Bullets Off Broadway: Texas Dems Claim
1st Round Win in Trump Map Quest Brawl

Texas Congress Redistricting Scoreboard - Round 1

Capitol Inside
August 18, 2025

Governor Greg Abbott and GOP lawmakers fired blanks for two weeks with tales of FBI pursuits, state police stakeouts at empty homes and surveillance that was announced in advance before 55 Texas House Democrats blew up a special session that devoted to congressional redistricting.

But Abbott sought to begin a second called session on Friday with a bang - warning the Democrats who hijacked his first special session that the Republicans in Austin have "a lot more bullets in our belt" to use against renegade lawmakers who try to pull off another quorum heist in the Legislature's second gathering.

The governor's fighting words made you wonder if he'd been aware at the time that Democrats won the first round in the President Donald Trump redistricting sweepstakes by every imaginable standard. The Democrats seized control of the first failed session at the midway point with a historic walkout that put them in position to rewrite the narrative with the minority party's members as the protagonists.

After repeated promises from GOP Speaker Dustin Burrows and Abbott on compelling the Democrats back to the lower chamber for a vote on a new U.S. House map, the legislators who'd been missing didn't return to the Capitol City until they were good and ready. A sufficient number of Democrats are expected to be on the floor to establish a quorum when the House convenes again on Tuesday.

While two weeks in nice hotel rooms in major American cities hardly qualifies as suffering, the House Democrats didn't feel the need to hold out any longer after buying critical time for California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrats in the nation's largest state to get their own congressional redistricting effort under way to counter the Texas Republicans' push.

The Texas Democrats who ran off with the quorum would make the vault from instant celebrity to legendary if the walkout in the first summer session culminates in the transformation of the U.S. House majority from Republican to Democratic at the polls in 2026. Abbott and the House Republicans who stood around for two weeks making threats they had little or no chance of ever enforcing would be the obvious scapegoats for Trump if the redistricting scheme fails to protect the GOP majority in the lower house of Congress and leaves him effectively neutered during his final two years as president.

Burrows, who Democrats carried to victory in the speaker's election in January, did his apparent best to create the appearance that the Republicans were in full control during the past two weeks when they were actually helpless. The speaker's threats and vows of harsh sanctions began with the standard call on the House, signing of civil arrest warrants and the deployment of Department of Public Safety troopers to round up errant Democrats so they could be hauled back to the Capitol against their will.

Burrows spent most of the last two weeks shooting wildly at the stars - telling Democrats they wouldn't be paid for their service until they came and picked up paychecks in the flesh. Burrows sent word to the absent Democrats about having newsletter subscriptions cancelled and travel reimbursements withheld. When all else failed, the first-term speaker announced late last week that the DPS had surveillance and stakeouts set up at the residences of Democrats who they knew were not home.

This seemed to be a highly unorthodox move. Nobody announces espionage in advance if they're serious about it. In the final analysis, Burrows and Abbott both came up empty and would be lying to themselves if they claimed that their attempts to compel a quorum were anything less than an absolute failure.

“We have all hands on deck," the House speaker declared on August 8. "We are continuing to explore new avenues to compel a quorum and will keep pressing forward until the job is done.”

The Republicans' decision to shut down the first called session four days early was an unusual but blatant admission of defeat for the members of a party who promised repeatedly that Democrats could only delay a vote on a congressional redistricting bill that they did not have the power or numbers to kill. But they failed to anticipate that their failure to keep Democrats from bolting could set the stage for California to counter.

Attorney General Ken Paxton was the only Republican to score a point in the opening round of the Texas map brawl when a Republican state district judge in Tarrant County granted his request to have a PAC controlled by Beto O'Rourke barred from bankrolling the House Democrats' walkout. But O'Rourke's group had already shelled out the money by the time the state lawyer secure the ruling.

But the Democrats who returned to Austin today as planned say they achieved a major goal of establishing a record for a court challenge to the eventual GOP map here. That could be a fairly moot point if California voters approve the new map there.

Mike Hailey is the editor, publisher and founder of Capitol Inside. His column Hailey's Comment appears on the site on a semi-regular basis.

Governor Abbott just said he’s got “bullets in his belt” that he’s ready to use against Texas Democrats.

As a prosecutor, I’ve had criminals threaten my life.

I never thought I’d see the day that the Governor of Texas threatens my life. @GovAbbott, retract your statement. pic.twitter.com/FtxKKXqgXS

— Ann Johnson (@VoteAnnJohnson) August 16, 2025