Democrats who fled Texas to thwart the redrawing of a congressional map said they were "undeterred" Wednesday after a bomb threat at the Illinois hotel where some of them are staying. The St. Charles Police Department said that around 400 people were evacuated from the hotel after the threat Wednesday morning but that bomb squad units didn't find any devices, the Hill reports.
- "This morning, a threat was made against the safety of the members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus," three of the lawmakers said in a statement, per NBC News. "We are safe, we are secure, and we are undeterred and unintimidated. We are grateful for Governor Pritzker, local, and state law enforcement for their quick action to ensure our safety."
The threat followed Pritzker's Tuesday night appearance on the Late Show, where he vowed that the Texas Democrats would be "safe" as long as they were in Illinois, despite threats of arrest or removal from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican leaders. Pritzker told Stephen Colbert that with the effort to give Republicans five more US House seats, Texas Republicans are "taking rights away from Black and brown people" and "literally obliterating districts that were written according to the Voting Rights Act." The Chicago Tribune reports that the Democratic governor "used humor to deflect questions about Illinois' own heavily gerrymandered congressional map," joking that, with one oddly shaped district, his party "handed it over to a kindergarten class and let them decide."
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