The Texas Legislature attempted to meet Monday to consider a redistricting plan that would favor Republicans, but Democratic members who left the state over the weekend did not return, denying the quorum needed to convene the session. Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to take steps to remove those lawmakers from their seats, and Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows said he had signed civil arrest warrants for the absent Democrats.
Republicans “can make idle threats, but as long as they are out of state, there’s really nothing that they can do,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor.
More than 50 Texas House Democrats left the state on Sunday, leaving the chamber short of the two-thirds quorum needed to bring a vote to the floor. Democrats are protesting the President Trump-led effort by Republicans to redraw the state’s U.S. House congressional map, which could net the GOP up to five more seats.
“We are fighting for representative democracy, and whether or not that will continue, and so we’re willing to face whatever consequences may come our way,” Democratic state Rep. James Talarico told CBS News.
“This House will not sit quietly while you obstruct the work of the people,” Burrows said Monday.
To assist Burrows, Abbott said Monday that he had 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.” But the Texas DPS does not have jurisdiction to arrest them out of state.
Rep. Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat, told CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe in an interview Monday that “a quorum break is written into the Texas Constitution,” and “the threat of arrest is something that should be an alarm for a lot of folks.”
Abbott claimed Monday on Fox News that the Democrats could face bribery charges if their costs while out of state are being covered by others.
“I think based upon comments made by legislators themselves, they face a possibility of facing bribery charges, which is a second-degree felony in the state of Texas, there’s one way to cure that, and that is if they get back to the state of Texas and make quorum today at a hearing that we have at 3 o’clock, they can cure themselves of any quid pro quo that would subject them to potential bribery charges,” Abbott said.
But Jones noted that “Texas, compared to other states, has very loose ethics laws.”
“The governor is certainly welcome to make that argument, and theoretically it has a limited level of potential to move forward, but at the end of the day, if you look at Texas ethics law and look at all of the things that are allowed under Texas ethics law … we would rank receiving money to pay a fine at the lower end at the potential for an ethics…
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