Reuters: Texas Governor Greg Abbott threatened on Monday to arrest Democratic lawmakers who are using their collective absence from the state capital to prevent the legislature from adopting a Republican-backed plan for redrawing Texas congressional districts.
The exodus of more than 50 Democrats from the Texas legislature staging a kind of temporary political exile in Democratic-led states was intended to deny Republicans in Austin the quorum necessary to vote on the redistricting plan, championed by President Donald Trump.
By redrawing district lines in hopes of flipping some seats in the US House of Representatives currently held by Democrats, the Republican Party aims to protect its narrow majority in next year’s congressional midterm elections.
Trump has told reporters he expects the effort to yield as many as five additional House Republicans.
During Monday’s statehouse session in Austin, the Republican speaker of the Texas House of Representatives issued civil warrants for the wayward Democrats – most of whom have gone to Illinois, New York or Massachusetts – to be brought back to Austin.
“To ensure compliance, I 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,” Abbott said in a statement.
But the warrants apply only within the state, and breaking quorum is not a crime that would allow Texas authorities to pursue extradition from other states.
On Sunday, Abbott cited an opinion by the state’s attorney general that Texas district courts may determine whether legislators have forfeited their offices “due to abandonment,” saying that would empower him to “swiftly fill vacancies.” But even if Abbott succeeded in ousting the absent Democrats, it would take time to hold new elections.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told Fox News on Monday that he expected the Texas Supreme Court to ultimately weigh in on any abandonment cases he files. “And they’re obviously a Republican court,” he added.
In another possible tactic, Abbott said any lawmaker who solicited funds to pay the $500-per-day fine that Texas House rules impose on absent legislators could violate bribery laws. He vowed to try extraditing any “potential out-of-state felons.”
