Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico defended his party’s aggressive response this week to the GOP’s attempt to gerrymander the Texas map to nab five more U.S. House seats.
“What I’m advocating for is to stand up to bullies, to look them in the eye and not flinch, because we all know from our personal experiences, you don’t beat a bully by playing dead,” Talarico told Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan on Tuesday.
Talarico has made a name for himself with a strong social media presence and a slight endorsement last month from Joe Rogan, a podcaster and supporter of President Donald Trump.
Many state House Democrats left Texas on Sunday in a last-ditch effort to block a new congressional map that would give Republicans a better chance of keeping their U.S. House majority in the 2026 midterm elections. The Republican effort is backed by Trump, who said his party is “entitled to five more seats.”
Talarico, who left the state for Illinois, told Hasan that quorum-breaking is protected by the state’s constitution and “is a tool that the minority should use to check the majority, especially when the majority is cheating.”
“If the majority is going to cheat, the minority is not going to play, and I think most people can understand that,” Talarico said.
The battle to stop Texas from redrawing its congressional map heated up Tuesday after Trump-backed Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) called for the FBI to arrest Democrats who left the state.
Talarico told Hasan that Cornyn’s plea to the FBI is an “extreme example of what they are trying to do in this country.”
“They are trying to hold on to power without any consequences from the voters, without any accountability, and that’s not what the founders intended,” Talarico said.
Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom (Calif.), Kathy Hochul (N.Y.) and JB Pritzker (Ill.) are exploring ways to redistrict their states’ congressional maps to counter GOP efforts.
While Talarico said he believes that gerrymandering is wrong no matter which side does it, Republicans are “rigging the rules in the middle of the game.”
“Now, because they’re worried they’re going to lose, they’re trying to change those rules, and it’s being done at the direct request of the most powerful man in the country because he doesn’t want to face consequences for his undemocratic actions,” he said.
The Texas Democrat argued that ending gerrymandering is a central part of his positive vision of “how we can fix democracy,” but he “can’t let that vision get in the way of current reality, and if one side cheats, then all bets are off.”
“When you stand up to a bully, it’s easy to become a bully yourself, and it’s so important that we maintain that moral clarity of where we’re trying to get, which is ultimately getting the politics out of redistricting,” Talarico said.
