The Texas Republicans vote to stop the Democrats blocking the Rediscuss vote

The Texas Republicans voted to find and arrest dozens of democratic legislators who fled the state to block the adoption of a plan to rewrite the electoral limits to promote Republicans.

After the vote, the republican governor Greg Abbott ordered the soldiers of the State “locate, stop and return to the Chamber of the Chamber of any member who abandoned their duty to the Texans”.

Abbott has also threatened to charge corruption to absent democrats if they raised public funds to cover the daily fine they hire to boycott the Chamber.

The redrawn map of the Congress would create five other republican seats in the House of American Representatives of Washington DC, where the Republicans have a slim majority.

At least two thirds of the state legislative body of 150 members in Texas must be present to vote. The quorum became inaccessible after more than 50 Democratic legislators left the state.

Most of the Democrats fled to Illinois where the governor of the State JB Pritzker said that he was going to do everything we could to protect each of them “in the midst of Abbott’s arrest threats.

The Democrats said they planned to stay far from Texas for two weeks until the end of a special legislative session.

Monday’s vote was mainly symbolic because the mandates only apply in the lines of Texas State.

This decision empowers the chamber sergeant and state soldiers to arrest the absent legislators and deliver them to the State Capitol building in Austin.

They would not face any civil or criminal accusation following the mandate.

The Texas Democratic legislator, Ron Reynolds, told BBC News in Chicago on Monday that the threat of arrest was “nothing more than a frightening tactic”.

Texas House members engage $ 500 (£ 377) for each day they do not arise.

Governor Abbott warned that those who refused to return to vote could face charges.

“It would be a corruption if a legislator took money to play or refuse to perform an act in the Legislative Assembly,” Abbott told Fox News on Monday.

“And the reports are that these legislators both sought money and offered money to jump the vote, to leave the legislative assembly, to adopt a legislative act. It would be corruption.”

After the legislators voted to issue mandates against the Democrats, Abbott ordered the Ministry of Public Security of Texas “to locate, arrest and return to the Chamber of the Chamber any member who abandoned their obligation to the Texans”.

He added that his order would remain in force “until all the members of the missing Democratic Chamber are counted and brought to the Capitol of Texas”.

The Texas Republican legislator, Brian Harrison, criticized the Democrats for their argument that the constituencies were redesigned according to racial lines.

“Benefiting, cynical, dishonest and complete,” Harrison told BBC News.

He added that “these Democrats must be arrested” and that they “need to have all kinds of other punishments”.

Texas Ken Paxton’s prosecutor general, a Republican, also threatened to have absent democrats arrested.

Paxton, who presents himself for the American Senate, wrote on X that the state should “use each tool at our disposal to track down those who think they are above the law”.

The Texas Republicans currently hold 25 out of the 38 seats in the State Congress.

They hope that the new cards could increase this number to 30 – all in the constituencies that President Donald Trump won last November by at least 10 points.

Before the mid-term elections next year, the Rediscussing of Texas could help win the thin republican majority in the House of Representatives of the United States-the Lower House of Congress.

In the States where they manage the process of redistribution, such as Illinois, New Mexico and Nevada, the Democrats have already manipulated the electoral borders for a partisan gain, as the Republicans have done, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering project.

But other states controlled by Democrats – such as New York, California, Colorado and Washington – attribute redistribution to independent non -partisan commissions, rather than to state legislatures.

Some Democratic leaders from other states have suggested that they could restart their own legislative cards to counter the losses of seats offered in Texas.

New York governor Kathy Hochul said she explored a constitutional amendment to increase the calendar to redraw the legislative lines of her state.

States generally suffer a redistribution every 10 years, when the voting cards are redesigned to take into account changes in population.

The most recent American census took place in 2020. Retigating the district lines in the middle of a decade is unusual.