Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) threatened to remove Texas House Democrats from the legislature after they left the state on Sunday in a bid to stop Republicans from proceeding with a redistricting effort that would give the GOP five more opportunities to gain seats in the 2026 midterms.
“This truancy ends now. The derelict Democrat House members must return to Texas and be in attendance when the House reconvenes at 3:00 PM on Monday, August 4, 2025. For any member who fails to do so, I will invoke Texas Attorney General Opinion No. KP-0382 to remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House,” Abbott wrote in a statement issued Sunday.
The Texas Democrats said they were denying Republicans a quorum, or the minimum number of lawmakers needed present in order to conduct legislative business, following a similar tactic they employed the last time the GOP pursued midcycle redistricting effort in 2003.
Most of them traveled to Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, all of which are Democratic-led states, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is supporting their effort.
Abbott also said in his statement that any Democrat who receives funds “to evade the fines they will incur under House rules” may be in violation of felony bribery charges. He made the same threat against those who offer or give funds to Democrats.
Abbott pledged to use his “full extradition authority to demand the return to Texas of any potential out-of-state felons.”
“Real Texans do not run from a fight. But that’s exactly what most of the Texas House Democrats just did,” Abbott wrote in his statement. “Rather than doing their job and voting on urgent legislation affecting the lives of all Texans, they have fled Texas to deprive the House of the quorum necessary to meet and conduct business.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a similar threat to “Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards,” saying they “should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately.”
“We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law,” Paxton added, in a post on the social platform X.
