Texas AG will seek to vacate congressional seats of fled Democrats
Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday announced he will ask a court to declare the seats of the absent Democratic lawmakers vacant after they fled the Lone Star State in an effort to prevent majority Republicans from adopting controversial congressional maps that critics have derided as a power grab.
Legislative Democrats over the weekend left Texas for Democratic-strongholds, such as New York and Illinois, to deny Republicans the minimum number of lawmakers necessary to pass legislation, and to prevent passage of congressional maps, supported by President Donald Trump, that would reportedly lock in five GOP seats to the U.S. House of Representatives in the run up to next year's midterm elections.
Critics of the maps have described them as seeking to increase Republican seats in the House through racial gerrymandering that reduces the voting power of people of color in the state.
Texas Republicans have, in turn, accused the Democrats of neglecting their responsibilities as state legislators by fleeing. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered their arrest and has threatened to investigate any Democrat who solicits funds to support their effort.
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Republican, has given the Democrats until Friday to return to the House. Paxton on Tuesday said he will seek "aggressive legal action" against any who are not present at that time to remove them from office.
"Democrats have abandoned their offices by fleeing Texas, and a failure to respond to a call of the House constitutes a dereliction of their duty as elected officials," Paxton said in a statement. "Starting Friday, any rogue lawmakers refusing to return to the House will be held accountable for vacating their office. The people of Texas elected lawmakers, not jet-setting runaways looking for headlines."
Democrats have come out in support of their Texas colleagues, who say they stand together to protect voting rights.
In a press conference Tuesday in Illinois, the state's Democratic lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, said they were "facing the voting rights fight of our lifetime."
"Donald Trump and Texas Republicans are staging a blatant attempt to rig the next election," she said, while accusing them of diverting their attention from those suffering the effects of last month's fatal flooding to "further rigging the system to their own advantage. And there's no line they won't cross."
The Democrats broadly described their actions as a bold stand against the Republicans' power grab that targets the voting power of Latino and Black voters.
"This is not the Democratic Party of your grandfather, which would bring a pencil the the knife fight," Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin said. "This is a new Democratic Party. We're bringing a knife to a knife fight."
Former President Barack Obama even posted to X about the situation, stating: "Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year's midterm elections. This is a power grab that undermines our democracy."
Abbott also announced Tuesday that he has filed an emergency petition asking the Texas Superior Court to remove Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu over his failure to return to the state's House by the previous Sunday deadline.
Wu responded by chastising the governor for seeking to redraw the congressional lines while holding onto disaster relief for the families of the 137 Texans who died in last month's floods.
"My purpose has been clear from that start: to serve my constituents and fight for what's right, no matter the cost," Wu said in a statement. "You will find that my commitment to the people of Texas is unbreakable."
In a surprising move late Tuesday, Paxton filed his own petition with the Texas Supreme Court, stating that Abbott does not have the authority to file the writ of quo warranto, asserting that responsibility falls to him.
He has asked the court not to dismiss the case until Burrows' Friday deadline so he can consider filing a writ of quo warranto of his own.
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