Hello, and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip cast for August fifth, twenty twenty five.

I'm Matthew Watkins, editor in chief of the Tribune, back from my sojourn on the Gulf Coast.

I am joined as usual by Lawn politics reporter Eleanor Klebanoff.

Hello, Eleanor, anything that I miss anything?

I didn't miss any news.

The thing has happened.

We had nothing to talk about this week.

Yeah, you know, we really really had to scramble to come up at the topic.

Yes, of course, since you last heard Eleanor's voice, Texas Republicans released their proposed map for redrawn congressional districts in the state, aiming to give their party five new seats.

The seats were scheduled for a floor vote in the House on Monday, but before that could happen, more than fifty Democrats fled the state, denying the House the quorum necessary to pass the bill.

This, of course, has caused outrage from Republicans excitement among Democrats.

House Speaker Dustin Burroughs signed arrest warrants for the members.

Governor Greg Abbott has threatened to expel them from office and ordered investigations as to whether they're committing a felony bribery.

But for now, at least, how the work of the House has ground to a halt.

With fourteen days left in the special session, we are joined today by one of those Democrats who left the state, state Representative Gina Hinehjosa, a Democrat from Austin.

Welcome, Representative.

Thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So where are you right now?

Tell us tell us your location.

I don't know if I can do that.

I'm at this undisclosed location outside the starry I'm right, I'm right outside of Chicago, in a suburb of Chicago.

Okay, excellent.

I just, you know, wanted to make sure clear that you weren't in the newsroom with us.

We don't want any detests showing up at our doors.

Very good, but thank you for joining us.

It has been a very eventful few days week, or even more really in Texas politics.

I wanted to just start by sort of asking you, just big picture, tell us why you made the decision to leave the state.

It was an obvious decision for me.

I heard such concern, such alarm from constituents about these Trump maps.

I will say I had originally heard about this plan on Sinnee Die.

I had heard rumors of it.

I didn't know about the five seats, and I didn't know that they would try to attain the five Republican seats by breaking up latinal district in black districts.

Right.

But when I first heard the plan, I thought, well, this is troubling and started to worry, start to talk to people and trying.

I tried to prepare people for this potentially coming.

But once we saw the maps and saw what they did to Austin, what they did just to Texans, it was clear to me and to enough of us that the best plan of attack would be to leave the state, to break korum and deny them the numbers they need to.

Pass the bill.

Let's talk briefly about those maps, right, because last time this podcast recorded, they had not been released.

I understand, tell us just from your perspective, representative, what was it that what it was about that map that you know a firm for y'all that yes, we need to leave in order to stop this.

This is you know, really the nuclear option.

Right.

That's the biggest step y'all could take to block legislation.

Right, Breaking corn is an extraordinary Act that we use just for the most egregious bills, and let me say there are plenty of egregious bills in our eyes that come through the Texas Legislature.

We haven't done this since twenty twenty one.

When we did it in twenty one, it was a big deal.

It hadn't been done for years before that.

So this is not something that we take lightly.

It.

First of all, is hard for individual members to leave their lives, leave their families, leave their jobs to do this.

So the maps, though, let me give you an example of Austin, where I represent.

We have two congressional districts in Austin, and the Trump maps eliminate the Latinal Opportunity district in Austin that currently has a Latino representing that district, and then takes a big chunk of downtown Austin, which is in the Texas House district that I represent, and connects it to a Republican East Texas district that goes all the way to Polk County over two hundred miles away, gutting really the political voice in Congress of downtown Austin and really effectively gutting the voice of the Latino community and their ability to select the representative of their choosing in Congress.

That's just Austin, right Houston.

If you look at Houston, that is where you have the largest number of Latinos of any other place in Texas is in Houston.

They have eliminated the Latino opportunity seat there as well, and so if these Trump maps pass, there will no longer be a Latino seat in Houston, which is outrageous.

So those are just two examples.

I heard from Deuli Johnson last night about how her congressional district is cut into seven districts.

The list goes on and on.

So once people saw what.

We saw, the specific damage done to our constituents and their political power, it was easy for me and for the rest of us to choose this course of action.

I mean, I think, like, you know, your Republican colleagues would say, you know, we drew these maps in twenty twenty one, you know, pretty cautiously to protect our incumbents.

We had this blowout election in twenty twenty four.

