U.S. President Donald Trump said he might bring in the FBI to facilitate the return of Texas Democrats who fled the state to delay Republicans’ plans to redraw congressional district lines in a manner that would reduce the voting power of minority groups.
On Tuesday, the president said that he believes those who fled have “abandoned” the state, adding that the FBI “may have to” get involved.
His comments came the same day Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for the arrest of the dozens of “delinquent” Texas senators currently in other states — namely New York and Illinois — and a letter penned by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn called on the FBI to take action.
Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, as U.S. President Donald Trump, not pictured, speaks before an executive order signing in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, March 20, 2025.
Bonnie Cash / Getty Images
In it, he asked FBI Director Kash Patel to “take any appropriate steps to aid in Texas state law enforcement efforts to locate or arrest potential lawbreakers who have fled the state.”
On Tuesday, Abbott also asked the State’s Supreme Court to remove top Democrat Gene Wu from office, whom he described as the “ringleader of the derelict Democrats who fled the state to break quorum.”
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Abbott said he made it clear on Sunday that if Democrats did not return by the time the House reconvened at 3 p.m. on Monday, “action would be taken to seek their removal.”
Democrats who left Texas are beyond the reach of state law enforcement, and their absence means the 150-member legislature cannot operate because, without them, it does not meet the minimum number of lawmakers required to function.
Abbott says their actions “constitute abandonment of office, justifying their removal.”
In response to Abbott, Wu doubled down on his and other Democrats’ decision to flee.
“Let me be unequivocal about my actions and my duty,” he responded. “When a governor conspires with a disgraced president to ram through a racist gerrymandered map my constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant.
“Denying the governor a quorum was not an abandonment of my office; it was a fulfillment of my oath. Unable to defend his corrupt agenda on its merits, Greg Abbott now desperately seeks to silence my dissent by removing a duly elected official from office.
“History will judge this moment. It will show a Governor who used the law as a weapon to silence his people, and it will show those of us who stood for a higher principle.”
Texas Rep. Gene Wu speaks in front of Democratic members of Congress and Texas House Democrats during a news conference after they left their state to deny Republicans the quorum needed to redraw the state’s 38 congressional districts.
KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP) (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI Getty Images
Trump and Abbott want to redraw the Texas congressional map in the hopes of adding five more Republican seats in the state in time for the upcoming midterm elections.
Trump said in a phone interview with CNBC on Tuesday that he believes his party is entitled to more seats because it won the state in the 2024 election.
“I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats,” he said.
If Republicans succeed, it would increase the party’s chance of maintaining its slim U.S. House majority, which currently sits at 219-212. Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’s 38 seats in the House of Representatives.
The restructuring of congressional maps happens once a decade and is usually based on the results of a nationwide census in order to reflect population changes. Presidents do not typically have a hand in redrawing the lines; instead, it is overseen by state governments.
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