Trump Says GOP Entitled to Five More Seats
as Paxton Admits Ousting Dems Long Shot
Capitol Inside
August 5, 2025
President Donald Trump gave Texas Republicans a talking point on Tuesday for the justification of a congressional redistricting plan that they were moving swiftly to pass but made no attempts to defend during two weeks of hearings before state House Democrats left the state to block a vote on it in special session.
Entitlement.
“We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas. And I won Texas,” Trump said in an interview on CNBC. “I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.”
That's certainly debatable in a Lone Star State where the Republicans deserve to have no more than 22 U.S. House seats based on the elections in 2024 when the GOP's candidates for Congress scored 58.4 percent of the combined vote. The GOP currently has a 25-13 advantage in the Texas congressional delegation. Trump says the Republicans here have a right to no less than 30.
But Trump refused to follow Texas Governor Greg Abbott's lead with wild threats of retaliation that he and the other Republicans have no way to actually enforce. Abbott promised on Tuesday to have House Democrats thrown out of office and into prisons if they refused to obey him by returning to Austin immediately so the GOP can pass the map.
The Texas lawmakers who took the summer session hostage on Sunday when they fled to Illinois and New York to prevent a vote on a new map dismissed Abbott's rhetoric as ridiculous in a tirade on Tuesday on runaway Democrats who upended his plans in a move he apparently failed to anticipate.
Abbott vowed to have Democrats removed from the offices to which they were elected by voters if they failed to report to the chamber for a vote on the redesigned congressional map. But Abbott craving for vengeance would not end with expulsion. He says he's going to have the missing Democrats charged with bribery for accepting donations to pay fines that the Republicans plan to assess.
As someone who's been a full-time politician for 30 years, Abbott presumably understands that making threats without the power to enforce is a cardinal mistake in an arena in life. But the state has no laws that would make it possible for the governor to initiate a state legislator's ouster or to have lawmakers prosecuted for taking campaign contributions to use for political expenses.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton gave the impression in an interview on Tuesday that removing Democrats from House seats in time for a vote on a map would be next to impossible even if it was technically possible.
"We'd have to go through a court process, and we'd have to file that maybe in districts that are not friendly to Republicans," Paxton said. "So it's a challenge because every district would be different. We'd have to go sue in every legislator's home district."
Abbott has floated the possibility of going directly to the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court to give Democratic state House members the boot even though there would be no legal basis in state law or the Texas Constitution for such a move. The governor and the justices on the high court would be making up the law as they go in such an event.
The Republicans have three months to try to find ways to lure Democrats back to Austin that are realistic and not designed to create appearances. But Paxton acknowledged that the Democrats have a chance to kill the congressional redistricting plan even the odds for doing so appear slim at this point.
"If (Abbott) keeps calling them back, it's going to be a challenge for all 51 of them to stay out of the state for the rest of their lives," Paxton said.
While that's quite a stretch, it's true that three months might seem like eternity to Democrats once the homesickness kicks in.
more to come ...
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