Republicans Attempt To Arrest Texas Democrats For Leaving State

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The Democratic state lawmakers who fled Texas to prevent the legislature from having a quorum to approve new, gerrymandered districts are now facing civil arrest warrants from the Republican leadership of the state. These are not criminal warrants, and they are only seeking to force the Democrats back into the chamber so that the vote can be held. These Democrats are showing us a masterclass in courage and standing up for what’s right, and Democrats all over the country should be celebrating their actions. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Dozens of state democratic lawmakers in Texas have of course fled the state, as most people should be aware of by now, in order to avoid having the Republican controlled legislature getting a quorum so that they can finally pass their grotesquely gerrymandered, new districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. These gerrymandered new districts are so bad and so heavily in favor of Republicans that they actually get rid of Jasmine Crockett's district, like she would no longer actually even live in her own district, because these lines are so poorly drawn to favor Republicans. And of course, this is a measure that Donald Trump admitted. He called the Governor of Texas. Greg Abbott told Greg Abbott to do this. And so of course, Greg Abbott did it. This is part of Donald Trump and the Republican Party's attempt to continue to steal future elections and effectively gerrymandered Democrats out of existence.

But so far, according to the Democrats in the state, 57 state democratic lawmakers have left their beyond state lines, which is important. And so Republicans in the legislature voted this week to send out civil arrest warrants to bring these democratic lawmakers back into the house. So by God, we can gerrymander them out of existence. This is resistance. These democratic lawmakers in the state of Texas who make a couple hundred bucks a week, by the way, and they're facing fines of $500 a day that they don't show up. What they are doing right now is showing the rest of the country how you fight back. They're putting their SEL themselves at risk, their financial stability at risk. They're risking it all to protect what needs to be protected. And everybody, not just the Democratic Party in this country, though, they should be paying special attention. Everybody needs to be paying attention.

This is a masterclass in how you stand up to those in power. I love every second of this. And by the way, those civil arrest warrants that the Republicans voted to, you know, uh, put in place, they only apply within state lines. So that means that the police officers, or you know, the sergeant at arms, whoever it is, the state troopers that they send out there, once these Democrats leave the state, which they have, they can't do anything. So all these Democrats have to do is waited out for two weeks, and yes, they will get fined. Uh, that could severely financially hurt many of them, but as long as they stay outta the state for the next two weeks, this special session that Greg Abbott had called to do this will expire and then they can come back. But here's the thing, technically, even though Greg Abbott did call the special session to do this, that wasn't the official reason.

I don't know if everybody remembers this, um, but Texas had some pretty nasty flooding last month. So the special session was actually called to deal with that catastrophe, you know, to figure out response, what we're gonna do, what are we gonna fund, how are we gonna fix it? How do we put these people's lives back together? But instead of doing that, instead of protecting the flood victims and preventing natural disasters like this in the future, they went the gerrymandering, uh, avenue. That's what they wanted to do. That was the guise. We're gonna pretend to give a about people, but what we're really doing is taking away millions of people's voices in our elections. That is how disgusting these Republicans in Texas are from the bottom to the top at the state. This is the worst of the worst that the Republican Party has to offer.