The Blast - August 8, 2025

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The Blast | Texas Tribune
August 08, 2025

By Renzo Downey and The Texas Tribune Politics Team

11 days until sine die
92 days until the candidate filing period begins
122 days until the candidate filing deadline

IN TODAY’S BLAST

  • The latest on the quorum break

  • The road to 100

  • House “RINO” censure effort ramps up this weekend

  • Phil King: DOJ letter “confused” redistricting

  • Where redistricting could spread next

THE LATEST ON THE QUORUM BREAK

Attorney General Ken Paxton and House Speaker Dustin Burrows are all escalating efforts to round up the runaway Democrats as the Texas House quorum break ends Day 5.

Yesterday, Paxton and Burrows asked an Illinois court to enforce Texas’ arrest warrants against Democrats. On the floor today, Burrows said he expects more suits in other states, and he outlined the growing list of penalties for absent Democrats:

  • Absent members will have to pick up their $221 per diem in person

  • 30% of their $21,250 monthly office budgets will be withheld

  • Travel reimbursement, staff salary changes and newsletter approvals must be in person

That’s on top of the $500 daily fine that members have been accruing.

“Each one of you knows that eventually you will come back and we will pass the priorities of the special session on the call,” Burrows said from the dais, “but with each passing day, the political cost of your absence is rising, and it will be paid in full.”

By going after members’ budgets and limiting their cashflow, House Republicans hope to coax Democrats back because their staffers are taking the brunt of the hit.

Meanwhile, Paxton is doubling down on the lawsuit approach, asking the Texas Supreme Court to expel 13 House Democrats. That came after Gov. Greg Abbott sued on Wednesday to oust House Democratic Leader Gene Wu and Paxton wrote to say Abbott didn’t have that authority.

Wu asked the court to dismiss Abbott’s petition this afternoon.

After Paxton sued the 13 Democrats, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn filed a brief with SCOTX supporting Abbott’s version of the lawsuit. And yesterday, Cornyn said FBI Director Kash Patel agreed to help locate the missing Democrats.

Additionally, a Tarrant County district court has placed a temporary restraining order on former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke after Paxton sued to stop his “Beto bribes” to absent Democrats.

THE ROAD TO 100

Today, 95 were in the House chamber, a net loss of one in the search for 100 members. Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, showed up, but Reps. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, and Eddie Morales, D-Eagle Pass, were absent this time.

Rep. Claudia Ordaz, D-El Paso, posted on social media that she is in the hospital and that she has made that clear from the beginning. But today, she said, Department of Public Safety troopers showed up at a family member’s home, searching for her.

“Harassing my family, spreading lies, and dragging my name into political games is beyond unacceptable — it is a deliberate abuse of power and an intimidation tactic,” she said in a statement. “I do not appreciate any of it, and neither side is helping the cause.”

Now, 43 Democrats are accounted for as definitively out of state. It takes 100 present to make quorum, so Democrats need 51 absences to maintain the quorum break.

Burrows is asking members to stay within six hours of Austin this weekend but to come back for sure on Monday.

As Democrats track their quorum math, if it looks like the House may finally have a quorum, absconded members may start returning to Austin to be ready if the House gets back to work.

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HOUSE “RINO” CENSURE EFFORT RAMPS UP THIS WEEKEND

A different type of House member removal effort will kick into high gear tomorrow when a Texas GOP panel presents its outline for censurable offenses by Republican lawmakers. From there, it will be a two-month sprint to keep Dustin Burrows’ supporters off the 2026 GOP primary ballot.

In June, Texas GOP Chair Abraham George appointed 13 members of the State Republican Executive Committee to a Legislative Review Task Force. The group has been combing through House journals, town hall speeches and actions related to leadership and rules votes in the lower chamber, all to draft a list of grievances for county parties to cite when they censure House incumbents in the coming weeks.

Longstanding intraparty tensions exploded into a three-way civil war in 2023 after the Texas House impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton and failed to pass school vouchers. In total, 15 Republican House members lost in the primaries, nine retired and House Speaker Dade Phelan gave up the gavel. Still, enough GOP members backed Burrows and the old leadership regime to elect the Lubbock Republican speaker, forming a coalition of 49 Democrats and 36 “RINO” Republicans, as labeled by conservative activists.

The SREC task force meeting, scheduled for tomorrow morning in the Capitol auditorium, comes at a moment of unity for the Texas House Republican Caucus, which stands behind Burrows and the effort to bring Democrats back to Austin. Still, it doesn’t look like party leaders are pumping the brakes.

Beginning tomorrow, the censure fight will accelerate through the candidate filing deadline.

County party executive committees will have until Sept. 6 to submit censures against incumbents. The SREC will then hold a marathon special meeting in Austin on Oct. 11 to consider each censure.

Under a rule adopted at the Texas GOP Convention in 2024, a county executive committee may vote to censure an official for violating the party’s list of core principles. If the SREC approves the censure, it could then permit the county party to bar the censured official from the primary ballot for the next two years. 

Incumbents have vowed to challenge the untested rule, and legal experts question the legality of the rule.

There are also a few built-in deadlines party activists will have to overcome.

