Governor warns lawmakers who left to foil redistricting plan that he coould call special session to extend battle<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has stepped up his war of words with Democratic lawmakers who have left the state<\/a> to foil an aggressive redistricting plan aimed at giving his Republican party five additional seats in Congress, saying on Sunday that the fight \u201ccould literally last years\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abbott issued his new threat on Fox News Sunday, saying that he would use his powers to call a special session of the Texas<\/a> legislature to extend the battle indefinitely. The special session lasts 30 days, he said, \u201cand as soon as this one is over, I\u2019m going to call another one, then another one, then another one, then another one\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whenever the absent Democrats return to Texas, Abbott<\/a> said, they would be arrested for violating their oath of office. \u201cIf they want to evade that arrest, they\u2019re going to stay outside Texas for literally years,\u201d he remarked. \u201cAnd they might as well start voting in California or Illinois, or wherever they may be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sunday\u2019s TV political talk shows were dominated by the increasingly acrimonious dispute over Texas\u2019s audacious gerrymandering plans<\/a> which were instigated at the direct behest of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The move to flip five US House seats to the Republicans<\/a> is being made as polls indicate that the US president\u2019s party will struggle to hang on to its razor-slim majority in the chamber in next year\u2019s midterm elections. The Republicans currently hold a margin of just three seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stakes could not be higher: were Trump able to hang onto his narrow control of Congress, he could cement the attacks on democratic and constitutional norms that he has begun in the first six months of his second presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the crisis reaches a crunch, more than 50 Texas Democrats have left the state, heading to Democratically-controlled states<\/a>, including Illinois and New York. The relocation is designed to deprive Republicans of a quorum needed to pass the new gerrymandered maps in the Texas legislature in Austin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democratic governors went on the political shows on Sunday to launch their own barrage of words threatening counter-action. The strong language deployed was the latest indication that the leadership of the Democratic party, which has floundered in the face of Trump\u2019s radical authoritarian-leaning tactics, is determined at this point to take a stand<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New York\u2019s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul accused Abbott on Fox News Sunday of being a \u201clap dog\u201d for Trump. \u201cKnock it off,\u201d she told her counterpart in Texas<\/a>. \u201cLet\u2019s get back to governing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She added that if Texas continued with what she called \u201cthese games\u201d, \u201cwe\u2019re not going to sit on the sidelines \u2013 we\u2019re New Yorkers. We fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n New York\u2019s room for maneuver, however, is more limited than that of Texas. The state has an independent redistricting commission that oversees the drawing of its electoral maps which has been the subject in recent years of much court action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hochul said that the restrictions would not hold New York back. \u201cWe amend constitutions \u2013 we did it a few years ago,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can put it to the people. I\u2019m not going to let our democracy be eroded away because there\u2019s a blatant power grab in our nation\u2019s capital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois where many of the Texas Democrats are holed up in an undisclosed hotel<\/a> outside Chicago, unleashed his own verbal volley on NBC\u2019s Meet the Press. He accused Trump of being a cheater, saying: \u201cHe cheats on his wives. He cheats at golf. And now he\u2019s trying to cheat the American people out of their votes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pritzker was dismissive of claims by Texas US senator John Cornyn that the FBI had been brought in<\/a> to help find the missing Democrats. \u201cTexas law does not apply in the state of Illinois, and there\u2019s no federal law that would allow the FBI to arrest anybody that\u2019s here visiting our state,\u201d Pritzker said. \u201cSo, it\u2019s a lot of grandstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the governors were thrashing it out in the TV studios, lawsuits continued to fly around Texas\u2019s courts as both sides seek to gain the upper hand legally. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is suing a sample group of 13 of the Democratic lawmakers claiming that the \u201crunaways\u201d have officially vacated their offices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paxton is now asking the state\u2019s supreme court to remove the 13 from their seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beto O\u2019Rourke, the former Democratic presidential candidate from El Paso, Texas, has also waded into the fray. On Friday, a state court in Fort Worth blocked his political action committee, Powered By People, from using its funds to support the fleeing lawmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n O\u2019Rourke has counter-sued, arguing that Paxton was trying to \u201cintimidate\u201d a potential rival in next year\u2019s US senate race. Speaking at an event in New Orleans on Friday, he accused<\/a> the Republicans of being \u201cwould-be fascists\u201d and warned that if they got away with their plan to maintain power in Congress in 2026 \u201cthe consolidation of authoritarian control in the hands of Donald Trump will be nearly unstoppable\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s ruse to create more winnable congressional seats is being taken so seriously in Democratic circles that it has gelled even die-hard opponents of party political gerrymandering to come out in favor of counter measures. Bernie Sanders, the independent US senator from Vermont, is a fierce critic of the redrawing of electoral maps for partisan benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet he told CNN\u2019s State of the Union that the Democratic party had no option but to fight fire with fire, saying: \u201cDemocrats have got to fight back. I think it\u2019s pathetic, but I think that\u2019s what they\u2019ve got to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked whether that his position was defensible, given his years of opposing gerrymandering, Sanders said: \u201cWhat we have now is terrible, and Republicans are making it worse. Well, what do you do if Republicans are doing it? You have to respond. It\u2019s pathetic, but I think you have to respond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n