UPDATED:
On Sunday, Republicans in the Texas state legislature advanced two versions of the most extreme anti-voter bill in the country.
On Monday, Democrats are not only repeating the quorum-break gambit that first stopped the voting rights bill in late May, but also risking their own arrest by fleeing the state altogether. They fled Texas and flew on two charter planes to Washington, DC, where they hope to convince stubborn Democratic senators to finally give in on the filibuster and pass the For The People Act.
This is the most dramatic action taken by Texas legislators since 2003, when Democrats tried to stop an extreme gerrymander. They’d head to DC a day before President Biden is set to give a major speech on voting rights in an effort to nudge the holdout Senators (led by Manchin and Sinema) toward trading an arcane Senate procedure for the preservation of American democracy.
“We’re not coming back,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett told the Houston Chronicle.
Here’s a press conference the legislators held tonight in DC:
Late last week, State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, who helped lead the first walk-out and has been one of the top voices on voting rights, told me that this walkout would be a possibility.
“All of our tools are on the table,” he said. “The issue of us having a quorum is embedded in our Texas constitution, so for folks who criticize our use of the quorum, the issue is really better directed at our Texas constitution, because that's a constitutional right that we have. We'll put all those tools on the table and we will use them if necessary.”
Martinez Fischer was one of a number of Texas Democrats who went to Washington, DC in June after the first walk-out. There, they met at the Capitol with Democratic senators to plead their case, and while saying that he found a largely receptive audience for his appeals, he suggested that movement would have to come from the top this time.
“If it takes a band of ragtag Texas Democrats from the State House of Representatives to walk out and take our fight to Washington, DC and convince senators, whether it be Senator Manchin or Sinema or anybody else for that matter, that does not see the sense of urgency here, we're happy to bring our story to our nation's capital again,” he said. “This is a now-or-never moment for our country. And if we're gonna have voting rights reformed in this cycle, it's going to be done now.”
They have their work cut out for them. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reiterated Biden’s opposition to reforming the filibuster; at most, she said he’s willing to support a “talking” filibuster, but he hasn’t gone that far in any public comments.
Whether they can move Biden further or the recalcitrant senators at all remains to be seen. But it’s not just voting rights that are at risk here — just about every right we enjoy could be wiped out by a GOP takeover of government.
If Democrats don’t pass the For The People Act, they will be handing Republicans the opportunity to gerrymander and Jim Crow their way to majorities in both Congress and in state legislatures.
At that point, Democrats will lose any opportunity to confirm new Supreme Court justices or pass new protections for women’s health.
They’ll be subjecting LGBTQ+ people to the extreme bigotry of right-wing Republicans.
They’ll be abandoning the 30+ million Americans without health care.
They’ll be empowering white supremacists.
They’ll be surrendering to corporate greed.
And they’ll be dooming the planet to climate change apocalypse.
This is the greatest emergency we’ve faced since the Great Depression. This is our last chance to get it right. Hopefully, Senate Democrats are inspired by their Texas brethren and find the guts to do the right thing.
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