Texas House speaker signs warrants to arrest 52 vote-dodging Democrats
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan signed civil arrest warrants for 52 absent Democrats late Tuesday, setting in motion the potential roundup of lawmakers who have avoided the Capitol in order to stymie a Republican elections bill they say would harm minorities.
The House voted 80-12 Tuesday to force the fugitives to return, just hours after the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for the House to order them back to the chamber to secure a quorum.
The warrants were to be delivered to the House sergeant-at-arms Wednesday morning, according to Phelan spokesman Enrique Marquez.
The move will likely further inflame partisan tension in the House.
Grand Prairie Rep. Chris Turner, who chairs the Texas House Democratic Caucus, said Tuesday it’s “fully within our rights as legislators to break quorum to protect our constituents.”
“Texas House Democrats are committed to fighting with everything we have against Republicans’ attacks on our freedom to vote,” he said in a statement.
One Republican voted against authorizing arrest warrants: state Rep. Lyle Larson of San Antonio, who has been openly critical of the elections bill that Abbott has demanded.
“Have we got to the point where we believe our own bull shizz so much that we arrest our own colleagues,” Larson tweeted. “Civil discourse took a nasty turn today.”
Fugitive Democrats remain defiant, and an untold number are outside the reach of the House sergeant-at-arms and state troopers.
“I just question whether DPS or anyone can break down my door to come and put me in shackles and drag me there,” state Rep. Vikki Goodwin, an Austin Democrat, told The Dallas Morning News. “I feel certain that I can stay in my home, and stay off the House floor.”
At least two dozen House Democrats have stayed in Washington, D.C., where 57 of them camped out for all or most of a month to run out the clock on Abbott’s first special session.
“We broke quorum because anti-voter bills are nefarious attempts to disenfranchise Texans & these authoritarian motions by Republicans just cement that we are on the right side of history,” state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, an Austin Democrat, wrote on Twitter.
The governor called the Legislature into special session last month to reconsider a measure that House Democrats had blocked with an eleventh-hour walkout in May, at the end of the regular biennial session.
But Republicans are determined to wear them down, and Abbott immediately ordered a second special session that began on Saturday.
Nineteen of the Democrats who broke quorum last month sought protection in a Travis County court. On Monday, District Judge Brad Urrutia signed an order to prevent arrests for 14 days.
Early Tuesday, Abbott and Phelan asked the Texas Supreme Court to overturn that order, and the justices quickly agreed.
It wouldn’t take many arrests for the House to be back in business. A quorum requires two-thirds of the 150 members on site. Since Monday, 96 House members have checked in as present — just four shy.