Rep. Van Duyne to Newsmax: Texas Dems 'Showing Us What Cowardice Looks Like'

Texas Democrats who fled the state to block Republicans from passing a key voting bill ''are showing us what cowardice looks like,'' Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, said Tuesday while appearing on Newsmax.

''You compare that to what they're doing in Cuba. Cuban people who are fighting against this Marxist system are showing us what courage looks like while Texas Dems are showing us what cowardice looks like. It's embarrassing,'' she told "The Chris Salcedo Show."

''They would rather surrender our state to federal control and have tyrannical leadership over local control. Think about the majority of the people that are in the Texas state Legislature — they were elected legally and they're the majority and they're fighting that in the name of voter rights. So they're completely denying their citizens representation because they are refusing to do their job. They're running to D.C. to follow [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi in her horrendous, dangerous voting rights act, which is anything but, it's a federal takeover of our state systems.''

At least 57 of the 67 State House Democrats left the state Monday and headed to Washington to draw national attention to their cause.

The move could bring the Legislature to a halt for weeks if Democrats remain out of state until the special session ends in August, which the lawmakers have vowed to do to run out the clock.

"Our democracy is on the line," state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat, told NBC News. "It became very clear to us that this weekend that any attempts to negotiate some Democratic concessions were cut off, making it very clear that Republicans were hellbent on having it their way.''

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott slammed the move.

"Texas Democrats' decision to break a quorum of the Texas Legislature and abandon the Texas State Capitol inflicts harm on the very Texans who elected them to serve," Abbott said in a statement. "As they fly across the country on cushy private planes, they leave undone issues that can help their districts and our state."

Voting restriction legislation introduced last week in the Texas House and Senate would clamp down on the state's voting-by-mail rules, ban drive-thru voting and regulate early voting hours to preempt expanded early voting in Harris County, among other items.

Van Duyne said the Texas Legislature is ''trying to make it easier to vote but harder to cheat.''

''It's easier to vote in red states than it is in blue states, but that is a narrative they're not going to talk about. Instead, they just want to talk about this federal government takeover of all of our states. You look at ... the total control they want to have over people's lives, and quite honestly, it's shocking.''

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