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TYLER \u2013 East Texas state lawmakers are ready to go back to work, while Democratic Party leaders are saying they want a fair session. The breaking point of this special session came during Republicans\u2019 attempt at passing a redistricting map that would create more Republican seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to our news partner KETK.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time for the Democrats to get back and do their jobs and represent their districts and have a debate and a discussion where that\u2019s supposed to happen,\u201d State Rep. Cole Hefner, a Republican of Lindale, said.<\/p>\n
Hefner said committee meetings are still happening and bills are passing out of the calendar committee, but now they want to bring those items to the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have four or five flood relief, flood-related bills to do with the Kerrville floods, the central Texas floods, and those are top of the list priorities,\u201d Hefner said. \u201cOf course, the redistricting is going to be important for the direction of our nation, and so there\u2019s a lot of business to be done here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hefner also said the East Texas groundwater fight is still at the front of his mind this session.<\/p>\n
\u201cEast Texas, we\u2019re outnumbered by the big cities, but we are the representatives here in East Texas are united in protecting our private property owners\u2019 property rights,\u201d Hefner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a group just decides they\u2019re not going to show up for work, it puts the people of Texas at a real disadvantage,\u201d State Rep. Brent Money, a Republican of Greenville, said.<\/p>\n
As a Republican state representative for Van Zandt County, Money said he\u2019s disappointed in his fellow lawmakers and their decision not to come back to work.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the aisle, Democratic minority leader in the Texas House, State Rep. Gene Wu announced in a press conference in Illinois on Wednesday that he will continue their fight and will take their movement beyond Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo take away our voice and our power, other states will make sure that it does not matter what they do, that we will nullify their actions,\u201d Wu said. \u201cWe will make it pointless for them to attack our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through this process, Republican state lawmakers are now calling for stronger actions to bring the missing representatives back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that there is going to be punishment for the people who left and abdicated their duties,\u201d Money said.<\/p>\n
The next scheduled session is on Friday, if no quorum is reached again Governor Greg Abbott says he will end this first special session and immediately call for a second one, vowing to not stop until his legislative priorities are passed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TYLER \u2013 East Texas state lawmakers are ready to go back to work, while Democratic Party leaders are saying they want a fair session. The breaking point of this special session came during Republicans\u2019 attempt at passing a redistricting map that would create more Republican seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to our … Continue reading ETX Reps express disappointment with quorum breakers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1434636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/08\/2025-08-14_033841-201x200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1434363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-08 05:06:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/08\/2025-08-14_033841-201x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1434363"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1434706,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434363\/revisions\/1434706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1434636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1434363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1434363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1434363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}