By Rita Cook
Correspondent
Texas Metro News
Texas’ new redistricting map
AUSTIN – Last week five Texas Republicans introduced Bill HR 128 “amending the House Rules of Procedure to authorize additional constitutionally compliant, proportional penalties for members absent without leave for purpose of impeding the action of the House that do not unfairly impair members’ representative functions.”
The bill was additionally co-authored by 58 additional lawmakers in the House.
A press release from the Texas House Democrats indicated the escalating penalties were put in place after the “Democrats’ principled stand against Trump’s corrupt gerrymander succeeds.”
However, keep in mind, those penalties, which were mentioned last week have not been passed yet other than by the Texas House Administration Committee with a 6 – 2 vote.
Either way, the Texas Democrats see the Texas Republican’s move in forwarding HR128 as a “vindictive resolution” to punish lawmakers who break quorum, therefore confirming “that House Democrats’ principled stand against Trump’s racist redistricting scheme achieved its objectives.”
Texas House of Representatives Minority Leader Rep. Gene Wu said, “Texans should be alarmed by a party that changes the rules whenever they lose.”
Democrats believe HR 128 creates a series of harsh penalties for future quorum breaks, including triple-sized daily fines, cuts to office budgets, removal from committee leadership positions, and even stripping members of their legislative seniority.
“When politicians change the rules of the game, it’s because they know they’re losing,” Wu said. “By breaking quorum, we exposed the corrupt deal between Trump and Abbott to rig Texas’ congressional maps and turned it into a national movement. We shined a light on their plan to silence millions of Black and Latino voters, revealing their scam for what it was. Now, with California making Texas’ gerrymander irrelevant, Texas Republicans — angry and on the defensive — are throwing a tantrum and rewriting the rules because our actions worked.”
Texas House Democrats have only broken quorum twice in recent history, both times to defend the constitutional rights of Texans from Republican power grabs.”
In fact, this is the second time in the past five years Democrats have left the state in order to prevent what they defined as discriminatory voting restrictions.
This past June, a group of Democrats left Texas in order to stop a vote during the Texas House’s first Special Session to stop a mid-decade redistricting situation that they believed was to “disenfranchise minority voters.”
And while HR 128 is still making the rounds, the Texas House did approve another law last week affecting lawmakers who break quorum in the future.
House Bill 18 would stop lawmakers from being able to raise and spend campaign money when they are out of Texas breaking quorum.
HB 18 bans state legislators who break quorums from accepting political donations exceeding their daily per diem of $221.
“Texas Republicans know these maps violate the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution, and that courts may well strike them down before the 2026 elections,” Wu concluded.
Rita Cook is a world traveler and writer/editor who specializes in writing on travel, auto, crime and politics. A correspondent for Texas Metro News, she has published 11 books and has also produced low-budget films.
