Democrats flee Texas to block the republican redistribution card sustained by Trump

The legislators of the Democratic State fled Texas to try to stop a vote on a new Congress card which would strongly promote the Republicans.

The proposed redistribution – unveiled by the majority of Texas Republicans last week and supported by President Donald Trump – would create five new republican seats in the American House of Representatives. The Republicans currently have only a thin majority in the House.

Two -thirds of the State Legislative Assembly of 150 members must be present in order to keep a vote. Fifty and a democratic legislators fled Texas, most of them at Illinois, refusing to the Republicans the quorum required.

They said they planned to stay away for two weeks until the end of a special legislative session.

This session was summoned by the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who is himself a republican. He threatened to try to withdraw from his functions all the legislators who do not return to Texas for a vote.

The session at the Texas Legislative Assembly is held to provide repair after a disaster after the deadly floods last month in the state and to prohibit the THC, the active ingredient of cannabis – as well as to approve the planned electoral redistribution.

Each of the 51 absent legislators could face a fine of $ 500 (£ 380) for each day, and the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, republican, threatened to have them arrested.

Paxton wrote on X that the state should “use each tool available to us to track down those who think they are above the law”.

“The Democrats of the Texas Chamber who try to run away as cowards should be found, arrested and immediately brought back to the Capitol,” he added.

In a press release, the Democrats of Texas defended this decision.

“We are not going out on our responsibilities,” said the state legislator and president of the democratic Caucus WU.

“We go out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent.”

State Democrats have received the support of personalities from the National Party. The leader of the House minority, Hakeem Jeffries, said that the group was showing “courage, conviction and character”.

While the national democrats have threatened tactics of the Tit-for-Tat, their options can be limited.

In the States where they manage the process of redistribution, such as Illinois, New Mexico and Nevada, the Democrats have already gerrymanted as impatient as the Republicans.

The most recent map of Illinois, for example, received a note F from the Princeton Gerrymandering project because it was evaluated so politically unjust.

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

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

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

Before the national mid-term elections next year, Texas’ redistribution could help win the thin republican majority in the Chamber, which is the lower room of the Congress.

Trump’s party currently has 219 of the 435 seats in the House, while the Democrats hold 212.

The new map would include a redistribution of the Rio Grande Valley and combine two districts of the capital of the Austin State currently owned by the Democrats.

In northern Texas, the map would expand a district currently held by Democratic MP Julie Johnson to include rural republican bastions.

He also redrawn four seats in the Houston region, including one inmate by the member of the Democrat Congress Al Green.

The legislator of the State of Texas, Todd Hunter, a republican who sponsored the measure to redraw the card, called it “a good plan for Texas”.

This is the third time in recent years that Democrats have fled Texas to refuse the Republicans a quorum.

Party legislators took off for Washington DC in 2021 in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to block the adoption of new electoral rules.

The Democrats of Texas also left for Oklahoma in 2003 in order to prevent the redistribution that the Republicans finally managed to be approved.

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.