Texas

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Fort Bliss army base on US southern border to take 1,000 Ice detainees

      by

      Fort Bliss is preparing to accept 1,000 immigrant detainees as the Trump administration moves to use military bases for its unprecedented mass deportation operation and immigration crackdown.The facility, named Camp East Montana, is set to begin operations on 17 August at the US army post near El Paso, Texas. Ice (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) said in a statement that the facility will initially house up to 1,000 detainees, with plans to expand to a capacity of 5,000 beds.If the center reaches full capacity, the El Paso Times reports that it would become the largest immigration detention facility in the US.An Ice spokesperson said the agency is using the facility to help “decompress Ice detention facilities in other regions” and will serve as a short-term processing center. The statement adds that deportations carried out via “Ice air operations” will also take place at the facility.According to Ice, the facility will house undocumented immigrants who “are in removal proceedings or who have final orders of removal”.The site is being constructed under a Department of Defense contract, Ice said, and is funded “as part of the essential whole-of-government approach to protecting public safety and preserving national security”.In July, administration officials announced that Acquisition Logistics LLC, a Virginia-based contractor, was awarded a $231.8m firm-fixed-price contract to “establish and operate” the “5,000 capacity, single adult, short-term detention facility”.Bloomberg reported that Acquisition Logistics has no prior experience operating detention facilities.View image in fullscreenIn the statement from Ice, the agency said that Ice personnel “will be responsible for the management and operational authority” at the facility, and that the establishment of the center is being “carried out with contracted support and according to Ice detention standards”.The agency described the facility as “soft-sided” and said that it will offer “everything a traditional Ice detention facility offers”, which Ice said includes access to legal representation, a law library and space for visitation, recreation and medical treatment, as well as “necessary accommodations for disabilities, diet and religious belief”.In a statement to the Guardian, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin also confirmed the use of Fort Bliss to house immigration detainees.“Ice is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity” McLaughlin said. “This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases, including Fort Bliss.”In March, the Guardian reported that Fort Bliss has been used under multiple administrations for immigration-related operations.Under this Trump administration, the base has reportedly already been used to fly deportees on military aircraft to Guantánamo Bay and Central and South America.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder Joe Biden, it was used as an emergency shelter to for thousands of unaccompanied migrant children. In 2021, Fort Bliss also reportedly played a key role in resettling Afghan refugees brought to the US after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. And in 2016, under the Obama administration, Fort Bliss housed several hundred unaccompanied migrant children.The new facility being established at Fort Bliss comes as the Trump administration has sought to use several US military bases around the country as immigration detention facilities.The expansion has faced some criticism from Democrats. Texas representative Veronica Escobar, whose district includes Fort Bliss, warned that using military facilities as immigration detention centers could hurt the effectiveness of US military forces.“It’s not good for our readiness, and it degrades our military,” she said.Last month, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced that both the Camp Atterbury base in Indiana and the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey could now house detained immigrants.Democrats from both states condemned the move, with New Jersey’s Democratic delegation warning that “using our country’s military to detain and hold undocumented immigrants jeopardizes military preparedness and paves the way for Ice immigration raids in every New Jersey community”.The planned opening of the new immigration detention facility near El Paso also comes as a new report released this week by the office of the US senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat representing Georgia, found and documented hundreds of alleged human rights abuses at immigration detention centers in the US since 20 January 2025.The report cites deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, mistreatment of pregnant women and children, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of access to attorneys, child separation, and more.In a statement about the report’s allegations, a spokesperson for the DHS told NBC News that “any claim that there are subprime conditions at Ice detention centers are false”. More

    • 275 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas Democrats who left state in protest can ‘stay out long enough to stop this deal’, Beto O’Rourke says – live updates

