by By Texas Metro News Correspondent Rita Cook
Austin Once more, here we go.
Austin’s second round of special sessions.
It was not intended for the first Texas Legislative Session to conclude so early in August. However, the first special session was adjourned this past Friday because there hasn’t been a quorum since August 3, when 51 Democrats fled Austin to protest the state’s redistricting.
Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, promptly announced a second special session to start at noon on the same day.
Like all special sessions, this one is limited to a 30-day period. A third special session will probably be called as well if nothing is accomplished other than wasting taxpayer money.
Abbott declared, “We will not back down from this fight,” in a second proclamation during a special session. I’m summoning the Texas Legislature back today to complete the task because of this. I’ll keep using every resource at my disposal to make sure Texas produces outcomes for Texans.
Without a quorum, the Texas House is at a halt, despite the fact that there is still a lot of work to be done that was not finished during the 89th Texas Legislative Session that adjourned back in June.
The House Democrats’ two-week hiatus will come to an end with this second special session, but if the same MPs do not return for the second session, it may still come to a standstill.
In order to prevent the redistributed map from being passed, which could result in the red party gaining up to five additional seats in Texas, the blue party decided to depart the state during the previous session.
Ann Johnson, a Democrat from Houston, was reportedly the first to declare that she would be going back to Austin for the special session.
Johnson stated in a statement, “We broke quorum to defend fair representation, to protect the Constitution, and to stop a racist and rigged process in its tracks, and we succeeded.” Now that we’ve concluded that [first special] session, I’m going back to Texas to carry on the battle from the House floor.
The fight, as Johnson referred to it, should be addressed like an adult on the House floor, according to many Texans on both sides of the aisle.
Governor Abbott has stated that he will continue to call as many special sessions as necessary to pass the redistricting map in order to achieve this goal.
Houston’s Gene Wu, the leader of the Texas House Democrats, stated last week that if the first special session was postponed until Friday and if California is permitted to gerrymander a new redistricting plan to counter what the Texas redistricting map suggests, the Democrats will return.
Wu thinks that in order to combat Texas’ red turn, Democrats in blue states around the country can now redistrict their patterns to enable for blue seats to displace red seats in other states.
California voters will have to decide in a special election if the state decides to redistrict.
Redrawing the maps of California and Illinois is also being discussed. But it will be another two years before New York can redistrict.
Kendall Scudder, the chairperson of the Texas Democratic Party, stated that those blue states would not be acting at this time if the Texas Democrats hadn’t taken this move.
