'Just a waiting game': AG Paxton tells Glenn Beck what fate awaits absentee Texas Democrats

Texas House Democrats fled to Illinois and other blue states on Sunday in an effort to thwart the people's will and to block the passage of a redistricting plan that would help the GOP gain five more congressional pickup opportunities ahead of the midterm elections.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) gave the "derelict Democrat House members" an ultimatum: Return to Texas and show up at work by 3:00 p.m. on Monday or face possible removal.

The absentee legislators, evidently keen to test their luck, refused to show up.

Attorney General Ken Paxton told Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on Tuesday that the Texas Democrats are playing a "waiting game" that they will ultimately lose.

"I honestly would have locked them up when they were in the House. [The] Texas House speaker could have shut the doors and kept everybody in," said Paxton. "We did that back in 2003, and once the doors are locked, you can't get out, and you can spend the night there, and you vote."

Paxton noted that by failing to lock the lawmakers in for the vote on the redistricting plan, "they've let the cat out of the bag. The cat's gone. So now you need to arrest them, which you're not going to get help from jurisdictions like Illinois, Boston, or New York."

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 Texas House Democrats abandoning their posts on Sunday. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

After Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) announced Monday afternoon that a "quorum is not present," the Texas House passed a motion to issue arrest warrants for the Democrats who abandoned their posts.

Abbott subsequently announced that he had ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to "locate, arrest, and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans."

Paxton suggested that while it is unlikely the absentee legislators will be arrested out of state, they'll inevitably "have to come back. They have jobs; they have families. They're not going to live in Illinois. It's cold up there. And New York's cold. Boston's cold. So they come back and we vote."

'Governor Abbott is not going to back down.'

While some Texas Democrats could face felony charges for allegedly soliciting funds to break quorum and evade the associated $500-per-day fine — Abbott ordered the Texas Rangers to investigate the delinquent Democrats for "potential" violations of Texas law, including bribery — the civil arrests awaiting the absentee legislators will not lead to jail time.

"It's not a prison sentence," Paxton told Beck. "I mean, unless you consider being on the Texas House floor, which I often did, a prison sentence. But the doors are shut, and you're stuck with all those people."

Beck pressed Paxton about the governor's threat of removal, whereby a district court could apparently determine that a legislator has forfeited office due to abandonment, then remove the legislator from office, thereby creating a vacancy.

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 Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

The Texas attorney general, whose 2021 opinion was the cited basis of Abbott's plan, noted that removals would change the threshold of present bodies necessary for a quorum, possibly speeding things along, and that Abbott might be able to appoint replacements for the removed legislators, "at least until there's a special election."

As with the arrests, the removal plan does not appear to be a particularly swift remedy.

"It's definitely not a fast process, although we're trying to figure out a way to fast-track it so that we can get an answer sooner rather than later," said Paxton. "Otherwise, it's just a waiting game."

"In the end, we know how it's going to turn out," added Paxton, "because Governor Abbott is not going to back down, and he'll just keep calling them back until they show up."