Texas AG to Dems: Accept GOP Gerrymandering or I’ll Lock You Up

Texas Democrats are facing a potential lockdown as they oppose Donald Trump’s legislative redistricting effort.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton suggested Thursday that the state legislature could “lock the doors” on liberal-minded party members, trapping them into participating in a forced restructuring of Texas’s congressional maps.

“The House rules and the Senate rules both allow for these people to be arrested if they leave and ... they try to break the quorum,” Paxton told Steve Bannon on his War Room podcast Thursday. “The challenge is if they go out of state, we lose jurisdiction.”

Texas Republicans have dutifully responded to Trump’s demands that the party create five new right-wing seats ahead of the midterm elections. State conservatives unveiled their new House maps Wednesday, proposing to practically eviscerate historically Democratic districts.

State Democrats have planned to abscond from the state in order to avoid the vote. The party began fundraising earlier this week to offset the $500-a-day fines they’ll incur as a result. (Texas House rules prevent lawmakers from using their campaign funds to cover the fines, which were imposed in 2023 after an unsuccessful attempt to stop a Republican-led overhaul of the state’s election laws.)

“Well, when we say that, can’t you get to Texas Rangers?” Bannon asked Paxton. “How are we letting these guys, if they’re leaving the state specifically for the purpose of not coming in for their elected duties, can’t you stop them from leaving the state?”

“If I were the speaker of the House, if I were leading the Senate, I’d put rules in place, depending on which group they think is going to leave,” Paxton said, adding that he believed the House was the more likely group to skip town. “I’d put rules in place that basically lock us in until we get a vote because the House map is up on Friday.”

But Paxton’s vision was more akin to morphing the Pink Dome into a prison than initiating a genuine democratic exchange.

“You could lock them in for the rest of the session—two weeks—and just serve them food there, and they sleep there, and that’s just the way it is because we got to get these maps passed,” Paxton added.