Texas Dems flee rather than lose a vote (08-04-2025--Hour2)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. The Let's shift gears to Texas or is it Illinois? It's a little bit of both. Actually, you heard about this big redistricting fight down in Texas. I've talked about it a little bit. I think last week when Democrats started making their threats that they were going to flee the states. Flee the state of Texas, go hide out somewhere else so there will not be a quorum present for voting in the Texas legislature. Michael Graham, writing up at the nh Journal New Hampshire Journal dot com, he says the lone Star state sparked a panic among Democrats when it announced plans to redraw its congressional maps for twenty twenty six rather than waiting for the next census in twenty thirty. We went over this last week that apparently Texas can do this. They're allowed to do this in their state constitution. I don't know if we are able to. I don't think we are able to, but apparently Texas can. Texas Republicans unveiled a map that would create five more competitive congressional seats for the Republican Party, which could potentially, you know, depending on the candidates, depending on the campaigns they run, depending on the money they raise, depending on whether it's a red waveyear, blue wave year, all of this stuff. There are lots of you know, you can only do so much with these maps based on your population. By the way, I believe we are now expected to in North Carolina, we are expected to see the Republicans overtake the Democrats as the second largest party by registration. That's going to apparently happen according to the John Locke Foundation around March of twenty six. So number one voter registration is unaffiliated, Number two Republican, number three Democrat. That's the way the trend is going and has been going for years. So he's got it pegged it somewhere around March of twenty twenty six. Anyway, the maps that they unveiled would create five more competitive congressional seats for their party. Does it mean they're guaranteed to win them? It just means they are now more competitive. That could potentially shift the state from what it is now. It has twenty five Republican members of Congress and thirteen Democrat members of Congress, so twenty five to thirteen that would go to a thirty to eight breakdown. Outrage has ensued. Yes, Michael Graham writes that to their credit, nobody is hiding the motive here. No one's hiding what this is about. President Trump and his allies have said they're looking for ways to help the Republicans hold the US House in the midterms. Florida did this as well. DeSantis did this earlier this year, I think, or maybe last year I forget, but they redrew the maps down in Florida as well, gave Republicans more seats down there. Outrage did ensue for that too, And so here's the And then last week we heard the Democrats threatening, well, if you do this, we're going to go to our states that we control. The jerrymandering. Sorry, redistricting process, and we're just going to jerrymander two. And the Republicans said, okay, good luck, because the heavy blue states have already jerrymandered really all they can. The most gerrymandered states in America are blue states. So you knock yourselves out, guys, like, for example, did you know what the California breakdown is of voters that vote for Republicans versus how many seats they control. It's nowhere close to being representative. Which is this proportional representation argument. This is what we have heard in North Carolina for well since twenty eleven, since Republicans began drawing the maps. We always hear this, well, you know, it's a fifty two to forty eight state. You know, we voted fifty two to forty eight percent for Republican president. So therefore we have to have fifty two to forty eight percentage wise breakdown of our congressional seats. So if we have fourteen seats, it should be a seven to seven split. That's the argument, this proportional representation argument that they make that the representation should be proportionate to the presidential races. But if that's actually their standard, which spoiler alert, it is not their standard because when they do the map making in their states, they don't adhere to that standard. They just use that standard in order to try to shame you into drawing a map that's more favorable to them, or what they call fair maps. So that's why in a state like California, where about forty percent of the voters they're vote Republican, they only get seventeen percent of the congressional seats. That's a fair map, right. Illinois terribly jerry mandered as well. Trump got forty three percent of the vote there, Republicans hold just three of the state's seventeen seats, which equates to also seventeen percent. In other words, more than double the seats they are due. They should get more than double the seats they are due, which would be about four additional seats. Now go back over to the Texas example, and they're looking to add five. So you could argue that the Texas jerry mander is to offset the California and the Illinois jerry manders. Right, assuming Texas new maps deliver five GOP seats, that outcome would still be less partisan than Illinois. Oh sorry, the numbers I just gave you was California. I think I said Illinois. That was California. Seventeen percent, forty three percent of the vote, and they get three of the seventeen seats, so that's seventeen percent. That's the California numbers. In Illinois, Democrats would control eight of the state's thirty eight congressional seats, or twenty two percent. That doesn't seem right. California has already stripped Republicans down to seventeen percent. Maryland has reduced its eight seat delegation, so they have eight members of Congress in Maryland, which is also one of the worst jerry manders in America. You don't how many of the eight seats Republicans have one, one seat out of eight that is not representative, that is not a proportional representation of their voting habits. Every four years, about forty percent of New Englanders vote Republican, but there are zero GOP members of the US House from New England, the entire region. None like This is the problem that Democrats have on making good on their threats to Jerryman the Bejeebis out of their maps in order to penalize Republicans. Is that