The Texas Parliament is the theater on Monday of a distance confrontation between elected representatives of republicans and democrats, after the latter fled the state in order to prevent the adoption of a text which, in the long term, could offer Donald Trump some five seats at the Congress in Washington.
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The lower room of the Texan Parliament must meet at 3 p.m. – local time – to examine this bill which intends to redraw the 38 electoral districts of this southern state, the most populous second in the country.
The goal displayed for the Texas Republican officials is to modify the electoral map so that the Democratic vote is diluted, a technique called “Gerrymandering”.
Driven by President Donald Trump, they want their contingent of 25 Republican elected officials to the House of Representatives in Washington has five additional members after the mid-term elections in November 2026.
But the Democrats, in minority in the Texan Parliament, try to oppose the adoption of this redistribution. They decided on Sunday to flee the state so that a quorum is not reached for the vote on Monday and gathered in Chicago, in the north of the country.
“This is not a decision that we have taken lightly,” said Gene Wu, the chief of the Democrat minority in the lower room of the Texas Parliament, in a statement.
He accuses the republican governor, Greg Abbott, of “submission to Donald Trump” and to use an “intentionally racist” electoral card, because he said, according to him, the voices of the African-American and Hispanic electorates, which mostly vote traditionally democratic.
In return, Greg Abbott threatened the elected democrats on Sunday evening to get them down with their scarf if they were not back to Texas on Monday, even though the governor does not have this power.
“These absences were premeditated for an illegal purpose,” he accused in a statement.
In response to the will of Texas to redraw the electoral map in favor of the Republicans, several Democratic governors have announced their intention to do the same, such as the Californian Gavin Newsom.
But unlike Texas, where the legal process allows this relatively easily redistribution, democratic states have for many putting legislative and even constitutional safeguards. It will therefore be complicated for them to compensate for the seats potentially lost in Texas, or in Ohio and Missouri.
