Multiple Texas House Democrats will spend the night inside the Texas House chamber to protest law enforcement escorts that have been following them around to ensure they show up to the Capitol on Wednesday.

The new, partisan maps come on the heels of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s launch of California’s redistricting campaign on Thursday, an effort he touted as meant to favor Democrats in California in the upcoming midterm elections as a counter to similar efforts in Republican-led states elsewhere in the country.

North Carolina farmer Jamie Ager is part of a new crop of Democratic candidates the party is turning to as it tries to compete in the tough, often rural districts it may need to flip to retake the U.S.

Republican leaders said that if they can't reach a quorum again at 10 a.m., both the House and Senate will wrap up the special session.

But in some of the nation’s biggest Senate races, Democrats are relying on an old strategy of recruiting—and then clearing the field for—long-serving party leaders with whom voters are already familiar.

While a general notion behind drawing districts is to unite what’s called communities of interest — neighborhoods and cities that share similar concerns or demographic traits — the proposed

Former President Barack Obama praised a group of Texas Democratic lawmakers for fleeing their state to stop a vote on a redistricting bill, calling their actions “inspiring."

In a dramatic display of protest inside the Texas Capitol, State Representative Nicole Collier (D–Fort Worth), one of the longest-serving Black women in the Texas House, spent the night confined in the House chamber after refusing to sign a Republican-issued “permission slip” that would have placed her under constant police escort.