Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) said Sunday night that if Democrats in the state House don't show up to work by 3 p.m. on Monday, he will ask a court to remove them so he can appoint replacements under Texas Attorney General Opinion No. KP-0382.
The Democrats fled to Illinois last week to "break quorum" and prevent the House from voting on a redistricting plan that they think disenfranchises minority voters.
By their absence, they are denying the chamber a quorum, which means votes cannot take place.
“Real Texans do not run from a fight. But that’s exactly what most of the Texas House Democrats just did,” Abbott wrote. “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.”
The Democrats justified their actions by accusing Republicans of trying to "steal the voices" of minority voters.
Democrat Caucus Chair Gene Wu (D-Houston) said the governor is “using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal.” The chairman said House Democrats will “not be complicit in the silencing of hard-working communities who have spent decades fighting for the power that (President Donald Trump) wants to steal.”
But Abbott responded, "The Attorney General considered 'whether Texas law allows for a determination that a legislator has vacated office' if they intentionally break quorum. The Attorney General concluded that 'whether a specific legislator abandoned his or her office such that a vacancy occurred will be a fact question for a court.'"
Abbott added:
These absences are not merely unintended and unavoidable interruptions in public service, like a sudden illness or a family emergency. Instead, these absences were premeditated for an illegitimate purpose— what one representative called “breaking quorum.” Another previously signaled that Democrats “would have to go by an extreme measure” of a quorum break “to stop these bills from happening.” In other words, Democrats hatched a deliberate plan not to show up for work, for the specific purpose of abdicating the duties of their office and thwarting the chamber’s business.
That amounts to an abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office.
Abbott's words were far more restrained than Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's.
“Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately,” Paxton wrote in a post on X. “We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law.”
Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately.
We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law.
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) August 3, 2025
Meanwhile, Democrats accused Republicans of bringing up relief for recent flood victims in the same special session in which the redistricting vote would be held.
“For two weeks, while families in the Hill Country mourned the loss of over 130 Texans in catastrophic floods, Democrats fought to make their relief the legislature’s top priority,” the Texas House Democrats said in a statement on Sunday. “Instead, Governor Abbott and Republican leadership used the tragedy as political cover.”
Sadly, it seems that the only way to try to get Democrats to actually do their jobs as legislators was to hold that aid "hostage" to voting on an issue that Republicans have full power to do.
Let's remember that these Republicans were elected in sufficient numbers to do a job, and now Democrats want to prevent them from doing part of that job just because they don't agree. That's not democracy, and Abbott cannot let it stand.
