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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Paxton and Cornyn, facing off for Senate, use their official powers in
Texas redistricting fight
By Eric Bradner, CNN
Updated:
1:05 PM EDT, Sat August 9, 2025
Source: CNN
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the man he is vying to unseat in
next year’s Republican primary, US Sen. John Cornyn, are both using
the powers of their offices to try to pressure Democratic lawmakers who
fled the state to prevent a vote on a GOP-led redistricting plan.
Paxton on Friday said he was asking the state Supreme Court to remove
13 of the absent House Democrats from office, arguing in his lawsuit
that those lawmakers “made incriminating public statements regarding
their refusal to return, essentially confirming in their own words the
very grounds for this legal action.”
Cornyn, meanwhile, asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help
track down the absent House Democrats. He said Thursday that FBI
Director Kash Patel assigned agents to handle his request for federal
assistance, assigning them from Austin and San Antonio.
The standoff over the unusual mid-decade push by Republicans to redraw
Texas’ congressional map is shaping next year’s US Senate primaries
in both parties.
It’s not clear what role FBI agents could play since the absent Texas
Democrats do not appear to have broken federal law by leaving the
state. The FBI has repeatedly declined to comment. And Paxton’s legal
action – following a similar, narrower filing by Gov. Greg Abbott
seeking to remove Rep. Gene Wu, the House Democratic leader – seeks
to disqualify elected lawmakers in a seemingly unprecedented way.
“We will not be broken by these antics,” Wu said at a news
conference Friday afternoon in Illinois. “We are not here to play
games. We are not here to make waves, to go viral or do any of this
stuff.”
One of the Democrats targeted in Paxton’s lawsuit, Rep. John Bucy
III, said on social media he is “not backing down.”
Paxton has taken a range of actions seeking to pressure or punish
absent Democrats.
He also filed an emergency petition in Illinois’ Eighth Circuit Court
to make civil arrest warrants — which were signed by Texas House
Speaker Dustin Burrows earlier this week — enforceable in the state
of Illinois, where dozens of Texas Democrats traveled this week. He
filed a similar complaint in California, asking the Tehama County
Superior Court to enforce civil arrest warrants issued by Texas for
some of the Texas House Democrats who were in California on Friday. But
a source familiar with the lawmakers’ whereabouts said they are no
longer in California.
And he said he is suing former US Rep. Beto O’Rourke, whose political
action committee, Powered By People, has raised money for the travel
expenses incurred by Texas Democrats who left the state to block the
House from establishing the two-thirds quorum it needs to do business.
Paxton’s office said it was requesting a “a temporary restraining
order and an injunction” preventing O’Rourke and his PAC from
raising money for the Democrats.
On the Democratic side, several people involved in the quorum break are
running or talking about running for Senate. State Rep. James Talarico
has become a de facto spokesman for the House members who fled.
O’Rourke is raising money to foot the Democrats’ travel bills,
hotels and more. Former US Rep. Colin Allred, who has already entered
the race, is holding events rallying Democrats against the
redistricting effort.
Talarico was asked whether his experience in the quorum break would
inform his ultimate decision to run for Senate.
“I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t,” he told CNN’s David
Chalian for the “Political Briefing” podcast. “I’m still kind
of processing everything that’s been happening and I have no doubt
that it will inform my decision about how to continue my service.”
The Texas House is set to reconvene on Monday, and Burrows, the House
speaker, said the state’s Department of Public Safety will continue
trying to enforce the civil arrest warrants he signed for the absent
Democrats.
“We have all hands on deck. We are continuing to explore new avenues
to compel a quorum and will keep pressing forward until the job is
done,” Burrows said.
The speaker said Republicans had asked the sergeant at arms in the
Illinois House of Representatives for help returning the Texas
Democrats who are staying in Illinois, but the Illinois speaker’s
office told CNN the sergeant at arms’ office would not do so.
Burrows on Friday also detailed more punitive measures meant to punish
House Democrats who remain outside of the state.
Burrows said that 30% of each absent member’s monthly operating
budget “will be reserved and made unavailable for expenditure.”
He said he is now requiring absent members to appear in person to make
certain requests, including requests for travel reimbursement, requests
to change staff salaries and requests to approve newsletters. He said
that if members did not appear in person, newsletters and “the
encumbered funds” would be cancelled.
Earlier in the week, Abbott, the Republican who called the special
session that Democrats are stopping for now, told NBC that the absent
Democrats can’t wait out the redistricting effort, because he is
“going to call special session after special session after special
session with the same agenda items on there.”
Special sessions in Texas can last no more than 30 days. Democrats say
they haven’t yet decided how long they will seek to block the House
from establishing a quorum.
“We’re taking this one special session at a time, and my colleagues
and I have agreed to stay out of the state capitol for the next two
weeks to kill this rigged map and stop this corrupt process,”
Talarico told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday. “Who knows what will
happen after that?”
CNN’s David Wright, Molly English, Aditi Sangal and Arlette Saenz
contributed to this report.
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