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After leaving Texas for Illinois to prevent a legislative vote on a Republican redistricting plan, state House Democratic leader Gene Wu needed a means to project his voice — and viewpoints — to a national audience. So he tapped his campaign account to buy a microphone for news conferences.

When it came to covering the hefty hotel bill for Wu and his roughly 50 colleagues, the lawmaker said he relied on money from his chamber’s Democratic Caucus.

Now Texas Democrats are pleading for donations to help finance what could be a walkout of weeks — if not months — in a high-stakes attempt to prevent the Republican majority from passing a plan sought by President Donald Trump. The president is urging Texas and other GOP-controlled states to redraw their congressional districts to help Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House in next year’s midterm elections.

“We’re getting a lot of small-dollar donations,” Wu told The Associated Press, “and that’s going to be used to help keep this thing going.”

A political group led by Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman who ran unsuccessfully for governor and Senate, gave money to the Texas House Democratic Caucus to help cover the up-front costs, according to a spokesperson for the group, Powered by People. O’Rourke this week has been holding events in red states to fire up Democrats and encourage donations.

Powered by People has not disclosed how much it contributed. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said Wednesday he’s launching an investigation into whether O’Rourke’s group has committed bribery by a “financial influence scheme” benefiting Democrats who left Texas.

In response, O’Rourke said he would be undeterred by the threat of an investigation and used it as a fundraising opportunity.

Lawmakers face travel costs and potentially huge fines

By departing the state, Democratic lawmakers have prevented Republicans from obtaining the quorum needed to conduct business. Democrats hope to run out the clock on a special legislative session that ends Aug. 19. But Republican Gov. Greg Abbott could immediately call another session, raising the prospect of a prolonged and an expensive holdout.

Not only could Texas Democrats face thousands of dollars in out-of-state lodging and dining costs, they also could eventually face fines of $500 for each day they are absent, which under House rules cannot be paid from their office budgets or political contributions.

Texas has a part-time Legislature where lawmakers receive $600 a month, plus an additional $221 for expenses each day they are in session.

On Wednesday, state Sen. Jose Menendez joined Democrats from other states at a rally in Boston, where he noted that the potential daily fine for quorum-breaking lawmakers is nearly as large as their entire monthly legislative salary.

“They need your prayers, they need your thoughts and they need you to get behind them,” he said.

Some Democrats in the Texas Senate have traveled out of state this week to support their House colleagues, but lawmakers in that chamber are not leaving the state to hold up legislative business.

‘This fight is for the people’

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat and billionaire, has welcomed the Texas lawmakers to his state but said he has not financially supported them. Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who has built a national following in recent weeks, said the lawmakers told Pritzker they didn’t want him to fund their trip.

“We’ve already been inundated with donations from across the state of Texas, from across the country, just regular people donating $5, $10, $15,” Talarico said this week. “And that’s appropriate, because this fight is for the people and it should be funded by the people. We don’t have billionaires who are funding this operation.”

The House Democratic Caucus has set up a website seeking donations of between $25 and $2,500 — with a default amount of $250.

Earlier this week, Abbott asked the state’s highest court to remove Wu from office and ordered the Texas Rangers to investigate possible bribery charges related to how Democrats are paying for the walkout, alleging anyone who financially helped them could be culpable.

Wu, a former prosecutor from Houston, said the bribery suggestion is “monstrously stupid.”

“No member is leaving because they might get a campaign contribution that might restore some of the money that they’re spending,” he said.

How left-leaning groups are helping

Before Democrats decided to leave Texas, Wu said he called potential allies for assurance “that there would be resources that would come to our assistance.” But he said that’s no different from an aspiring candidate asking others for support before officially launching a campaign.

Wu, who is chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, said he has participated in online sessions with representatives of dozens of Democratic, progressive and redistricting-oriented groups. Not all are financial supporters. Some are providing help in other ways, such as by coordinating publicity.

The Democratic National Committee has helped with communications and organizing, as well as providing help from a data analytics team, Chair Ken Martin said.

