He seems destined to fail, but we’re going to go through the motions anyway, I guess.
Still a crook any way you look
Attorney General Ken Paxton will ask for a court ruling declaring vacant the seats of any lawmakers who are not back to work by Friday, he said in a press release Tuesday.
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On Tuesday, the chamber once again was six votes short of quorum, and Burrows adjourned until Friday at 1 p.m.
If members are not back by then, Paxton said that would qualify as “abandonment of office,” enabling him to file a legal action seeking to have their seats vacated.
“Democrats have abandoned their offices by fleeing Texas, and a failure to respond to a call of the House constitutes a dereliction of their duty as elected officials,” Paxton said in a statement. “Starting Friday, any rogue lawmakers refusing to return to the House will be held accountable for vacating their office.”
Texas’ Constitution explicitly enables the possibility of a so-called “quorum break,” the Supreme Court of Texas ruled in 2021, although it also allows for consequences to bring members back.
Legal experts say it would be difficult to argue that engaging in a quorum break qualifies as abandonment of office.
“I am aware of absolutely no authority that says breaking quorum is the same as the intent to abandon a seat,” said Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a constitutional law expert at the University of Missouri law school. “That would require the courts extending the premise to the breaking point. It’s inconsistent with the very text of the Texas Constitution.”
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Paxton himself has acknowledged that this would likely be a lengthy and complicated process, telling conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that they’d have to bring individual lawsuits in each district.
“We’d have to go through a court process, and we’d have to file that maybe in districts that are not friendly to Republicans,” Paxton said on Monday. “So it’s a challenge because every district would be different.”
Greg Abbott made some noises about this in his initial reaction to the quorum break, so obviously Paxton had to Do Something now that it’s out there. My interpretation of this is that he will file one lawsuit in whatever he thinks is the friendliest venue and hope for the best. Maybe Tarrant County, which has all Republican district court judges and a former House Democratic Caucus leader (Rep. Chris Turner) as a potential target. I’m just guessing, we’ll see soon enough. [NOTE: See update below.]
Separately, there’s the threat that the FBI could get involved, to drag the legislators back to Texas, in who knows what manner or condition. I’ve mentioned that possibility before and it is worth worrying about, but I don’t know how likely it is so I’m going to worry about other things for now.
At least at the national level, there is a bit of queasiness on the Republican side about this whole thing.
Reps. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., have called to impose nationwide limits on partisan gerrymandering, a rare move for Republicans in Washington who have thwarted proposed bans for years.
Democratic governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Kathy Hochul have threatened to retaliate against Texas by pursuing their own redistricting plans that could knock out GOP-held swing districts, like those Lawler and Kiley represent.
Kiley announced he will introduce legislation Tuesday to nullify new House maps states adopt before the 2030 census, including any that might be approved this year.
That would block the ongoing Texas effort and any potential push in California, his office said.
“Gavin Newsom is trying to subvert the will of voters and do lasting damage to democracy in California,” Kiley said in a statement Monday. “Fortunately, Congress has the ability to protect California voters using its authority under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This will also stop a damaging redistricting war from breaking out across the country.”
Lawler, a fellow second-term Republican who represents a swing district, also said he will introduce legislation to prohibit gerrymandering in every state.
“Gerrymandering is wrong and should be banned everywhere — including in New York, Texas, California, and Illinois. I’m introducing legislation to ban it,” Lawler said Monday on X, inviting Democrats to sign on.
Still, it’s unlikely that House Republican leaders would allow a vote on any legislation to limit partisan redistricting. That would be an about-face from the party’s long-standing view that Washington shouldn’t impose any such limits on states. The office of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., didn’t immediately comment on the idea.
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Democrats in Washington have tried to pass legislation to prohibit partisan gerrymandering, some of it in recent years during the Biden administration. A section of the sweeping For the People Act of 2021 would have required all states to set up independent redistricting commissions with balanced partisan representation. Democrats passed it in the House along party lines during the Biden administration, but a different version of the bill failed to overcome a Senate GOP filibuster.
Reps. Kiley and Lawler are obviously acting in their own interest, but that’s fine. That’s a motive that can lead to actual compromise, since there’s something you want to achieve. It won’t happen with this Congress of course, but with a Democratic House majority and a better Senate it could happen in the future.
We have talked about how expensive a prolonged quorum break would be. Here’s how it is being paid for, at least for now.
Powered by People, a Democratic political group started by former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ out-of-state decampment to thwart a new GOP-proposed congressional map, according to two people involved with the fundraising efforts.
