Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, presided over an eight-minute session of the lower chamber on Monday afternoon and criticized Democrats for not showing up in enough numbers to continue the session.

"Leaving the state does not stop this House from doing its work; it only delays it,” Burrows said in the House chamber.

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It's a sentiment political observers in the state echoed Monday but did say it provides Democrats with a visible national platform to call attention to the uncommon political practice of redrawing congressional maps in the middle of the decade.

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said leaving the state allows Democrats to signal the intensity of their opposition to a plan that would r

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