charter bus to the Capitol. Cheering supporters greeted them inside.

Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows did not mention redistricting on the floor but promised swift action on the Legislature’s agenda.

“We aren’t playing around,” Republican state Rep. Matt Shaheen, whose district includes part of the Dallas area, said in a post on the X social media platform.

Democrats promise to keep fighting

Even as they declared victory, Democrats acknowledged Republicans can now approve redrawn districts. Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu said Democrats would challenge the new designs in court.

Lawmakers did not take up any bills Monday and were not scheduled to return until Wednesday.

Trump has pressured other Republican-run states to consider redistricting, as well, while Democratic governors in multiple statehouses have indicated they would follow California’s lead in response. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said his state will hold a Nov. 4 special referendum on the redrawn districts.

The president wants to shore up Republicans’ narrow House majority and avoid a repeat of the midterms during his first presidency. After gaining House control in 2018, Democrats used their majority to stymie his agenda and twice impeach him.

Nationally, the partisan makeup of existing district lines puts Democrats within three seats of a majority. Of the 435 total House seats, only several dozen districts are competitive. So even slight changes in a few states could affect which party wins control.

Redistricting typically occurs once at the beginning of each decade after the census. Many states, including Texas, give legislators the power to draw maps. California is among those that empower independent commissions, giving Newsom an additional hurdle.

California Democrats start redrawing process

Democratic legislators introduced new California maps Monday. It was the first official move toward the fall referendum asking voters to override the independent commission’s work after the 2020 census. The proposed boundaries would replace current ones through 2030. Democrats said they will return the mapmaking power to the commission after that.

State Republicans promised lawsuits.

Democrats hold 43 out of California’s 52 U.S. House seats. The proposal would try to expand that advantage by targeting battleground districts in Northern California, San Diego and Orange counties, and the Central Valley. Some Democratic incumbents also get more left-leaning voters in their districts.

“We don’t want this fight, but with our democracy on the line, we cannot run away from this fight,” said Democrat Marc Berman, a California Assembly member who previously chaired the elections committee.

Republicans expressed opposition in terms that echoed Democrats in Austin, accusing the majority of abusing power. Sacramento Republicans said they will introduce legislation advocating independent redistricting commissions in all states.

Texas’ governor jumped to the president’s aid

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott launched the expanding battle when he heeded Trump’s wishes and added redistricting to an initial special session agenda that included multiple issues, including a package responding to devastating floods that killed more than 130 people last month.

Abbott has blamed Democrats’ absence for delaying action on those measures. Democrats have answered that Abbott is responsible because he effectively linked the hyper-partisan matter to nonpartisan flood relief.

Abbott, Burrows and other Republicans tried various threats and legal maneuvers to pressure Democrats’ return, including the governor arguing that Texas judges should remove absent lawmakers from office.

As long as they were out of state, lawmakers were beyond the reach of the civil arrest warrants that Burrows issued. The Democrats who returned Monday did so without being detained by law enforcement.

The lawmakers who left face fines of up to $500 for each legislative day they missed. Burrows has insisted Democratic lawmakers also will pay pick up the tab for law enforcement who attempted to corral them during the walkout.

Barrow, Nguyen, Figueroa and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. Nguyen reported from Sacramento. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he will begin trying to remove Democratic lawmakers from office Monday if they don’t return after dozens of them left the state in a last-resort attempt to block redrawn U.S. House maps that President Trump wants before the 2026 midterm elections.

The revolt by the state House Democrats, many of whom went to Illinois or New York on Sunday, and Abbott giving them less than 24 hours to come home ratcheted up a widening fight over congressional maps that began in Texas but has drawn in Democratic governors who have floated the possibility of rushing to redraw their own state’s maps in retaliation. Their options, however, are limited.

At the center of the escalating impasse is Trump’s pursuit of adding five more GOP-leaning congressional seats in Texas before next year that would bolster his party’s chances of preserving its slim U.S. House majority.

The new congressional maps drawn by Texas Republicans would create five new Republican-leaning seats. Republicans currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 seats.

A vote on the proposed maps had been set for Monday in the Texas House of Representatives, but it cannot proceed if the majority of Democratic members deny a quorum by not showing up. After one group of Democrats landed in Chicago on Sunday, they were welcomed by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, but declined to say how long they were prepared to stay out of Texas.

“We will do whatever it takes. What that looks like, we don’t know,” said state Rep. Gene Wu, the Texas House Democratic Caucus leader.

But legislative walkouts often only delay passage of a bill, including in 2021 when many of the same Texas House Democrats left the state for 38 days in protest of new voting restrictions. Once they returned, Republicans still wound up passing that measure.

Four years later, Abbott is taking a far more aggressive stance and swiftly warning Democrats that he will seek to remove them from office if they are not back when the House reconvenes Monday afternoon. He cited a non-binding 2021 legal opinion issued by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, which suggested a court could determine that a legislator had forfeited their office.

He also suggested the lawmakers may have committed felonies by raising money to help pay for fines they’d face.

“This truancy ends now,” Abbott said.

In response, House Democrats issued a four-word statement: “Come and take it.”