The county parties must give members at least seven days’ heads up before censuring them. Additionally, the SREC must give members at least 14 days’ notice before it votes. That makes the calendar of events look something like this:

  • Aug. 9: Task force report considered

  • Aug. 30: Deadline for CECs to notify officials of incoming censures

  • Sept. 6: Deadline for CECs to submit censures to the SREC

  • Sept. 28: Deadline for the SREC to notify officials of censure votes

  • Oct. 11: SREC special meeting

  • Nov. 8: The start of the candidate filing period

  • Dec. 8: The end of the candidate filing period

It’s a quick turnaround at each step, so state party officials have been encouraging county parties to line up their censure resolutions and meetings ahead of time.

For example, the Navarro County GOP has scheduled a meeting for Aug. 21 to consider a censure against state Rep. Cody Harris of Palestine. Harris was previously censured by the Henderson County GOP with a resolution that had too many factual errors to count.

Like the Lubbock County GOP, which stands behind Burrows, not every county party is on board with censuring their representatives. Some believe the Republican Party of Texas’ rule 44 is illegal.

“I don’t want to go against my RPT, but if they’re going to do that, I’m going to follow the law,” one party chair told The Blast.

The Texas GOP has invited state lawmakers to attend tomorrow’s meeting. Members have to stay around Austin, anyway. Do they have anything better to do?

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PHIL KING: DOJ LETTER “CONFUSED” REDISTRICTING

A letter from Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon to Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spurred Texas’ redistricting effort to life on the basis that four districts are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Since then, Republican state lawmakers have had to fend off assertions from Democrats that the proposed map was drawn based on race.

When Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, presented the map last week, he repeatedly said the maps were based on political performance. When Senate redistricting committee Chair Phil King, R-Weatherford, laid out the map yesterday, he told the panel he talked about the DOJ letter with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

“I think in discussing it with him I’ve mentioned that the DOJ letter, I thought, unnecessarily confused the redistricting process,” King said.

House and Senate Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to get the redistricting committees to subpoena Dhillon. King and Hunter have insisted that the DOJ letter had no bearing on the decision to redistrict, that they’re redrawing the maps because Abbott requested the Legislature look at it this special session.

King has gone so far as to say he thinks Dhillon’s analysis is wrong.

Yet, Dhillon, the DOJ’s top attorney for civil rights, claimed responsibility in an interview with Newsmax this week.

“We, actually, in the civil rights division kicked that whole thing off,” Dhillon said. “Four of those districts run afoul of the law, and we told the state of Texas a few weeks ago … “You need to fix this problem because your districts are unconstitutional.’ That’s what’s happening now.”

“That’s actually mandated by DOJ policy and by the courts,” she continued. “It’s not something that Texas is making up for purposes of trying to get partisan advantage. They have to do this, and there are other states like that, too.”

WHERE REDISTRICTING COULD SPREAD NEXT

Here’s the growing list of states to watch as the redistricting arms race begins.

Blue states:

  • California — 43-9 delegation, Cook Partisan Voting Index D+12

  • Illinois — 14-3 delegation, PVI D+6

  • Maryland — 7-1 delegation, PVI D+15

  • New Jersey — 9-3 delegation, PVI D+4

  • New York — 19-7 delegation, PVI D+8

Red states:

  • Florida — 20-8 delegation, PVI R+5

  • Indiana — 7-2 delegation, PVI R+9

  • Missouri — 6-2 delegation, PVI R+9

  • Nebraska — 3-0 delegation, PVI R+10

  • Ohio — 10-5 delegation, PVI R+5

  • South Carolina — 6-1 delegation, PVI R+8

Ohio is required to redistrict before 2026.

Public radio and television have informed, educated and entertained Texans for decades. But recent cuts in federal funding could endanger some of that work.

On Aug. 26, we’ll talk with three public media leaders about the services they provide, the impact of the cuts and where their stations will go from here.

Confirmed speakers include:

  • Corrie MacLaggan, executive editor of KUT News and The Texas Newsroom

  • Luis Patiño, president and CEO of Austin PBS

Additional speakers will be confirmed soon.

Doors open at Studio 919 at 8:30 a.m. and the one-hour conversation begins at 9 a.m.

Next week:

  • The House Natural Resources Committee will meet at 1 p.m. on Monday, or when the House completes its business.

  • The House State Affairs Committee will meet at 10 a.m. on Monday to consider and hear public testimony on the following:

    • SB 6 — abortion pill ban

    • SB 10 — creating a duress defense for victims of human trafficking

    • SB 16 — the judicial omnibus bill

View the full list of upcoming committee notices here and here.

The House will convene at 1 p.m. on Monday.
The Senate will convene at 4 p.m. on Monday.

  • Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, was a little upset when redistricting committee Chair Phil King, R-Weatherford, and Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, stressed the point that the Massachusetts delegation is entirely Democrat: “Dammit, this is Texas. We’re Texans. I really don’t give a shit what goes on in any other community — any other state.”

  • TX-18: EMILYs List endorsed former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards in the special election to succeed the late U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Sylvester Turner. Most Texas Democratic heavyweights have endorsed former Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, including Jackson Lee’s daughter, former U.S. Rep. Erica Lee Carter.

  • Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke will rally in Fort Worth tomorrow against the mid-decade redistricting.

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(Aug. 8) State Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-University Park

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