Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Republicans are entitled to the five more seats they could pick up if congressional maps proposed by Texas Republicans are passed.
Trump called in for an interview with CNBC Tuesday morning, less than a day after Texas Democrats denied a legislative quorum by fleeing the state, with many decamping to Chicago, Illinois where the Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, has vowed to protect them.
Related: New Texas Republican maps dilute Latino voting power in Austin – experts
“We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats,” Trump said. “We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas. And 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.”
“In Illinois, what’s happened is terrible what they’re doing,” the president added. “And you notice, they go to Illinois for safety, but that’s all gerrymandered. California is gerrymandered. We should have many more seats in Congress in California. It’s all gerrymandered.”
Trump did not provide any evidence of gerrymandering in the Democratic-controlled states. California voters approved an independent redistricting commission to draw the state’s congressional maps for the first time in 2010, but the Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has indicated he will play hardball and call a special election to undo that commission so that California Democrats can gerrymander the state maps ahead of the 2026 midterms as well.
Pritzker in Illinois has also said that the state may respond to Texas’s efforts by redrawing its own map in Democrats’ favor, given that “everything has to be on the table”.
“Trump came up with a new scheme to rig the system by ramming through a corrupt, mid-decade redistricting plan that would steal five congressional seats, silencing millions of voters, especially Black and Latino voters,” Pritzker said.
The Texas house is scheduled to reconvene at 1pm local time on Tuesday, but enough Democrats remain outside the state to deny quorum for a second day. Democratic Representative Lulu Flores told CNN that she and several other Democratic members who traveled to Illinois “plan to stay as long as it takes” to stall the Republicans’ redistricting plans.
The current special legislative session, called by Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbott, lasts until 19 August. “That’s the very least time that we expect to be out here,” Flores added.
Abbott could continue to call additional special sessions, and it’s not clear how long Democrats could stay outside the state. Each lawmaker that has absconded faces a $500 for day fine, and Abbott has ordered the Texas department of public safety to “locate, arrest and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans”.
Flores told CNN that the legal threats were “upsetting”, but she added: “I don’t know that he has anything to back that up.”
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