The state of the vote

Lawmakers can’t pass bills in the 150-member Texas House without at least two-thirds of them present. Democrats hold 62 of the seats in the majority-Republican chamber and at least 51 left the state, said Josh Rush Nisenson, spokesperson for the House Democratic Caucus.

Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows said the chamber would still meet as planned on Monday afternoon.

“If a quorum is not present then, to borrow the recent talking points from some of my Democrat colleagues, all options will be on the table. . .,” he posted on X.

Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, said on X that Democrats who “try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately.”

Fines for not showing up

A refusal by Texas lawmakers to show up is a civil violation of legislative rules. The Texas Supreme Court held in 2021 that House leaders had the authority to “physically compel the attendance” of missing members, but no Democrats were forcibly brought back to the state after warrants were served that year. Two years later, Republicans pushed through new rules that allow daily fines of $500 for lawmakers who don’t show up for work as punishment.

The quorum break will also delay votes on flood relief and new warning systems in the wake of last month’s catastrophic floods in Texas that killed at least 136 people. Democrats had called for votes on the flooding response before taking up redistricting and have criticized Republicans for not doing so.

Illinois hosts Texas lawmakers

Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has been one of Trump’s most outspoken critics during his second term, had been in quiet talks with Texas Democrats for weeks about offering support if they chose to leave the state to break quorum.

Last week, the governor hosted several Texas Democrats in Illinois to publicly oppose the redistricting effort, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom held a similar event in his own state.

Pritzker also met privately with Texas Democratic Chair Kendall Scudder in June to begin planning for the possibility that lawmakers would depart for Illinois if they did decide to break quorum to block the map, according to a source with direct knowledge who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

“This is not just rigging the system in Texas, it’s about rigging the system against the rights of all Americans for years to come,” Pritzker said Sunday night.

Trump is looking to avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House just two years into his presidency, and hopes the new Texas map will aid that effort. Trump officials have also looked at redrawing lines in other states.

Cappelletti and DeMillo write for the Associated Press. AP writer Nadia Lathan in Austin contributed to this report.

Democrats in the Texas House left the state Sunday in a last-resort bid to block new congressional maps sought by President Trump that would give Republicans a better chance of preserving their narrow U.S. House majority in the 2026 midterm elections.

The dramatic revolt came before the GOP-controlled House was set to vote Monday on the proposed maps, which would give Republicans five more winnable congressional seats. In response to Texas’ rare mid-decade political gerrymander, Democratic governors in other states have floated the possibility of redrawing their own maps in retaliation, but their options are limited.

Many of the Texas Democrats were bound for Illinois and a welcoming from Gov. JB Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential contender, who in recent weeks has offered them support. It was unclear how long they were prepared to stay out of Texas or whether the maneuver would succeed. Four years ago, House Democrats left Texas for 38 days in protest of new voting restrictions that still wound up passing once the holdout ended.

“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement.

Lawmakers can’t pass bills in the 150-member Texas House without at least two-thirds of them present. Democrats hold 62 of the seats in the Republican-majority chamber, and at least 51 were leaving the state, said Josh Rush Nisenson, spokesperson for the House Democratic Caucus. In addition to the Illinois group, five lawmakers headed to New York and another group went to Boston, Rush Nisenson said.

Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows said the chamber would meet as planned Monday afternoon.

“If a quorum is not present then, to borrow the recent talking points from some of my Democrat colleagues, all options will be on the table,” he posted on X.

Republican Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, said on X that Democrats who “try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately.”

A refusal by Texas lawmakers to show up is a civil violation of legislative rules. The Texas Supreme Court held in 2021 that House leaders had the authority to “physically compel the attendance” of missing members, but no Democrats were forcibly brought back to the state after warrants were served that year. Two years later, Republicans pushed through new rules that allow daily fines of $500 for lawmakers who don’t show up for work.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.

The quorum break will also delay votes on flood relief and new warning systems in response to last month’s catastrophic floods in Texas that killed at least 136 people. Democrats had called for votes on the flooding response before taking up redistricting and have criticized Republicans for not doing so.

Texas Republicans last week unveiled their planned U.S. House map that would create five GOP-leaning seats. Republicans currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 seats.

Pritzker, who has been one of Trump’s most outspoken critics during his second term, had been in quiet talks with Texas Democrats for weeks about offering support if they chose to leave the state to break quorum.

Last week, the governor hosted several Texas Democrats in Illinois to publicly oppose the redistricting effort, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom held a similar event in his state.

Pritzker also met privately with Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder in June to begin planning for the possibility that lawmakers would depart for Illinois if they did decide to break quorum to block the map, according to a source with direct knowledge who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Now, with many Texas Democrats holed up in Illinois and blocking the gerrymandered map proposal, the stage may be set for a high-profile showdown between Pritzker and Trump.

The Republican president is looking to avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House two years into his presidency, and he hopes the new Texas map will aid that effort. Trump officials have also looked at redrawing lines in other states, such as Missouri, according to a person familiar with conversations but unauthorized to speak publicly about them.

Cappelletti and DeMillo write for the Associated Press. AP writer Nadia Lathan in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.