'Not sure they can come back': No end in sight after 'bizarre' Trump move exiled Democrats

Texas Democrats intend to remain in exile until at least Aug. 19, the end of a special legislative session called by Gov. Greg Abbott to pass a gerrymandered congressional map, but the end of the political saga is far from over.

President Donald Trump asked for the mid-decade redistricting that could gain Republicans five seats in next year's midterms, but Democrats fled the state this week to prevent the necessary quorum to vote on the measure, which other GOP-led states are also considering.

"I don't necessarily see the endgame to it at this point in time, which I do think threads directly into the national implications of this," said CNN's Phil Mattingly. "You know, these type of thing has happened in the past. Democrats stay out for that special session, and then they come back and then kind of things move forward. My kind of sense of it, based on the past was that, look, at some point this is going to happen. Democrats are going to have to come back and deal with this reality, and the bigger question is, what do Democrats in blue states end up doing here?"

"But I'm starting to get the sense that, one, Republicans clearly don't plan on stopping this effort," Mattingly added. "Democrats clearly don't plan on coming back, and I'm not sure Democrats can come back as long as Democrats are, or as long as Republicans are pursuing this pathway because of the moment they are in, and because of how big this has gotten across the nation."

CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere agreed the situation has already escalated and neither side seems willing to back down.

"We should not lose sight of just how bizarre this whole thing is," Dovere said. "Six weeks ago, nobody was ever thinking about Texas redistricting. Donald Trump said, 'I want more seats out of Texas,' so the governor now made this a priority over everything else that they were doing in Texas, including dealing with the flood response there, and now we've got the Democrats who have run away from the state because they feel like they have no other option, and the governor saying to them, 'We're not going to pay you, we might send the FBI after you, we could kick you out of office, and if you don't do what we want right now, then it will get worse for you.'"

"This is a really extraordinary thing, and it is not just the back and forth, even though, yes, the blue state governors like Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul are saying that they will respond to it," Dovere added. "It is the Republicans chasing more seats that they think they can about the polls for next year's midterms, and by the way, who knows what will happen in next year's midterms."

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