For Republicans, we're going to redraw these maps.

It is purely partisan.

It's sort of the message that we're hearing, which of course, you know, the courts have said, like, as long as it's partisan, that's fine.

What you know, we still have the protections of the Voting Rights Act, you can't sort of discriminate against voters of color.

And you know, but certainly, what we've been hearing from Republicans just particularly the last couple of days is, you know, we have a right to draw partisan maps if we want to.

I'm seeing a lot of people now are calling it the big Beautiful Map.

We're getting a lot of branding around this as like this is just about Republican politics.

How does that?

You know, do you think that that sort of rings true to you, this idea that this is just politics, it's not about disadvantaging black and brown voters.

So I actually think this is kind of hilarious the way Republicans are insisting, no, no, no, no, no, this isn't about race.

This is just a.

Pure partisan power grab, right, And they are so insistent that that is their motivation because they said the quiet part out loud by issuing that Department Justice letter that specifically said these majority minority districts should be targeted for eliminated elimination because of race.

Right, the Governor's proclamation then cites as the sole reason for a mid decade redistricting session that letter, and legislator saying, oh, no, did we.

Say this was about race.

No, Actually, this is a pure partisan power graph.

So they're trying to cover up their mistake.

But it is on the record.

It could not be more clear that this is about race.

And let me say this though, it is both things.

Because the intended purpose is to achieve five additional Republican members of Congress, their Department of Justice letter the Governor's proclamation may clear.

The way they intend to do that is by eliminating majority minority districts.

Okay, so I want to ask you about you mentioned that y'all did this previously in twenty twenty one.

There have been some things that have changed the district the court.

Well, well, you did both, but you yes.

I'm specifically talking about the quorum break that at the time was to block a bill imposing new voting restrictions in the state and everything like that.

Since then, things have changed around the rules around quorum breaks the House.

You know, past rules that would include a five hundred dollars fine, there is now the uh you know, as I mentioned in the introduction, Governor Abbott, you know, talking about you know, possibly pursuing criminal charges against members.

We can get a little bit more into that.

How prepared are you and your colleagues to with stan and that financial and legal pressure into the long term.

How long can you make this last given that situation.

So my primary concern is defending my constituents right.

They have a fundamental right to representation, to hold our politicians accountable for the hurt and abuse that they are suffering.

And the list of that hurt and abuse goes on and on.

High prices at the grocery store because of these pay to play tariffs, constituents are losing healthcare, our neighborhood schools are losing money, are going without.

That list goes on and on.

So that's my primary concern.

Let me start with that.

I think those five hundred dollars fines are unconstitutional under the Texas Constitution.

Texas is one of only four states that authorizes the breaking of core That is a rule, that is i'm sorry, a procedure under the rules that we can take to.

Represent our constituents.

It is the way that we protect their interests and we should not be punished for using what is a procedural tool in the toolbox.

So I think it's unconstitutional, but I'll say this.

I'll say that again, the primary importance here is protecting our constituents.

I'm willing to do whatever it takes to do that.

If you think about all the ways that Texans Americans have sacrificed for our freedoms, this is, in comparison, not a lot.

To ask elected leaders whose job it is to represent and protect the interests of our constituents.

Do you anticipate legal action against trying against those fines to sort of challenge that on constitutionality.

Well, it's too early to say, right.

They can't impose those fins until there's a quorum and there's a vote to do so, so it's a little premature to say, but I do think it is legally questionable.

So we are ninety six days from the November eighth filing period.

Hypothetically, if lawmakers were to stay for that entire time, that would add up to a forty eight thousand dollars fine, assuming that Abbott were to just continue calling special sessions, which I think is probably a pretty safe assumption.

So we're talking about forty eight thousand dollars worth of fines.

It is no secret that state lawmakers are not highly paid seventy two hundred dollars per year.

You know, of course you all have other jobs, but presumably many of those jobs might be complicated how they might be able to be done when you're not in the state.

How you know?

There has been reporting, including from the Tribune, about you know, fundraising in order to help kind of bear that financial cost.

How are you all going to pay for this?

How you know?

Are you raising money?

Are you planning to use donor funds to help bear the cost of this expense?

So I think we're getting ahead of ourselves.

We are on day two of our core break, and we're taking it day by day.

Right.

