# Texas 2025 redistricting standoff -- what is endgame?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/texas-2025-redistricting-standoff-what-is-endgame/1021745
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [August 5, 2025, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/texas-2025-redistricting-standoff-what-is-endgame/1021745 "2025-08-05T23:21:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 69

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### Author: ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2025, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/texas-2025-redistricting-standoff-what-is-endgame/1021745/69 "2025-08-20T08:42:21Z")

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> [@Jihi](#):
>
> Democratic politicians in Texas have now acquiesced to law enforcement monitoring of their movements though they have not committed a crime. How does this not become the new normal moving forward? If this works in Texas how does it not spread to other states? If Democrats left the state once to prevent a quorum what’s to say that they won’t do so again in the very near future?

You neglected this bit of joy:

[KOMO News: “UPDATE (11:30 P.M.) - The Texas House Democrats are reporting that demonstrators who showed up to support Rep. Collier have been arrested by Texas Department of Public Safety Troopers.”](https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/texas-rep-nicole-collier-remains-on-house-floor-after-refusing-law-enforcement-escort?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#:~:text=UPDATE%20(11:30%20P.M.)%20%2D%20The%20Texas%20House%20Democrats%20are%20reporting%20that%20demonstrators%20who%20showed%20up%20to%20support%20Rep.%20Collier%20have%20been%20arrested%20by%20Texas%20Department%20of%20Public%20Safety%20Troopers.)

So they aren’t just harassing and detaining legislators with presumptive ‘civil arrest’ (unclear under what authority Republican House speaker Dustin Burrows believes that he has to require legislators to sign a statement that commits them to showing up for the Wednesday morning vote or how that in any way justifies supervision and detainment) but are allegedly engaging in what is unambiguously [prior restraint](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/prior_restraint) on political speech of people freely demonstrating in support of Representative Nicole Collier and in opposition to effectively putting state legislators into custodial supervision without a court order.

> [@Jihi](#):
>
> This may be flirting with hyperbole here, but the Gestapo in Nazi Germany was used to enforce ideological conformity among German politicians and the populace at large. It seems a very small leap to go from this to that.

The _ **Geheime Staatspolizei** _ (‘Gestapo’) were a federal state security agency under the Nazi regime, but yes, at a state level this is clearly an effort to suppress dissent against an irregular, politically motivated redistricting scheme unambiguously intended as an illegal partisan gerrymandering. It is being done out in plain sight with no shame or any effort to conceal it in the clothing of legitimacy, doubtless _pour encourager les autres_ in suppressing political dissent. Or, as Heather Cox Richardson plainly observes, [“On the road to authoritarianism, this is a whole factory of red flags.”](https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-19-2025)

Stranger

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