Texas Senator Cornyn is asking the FBI to help “locate or arrest” Democratic state lawmakers hoping to evade an unexpected redistricting fight thrust upon them by Republican lawmakers at the urging of President Trump.
As mid-decade redistricting challenges heat up in states across the nation, Mr. Cornyn, in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday, asked for federal resources to be used to “locate the out-of-state Texas legislators who are potentially acting in violation of the law.”
He added that the time-sensitive request is needed to ensure Democrats are not abetted by “out-of-state actors”who wish to help lawmakers “currently hiding out of state from any accountability for their actions.” He described Texas Democrats accepting support from these individuals as potentially guilty of bribery or public corruption.
With a crucial midterm election 15 months away, President Trump and his supporters are looking to shore up the number of congressional seats that will go red in 2026. Their best shot is in the second most populous state of Texas, which has 25 Republicans in Congress compared to 12 Democrats and one vacancy. Republicans want to guarantee five of those Democratic seats turn Republican.
Though redistricting is usually done once every 10 years after the decennial census, states like Texas can rewrite the congressional map mid-decade. The only way Texas Democrats could prevent the vote is to deny the legislature a quorum. However, by staying in-state they would have been subject to civil arrest warrants issued by Governor Abbott to force their attendance in session. By leaving Texas, state authorities have no jurisdiction.
In response, more than 50 Democratic lawmakers fled Texas over the weekend for Massachusetts, Illinois, and New York to avoid the unexpected votes on redistricting scheduled in an August special session originally called to provide assistance for flood victims. The session is scheduled to end in two weeks.
Mr. Abbott said Tuesday that Democrats are derelict in their duties. “Democrats turned their backs on Texans. They fled and abandoned both the redistricting fight and flood victims,” he said.
One of the absent Democrats, however, said their departure was the only way to uphold democracy and civil rights.
“We better have the courage to stand up, otherwise we will fall for anything,” state Rep. Jolanda Jones told Don Lemon. “And I will liken this to the Holocaust. Good people didn’t realize that what happens to them could very soon happen to me or somebody I love.”
With the smallest of legislative margins in the House, Trump backers are also looking to persuade lawmakers to redistrict in other states as well, like Indiana, where just two of the nine congressional seats are blue.
Vice President Vance is reported to be considering a trip to Indiana this week to meet with its Republican Governor, Mike Braun, and Republican state lawmakers who could coordinate a redistricting vote in the statehouse. The appetite for such a move may not be present, however, as the state was formerly run by Mr. Trump’s previous vice president, Mike Pence.
While highly consequential, redistricting can be a tedious affair. In some states, lawmakers may vote to change the map, while in others like California, an independent commission builds the map and brings it to voters. In New York, the redistricting process is codified in the state constitution. Still, in other states, redistricting may by decide by the courts.
Gerrymandering, arranging the map so that it favors one party over another, is illegal. Congressional districts are supposed to be contiguous and proportional; however, states where single parties have a large majority are often able to tilt the map to their favor.
This is a common event. Ten states have congressional districts that are more than 75 percent Democratic, representing 103 congressional seats, while Republicans control more than 75 percent of the districts in 10 states. However, those states account for only 28 seats, three of which have only one lawmaker in Congress.
In California, where 40 out of 52 seats are Democratic, Governor Newsom is considering holding a special election to dismantle the independent commission that does the mapping and turn five districts Democratic, matching the number that Texas would turn.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, one of the 12 Republicans representing the state in Congress, said voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around. He is introducing a bill to prevent redistricting mid-decade.
“Newsom is scheming to replace our state’s nonpartisan congressional map with his own hyper-partisan version and abolish the Citizens Redistricting Commission that our voters put in place. It is a uniquely corrupt plan and we won’t let him get away with it,” he posted on X on Tuesday.
Mr. Trump said Republicans are entitled to have many more seats in Congress, but Democratic states gerrymandered in Massachusetts, Illinois, and elsewhere.
“They did it to us, you know, those blue states you’ve been talking about,” he told CNBC. “In Massachusetts, I think I got 41 percent of the vote … yet it’s got 100 percent of the Congress. … It shouldn’t be that way. We should have a couple of congresspeople, but we have none.”
Echoing Mr. Abbot, Mr. Cornyn, who is running for a fifth term in 2026 and faces a significant primary challenge from Texas’ state attorney general, Ken Paxton, told Mr. Patel that he is “prepared to do everything” in his power to hold Democrats accountable
“These liberal lawmakers are not above the law,” he wrote. “It’s imperative that they be swiftly arrested, punished, and face the full force of the law for turning their backs on the people of Texas.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
