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Senator John Cornyn's announcement that the FBI will step in to help locate Texas Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to deny quorum over a mid-decade redistricting bill raised alarms for legal analysts. The announcement from Cornyn, a Texas Republican, raised questions about whether this is a proper, or political, use of the FBI. Texas Republicans are seeking to redraw the state's congressional boundaries to give Republicans an advantage and thwart potential losses in the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats left the state to deny quorum and block a vote on the bill, which they view as blatantly partisan gerrymandering.
Michael McAuliffe, a former federal prosecutor and former elected state attorney, told Newsweek that the use of the FBI to find the lawmakers is "well beyond alarming." "The FBI's function is to investigate potential violations of federal law, conduct specified national security functions, and perform background investigations for potential presidential nominees," he said. "Nowhere in the statutory list of powers that I know of is tracking down political officer holders of an opposition party. "The assignment to pursue state elected officials without clear investigative jurisdiction is a crass abuse of the immense authority of the Bureau. It's an insult to the thousands of special agents who took an oath to protect the nation, not answer the call of politicization." The FBI being used for this amounts to "pure, naked political purposes" and is a "bull's-eye hit on the rule of law," he said.