you already have done it. You can't do it anymore. If you start trying to dilute your districts through a mid decade redraw, you're going to end up making more competitive races. You're going to have to draw Democrats out of districts that you drew to heavily favor those Democrats in the first place. So now you're going to have to draw those voters out redraw the lines. They're going to go into other areas, and now you're going to have a district that is actually more winnable for a Republican. You can't make it worse for the Republicans. You can only make it more advantageous for them. So please throw me in that Brier patch. This doesn't even take into account the undercounting of the half a dozen Republican states in the census last time around and the overcounting of the blue states in the last census count coincidentally, surely it was a simple coincidence that of all of the states that got under cat like, six of the seven were Republican, and of all the states that got overcounted, all of them were Democrat, which means what they got to keep more seats, Republicans didn't get more seats. Democrat states got to keep more electoral College votes. Republican states did not get those electoral college votes. So yeah, I'm okay with them trying to do another redraw. It could be a swing of what twenty to thirty votes in the US House. And so the Democrats in Texas fled their state. They fled their state, and guys, I am I'm sorry to say, but the theater kids are acting out again. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias. Is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot Ground dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. NBC News reports quote a showdown over redistricting in Texas, dozens of state Democrats took refuge roughly one thousand miles away from home, saying they fled Texas to deny quorum, which is the minimum amount of you know, members of a body that have to be present in order for the vote to be legitimate. So that's the reason they left the state is so I'm not here, I'm not in the state. You can't come get me. Ha haa haa. So now you can't have a legitimate vote, so they can deny the Republican efforts to add as many as five congressional seats to their map to where did they flee to oppose jerry mandering? That's right, one of the if not the most jerrymandered state jerrymandered by Democrats. That's where they chose to go to, which seems like a bit of a pr fail because now you've made it part of the story. If you had gone to some state that doesn't jerry mander and is controlled by Democrats, first off, it would be a state that's not in the continental US, but like that would actually help make your case, I think a little bit stronger to not highlight the fact that you have engaged in even far more egregious behavior that you are claiming to be opposed to. Now you know, Governor J. B. Pritzker stood alongside these Democrats to rail against what they charged was a racist, unfair, and undemocratic attempt to overhaul the lone Star state's political map. Yes, that prompted the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to issue a strongly worded letter. It begins thusly quote, real Texans do not run from a fight. He called you all not real times. These absences were premeditated for an illegitimate purpose, what one representative called breaking quorum. Democrats hatched a deliberate plan not to show up for work for the specific purpose of abdicating the duties of their office and thwarting the Chamber's business. That amounts to an abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office. An abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office. I don't know if that's true, like legally, technically speaking, I think it's true politically speaking, and from a logical standpoint, he says. When the governor calls a special session, our constitution provides that quote, the legislature shall meet. It's not optional, it's a duty. The absconded Democrat House members were elected to meet and vote on legislation, not to prevent votes that may not go their way. Every session, legislators on both sides of the aisle find themselves on the losing side of a legislative vote, and every session, most of those legislators find a way to disagree agreeably and behave like adults rather than going a wall. Sir, this is the Democrat party. I don't know if you can ask them to behave like adults, he said. This truancy ends now. The derelict Democrat House members must return to Texas and be in attendance when the House reconvenes at three PM today. For any member who fails to do so, I will invoke Texas Attorney General Opinion number KP dash O three eight two to remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House. He's going to remove them from office, which will of course prompt all sorts of other litigation. In that opinion, the Attorney General considered whether Texas law allows for a determination that a legislator has vacated office if they intend mentionally break quorum, and the Attorney General concluded that quote whether a specific legislator abandoned his or her office such that a vacancy occurred will be a fact question for a court. Okay, so this isn't a slam dunk of a of a tactic as people I think may think it is. Even the Attorney General Ken Paxton right, even he was saying this would be a question for the court. He further concluded that quote, through a quote warranto action, a district court may determine, may determine, not shall, but may that a legislator has forfeited his or her office due to abandonment, and can remove that legislator from office, thereby creating a vacancy. So he says that empowers him to fill the vacancies. In addition to abandoning their offices, he says these legislators may have committed felonies. Many absentee Democrats are soliciting funds to evade the funds they will incur under House rules. Any Democrat who solicits, accepts, or agrees to accept such funds to assist in the violation of legislative duties or for purposes of skipping a vote may have violated bribery laws because you're being paid to achieve some sort of a political or legislative outcome. That's an interesting theory. The same could be true for any other person who offers, confers, or agrees to confer such funds to fleeing Democrat House members, So whoever's paying them could also be charged with bribery. He says. I will use my full extradition authority to demand the return to Texas of any potential out of state felons. So if he can get bribery charges against you, then he'll extradite your took us back to Texas. So which way do you want to go here? Do you want to stay there and risk the filling of your seats with goobernatorial appointments. While you litigate it out, you're also going to be facing bribery charges and then he's gonna extradite you back to Texas and you're not gonna have the seat anyway, Like is the juice worth the squeeze here? Now, if all of this sounds familiar, like don't you remember, like, wasn't there some other legislature that fled the state? You would be correct. It was Texas Democrats who have done this not once, not twice, but like three different times, maybe four. 