      by

      Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ exodus, told CNN earlier that he believes they can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are, O’Rourke said, “trying to steal these five seats in Texas because without them Trump’s going to lose a majority in the House of Representatives”.
      Without that majority, there’s a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption, and the possibility of free and fair elections going forward.
      The 56 Texas Democrats who left the state are, O’Rourke said, “all that stand between that future and where we are right now”.
      I think what they’re doing is the highest form of public service. They’re trying to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power in America.
      They are the champions for this democracy, for America, for the rule of law and for our constitution.
      Paxton has called their leaving a “dereliction of the duty as elected officials” and said he would pursue a court ruling to declare the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” vacant if they do not return to work at the statehouse by Friday.“This matters more than any other priority,” said O’Rourke. “We have to stop their power grab.” He added:
      The election of 2026 is going to be decided in the summer of 2025, so we have to fight now and every day going forward.
      During a White House event to announce new investments in manufacturing by Apple, Donald Trump said the United States will impose a tariff of about 100% on semiconductor chips imported into the country.Trump told reporters in the Oval office that the new tariff rate would apply to “all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States,” but would not apply to companies that had made a commitment to manufacture in the United States.“So 100% tariff on all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States”, Trump said. “But if you’ve made a commitment to build [in the US], or if you’re in the process of building, as many are, there is no tariff”, Trump said.The White House has released a statement to reporters in which the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, suggests that the idea of a direct meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, was proposed by the Russians during Putin’s meeting with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Wednesday.“As President Trump said earlier today on TRUTH Social, great progress was made during Special Envoy Witkoff’s meeting with President Putin”, Leavitt said. “The Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the President is open to meeting with both President Putin and President Zelensky. President Trump wants this brutal war to end.”I asked Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who represents San Antonio in the Texas state legislature what it was like away from the cameras as he and his colleagues live out of a hotel room in Illinois with no idea of how long they’ll be there.“It’s important to just have the right mental focus and to stick to routines”, he said. “We’re still, you know, we’re still parents, and we’re still spouses. And we’re still trying to run our business or explain to our boss why we’re not there. We try to live, you know, we try to live a normal life, and we will rely on each other”.Texas’ part-time lawmakers earn just $600 a month, so many have other jobs and have been forced to work remotely from outside the state, if they can.Martinez Fischer wanted to make sure people knew that he and his colleagues are still doing legislative work, even though they’re not in Austin. He mentioned that he filed two bills yesterday.He said this was his fourth quorum break. He said he was a “one bag guy” and had packed some leisure wear to wear with polos and his best suit he could stretch out a few days. “I’m wearing some clothes today that I haven’t worn yet. So, you know, that’s a small success for me”.“When we talk about the grand scheme of what we, what we’re doing here and why we’re here, I mean, there are people who have had it a whole lot worse than me”, he said.He also said this quorum break feels different than the one in 2021, when Democrats fled the state for several weeks to try and stop a bill with sweeping new voting restrictions from going into effect.“2021, we spent more time trying to convince the country that there was an issue, right? This time, you know, there is no tutorial necessary and everybody is laser focused on the issue before us”, he said. “We don’t have to debate somebody on the merits of this walkout. I mean, they know the implications”.I just got off the phone with Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who represents San Antonio in the Texas state legislature, and is one of dozens in his party who fled the state to try and stop Republicans from passing new Congressional maps.I asked Martinez Fischer if he could lend any insight into how long Democrats would hold out before returning. He declined to say.“These quorum checks and the strategies and end games are kind of best left undiscussed”, he said. “It’s a very fluid, it’s a very fluid dynamic. The idea that we had on Sunday may be different next Sunday”.Martinez Fischer said he’s not really concerned about the $500 per day fines lawmakers are accruing under state legislature rules enacted in 2023. “Not concerned about it at all”, he said. “We’ve had rules set aside before, and courts don’t have to interpret the rules the way Republicans want them to be interpreted”.He said he also wasn’t fazed by threats from top Texas Republicans to ask courts to remove Democratic lawmakers from office. Abbott filed a long-shot legal bid to do so against Gene Wu, the chair of the Democratic caucus, on Tuesday evening.“I think he recognizes that he’s on the losing side of this narrative”, Martinez Fischer said. “I think that the theories by which the governor is trying to remove people from office has a much more structured procedure than just filing some papers with the supreme court. So I don’t think that that kind of stuff happens overnight”.

      Texas Democrats are still hunkering down in blue states across the country. It comes after they broke quorum for two consecutive days this week, in protest of a new GOP-drawn congressional map. It’s now evolved into a nationwide redistricting battle.

      Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke has emerged as a top funder, covering the costs of the lawmakers’ exodus through his political group ‘Powered by People’. In an interview with CNN earlier he said that state reps can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.

      Meanwhile, many of the Texas legislators who decamped to Illinois were forced to evacuate from their hotel today when they experienced a bomb threat. The area was secured as bomb squad units conducted their investigation. No device was found according to local police. Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was aware of the threats, in a post on X. “Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” he added.

      In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “great progress” was made at a “highly productive” three-hour meeting today between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian president Vladimir Putin. This comes just two days ahead of a deadline Trump set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war with Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions.

