EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — For a third day, more than 50 members of the Texas Democratic Caucus remain out of state to block a vote on a congressional map that would lean in favor of Republicans come the 2026 midterm elections.
In response to this, Governor Greg Abbott threatened to remove lawmakers who did not show up to the chamber by Monday afternoon and said the AWOL members would be met with legal action after requesting help from the Texas Department of Public Safety to issue arrest warrants.
The battle further escalated Wednesday morning after democrats who found refuge in Chicago, Illinois, were forced to evacuate the hotel they were staying at after a bomb threat was made.
“We were awoken early in the morning to an evacuation alarm notifying us that we had to leave the building immediately. Fortunately, everybody is safe, but it’s just a little concerning,” State Rep. Vince Perez, D-El Paso, said.
Local authorities responded to the threat and were unable to locate a device, but say investigations are ongoing.
“It’s just concerning that these are the types of intimidation tactics that are going to be used to threaten the security of the people here, and to intimidate them into going back, to pass this very discriminatory map,” Perez said.
In a statement, the Texas House Democratic Caucus Chairman Gene Wu said:
“This morning, a threat was made against the safety of the members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus. We are safe, we are secure, and we are undeterred and unintimidated. We are grateful for Governor Pritzker, local, and state law enforcement for their quick action to ensure our safety.”
Speaker of the Texas House, Dustin Burrows, has set a deadline for members to return to the Capitol by Friday, Aug. 8, before being subjected to “aggressive” legal action by Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Attorney General Paxton said any lawmaker who refuses to return to the House will be held accountable for vacating their seat, saying it is an abandonment of office.
The Chairman for El Paso County’s Republican party agrees with this notion, saying breaking quorum is a failure to uphold their oath.
“I like that the Democrats left the state. I know the Governor’s doing his job by bringing them back, but I wish he could do it and just leave them out of the state and let them stay gone forever… It sounds like it’s within his power to remove them from office, which he should do. They’ve already, broken their oath. Broken the law,” said El Paso GOP Chairman Michael Aboud.
Aboud said redistricting itself will not have a major impact on El Paso, but would be a great benefit for the rest of the state.
“It looks like most of the map is going to be redrawn so that it falls within natural boundaries, which is a much better way to draw out these districts so that people actually have better representation because, it’s more competitive as opposed to be like locked into just one party, which is pretty much what’s happening in most of El Paso,” said Aboud.
Democrats, including Perez, disagree with this idea and believe the redistricting would result in less representation.
“It’s not an overstatement to say that if this map passes, Hispanics in the state of Texas will be the most underrepresented, marginalized, and discriminated group, politically, in the United States… if we lose this level of representation, it is going to take decades, if not generations, to get that representation back, because you’re going to have a government that isn’t held accountable to, Latinos, to blacks because of the structure of these lines, “ said Perez.
So long as a quorum is broken, the Texas legislature cannot move forward with a special session. On the agenda are improvements to flood warning systems, flood emergency communications, and relief funding for Hill Country, among other legislation that was not passed during the Regular Session. Despite this, Perez said he would not be returning to Texas until the proposed map was voided.
“Democrats showed up for the special session, and we had sent letters to the speaker of the House that, we had wanted those priority issues to be considered first, starting with the flood relief but what Republicans did is that they used all of those issues as critical as they are, as a ruse to keep, Democrats there in Austin… will go back when this map is rescinded and when there’s fair representation for my community and the people that I represent,” said Perez.
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