I just have to be honest.

I am not concerned about those fines right now.

That is not It does not scare me.

It is not a motivator for me.

What is a moti vader for me is to be able to protect my constituents.

And let me say this, Let me take a moment to put in perspective and context what is happening today.

So when a thousand people showed up to oppose these maps, in Arlington to testify.

Right, hundreds and hundreds of people showed up to testify in Austin.

Over maps that I think have been released twenty four hours for hours.

Maybe this has happened so fast, and you see that Texans are ready for a fight and ready to stand up to Donald Trump.

In some ways, this fight is a gift to us.

It is a rallying call to Texans, to Americans that we do not have to bend a need to Donald Trump, and we can take the fight directly to him.

And the support, the overwhelming gratitude that we are hearing from constituents and from Americans all over this country reinforces that people are ready for this fight.

And so I'm not motivated by the fear of fines.

I am extremely motivated and propelled by just the determination of my constituents and Texans and Americans to do what it takes to stand up to Trump on this this most fundamental of our values.

It is about who we are.

It is our identity as Americans.

Representation is why we exist as a country, and I'm proud to be part of that.

Do you feel like there's cohesiveness among the caucus on that of like we're in this for the long haul and that mounting dollar amount doesn't scare us.

Let me say that getting independently elected leaders on the same page about anything is a struggle.

Right.

Everybody is strong willed and has their own good ideas, but we all understand the stakes, and so we work through these things every day because we have the shared goal, and that's to protect our constituents and stand up for what's right.

So it is a day by day conversation.

It is a day by day fight, and today we are united in that fight.

Terry Canalis, one of your colleagues who did not make the trip, told our reporter Rinzo Downey yesterday that he thought the outcome of this is inevitable.

And I think what he meant by that was inevitable that eventually these maps would get passed.

Am I hearing from you that you disagree with that assessment right now?

I just disagree in that defeatist attitude.

It is inevitable if we do nothing and we don't fight.

Sure, yeah, absolutely, that's inevitable, but that's not what we're doing.

That is the only thing that is inevitable, that it will happen if we don't fight.

So what we learned in the twenty one Korm break was when we broke korm for the day to kill the irregular session, and then we broke korm for the thirty days of the special session.

We went to DC, we lobbied on the John Lewis voting right sack that it passed.

But something else happened, and that's that Republicans were so shamed by the national attention they were getting on their bill that they could not defend that they gutted the most offensive part to the bill, the parts of the bill that inspired our corn break.

We could not have anticipated that outcome when we broke korum on that one day to kill that to kill the end of the regular session or for the special session.

All we knew was that we had to fight to win that day, and we take it day by day.

That is the lesson from the twenty one Corm break that we bring to this corn break where the stakes are even higher.

And I do think a difference between twenty twenty one and now is the level of national awareness of what's going on.

Right.

This has become sort of like a national arms race in a way.

We've got blue states saying they want to redistrict now certainly do you feel does that feel different for you all that, like, you know, you're obviously getting a lot of support from National Democrats.

Yeah, so in twenty one it was just like this rogue thing that happened on our own.

We had no support at the time, we just did it.

And so this feels very different.

Right, we have the DNC leader here today, Ken Martin, who's supporting us and grateful for what we were doing.

We had Jeffries come speak, I'm sorry, Leader Jeffries come and speak to us last week in Austin.

So yes, it's.

Very different in that we have institutional support from National Democrats and in some ways it's easier.

What's harder is we have now a Republican president.

Right when we broke Corman twenty one, it was Biden who was president, we were able to go to DC.

But having Donald Trump as president is is different and it means that we have to play this a little differently.

I think one of the dynamics here, you know, mentioned other states, California, you know, saying if New York, possibly if Texas does this, we're going to do our own type of redistricting.

You know, California the part and breakdown right now already forty three Democrats nine Republicans.

It is all, you know, disproportionately democratic, in the same way that Texas is disproportionately Republican.

I think there are a lot of people who view this as not an encouraging sign in either direction when these types of things happen.

But there's also I mean, I'm not naive and thinking that, like one party is not going to unilaterally disarm in this fight, right, And I bring that up to sort of ask you the question is, like, is there any hope of either side standing down here or or the two sides coming to an agreement of like, let's just let these maps stick the way they are in the political climate that we find them ourselves in.