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That's that's not the story. Uh. It was a congressman. I think it's actually pronounced Gary g e r r y congressman Gary. And I think he was from Taxachusetts, I want to say. And he had a he drew a diff strict that looked like a salamander. That's the mander, part of Jerry's mander, jerry mandering. That's where that came from. Hey, Pete, I watched three hours of the Texas House debate last week so that you did not have to thank you. I appreciate that. It was hilarious. Democrats argument was nothing but racism. Oh and the speaker is a real bad guy. Joey says Democrats have not caught on yet that under Trump two point zero, Republicans are only playing by their rules. In other words, Democrats rules, period, full stop. Yeah. Look, I warned Democrats that this was coming for years before Trump. I was like, you guys cannot like I. I want a single application of a consistent standard, right, I want a consistent standard applied, And you can't keep ammoring for Republicans to be better than you are. Meanwhile, they keep losing. See, And I suspect that's why a lot of the the rage is embedded in this in these protests is because the left knows this stuff works. They know that, so they recognize power for what it is because they're all about the power dynamics being of the left. So I suspect they're very, very worried they're going to be in the wilderness for a very long time. If I were king, Alan says, I would change the locks on their office doors as abandoned property he if I were king. And then there's some stuff. Okay, so here's a there's some text here about last hour I was talking about Israel and Gaza. There are a couple of texts here I will get to. There's a bit of developing news that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Yahoo, has reportedly said that Israel will go in and ReOC pie Gaza. It's because there's been this question of what to do now, right, like, how do you secure the area to prevent Hamas from coming back into power. And there have been talks of like, well, maybe they get some other Arab countries in there, some like Arably nations could send troops and they could do whatever. And apparently Israel's like, we're going to occupy it. Okay, well I just said that, so I might as well do this before I get to the history of the fleeing democrats in Texas. Stan says one thing to remember is Gaza had elections in two thousand and six. Contrary to what the experts thought would happen, the citizens there did not vote for democracy, but for Hamas instead. So the two states solution would be an end to Israel, which is the goal, and the civilians living in Gaza are essentially being used as pawns to further that objective. It's as though the Israelis care more about the civilians living there than Hamas does. They do, even though those most of those Palestinians do not care about the Israel. That's the polling people. You can get mad at me all you want, but that's the polling. Why is Amas still in power. This happens every time hostages keep from destroying the enemy. It's hard to do and sad to say, but the hostages can't get in the way of wiping out the enemy one hundred percent. Look, this is yeah, I mean, this is one of the decisions that Israel has been faced with because at the very beginning, you know, they knew Hamas was in there in the tunnels, and one of the things that was proposed was to just flood the tunnels. It's on the Gaza is on the waterfront. You just go in there with earth movers. You find one entrance to a tunnel and you break through and you connect it with a pipe or something, dig a trench to the ocean and allow that sea water to flow on in there. It'll short out all of the electrical circuits and everything, and it will kill all the hostages though if they're in the tunnels. So they didn't do it right. Again, I always point this out. If Israel was intent on committing genocide and ethnically cleansing and kicking all the Palestinians out of Gaza, either by kicking them out or killing them, they could have done that. They would have done it already. So all right, now I'll go back to the this from the Texas Tribune. This habit or tactic of fleeing Texas when you can't stop legislation that you really don't like. This has been going on for one hundred and fifty years. There. In June of eighteen seventy thirteen, Texas senators walked out of the Capitol to block a bill giving the governor wartime powers, depriving the Upper Chamber of the two thirds quorum required for voting. Though the fleeing members were arrested and the bill eventually passed, this was called the Rump Senate incident, and it established quorum breaking as a minority party tactic that has persisted in Texas politics ever since. Right, So that was when this all started, eighteen seventy. More recently, I think all of the other three examples prior to today's, they were all since nineteen seventy nine. That was the next one nineteen seventy nine, then again in two thousand and three, then again in twenty twenty one, and now twenty twenty five. And Democrats just cannot seem to keep their butts in the seats. You know, Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connected to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com got a tweet from Eric It's a peat tweet. He says the left is lashing out because they have already squeezed as many seats out of blue states as they can they're so terrified of an even playing field that greasy Gavin Newsom is saying the quiet part out loud and admitting California's