A political showdown is unfolding in Texas, where state Republican lawmakers are trying to game the system to give their national party an advantage in next year’s midterm elections. They’ve hit a temporary roadblock, for now. But the whole gambit has huge national implications.
If you’re just tuning in, a quick summary: In July, President Donald Trump told reporters that he wanted lawmakers in Texas to redraw the state’s congressional districts to flip five currently Democratic-held seats in Republicans’ favor. Redrawing congressional maps, known as redistricting, usually happens every decade across the country, after the US Census has collected the most recent demographic information in each state and maps can be drawn to better represent each state’s population.
Trump’s middle-of-the-decade demand of Texas is brazenly political — a form of gerrymandering that has happened very rarely before (most recently in 2004).
In Texas, where the state legislature has the power to draw congressional districts, Republicans control the governor’s office and have majorities in both chambers of the legislature. An additional five seats would boost the current GOP majority, or offset losses during next year’s elections. Currently, Republicans control the House 219-212, but when all vacancies are filled, that becomes 220-215. A party needs 218 seats for a majority, so these new seats would give Trump more leeway to pass legislation in the second half of his term.
Late last month, Gov. Greg Abbott followed through on Trump’s demand, calling the legislature back for a special session to vote on new maps. And just last week, the proposed map was released, revealing five new Republican-leaning seats in South Texas and the Austin, Dallas, and Houston metro areas.
In response, Texas Democrats did all they could do: first rallying Democrats across the country to pay attention to the GOP’s gerrymandering attempt, and ultimately fleeing the state entirely. If enough Democrats refused to participate in the special session, per parliamentary rules, the Texas House can’t meet.
Over the weekend, more than 50 Democratic state lawmakers flew to Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York to deny a quorum and halt the process temporarily. For now, the plan is for them to remain out of state for the next few weeks, when the special session is scheduled to end.
Things become a little hazier then. The governor can technically call an unlimited number of special sessions, meaning Texas Democrats might have to repeat this process until the end of the year. And for every day that these lawmakers miss a vote, they’re racking up a $500 fine per person.
The latest development is that the Texas House has voted to issue “civil warrants,” empowering law enforcement to detain the absent lawmakers and bring them to the state capitol. It’s a largely symbolic act, since this authority only applies within Texas. At the same time, Abbott has threatened to expel and replace the lawmakers — but this threat doesn’t seem to have a firm legal grounding, and would require overcoming tremendous practical challenges, like filing individual lawsuits against each missing lawmaker and holding new elections, according to the Texas Tribune.
None of this has stopped Trump from pressuring other states to follow suit, including Missouri, Ohio, and, more recently, Indiana. Democrats, meanwhile, have responded with their own threats to further gerrymander states like California, Maryland, or New York.
While Texas is at a standstill, the national implications are still unfolding.
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