Rep. Jasmine Crockett took a whack at the latest move by Texas Republicans who are lawlessly holding Texas State Rep. Nicole Collier hostage in the Capitol.

As the HuffPo has reported, Collier is suing:

Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier filed a writ of habeas corpus on Tuesday in the district court of Travis County, Texas, claiming the state legislature’s Republican majority has unlawfully detained her in the state Capitol after she refused to consent to 24-hour police surveillance. [...]

“Representative Collier has been informed that she is not free to leave the Capitol,” the lawsuit states. “Chairman of the Committee on House Administration Charlie Geren informed Representative Collier, ‘If you leave the Capitol you are subject to arrest.’”

Collier’s suit argues this is effectively an illegal confinement. Burrows “does not have the power to compel any Texas citizen or any elected official into preemptive custody,” her suit argues.

The legislative majority party can compel attendance by absent members in order to obtain a quorum, the minimum number of legislators present to do business, by directing the sergeant-at-arms to arrest and return absent lawmakers. That was settled in a court case in 2021. But, it does not have the power to detain or hold in custody a lawmaker due to a concern that they may be absent in the future, or as punishment for previously being absent.

“The plain language is clear: a member may be compelled by the Sergeant-at-Arms to attend a legislative session if he or she is physically absent, but no such power is conferred on the Legislature to arrest or otherwise compel a member who is currently present (and not absent) to stay,” her lawsuit states.

Crockett joined MSNBC's Chris Hayes this Tuesday and discussed the latest turn of events:

HAYES: I want to ask you about something happening in your home state of Texas. You were a state legislator in Texas before you came to Congress. We've all been following the story of the, the extremely rare, abnormal, pure nakedly partisan attempt to redistrict mid-decade just to jack up the numbers for Republicans to take, make it more difficult for the American people to essentially choose their own representatives instead of have the representatives choose their people.

Democratic members of the state legislator have have broken quorum to try to slow this down.

There's one member now, Nicole Collier, who is essentially kind of locked inside the state Capitol right now. There you see her sleeping because she wouldn't sign a like permission slip that they made her... have you been, what do you think about what's going on in your own, your old place of work?

CROCKETT: Yeah, again, we're living in a country of lawlessness. This is unconstitutional.

This is someone who has not been accused of a crime whatsoever. In fact, just the opposite.

I mean there are definitely people that needed to be locked up in the state of Texas starting with our attorney general who had been under federal investigation for a number of years, who had been under felony indictment for a number of years, who was impeached by his own party, yeah, yet he never saw any lockup come to him and obviously you know how I feel about the president and where he should be right now.

But instead it is a lawmaker who had the audacity to speak up for her constituency and frankly speak up for the Constitution and the rule of law overall, and they decided that because they were not being good little Democrats and doing as they were told that once those warrants expired, most people didn't understand that the warrants that they issued, the civil warrants are only good during the session in which they are issued.

Well, once that session ended, which it ended, that meant that there was now not a warrant. So now what they said is you must voluntarily sign a permission slip for people to track you so that you come to work and don't leave again, in order to ring ring the alarm on what's happening.

So my former colleague Nicole Collier said, I'm not doing it. I'm not signing it, and they said, well then we will break the law and we will unlawfully detain you here at the Capitol.

HAYES: I should note that your former colleague has filed a habeas petition because she basically says she's essentially being imprisoned by the the Texas State legislator at this point, the government.

CROCKETT: That is, yep, that's the that's the absolute proper thing to file. You file a writ of habeas when there is someone who is a government actor and has illegal custody over your body, and they then have to come and say this is why we're able to detain you.

They are violating her civil rights. Like there is no question about it. We don't have anything that is available that allows you to restrict a person's freedom from moving about because they failed to sign this bootleg made up permission slip for somebody to then stalk you and be around you 24/7.

I did not think any of this sounded remotely legal when I first heard about it, but Crockett is right, Republicans don't care about the law.