Taking on Texas Tyranny

A brave legislator in Texas takes a bold stand, drawing the attention of the nation to the tyranny of the Texas GOP.

“Explain it to me like I’m five,” wrote one reader.

How is it that a Texas state legislator is literally trapped in the state House chamber, unable to leave? How is that possibly legal?

The nation has turned its troubled eyes to Austin, where Rep. Nicole Collier decided things had gone too far, and she took a stand. And last night, a slumber.

For more than 30 hours, Rep. Collier has refused to leave the Texas House chamber. She is there in protest, calling out a power grab by Donald Trump, Gov. Abbott and Texas Republicans. But she’s also there because if she leaves, she will be arrested.

If that sounds to you like an authoritarian police state, where elected representatives are actively being threatened and bullied by the party in charge, that’s because it truly is. And the world should know what’s happening.

How we got here

To understand how we arrived at this absurd and dangerous point, where lawmakers are trapped inside the legislative chamber and unable to depart, we should first review the ugly history of the last few weeks.

At the urging of Donald Trump, who is afraid of what a Democratic majority in the House will do to hold him accountable for his many lawless and unconstitutional actions, Governor Abbott called a special session of the legislature. Their collective goal was to ram through a mid-decade gerrymander that could erase up to five Democratic held congressional seats—all from minority districts.

That move probably already violates the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, but no one trusts the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court to do the right thing. That itself is a huge crisis. So Texas Democrats fought back the only way they really could: by turning to a long tradition in Texas of walking out and breaking quorum.

They set up camp in Illinois, buying precious time for the party. And the delay tactic worked. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California met with them and then answered the call, striking back with his own redistricting plan to be decided by the state’s voters in November. Under the proposed California map, which would move forward only if Texas goes through with its current threat, five Republican seats in California would likely disappear, neutralizing the effect of the Texas redistricting.

Meanwhile, Texas had already gone full authoritarian. AG Ken Paxton issued arrest warrants for the absent legislators, which a court in Illinois refused to enforce. At the urging of Sen. John Cornyn, who is trying to burnish his MAGA credentials ahead of a bruising primary, the FBI staked out lawmakers’ homes. Big daily fines mounted for the boycotting state legislators, with the state even obtaining a court order preventing Beto O’Rourke from fundraising for them on grounds it comprised an official bribe.

Permission slips and police surveillance

The lawmakers are ordinary citizens with jobs and families who earn practically nothing for their government positions. They were being assessed $500 per day, fines that apparently couldn’t be covered by others. No one reasonably expected them to hold out forever.

Still, before they broke their protest, they succeeded in their main goals: to kill the first special legislative session, to draw national attention to the undemocratic rule of the GOP, and to buy valuable time for other state and national party leaders to respond.

When some two dozen Democrats finally returned, they still remained under the threat of civil arrest. The GOP promptly put them under round-the-clock police surveillance to ensure they didn’t break quorum again. Specifically, Texas House leadership demanded that the returning lawmakers sign “permission slips” agreeing to this extra Big Brother-style police monitoring.

Collier looked at the permission slip and said no. She reacted instinctively, recoiling at the idea of being treated in this manner. “I don’t have a plan,” Collier told reporters on Monday afternoon. “I just feel in my heart that this is wrong.”

The GOP wasn’t ready for someone to defy them in this way. Republicans sensed the stand-off had reached a precarious moment, so of course they began a campaign of censorship. On GOP orders, a sergeant-at-arms kicked all the reporters out of the House gallery, blocking them from talking further with Collier, who was on the floor below. The move also prevented them from taking any more photos of her.

Then the arrests began. As the Houston Chronicle further reported,

Democratic activists protested Collier’s detention outside of the House chamber until around 10:30 p.m., when the state Senate adjourned and the Capitol complex was shut down. State troopers arrested four of them who refused to leave the lobby, including the presidents of Black Austin Democrats and Stonewall Democrats of Austin.

For her part, Collier simply insisted that she not be treated like a criminal. “I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with police escorts,” she said in the statement. “My community is majority-minority, and they expect me to stand up for their representation.”

So instead, she planted herself in the chamber as a symbol of democratic defiance. Her vigil was then joined by two other state legislative leaders in solidarity with their colleague.

A rallying cry for democracy

Rep. Collier’s stand has electrified the nation, exposing how far the Texas GOP will go to cling to power. Social media lit up with images of her camped out at her desk. And then there was this remarkable moment when former Vice President Kamala Harris called Collier to lend her support, garnering well over a million views so far and bringing a lump to many a throat as Collier received well-deserved recognition from her personal hero.

Along with other major news outlets, the New York Times covered the stand-off, calling out the extraordinary incursion into liberty that the Texas GOP had embarked upon:

When the sun broke on Tuesday morning over the Texas Capitol, State Representative Nicole Collier was inside the chambers, having spent a rumpled night there in a one-woman standoff against state Republicans.

Even veterans of Texas’s often wild political theater said they had never seen anything like it.

Then again, no one could recall hearing of state legislators prevented from leaving the Capitol building unless they signed a permission slip promising to return — it looked a lot like a middle-school hall pass — and agreed to have a state police officer follow them until they did.

Collier also moved to protect her legal rights and demand that a court permit her to leave the building. She filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal court, arguing that this treatment and the “permission slip” requirement amounted to an illegal and unconstitutional restraint.

Why Collier’s stand matters

Let’s be clear-eyed about this and the likely outcome. As with the quorum breaking boycott, Rep. Collier’s stand ultimately will not prevent the Texas legislature from convening and moving forward with its mid-decade gerrymander. The legality of that move, and the possibility that it could be stopped, ultimately will be up to the courts.

In the meantime, however, the Texas Dems have shifted public opinion on this issue and mobilized their voters across the state. That could have very real consequences should Texas impose its new map. Indeed, the redrawing of lines could put certain GOP incumbents at risk should a Blue Wave election occur next year.

More immediately, Rep. Collier, who was joined by other Texas Dems last night in a “slumber party” after they ripped up their permission slips, has sent a message to Democrats across the country: Stand up and resist the fascist GOP, or you will be next.

That could affect public opinion outside of the state, particularly in other blue states considering retaliation. For example, and importantly, Newsom’s proposal likely will go before California voters as early as November of this year. The electorate must collectively decide whether to suspend the state’s independent redistricting commission and redraw the state’s own congressional map to respond to Texas. When voters go into election booths, they might well remember Nicole Collier. Indeed, Gavin Newsom’s office should bring Collier out to speak to the California public about why she stood up to the GOP in Texas, and how voters in his state could help her continue her resistance.

Collier may be just a single official in another state who decided that enough was enough, that she wouldn’t bow any further to the tyranny of the GOP. She no doubt understands that her decision comes with significant risk that she will become a prime target of MAGA anger and threats.

Collier may not have realized where it would all lead in the moment that she made her decision. But in her stance we all can learn a clear lesson: that one principled and brave act might very well go on to change the world.