Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he is ready and willing to amp up his efforts to bring state Democrats, who fled to other parts of the U.S. to block redistricting legislation, back to Texas.
Speaking to NBC News from the governor’s mansion on Thursday, the governor warned that Democrats would have to remain out of state for years to prevent the legislation from passing.
“We are in the process as we speak right now of searching for, preparing to arrest Democrats who may be in Texas, may be elsewhere,” he told the outlet.
Many seats remain empty during the session in the House Chamber at the Capitol in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 5, 2025. A quorum was not present after most Democrat state representatives left Texas to break quorum and block a vote on a Republican plan for congressional redistricting.
Jay Janner/Getty Images
“But I’ll tell you this also, Democrats act like they’re not going to come back as long as this is an issue,” Abbott said.
“That means they’re not going to come back until like 2027 or 2028, because I’m going to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.”
More than 50 Texas Democrats fled earlier this week to prevent the state House from passing legislation to redraw congressional districts in a manner that would reduce the voting power of minority groups and increase the Republican Party’s chances of taking control of the U.S. House by adding five additional seats, to which President Donald Trump says his party is entitled.
If passed, the legislation would increase the Republicans’ chances of maintaining their slim U.S. House majority, which currently sits at 219-212. Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’s 38 seats in the House of Representatives.
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On Tuesday, Abbott also asked the state’s Supreme Court to remove top Democrat Gene Wu from office, whom he described as the “ringleader of the derelict Democrats who fled the state to break quorum.”
In response to the accusation that he abandoned his post, Wu wrote, “Let me be unequivocal about my actions and my duty. When a governor conspires with a disgraced president to ram through a racist gerrymandered map my constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant.
“Denying the governor a quorum was not an abandonment of my office; it was a fulfillment of my oath. Unable to defend his corrupt agenda on its merits, Greg Abbott now desperately seeks to silence my dissent by removing a duly elected official from office.
“History will judge this moment. It will show a Governor who used the law as a weapon to silence his people, and it will show those of us who stood for a higher principle.”
Abbott told NBC he had not spoken with Trump about him potentially ending the deadlock. Trump said on Tuesday that he believes those who fled have “abandoned” the state, and that the FBI “may have to” get involved if they do not return on their own.
Democratic Texas Rep. Harold V. Dutton Jr. speaks alongside other Texas democrats during a press conference at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall on August 04, 2025 in Warrenville, Illinois. The lawmakers left the state yesterday so a quorum could not be reached during a special session called to redistrict the state to favor Republican candidates.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Earlier this week, a government official told NBC News there were no plans to deploy federal agents to arrest out-of-state Texas lawmakers.
When asked if the FBI was playing a role in efforts to return the Democrats that Abbott called “delinquents,” he said, “I’m not going to disclose, though all may or may not be involved.”
“All I can say is we’re going to use every tool that we can to make sure that these runaway Democrats are going to be held accountable,” he said.
Abbott added that redrawing the state’s map is called for because “both the law and facts have changed since we drew the lines back in 2021.”
The restructuring of congressional maps occurs once every decade and is typically based on the results of a nationwide census, allowing for the reflection of population changes.
“A lot of people who voted Republican, who voted for Donald Trump, were trapped in Democrat districts,” Abbott added. “And so when you look at the facts, when you look at the law, there is every reason to go ahead and draw the lines so that we can assure that every voter is going to have the opportunity to vote for their candidate of choice.”
Abbott rejected the idea that redrawing the map would give Republicans favourable representation in the state and turned his attention to Democrat-run jurisdictions.
“What has surfaced because of Texas doing redistricting is the way that all the blue states in the country have gerrymandered their states. Look at the disproportionate lack of Republican representation in Congress, in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, which has zero members of Congress who are Republican, New York,” Abbott said.
The Democrats’ absence means the Texas House cannot operate or pass any legislation, including bills designed to provide aid to recent flood victims.
“There’s only one thing that’s denying our ability to get legislation passed. And it’s these Democrats who have fled the state, turned their backs on their fellow constituents,” Abbott said. “And those Democrats are going to lose their job in the upcoming election, if they don’t get kicked out before then, because they’re not stepping up helping out their constituents who are in desperate need.”
“Any aid to their constituents who these floods have harmed is being delayed and denied by the derelict Democrats,” he concluded.
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