Texas Democrats, who had left the state to halt an aggressive redistricting, were expected to return to Texas and end their two-week walkout on Monday, paving the way for Republicans to pass a redrawn congressional map called for by President Trump.
For the past two weeks, Republican leaders in Texas bristled at the Democrats’ flight and took extraordinary steps to pressure them to return. Gov. Greg Abbott and the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, sued to try to remove the absent Democrats from office. Senator John Cornyn got the F.B.I. involved in locating them. The State House speaker, Dustin Burrows, issued civil arrest warrants and threatened to impose $500 daily fines under House rules.
But in the end, Democrats said they had decided to return only after they had denied a vote during a first special legislative session, a move that drew national attention to Mr. Trump’s push for a rare mid-decade redistricting and helped propel Democratic states to begin their own redistricting efforts.
On Monday, California state lawmakers were expected to move forward on a measure to redraw the state’s congressional map to favor Democrats and counteract the changes in Texas, a move championed by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.
The standoff among Texas lawmakers began on Aug. 3, when dozens of Democratic state representatives boarded a charter plane to Chicago. And it was expected to end in much the same way, with a large group of Democrats flying together back to Austin.
At least 100 of the 150 members of the Texas House must be present to have a quorum of lawmakers, and in recent days, there have been around 96. On Monday, the House is scheduled to gavel in at 12 p.m. Central time, and it was not immediately clear how many of the Democratic lawmakers would be at the Capitol by then.
Some Democratic lawmakers came back to Texas on their own on Sunday, some said privately that they would not immediately return to the floor, and others vowed to remain out of state even if many of their colleagues returned.
“I’m not coming back,” said Representative Jolanda Jones, a Democrat from Houston. “The only power we have is the power to deny them a quorum,” she added. “Who goes to a fight where you’ve already lost?”
But only a handful of the more than 50 Democrats who took part in the walkout would need to be present for the House to move forward with a vote on the map. (Several of the 62 Democrats in the House did not participate in the walkout.)
“I have been told, and I expect, that we will re-establish quorum on Monday,” Mr. Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, said on Friday.
The walkout did not change the raw political dynamics in Republican-dominated Texas, and Democrats remained in the situation they were in before they left: powerless to permanently stop the new map from being adopted. When that happens, as expected, they have vowed to challenge its legality.
The proposed map, which could be passed quickly this week, was designed to help Republicans keep control of the U.S. House by redrawing five districts to swing from Democratic to Republican control in 2026. Republicans said in public hearings that their goals were partisan; Democrats argued that the new map would illegally disempower Black and Hispanic voting populations, in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Since the start of the Democratic walkout, the fight over Texas’ redistricting has expanded into a bare-knuckled national political brawl between red and blue states. Not only is California moving forward with its attempt to counteract Texas’ map, but several Republican states — including Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio — have been weighing a redistricting of their own.
The extraordinary interstate fight over congressional lines — a process that usually occurs only once a decade, after the U.S. census — erupted suddenly in the spring, at the urging of Mr. Trump and his political aides. They were concerned that Republicans would lose control of the U.S. House in the 2026 midterms, and began lobbying Texas and other Republican states to remake districts to their advantage.
Texas was the first to act. Mr. Abbott put redistricting on the agenda for a special session of the Legislature that he had called, which was also set to address measures responding to last month’s devastating Hill Country floods.
His justification was a letter from the Justice Department that argued some Democratic districts had to be redrawn because of a recent court decision. Some legal scholars disagreed with the reasoning, but Mr. Abbott and Republican lawmakers moved rapidly to hold hearings on redistricting, delaying any action on flooding until after a vote could be held on a redrawn map.
The map was introduced on July 30 and passed committees in the Texas House two days later. Without the numbers to stop the map’s final passage, dozens of Democratic representatives left the state. Most ended up at hotels outside Chicago.
By going to Illinois, where the governor, JB Pritzker, promised refuge, the Texas Democrats temporarily denied Republicans the minimum number of legislators needed to hold a vote, and avoided being compelled to return by Texas law enforcement.
Republican leaders in Texas ratcheted up the pressure on the absent lawmakers, with Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Paxton, who are rivals in a U.S. Senate race, seemingly competing over who could be tougher. Yet none of their efforts led directly to the return of the Democrats.
Instead, the Democratic lawmakers decided to return after the first special session ended on Friday. For many, the goal had been to hold together through the end of the first session, to attract attention and to give other states like California time to start their own processes of redistricting.
But there were also fissures among the Democratic lawmakers, with some arguing for a much longer walkout and others countering that they could not stay away forever.
Ms. Jones said she had been prepared to stay away for weeks or even months longer to prevent the redistricting, which would affect her district in Houston. She is also a candidate in a special election in the 18th congressional district in November.
“Even if California and New York redistrict and successfully get rid of Republicans, that doesn’t help my district,” Ms. Jones said. “We will lose one Black seat in Houston and one Black seat in Dallas. That’s unacceptable.”
Mr. Abbott had promised to repeatedly call for more special sessions until the map passed, and he followed through on Friday, announcing a second special session just minutes after the first one ended.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
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