I’m sitting here waiting for the Supreme Court to take up those ridiculous quo warranto actions by Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton and have been hesitant to start writing something for fear that I’ll have to trash it and start over, but I guess I can only hold out for so long. The main news so far for Monday was the continued lack of a quorum.
Texas Republicans were unable again Monday to approve new congressional districts to meet President Donald Trump’s demands as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats urged Republicans to stand down and avoid a partisan brawl spanning multiple statehouses.
Texas Democratic lawmakers remained outside of Texas after leaving the state to deny their GOP colleagues the quorum necessary to vote on Trump’s aggressive redistricting play and push the stalemate into its second week. The president’s agenda also spurred Democratic governors, including Newsom, to pledge retaliatory redistricting efforts in their states — setting up the possibility of an extended standoff that could upend the 2026 midterm elections.
Newsom urged Trump in a letter Monday to abandon his scheme, telling the president he is “playing with fire” and “risking the destabilization of our democracy.”
I mean, that ship has sailed, but we do have to keep stating the fact of it, so here we are. This session gaveled in on July 21, so that means it should end next Wednesday, the 20th of August. Abbott can and almost surely will call another session right away, and as I’ve said before I don’t know how long the quorum breakers can hold out. Barring anything unexpected, such as a favorable to Abbott and Paxton ruling from SCOTx, I don’t expect anything to change before then.
The Republicans do have one other card to play.
Even though the Texas House is at a standstill, Texas Republicans are advancing legislation related to last month’s deadly flooding.
On Friday, both the House and Senate Committees on Disaster Preparedness advanced bills that were filed in response to the deadly July floods.
Democrats argue that the Legislature should focus on responding to the floods, rather than redistricting. The floods killed more than 130 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across Texas.
House and Senate lawmakers are looking to improve early warning systems, expand emergency management licensing and training and streamline volunteer response.
Several bills on those topics have advanced out of committee, including Senate Bill 1, which makes sweeping changes to the state’s emergency management framework.
[…]
The bills now head to the full Senate for consideration, but they will likely die in the Texas House, which has stalled. More than 50 House Democrats fled the state on Sunday to stop consideration of a proposed congressional redistricting map. At least 100 House members must be present for a quorum to be established, allowing the House to conduct regular business.
On Friday, a House panel advanced bills of its own dealing with disaster preparedness, relief, and warning systems related to the July floods.
Republicans claim that Democrats are blocking critical flood bills by not being present at the Capitol, but Democrats argue that Gov. Greg Abbott could act and allocate state funds towards these issues without lawmakers’ approval.
“We have an arrest warrant for us to go back to Texas for one bill only,” State Rep. Ann Johnson (D-Houston) said. “They don’t want us to come back for flooding. They are using those families as a distraction.”
We’re back to the messaging wars. The simple fact of the matter is that the Republicans put redistricting first – indeed, they rushed the bill to enact the new Congressional map to the floor, in part to make it harder for Dems to pull off a walkout – when they could have done flooding first. That was their choice. They could choose to put flooding first for Special Session 2 – heck, they could make flooding the only agenda item until it’s done, and then can add whatever afterwards as time permits – but it seems unlikely that they will. It’s their choice.
Abbott says that he’ll keep calling special sessions, but is it true that there is a Dec deadline to get a new map passed? That’s a long time to break quorum, but it would mean a chance to defeat this cheating for at least the 2026 midterms.
]UPDATE QUO WARRANTO ACTIONS
– MORE LIKE … QUO VADIS? [Where are they going with that?]
So, the SCOTX has now consolidated that two cases and ordered merits briefing (full briefing)
The Governor didn’t even file a record, but he is the Governor, so who is going to bother with the normal rules? As for Ken Paxton d/b/a The State of Texas, he is making his case for summary expulsion based largely on authenticated copies of tweets by the culprits. Apparently that is now supposed to qualify as (incriminating) evidence: “Hell no” [quote] and such.
Here is the briefing schedule:
Relators [Fancy Term for Pink Slip Writ Seekers Abbott and Paxton] shall file their brief(s) by Wednesday, August 20, 2025.
Respondents [Absentee Legislators] shall file their response brief(s) by Friday, August 29, 2025.
Relators shall file any reply brief(s) by Thursday, September 4, 2025.
COMMENT: It’s clever of them (SCOTX) to consolidate the two cases and then decide them together in a single opinion. Abbott’s case has many holes. Paxton’s is a bit better but Gene Wu is a respondent in both. So they can maintain the pretense of neutrality by denying Abbott’s petition and granting Paxton’s.
It will be interesting to see how the handle of problem of hearsay. None of the out-of-court statements by the eloped legislators are evidence in the strict sense of the term, so they will presumably have to take them as admissions by party opponents (albeit still out of court, not in live pleadings) or take judicial notice of some facts, like their presence in Illinois, etc. But how does that prove their intent to abandon office, which they are obviously denying. Alternatively, they might try to take the statements and defensive legal arguments in their briefs (Wu already filed a response in the Abbott case) as admissions, and dispense with the need to receive evidence on that basis.
The tricky part here is that the Supreme Court is basically in the position of a trial court, but is not set up to conduct a trial because all they usually do is appellate work. Nor are the Defendants going to show up in Austion to testify or do so via Zoom. So this is going to be more like a summary judgment proceeding, but that too would invoke the Rules of Civil Procedure and Evidence governing Proceedings in trial courts, not the appellate ones.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It will set precedent no doubt, even if the SCOTX doesn’t come straight out and announces that the Attorney General d/b/a The State of Texas gets to fire legislators upon his conclusion that they don’t do their jobs right.
The irony of an indicted, adulterous A G (Ken Paxton), who claims 3 homestead exemptions filing lawsuits is beyond . . . beyond, I don’t know what! This man must be removed from office.
And, after much thought, I believe that all states should have independent redistricting commissions determining fair districts. (HA!) Only 6 do. The tit-for-tat threats and accusations are unlikely to result in fair districts in Texas, in my opinion. The closest we’ve come, from what I’ve heard, is Governor Newsom offering to call off his redistricting push if #47 will back off his demand that Governor Abbott redistrict to give him 11,780 (oops that was Georgia votes) –5 districts supporting Republicans.
@Flypusher Every day that this continues is one less day for the elections staffs of the affected counties to make the changes in their systems unless the primary election calendar is moved later into the year. An upcoming event is the statewide mass mailout of voter registration certificates displaying the precinct, district and other jurisdictions that are effective for the ’26-’27 cycle. Those normally go out in late December or early January.