A group of Texas Democrats are returning to the state House in Austin where they will spend the night \u2014 the latest step in a broader protest over Republican plans to redraw congressional districts in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The state House Democratic caucus said in a news release that eight of its members will return to the floor Tuesday evening, \u201cpublicly tearing up the permission slips required by Republicans for members to leave the chamber.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Democrats will join state Rep. Nicole Collier, their colleague who has remained locked in the state House chamber<\/a> since Monday afternoon after she refused the condition of a security escort to leave the chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Democratic lawmakers fled the state for two weeks, denying the House a quorum to move forward with redistricting legislation, Republican leaders have demanded that Democrats agree to around-the-clock security escorts to ensure they would return to the chamber Wednesday for the redistricting vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collier didn\u2019t agree, so she has remained on the floor, while her party has livestreamed her protest for more than a day. Tuesday night, though, she\u2019ll have company ahead of passage of the redistricting plan in the House, which could happen as soon as Wednesday. The legislation is meant to pad the GOP majority in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collier has framed her decision to remain in the Capitol as an act of defiance, telling NBC News she wouldn\u2019t sign the de facto permission slip House GOP leaders presented to Democrats outlining the conditions that allowed them to leave the chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those conditions are in effect because the House approved civil arrest warrants for the dozens of Democrats who left Texas this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Dallas-area Democrat, said during a press conference Tuesday that former Vice President Kamala Harris was among the “history makers” who called Collier to send their support for her protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rep. Penny Morales Shaw, a Houston-area Democrat, told NBC News that she decided to return to stand with Collier because she didn\u2019t want to be seen as \u201cvalidating\u201d the GOP\u2019s \u201cnarrative that we were derelict.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNicole was right. We should not have submitted to this,\u201d she added. \u201cI cannot support this very low and bad precedent for all future legislators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rep. Rhetta Andrews Bowers told reporters that she also believed the decision to have law enforcement follow Democrats was a waste of taxpayer dollars, evoking last month’s floods in the Hill Country that killed more than 100 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Families in the Hill Country who lost everything to the devastating floods need our help. Yet instead of providing relief, those dollars are being spent on constant [Department of Public Safety] patrol,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n