Like, is that even you're saying that cold war, Yeah, like this is not good for anyone.

Let's let's not redraw any maps here.

Nice idea.

Maybe I heard last night from one of our members of Congress that there were two Republican members of Congress who had now filed bills to eliminate mid decade redistricting.

So they're starting to feel the heat in other parts of the country because No, this is not ideal for anyone.

And in fact, if Democrats were the majority in Texas, we would have nonpartisan, independent citizen redistricting commissions.

That is legislation Democrats have filed.

I believe I've signed on to those pieces of legislation that would be ideal.

That's what we would have if Democrats were in power.

We don't exist in that world today.

That world does not exist today.

And so what you're seeing is governor in other states, in democratic governors in other states, trying to figure out, given this Trump powerplay in Texas, how can I protect my own constituents from the outcome of trying to predetermine the twenty twenty six midterms.

Right, So it's understandable, right, is it ideal?

No?

What would be ideal is if everybody played by the same roles and we had these nonpartisan citizen redistricting commissions.

We just don't live in that world today.

But again, this is a day by day deal.

You're starting to see some movement on the Republican side because they don't like this arms war, and we'll see where it ends.

Right.

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I want to ask you about the calculus about the other issues on the table during the special session, particularly flood relief.

Right, you know, it is true that while Democrats are not in Texas that they cannot pass a map of new congressional districts.

It also means they cannot pass legislation in response to these terrible floods that happened, you know, including in Travis County, but also in the Hill Country as well.

Did that factor into y'all's decision?

How do you feel about that work being grinded to a halt at the same time this other work is as well.

That work hardly even kicked off When we were still in Texas.

We had only had two hearings that were scheduled by the Republican majority on flood relief.

We had eight hearings on Trump's maps, So it became clear to us that the Republican majority was not interested in prioritizing flood Really, even if you look at the call on the House to arrest us, it's to pass the maps, it's not to pass flood relief.

The biggest problem we have with flooding and extreme weather is more who's elected and who's in charge than what the laws are.

We know that it was revealed that the all Abbott elected River Authority had three point four million dollars in their reserves that they did not use for an emergency warning system for floods that would have cost a million dollars.

They didn't use that money.

We know the governor could, in fact, on his own use his emergency powers to transfer money for flood relief victims, just like he transferred two hundred and fifty million dollars from one agency to build parts of a border wall in twenty twenty one.

That was not an appropriate use of that power.

Today, absolutely, when you have an Act of God emergency whether emergency, this would be an appropriate time to use his power.

But what he is doing here is the same thing that he did with the school voucher fight.

He's holding hostage something that everything wants, everyone wants, which is flood relief.

So as to pass his political maps.

He's playing political games.

You remember he did the same thing by withholding funding for schools because he didn't get his voucher scam passed.

We will not play those games.

He needs to be responsible.

He needs to own his leadership position and his authority to grant that relief now and stop playing these political games.

Speaking of the governor, you know, we have certainly heard some big talk from Governor Abbot in the last couple of days about, you know, saying he would like to begin the proceedings to declare your seats vacant, talking about you know, calling special elections to fill those seats.

Certainly, as we mentioned, you know, the felony bribery investigated by the you know, he's called on the Texas Rangers to investigate you all for felony bribery.

Just talking first about the vacating the seats.

I mean, how credible of a threat is that to you?

How worried are you all?

I'm not the least bit worried about that.

I will say it's shameful.

It is disrespectful to Texans, to the voters to threaten to remove from office.

They're duly elected representatives.

They chose us, elected us to represent them in the House.

They support us with overwhelming support in this endeavor.

And so it is really though, in keeping with what he is doing with these redistricting maps, right, trying to silence voters, trying to subvert their will.

So you don't think it's a you're not worried about losing your seat.

He has no legal authority to do that.

He's making threats that are outside the bounds of the law.

What about the bribery.

Investigations, all right, it's rich that we have the most corrupt governor in all of Texas history making allegations of bribery.

This is the governor who accepted how.

Many millions of dollars I can't remember, like over six million dollars from an out of state billionaire to pass the voucher scam.

This is a governor who waives monthly since twenty twenty, the competitive bidding laws to do no big contracts, oftentimes to his donors.

It is unprecedented grift.

And so it is rich that the governor would be accusing us of bribery for raising funds during a period we're able to raise political funds.

