Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives said they’re leaving the state on Sunday, in what would amount to a last-ditch attempt to stop Republicans from adopting an aggressively redrawn congressional map. Their absence would prevent the House from reaching the quorum needed to hold a vote this week.
The move to walk out was a sharp escalation in the bitter partisan clash over a mid-decade redistricting in Texas that was requested by President Trump. Republicans in the State Legislature were rapidly moving forward, with the map — drawn to flip five Democratic congressional districts to favor Republicans — being passed out of two committees over the weekend.
A floor debate on the map, and a potential vote of the full House, was scheduled for Monday.
The ultimate outcome would be far from certain: a walkout by the Democrats could delay action in the Legislature for several weeks or more, but comparable past attempts to block Republican legislation and redistricting in Texas have eventually failed.
It was not clear if they were still in Texas on Sunday afternoon or had already left.
Most of the Democratic lawmakers who took part were aiming to head to Chicago. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois has been weighing whether his state would respond to the move in Texas by redrawing its own congressional map in the Democrats’ favor.
The Texas Democrats planned to hold a news conference with Mr. Pritzker at 7:15 p.m. Central time at a local Democratic Party office near the city.
A smaller group of Texas Democrats were planning to go to New York, where they were expected to meet this week with Gov. Kathy Hochul. She has also been looking for ways that her state could respond to the Republican move.
A handful of Democratic lawmakers were also looking to depart from Texas to Boston, for a meeting of the National Conference of State Legislators this week.
“We’re leaving Texas to fight for Texans,” Gene Wu, a state representative from Houston and the chair of the Democratic caucus in the Texas House, said in a statement Sunday. ”We’re walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent.”
Mr. Wu faulted Mr. Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas for pushing the redistricting forward in a special legislative session before lawmakers had taken action on a response to the deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country. Mr. Wu, who was set to travel to Illinois, suggested that the planned walkout could last through the rest of the 30-day special session, which was scheduled to end in late August, and possibly beyond.
“As of today, this corrupt special session is over,” he said.
The move to prevent a quorum had the support of national Democratic groups and required coordination among nearly all of the Democrats in the Texas House. For the House to conduct business, at least two-thirds of its 150 members must be present. There are 62 Democrats in the House, and at least 51 of them would have to take part for the walkout to be effective.
Texas Republican lawmakers could try to compel the Democratic members to return by issuing civil arrest warrants for violating the rules of the Texas House, as they did during a previous walkout, or by withholding pay from the members and their staffs. Even before the walkout, the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, said he would work with “local, state and federal authorities” to bring back any absent members.
Texas Democrats have been discussing the possibility of preventing a quorum ever since Mr. Abbott, a Republican, added redistricting to the agenda for the special session that began July 21.
Some Democratic members appeared to be apprehensive about attempting a walkout because the Republican majority in the House adopted new rules that impose a fine of $500 for each day a member is absent without permission.
Even so, national Democrats, including the Democratic National Committee, urged Texas Democrats to use whatever tactics were at their disposal. The fines could potentially be challenged in court, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Discussions about Texas Democrats traveling to Illinois have been going on since at least late June, when party officials in Texas began speaking with Mr. Pritzker and his staff.
A group of Texas Democrats flew to Chicago last month, met with Mr. Pritzker and were reassured that the governor and his team would support them if they chose to go to Illinois, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Mr. Pritzker’s staff has been providing logistical support, including determining where the lawmakers could stay and offering office resources, the person said.
Though Illinois has offered a safe haven, some Texas Democratic members expressed concern that Mr. Trump would try to use federal agents to round up the legislators and bring them back to Texas if they left. It was not immediately clear whether there would be a legal basis for doing so, since the lawmakers would be violating state legislative rules and not federal law.
One person familiar with the planning said that the Texas lawmakers decided not to go to Washington, D.C. — as they had during a walkout in 2021 — because of federal jurisdiction in the capital.
Previous walkouts by Texas Democrats against the solid Republican majority in the Texas Legislature have also been mounted in what they said was a defense of voting rights. Many of the members who were leaving the state on Sunday had done so before.
“Our democracy is being stolen right in front of our faces,” said Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, who helped lead the action in 2021. “If it takes Texas Democrats to walk out and wake up the nation, that’s what we’re going to do. Democrats need to start acting like Democrats and fight back.”
In 2021, Texas Democrats walked out hoping to block legislation on voting that they said would diminish representation for Black and Hispanic voters across the state. In response, the Republican speaker of the Texas House issued civil arrest warrants for the absent members to force them to return, and the Texas Supreme Court upheld their validity, concluding that the Legislature had the authority to “physically compel the attendance of absent members to achieve a quorum.”
None of the members actually were arrested in 2021. But after nearly five weeks’ absence, three Democrats broke ranks and returned to the State Capitol in Austin, allowing the House to achieve a quorum and pass the legislation in a new special session called by Mr. Abbott. The Legislature also adopted new district maps after the Democrats returned.
“Texas Dems pulled the same stunt in 2021 because of my election integrity bill,” said State Senator Bryan Hughes, an East Texas Republican, of the planned walkout on Sunday. “We still got it passed and we’ll do it again with redistricting.”
The first major showdown in Texas over redistricting came in 2003 when Republicans in Washington, led by Representative Tom DeLay, the U.S. House majority leader, pushed for a mid-decade redistricting. At the time, Democrats still held a majority of the seats in the Texas congressional delegation, even though Republicans had begun to dominate in statewide races.
Texas Republicans, who had achieved majorities in both houses of the Legislature for the first time, introduced new maps intended to flip many of the Democratic-held seats.
The fight over the new maps was bruising. Democratic lawmakers left, first from the Texas House, to try to halt progress there. Then, in a special session, Democrats in the Texas Senate staged their own walkout and hid out in New Mexico for more than five weeks.
The effort ended when John Whitmire, then a state senator, returned to Austin. The new maps were adopted soon afterward, and Republicans succeeded in gaining a majority of the state’s seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 election, an advantage they have retained ever since.
Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from New York.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
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