Austin, Texas – The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, promised to call “special session after a special session after a special session” in response to Democratic legislators who have fled the State to block the redistribution legislation of districts, saying that they will have to stay out of Texas for years to prevent it from becoming law.
“We are in the process while we talk at this time of searching, preparing to arrest the Democrats who can be in Texas, can be elsewhere,” said Abbott, a Republican, NBC News in an interview in the governor’s mansion on Thursday night.
“But I will also tell you this, the Democrats act as if they were not going back while this is a problem,” said Abbott. “That means they will not return until 2027 or 2028, because I am going to call a special session after a special session after a special session with the same elements of the agenda there.”
More than 50 Democratic legislators fled the State earlier this week to prevent the State Representatives Chamber from progressing with the map of the Congress proposed by the Republican majority, designed to increase the number of Republican party seats before the middle of the period of the period next year.
The House of Representatives, led by Republicans, has approved civil arrest orders for missing legislators, and Abbott has filed a lawsuit before the Supreme Court of the State that seeks to withdraw the Democratic leader from the House of Representatives of his position for “an intentional abandonment of his constitutional duty.”
Abbott said he has not spoken with President Donald Trump about the potential role of the federal government at the end of the confrontation. Trump said earlier this week that the FBI “may have to get involved,” although an administration official also told NBC News earlier this week that there were no plans to use federal agents to arrest Texas legislators who left the State.
“I will not reveal even if everyone can be involved or not,” said Abbott on Thursday when asked if the FBI has a legitimate role to play. “All I can say is that we are going to use all the tools we can to ensure that these fugitive democrats are responsible.”
ABBOTT said that a red -wedding map of the State Congress was necessary because “both the law and the facts have changed since we took the lines in 2021,” pointing a federal appeal court last year that ruled that multiple minority groups could not form a coalition to challenge a political map like a racial gerrymander.
But Abbott also pointed out the results of the last elections as political justification for the redistribution of districts in the mid -decade, instead of waiting until the next national census after 2030.
“Many people who voted for the Republicans, who voted for Donald Trump, were trapped in the Democratic districts,” Abbott said. “And so, when you look at the facts, when you look at the law, there are many reasons to move forward and draw the lines so that we can ensure that each voter will have the opportunity to vote for their candidate for choice.”
Trump won 56% of the votes in Texas in 2024. The proposed Map of Congress could lead the Republicans who control 30 of the State Congress districts, almost 80%. Republicans currently control 25 of the 38 districts of the State Congress.
Abbott rejected the notion that the new map could give Republicans a huge representation, pointing to Illinois, with his democratic delegation of Congress 14-3 and other states.
“What has emerged because Texas makes districts redistribution is the way in which all the blue states of the country have gerryo to their states. Look at the disproportionate lack of republican representation in Congress, in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, which has zero members of Congress that are Republicans, New York,” said Abbott.
Some of those blue state governors have promised to retaliate and promote their own states to draw new limits of Congress if Texas does so, although they could face significant obstacles due to the different redistribution processes of districts in their states.
“The governor has no unilateral authority in those states to take action,” Abbott said about that possible reprisal. “They have committees, commissions and things like that. But the fact is: look at the Illinois map. It is drawn in such a way that they cannot even squeeze another Republican. It is a joke.”
The ongoing confrontation has been arrested in the special legislative session that Abbott called in Texas, also blocking action on other priorities, including relief for victims of devastating floods in the center of Texas last month. The leaders of the Chamber of Republican representatives chose to first advance in the redistribution legislation of districts, but all bills in the legislature are now in pause without a present quorum.
“There is only one thing that denies our ability to approve legislation. And it is these Democrats who have fled the state, turned their backs on their companions voters,” said Abbott. “And those Democrats will lose their work in the next elections, if they are not expelled before that, because they are not intensifying helping their constituents who have a desperate need.”
“Any help for their constituents who have been harmed by these floods is being delayed and denied by abandoned Democrats,” said Abbott.
All that fed Abbott’s argument before the Supreme Court of the State that state representative Gene Wu, the president of the democratic Caucus of the Chamber, violated his oath and left his seat by fleeing to Illinois.
“If the quorum rupture can succeed, then a third of the Chamber Democrats may dictate the rule of law for 100% of all Texans,” Abbott said about his demand, and added that he believed that the Supreme Court of the State would agree that the Democrats do not have that power.
“These Democrats are the antithesis of what a Texan is,” said Abbott. “Oh, the march became difficult. Let’s not fight, let’s run away. These are renuncant. They are cowards and their cowardice will make them out of office.”
WU, in a statement on Tuesday, responded to the ABBOTT demand saying that its “constitutional duty is not to be a participant arranged” in the special session that includes the map of the Redraw Congress.
“To deny the governor a quorum was not an abandonment of my office; it was a fulfillment of my oath,” Wu said in the statement. “Unable to defend his corrupt agenda about his merits, Greg Abbott now seeks to silence my dissent by eliminating a duly chosen official of the position.”
Ryan Chandler reported from Austin and Bridget Bowman reported from Washington, DC
