Texas House Democrats who have gone to other states as a way to break quorum — a tactic to prevent the Legislature from approving new and further gerrymandered congressional districts designed to hand five seats to Republicans — need to return to Austin and fight.
We understand that this power grab is being done at the direction of President Donald Trump, who cajoled Gov. Greg Abbott into adding mid-decade redistricting to the current special session. That session should be focusing on a legislative response to the fatal Hill Country flooding, replacing the flawed STAAR exam and several other imperatives.
We understand that Trump sees how unpopular his actions are on multiple matters — indiscriminate immigration raids and inhumane treatment of detainees, tariffs that are likely to harm U.S. consumers and businesses while needlessly alienating allies, firing and investigating people for doing their jobs, and his confounding and obtuse handling of the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases, to name some.
We understand that as a result of how unpopular these policies and actions are, Trump fears losing the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. We understand he is desperate to have the Texas Legislature gerrymander more GOP-dominated congressional districts in the hope they will offset expected losses elsewhere.
We understand the cowardice that is demonstrated in seeking to change the rules of a game — a game in which one’s selfish playing has squandered a lead — to make the opponent run farther to catch up.
Given all that, we understand the temptation to take extraordinary measures to prevent that power grab.
But you can’t fight by exiting the arena. You have to stay in the ring.
Breaking quorum by leaving the state has been tried before, not only in Texas, and invariably it delayed but did not prevent the majority from enacting whatever the minority viewed as an existential threat.
State Rep. Linda Garcia, D-Mesquite, told CNN that her contingent in the Chicago area is prepared to stay there for two weeks, which would run out the clock on the current special legislative session.
Then what?
The governor need only lift a pen to call another special session, then another, then another — as many as it takes. He’s also threatened to remove them from office and appoint replacements. And while it’s questionable whether he has the authority to do that, it adds to the mess.
And yet inevitability is not the main reason Democrats should return. And we’re not advocating that they adopt a fatalistic acceptance of the majority party’s will on this issue.
We’re saying that the sooner they face the dragon, the sooner they can slay it.
Once the proposed redistricting map is voted on — and it will be approved — the minority party can respond tangibly. That will certainly involve court challenges, which will have merit.
It also seems increasingly likely that states such as California will redraw congressional districts to at least counterbalance the five-seat, gerrymandered swing in Texas.
In a perfect world, Republicans will sue to block that action and the courts will say enough to all these shenanigans and restore the status quo — gerrymandered as it already is. That would force both parties to fight their campaign battles on the fields they’ve already prepared.
Beyond such gerrymandering tit for tat, Democrats need to stem the tide of public opinion that sees their party as feckless.
