Texas Gov. Abbott slams Austin Democrats who fled to Washington
Gov. Greg Abbott joins 'America Reports'
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott told Fox News on Tuesday that he plans to call a subsequent special session of the Texas State Legislature as soon as the absentee lawmakers return from their trip to Washington, where they fled to avoid granting the GOP majority a quorum to vote up or down on an election integrity bill.
Abbott told "America Reports" that Texans are recognizing that the dozens of fleeing State House members are shirking their taxpayer-funded work on their behalf and that the trip has been a "disaster."
"Their constituents are getting mighty upset about the fact that their house member is not in the [Capitol], doing the job they were elected to do," he said.
"Because they abandoned their responsibility, when they get back to Texas, I will be calling another special session and put this back on the agenda as well as so many other items that are so important to their constituents."
In previous remarks, Abbott said he has the power to arrest the rogue members and "cabin" them inside the Capitol.
However, on Tuesday, Abbott said some Texas Democrats have in fact made a constructive impact on the election integrity bill.
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Texas Senate Democrats who did not join their House colleagues on their private jet ride to Dulles International have been in the Capitol working with Republicans and offered input on the legislation that the governor said the absent members would otherwise appreciate.
"The Democrats who remained in Texas in the Senate -- they were able to work to make amendments to the bill that would be more to their liking. That is exactly what the Texas House Democrats could have done, had they remained in Austin, Texas, as opposed to wasting their time in Washington, D.C," he said.
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Abbott ripped the absent Democrats, saying they accomplished "absolutely nothing".
Host Sandra Smith noted a sixth member has now tested positive for COVID-19 despite being vaccinated, and that little of substance has come from meetings with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Vice President Harris.
During the Texans' meeting with Harris, she called the group "courageous" and compared them to prominent 19th Century Republican scholar Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became one of the most important U.S. figures in the latter half of the 1800s.
Speaking in Alexandria, Va. on Friday, Democratic Texas State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, one of the leaders of the delegation to Washington, said that her caucus "refuse to be hostages" and compared Abbott's warning of potential arrest to the act of detaining escaped slaves and returning them to southern plantations:
"I'm ready to be arrested," she said. "What do you do to a slave if you don't do nothing but arrest them when they flee."