The flight from Austin to Chicago likely cost tens of thousands of dollars, though it’s unclear who paid for it
When Texas Democrats left the state on Sunday to deny their Republican counterparts the quorum needed to pass a new congressional map, they said they were fighting a “rigged-redistricting process.” They had an odd way of showing it.
Most of the state legislators boarded a 76-seat private jet flown out of a “state-of-the-art” private terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, a Washington Free Beacon review of flight logs and photos found. That jet left Austin around 5 p.m. on Sunday and landed in Chicago some two hours later, a flight that likely cost tens of thousands of dollars. Upon arriving in the Windy City, the lawmakers held a press conference alongside Illinois governor and billionaire Hyatt hotel heir J.B. Pritzker (D.), who said Texas Republicans are “attempting to cheat” by redrawing their state’s congressional boundaries to carve out additional districts likely to elect Republicans.
Pritzker is quite familiar with the concept.
Illinois suffered the second-largest population decline in the country from 2010 to 2020, causing it to lose a congressional seat following the 2020 census. Pritzker, who took office the year prior, responded by spearheading an aggressive redistricting process that saw his partymates in the legislature pack five Republican-held districts into three. The move meant Illinois Democrats picked up a congressional seat even as their state lost representation. They now hold 82 percent of the state’s congressional seats; Kamala Harris carried just 54 percent of the vote in Illinois in 2024. The state’s House map is widely regarded as one of the most gerrymandered in the country.
Walkout participants said they plan to stay away from Austin for two weeks, when the special session is scheduled to end. In a statement released Sunday, Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.) threatened to “remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House.”
Abbott also threatened to prosecute participants who violate state “bribery laws.” He was referring to the $500 fine individual lawmakers incur each day they are absent. Those lawmakers cannot use their campaign accounts to pay those fines, meaning that, in theory, they would have to personally pay more than $7,000 each to see out the quorum break. Instead, Texas Democrats say they found a legal loophole that would allow them to fundraise to pay the fines, though they have not described their plan to do so.
In addition to the fines, it’s unclear who paid for the private jet that took the lawmakers from Austin to Chicago. The Texas Tribune snapped a photo of the lawmakers boarding a CommuteAir flight chartered through Signature Aviation, a company that dubs itself “the world’s largest network of private aviation terminals” and maintains its own “top-tier” terminal at Austin’s international airport.
CommuteAir, meanwhile, advertises charter flights on an “efficient 76-seat Embraer E170” aircraft featuring “comfortable 2×2 leather seating, two lavatories, ovens for hot meals, and two experienced flight attendants at your service.” Flight logs show such a plane leaving Austin for Chicago at 6:19 p.m. Eastern time, not long after one Texas Democrat, James Talarico, posted a video from the tarmac announcing the walkout. A separate charter flight company lists the average price per hour for an Embraer 170 at $14,850, meaning the flight likely cost around $30,000.
Pritzker was asked about his state’s map during the Sunday press conference. He dismissed the notion that it’s an example of Democratic gerrymandering, saying, “The fact that we are very good in Illinois about delivering for the people of Illinois and then people react to that and vote for our candidate winning is very different than cheating mid-decade by rewriting the rule because their cult leader told them to do it.”
Texas Republicans, however, neither changed nor broke any state rules when they convened for a special legislative session to redraw their House map. While boundaries are usually drawn every 10 years, as federal law requires, nothing prevents Texas lawmakers from assembling mid-decade to redraw them, as they did in 2003. After drawing a new map, the state legislature votes to enact it like it would any other law.
Texas Democrats are aiming to prevent that from happening by executing what’s known as a quorum break. Two-thirds of the Texas House’s 150 members must be present to pass a bill, meaning at least 51 of 62 Democratic members must leave the state to break quorum. While it’s unclear how many members left for Chicago, the New York Times reported that the “number of those taking part in the walkout on Sunday was well over that threshold.”
Roughly two weeks before Texas Democrats launched the walkout, they huddled with former Obama administration attorney general Eric Holder to discuss the move. Though a New York Times account of that meeting cited Holder as having “led efforts to reverse gerrymandering in the House,” Holder endorsed growing left-wing calls to gerrymander in blue states during a Sunday interview with MSNBC’s Al Sharpton.
“We simply can’t lie down and think that if we play fair, we’re going to get a fair deal,” he said. “If we want to have a functioning democracy, we’ve got to make sure that we are fighting them right now as they try to do things that would harm our democracy, potentially destroy our democracy.”
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