Democrats harshly criticized Donald Trump and Republicans after a US senator said the FBI had agreed to assist in locating Texas Democratic lawmakers who left the state to block Republicans from enacting a gerrymandered congressional map that would likely add five more Republican seats before next year’s midterm elections.
Senator John Cornyn’s claim that the FBI would assist Republicans’ effort could not be independently confirmed. The FBI declined to comment. An administration official told NBC News this week the government did not plan on using federal agents to arrest Texas lawmakers and a federal law enforcement official told the outlet that as of Thursday morning, the agency had not assisted with trying to locate the lawmakers. None of the lawmakers have been charged with a crime.
“Using federal law enforcement to track down political opposition is the tactic of a collapsing regime,” said the Texas state representative John Bucy, one of the lawmakers who is staying in Illinois. “It’s the kind of authoritarian overreach we condemn in other countries. Now, it’s happening here.”
Involving federal agents would set up an extraordinary confrontation between the blue state leaders shielding the Democratic lawmakers and the Trump administration.
Speaking to reporters at the Illinois state fair on Thursday, the Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, said he welcomed the FBI to the state.
“I hope they take in the state fair, I hope they go see the beauty of Lake Michigan. But they won’t be arresting anyone because there is no US federal law that prohibits those Texas house Democrats from being here in the state,” he told reporters.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House, called it an effort to intimidate Democrats.
“Shouldn’t the FBI be tracking down terrorists, drug traffickers and child predators? The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries. These extremists don’t give a damn about public safety. We will not be intimidated,” he said in a post on X.
Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, also accused Cornyn, who is locked in a primary battle against Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, of grandstanding. “John Cornyn is desperately swinging for the fences, asking Kash Patel to take a break from covering up for Donald Trump to instead pull this political stunt. They both know damn well that legally, there’s nothing they can do,” he said.
Legal experts have questioned how the federal law enforcement agency could play a role in returning the lawmakers.
“Federal government intrusion into a state’s process of self-government should only occur when there is a clear constitutional warrant. In this situation, the federal government has no authority to intervene and no legitimate role to play,” said David Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Houston.
In his request for assistance to the FBI earlier this week, Cornyn said he was “concerned that legislators who solicited or accepted funds to aid in their efforts to avoid their legislative duties may be guilty of bribery or other public corruption offenses”. Trump also suggested earlier this week that the FBI might have to get involved in the matter.
Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has also launched a long-shot legal effort to get the top Democrat who left, Gene Wu, removed from office.
Paxton, the Texas attorney general, also announced on Wednesday he had launched an investigation into a group run by former congressman Beto O’Rourke that has been covering the costs of Texas lawmakers as they remain in Illinois. Each lawmaker that breaks quorum is fined $500 per day.
Also on Thursday, JD Vance met with Republican lawmakers in Indiana to encourage them to redraw the state’s congressional map to be more favorable to the GOP, the latest in a brazen nationwide push to reconfigure district lines ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Republicans already control seven of Indiana’s nine congressional seats, but the party has complete control of state government, which could allow them to redraw the map to pick up more seats. Donald Trump is also pushing Missouri to redraw its congressional map to add more GOP seats and Republicans in Ohio, where Republicans already control 10 of 15 districts, are also likely to reconfigure their map later this year to add more Republican seats.
Vance met with Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, and state legislative leaders on Thursday. To redraw the maps in Indiana, Braun would need to call a special session.
Republicans have an extremely slim margin in the US House and Democrats need to net just three seats to flip control of Congress next year. The president’s party typically loses US House seats in a midterm election, which is why Republicans are pushing to redraw districts in their favor.
During a conference call on Thursday, two of four Texas lawmakers who had been scheduled to speak were delayed by taking a security briefing in light of the report of FBI involvement in the quorum break. Legislators deflected questions about the risk of a conflict between state and federal law enforcement, redirecting questions toward flooding relief and Abbott’s legislative and executive priorities.
“We wouldn’t need to have a quorum break and wouldn’t need to be scared of the constitutional breakdown of states’ rights, and Illinois law enforcement versus the FBI, if we were focusing on the things that matter,” said the Texas representative Mary Gonzalez. “To me, the thing that matters most is that over 100 people died and that the homes are still destroyed and that people are still living in unsafe communities because there is debris.”
The governors of California and New York, where Democrats have complete control of state government, have pledged to retaliate against Republicans’ redistricting efforts by adding Democratic seats, though both states face legal requirements that make aggressive gerrymandering more difficult.
Additional reporting by George Chidi
