Dozens of Texas Democratic lawmakers head to Illinois in protest against redistricting plan
A plane load of Texas Democrats arrived in Illinois on Sunday in a rarely used act of political maneuvering.
The group left the Lone Star State in a last-ditch effort to disrupt a Republican plan to redistrict the state by denying GOP lawmakers a quorum to advance their new map.
Pritzker has arranged for roughly 30 Democratic lawmakers to stay in Illinois for the week. Politico was first to report the lawmakers had left Texas.
Upon landing, the lawmakers held a news conference with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in suburban Carol Stream, Illinois.
"We're not here to have fun. We're not here because this is easy, and we did make a decision to come here today — we did not make a decision lightly," said Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu. "But we come here today with absolute moral clarity that this is absolutely the right thing to do to protect the people of the state of Texas."
Wu had strong words for the new map proposed by Texas Republicans.
"The tool they are using is a racist, gerrymandered map a map that seeks to use racial lines to divide hard working communities who have spent decades building up their power and strengthening their voices, and Governor [Greg] Abbott is doing this in submission to Donald Trump," he said.
Gov. Pritzker has considered whether Illinois would respond to the Texas effort by redrawing the Illinois map in Democrats' favor. On Sunday night, Pritzker said with what he called the cheating underway in Texas, all bets are off, and everything has to be on the table.
"Trump came up with a new scheme rig the system by ramming through a corrupt mid-decade re-districting plan that would steal five congressional seats silencing millions of voices — especially Black and Latino voters," Pritzker said.
Republicans in Texas currently hold 25 of the state's 38 congressional seats. The party hopes the new maps could bring that number up to 30, and all of those new 30 seats were won by President Trump in November by at least 10 points.
President Trump said in July that he believes Republicans could win five more seats in Texas with different districts.
Democrats have fought back against the new districts, with U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries traveling to Austin on Thursday to pledge national support.
In a statement to the Chicago Tribune Sunday night, Illinois Senate Republican leader John Curran (R-Lemont) called Pritzker's hosting of the Texas delegation "the height of hypocrisy," Curran said Pritzker supported independent mapmaking.
With Democrats in control of 14 of 17 congressional seats in Illinois, Curran described the state's map as "shameless in its attempt to remove choice from voters."