Our top story: In order to fully block redistricting, #Democrats will likely need to maintain an organized quorum break of more than 90 days—easily the longest in Texas history—through possibly three special sessions and under more punitive political conditions than ever. https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-house-dems-quorum-break-gerrymandering/

#Texas#TXlege #news #politics#USpol #democracy#Trump#GregAbbott

Our top story: In order to fully block redistricting, #Democrats will likely need to maintain an organized quorum break of more than 90 days—easily the longest in Texas history—through possibly three special sessions and under more punitive political conditions than ever. https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-house-dems-quorum-break-gerrymandering/

#Texas#TXlege #news #politics#USpol #democracy#Trump#GregAbbott

"But most importantly, natural disasters are a reminder to 'repent or perish,' because see point #1 about living in a fallen world."

#Texas #evangelicals #floods #ClimateChange
/6

"The main point, says the editorial, is that natural disasters “are a result of living in a fallen and sinful world,” and that humans and the natural world itself are both cursed by original sin, so you’d better focus on getting right with Jesus. Also that extreme weather, like the rain, fall on both 'the just and the unjust,' and God’s will is inscrutable (and of course human activity like burning fossil fuels can’t affect the atmosphere)."

#Texas #evangelicals #floods #ClimateChange
/5

"Following Hurricane Helene last fall, the 'Standing for Freedom Center' explained that the death and destruction of a natural disaster must be understood through 'sound Christian doctrine,' which is why no one should think that the hurricane had anything to do with 'climate change,' which isn’t real, and is in fact 'a fabricated crisis that is weaponized by the global elites.'”

#Texas #evangelicals #floods #ClimateChange
/4

Doktor Zoom explains why, in Texas, getting politicans to enact legislation assuring that summer camps for children (many of them church-based) are safe is an uphill climb:

"For a lot of fundagelical Christians, taking care of each other is something people should only do on their own, because God wants government to be very, very limited."

#Texas #evangelicals #floods #ClimateChange
/3

https://www.wonkette.com/p/sure-texas-could-require-less-drowny

“Trump knows he can’t win the upcoming mid-term elections, so he is trying to rig them. And the way he is trying to do it is to dismantle the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as we know it. He is trying, for example to try and dismantle Hispanic and African-American opportunity districts."

~ Rep. Greg Casar quoted by John Nicholls

#Texas#Republicans #gerrymandering #racism#SupremeCourt#JohnRoberts
/6

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/texas-gerrymandering-fight-trump/

#Texas House rules allow for fines of $500 every day the #Democrats are absent. The #House also issued civil warrants for the missing lawmakers to be arrested & returned to the House.

#Trump#FBI #law#AbuseOfPower #gerrymandering #redistricting #democracy #rigged #elections

After Republican Sen John Cornyn of Texas called on the FBI to help locate & #arrest Democrats who left the state to block a vote on a new congressional map, Trump said, “They may have to.”

“A lot of people have demanded they come back. You can’t just sit it out. You have to go back, you have to fight it out,” said Trump.

#law#AbuseOfPower #gerrymandering #redistricting #democracy #elections
https://apnews.com/live/donald-trump-news-updates-8-5-2025#00000198-7c2b-dc4c-adfc-fc3f02bc0000

Billy Begala explains how the Republican gerrymandering proposal wants to "carve up Texas like a Christmas ham," disenfranchising Black and Hispanic voters and privileging rural white ones.

#Texas#Republicans #gerrymandering #racism
/7

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/republicans-are-planning-to-carve

“Trump knows he can’t win the upcoming mid-term elections, so he is trying to rig them. And the way he is trying to do it is to dismantle the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as we know it. He is trying, for example to try and dismantle Hispanic and African-American opportunity districts."

~ Rep. Greg Casar quoted by John Nicholls

#Texas#Republicans #gerrymandering #racism#SupremeCourt#JohnRoberts
/6

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/texas-gerrymandering-fight-trump/

"Having washed its hands of voter suppression like a modern-day Pontius Pilate, the Supreme Court relinquished control of congressional districting to a patchwork of inconsistent, flawed, and (sometimes) corrupt state legislatures. Chaos ensued."

#Texas#Republicans #gerrymandering #racism#SupremeCourt#JohnRoberts
/5

"Partisan gerrymandering is legal because the US Supreme Court declared in 2019 that it is too difficult for federal judges to ensure that congressional districts are fairly drawn. (A demonstrably false claim.)"

~ Robert B. Hubbell

#Texas#Republicans #gerrymandering #racism#SupremeCourt#JohnRoberts
/4

https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/the-battle-for-2026-is-joined

The inflated power of rural White voters confers upon them an unusual ability to force state and national governments to cater to their preferences and grievances. Herein lies the danger: precisely because they wield inflated power, rural Whites’ increasingly tenuous commitments to democratic norms and traditions are magnified across the U.S. political system in many of the same ways their preferences have been for two centuries” (p. 63).

#Texas#Republicans #gerrymandering #racism
/3

As Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman show in their important 2024 study White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, no demographic group is so catered to politically and has so much unmerited and outsized clout as white rural voters. They write:

“No group was ever dealt a better electoral hand than rural White Americans."

#Texas#Republicans #gerrymandering #racism
/2

Mark Mansour notes that the overt, unabashed gerrymandering proposed by Texas Republicans is designed, by their own admission, to "enhance the political efficacy” of GOP votes.

What this is really about is enhancing the political efficacy of WHITE RURAL voters. As Mansour says, it's "a chilling disenfranchisement of millions of voters—especially Black, Latino, and Asian Americans."

#Texas#Republicans #gerrymandering #racism
/1

https://mmansour.substack.com/p/the-texas-swindle

Just heard this great point: MAGA is mad that Democrats in Texas left the state to prevent a vote on gerrymandering, but they’re fine with Republicans leaving DC to prevent a vote on releasing the Epstein files? #hypocracy #gerrymandering #texas #epsteinfiles

Just heard this great point: MAGA is mad that Democrats in Texas left the state to prevent a vote on gerrymandering, but they’re fine with Republicans leaving DC to prevent a vote on releasing the Epstein files? #hypocracy #gerrymandering #texas #epsteinfiles

"It was important for me to have this lead character who’s going through it and is not being pretty and sweet and nice about it.”

New from Kit @oconnell: This 9-part #audio comedy from Audible centers around a still all-too-rare depiction of a very funny, very human disabled main character. https://www.texasobserver.org/shaky-audio-series-messy-real-disabled-life/

#comedy #culture #podcast #disability#Texas #fiction