      The New York Times also reports that Donald Trump plans to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin as early as next week. Trump will then organise a follow-up for Putin, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and himself, sources tell the Times.

      Trump also followed through on his threats to increase tariffs on India. Earlier he issued an executive order today imposing an additional 25% on goods from India, saying the country directly or indirectly imported Russian oil. It brings the total levies against India to 50%.
      The president plans to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin as early as next week, according to reporting from the New York Times.Sources tell the Times that Trump plans to follow up with a meeting between himself, Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.The newspaper reports that Trump disclosed the details on a call with European leaders. Although, the meeting with Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy will not include any European counterparts, two people familiar with the plan tell the Times.This comes after a three-hour meeting today between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin, which Trump described as “highly productive” in a post on Truth Social.Facing images of violent white mobs defending racial segregation, the condemnation of the world and of its own citizens, Congress in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, a law meant to end the hypocrisy of a democratic country that denied Black people the power of their vote.Sixty years later, race remains at the center of American politics. Cases before the US supreme court, and a platoon of Texas legislators fleeing the state to prevent redistricting, demonstrate how the Voting Rights Act – and its erosion – remains on the frontline of the political battlefield.“Democracy is at stake,” said Todd Cox, associate director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Even as voting rights advocates use the act to win additional congressional representation in Alabama and press cases in Louisiana and North Carolina, a conservative supreme court makes gains precarious, he said.Read more about how the Voting Rights Act is confronting its biggest threats in the 60 years since its passage.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, in a post on X, that Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia, and the White House is monitoring the situation.Five soldiers were shot and wounded today on the military base in south-east Georgia, before the shooter was taken into custody.Parts of the base had been locked down earlier on Wednesday after a shooter was reported on the sprawling army post, a spokesperson said.In an analysis by Politico, Democratic lawmakers from Texas stand to amass almost $400,000 in penalties, for leaving the state in protest during the special session that ends on 19 August.Politico crunched the numbers and worked out the total based on the fewest lawmakers needed to break quorum, the anticipated length of their out-of-state trips, and the $500-per-day fee they’re being charged.“Should Democrats refuse to return for the length of the entire special legislative session, which will end on Aug. 19, they could rack up fines totaling at least $382,500,” Politico estimated.In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “great progress” was made at the meeting between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian president Vladimir Putin.“Afterwards, I updated some of our European Allies. Everyone agrees this War must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,” Trump added.The meeting comes just two days before a deadline the president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war with Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions.Texas state lawmakers – many of whom decamped to Illinois to break quorum over the new GOP-drawn congressional map – were forced to evacuate from their hotel earlier near Chicago today.The St Charles police department said they responded to a report of a potential bomb threat at the Q-Center hotel and convention complex. Four hundred people were immediately evacuated, and the area was secured as bomb squad units conducted their investigation. No device was found.On social media, Democratic state representative John Bucy III said that “this is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’,” referring to the Texas attorney general’s earlier calls to bring absent lawmakers back to the state house.Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was aware of the threats, in a post on X. “Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” he added.JD Vance will reportedly host top administration officials at his residence tonight, where they will discuss a strategy to address the fallout of the government’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and come up with a “unified response”, CNN reports.Among the attendees will reportedly be, attorney Pam Bondi, her deputy Todd Blanche, FBI director Kash Patel and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.It comes as the administration weighs whether to release the contents of Blanche’s interviews, including over 10 hours of audio and a transcript, with Epstein accomplice and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Two officials told CNN that the materials could be made public as early as this week.One official told CNN that some of the conversation within the White House has focused on whether making the details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back to the surface, at a time when many officials close to Trump believe the story has finally died down.Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ exodus, told CNN earlier that he believes they can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are, O’Rourke said, “trying to steal these five seats in Texas because without them Trump’s going to lose a majority in the House of Representatives”.
      Without that majority, there’s a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption, and the possibility of free and fair elections going forward.
      The 56 Texas Democrats who left the state are, O’Rourke said, “all that stand between that future and where we are right now”.
      I think what they’re doing is the highest form of public service. They’re trying to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power in America.
      They are the champions for this democracy, for America, for the rule of law and for our constitution.
      Paxton has called their leaving a “dereliction of the duty as elected officials” and said he would pursue a court ruling to declare the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” vacant if they do not return to work at the statehouse by Friday.“This matters more than any other priority,” said O’Rourke. “We have to stop their power grab.” He added:
      The election of 2026 is going to be decided in the summer of 2025, so we have to fight now and every day going forward.
      US envoy Steve Witkoff’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday went well, a White House official has told Reuters, adding that Washington still planned to proceed with secondary sanctions on Friday.
      The Russians are eager to continue engaging with the United States. The secondary sanctions are still expected to be implemented on Friday.
      My colleague Jakub Krupa is covering this in greater detail over on our Europe live blog:It follows a Reuters report that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump spoke on the phone earlier today, according to a source familiar with the matter.Hours earlier, US special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. There haven’t been any immediate indication from either side as to how the talks went.We’re seeing lines on Reuters quoting a White House official that secondary US sanctions on Russia are expected to be implemented on Friday, the deadline Trump gave Putin to reach a peace deal to end its war in Ukraine.Up until this point Trump had been unusually reticent to punish the Russian president, my colleague Patrick Wintour wrote in a piece published this morning, so “what Trump – who some had claimed was a Russian asset – does next to punish Putin could define his presidency.”I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.If state legislators in California move ahead with governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to hold a special election – and begin the process of redrawing the state’s congressional maps in response to Texas’s plans – they’ll have just five days to announce their decision.The California legislature returns from its recess on 18 August, and it will have to declare a special election by 22 August, according to KCRA News.“They’re doing a midterm rejection of objectivity and independence, an act that we could criticise from the sideline, or an act that we can respond to in kind – fight fire with fire,” Newsom said in a press conference last week, referring to Texas Republicans’ plans to pass a new congressional map.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with Donald Trump on the phone today, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.This comes after US special envoy Steve Witkoff wrapped up a three-hour meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier today.My colleagues are tracking the latest here. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas Democrats receive bomb threat in escalating standoff over redistricting

