Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows plans to sign warrants to track down and arrest more than 50 Democrats who left the state over the weekend in order to deny Republicans the quorum needed to create a new gerrymandered congressional map at President Trump’s behest.
The Texas House voted 85–6 to issue arrest warrants for those absent when the House convened on Monday afternoon.
Texas House rules state that lawmakers who are absent from “calls of the House” without sufficient excuses “may, by order of a majority of those present, be sent for and arrested, wherever they may be found, by the sergeant-at-arms or an officer appointed by the sergeant-at-arms for that purpose, and their attendance shall be secured and retained.”
In doing so, Burrows escalates the warpath that state Republicans have forged against the Democratic walkout.
On Sunday, Governor Greg Abbott—claiming powers that legal experts say he doesn’t actually possess—threatened to oust Democrats from office unless they returned to the Capitol by 3 p.m. Monday. (“Come and take it,” the Democrats replied verbatim.) State Attorney General Ken Paxton also promised to “use every tool at our disposal” to “hunt down” Democrats, who, he said, should be “found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately.”
But we’ll likely not see Texas Democrats physically forced back to the Capitol as the warrants only apply within state lines, and most truant Democrats departed for other states.
No arrests took place in 2021 when warrants were issued for 52 Texas Democrats who similarly fled to block a GOP bill to restrict voting rights, before returning after 38 days.
Back then, warrants were blocked as they underwent legal challenges, but the state’s Supreme Court eventually ruled that lawmakers could be arrested under Texas’s Constitution, which, it said, “enables ‘quorum-breaking’ by a minority faction of the legislature” but also “authorizes ‘quorum-forcing’ by the remaining members.”
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