Texas Democrats aren’t worried that they’ll be forced to return home in the near future because of a lack of money, said Luke Warford, founder of Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund, a Texas fundraising and organizing group. He said longtime Democratic funders understand the high cost of competing in tougher U.S. House races if Republicans succeed in redrawing the map.

“Of course having most of the delegation out of the state is going to rack up a bill,” Warford said. But “when you think about it in the context of what Donald Trump has to gain and what Democrats might lose in the short term, it’s just not even close to the cost of trying to win back either these races or a bunch of other races in the country.”

The Democratic lawmakers have been holed up at a hotel and conference center outside Chicago that was evacuated Wednesday after an unfounded bomb threat. Many lawmakers have been dining and meeting together, and are prepared to keep doing so.

Democratic state Rep. John Bucy III, speaking by phone from the hotel, said he isn’t concerned about how the costs ultimately get covered.

“There’s too much at stake here to be worried about those things,” Bucy said. “Our hotel bills seem so minor compared to what we’re trying to do — to protect democracy.”

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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Washington, Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, John O’Connor in Springfield, Illinois, and Leah Willingham in Boston contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Apple CEO Tim Cook joined President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday to announce a commitment by the tech company to increase its investment in U.S. manufacturing by an additional $100 billion over the next four years.

“This is a significant step toward the ultimate goal of ensuring that iPhones sold in the United States of America also are made in America,” Trump said at the press conference. “Today’s announcement is one of the largest commitments in what has become among the greatest investment booms in our nation’s history.”

As part of the Apple announcement, the investments will be about bringing more of its supply chain and advanced manufacturing to the United States as part of an initiative called the American Manufacturing Program, but it is not a full commitment to build its popular iPhone device domestically.

“This includes new and expanded work with 10 companies across America. They produce components — semiconductor chips included — that are used in Apple products sold all over the world, and we’re grateful to the President for his support,” Cook said in a statement announcing the investment.

The new manufacturing partners include Corning, Coherent, Applied Materials, Texas Instruments and Broadcom among others.

Apple had previously said it intended to invest $500 billion domestically, a figure it will now increase to $600 billion. Trump in recent months has criticized the tech company and Cook for efforts to shift iPhone production to India to avoid the tariffs his Republican administration had planned for China.

While in Qatar earlier this year, Trump said there was “a little problem” with the Cupertino, California, company and recalled a conversation with Cook in which he said he told the CEO, “I don’t want you building in India.”

India has incurred Trump’s wrath, as the president signed an order Wednesday to put an additional 25% tariff on the world’s most populous country for its use of Russian oil. The new import taxes to be imposed in 21 days could put the combined tariffs on Indian goods at 50%.

Apple’s new pledge comes just a few weeks after it forged a $500 million deal with MP Materials, which runs the only rare earths producer in the country. That agreement will enable MP Materials to expand a factory in Texas to use recycled materials to produce magnets that make iPhones vibrate.

Speaking on a recent investors call, Cook emphasized that “there’s a load of different things done in the United States.” As examples, he cited some of the iPhone components made in the U.S. such as the device’s glass display and module for identifying people’s faces and then indicated the company was gearing to expand its productions of other components in its home country.

“We’re doing more in this country, and that’s on top of having roughly 19 billion chips coming out of the US now, and we will do more,” Cook told analysts last week, without elaborating.

News of Apple’s latest investment in the U.S. caused the company’s stock price to surge by 5% in Wednesday’s midday trading. That gain reflects investors’ relief that Cook “is extending an olive branch” to the Trump administration, said Nancy Tengler, CEO of money manager Laffer Tengler Investments, which owns Apple stock.

Despite Wednesday’s upturn, Apple’s shares are still down by 15% this year, a reversal of fortune that has also been driven by the company’s botched start in the pivotal field of artificial intelligence.

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AP Technology Writers Michael Liedtke and Shawn Chen contributed to this report.