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HOW REP. NICOLE COLLIER’S CAPITOL PROTEST SPARKED SOLIDARITY AMONG
THESE TEXAS WOMEN  
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Leslie Rangel and Olivia Messer
August 20, 2025
The 19th
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_ The Fort Worth Democrat spent the night held hostage in the Texas
House in protest. Then four enraged women — many of them mothers —
refused to leave her side overnight. _

Democratic Texas Rep. Nicole Collier from Fort Worth sleeps at her
desk on the Texas House floor on August 18, 2025 , (Nicole Collier).

 

Tuesday morning, state Rep. Nicole Collier awoke from her seat on the
floor of the Texas House, “bonnet and all,” after spending the
night locked in the Capitol. 

It’s an image that will go down in history.

In a photo posted online, the Fort Worth Democrat is wearing a dark
blue eye mask and white and red blankets. They match her Texas flag,
which marks a page in the book “African Founders: How Enslaved
People Expanded American Ideals.” Next to her lies a pink-tasseled
pillow that reads, over a rainbow, “Y’all means all.”

It’s immediately clear: None of these items were placed there by
accident.

Collier — an attorney, a mother, and the first woman to represent
Tarrant County’s House District 95 in North Texas — was protesting
the decision by the Texas House to order 24/7 monitoring by DPS state
troopers of Texas Democrats who broke quorum over the past two weeks.
More than 50 Texas Democrats left the state
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month for Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts to protest racist
redistricting efforts by Texas Republicans
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In addition to creating five more Republican seats in Congress, the
Texas GOP’s redistricting map would substantially reduce the
representation available to Black and brown Texans. 

“If I’m telling you that there’s 26 seats and there are 11
million white residents, that breaks down to 430,000 white residents
per congressional seat,” said state Rep. Vince Perez, a Democrat
from El Paso
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according to _Houston Public Media_. “So, what does it take for
Latinos? Well, there’s one congressional seat for every 1.2 million
Latinos, and there’s one Black seat for every 2 million Black
voters. That’s why the value of a Latino resident in Texas is
one-third of the political power of that that a white resident in
Texas delivers, and again, for Black residents in Texas, it’s
one-fifth.”

There’s no question that the House’s latest decision — to force
returning Democrats to sign
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the lawmakers described as “permission slips”
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was unprecedented. The slips of paper were agreements to be under 24/7
surveillance to ensure they return to the Capitol on Wednesday at 10
a.m. according to NBC News.
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Dozens of Democrats lined up to sign the permission slips and were
paired with plainclothes DPS agents, the _Houston
Chronicle_ reported
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Rep. Mihaela Plesa, who represents suburban Dallas, said her officer
followed her everywhere
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to lunch, to her office couch, down the hallway for bathroom breaks,
and even on her drive home.

“They told me, ‘I have to stay glued to your hip,’”
said state Rep. John Bryant
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after asking who his escort was — and if they were going to Dallas
with him. 

“I think most people were not taking it that seriously because
it’s so performative,” state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt told _The Barbed
Wire_ on Tuesday morning. “But what is it performing? It’s
authoritarianism.”

The only holdout was Collier, who wouldn’t sign the slip.

[Rep. Mihaela Plesa tears her Department of Public Safety escort form
during a news conference outside of the House chamber in the Texas
State Capitol.] Rep. Mihaela Plesa tears her Department of Public
Safety escort form during a news conference outside of the House
chamber in the State Capitol on August 19, 2025 in Austin, Texas.

‘I REFUSE TO SIGN AWAY MY DIGNITY’

“I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative
just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with
police escorts,” Collier said in a statement. “My community is
majority-minority, and they expect me to stand up for their
representation. When I press that button to vote, I know these maps
will harm my constituents — I won’t just go along quietly with
their intimidation or their discrimination.” 

Texas Democrats even posted a livestream overnight from the House
floor, which showed other lawmakers, including some Democratic
senators and state Rep. Gene Wu, visiting Collier with provisions.

Social media exploded overnight, as activists, civilians, and
lawmakers — like U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and former U.S. Rep.
Beto O’Rourke — called Texas Republicans “fascists” using
“some old Jim Crow playbook.” 

“Texas Republicans have lost their damn minds,” Crockett posted
on X [[link removed]].

Texas Congresswoman Julie Johnson called Collier a “badass” for
“holding her ground.”

“This situation says it all,” Johnson added. “Republicans
holding a Black woman hostage so they can finish their business of
rolling over Texas voters for Trump. Disgusting, racist, and
shameful.”

Meanwhile, in the face of such authoritarianism, Democrats like
Collier have shown “genuine vulnerability,” Eckhardt said.

“She invented a form of protest in that moment,” Eckhardt added.

“The House members have taken real risk,” she said. “Real risk,
professionally, personally, and politically. They have put themselves
on the line, and people are responding to that.”

At the beginning of the evening, Collier appeared to be alone in her
demonstration. 

But that didn’t last long. 

Dozens of members of the public — who had seen news reports of the
situation — appeared at the Capitol to defend the representative on
Monday evening.

“People just started spontaneously showing up for Nicole,”
Eckhardt said, describing 50-75 people chanting “Let Her Out!” on
Monday evening and past 10 p.m.

They were enraged, Eckhardt said.