      by

      Texas Democrats who left the state say they experienced a bomb threat at their Illinois hotel on Wednesday morning amid an ongoing clash with Republicans over their effort to block a new congressional map from going into place.John Bucy III, a Democrat who represents Austin in the state legislature, confirmed the threat on X on Wednesday and said the lawmakers were evacuated. “This is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’. Texas Democrats won’t be intimidated,” he said.“We are safe, we are secure, and we are undeterred,” three other members of the Texas house Democratic caucus, representatives Gene Wu, Ramón Romero and Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, said in a statement. They thanked Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, and law enforcement officials “for their quick action to ensure our safety”.The showdown between Texas Republicans and the Democrats who fled the state to block redistricting plans escalated late on Tuesday when Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, filed an emergency petition asking the state supreme court to remove Wu, the top Democrat in the state house of representatives, and declare his seat vacant.“Fearing one of eighteen items on the Special Session agenda, Democrat members of the Texas House claim an entitlement to abdicate their official duties by refusing to show up for work,” lawyers for Abbott’s office wrote in the filing, asking the court to rule on his request by Thursday. “These members have abandoned their official duties required by the Constitution.”In a statement on Tuesday evening, Wu said he would not be intimidated by Abbott’s request.“This office does not belong to Greg Abbott, and it does not belong to me. It belongs to the people of House District 137, who elected me. I took an oath to the constitution, not a politician’s agenda, and I will not be the one to break that oath,” he said in a statement. “Let me be unequivocal about my actions and my duty. When a governor conspires with a disgraced president to ram through a racist gerrymandered map, my constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant.”Texas Republicans already hold 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional seats, but Abbott agreed to redraw the state’s congressional districts at the request of Donald Trump to add more GOP-friendly districts. Republicans hold a narrow 219-212 advantage in the US House, and the Texas redraw is a brazen effort to try to shore up Republicans’ advantage before next year’s midterm elections, when Republicans are expected to lose seats.A new map unveiled last week would favor Republicans in 30 of 38 seats and weaken the influence of Hispanic voters throughout the state.Abbott’s effort is considered a long shot, legal experts told the Texas Tribune. In 2021, the Texas supreme court made clear that the state constitution both allows state lawmakers to break quorum and allows for mechanisms for lawmakers to bring them back.“I am aware of absolutely no authority that says breaking quorum is the same as the intent to abandon a seat,” Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a constitutional law expert at the University of Missouri law school, told the Tribune. “That would require the courts extending the premise to the breaking point. It’s inconsistent with the very text of the Texas Constitution.”The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican, has said he also plans to take legal action to try to remove the lawmakers from office.On Tuesday, Senator John Cornyn asked the FBI to assist in returning the lawmakers to Texas. Trump said on Tuesday that the FBI may have to get involved. “The governor of Texas is demanding they come back,” Trump said. “You can’t just sit it out. You have to go back. You have to fight it out. That’s what elections are all about,” he said. The FBI has declined to comment.Under rules enacted by the legislature, lawmakers also face a $500 daily fine for each day they are not present in the capitol. Many of the costs so far, including a private charter to Illinois, meals and lodging have been picked up by Powered by People, a political group started by former Representative Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Tribune reported. Paxton announced on Wednesday he was investigating the group’s funding of the effort.Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democratic representative of San Antonio in the state legislature, said in an interview he was unfazed by the possibility of racking up fines.“Not concerned about it at all,” he said. “We’ve had rules set aside before, and courts don’t have to interpret the rules the way Republicans want them to be interpreted.”“The group is very committed and we recognize that this is much bigger, it’s much bigger than anybody’s individual congressional district, it’s much bigger than anybody’s individual city, and it’s even bigger than the state of Texas,” he added.Other states appear to be following Texas’s lead and considering mid-cycle redistricting. Ohio is already set to redraw its congressional map this year because of a unique state law, and is expected to add more GOP-friendly seats. Republicans in Missouri and Indiana are also reportedly considering redrawing maps to add GOP-friendly districts.Democratic governors have threatened to redraw the maps in their states too to offset Republican gains, though they do not have the power to draw as many seats as Republicans do. The biggest opportunity for Democrats is in California, which has 52 seats in Congress. Governor Gavin Newsom is reportedly moving ahead with a referendum this fall to ask to adopt a new map that would add Democratic seats and override an independent redistricting commission. More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      The US supreme court paved the way for Texas’s gerrymandering mess | Steven Greenhouse