quote Independent Commission is a sham. Well, if you listened to my program over the years, going back to two thousand and ten, I believe it was. I was talking about how the Independent Commission was completely and utterly, irreparably corrupted by Democrats and left wing activists. It's never recovered. Republicans were completely unprepared for that census overhaul and the redistricting that occurred, completely unprepared, did not ever contemplate what Democrats rolled out on them in order to rig the Commission. It's I mean, I could go just from memory, I could go into some of the details, but at a high level, they set up these parameters, these rules for their Independent Commission, and was like, you can't have anybody that has any experience running an election, running for an election, being part of any election or campaign or anything like. They like, you had to have no experience at all. In other words, we need somebody we can roll, right, So they get all these people onto the Commission that have no idea what they're doing, no idea what they're looking at, and no idea about the political nature of the process. It is inherently political. And then there was one of the rules that they exploited the most, which was communities of similar interest. So when you're drawing the district lines, if you have a community with a similar interest, then you could put it together with another. And so what the left did was they targeted all of these different priests and districts and communities and stuff, and they just made up literally made up fake organizations to represent like we're the you know, beachside community and whatever, and they made fake websites and stuff, submitted that as proof, and then it got included in the precincts and into the districts where the left needed them to be so they could maintain as many seats as possible. It's why Republicans got wiped out. They never contemplated the links that the Democrats would go to to rig all of those districts or as many as they could. So that was the California sham. And don't take my word for it, go read the pro public apiece. They were the ones that did all the research on it. They busted it wide open and that was fifteen years ago. Anyway, back to the Texas Deal, there were quorum breaks in nineteen seventy nine, two thousand and three, and twenty twenty one where Democrats fled. Political scientists say, barring exceptional endurance on the part of the Democratic delegation, it's likely to be symbolic rather than directly effective in preventing redistricting, which is very on brand by the way, for Democrats. Largely symbolic rather than directly effective. Anyway, it's a messaging move, said Brandon Roddinghouse, a political science professor at the University of Houston. Quote, it's a last resort for Democrats who have run out of options legislatively and even legally, right so, to Eric's point in the tweet, they're desperate. There's nothing else left to do. So here's the thing, though, it requires the entire delegation to stay out of the state until at least November. They can't come back until November at the earliest. And it's like all of them because they've lost so many seats in recent years, they don't have enough seats that if any come back, that's a quorum and they would have to come back in November because that's when candidate filing opens for the mid term elections, so they got to come back to file for reelection. The challenge for Democrats is that Governor Greg Abbott can call an unlimited number of special sessions, each of these lasting up to thirty days a piece, and he just keeps doing him back to back to back to back until you guys eventually come home. If Democrats break quorum during the current special session, which runs through late August, Abbott could immediately call for another session the next day and continue doing so indefinitely. Even if Democrats manage to stay out of the state until the November filing deadline, it could be possible for Republicans to simply hold a second round of primaries for the twenty twenty six mid terms. That according to John Taylor, a poly scide professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio, the difficulty of living out of state, away from legislators' families and their day jobs, makes it difficult for an entire delegation to break quorum for longer than two special sessions. I mean, think about it, You're going to miss all your high school football games. You got kids doing athletic stuff or after school activities. Right. Also, Texas is a part time legislature. It's even more part time than hours, so this is not the primary gig for these lawmakers. They have to come back to work. There's also the physical difficulty of housing so many people out of state. When they last did this in twenty twenty one, Democrats were only able to stay out of state for six weeks. So what's this about. It's a pr stunt, it's theater kids acting out right. It will generate national media attention, but this coverage will fade and quickly. House rules adopted in twenty twenty three impose a five hundre undred dollars a day fine on lawmakers who leave the state and indicate that campaign funds cannot be used to pay for those penalties. However, there are some workarounds or some loopholes there, Like somebody could pay them a bunch of money and say it's you know you're a consult I'm going to hire you as a consultant for some bs reason. Give you the money that way, and then you can pay the fine. The legislators are all so likely to challenge the fines in court. Poly scientists say there is no direct way for Republicans to compel the return of legislators who have left the state. If they were still in Texas, it would be different. Then they could go get them, but right now they can't. The challenge of tracking down missing legislators was vividly illustrated during the nineteen seventy nine Killer Bees episode, when a dozen Democrats state senators hid out in Austin to block changes to the primary election date. Then Lieutenant Governor William Hobby Junior sent Texas rangers and state troopers to hunt them down, leading to a week's long game of hide and seek, and they got busted because some guy walked out of the place they were staying to throw out the trash and a reporter saw on that's how that ended. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.