Texas state House Speaker Dustin Burrows adjourned the GOP-dominated chamber again on Tuesday as most Democratic lawmakers continued staying out of the state so as to deny a quorum needed for enacting a redistricting bill supported by President Donald Trump, who is eyeing the 2026 midterm elections.
The Republican speaker said the state House will try to reach a quorum on Friday and that he has been fully briefed on the efforts by the Texas Department of Public Safety "to locate and return members who are actively trying to thwart the legislature from performing its duties."
Also on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his decision to seek court rulings "ensuring that their seats are declared vacant" if absent state House Democrats fail to return by Friday.
"If you don't show up to work, you get fired," Paxton, a veteran Republican, said in a statement. "Any lawmaker who has not been arrested and returned or fails to appear by the Speaker's deadline will be subject to aggressive legal action by Attorney General Paxton."
The current congressional map in Texas was drawn in 2021, with Republicans having 25 seats out of Texas's 38. Pushed by the White House, Texas Republicans proposed new congressional lines last week to divide up existing districts in Austin, Houston and Dallas in a bid to garner five more seats.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump voiced his support for the redistricting plan, claiming that Republicans are "entitled to five more seats" in the 2026 midterms in Texas, the largest red state in the country.
"We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas. And I won Texas ... We are entitled to five more seats," Trump said on CNBC's Squawk Box program.
Facing the criticism of using gerrymandering in the Texas redistricting, the Republican president claimed that Democratic states like Illinois and California are "all gerrymandered".
"They did it to us," Trump said.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin reiterated his vow that Democrats will "fight fire with fire," accusing Texas Republicans of trying to "cheat" in their redistricting plan.
"This is not the Democratic Party of your grandfather, which would bring a pencil to the knife fight," Martin said. "This is a new Democratic Party; we are bringing a knife to a knife fight, and we are going to fight fire with fire."
Martin said Monday that if Texas Republicans pass the redistricting map into law, Democratic governors will "put every single option they can on the table to respond in kind."
The Texas House of Representatives, which currently has 88 Republicans, requires 100 members in the room as the minimum number of lawmakers needed to conduct legislative business.
On Monday, the state House voted 85-6 to arrest more than 50 absent Democrats, and Burrows signed civil warrants shortly afterwards. However, the absent Democrats chose the three blue states of Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, where Texas can't exert state authority without local cooperation.
Despite the Democrats' resistance, with a sweeping majority, Texas Republicans may easily resume business and pass the legislation once Democratic lawmakers return, or are compelled to return.
"This is often a very effective strategy to delay legislation and shine a spotlight on that legislation," Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, has said of Democrats' walkout in an interview with NPR. "But it's not an effective strategy to actually block the legislation."
The strategy also has no mechanism for enacting structural reform and is doomed to fail to block future gerrymandering, local analysts say. Critics also argue that fleeing the state amounts to dereliction of duty, and such moves can alienate moderate voters or energize Republican bases.
In the summer of 2021, Texas Democrats used a similar walkout strategy to resist redistricting, thrusting the issue of gerrymandering and voter suppression into the national spotlight. The bill was passed after a delay of nearly 40 days when several Democratic lawmakers returned to the state capitol, allowing for a vote.
The Texas legislature is currently in a 30-day special session that is slated to end on Aug. 19, but the governor can keep calling the Texas legislature back for a special session.