US president has urged Republicans to redraw map to help the party net a handful of seats in the midterms next year.
Texas Democrats are leaving the state en masse in an attempt to prevent the state’s House of Representatives from holding a vote on Monday on new congressional maps that Republicans hope will win them several additional US House seats in the 2026 midterm elections to buttress their narrow majority.
The dramatic move on Sunday could expose Democrats to fines and other penalties, with the state’s attorney general having previously threatened to arrest them if they took such an action. Refusing to attend legislative sessions is a civil violation, so Democrats legally could not be jailed, and it is unclear who has the power to carry out the warrants.
Democrats have cast the decision to leave the state as a last-ditch effort to stop Republicans who hold full control of the Texas government from pushing through a rare mid-decade redrawing of the congressional map at the direction of President Donald Trump.
Trump is eager to avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House just two years into his presidency, stymying his legislative plans, and hopes the new Texas map will aid that effort.
“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” said Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, in a statement.
To conduct official business, at least 100 members of the 150-member Texas House must be present.
Democrats hold 62 of the seats in the majority-Republican chamber. At least 51 Democratic members are leaving the state, said Josh Rush Nisenson, spokesperson for the House Democratic Caucus.
“Apathy is complicity, and we will not be complicit in the silencing of hard-working communities who have spent decades fighting for the power that Trump wants to steal,” he said.
Standoff in 2021
The move marks the second time in four years that Texas Democrats have fled the state to block a vote.
In 2021, a 38-day standoff took place when Democrats left for Washington, DC, in opposition to new voting restrictions.
Republican Governor Greg Abbott called a special session of the legislature that started last month to take up the redistricting effort, as well as to respond to flooding in Texas Hill Country, which killed at least 135 people in July.
Texas Republicans last week unveiled their planned new United States House map that would create five new Republican-leaning seats. Republicans currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 seats.