The state lawmakers are searching for suits and hoping any of it will matter.
On their first morning in Washington, almost all the Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives walked up Capitol Hill just before 10 a.m. Some had arrived in D.C. on Monday evening; others were fresh off the plane. As the members passed a small crowd of reporters and Texan Hill staffers, Rep. Ramon Romero of Fort Worth raised his hand in a fist. They’d come to D.C. to take the last (and most dramatic) action available to them to stop their home state of Texas from passing sweeping restrictions on voting rights. The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature is ready to pass the bill, so more than 50 Democrats in the Texas House fled to D.C. to withhold the quorum required to pass a bill. They must stay out of the state for the rest of the 30-day special legislative session called by Gov. Greg Abbott. Their plan for their first day included a short press conference, then lobbying senators and members of Congress to pass federal voting rights legislation that would supersede what the Republicans in the Texas Legislature are trying to pass. Before the Democrats could get to their first meetings on the Hill, their Republican colleagues in Austin voted to authorize warrants for their arrest. “I was lightheaded yesterday, and before I even went to bed, I was thinking, you know, this is a lot that we’re risking,” said first-term Rep. Claudia Ordaz Perez, who wore cowboy boots embossed with her name and the seal of El Paso. “So I’m putting it in perspective, and I do my prayers every night, and I just recognize how important this is.” Rep. Rhetta Bowers of Dallas said she’d been thinking of her children, both of whom are now registered voters. “If this isn’t standing up and working hard for your constituents, I don’t know what is,” she said. “To make a sacrifice like this, with uncertainty, and have to truly walk by faith and not by sight, to just truly put your heart out there and say we won’t stand for this.
