BBC News
Texas Republican has voted to track and arrest dozens of Democratic MLAs who have fled from the state to pass a plan to re -attract electoral boundaries in favor of Republican.
After the vote, Republican Governor Greg Abbott ordered the state soldiers to “find out, arrest and return to the House Chamber, which any member has given up his duty to Texas”.
Abbott has also threatened to charge absent Democrats with bribe if he raised public funds to cover daily fines to boycott the chamber.
Redrawn Congress map will create five and Republican-furious seats in the US House of Representatives at Washington DC, where Republican holds a thin majority.
The 150-member state legislative body should be present in Texas to proceed with at least two-thirds of the vote. More than 50 Democratic MPs became quorum after leaving the state.
Most of the Democrats ran away Illinois where the state governor JB Pritjkar said that he was going to do everything to protect each of them amidst the hazards of arrest from Abbott. ,
Democrats said that they planned to stay away from Texas for two weeks by the end of a special legislative session.
Monday’s vote was mostly symbolic as warrant applies only within the state of Texas.
The move empowers the Chamber’s Sergeant-At-Arms and the state soldiers to arrest absent MPs and deliver it to the State Capital Building in Austin.
They will not face any citizen or criminal allegations as a result of warrant.
Texas Democratic MLA Ron Rrenolds told BBC News from Chicago on Monday that the danger of arrest was “nothing more than the intimidation strategy”.
Members of the Texas House carry out $ 500 (£ 377) for each day which they fail to show.
Governor Abbott has warned that those who refused to vote can face the allegations.
Abbott told Fox News on Monday, “It would be bribe if any legalist took money to perform or refuse to make an Act in the Legislature,” Abbott told Fox News on Monday.
“And the reports these MLAs have asked for both money and offered money to take a legislative act to leave the vote, to leave the legislature. It will be bribery.”
After voting to issue a warrant against Democrats, the legislators ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to “find out, arrest and return to the House Chamber, which any member has given up his duty to Texas”.
He said that his order would remain effective “until all the missing Democrat House members are brought and brought to Texas Capital.
Texas Republican MLA Brian Harrison slammed Democrats for his argument that the constituencies were being rebuilt with racial lines.
Harrison told BBC News, “Preposterus, eccentric, dishonest, full nonsense,” Harrison told BBC News.
He said that “these Democrats need to arrest” and they “need all kinds of punishments”.
Texas’s Attorney General Kane Pasteon, a Republican, also threatened to arrest the absent Democrat.
Paxon, which is running for the American Senate, wrote on X that the state should “use every equipment at our disposal to hunt those who think they are above the law”.
Texas Republican is currently out of 25 of the 38 Congress seats in the state.
He hopes that the new maps can increase that number to 30 – in all constituencies that President Donald Trump won by at least 10 points last November.
Next year beyond the mid -term elections, the Texas Refreshment may help padd the diluted Republican majority in the US House of Representatives – the lower chamber of the Congress.
According to Princeton Gerimandering Project, in states where they handle the redistribution process, such as Illinois, New Mexico and Nevada, Democrats have already manipulated electoral limitations for participation benefits as Republicans.
But other democratic -ministed states – such as New York, California, Colorado and Washington – provide remarriage to non -flirtable, independent commissions rather than state assemblies.
Some Democratic leaders from other states have suggested that they may re -prepare their own legislative maps to combat the proposed loss of seats in Texas.
New York Governor Kathy Hachul said that she was searching for a constitutional amendment to carry forward the timeline to resume legislative lines in her state.
States usually undergo redistribution every 10 years, when the voting map is re -prepared for changes in the population.
The most recent American census was in 2020. It is unusual to resume district lines in the middle of a decade.
