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The Republican Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan has signed 52 civil arrest warrants for the state Democrats who departed to Washington D.C. on July 12. The Democrats departed in order to block a contentious Republican voting bill from becoming law.
The warrants will reportedly be delivered to the House Sergeant-at-Arms tomorrow morning, KXAS-TV reported. It's unclear how the warrants might affect Democrats' legislative strategy and plans for eventually returning to the state.
On July 13, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that the Democrats would be arrested upon their return to the state. The Democrats responded by saying that only Phelan could issue such orders. Now Phelan has.
Abbott said that after their arrest, he would lock the Democrats inside of the state House chamber in order to force them to vote on the voting bill and other legislation. The Democrats' escape temporarily succeeded in blocking the bill during the normal legislative session.
However, Abbott pledged to repeatedly convene special legislative sessions from now until the midterm elections until the bills became law in the Republican-led chamber.
"If these people want to be hanging out wherever they're hanging out on this taxpayer-paid junket, they're going to have to be prepared to do it for well over a year," the governor said.
The contentious Texas voting bill would add new voter ID requirements, punish the unsolicited sending of absentee ballots, ban drive-thru voting and change early voting hours. Democrats said it would restrict ballot access overall.
Texas state Democratic Representative James Talarico has said that there is no "endgame" plan for stopping the bill in the Texas legislature. However, his communications director, Mason Reid, told Newsweek that the Democrats chose to lobby federal lawmakers in D.C. in hopes that the lawmakers would pass voter protection legislation nationwide.
To help keep the Democratic lawmakers in the nation's capital, over 17,000 people donated $600,000 to the political action committee of former congressman and Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke. O'Rourke said that the funds had since been sent to the legislators.
On July 19, the Democrats revealed that they had set the budget of their trip at $1.5 million. Most of the money went towards transportation, lodging and food for the remainder of the special session.
Some Democrats have pledged to stay in D.C. indefinitely. However, the returning group has promised never to appear together in the Texas House. This way, they can possibly deny House Republicans the number of legislators required to be in attendance before the chamber can begin passing legislation.
On July 29, Abbott vetoed payroll legislation that would fund the paychecks of the Democratic legislators and their congressional staffers. The veto could affect 2,000 legislative workers when it goes into effect this coming September. The Texas Senate Democratic Caucus sued in response. Some caucus members have pledged to cover their staffers' salaries themselves until the matter is resolved.
On August 6, Texas Democrats filed a lawsuit against Abbott saying that Republican efforts to force their return to the state violated their constitutional rights to free speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Newsweek contacted Talarico's office for comment.
