Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan requested that the Democrats “who are intentionally absent” from the chamber return their per diem special session pay after they fled the state to stonewall Republican-backed voting bills.

More than 50 Democrats left Austin on Monday, paralyzing the state’s House of Representatives and drawing ire from their GOP colleagues. The majority of the lawmakers boarded private jets to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal officials after Republicans pushed two pieces of legislation that would restrict certain ballot-casting processes and require more identification for voting.