Democrats Celebrate Round One Map Kill
that Buys Critical Time for California Dems
Feds Stake Out Gavin Newsom Press Conference
Capitol Inside
August 15, 2025
Texas House Democrats declared a resounding victory on Friday after Republican legislative leaders ended a special session early in a passive admission of defeat in a fight on a congressional map they plan to resurrect in a second summer gathering that Governor Greg Abbott called to begin immediately.
The Democrats won the first round in the map fight in every possible aspect with a walkout that bought time that Democratic leaders in California needed to get their own redistricting effort under way to counter the GOP gains in Texas in an epic chase for the U.S. House majority.
GOP leaders and lawmakers - in dramatic contrast - delivered one of their worst performances in 22 years of Republican rule with a special session that they staged for 25 days without a single accomplishment to their credit. Everything the Republicans did in the now-defunct special session #1 was purely for show - from public hearings that had zero impact on the proposed map to fantasies of FBI agents in pursuit and state police stakeouts at homes of lawmakers who were known to be out of state.
Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows said the DPS will be on the lookout for Democratic lawmakers who try to sneak back to their homes this weekend. Burrows said quorum-breaking Democrats who dare to return to the Lone Star State before Monday will be arrested and forced back to the chamber where the members who were present on Friday will be summoned back immediately.
"Those who are here today, you have earned the weekend at home with your families, but those who have refused to make quorum. I'm sure you're missing home," the speaker said after convening the House in the new session shortly after noon. "Do not think you have permission to return to Texas and enjoy a peaceful weekend before finally showing up to work.
"DPS will remain active and civil arrest warrants will be reissued," the speaker warned. "If you are located, you will be compelled to this chamber. If that happens, I will ask those members who've gone home for the weekend to return immediately."
But Burrows has issued the same threat repeatedly since Democrats fled the state on August 3. The attempt to make homesick Democrats pay for playing hardball by forcing them to stay gone for a couple of extra days appeared to be the speaker's way of trying to reclaim a narrative that Democrats seized and controlled for 12 days and counting.
Now the Democrats don't appear to be ready to relinquish it based on fighting words from House members who ramped up pressure on the governor on Friday to use his executive power to authorize funding for disaster relief for flooding in the Hill Country on July 4th.
"It appears we are FINALLY going to prioritize the Hill Country, just as we have been demanding from the beginning—giving them HB 1," freshman Democratic State Rep. Cassie Garcia Hernandez said in a post today on X. "It’s sad that it took families begging in a meeting with Republican leadership, along with our pressure both in Texas and across the nation, to finally focus on them. Let’s see what actually gets moved and ends up on the floor first. Texas and our country are watching."
Burrows and the Republicans sought to shame Democrats back to Austin by claiming that their absence was wrecking plans for disaster readiness and relief in the aftermath of the tragedy on the Guadalupe River last month. But the Republicans had relegated flood-related legislation to a distant second fiddle to redistricting by the time the House Democrats left the state on August 3. After promising to make disaster proposals the foremost priority in the first summer session, the governor declined to object when GOP legislative leaders pushed it to the side.
Abbott and the Republicans warned Democrats repeatedly that they could only delay the approval of a new congressional map with no possible hope of killing it. But the Republican redistricting push in Texas will be considered an unmitigated failure if California Democrats get a U.S. House map in place with more Republican seats targeted than the number in a plan that emerges from the Legislature here.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders announced on Thursday that they will introduce a package of legislation next week in a move designed to counter the Texas redistricting effort that Abbott added to the agenda for special session number two here. The Texas lawmakers who blocked a vote on the GOP map for two weeks received a show of support on Thursday night from former President Barack Obama in a video on social media.
“We can’t let a systematic assault on democracy just happen and stand by," Obama said. "This precious democracy that we’ve got is not a given, it’s not self-executing. It requires us to fight for it.”
Fifty-five House Democrats broke quorum again on Friday morning in a move that prompted Speaker Dustin Burrows to gavel the House adjourned sine die before Abbott issued a proclamation for a second special session for a reboot on redistricting and other items that the map fight dragged down with it.
Democrats have a shot to get back in the saddle on Saturday when the House is scheduled to meet on day two of session #2. But their return in the near future appears imminent now that the only two conditions for their re-emergence have been met with the aborting of the first special session and the California Democrats taking of the torch in the battle for control of Congress that the Republicans in Texas initiated with prodding from President Donald Trump.
Democratic State Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas mocked a litany of broken promises that Abbott and the Republicans in Austin made during session number one.
"They vowed to break us.
To make quorum every day.
To arrest us.
To remove us.
To attack us," Anchia wrote. "But today, Sine Die."
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.
| 
