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A contingent of Texas Democrats have vowed to hold the state’s legislature crippled, but how long can they hold it together?
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The second consecutive special session of the Texas Legislature got off to a predictably slow start as enough House Democrats who fled the state to Washington, DC last month to block GOP-backed election restrictions have still refused to go to Austin to return to deny the House the 100 out of 150 members it needs to have a quorum and actually do business.
However, there is no denying that cracks are starting to form in the once seemingly rock-solid resolve of this group of 57 House Democrats, as a handful of Democratic quorum breakers have gone back to the House in recent days while a group of 26 have committed stayed in DC as long as there was even a glimmer of hope that before its August hiatus, the US Senate could somehow get a vote on the federal electoral law that would strike back against the Republican “electoral integrity” law that is all but inevitable is adopted in some form.
While DC pundits think a US Senate vote on the federal suffrage bill is extremely unlikely before the chamber goes on vacation in August, likely later this week, House Democrats had also hoped the Texas Supreme Court would give them would help by blocking Governor Greg Abbott’s veto of legislative funding, a move he took to pressure the Democrats to show themselves to Austin and allow the passage of the Republican Electoral Bill that critics have claimed that it would create more voting barriers for disabled and Texan minorities, and that was clearly inspired by former President Trump’s insistence that his election was stolen, despite no evidence of widespread electoral fraud in Texas.
However, the Texas Republican Supreme Court on Monday declined to block Abbott’s veto on legislative funding, arguing in its ruling that the funding struggle was a “political dispute within the legislature” as the veto could be overruled by a two-thirds majority of both the House and Senate and “no question of separation of powers to decide,” and rejects Democratic claims that Abbott’s veto is an example of excessive demands on the executive branch.
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When the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, Dade Phelan, complained in the second special session, the chamber still lacked the 100 members it needed to pass new laws. The majority of the absent legislators were Democrats in the House of Representatives, but even a handful of Republicans did not show up on the first day of the new session. One of them, State Representative Travis Clardy (R-Nacogdoches), was confirmed to have COVID-19, but that didn’t stop Clardy from showing up for work on Monday, where he was using a secure device in an isolated private room from the Capitol voted for the gift.
Among the other MPs in attendance on Monday were several of the formerly absent Texas Democrats, including former spokesman Pro tempore Joe Moody (D-El Paso) and State Representatives James Talarico (D-Round Rock) and Mary González (D -Clint.). ). As of Monday, 95 representatives were in the Capitol, only five fewer than the quorum.
Moody’s return came after Phelan withdrew Moody’s pro-tempore speaking role during the quorum break of the first special session in small retaliation from the Beaumont Republican. Talarico, the young Austin-born Democrat and vocal progressive lawmaker who could face a tough re-election campaign in his contested home district, wrote on Facebook that he was back in Austin “to clean up Greg Abbott’s latest mess from COVID to ERCOT” .
But Talarico’s Democratic colleague Ana-Maria Ramos (D-Richardson) didn’t have it. She beat up Talarico, Moody and González by name on Twitter Monday night for bringing the House of Representatives one step closer to a quorum, and accused her Democrats of throwing the rest under the bus.
@jamestalarico @RepMaryGonzalez @moodyforelpaso you threw us all under the bus today! Why? pic.twitter.com/yD6ODZKFcP
– Representative Ana-Maria Ramos (@ Ramos4Texas) August 9, 2021
In an angry tweetstorm, Ramos mentioned that it was especially frustrating that one of the Democrats who broke the quorum during the first special session this summer was returning to the House as a Travis County judge answered a lawsuit filed by a handful of Texas Democrats on Monday In response to a ruling that prevented state law enforcement officers from arresting absent House members and forcibly returning them to the House floor.
That victory was short-lived, however: Abbott and Phelan filed an urgency motion to the Texas Supreme Court Tuesday morning to block the Travis County’s order, and hours later the state Supreme Court granted a temporary residence to the Democrats of the To give the House of Representatives the opportunity to round up the state if Phelan and his majority in the Republican House of Representatives opt for this path.
A majority of the House of Representatives in attendance Monday authorized Phelan to issue a “Call of the House,” a procedural step that locks the House doors during session and requires lawmakers to seek permission from the speaker to leave the building . They stopped voting to empower Texas law enforcement agencies to find the missing Democrats hiding in the state (as the Republicans previously approved during the previous special session), but given the state Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday morning, one Vote on the dispatch of the cops The raid on the Democrats in hiding could come as early as Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick brought about the passage of laws that are doomed to sit in limbo while the House of Representatives does not have a quorum, as did the House in its last session. In the presence of all the state’s senators – including the Democrats – Patrick’s Senate has passed laws since Saturday authorizing additional pension checks for ex-Texas teachers, an Abbott-proposed bail reform bill that would make it harder for those accused of violent crimes to get out of jail pre-trial and two property tax breaks penned by Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston).
Patrick has again vowed that his Senate will “keep passing every single one of Abbott’s priority bills until the House of Representatives is finally quorate.”
Secretary of State Jarvis Johnson (D-Houston) and Ron Reynolds (D-Missouri City) are among the 26 House Representatives who have vowed to stay in DC while the US Senate is still in session to see the Upper Chamber of Congress approve move sweeping, Democrat-backed federal electoral laws that would likely prevent Republican-backed Texas electoral law from coming into effect.
Of the 31 other Democrats who stayed in DC during the first special session, Johnson said many of them returned to Texas to review their families and businesses, but they didn’t necessarily plan to return to Austin and give the house a quorum new bills soon.
When the Houston Press asked Johnson about a Texas Monthly report that two Democrats who break the quorum, State Representatives Julie Johnson (D-Farmers Branch) and Jessica González (D-Dallas) spent much of last week in Europe in Portugal , resisted the idea, which suggested the Democrats were not as united as they had been in the previous weeks. He didn’t specifically name Johnson or González, but did tell the press that all of the quorum breakers attended Zoom’s strategy and planning talks last week.
“I can tell you that anyone they accused of being on vacation – that I don’t know about – they were there on every call we had,” said Johnson. He also made the claim that “I happen to know there were several Republicans who were also going on vacation” while the first special session was ongoing, but said, “It’s not my job to go out there and get them in.” to blow up. “
“I can tell you, anyone they accused of being on vacation – which I don’t know about – I know they were there on every call we had.” – State Rep. Jarvis Johnson (D- Houston)
tweet that Reynolds admitted to the press that “it will be unlikely” that the US Senate will be able to pass the voting laws this week to vote on the measure.
“I’m very practical and realistic,” said Reynolds. “It’s going to be a big job. Though Schumer would get the word out, they are unlikely to have Republicans to support it. ”
If Senate Democrats can’t get all of their 50 members and at least ten Republicans to support their electoral legislation (and it’s astronomically unlikely that many Republicans would vote for it), one of the Senate moderates, Joe Manchin (D- West Virginia) or Krysten Sinema (D-Arizona). to do that.
“Assuming that doesn’t happen, we need to rethink our options because at this point it looks pretty grim,” Reynolds said. “We need to rethink our plan of action, including returning to Austin at this point.”
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