Pritzker offers refuge to Texas legislators blocking the redistribution of the GOP

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker deploys the red carpet of the State Democratic legislators who fled Texas when they postpone a decision by President Donald Trump to add five seats of the Congress controlled by the Republicans in their state.

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they are welcome here, that they have the opportunity to stay as long as they need and wish it,” said Pritzker, a Democrat, Sunday evening while the legislators arrived in Illinois.

The legislators fled Texas to prevent the quorum necessary for the state legislature dominated by the Republicans to vote on Monday on the new redistribution cards, which adopted a vote of the Committee last weekend along the party of the Parties.

The Conservative Governor of Texas promises to withdraw legislators from the Funite Democratic State

The president of Texas House Democratic Caucus, the representative Gene Wu, spoke at a press conference in Chicago after the Democrats of Texas fled the state to avoid voting on a proposal for redistribution. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, on the left, called WU and the other “courageous” Texas legislators. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

The Rediscup on Texas is part of a wider effort of the GOP across the country to keep control of the house and cushion losses elsewhere in the country, because the ruling party is traditionally confronted with political-opposite winds and loses seats in mid-term elections.

But the republican veteran Matt Whitlock’s republican strategist argued that the decision of most democratic legislators heads for Illinois – with a few other decamping in two other blue states, New York and Massachusetts – was “caricatured”.

Tom Bevan, the co-founder and president of Realclearpolitics, wrote on X: “The idea that the Democrats of Texas would flee for Illinois, a state where the DEMS abused Gerrymandering at comic levels, is perfection.”

“To protest against the Democrats in favor of the Gerrymandering ‘Texas fleeing for … the Illinois,” wrote the Missouri republican senator Eric Scmitt on X. “You cannot invent that.”

Texas Democrats flee the state to block the redistribution vote supported by Trump in a dramatic legislative decision

Pritzker, the Governor of Illinois with two mandates which is considered a potential of the Democratic White House in 2028, criticized Trump and the Republicans for having “cheated” as they push for a redistribution of the mid-December congress of rare decades.

“The Democrats of Texas had no choice but to leave their country of origin to prevent a vote from taking place and protecting their voters. It is an act of fair courage,” said the governor.

The Democrats of the Chamber of Texas join the Governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, talks about the Republican Plans of Texas to redraw the chamber card during a press conference at the Dupage Comté office in Carol Stream, he, on Sunday August 3, 2025. (AP photo / Mark Black)

But the Republicans underline the move four years ago by Pritzker and the Democrats of the Illinois to eliminate two republican seats of the Congress in the State, to help strengthen the party.

Illinois, who lost a siege in the congress due to population changes in the last census, went from 13 Democrats and 5 Republicans to 14 Democrats and 3 Republicans in their Congress delegation.

And Whitlock, a long -standing gop communicator and a veteran of the National Republican Senate Committee, questioned the optics of the Democrats of Texas fleeing to Illinois, which he called “the Mecca of the partisan gerrymandering”.

Trump, the Republicans rank on the menu of the Texas Congress while Democrats threaten the legal war

By breaking the quorum – the minimum number of legislators needed to carry out legislative affairs – the fleeing democrats will be sentenced to a fine of $ 500 per day and conservative Governor Greg Abbott Threatened them with arrest on their return to Texas.

Trump and his political team aim to prevent what happened during his first mandate in the White House, when the Democrats returned to seize the majority of the room in the middle of 2018.

“Texas will be the greatest,” the president recently told journalists, as he predicted the number of seats adapted to the GOP which could be added by redistribution in the red state reliably. “Just a simple redrawn, we collect five seats.”

The Democrats only control 12 of the 38 districts of the State Congress, with a vacant blue seat after the death of March of the representative Sylvester Turner.

The GOP plan moves the democratic voters of competitive seats in the GOP districts nearby and takes republican voters in the neighboring districts that Democrats are currently controlling.

Abbott and Lieutenant-Governor Dan Patrick, both allies of Trump, said that they should redirect due to the constitutional concerns raised by the Ministry of Justice on a handful of districts dominated by the minorities.

Rediscussing generally takes place at the beginning of each decade, based on the latest data in the American census. Rediscussing in mid-December is rare, but not unprecedented.

The Democrats slam Trump and the Texas Republicans for what they describe as a takeover, and promising to take legal action to prevent any change in the current Congress maps.

And the Democrats in the States dominated by blue are now trying to fight fire with fire.

“Two can play this game”, California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on social networks recently.

California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is planning to launch a redistribution in his blue state to counter the republican efforts in progress in Texas in the red state. (Paul Steinhauser – Fox News)

The next day, after a meeting, the Democrats of the California Congress Delegation said they were on board with an ambitious plan to try to win at least five seats per redistribution. Democrats currently control 43 of the 52 districts of the Golden State congress.

But it will not be easy to implement the change, because in California, the Congress cards are fired by an independent commission which is not supposed to leave the partisanary influencing their work.

Democrats from other highly populated blue states, including Illinois, New York and New Jersey, also plan to make changes to their cards, but have redistribution limits devoted in their state constitutions.

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Meanwhile, Ohio is obliged by the law to redirect this year, and a restart of the cards in the state with red sensations could provide GOP up to three other seats in the congress.

And the Republicans also reflect on redistribution of mid-December which could give the GOP some additional house seats in red states such as Florida, Missouri and Indiana.