- Texas Democrats fled to Illinois Sunday night in an effort to block a vote to bolster the state s number of Republican lawmakers in Congress.
- JB Pritzker called the Texas GOP s effort cheating at the request of President Donald Trump.
- Pritzker defended Illinois congressional map, which was drawn to put 14 Democrats in Congress and three Republicans.
- Illinois Republicans accused the state s Democrats of hypocrisy.
The reporters and editors who worked on this story wrote this synopsis.
In an effort to postpone a vote in Austin on a mid-decade redistricting plan that would give Republicans five more congressional seats in the upcoming midterm elections, Governor JB Pritzker welcomed a group of Texas House Democrats to Chicago on Sunday night.
The Texas Legislature is now in a special session that was convened to address a number of concerns, including the devastating floods that occurred in the state’s central region last month and claimed over 100 lives. According to the Texas Tribune, President Donald Trump pushed for the inclusion of the topic of congressional redistricting on the agenda.
The Texas House is controlled by Republicans 88–62, but in order for the House to function, at least two-thirds of its members must be present. Democrats have essentially closed the House and prevented Texas law enforcement personnel from forcing them back to the Statehouse by leaving the state.
At a press conference with Pritzker on Sunday evening at the DuPage County Democratic offices in Carol Stream, Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu stated, “We’re not here because this is easy.” And we didn’t decide to come here today without careful consideration. However, we get here today with the utmost moral certainty that this is the correct thing to do in order to safeguard the citizens of Texas.
In order to guarantee fair representation, the U.S. Constitution mandates that states redistrict congressional districts after every decennial census. However, it doesn’t expressly forbid states from creating new maps more regularly.
Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering—the practice of creating district lines in order to favor one party over another—is a political matter that cannot be decided by courts and must be resolved by state or federal legislation.
Pritzker, however, charged that Trump and Texas Republicans were trying to cheat by trying to redraw boundaries in the middle of a census cycle.
The fact that we are halfway through 2025 and they want to change the map for just one reason is cheating, he remarked. They are instructed to do so by their party’s cult leader, who is aware that he will lose control of the House of Representatives during the midterm elections.
Height of hypocrisy
Illinois Republicans, who contend that their state has some of the most political gerrymandered maps in the nation, have responded sharply to Pritzker’s similar remarks in recent weeks as Texas Republicans have advanced their plans.
Senate Minority Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said in a statement that it is the height of hypocrisy for Texas Democratic lawmakers to travel to the most rigged state in the nation at the invitation of a governor who twice betrayed his pledge to voters to produce the most gerrymandered maps in the country. In a blatant attempt to deny voters choice, Governor Pritzker and his legislative supporters have already rigged Illinois with a 14-3 Congressional map.
The 17-member Illinois congressional delegation is split into three Republican-leaning districts and fourteen Democrat-leaning districts on the map. Republicans presently control three districts, all of which are sprawling, rural regions.
But in 2021, Pritzker supported the maps that were approved by the Democratic-controlled Illinois General Assembly.
To be clear, Governor Abbott is not attempting to implement the Constitution-compliant map that we enacted in Illinois, he stated. We think that Texans should be fairly represented and shouldn’t have their game modified in the midst of the decade.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made the suggestion that the absent House Democrats be taken into custody and brought back to the Lone Star State in a social media message on Sunday.
He stated on X, formerly Twitter, that Democrats in the Texas House who attempt to flee like cowards must to be apprehended, detained, and returned to the Capitol right now. To find people who believe they are above the law, we should employ every resource available to us.
Hundreds of news outlets throughout the state receive coverage from the state government through Capitol News Illinois, a nonprofit, unbiased news organization. The Robert R. McCormick Foundation and the Illinois Press Foundation provide the majority of its funding.
This story is reproduced here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which was originally published on Capitol News Illinois.
