Rep. Jasmine Crockett has been consistently vocal against the Texas GOP’s agenda to redraw the state’s congressional map, which will result in more Republican voting districts and, as usual, the dilution of Black voting power. Now, Crockett is defending state Democrats who exited the state on Sunday to prevent Republicans from redistricting the state’s map to give themselves five more safe GOP seats — a move that has Texas Gov. Greg Abbott foaming at the mouth and threatening Democratic lawmakers with removal and even criminal legal action.

(Votes can only take place in the Texas legislature when two-thirds of the 150 members are present. So, when most Texas Dems declined to show up, it put a damper on the GOP’s mission to win future state elections by manipulating the map instead of winning on merit. It’s like Republican DEI, only it benefits white people, so it doesn’t count.)

According to Newsweek, Crockett said at an event in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by progressive advocacy group MoveOn, that it’s time for Democratic leaders to be more “aggressive” in fighting the tactics of the Republican party, specifically, the way GOP legislators are preparing for the mid-term elections by gerrymandering their voting maps to stop their classically red states from leaning blue in 2026.

“I do want to be aggressive, because we’re going to have to be aggressive because some of the things that have been broken such as some of our trade agreements, they may not come back,” Crockett said, adding that the U.S. “needs guardrails around the Supreme Court” to stop MAGA-fied Republicans who are serving the will of their MAGA messiah, President Donald Trump, from using political loopholes to rig elections. (You know, the thing Trump and his GOP minions keep accusing Democrats of doing without presenting a shred of evidence to back their absurd claims.)

From Newsweek:

“I’m aggressive,” she added. “So for me, I don’t serve in the Senate, but I would get rid of the filibuster if it means that we can for voting rights because we don’t get rights to repro. We don’t get rights to healthcare. We don’t get rights to education. We don’t get any other rights if we don’t have the ability to access the ballot box. So those are the things that I would do. I would get aggressive on the Supreme Court and I would get aggressive about making sure that we equalize this thing so that we can all access the ballot box.” She added that she was “so inspired” by Texas Democrats. “Right before I got over here, my former colleagues from the Texas House, those Texas Democrats, decided to get the hell out of Texas,” she said. “They decided to use whatever tools they could and breaking quorum is where they are at right now. And they didn’t just do it by themselves. They went to Illinois where there is a governor that gives a damn. You see, this fight is going to take all of us.”

Meanwhile, Abbott is out here trying to reframe what Texas Democrats did as cowardice, rather than the act of playing politics, and, arguably, beating Republicans at their own game. (It’s almost as if he’s completely forgotten that not two weeks ago, House Republicans quit for summer recess a day early to avoid a vote on the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.)

“Real Texans do not run from a fight,” Abbott tweeted. “But that’s exactly what most of the Texas House Democrats just did…rather than doing their job and voting on urgent legislation affecting the lives of all Texans, they have fled Texas to deprive the House of the quorum necessary to meet and conduct business.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton shared similar sentiments, tweeting, “Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately. We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law.”

Nah — they’re really playing around in our faces right now.

Again, Abbott and Paxton are attempting to reframe what Texas Democrats did as running “away” and running “from a fight,” but GOP legislators are transparently too afraid of midterm election voters to leave their maps alone and let the chips fall where they may. That’s cowardice, not Democrats doing the little that they have the power to do to stop Republicans from rigging things in their favor.

“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement. “We’re not walking out on our responsibilities; we’re walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent.”

Exactly!

See social media’s reaction to the Democrats fleeing below.