Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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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,
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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,
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Scott says, Pete. Have you ever explained where the term
Jerrymanderin came from? It's interesting and informative if nothing else. Yes,
I have no it. Okay, it comes from a comes
from a guy. His name was Jerry, last name Mander
and he was notoriously unable to walk straight, but they
gave him the job of walking the district lines for
the original Continental Congress, and so he could not walk straight,
and so he would just track this line. He would
leave chalk lines, and then they made the maps off
of that jerry mandarin. That's how they got that. I'm
just kidding. That's not at all the story. 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.
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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
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for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.