      by

      With Texas Republicans rushing to fulfil Donald Trump’s wish to gerrymander to the max, many Americans are no doubt wondering why there isn’t some referee to stop this hyperpartisan race to the bottom that is poisoning our democracy. The supreme court should be the referee that puts a halt to this ugly, undemocratic mess, but in a shortsighted, 5-4 ruling in 2019, the court’s conservative majority essentially told state legislatures that anything goes when it comes to gerrymandering. Their message was: no matter how extreme the gerrymandering, we’ll look the other way.Writing the majority opinion in that case, Rucho v Common Cause, chief justice John Roberts declared that gerrymandering was a political matter that federal courts shouldn’t intervene in (unless it involves racial discrimination). Many legal experts said the conservative justices were defaulting on the court’s responsibility to prevent absurdly unfair, undemocratic elections, where the fix is in even before people vote. In a prescient dissent, justice Elena Kagan warned that the huge permission slip the court was giving to gerrymandering would encourage “a politics of polarization and dysfunction” and might “irreparably damage our system of government”.Trump and his team have been shrewd enough and shameless enough to seek to take maximum advantage of that ruling, and in doing so, they’re showing how right Kagan was. Trump and company are seriously damaging our system of government and our democracy by seeking to insulate Trump from the majority’s will, an expected Democratic-leaning vote in the 2026 congressional elections. Trump and team are also ratcheting up the “polarization and dysfunction” Kagan warned us about. Democratic lawmakers have fled Texas to prevent a GOP power grab, while Texas governor Greg Abbott has called for their arrest and removal from office.Gerrymandering further fuels polarization because November elections become largely irrelevant for choosing candidates. With gerrymandering, what counts are the party primaries, and there, the extremes, rather than moderate swing voters, determine who the winning candidate is. This in turn leads to increasingly polarized, dysfunctional legislative bodies, like the House of Representatives, where there’s plenty of performative, partisan showboating and very little legislation passed.In Rucho, the conservative majority declined to overturn a gerrymander in which the North Carolina GOP had rigged congressional districts so that Republicans would win 10 of the state’s 13 House seats even when the GOP won a bare majority of the statewide vote. (The case also involved some flagrant gerrymandering by Maryland’s Democrats.) It’s thanks to Roberts and the conservative justices’ indifference to gerrymandering that a person close to Trump could say that the administration’s attitude was “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time”.Seeking to maximize the chances of maintaining Republican control of the House, where the GOP has a mere three-seat majority, many Republicans also want GOP-led legislatures in Missouri, Florida, Ohio and Indiana to gerrymander to the max. In Texas alone, Trump hopes the GOP can pick up five House seats through redistricting. Even though Trump beat former vice-president Kamala Harris by 56% to 42% in Texas in 2024, the newly unveiled gerrymander aims to guarantee Republicans 30 out of Texas’s 38 House seats (a 79% to 21% ratio). Democrats accuse Trump and the Texas GOP of cheating, and it should be no surprise that they want to respond to fire with fire, with the Democratic governors of California, Illinois and New York saying that they, too, will push through gerrymanders.This unseemly electoral arms race results directly from the supreme court’s dodging of responsibility. In Rucho, chief justice Roberts shrugged at gerrymandering, saying that redistricting shenanigans were part and parcel of US history. Pointing to examples of gerrymandering from the 1780s and early 1800s, Roberts pooh-poohed this phenomenon, writing: “Partisan gerrymandering is nothing new. Nor is frustration with it.” He