Politics

‘We’ve Been Tested’: Texas Dems Who’ve Fled to Illinois Enter Second Week of Quorum Break

Texas Democrats who fled to Illinois amid an ongoing redistricting battle say they remain “more committed than ever,” days after bomb threats forced the evacuation of their suburban Chicago hotel and delayed scheduled events.

The Texas representatives, who are entering their second week of their quorum break, stood with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in Chicago Monday, days after a pair of bomb threats were called in to their St. Charles hotel.

“We’ve been tested this week,” Texas Rep. Mihaela Plesa said during the news conference in the Avondale neighborhood, “we’ve been threatened, but we stand more committed than ever in our goal.”

Plesa’s comments came almost a week after a first bomb threat forced the evacuation of some 400 people at their hotel. A second bomb threat was reportedly phoned in last Friday.

Texas’ Republican majority is seeking to redraw five U.S. House districts at President Donald Trump’s urging as he tries to avoid a replay of the 2018 midterms. Those elections installed a new Democratic majority in the U.S. House that stymied the president’s agenda and twice impeached him.

Now, Democratic-controlled states including California, New York and Illinois are threatening to retaliate against Texas and Trump by proposing their own redistricting, putting the nation on the brink of a tit-for-tat overhaul of congressional boundaries that are typically redrawn only once a decade.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he’ll call lawmakers back to the Statehouse again and again until enough Democrats show up to reach the 100-member threshold required to vote on the bill. Democratic leaders in other states are planning out their retaliatory redistricting plans if Abbott succeeds.

“This is not a vacation for them, it is a very important assignment to tackle an issue that affects the whole country,” Durbin said. “This isn’t just a Texas issue, this is an American issue.”

Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have pushed for the absent representatives to be arrested and returned to Texas in order to complete the vote.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has said those threats are nothing more than “grandstanding” as there’s no federal law allowing them to arrest representatives who are simply visiting the state of Illinois.

“They know where we are,” Texas Rep. Ramón Romero, Jr. said at a separate press event Monday afternoon. “We feel very safe here in the state of Illinois. We feel very safe by the counsel we’ve received from our lawyers.”

The Texas Democrats have claimed the gerrymandering efforts underway in Texas are “racist” and would eliminate Hispanic opportunity districts in major cities including Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin.

They said Monday they intend to kill Abbott’s first special session, which ends next week, and after that point, negotiations with Republican leaders could “open up again.” The Democrats have also called on Abbott to prioritize funding for victims of the historic July flooding that killed dozens in Texas.

“We’re going to continue using all of our tools,” Plesa said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.