Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker accused Republicans of “grandstanding” Thursday after Texas GOP U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said the FBI granted his request that they assist Texas law enforcement in locating House Democrats who fled the southern state, many of them to west suburban St. Charles.
“The reality is that all that he has said, Cornyn, is that the FBI has been authorized to locate the Texas House Democrats, nothing more. And you know why? Because there is no federal law that allows them to arrest Texas Democrats who are here visiting the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said in Springfield after cutting the ribbon to open the Illinois State Fair.
“I welcome the FBI coming to the state,” the Illinois governor said. “I hope they take in the state fair. I hope they go see the beauty of Lake Michigan, the adventure awaits for all of them. But they won’t be arresting anyone.”
It was unclear what the FBI’s activities would entail since the Texas lawmakers have not been charged with state- or federal-level criminal activity. They are facing civil warrants for leaving the state, but they are unenforceable outside of Texas.
As for locating the Texas lawmakers, the bulk of them were staying at the same hotel in far west suburban St. Charles, where they went after arriving at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Sunday night. Their hotel was the subject of a bomb threat Wednesday that caused them to be evacuated during a search that turned up nothing. There were no reports of FBI activity in or around the hotel Thursday.
Still, the decision by FBI Director Kash Patel and the Trump administration represents the latest escalation in what has become a national battle between Republicans and Democrats after Texas House Democrats left the state Sunday to deny Republicans a quorum to approve a new mid-decade redistricting plan that would flip five Democratic congressional seats to the GOP.
The new Texas congressional map, encouraged by Trump, is aimed at helping ensure Republicans maintain their narrow U.S. House majority in next year’s midterm elections and during the president’s final term. It also has prompted Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Kathy Hochul of New York to consider counter-efforts to redraw their state’s congressional boundaries to flip GOP seats to Democrats.
The FBI’s involvement at Cornyn’s request also represents a further politicization of the redistricting issue for Texas and national Republicans.
Cornyn, a four-term senator from San Antonio, has sought to ingratiate himself with the Trump administration to win the president’s endorsement in his Texas GOP primary race against the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton. Paxton, also courting Trump’s backing, has vowed to ask local courts in the absent House members’ districts on Friday to declare their seats abandoned so Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott can name replacements.
“I am proud to announce that (FBI) Director Kash Patel has approved my request for the FBI to assist state and local law enforcement in locating runaway Texas House Democrats,” Cornyn said in a statement.
“I thank President Trump and Director Patel for supporting and swiftly acting on my call for the federal government to hold these supposed lawmakers accountable for fleeing Texas. We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” he said.
One of the Texas lawmakers who has stayed in St. Charles, Texas state Rep. John Bucy, called Cornyn “a weak man that’s about to lose his primary and he’s trying to play tough.”
“It’s sad that he would sink his reputation down to do this,” Bucy said of Cornyn. “This is America. What they’re doing are tactics that we’ve seen in authoritarian states. It’s disgusting that they would try to use any legal force, especially the FBI, to come try to lock us up or take us back because we have political disagreements. That’s not what America stands for. And I think the people know that and they’re resisting John Cornyn and Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton, and their rhetoric.”
On Thursday, Pritzker vowed to protect the Texans while they were in Illinois and called the move to get the FBI involved “a lot of grandstanding by the Trump administration, by John Cornyn (and) by Gov. Abbott.” Pritzker said Republicans started the affair and accused the GOP of attempting to “thwart democracy” by seeking to redraw maps in the middle of the decade rather than every 10 years after the federal census is conducted.
“We’re going to do everything we can to protect these Texas House Democrats and to help them do what they’re doing,” Pritzker said, again referring to the Texas lawmakers as “heroes” for what “they’ve given up for all of us” by leaving their homes.
Pritzker also referred to Abbott as a “lapdog” for Trump, belittling Abbott for focusing on the remap issue rather than the purpose for which he called Texas lawmakers into special session — providing relief from the July Fourth flooding in the state’s Hill Country that killed more than 130 people.
“It’s too bad that he doesn’t know what his job is, that he doesn’t carry out his job, which is to take care of the people of Texas, and, frankly, to work with the rest of the states in getting the job done of whether it’s immigration reform, which he should have worked on with all of us, or caring for democracy, by making sure that there isn’t a remap,” Pritzker said of Abbott.
The Trump-inspired redistricting effort isn’t just in Texas. In neighboring Indiana on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance met in Indianapolis with top Indiana Republicans to encourage them to redraw congressional boundaries.
Gov. Mike Braun said the meeting with Vance and GOP legislative leaders “covered a wide array of topics,” including redistricting. But he was noncommittal on the state moving forward with a new map. Asked if any agreement had been reached, Braun said, “We listened.”
Republicans hold a 7-2 majority over Democrats in Indiana. If Hoosier Republicans moved forward, the most likely target for a seat to flip would be U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan’s in northwest Indiana. Mrvan joined protesters at the Indiana statehouse and said Republicans were “afraid of checks and balances.”
Meanwhile, the Florida state House speaker, Daniel Perez, said his Republican-led chamber will take up redistricting this fall through a special committee.
Though Pritzker has said “everything is on the table” in Illinois to counter the Republican redistricting plans in Texas and elsewhere, he said Illinois Democrats are not working on a new congressional map to replace the state’s already heavily politically gerrymandered boundaries to try to wring out at least one additional Democratic district at the expense of Republicans.
The 2021 Illinois redistricting map approved by Democrats and signed by Pritzker created a 14-3 Democratic majority in the state’s congressional delegation, boosting their majority while reducing Republicans from the 13-5 split in the previous decade map when Illinois had 18 U.S. House seats.
“Nobody’s done any work on a map for Illinois. We have a map in Illinois. It was passed and signed back in 2021. That’s when they’re done, right after a decennial census, and that’s when they should be done — not in the middle of a decade just because Donald Trump wants to change the math for 2026,” Pritzker said. “We’re not making any moves right now. If we have to, we’re going to look at all the options that are available to us.”
Later, he told reporters he would only make a move to call a special session on redistricting in consultation with Democratic House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch and Senate President Don Harmon.
“On that subject, it’s important that we have some agreement about doing something like that,” Pritzker said. “But I don’t anticipate we’re going to have to do that. I really hope that the Texas House Democrats are going to be successful at thwarting this attack on democracy coming from Texas.”
In response to Patel’s decision to engage the FBI on the matter, the leader of the Democratic minority in the U.S. House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, used social media to ask, “Shouldn’t the FBI be tracking down terrorists, drug traffickers and child predators?”
“The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,” he wrote on the social media platform X. “These extremists don’t give a damn about public safety.”
He added, “We will not be intimidated.”
Bucy would not discuss what security measures are currently in place for him and his fellow Democratic lawmakers, saying only that “we’re going to leave that up to the authorities and people in charge to make those decisions.” But he said he and his colleagues are undeterred.
“These guys are playing political games and we are fighting for the future of America’s democracy,” said Bucy, whose district is based in the Texas state capital of Austin area.
In a statement Thursday, state Rep. Ann Johnson, who represents the Houston area, said she “will not be intimidated into silence by politicians who are trying to rig our democracy to cling to power.”
“If standing in the way of authoritarianism makes me a target, so be it,” she said. “I’d rather be chased for doing what’s right than complicit in what’s wrong.”
Gorner reported from Springfield.
