AUSTIN — Over the weekend, a number of Democratic lawmakers from Texas left the state in a push to stop a rare mid-decade revision of the state’s congressional districts. The state’s House of Representatives can only conduct business if at least 100 members are present, meaning that if 51 Democrats don’t show up to work, the chamber can’t pass any legislation.
In response, the state’s Republican leadership has made a variety of threats from fines to felony charges. “Real Texans do not run from a fight,” Gov. Greg Abbott wrote in a press release. “But that’s exactly what most of the Texas House Democrats just did. Rather than doing their job and voting on urgent legislation affecting the lives of all Texans, they have fled Texas to deprive the House of the quorum necessary to meet and conduct business.”
Hackles have been raised over the issue of redistricting since June, when the New York Times reported on rumblings in Washington that Trump wanted five more Republicans from Texas in the midterm elections. On July 7, the Department of Justice sent Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a letter claiming that four majority-minority districts in the Lone Star State could be found to have been drawn illegally, thanks to a 2024 ruling that shifted how the courts interpret part of the Voting Rights Act.
President Trump has since said the quiet part out loud, telling an anchor on CNBC that the Republicans were “entitled” to five more seats because he got “the highest vote in the history of Texas.” (The president’s claim is technically true because voter tallies have grown alongside Texas’ population, but the historical record for highest percentage of the electorate in Texas belongs to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.)
Typically, states redraw their maps every 10 years, after the results of the latest decennial census have been released. This special session of the Legislature was initially called under the pretense of fixing a controversial bill to ban THC products in Texas, though the focus changed after July 4, when devastating floods took over a hundred lives in the Hill Country. Redistricting has since gobbled up all of the focus — 11 hearings have been held over the issue this session so far, while only two have been dedicated to flood victims and emergency response.
The Big Bend sits squarely in the middle of TX-23, the massive congressional district currently led by Republican Tony Gonzales of San Antonio, which was not one of the districts mentioned in the DOJ letter but was singled out for changes when official maps were released last Wednesday. The new maps carved Fort Bliss and the El Paso International Airport out of Democrat Victoria Escobar’s District 16 and added them to TX-23.
In addition to some of the district’s biggest economic assets, the move also put the largest ICE detention facility in the United States — currently under construction at Fort Bliss — in TX-23. (Escobar is currently suing the Trump administration over being denied access to an ICE facility after constituents complained of the conditions inside.)
Escobar was not impressed by Gonzales’ voting record and worried for the future of a divided El Paso. “This means our needs would be handed over to a representative who regularly votes against the interests of El Pasoans (who has voted to cut Medicare, Medicaid, veterans programs, nutrition programs, infrastructure funding, water and wastewater funding, and more), only briefly visits the district when time permits, and who prioritizes assets and needs of constituents who are closer to his home in San Antonio,” she wrote in a statement.
Perhaps due to legal threats from Gov. Abbott, a full list of absent lawmakers wasn’t available as The Big Bend Sentinel went to press — but the region’s two state lawmakers were accounted for. Neither state Sen. César Blanco nor Rep. Eddie Morales like the governor’s plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps, but their opposition took different forms.
Blanco was among a small delegation of lawmakers from the Senate who also left the state in solidarity, visiting Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who expressed her support for the rogue lawmakers. Sen. Carol Alvarado, one of the few Democrats on the Senate redistricting committee, spoke for the group at a press conference, warning the gathered national media about the consequences of letting the president influence state politics. “This is coming to you — you’re next,” she said. “This is not a Texas problem. This is a United States of America problem.”
Morales was also out of town, but for personal reasons having to do with the family business. Morales said that he had never broken quorum and that fellow House Democrats traveling out of state have “a different way of fighting.”
“It is regrettable that this Special Session was called with the focus of providing relief to the devastating floods that engulfed Central Texas, claiming the lives of fellow Texans, and is instead replaced with this redistricting effort,” Morales wrote in a statement. “Taking care of Texans should be first and foremost.”