Republicans Raise the Pressure on Texas Democrats to End Their Walkout

New York Times

a day ago

The warning blared over the loudspeakers of a Chicago-area hotel around 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday: bomb threat, evacuate immediately.
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers from Texas, along with hundreds of other guests, rushed outside as state and local police officers scoured the hotel and conference center in St. Charles, Ill., before determining the threat had been false.
The episode, though not traced back to any political opponents, was emblematic of the pressure mounting on the lawmakers since they left their state on Sunday to prevent Republicans from passing an aggressively redrawn congressional map at the behest of President Trump.
Illinois, a Democratic state, was supposed to be a haven, but Texas Democrats have been unable to escape escalating legal and political threats that have gone further and come faster than many of them had anticipated, based on earlier walkouts in 2021 and 2003. Now they are wondering just how long they can hold out — and hoping to make it to the end of the special legislative session they left behind, which is set to end Aug. 19.
'They're using hardball, unconventional, authoritarian tactics that we didn't see in 2021,' said State Representative Ron Reynolds, a Houston Democrat who was part of the group at the hotel in St. Charles. 'People are concerned. We're looking over our shoulder.'
Those tactics keep coming.
On Tuesday, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, called for F.B.I. agents to round up the Democrats who were camped out in Illinois. Mr. Trump seemed to endorse the idea of federal agents getting involved — 'They may have to,' he said that evening — though the agency has not commented.
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