Most of the Democratic members of the Texas Legislature who left the state returned on Monday, ending their two-week walkout that temporarily blocked Republicans from adding at least five gerrymandered US House seats in an attempt to rig the 2026 midterms. The special session ended Friday, killing the gerrymander temporarily, but with Democrats back, Gov. Greg Abbott will just keep calling new sessions until he gets his way.
Everyone saw that much coming. Walkouts to deny a quorum have from time to time brought the Texas Lege to a dead halt since 1870, although it almost never kills a bill the minority party objects to. The tactic can cause a delay and bring attention to whatever the majority is trying to push through. Democrats walked out in 1979, 2003, and 2021, the most recent time to slow passage of Republicans’ voter suppression bill. It’s unusual, but normal.
This time, with “normal” far in the past, things took — would you have guessed? — an authoritarian turn. To prevent another walkout, House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) told the returned Democratic members they couldn’t leave the Capitol building unless they signed a “permission slip” allowing him to assign a state trooper from the Department of Public Safety to each of the Democrats. The cops would then stick to them like white supremacy on rice, with orders to arrest them if they prepared to leave the state again. Just like Ben Franklin said: A Republic, if you can keep one party under constant police surveillance.
But Rep. Nicole Collier (D-Fort Worth) refused to sing along with Burrows’s rendition of “Someone To Watch Over Me,” because what the hell, is this now Viktor Orban’s version of America?
For her disobedience, Collier wasn’t allowed to leave the House floor (she was eventually “allowed” to also go to her office), and spent Monday night locked under the Pink Dome. It looks like she’ll be locked in there until the House comes back into session Wednesday.
For good measure, Republican House leadership also cleared and locked the gallery so reporters couldn’t speak to Collier directly, or take photos of her. They claimed this was because she’s entitled to “some amount of privacy.” State troopers also arrested several Democratic activists who were protesting Collier’s House arrest.
In a statement, Collier said,
“I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with police escorts. My constituents sent me to Austin to protect their voices and rights. When I press that button to vote, I know these maps will harm my constituents — I won’t just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination.”
We really have just one question: Why is Collier the only Democrat who refused to go along with the surveillance scheme? Every last one of them should have, instead of just rolling their eyes, giving in, and posting photos of their signed “permission slips” to social media. What happened to solidarity, you dopes?
Despite that kind gesture toward her privacy, Collier wasted no time after being locked up, holding online video interviews with any national and local news outlets who wanted to hear from her. She’s perfectly aware that “State Representative Locked In Capitol” makes for a pretty dramatic photo:
Collier said of the gerrymander, “In my heart right now, I’m not feeling it, considering that we’re about to lose two Black seats. […] I guess I’ll wait until Wednesday. The good thing is, I’ve been gone for two weeks, so I have luggage.”
For part of the evening, Rep. Ann Johnson (D-Houston) joined Collier while she sat at her desk on the empty House floor; Johnson signed the “permission slip,” but objected to a plainclothes officer following her home, because, again, is this America?
“I have more supervision on me as a political opposition than a felon on probation,” said Johnson. “This is not normal politics.”
US Rep. Jasmine Crockett had no difficulty at all smelling what the Texas Rs were stepping in:
Crockett followed that up with “Texas Republicans have lost their damn minds.”
While Texas Democrats are fully aware the GOP will ram through the gerrymander, they’re now using Collier’s bizarre detention to call attention again to the Republican power grab, both to rally Texas Democrats and independents, but also to warn other states not to let Republicans mess with them like Texas.
Dem Caucus Leader Gene Wu of Houston said in an interview with the Texas Tribune that now that other states have picked up the national fight on gerrymandering, “Our return allows us to build the legal record necessary to defeat this racist map in court,” especially after Texas House Republicans revised the map Saturday to steal six new seats, up from the original five Trump says he’s “entitled” to.
Other Democrats expressed hope that the sight of Republicans using semiautocratic weapons to rig elections might also generate backlash, and votes, before it’s too late. Rep. Ramon Romero (D-Fort Worth) said, “The fact that I have a police escort, a DPS escort, I think that’s going to be something that — Texas doesn’t want to see this.”
Republicans plan on Wednesday to vote on the new maps, and to wrap up the special session by Labor Day to please Great Leader. By that time we won’t be surprised if Democrats have all been stripped of their voting rights in the House, as a first step toward revoking the voter registrations of all non-Republican voters, with a ten-year ban on any canceled voter from re-registering even as “R.”
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[Texas Tribune / Houston Chronicle (archive link) / NYT]
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