CHICAGO — Texas Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said Thursday the FBI has granted his request to assist Texas law enforcement in locating House Democrats who fled the state, setting up a potential confrontation with Illinois Democratic officials who have vowed to protect them.

“I am proud to announce that Director Kash Patel has approved my request for the FBI to assist state and local law enforcement in locating runaway Texas House Democrats,” Cornyn said in a statement.

“I thank President Trump and Director Patel for supporting and swiftly acting on my call for the federal government to hold these supposed lawmakers accountable for fleeing Texas. We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities.”

But Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker attempted to tamp down the federal law enforcement involvement, describing it as “a lot of grandstanding by the Trump administration, by John Cornyn, by Gov. (Greg) Abbott in Texas.”

“The reality is that all that he has said, Cornyn, is that the FBI has been authorized to locate the Texas House Democrats, nothing more. And you know why? Because there is no federal law that allows them to arrest Texas Democrats who are here visiting the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said in Springfield after cutting the ribbon to open the Illinois State Fair. “I welcome the FBI coming to the state. I hope they take in the state fair. I hope they go see the beauty of Lake Michigan, the adventure awaits for all of them. But they won’t be arresting anyone because there is no U.S. federal law that prohibits those Texas House Democrats from being here in the state of Illinois.”

Still, the decision by Patel and the Trump administration represents the latest escalation in what has become a national battle between Republicans and Democrats after Texas House Democrats left the state Sunday to deny Republicans a quorum to approve a new mid-decade redistricting plan that would flip five Democratic congressional seats to the GOP. The new map, encouraged by Trump, is aimed at helping ensure Republicans maintain their narrow U.S. House majority in next year’s midterm elections and during the president’s final term.

It was unclear what the FBI’s activities would entail since the Texas lawmakers have not been charged with state or federal-level criminal activity. They are facing civil warrants for leaving the state, but they are unenforceable outside of Texas.

In making his original request for federal assistance, Cornyn wrote that the FBI “has tools to aid state law enforcement when parties cross state lines, including to avoid testifying or fleeing a scene of a crime.”

“Specifically, I am concerned that legislators who solicited or accepted funds to aid in their efforts to avoid their legislative duties may be guilty of bribery or other public corruption offenses,” Cornyn wrote on Tuesday.

As for locating the Texas lawmakers, the bulk of them are staying at the same hotel in far west suburban St. Charles, where they went after arriving at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Sunday night. Their hotel was the subject of a bomb threat on Wednesday that caused them to be evacuated during a search, which turned up nothing.

Pritzker on Wednesday said his administration was closely coordinating with state and local law enforcement to protect the Texas House delegation.

“We’ve had to react from a law enforcement perspective here in the state by calling our state police, local law enforcement, making sure that they’re protecting the people who are staying at that hotel, including the Texas visitors that we have,” Pritzker said, though he didn’t directly answer what concrete steps Illinois State Police were taking to shield the Texas legislators from possible efforts to send Texas Rangers or FBI agents to bring them back to Texas.

On Thursday, Pritzker said Republicans started the affair and accused the GOP of attempting to “thwart democracy” by seeking to redraw maps in the middle of the decade rather than every 10 years after the federal census is conducted.

“We’re going to do everything we can to protect these Texas House Democrats and to help them do what they’re doing,” Pritzker said, again referring to the Texas lawmakers as “heroes” for what “they’ve given up for all of us” by leaving their homes.

Pritzker also referred to Abbott, the Texas Republican governor, as a “lapdog” for Trump, belittling Abbott for focusing on the remap issue rather than the purpose for which he called Texas lawmakers into special session — providing relief from the July 4 flooding in the state’s Hill Country that killed more than 130 people.

“It’s too bad that he doesn’t know what his job is, that he doesn’t carry out his job, which is to take care of the people of Texas, and, frankly, to work with the rest of the states in getting the job done of whether it’s immigration reform, which he should have worked on with all of us, or caring for democracy, by making sure that there isn’t a remap,” Pritzker said of Abbott.

Though the Illinois governor has said “everything is on the table” to counter a Republican redistricting plan in Texas, he said Illinois Democrats are not working on a new congressional map for the state to wring out at least one additional Democratic district at the expense of Republicans.

The 2021 Illinois redistricting map approved by Democrats and signed by Pritzker created a 14-3 Democratic majority in the state’s congressional delegation, down from 13-5 in the previous decade map when Illinois had 18 U.S. House seats.

“Nobody’s done any work on a map for Illinois. We have a map in Illinois. It was passed and signed back in 2021. That’s when they’re done, right after a decennial census, and that’s when they should be done — not in the middle of a decade just because Donald Trump wants to change the math for 2026,” Pritzker said. “We’re not making any moves right now. If we have to, we’re going to look at all the options that are available to us.”

In response to Patel’s decision to engage the FBI on the matter, the leader of the Democratic minority in the U.S. House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, used social media to ask, “Shouldn’t the FBI be tracking down terrorists, drug traffickers and child predators?”

“The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,” he wrote on the social media platform X. “These extremists don’t give a damn about public safety.”

He added, “We will not be intimidated.”

A spokesman for the Texas Democrats on Thursday morning did not comment on the reports that the FBI had granted Cornyn’s request. Instead, the spokesman referred to a statement from Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, the leader of the state’s House Democratic Caucus, from earlier in the week in which Wu referred to Cornyn as “a career DC politician in the middle of a political death spiral.”

“So he’s flailing around, threatening to misuse the FBI in a pathetic attempt to prove his extremist credentials to a base that’s already left him behind,” Wu said, alluding to Cornyn facing a challenge in his reelection bid against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “We’re focused on fighting for Texas, he’s focused on fighting for his own political survival. Good luck with that.”

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—Gorner reported from Springfield.

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