also voiced skepticism and snark about judges’ use of standards and election experts’ predictions to determine when partisan redistricting crosses the line into unconstitutional gerrymandering that violates the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause.In contrast to Roberts’ who-cares casualness, justice Kagan was an I’m-warning-you Cassandra. In a stinging dissent joined by justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, she correctly predicted that terrible things would result from Roberts’s decision. She wrote that his opinion showed “a saddening nonchalance about the threat that such [extreme] redistricting posts to self-governance”.Kagan didn’t mince her words about how Roberts’s decision threatened our democracy and undermined the ability of Americans to elect a government of their choosing. “For the first time ever,” she wrote, “this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities. And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives. In so doing, the partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people.”In Rucho, Roberts wrote that the constitution neither expressly bans gerrymandering, nor points to a standard to determine when partisan redistricting is so unfair that it becomes unconstitutional. He suggested it would be a grievous, arbitrary wrong to select some legal or mathematical standard to determine when gerrymanders are illegal. Roberts wrote: “There are no legal standards discernible in the Constitution for making such judgments, let alone limited and precise standards that are clear, manageable, and politically neutral.”Today’s headlines make clear that Roberts and his Rucho decision have left us with a far more grievous wrong. It has encouraged ultra-partisan gerrymandering that is sabotaging our democracy and the majority will – in this case with an eye to preventing Democrats from winning back control of the House and serving as a check on Trump, the most authoritarian president in US history. If Texas Republicans prevail and enact their gerrymander, despite Democratic lawmakers’ exodus from the state, then the votes of millions of Texas Democrats will become meaningless, their votes in effect erased by the Trump/GOP gerrymander juggernaut. The same thing will happen to many Republican voters in states where Democrats gerrymander.Roberts was dismayingly myopic in failing to realize how his Rucho decision would someday lead to a push for maximum, hyperpartisan redistricting and how new electoral and computer models would make gerrymandering far more sophisticated – and sinister. Roberts was flatly wrong when he wrote that there can’t be “clear, manageable, and politically neutral” standards that define when redistricting crosses the line from mere partisanship to over-the-top, undemocratic, grossly unfair ultra-partisanship. One study put forward a smart standard that says gerrymandering crosses the line into illegality when a certain, high percentage of votes are wasted, deliberately rendered meaningless through partisan redistricting.What we’re seeing right now in Texas is one political party seeking to squeeze every last drop out of a filthy gerrymandering sponge – fair play and democracy be damned. Foreseeing ugly episodes like this, Kagan cited the vision of James Madison, the main author of the constitution, who once wrote that the “power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people”.The whole purpose of Trump’s gerrymandering power grab is to prevent the people from having power over him and his increasingly unpopular government. Unfortunately, Roberts gave Trump a green light for such a power grab.Like Trump, Roberts hates admitting mistakes, but it’s not too late for him to admit how shortsighted and harmful his Rucho ruling was. Nor is it too late for the chief justice to get the court to set some sane, healthy limits on gerrymandering to safeguard our democracy as well as Madison’s vision that the “power is in the people over the Government”.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas senator asks FBI to help locate and arrest Democrats for leaving state

