Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) said Texas Democrats will keep calling special sessions for as long as it takes to pass new congressional maps, meaning Democrats would have to keep up their disappearing act for years.

The Democrats fled the state to deny the Texas legislature a quorum, disabling them from bringing the GOP-friendly maps to a vote. Abbott has threatened the Democrats with arrest and expulsion from the Texas House to coax them back, but has been unsuccessful.

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Abbott says he’ll keep calling special sessions until they come back.

“I’ll tell you this also, Democrats act like they’re not going to come back as long as this is an issue,” Abbott told NBC News Thursday. “That means they’re not going to come back until like 2027 or 2028, because I’m going to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.” 

The governor says the state is in the process of “searching for, preparing to arrest Democrats who may be in Texas, may be elsewhere.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said Thursday that the FBI will assist Texas law enforcement in seizing the Democrats and bringing them back home. “I’m not going to disclose, though all may or may not be involved,” Abbott said when asked about the FBI’s involvement. “All I can say is we’re going to use every tool that we can to make sure that these runaway Democrats are going to be held accountable.”

The Texas Republican justified the redistricting by saying, “both the law and facts have changed since we drew the lines back in 2021,” and pointed to the last election.

“A lot of people who voted Republican, who voted for Donald Trump, were trapped into Democrat districts,” Abbott said. “And so when you look at the facts, when you look at the law, there is every reason to go ahead and draw the lines so that we can assure that every voter is going to have the opportunity to vote for their candidate of choice.”

Democrats across the nation have revolted against the Texas effort. Several large blue states like New York and California have floated doing their own redistricting. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said he will call a special election for later this year to allow voters to decide whether to enact Democrat-friendly congressional maps.

ABBOTT THREATENS EXPANDING NEW MAP TO GIVE GOP EIGHT MORE SEATS IF TEXAS DEMOCRATS DON’T RETURN

As for the Texas Democrats, there’s no exact timeline for their return. Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu said that they’re committed to staying until the special session is over.

“Our group is committed to ending this corrupt special session. Whether that’s a week, whether that’s two weeks, I don’t know. That’s not up to us,” Wu told CNN.