AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott asked the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday to remove House Democratic Caucus chair Rep. Gene Wu of Houston.
The lawsuit filed by the governor’s office comes hours after Attorney General Ken Paxton made a similar threat Tuesday afternoon. However, Paxton said he wouldn’t ask courts if lawmakers can be removed until Friday afternoon – the next time the House is scheduled to convene.
Abbott asked the Supreme Court to rule by Thursday at 5 p.m.
Wu, who is in his first session as the House Democratic chair, is among the more than 50 Democrats who left the state on Sunday in an effort to stop the Texas House from passing a redistricting map that would shift five congressional districts in the GOP’s favor.
The Democrats left to protest a rare mid-decade redistricting effort that President Donald Trump desired to give Republicans a better chance at keeping control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections.
In the Tuesday afternoon email announcing the lawsuit, Abbott called Wu the “ringleader of the derelict Democrats.”
Wu said in an emailed statement that denying a quorum in the Texas House was “not an abandonment of my office; it was a fulfillment of my oath. Unable to defend his corrupt agenda on its merits, Greg Abbott now desperately seeks to silence my dissent by removing a duly-elected official from office.”
“History will judge this moment,” Wu said. “It will show a governor who used the law as a weapon to silence his people, and it will show those of us who stood for a higher principle.”
Abbott’s move marks another escalation in a bitter partisan fight that has ensued since Democrats left the state on Sunday to block a partisan gerrymander requested by Trump that could flip as many as five Texas seats in Congress from Democratic to Republican control.
House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, signed civil warrants Monday empowering state police to detain Democrats who left the state. Sen. John Cornyn sent a letter on Tuesday to FBI Director Kash Patel asking him to investigate House Democrats.
On Tuesday, Burrows adjourned the House until Friday at 9 a.m. after there were not enough lawmakers to establish a quorum for the second-straight day.
With Republicans holding a clear majority in the Texas House, Democrats had few options to prevent the map from passing the legislature. Dozens of Democrats flocked to Chicago, New York and Massachusetts to try and run out the clock on the special session.
Abbott said that the Democrats who have left have shown a willful refusal to return.
“Texas House Democrats abandoned their duty to Texans, and there must be consequences,” Abbott said in a statement.
In the lawsuit, the governor’s office says that “nothing less” than the future of Texas is at stake and adds that it would have consequences down the line.
“If representatives are free not to show up whenever they choose, then Texans simply do not have a representative government,” the petition said. “This Court should make clear that a legislator who does not wish to perform his duties will be stripped of them.”
On Tuesday evening, Paxton sent a letter to the Texas Supreme Court, writing that only the attorney general can file the type of petition Abbott submitted to the court.
Shortly after Abbott announced the filing, Democrats decried the move as undemocratic.
“We still have separation of powers. As much as Abbott wants to be a dictator, he’s just a governor,” Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, said.
Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, said in an interview shortly after Abbott announced the filing that the governor’s actions were consistent with his redistricting effort – that he is trying to move elected representatives, whether in Congress or the House, from office.
“To me, it is just Republicans telling on themselves,” Talarico said. “This was always the motive.”
House Democrats in Illinois have defended their action as a fight for dDemocracy and a stand against authoritarianism. They’ve beseeched governors in liberal states, including Illinois, New York and California to consider undertaking retaliatory gerrymanders of their own to counter any Republican gains in Texas.
In Austin, Republicans at the Capitol have said that Democrats are taking orders from Washington operatives and that they have put politics ahead of providing assistance to the victims of the Hill Country floods.
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