The expenses are mounting fast for the more than 50 Democrats in the Texas House who left the state Sunday to prevent the Republican-controlled chamber from having enough members to conduct business. Most lawmakers traveled to the Chicago area by way of a private plane from CommuteAir. They are now on the hook for lodging, meals and the $500-a-day fines they will each accrue for every day of the special session they miss.
National Democratic organizations have been eager to pick up the tab for what they see as a last-ditch effort to stop a nationwide redistricting war that threatens to upend the 2026 midterms. O’Rourke’s organization, armed with a $3.5 million war chest, has covered much of the costs so far — including air transport, lodging and logistical support, a person involved with the fundraising said — though other groups have been in the mix.
Texas Majority PAC, a group backed by Democratic megadonor George Soros and formed by alums of O’Rourke’s 2022 gubernatorial bid, is coordinating with national Democratic groups to solicit fundraising from the party’s regular big-dollar donors, according to two people with knowledge of the internal dynamics.
The sources, each of whom were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations that could have legal implications, declined to say which big-dollar donors were being courted or how much money Powered by People had contributed to the quorum-busting effort.
Please GTFO with any hot takes about shadowy big money groups operating in the shadows. Not unless you want to have a long talk about the billionaire cabal that props up and orders around Greg Abbott and most of the Texas GOP these days first.
Meanwhile, the Senate still has a quorum.
The Texas Senate State Affairs committee on Monday again approved a “bathroom bill” proposal that would restrict transgender people from using bathrooms in government and school buildings that match their identifying gender.
Senate Bill 7 is one of two bills currently filed in the Texas Legislature after Gov. Greg Abbott put the provisions on the special session agenda. The bill would mandate that people only use restrooms in government buildings and schools that match their sex assigned at birth. Similar restrictions would also be placed on prisons and women’s violence shelters based on biological sex, which the bill also defines.
Supporters of SB 7 and similar legislation have framed the bill as a way to protect women from discomfort and predation in private spaces. The bill’s author, Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, said the bill was common sense that upheld “biological and biblical truths.” To do this, Middleton said the bill has greater enforcement capabilities than previous bills: SB 7 institutes a $5,000 first-time fine for agencies or schools where violations occur, which increases to a $25,000 fine for subsequent violations.
A committee substitute that was filed Monday contained a provision mandating that the 15th Court of Appeals have exclusive jurisdiction to any civil action brought from the bill, and added its own definitions of male and female.
Over 100 people registered to testify on SB 7 both for and against the bill, with testimony from both sides at times becoming emotional over fears or recollections of harassment and abuse.
During testimony, opponents of the bill said they feared that attempts to enforce the law would evolve into discriminatory scrutiny and surveillance affecting both cisgender and transgender women. The bill does not specify what agencies or schools would need to do to ensure the law is enforced, save that they “take every reasonable step to ensure” no violations occur.
I for one am happy to see garbage bills like this one and others like it wither on the vine. That may be a temporary victory, depending on how long the quorum break lasts. It may be a pyrrhic one as well, in that Republican legislators may care about passing some of those bills now in a way they hadn’t before; remember that some of these bills died during the regular session, so passing them going into this session was not a given. The quorum break may be incentive for the Rs to pass them. Or maybe it won’t be. That’s one of the risks that had to be taken.
The House is standing down until Friday. The messaging continues. Hang in there, y’all. The Barbed Wire, Texas Monthly, the Current, the Dallas Observer, Politico, and the Chron have more.
UPDATE: Greg Abbott decided he couldn’t wait for Paxton to file something.
Gov. Greg Abbott asked the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday to remove state Rep. Gene Wu of Houston from office for his role in leading Democrats in their quorum break over redistricting.
Wu and dozens of other Democrats fled to Illinois on Sunday to block a vote on a new congressional map meant to shore up Republicans’ power in Congress.
“Representative Wu and the other Texas House Democrats have shown a willful refusal to return, and their absence for an indefinite period of time deprives the House of the quorum needed to meet and conduct business on behalf of Texans,” Abbott said in a statement. “Texas House Democrats abandoned their duty to Texans, and there must be consequences.”
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The legal action by Abbott ratchets ups the Republican effort to move ahead with the congressional map last week. In past quorum breaks by Democrats – one in 2021 and two others 18 years earlier – ended with the absent members returning to the Capitol voluntarily. No legal action was taken, much less threatened, in those cases.
Abbott, in the court filing, asked the justices to make a ruling on his request by Thursday, If they do not order Wu’s removal from office, Abbott asked them to find that “at the very least” he has demonstrated “demonstrated probable grounds” to file additional court documents to advance his claims.
You can see a copy of the lawsuit here. I have not read it. Among many other things, if this is a valid legal argument it’s wild to me that no one thought to employ it in 2003 or 2021. What could possibly be different now?