Night at the Capitol: One Democrat’s Unexpected Protest Grips Texas

When the sun broke on Tuesday morning over the Texas Capitol, State Representative Nicole Collier was inside the chambers, having spent a rumpled night there in a one-woman standoff against state Republicans.

Even veterans of Texas’s often wild political theater said they had never seen anything like it.

Then again, no one could recall hearing of state legislators prevented from leaving the Capitol building unless they signed a permission slip promising to return — it looked a lot like a middle-school hall pass — and agreed to have a state police officer follow them until they did.

Ms. Collier refused. “I just felt like it was wrong,” she said in an interview on Tuesday morning. When she heard that she would be trailed by an officer, she said, “I couldn’t move. I felt like, ‘I don’t like it. I disagree, and this is the way that I am resisting.’ ”

The imposition of police surveillance by Republican state house leaders on their Democratic colleagues marked the latest front in Texas’s redistricting battle. It came as dozens of House Democrats had just returned to the capitol on Monday, after a two-week walkout.

Texas Republicans had been furious at the Democratic members over the walkout, which prevented them from passing an aggressively redrawn congressional map designed to flip five Democratic-held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. Republican state leaders tried various tactics to bring the absent Democrats back, including civil arrest warrants issued by the state’s House speaker, Dustin Burrows.

On Monday, the House speaker invoked rules that allow him, after a majority vote, to lock the chamber doors and prohibit members from leaving without his written permission. The rules also allow “by order of a majority of those present” for the attendance of members to be “secured and retained.”

Mr. Burrows said in a statement that Ms. Collier’s “choice to stay and not sign the permission slip is well within her rights under the House rules.” He said he was focused on the business of the special legislative session.

On Monday evening, a Republican-led committee passed a newly redrawn map, one that still gained them five seats — as had been requested by President Trump — but also better protected their incumbent U.S. House members.

A full state House vote was scheduled for Wednesday, with final passage expected late in the day.

Ms. Collier’s impromptu protest began shortly after the House convened, for the first time in two weeks, with enough members present to do business.

Before adjourning for the day, Mr. Burrows told the returning Democrats about the required permission slip and police chaperone, to ensure their return to the Capitol for the next meeting of the full House on Wednesday.

Although lawmakers had not been told in advance, everyone agreed to the terms except for Ms. Collier, a Fort Worth representative with three adult daughters and little history of protest. “I can’t say that I’ve done anything like this,” she said.

Soon her protest attracted widespread attention on local television and among Democrats. Two fellow Democratic state representatives joined her for the night in the House chamber, Gene Wu of Houston, who led the walkout over redistricting, and Vincent Perez, of El Paso. Their assigned police officers spent the night there, too.

Republicans, who as the majority party lead the State House, closed the gallery to the public and the news media, arguing that Ms. Collier needed her privacy. (Ms. Collier later set up a livestream, offering a view inside the chamber.) Protesters gathered, demanding that she be let out, and several were arrested after refusing to leave when the Capitol building closed on Monday night.

On Tuesday morning, Ms. Collier shared a breakfast of oatmeal brought by Democratic colleagues who had come to see her, and, in an interview, recalled her thoughts during a night of troubled sleep in the House chamber, where the lights never turn off.

“‘Where am I? What is happening?’ That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she said. “What is going on that it’s OK to basically take the free will and freedom of another member away?”

Veteran lawmakers and lobbyists said they could not recall another time officers had been assigned to keep track of members.

“It is a first, in my experience,” said Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist. “It is hardball.”

The officers, too, had been caught off guard by their assignment. Some had to change their clothes (They were told to wear suits.) Others were surprised to learn that they would be driving long distances, possibly to Dallas or Houston.

One officer, a special agent in the criminal division of the state police, said his usual work often involved policing drug crimes and assaults. On Monday, he was told at the last minute to go home and get a suit, he said. He was assigned to a Houston lawmaker.

Democratic lawmakers were trailed by state police officers all over the State Capitol on Monday.

“It’s a new one,” said Mr. Wu, walking quickly through the halls, an officer close behind. “What happened in the past was always that you just, you know, swear that you’re going come back and that’s it.”

Mr. Wu said he had not seen a way around signing the slip and agreeing to the police escort.

“They’re not going to change their minds about it,” Mr. Wu said of his Republican colleagues. “They’re very much in the mode of doing whatever the hell they feel like.”

Some of the Democratic lawmakers said they welcomed the extra police security, given the threats they had received since leaving the state early this month. There had been a bomb threat at their hotel outside of Chicago. Someone had phoned in an order for dozens of pizzas to be delivered to the homes of Democratic lawmakers, leaving his name as that of the man who fatally shot a lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota.

“I feel like it’s a personal security detail,” said State Representative Jon Rosenthal, a Houston Democrat.

Many of the Democratic lawmakers were outraged.

“This is an abuse of power,” said Ann Johnson, a Democratic state representative from Houston. She blamed Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, who oversees the state police.

“You’re taking an actual police officer off the street from actually dealing with real crime affecting everyday Texans,” she said, “because you’re mad at your political opposition.”

She was among the first to sit with Ms. Collier in the State House chamber on Monday afternoon. Ms. Johnson tried to tell a Republican state representative, Charlie Geren, that Democrats should not have to agree to police surveillance.

Mr. Geren could be heard telling her that Ms. Collier was free to leave, provided she agreed to the terms. In an interview later, Mr. Geren said she could also leave the chamber to use the bathroom or go to her office.

Ms. Collier said on Tuesday that she was only able to do so with a police escort.

She said she had slept in fits and starts, in a brown leather chair marked with the seal of the State of Texas, and a state flag propped on her legislative desk. She said she planned to stay until the House reconvened on Wednesday.