      by

      The US senator John Cornyn of Texas has asked the FBI to aid Texas law enforcement in locating and arresting Democrats who left the state to forestall a plan sought by Donald Trump to aggressively redraw the state’s congressional map in a way that could help Republicans keep their House majority after the 2026 midterm elections.The senator’s request is a significant escalation in the fast-moving showdown that could set up a confrontation between the blue state leaders shielding the Democratic state lawmakers and the Trump administration. Earlier on Tuesday, Texas Democrats denied a legislative quorum for the second day in a row by scattering across the country, with many decamping to Chicago, Illinois, where the Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, has vowed to protect them.In a letter to the FBI director, Kash Patel, Cornyn, a Republican, said “federal resources are necessary to locate the out-of-state Texas legislators who are potentially acting in violation of the law”.The FBI declined to comment on the senator’s request to involve its agents.Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, said he would ask a court to declare vacant the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” who had not returned to work at the statehouse by Friday.“The people of Texas elected lawmakers, not jet-setting runaways looking for headlines,” Paxton, the long-embattled Trump loyalist challenging Cornyn for the Republican Senate nomination, said in a statement. “If you don’t show up to work, you get fired.”Texas House speaker Dustin Burrows said the chamber would attempt to reach quorum again on Friday, after it failed for a second consecutive day on Tuesday,Trump, who had been unusually silent on the dramatic showdown that he set in motion, also weighed in on Tuesday, arguing that Republicans were entitled to the five additional seats they could stand to gain if the new map were approved.“We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box. “We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas. And I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.”“In Illinois, what’s happened is terrible what they’re doing,” the president added. “And you notice, they go to Illinois for safety, but that’s all gerrymandered. California is gerrymandered. We should have many more seats in Congress in California. It’s all gerrymandered.”Democrats and Republicans have both used gerrymandering to maximize their party’s political power, though in recent years Republicans have been far more aggressive – and effective – in deploying the tactic.California voters approved an independent re-districting commission to draw the state’s congressional maps for the first time in 2010. But the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has vowed to “fight fire with fire” by asking voters to override the commission and approve new maps that would favor California Democrats if Texas moved forward with its gerrymandering plan. At a press conference on Monday, Newsom said he hoped Texas Republicans would retreat, but that California would not hesitate to respond in a way that carried “profound national implications” for balance of power in Washington.At a news conference in Illinois, Texas Democrats were joined by Pritzker, who hailed them as “heroes”, and the Democratic National Committee chair Ken, Martin, who accused Republicans of attempting to “steal their way to victory”.Pritzker has also said that Illinois may respond to Texas’s efforts by redrawing its own map in Democrats’ favor, given that “everything has to be on the table”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Trump came up with a new scheme to rig the system by ramming through a corrupt, mid-decade redistricting plan that would steal five congressional seats, silencing millions of voters, especially Black and Latino voters,” the governor said.The Texas house reconvened at 1pm local time on Tuesday, but enough Democrats were still outside the state to deny quorum for a second day. “There being 94 members present, quorum is not present,” said the House speaker, Dustin Burrows, a Republican. Burrows added that the Texas department of public safety was “actively working to compel their attendance after I signed their civil arrest warrants yesterday”.He said the House would reconvene and try to make quorum again on Friday.Gina Hinojosa, a Democratic state representative who left Texas for Illinois on Sunday, said that she and her colleagues planned to be absent from the state capitol for “as long as it takes” to thwart the Republicans’ redistricting plans.The current special legislative session, called by Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, lasts until 19 August. “As long as we need to stay away and deny quorum on this bill to pass the truck maps, I will stay away,” Hinojosa said, speaking from a suburb of Chicago.Abbott could continue to call additional special sessions, and it’s not clear how long Democrats could stay outside the state. Each lawmaker who has absconded faces a $500-per-day fine, and Abbott has ordered the Texas department of public safety to “locate, arrest and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans”.Hinojosa shrugged off Republicans’ threats to remove Democratic members from office, calling it “disrespectful” to the Texans who elected them, many of whom, she said, have expressed gratitude to their lawmakers for standing up to Trump. Though she lamented the redistricting “arms race” that the Texas undertaking had set off – with Democratic states vowing to respond in kind – Hinojosa said it was imperative that her party confront the “real, present-day threats” posed by redrawn congressional maps.“Democrats need to fight to win,” she said. “We fight to win for the day, and we take tomorrow as it comes.” More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Latinos deserve a district’: alarm as new Texas maps dilute voting power in Austin