“That particularly a woman, and particularly a Black woman, would be
held captive,” Eckhardt continued. “They were just shocked that in
a modern democracy, you could hold a duly elected representative on a
civil warrant regarding a quorum break in a session that sine died.”
(For the unfamiliar, “sine die” means the end of a legislative
session.)

“The rules keep changing to their authoritarian power play,” said
Eckhardt. “If the call to arrest legislators was for quorum break,
that was in the last special session, and quorum is established
now.”

Thus, Democratic lawmakers are asking: What right does the House have
to hold a member when quorum has already been established?

“When they change the rules inside the building to assure that
dissent loses, dissent’s only option is to take the argument
outside,” she said.

‘THE MORE THEY TRY TO PUSH US DOWN, THE MORE WE RISE TOGETHER’

As for the demonstrators outside the chamber, “they didn’t have a
plan,” said Eckhardt, but they wanted to help. By the time law
enforcement officers were determined to clear the building at 10:30
p.m., some of the protesters agreed to pack it up and return later.

But four women remained, Eckhardt said, who told _The Barbed
Wire_ she acted as their attorney “for the purposes of having
gotten them out of jail this morning.” 

The four arrested women were Angel Carroll, organizer of last
night’s protests and president of the Black Austin Democrats; Megan
Chopra, a political content creator; Jessica Cohen, with Stonewall
Democrats of Austin; and Jill Van Voorhis, President of Westlake Eanes
Democrats.

The women were finally released from the Travis County Jail at 5
a.m. 

“Had a girls night at the county jail,” Chopra wrote in a video
of the four women [[link removed]] in the
jail’s lobby.

One commenter wrote underneath the video: “BAD BITCHES WHO NEED 20
COPS TO DETAIN THEM.” 

“This is NOT what democracy looks like, but it is what RESISTANCE
looks like and this is only the beginning!” Carroll said in a
separate video posted to Instagram. 
[[link removed]]“We
are looking straight in the face of fascism and we cannot back
down✊🏾” 

[Democratic Texas Rep. Penny Morales Shaw displays a poster of
Democratic Texas Rep. Nicole Collier during a news conference outside
of the House chamber in the Texas State Capitol.] Rep. Penny Morales
Shaw displays a poster of Democratic Texas Rep. Nicole Collier during
a news conference outside of the House chamber in the State Capitol on
August 19, 2025 in Austin, Texas.

Along with Eckhardt, Pooja Sethi, an attorney and community advocate,
spent most of the night at the Travis County Jail waiting for the four
women to be released.

Ultimately it was a cascade of support. Collier stood up for her
constituents, the women who protested stood up for Collier, and
Eckhardt and Sethi supported _them_ in turn.

“I was there to offer legal guidance, but more importantly, to stand
in solidarity with the women taking this brave action,” Sethi
told _The Barbed Wire_. “My presence was rooted in support, care,
and deep respect for their courage.” 

Sethi said at least three of the women are mothers — and were still
willing to leave their children for the evening to fight what they saw
as an abuse of power. And after their arrest, the women have been
banned from the Texas Capitol grounds for a full year. For now, they
said, in the video of their release, “It’s up to you all to keep
it going.”

“The more they try to push us down, the more we rise together,”
Sethi said. “Women have always been on the front lines of justice
movements.”

Hours into her detention, Collier reportedly filed a habeas corpus
petition in Travis County, according to _Courthouse News Service
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In the court filing
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Collier requested that a judge declare her restraint illegal and
argued that, while the House has the authority to compel the
attendance of absent member, she is present. Thus, there’s no need
for Collier to be held in the House’s custody, she said.

By 6:17 a.m. Collier posted a video with Wu. Both agreed that it was
“real cold” on the House floor overnight.

As for the lawmakers who did sign, all wasn’t smooth: Rep. Sheryl
Cole posted on X that her DPS escort “who was forced upon me to
track my every movement” accompanied the lawmaker on her morning
walk in her Mueller neighborhood. But after the officer lost her on
the trail, the lawmaker said he “threatened to arrest me” and
“made a scene in front of my constituents.”

Several hours later, just before 11 a.m., Collier thanked her
supporters.

“I’m still here on the floor of the house chamber,” Collier
said in a live video. 
[[link removed]]“Thank
you for standing up for our democracies, for taking a stand against
our oppressor. Join us in resisting.”

Fellow lawmakers took her live video feed and showed demonstrators
lining the capitol hallways holding signs that read “Liberation”
and “No justice, no peace.” 

More than 24 hours after her detainment began, the crowd again
chanted, “Let her go!” 

During those weeks, Republicans increasingly escalated rhetoric, court
filings, and threats of felony arrests, while the Democrats in
Illinois were forced to evacuate their hotel over a credible bomb
threat
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Still, the goalpost has kept on moving, even after their return to the
Capitol.

_The 19th was founded in 2020 by Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora,
longtime journalists who believed the news was not representative
enough. Our goal is to empower all women and LGBTQ+ people
— particularly those excluded from the promise of the 19th
Amendment by their gender, race, ethnicity, class or disability
— with the information they need to be equal participants in our
democracy._

_This article originally appeared in The Barbed Wire
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* texas
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* Gerrymandering
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* Rep. Nicole Collier
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* women's protests
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