Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is rolling out the red carpet for Democratic state lawmakers who fled Texas as they push back against a move by President Donald Trump to add five Republican-controlled congressional seats in their state.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that they’re welcome here, that they have the ability to stay as long as they need to and want to,” Pritzker, a Democrat, said on Sunday evening as the lawmakers arrived in Illinois.
The lawmakers fled Texas in order to prevent the quorum needed in the Republican-dominated state legislature to vote on Monday on the new redistricting maps, which passed a committee vote this past weekend along party lines.
The redistricting push in Texas is part of a broader effort by the GOP across the country to keep control of the House and cushion losses elsewhere in the country, as the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats in midterm elections.
But veteran Republican strategist Matt Whitlock argued that the decision by most of the Democratic lawmakers to head to Illinois – with a few others decamping in two other blue states, New York and Massachusetts – was “cartoonishly dumb.”
Tom Bevan, the RealClearPolitics co-founder and president, wrote on X, “The idea that Texas Democrats would flee to Illinois, a state where Dems have abused gerrymandering to comical levels, is perfection.”
“To protest ‘partisan gerrymandering’ Texas Democrats are fleeing to…Illinois,” Republican Missouri Senator Eric Scmitt wrote on X. “You can’t make this up.”
Hellbound and Down 