Texas Democrat Threatened With ‘Felony’ During Press Call
As the Texas House of Representatives prepared to vote on a mid-decade redistricting to give President Donald Trump the five more safe Republican seats he demanded, Democrats rallied the troops.
The Democratic National Committee organized a virtual press conference with DNC Chairman Ken Martin, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), and Texas Representative Nicole Collier, who caught the national spotlight this week after choosing to sleep in the state capitol rather than accept a police escort ordered by Republicans in control of the Texas House.
Collier dialed into the Zoom call from a Capitol restroom as the floor debate over the new maps echoed in the background. “I’ll be damned if I let [Republicans] use petty intimidation tactics to silence my voters. They sent me here to fight, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she said. “I represent a majority Black and brown district and it’ll be my constituents, people who look like me, that will be harmed.”
A few minutes later, Collier interrupted as Martin was responding to a press question, saying she was being ordered to end the call.
“It’s a felony for me to do this, apparently?” Collier said before seeming to address someone off camera. “I can’t be on the floor or in the bathroom? You told me I was only allowed to be here, in the bathroom.”
As Collier left the videocall, Booker quickly laced into Texas Republicans’ “outrageous” behavior.
“We just witnessed them trying to shut her down and say it’s illegal for her to be in the bathroom and on this call,” he said. “[These are] the lengths that they’re going to in Texas to try to bring about a system so unjust and so unjustifiable that they are going to try to silence those leaders from being heard and speaking out.”
“Let me tell you something, Representative Collier in the bathroom has more dignity than Donald Trump in the Oval Office,” Booker added.
The call came as polls show Democratic voters are disappointed with their own party, wanting it to fight harder against Trump, which Martin addressed in his opening remarks.
“There’s been a lot of talk out there about Democrats wanting Democrats to fight harder,” he said, introducing Collier, Newsom and Booker as fighters. “Don’t let anybody tell you that Democrats aren’t fighting.”
After Trump demanded a new, even more gerrymandered map in Texas, Newsom was one of the first big-name Democrats to push back, vowing to respond in kind. On the call, Newsom pointed to Trump’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., calling it evidence of “encroaching authoritarianism.”
“Nothing about this is normal, and so we’re not going to act as if anything is normal any longer,” Newsom said. “Yes, we’ll fight fire with fire. Yes, we will push back. It’s not about whether we play hardball anymore. It’s about how we play hardball.”
Newsom and his allies are now rushing to put a ballot question authorizing mid-decade redistricting before voters in November. If passed by voters, it could allow for California Democrats to counter the Texas redraw with their own.
This story has been updated.