Texas Gov. Greg Abbott moves to amp up the pressure on Democrats who fled in redistricting standoff

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to call “special session after special session after special session” in response to Democratic lawmakers who have fled the state to block redistricting legislation, saying they’ll have to stay out of Texas for years to prevent it becoming law.

“We are in the process as we speak right now of searching for, preparing to arrest Democrats who may be in Texas, may be elsewhere,” Abbott, a Republican, told NBC News in an interview at the governor’s mansion Thursday evening.

“But I’ll tell you this also, Democrats act like they’re not going to come back as long as this is an issue,” Abbott said. “That means they’re not going to come back until like 2027 or 2028, because I’m going to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.”

More than 50 Democratic lawmakers fled the state earlier this week to block the state House from moving forward with the Republican majority’s proposed congressional map, designed to boost the number of GOP-held seats ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

The Republican-led state House has approved civil arrest warrants for the missing lawmakers, and Abbott has filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court seeking to remove the House Democratic leader from office for “an intentional abandonment of his constitutional duty.”

Abbott said he has not spoken to President Donald Trump about the federal government’s potential role in ending the standoff. Trump said earlier this week that the FBI “may have to” get involved, though an administration official also told NBC News earlier this week that there were no plans to use federal agents to arrest Texas lawmakers who left the state.

“I’m not going to disclose though all may or may not be involved,” Abbott said Thursday when asked if the FBI has a legitimate role to play. “All I can say is we’re going to use every tool that we can to make sure that these runaway Democrats are going to be held accountable.”

Abbott said a redraw of the state’s congressional map was necessary because “both the law and facts have changed since we drew the lines back in 2021,” pointing to a federal appeals court last year that ruled that multiple minority groups could not form a coalition to challenge a political map as a racial gerrymander.

But Abbott also pointed to the results of the last election as political justification for mid-decade redistricting, instead of waiting until the next national census after 2030.

“A lot of people who voted Republican, who voted for Donald Trump, were trapped into Democrat districts,” Abbott said. “And so when you look at the facts, when you look at the law, there is every reason to go ahead and draw the lines so that we can assure that every voter is going to have the opportunity to vote for their candidate of choice.”

Trump won 56% of the vote in Texas in 2024. The proposed congressional map could lead to Republicans controlling 30 of the state’s congressional districts — nearly 80%. Republicans currently control 25 of the state’s 38 congressional districts.

Abbott rejected the notion that the new map could give Republicans outsized representation, pointing to Illinois, with its 14-3 Democratic congressional delegation, and other states.

“What has surfaced because of Texas doing redistricting is the way that all the blue states in The country have gerrymandered their states. Look at the disproportionate lack of Republican representation in Congress, in California, Illinois, Massachusetts — which has zero members of Congress who are Republican, New York,” Abbott said.

Some of those blue-state governors have vowed to retaliate and push their own states to draw new congressional boundaries if Texas does so, although they could face significant hurdles due to the different redistricting processes in their states.

“The governor doesn’t have unilateral authority in those states to take action,” Abbott said of that possible retaliation. “They have committees and commissions and things like that. But the fact is: Look at the map of Illinois. It’s drawn in such a way that they can’t even squeeze out another Republican. It’s a joke.”

The ongoing standoff has ground to a halt the special legislative session Abbott called in Texas, also blocking action on other priorities including relief for victims of devastating floods in Central Texas last month. Republican state House leaders chose to move forward on the redistricting legislation first, but all bills in the legislature are now on pause without a quorum present.

“There’s only one thing that’s denying our ability to get legislation passed. And it’s these Democrats who have fled the state, turned their backs on their fellow constituents,” Abbott said. “And those Democrats are going to lose their job in the upcoming election, if they don’t get kicked out before then, because they’re not stepping up helping out their constituents who are in desperate need.”

“Any aid to their constituents who’ve been harmed by these floods is being delayed and denied by the derelict Democrats,” Abbott said.

All of that fed into Abbott’s argument to the state Supreme Court that state Rep. Gene Wu, the House Democratic Caucus chairman, has violated his oath of office and abandoned his seat by fleeing to Illinois.

“If quorum breaking is allowed to succeed, then one-third of House Democrats will be able to dictate what the rule of law is for 100% of all Texans,” Abbott said of his lawsuit, adding that he believed the state Supreme Court would agree that Democrats do not have that power.

“These Democrats, they’re the antithesis of what a Texan is,” Abbott said. “Oh, the going got tough. Let’s not fight, let’s flee. These are quitters. They are cowards, and their cowardice will cause them to get kicked out of office.”

Wu, in a statement on Tuesday, responded to Abbott’s lawsuit by saying his “constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant” in the special session that includes the congressional map redraw.

“Denying the governor a quorum was not an abandonment of my office; it was a fulfillment of my oath,” Wu said in the statement. “Unable to defend his corrupt agenda on its merits, Greg Abbott now desperately seeks to silence my dissent by removing a duly-elected official from office.”

Ryan Chandler reported from Austin and Bridget Bowman reported from Washington, D.C.