Texas AG Paxton Has To Water Down Abbott’s Threats to Jail State Dems

Date:2025-08-05 08:45:24 Category:US Views:1 Comment:0

As soon as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) vowed to oust, arrest and replace Democratic state lawmakers who left Texas to slow down Republican lawmakers’ efforts to redraw state congressional maps in their political favor, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made a big show of backing Abbott’s attempted display of strength.

“Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately,” he posted on Elon Musk’s X on Sunday. “We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law.”

An hour later, he posted again, suggesting the “radical Democrats” — who fled the state to prevent their Republican colleagues from reaching a quorum during their special session to approve mid-decade redistricting maps — would be hit with the “full force of the law without apology.”

In other venues, however, he has been casting doubt on whether he is the man who will follow through on those threats. During a conversation with right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson, he conceded that Abbott’s threats to charge Democrats who fled the state with felonies — a task that would likely fall to his office — might not be realistic.

Breaking quorum means that state Democrats will incur daily fines of $500 and the potential for legal action, according to state House rules. Abbott has maintained that state Democratic lawmakers could be charged with felonies if they solicit any funds to pay the $500 daily fine for skipping the legislative session, which, of course, he called in order to shove through a new congressional map that would potentially give Republicans five seats currently held by Democrats in the U.S. Congress. It’s a move that President Trump has pushed, as his party holds a razor thin majority in the House ahead of the midterms.

“We’d have to go through a court process, and we’d have to file that maybe in districts that are not friendly to Republicans,” Paxton said in a Monday interview with Johnson.” So it’s a challenge because every district would be different. We’d have to go sue in every legislator’s home district.”

He alluded to a similar “challenge” during a conversation with Steve Bannon on Thursday last week, before this all erupted over the weekend.

“The House rules and the Senate rules both allow for these people to be arrested if they leave,” he said. “The challenge is, if they go out of state, we lose jurisdiction, and that — it’s been a challenge in the past, but in the end, as long as the governor is willing to keep calling sessions, ultimately they have to come home.”

The Texas Democrats who have fled the state have mostly gone to Illinois, New York and Massachusetts while they wait out the special session. But Abbott is expected to call more special sessions to try to pull off midcycle redistricting ahead of the midterms.

Texas Democrats employed a similar tactic in 2003 when Republicans in the state legislature tried to pull off an at-the-time unprecedented mid-decade redistricting. My colleague Josh Marshall gets into the history and the parallels more here.

Texas House Speaker Signs Civil Arrest Warrants

When Texas Democrats did not show up for the special session Monday afternoon, denying the GOP a quorum, the Texas Republican-controlled House passed a motion that gave state House Speaker Dustin Burrows permission to issue civil warrants to arrest the Democrats who didn’t attend the special session. Not long after, he announced he had signed the warrants. Per CNN:

Dustin Burrows, the Republican speaker of the Texas House, urged absent Democrats to return to the state, saying that he had “signed the civil arrest warrants” and that he was working with Texas law enforcement “to locate members.”

Texas Dems Dare Abbott, Paxton to Arrest Them

In response to Abbott’s demand that Democrats return to the state House by 3:00 p.m. CT Monday or risk being removed from membership in the Texas House, the Texas House Democratic Caucus issued a statement: “Come and take it.”

Texas state Rep. Jolanda Jones, who is also an attorney, said from a press conference in New York Monday that Abbott’s threats were “smoke and mirrors.”

“There is no felony in the Texas penal code for what he says. So respectfully, he’s making up some shit,” Jones said. “Subpoenas from Texas don’t work in New York, so he’s going to come get us how?”

“This is wrong, this is un-American and this is undemocratic,” state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D) said from Illinois on Sunday. “And America, we need to wake up. Republicans are stealing our democracy right before our very eyes.”

Just after Abbott’s supposed deadline for the Democrats to return to the state passed at 3:00 p.m. CT Monday, he tweeted the following, dramatic post: