Texas Republicans are trying to take the highly unusual, potentially illegal, and definitely undemocratic step of redrawing their state’s congressional districts mid-decade to boost the GOP’s chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives. And if you are standing in the way of their scheme, you risk losing your job or facing arrest.

That’s the message the Lone Star State’s top officials are sending to Democrats who have left Austin ahead of a vote on the GOP’s attempt to further rig Texas’s congressional map in their favor.

Under the current map, Republicans control 25 of the state’s 38 congressional seats, which amounts to nearly two-thirds of the seats. Seeing how Donald Trump won Texas last year by 56-42 percent, that means GOP lawmakers are already overrepresented in Washington.

However, in light of the slim Republican majority in the House, and the enactment of a highly unpopular bill that puts billionaires before regular Americans, that is not good enough for the state’s leaders.

That is why they came up with a plan to redraw the state’s congressional map to add five additional seats to the GOP’s side of the ledger.

In other words, they want Republicans to control nearly 80 percent of Texas’s congressional seats by packing as many Democratic voters as possible into a handful of districts. This would especially (and likely unconstitutionally) impact the state’s minorities.

In a bid to foil this plot, Democratic lawmakers left Texas to deny the state legislature a quorum and prevent Republicans from ramming through the new map.

That doesn’t sit well with the state’s Republican leaders, which is why Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) want the wayward Democrats to lose their jobs and risk arrest for not going along with the GOP’s scheme.

“I support the immediate arrest of these rogue lawmakers who’ve fled their duties,” Paxton said. “These radical Democrats are spitting in the face of every Texan they swore to represent.”

That’s nonsense, of course, because those Democratic lawmakers are doing exactly what their constituents have elected them to do, which is to stand up to the GOP’s tyrannical power grabs.

“This is cowardice and dereliction of duty, and they should face the full force of the law without apology,” added Paxton.

Coming from him, that’s a bit ironic.

After all, Paxton was impeached on corruption, bribery, obstruction of justice, and abuse of public trust charges in 2023 and beat the rap only because the GOP-controlled state Senate acquitted him. In addition, after he was accused of duping investors in a startup, he agreed to pay $300,000 in restitution to escape criminal securities fraud charges.

While Paxton kept his threats vague, Abbott was more specific.

In a letter to the Democratic lawmakers, the governor said their actions amount “to an abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office” and said he would seek to remove them from office and appoint replacements (who would likely go along with the GOP power grab).

Furthermore, Abbott also stated that the lawmakers who are soliciting funds to pay for the fines they are incurring for staying away from Austin may be committing felonies because, according to him, those donations could be viewed as bribes. Of course, that would mean that the donors would be culpable as well.

How will it all play out?

In the past, Democrats have often folded in the face of such threats, including in 2021, when they also walked out but enough of them eventually returned to allow Republicans to pass a sweeping voter suppression law.

As the threats of GOP officials show, the stakes are incredibly high.

However, while Americans may not have understood the details of the 2021 law, it is possible that Republicans are overplaying their hand this time.

It is clear that it is inherently unfair for a party that is backed by only slightly more than half of the voters of a state to control 80 percent of its congressional seats.

In addition, the extreme measures Abbott and Paxton seem willing to go to in order to get their way also seem disproportionate, especially because their map-rigging scheme may turn out to be illegal.

At the very least, this Texas standoff will get some Americans to pay attention to the GOP’s efforts to rig the 2026 election long before the first vote is cast, and that’s a good thing.