And also some flooding stuff, which was clearly top of mind for him.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday unveiled a jam-packed agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, calling on lawmakers to redraw Texas’ congressional maps and address several unfinished conservative priorities from earlier this year.
The governor, who controls the agenda for overtime legislative sessions, also included four items related to the deadly Hill Country floods over the July Fourth weekend, directing legislators to look at flood warning systems, emergency communications, natural disaster preparation and relief funding for impacted areas.
The flooding has killed more than 100 people, with more than 160 still missing in Kerr County alone.
Abbott’s call also includes redrawing the state’s congressional districts — following through on a demand from President Donald Trump’s advisers, who want to fortify Republicans’ slim majority in the U.S. House by carving out more GOP seats in Texas. Republicans in Texas’ congressional delegation have expressed unease about the idea, worrying it could jeopardize control of their current districts.
More than 40 Republican lawmakers, including Patrick, signed onto a letter to Abbott in June asking him to include the abortion pill proposal on the special session agenda. Senate Bill 2880, considered the most wide-ranging legislation to crack down on abortion pills in the U.S., passed the Senate earlier this year but stalled in a House committee.
The so-called “bathroom bill” similarly failed to reach the House floor. An earlier bathroom measure also made it onto Abbott’s agenda for the 2017 special session, where it died under opposition from business interests.
The governor’s call to bar local governments from spending public money on lobbyists — a practice dubbed by critics as “taxpayer-funded lobbying” — has also failed to gain traction through multiple sessions, despite long-running support from conservative activists and a vocal contingent of GOP lawmakers.
Abbott is also directing lawmakers to reconsider a proposal to allow the attorney general to prosecute state election crimes. Texas’ attorney general does not have authority to independently prosecute criminal offenses unless invited to do so by a local district attorney, which the state’s highest criminal court has repeatedly upheld.
But after successfully unseating three members of the Court of Criminal Appeals in November, Attorney General Ken Paxton pushed the Legislature to carve out an exception for allegations of election fraud. The Senate passed one such proposal, but it didn’t clear the House. Abbott is asking lawmakers to reconsider the idea in the form of a constitutional amendment, which requires support from two-thirds of both chambers and voter approval in a statewide referendum.
[…]
The agenda sparked immediate condemnation from some Democratic state lawmakers. Houston Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, blasted Abbott for pairing flood-related items with an agenda otherwise dominated by GOP priorities.
“Governor Abbott listed flood preparedness at the top of his special session call, but then buried it under a pile of cynical, political distractions,” Wu said in a statement, calling Abbott’s agenda a “stunning betrayal.”
I mean, yeah, it’s hard to argue that this was about flooding and emergency preparedness when there’s all this other red meat on there. And it’s not stuff that was narrowly defeated by Democratic trickery, it’s stuff that the Republicans haven’t been able to pass on their own. I know Abbott can call as many sessions as he wants, but I don’t know what exactly he thinks he’s going to get. I also know he thinks he’s invincible, but boy this sure has the potential to be a really bad look. We’ll see how it plays out. Oh, and California really needs to follow through if the Lege does indeed pass a new map. To do nothing would be total chump behavior. Don’t let us down, Gavin. The Chron has more.
Houston area can add one and possibly two additional Republican seats through the following mechanisms now that anything and everything is ok with the courts and republicans want to be truly ruthless :
TX 38 Hunt — move in Acres Homes and East Spring Branch to make it more competitive. Won by 25 last round so plenty of wiggle room.
TX 7- move some of Hunt’s solid red into Fletcher’s district to make it a true toss up
TX 9- move southwest Houston and Missouri City parts of Al Green’s district to TX 14, Weber’s solid red district. Take out Beaumont/Jefferson Coujty to make up for the population gain. Repackage this district into a Central Houston yuppie resist lib white district.
TX 18- 3rd Ward, 5th Ward, Aldine plus the bluer parts of Sylvia Garcia’s district and take out the yuppie areas of inner-loop Houston plus Acres Homes and East Spring Branch
TX 29- add in more rural and more red areas to make this an R + 10 seat which would make Garcia have overperform to keep her seat or challenge the newly constructed TX 9 or TX 18