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This is getting embarrassing. In the video above, I break down the Speaker of the Texas House’s reply to Democrats who left the state to deny Republicans a quorum to pass a new gerrymandered congressional district map of the state.
The Democratic Party is supporting the Texas Democrats, but they need to be doing more.
Republicans have nothing. The big move from Texas state Republicans is to take away the Democratic House members’ ability to have their checks direct deposited. Supposedly, this is going to make the Democrats show up in Austin to get their checks and then boom!! The Democrats will be detained and forced onto the House floor until Republicans have a quorum and can pass the Trump-mandated gerrymandered map.
That’s the “big plan.”
The Texas House Democrats are not running away; they're not criminals. They voluntarily left. They took a principle to stand and left. The Republicans don't have much in the toolbox to bring them back. Greg Abbott is saying he's gonna call special session after special session until the Democrats come back and he can pass his map.
But Greg Abbott also has a deadline. Greg Abbott's deadline is the end of the year. If this map is not gerrymandered by the end of the year, then it doesn't go into effect at all for the midterm. My proposal, being from a union household is very simply this. If Democrats had their act together, which I know is sometimes really stretching it, what they should do is they should go to their donors set up basically, what is a democracy fund, A strike fund we would call it, in terms of union workers.
Go to every person who voted for the Harris/Walz ticket and ask for a dollar. And don't go through a super PAC. Don’t take a cut out for “administrative costs.” Raise $60 or $70 million to cover these expenses for these Texas Democrats to pay their fines so that it doesn't matter how much Greg Abbott and the Texas Republicans fine them.
It's covered so that it doesn't matter, so that they can bring their families wherever they've gone and keep those Democrats out of Texas for the rest of the year. Wouldn't that send a message? Wouldn't that send a message? Wouldn't that make everybody go, Wow, the Democrats are serious about this. And it wasn't just the 50 Texas Democrats, it was every Democrat in the party that stepped up and said, we got you. We got your back. We're not gonna let this happen. We're gonna fight.
We're not just gonna talk about democracy as a threat. And then once Donald Trump wins the election, say democracy didn't play well with voters, so we're not gonna talk about that anymore.
It's ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous that these people were so big into talking about democracy for years, and then when they found out it wasn't a winning campaign issue, they stopped. What does that tell you? Is this a group of people that are serious about protecting democracy, or are they listening to some high-paid consultants who are just telling them this polls well with voters?
And then when they lost the election, a lot of them stopped talking about democracy. A lot of them stopped. Why did they stop?
This is our situation. What are we gonna do? You have a choice. You can sit on your hands. You can watch cable news, and you can just follow the coverage and maybe tell some people, tell some friends, and whatnot about what's happening, or you can step up. You can demand that the Democratic Party take care of these Texas Democrats.
You can demand they take the fight to the next level.
Republicans have nothing, and they are humiliating themselves right now. It’s time for Democrats to step up and strike a blow for democracy.
What do you think? Have Texas Republicans been exposed? Join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments below.
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