So are you just to make sure I understand though, are you and your call colleagues raising funds to support that the actions y'all have taken, Like are you well, are you collect are you fund are you fundraising off this quorum break?

And are you using donor funds to help you, you know, sustain the considerable expenses of leaving your home, staying in a hotel and all that stuff.

Well, what I'm raising funds for, I'll tell you what I'm doing personally.

I'm raising funds to help with legal advice.

I'm raising fund communications to help with paying my staff who are supporting this work.

So the funds that I'm raising are to make me more effective.

At my job.

Where where is the money coming from for the plane, for the hotel room, all those things?

So I'm not making those arrangements that is, those are being made by the caucus and I don't have that.

I legitimately don't have that information.

I will say that I've flew my own staff here with campaign funds, and so that's how I.

Paid for my staff.

Can you tell us just a little bit about just like what life is like for you right now, Like how are you passing your time?

What are you all hanging out together.

I mean, what's the scene up there.

It's very busy.

We A lot of what we're doing is just communicating, communicating.

This has happened so fast, and it's at a time when families are vacationing, they're coming back to this drama.

So we're having to constantly communicate so that people understand what is happening and why we took this action.

So that's a large part of it.

We're getting legal briefings as well.

We are using this time to exchange ideas about efforts policy efforts as well.

So but there just hasn't I mean, we start first thing in the morning.

I woke up for an interview yesterday.

I had a four fifty in the morning interview yesterday, and we didn't get home till past ten o'clock, right, So that's an idea of what our days have been like.

Do you worry, I mean, after the twenty twenty one quorum break, now we've got these stricter rules around fines and things like that.

Obviously I was here yesterday in Austin.

Your Republican colleagues are not thrilled with you all for leaving.

Do you anticipate sort of a heightening of those sort of penalties, or you know, eventually when we have a quorum, legislation to make it harder to quarm break in the future.

I don't know what they will do, but let me say that their outrage is feigned.

It's fake.

They knew that doing mid decade redistricting would provoke pretty extreme.

Opposition from us.

The last time it was done two thousand and three, there was also a quorum, right, So to for them to pretend like this is something they did not anticipate, did not expect, and is out of the ordinary for what they are doing is not real.

It's interesting to me how far we've gone in a year, right, I mean, there was a lot of sort of you know, in the lead up to this legislative session that sort of like defending some of the like bipartisan nature of the House.

We all work together, we work toward Texas, and now we're in a place where we're talking about, you know, essentially throwing out almost all of the Democrats, you know, from their elected seats.

Do you see a long term effect on the ability of the two parties to work together.

Do you see a change in Democrats support for the current House Speaker who was elected with the support of many Democrats.

I did not vote for Speaker Burrows.

He is a maga Republican and I was not going to be a part of that.

Stood from the beginning what his agenda was and still live.

So just speaking for myself, I'm not surprised by anything he has done.

I fully anticipated it, and there are opportunities for Democrats and Republicans to work together, but that's when we have shared policy interests.

You saw that vouchers was one of those bipartisan efforts where we came together to oppose it time and time again until Donald Trump went in and told Republican members of the Legislature and of the House that he needed them to vote for the voucher and they did as told because they do not feel free to stand up to him.

So there is a little bit of.

Space for some bipartisan initiatives on big, overarching policy issues.

It's really hard to come by these days, especially when they are so obedient to President Trump.

How are you just feeling about, you know, our democracy, our state of government these days?

I mean, what's your what's your how are you feeling?

Well?

That's why I'm doing this.

I have a son who is thirteen years old.

We went to Philadelphia for a summer vacation this summer, and I needed him to understand what good ideals, honest, right ideals our country was founded on.

Because politics has become so nasty, so ugly, so bitter, and we're losing sight of who we are as Americans.

I do this because I believe we have to fight to maintain what is good about our country and about public service.

So yeah, it's a scary time.

We're at a crossroads in this country and we have to fight with everything we've got to hold on to what matters in America.

So that's the inspiration for why I do what I do.

All right, Representative, Well, we appreciate you taking some time to talk to us during what is clearly a busy time.

Thank you for that.

Thank you, Eleanor, and thank you to our producers, Rob and Chris.

That's all for this week.

We will talk to y'all next week.

Thank you.