Texas state Rep. James Talarico speaks during a rally to protest against redistricting hearings at the Texas Capitol on July 24, in Austin, Texas. AP/Eric Gay
A lot of people want to get a hold of James Talarico these days. The 36-year-old Texas state representative and seminary student is a rising Democratic star. You—like 5.6 million others—may have seen him in your social-media feed, calling a proposal to place the Ten Commandments in every public-school classroom “un-Christian” and the mark of a “dead religion.” Or perhaps you caught his recent two-and-a-half-hour conversation with Joe Rogan—who told him he should run for president. (He’s thinking about running for Senate.)
He’s also on the lam. The state speaker of the house ordered arrest warrants for Talarico and dozens of Democrats who left the state last weekend to prevent a vote on a mid-decade redistricting plan that would likely give Republicans five more congressional seats. “Right before we got on the flight to leave Texas, we all gathered in an interfaith prayer, holding each other’s hands, because this is not just a political struggle, it’s also a spiritual struggle,” Talarico says. I spoke to the legislator via Zoom from an undisclosed location outside Chicago on Thursday, hours after Republican Sen. John Cornyn—a man he may end up running against next fall—announced that the Trump administration would assign FBI agents to help “hold these supposed lawmakers accountable.” This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tim Murphy: Sen. John Cornyn says the FBI has agreed to help locate you. How does it feel to officially be wanted by the FBI?
James Talarico: Well, I mean, I think Senator Cornyn is trying to stay relevant in his primary battle with Ken Paxton. So I understand the gimmick, but I think it should trouble us that any politician is trying to use the resources of the state to arrest or remove duly elected legislators who are exercising their constitutional right to break quorum. The Texas State Constitution gives us this tool in our toolbox as the minority to check the abuses of the majority, and so we’re not doing anything wrong. And there’s about 200 years of history in this country of legislators breaking quorum, including Abraham Lincoln. You know, we’re here in Illinois, in the Land of Lincoln. And that’s appropriate because, because Abraham Lincoln broke quorum in 1840 as a state senator by jumping out of the window of the Illinois State Capitol. And thankfully, I didn’t have to jump out of any windows back in Texas. But this is not unusual. It is a tool the minority has. And so for Greg Abbott to threaten to remove us from office, for Ken Paxton and John Cornyn to be threatening our arrest, it is unacceptable in a democracy, and this is a page out of an authoritarian playbook we’ve seen in other countries, and it should be alarming to all of us, regardless of our political party.
TM: So what’s at stake here? Why are you here—wherever you are?
JT: Trump is asking Texas Republicans to redraw the maps that they just drew in 2021 to get him five more seats to protect his majority in Congress, because he’s worried about losing it in the next election, and it’s because his policies are unpopular, right? He’s starting wars and wrecking the economy. He’s protecting pedophiles. He’s kicking millions of people off their health care to fund tax breaks for billionaires, and those policies deserve to be evaluated by the American people and the only way we can hold the most powerful politician our country accountable is through free and fair elections, especially in the midterms, and that’s what’s at stake here. And it’s not just a Texas problem. It’s an American problem.
TM: What persuaded you to actually leave? Because it seems like there was a bit of debate among Democrats, and not all of your colleagues actually have left the state.
JT: When Donald Trump asked Georgia Republicans to find him 11,000 more votes after he lost the 2020 election, they said, No, sir. But when Trump asked Texas Republicans to find him five more congressional seats ahead of the 2026 elections, they said, How about Thursday? So the responsibility to defend and fix this representative democracy of ours fell to Texas Democrats, and 57 of us answered the call, and we’re proud to do so, regardless of what consequences we may face.
TM: Can you tell me a little bit about where you are, as much as you’re able to say?
JT: Well, we’re here in Illinois, and in a nondescript hotel room, as you can see, and that’s for security reasons. As you may have read, we had a bomb threat called into our hotel, and Ken Paxton has put out a tweet asking his followers to “hunt us down.” And so, you know, we’re trying to keep all of our members safe, all of our staff members safe, as we do this important work of fixing this democracy of ours so that it can work for every Texan and every American.
TM: What was that bomb threat like?
JT: It was early in the morning. I woke up to the bomb threat, and a lot of my colleagues did. And it was certainly scary, because we all had to evacuate, and law enforcement swarmed the premises, and we were outside for hours. But I think it’s a reminder that what we’re doing is very important. They wouldn’t be trying to bomb you if you’re not doing something consequential. And we feel that we are at the front lines of protecting and hopefully advancing the American experiment, because if people—Democrats, independents and Republicans alike—can’t hold their elected officials accountable in a midterm election, if they’re not able to change their government from the bottom up, if they’re not able to elect the representatives of their choice, then we no longer have representative democracy and and we’re not ready to accept that.
TM: Texas legislators make something like $7,200 a year. You’re not swimming in inherited wealth or anything like that. Are you putting everything on your card while you’re up here or is somebody else paying for the hotel room? How does this work financially?