      by

      When representative Greg Casar won his election last year, he became the first Latino to represent the Texas capital city of Austin in the US House of Representatives. A panel of federal judges had drawn his district’s lines after a prolonged legal battle over racial gerrymandering.But under the map Texas Republicans unveiled last week, Casar would instead live in the modified version of his neighboring district to the west, which would swallow east Austin – a gentrifying but historically working-class area home to Mexican American and Black residents once forced by segregation laws to live on the east side of town.“Even a conservative supreme court said central Texas Latinos deserve a district, and that’s why my district exists,” Casar said. “If Donald Trump is able to suppress Latino voters here in Austin, he’ll try to spread that plan across America.”Texas Republicans took the unusual step of redistricting several years early in an attempt to deliver more congressional seats to Donald Trump ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Democratic state lawmakers fled the state Sunday to try to thwart the GOP redistricting plan by denying state lawmakers a quorum needed to pass it into law. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, said Monday he would seek to arrest and possibly unseat and replace Democratic lawmakers who do not return.In majority-minority Texas, where Black and brown voters have traditionally leaned left, the overtly political ploy is teeing up another in a series of legal battles over racial gerrymandering that have erupted repeatedly for more than a decade.The dramatic reshaping of Casar’s district 35 is one of the most egregious examples cited by civic groups concerned that the new map will dilute Latino voter strength and make it harder for candidates of color to win congressional elections.“The map as proposed clearly violates the Voting Rights Act and is unconstitutional,” said Lydia Camarillo, the president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. “It’s canceling out districts that are part of the Voting Rights Act … and it’s not giving Latinos the right to represent their voice based on their population growth.”Hispanics are the largest population segment in Texas, at about 40%. Only one-fifth of the state’s 38-member House delegation is Hispanic, however.Since the last census, civic groups like Camarillo’s have contended that the state’s booming Hispanic population growth merits two more Latino-majority congressional districts under the Voting Rights Act – one in Houston and the other in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. A dozen organizations and several individuals are pressing Texas to create the two Latino-majority districts in an ongoing federal lawsuit in El Paso.The new GOP-drawn map not only fails to provide those two Latino-majority districts, but it significantly dilutes the voting strength of the ones that exist, critics say.“This is a calculated move that exploits Texas’ historically low voter turnout for those in charge to maintain power,” Jackie Bastard, the executive director of the voter turnout group Jolt Action, wrote in an email. “By deliberately diluting Latino voting strength across districts, these maps would severely diminish the impact of our ongoing voter mobilization efforts and silence the voices of Texas’ fastest-growing demographic.”Those intricacies are often difficult to tease out. Congressional district nine, represented by Democratic representative Al Green, for example, is a so-called “coalition district” under the current map, with no one ethnic or racial group holding a solid majority. In practice, however, it functions more like a Black-opportunity district in a state where African American voters are becoming a smaller share of the electorate.Under the new map, district nine’s Black population plummets to 11%, while the Hispanic voting age population now holds a majority.But the historically low voter turnout rate there raises doubts that the district will actually function as a Latino-majority district, said Gloria Leal, the general counsel for the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the plaintiffs in the El Paso case. Representative Sylvia Garcia’s district 29 also dropped enough to raise concerns, while retaining a majority on paper.Representative Henry Cuellar’s district 28, on the other hand, saw the opposite approach under the new map – Hispanics voters shot up to roughly 90% of the voting age population.“They added like 20 percentage points to that district to pack us all in,” Leal said. “We oppose the current map that exists and we adamantly oppose the proposed map,” she added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAny redrawing of Texas districts is likely to draw the scrutiny of the federal courts, given the state’s long history of voter suppression. The Voting Rights Act, which will celebrate its 60th anniversary on Wednesday, prohibits both diluting a protected groups’ votes across multiple districts and packing voters into a single one.Carrying out such sweeping changes so quickly at the request of the White House may also raise legal questions that go beyond the Voting Rights Act, according to Thomas A Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs in the El Paso case.“This is clearly improper,” Saenz said. “Trying to circumvent judicial review by acting so close to an election is straight-up unlawful.”Political analysts had widely viewed Republicans’ goal of finding five congressional seats for Trump as an overly ambitious one that may backfire. The map that Republicans came up with in 2021 to fortify their current lopsided majority in the congressional delegation appeared hard to alter without making the party more vulnerable to Democratic challenges.Texas conservatives appear to have exceeded those expectations, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones – partly by “riding roughshod” over the Voting Rights Act.“I underestimated the level of disregard of the Voting Rights Act,” Jones said. “It’s not clear how the Voting Rights Act constrained this map in any significant way, with the exception that Republicans focused on hitting absolute majorities of Hispanics in a few districts.”Still, Jones said, Republicans drew the map with an exceptionally favorable year in mind. If Republicans fail to consolidate the inroads they made in last year’s election, which is normal during a midterm, the new map could easily fail to produce a single new GOP congressional seat in Texas. It might even lead Republicans to lose a seat, according to Jones.“One thing that is very clear about this whole process is these maps are being drawn under a very rosy scenario,” Jones said. “And with Trump not on the ballot, with the natural referendum on his presidency, an economy that may be problematic – it’s tough to imagine Republicans hitting 2024 numbers in 2026.” More