{"id":245414,"date":"2026-04-11T19:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T19:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/245414\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T19:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T19:44:12","slug":"texas-democrats-split-on-response-to-gop-vote-to-enforce-fines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/245414\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Democrats split on response to GOP vote to enforce fines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AUSTIN \u2013 Texas Democrats offered split views after a GOP-led House committee moved to enforce thousands of dollars in fines against legislators who fled the state last year to block a redistricting plan.<\/p>\n<p>Some Democrats say they will pay and move on. Others vowed to fight what they call an unconstitutional punishment.<\/p>\n<p>The House Administration Committee voted along party lines Friday to uphold the penalties, reducing them to $8,354 per member. The\u00a0dispute stems from last year\u2019s quorum break, when Democrats left Texas and temporarily stalled a Republican-backed congressional map.<\/p>\n<p>Some Democrats said they will pay and avoid further penalties. Others, including Houston Rep.\u00a0Jolanda Jones, said they will refuse, arguing the fines violate her constitutional rights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to appeal this all the way up as far as I have to,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>House Democratic leader Gene\u00a0Wu of Houston said he plans to pay but\u00a0questioned the requirement to use personal funds, pointing to state law that allows campaign money to cover such expenses.<\/p>\n<p>Payment won\u2019t be required until members are formally notified, and committee Chair Charlie\u00a0Geren, R-Fort Worth, gave no timeline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN \u2013 Texas Democrats offered split views after a GOP-led House committee moved to enforce thousands of dollars&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-245414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}