JT: It depends. You know, we’re facing financial penalties, fines from the state legislature for breaking quorum. It’s about $500 a day. Those we’re going to pay ourselves, which certainly won’t be easy to do depending how long this lasts, but we will be paying those fines ourselves. Travel, food, lodging—that we’re able to pay out of our campaign accounts, out of the caucus’ account. And thankfully, you know, we have been flooded with grassroots donations from all across Texas, from all across America. You know, $5, $10, $15—regular people funding this operation of ours. And it’s appropriate because we’re fighting for the people, not just Democrats, but independents and Republicans too, and it’s appropriate that those people are the ones funding this effort.
TM: What did you expect from this episode, versus what you’ve gotten? Because it seems a bit more intense than what you went through in 2021.
JT: I think that’s right. I’ve been frankly shocked at how Texas Republicans have conducted themselves, you know, endangering the safety of their colleagues, threatening to remove those colleagues from their duly elected positions and then, you know, people like Donald Trump sending in the FBI to find us. So that kind of rhetoric, those kind of actions, should be deeply disturbing to every American, regardless of their political affiliation, because we’ve seen how this authoritarian playbook works out in other countries, and it doesn’t lead anywhere good.
TM: There’s been a lot of legal threats swirling around this, from Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, Donald Trump, Greg Abbott. How much of this is kind of jockeying for the primary, as you mentioned, and how much of this is like real legal threats that you’re concerned about?
JT: It’s hard to tell. And you know, we think they’re on pretty dubious legal ground but unfortunately, our courts have become highly politicized. They’ve been bought by big money, particularly in Texas, and so it may not matter what the law says. It may just matter what the politics requires, and so we’ll see how this plays out. But my colleagues and I are not going to be deterred. We are here to fight for our constituents and fight for all Texans. We’re here to fight for free and fair elections for every single person in this country and we’re participating in a long American tradition of standing up to bullies, of speaking truth to power, of civil disobedience, of good trouble.
TM: There’s a push to have Democrats respond in kind with redistricting elsewhere. It’s something that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has called for. Do you think that that’s something that Democrats can actually level the playing field with or is that a losing battle against a party that controls a lot more states?
JT: Our ultimate goal is to get the politics out of redistricting everywhere. We should ban gerrymandering across this country, in every state, red states and blue states alike. It’s why I filed a bill in the Texas legislature to create an independent, citizen led redistricting commission so that voters can choose their politicians instead of politicians choosing their voters. That said, if one side is intent on cheating—which is exactly what Texas Republicans are doing and what Donald Trump is doing by redrawing the maps in the middle of the decade at the direct request of the most powerful man in the country—they are attempting to rig the next election. There’s no other way to describe it. And so if that’s the case, if one side’s going to cheat, all bets are off. And Democrats should not unilaterally disarm, but we should maintain our vision for how we can ultimately fix this democracy so it can work for regular people all over the country.
TM: Do you really think that you can stop this particular redistricting effort from advancing, if you come back and Greg Abbott just calls another session and another session after that?
JT: If every American who took a brave stand throughout our history did it because they knew they were going to win, we’d probably have a very different country right now. Sometimes you have to stand up, even if you’re not sure if you’ll be successful. But I can just tell you, over the last four days of this special session and of this quorum break, we have shined a national, an international spotlight on this power grab in Texas, and that, in and of itself, is a victory. People and the media are talking about this in a way they weren’t before. Sometimes the media needs conflict to be able to report on the news, and so we’re happy to provide that to make sure that all Americans are informed about what’s happening in their name and what’s happening in their government, and how the most powerful politician in the country is trying to rig the upcoming midterm elections. But if we can inspire blue states to respond in kind, if we can inspire acts of courage across the country to stand up to these would be tyrants, then we’re going to consider that a victory.
TM: What would you like to be working on in a special session if you were back in Austin, not not dealing with redistricting?
JT: I think the top of the list is relief for those flood victims and their families in the Texas Hill Country, an area of the state that means a lot to me personally, where I’ve spent a lot of time, where my family has lived, and so we need to get that relief to that community, and we’ve got to prevent a disaster like that from happening ever again in our state. We showed up two weeks ago at the beginning of this special session, and we begged our Republican colleagues to prioritize flood relief and disaster mitigation, and they refused to do so. They held 12 hearings on redistricting, and they held two hearings on flood relief. They didn’t even file a flood bill, and so instead, they put flood victims and their families at the end of the agenda and used them as leverage to try to rig the next election and pass these correct maps. It’s cynical politics at its worst. It’s deeply immoral, and it should outrage all of us, regardless of our party.
TM: You’ve been floated as a candidate for US Senator and governor. Have you narrowed that search at all, or the timeline for that?
JT: Well, I am seriously looking at the US Senate race, but frankly, it’s kind of been put on hold. I was hired by 200,000 people in Central Texas to fight for them at the state capitol. I’m basically their attorney in state government, even though I’m not an attorney, I’m a former teacher. But that’s my job, to defend them and their interests, and that’s what I’m doing by breaking quorum and stopping their voices from being silenced, and I intend on doing this job before I start applying to other jobs. So once we stop this power grab and kill these corrupt maps, I’ll start thinking about other ways I may be able to serve in the future.