Fugitive Texas Dems take their kids to meet senators at the Capitol on their ...

During Texas Democratic lawmakers' second day in Washington D.C., the group met with Senator Elizabeth Warren at the Capitol – and some towed their children along with them.

At least two Texas House members brought their children with them when fleeing Austin to the nation's capital this week.

A young girl joined her mother as the group was pictured speaking with Warren on Capitol Hill Wednesday afternoon. At one point she was being held by her mother, and then was pictured sitting on the floor and looking at a picture book with a puppy on the cover.

While none of the lawmakers were wearing face coverings, the young girl was. The FDA has not approved emergency use for the vaccine for children under 12-years-old.

On Tuesday morning, while leaving Washington Plaza Hotel for a press conference on Capitol Hill, a representative was seen walking hand-in-hand with her masked-up grade school-age son.

Around 60 Democrats fled the state on Monday to break quorum in order to stop the Texas House of Representatives from passing two Republican voting rights bills, which was passed by the State's Senate on Tuesday.

The lawmakers say they are prepared to stay in D.C. until the end of the 30-day special session called by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, which still has 26 days remaining.

It is unclear how many children came along for the ride with their lawmaker parents or if they will also remain in Washington for that full time.

Currently, the group is staying at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Northwest Washington, D.C., where rooms start at $199 per night. The high-end hotel, however, includes a luxurious outdoor pool, which is open for the summer.

Trey Martinez Fischer, one of the runaway Democratic representatives, said Tuesday that Texas Democrats, through campaign funds and other private fundraising efforts, are fully funding paying for the trip.

The group insists no taxpayer money has been spent on the $100,000 to charter two private jets to get from Austin to D.C. or the several thousand dollars per night to stay at the hotel.

Also on Tuesday, several of the lawmakers said they are not worried about threats that they will be arrested once stepping foot back in Texas.

Abbott slammed President Joe Biden on Tuesday night for 'spreading disinformation' with his speech saying GOP voting bills are 'the most significant threat to democracy since the Civil War'. 

'Biden has a pattern of spreading misinformation & he's at it again today,' Abbott said in a tweet. 

'The [Texas Legislature] is passing a law that EXPANDS early voting hours & prevents mail-in ballot fraud. Texas is making it EASIER to vote & harder to cheat,' he added.

The Texas Senate bill would allow voting from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. – an increase of three hours on weekdays and 10 hours on Sundays – and would lower the population threshold from 100,000 to 30,000 for counties to open the polling booths for at least 12 hours in the week before Election Day. 

Mail voters would also be asked to verify their identities with a state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number in a bid to get rid of signature verification that accounts for a higher number of rejected ballots.

Texas Democrats believe the two bills passing through the state legislature would make it harder to vote and fled the state in two private jets and headed to  Washington D.C. to block Republicans getting them through. 

'Once again, President Biden ignores the facts,' Abbott said in a video attached to his Tuesday evening tweet. 'The fact is that Texas is passing a law that expands—not reduces—the hours of early voting.  

'That's more than many states, including President Biden's home state of Delaware, which has zero hours of early voting,' Abbott added.

Biden has upped his rhetoric claiming the allegedly 'restrictive' voting bills, which are being proposed and passed across the country, are an 'un-American' throwback to Jim Crow laws.

The White House and Capitol Hill Democrats are using the latest stunt from Texas Democrats to push for the expansion of voting rights and access in the passage of H.R. 1, the For the People Act.

Democrats argue the law would increase access and expand the right to vote for minority and poor communities, while Republicans argue it opens the way for a slew of fraud – especially since the bill does include requiring identification in the form of government-issued ID to cast a ballot. 

The Texas state Senate approved their version of the election reform bill on Tuesday, but the legislation has been stalled because the House Democrats broke the quorum of having two-thirds of lawmakers present by fleeing.

The House voted on Tuesday that the runaways would be arrested on their return to the state, but the group has vowed to stay in Washington, D.C. until the 30-day session is up. 

At best, the Democrats fleeing to the nation's capital from Austin on two private jets chartered at $100,000 on Monday is just a delay tactic or PR stunt. After the special session is up on August 7, Abbott can just call another one. 

Biden on Tuesday launched an assault on attempts by Republican-controlled states to change voting rights laws, blasting them as a 'threat to democracy' and vowing to protect 'free and fair elections.'

'This is election subversion. It is the most dangerous threat to voting in the integrity of free and fair elections in our history,' he said, speaking at the historic National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.  

Republicans say their new laws protect election security and argue the federal government shouldn't be involved in a state issue. Democrats claim the state laws will make it harder to vote, particularly for minority groups, which tend to vote Democratic. 

In a 25-minute speech that traced the history of the voting rights movement, Biden veered between attacks on Donald Trump and Republicans who are undermining confidence in American elections and defending his own administration's work on the voting rights.  

His speech came as faces criticism from Democrats, including some of his faithful supporters, that he has not done enough on the issue amid fears his party could lose control of the House and Senate in next year's midterm election. 

Biden called on Congress to pass Democrats' two key voting rights legislation, which are being held up by GOP lawmakers. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has called them 'a craven political calculation' that shows 'disdain for the American people.' 

But, in his remarks, Biden offered few solid ideas on how to counter the new round of state laws. He did not mention the Senate filibuster, which many of his Democratic allies want to be removed as an obstacle to federal voting rights legislation.

'I'm not filibustering now,' Biden said after his speech, when reporters asked him about the issue. 

Biden targeted Trump in his speech even as he did not mention his predecessor by name. But he made it clear who he was referring to as he denounced the 'big lie' along with the 'bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies.'

'The Big Lie is just that - a big lie,' he said, referring to Trump's false claim that he won the 2020 election. Trump called Biden's victory 'the big lie' and falsely claimed to be the victim of voting fraud. 

The crowd - nearly 300 people made up of local elected officials, national and local civil rights leaders, voting rights advocates, labor leaders and other officials - burst into applause. 

'In America, if you lose, you accept the results, you follow the constitution,' Biden said, referring to Trump's continual attempts to cast doubt on the 2020 results. 

'You try again. You don't call facts fake, and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you're unhappy. That's not statesmanship. That's selfishness,' he added.

He also blasted a litany of events that he said hurt Americans' right to vote, including poll taxes, literacy tests, terrorizing voters in the 1950s and 60s, and even a recent Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act. 

Biden made the case that the right to vote is the most essential, fundamental one to America's democracy. 

'Perhaps the most important of those things, the most fundamental of those things, is the right to vote freely, the right to vote fairly, the right to have your vote counted,' he said.

'It's up to all of us to protect that right. This is a test of our time,' he declared.

'Time and again we've had further threats to the right to vote, free and fair elections, and each time we found a way to overcome,' he said. 

He blasted the spate of state laws that have been passed restricting voting rights.  As of June 21, 17 states enacted 28 new laws that restrict access to right to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. 

'Republican members of the state legislatures are trying to pass 21st century Jim Crow laws,' the president said in remarks at the National Constitution Center.

'They want to make it so hard and inconvenient they hope people don't vote at all. That's what this is about,' he noted. 

'Have you no shame?,' he asked those Republican state legislatures.  

He described the laws as 'odious' and 'vicious.' He praised civil rights groups that are challenging them in courts. 

And he called the state laws the most significant threat to democracy since the Civil War, adding that not even the Confederate Army breached the U.S. Capitol building, unlike the MAGA supporters on January 6th, who attempted to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election.

'We're facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. Confederate back then never breached the Capital as insurrectionists did on January 6th. I'm saying not this to alarm but because you should alarmed,' he said.