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      Joe Biden’s reforming agenda at risk of dying a slow death in Congress

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      Joe Biden’s first hundred days surpassed progressive expectations with the scope of their ambition. His second hundred days are being mugged by reality: the one that says Washington DC is a place where dreams go to die.A once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure and the climate crisis has hit a wall. Reforms on gun safety, immigration and police brutality are in limbo. Legislation to expand voting rights and reduce the influence of money in politics appears doomed.The stalled agenda reflects Republican obstruction, Democratic disunity and the inherent messiness of “sausage-making” on Capitol Hill. But it also shines a light on taken-for-granted structures of American government and democracy that many argue are no longer fit for purpose because they favor gridlock and militate against sweeping change.“The American system of government is a beta form of democracy,” said Ezra Levin, a former congressional staffer who is co-executive director of the grassroots movement Indivisible. “We have a presidential system that hasn’t really substantially been updated since the 19th century.“Nobody designing a democracy today would create as many veto points as we have and nobody, including the original founders, would have developed a system like the Senate filibuster where theoretically senators representing 11% of the population can veto legislation that is wildly popular.”Much has been written about Biden’s prospects of emulating Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) and Lyndon B Johnson (LBJ) with a transformational presidency and eclipse Barack Obama by throwing caution to the winds. The excitement only grew with the passage of a $1.9tn coronavirus relief package in March.But that, it transpires, was the exception not the rule. The Democrats’ progressive wing is becoming increasingly frustrated as other promises go unrealised, fearing an all-too-familiar pattern of hopes dashed and dreams deferred that will only feed anti-Washington resentment.Ro Khanna, a congressman from California who was a co-chair of Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, told the Associated Press: “There’s a lot of anxiety. It’s a question really for President Biden: what kind of president does he want to be?”Joe Biden won a fairly significant personal victory but the 2020 elections were hardly a victory for the Democratic party as a wholeThe first problem is that Biden does not have a Roosevelt-like majority in Congress. Democrats have only a wafer-thin advantage in the House of Representatives. The Senate is evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, giving Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker vote. It is hardly a recipe for revolution.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “There was always the brute fact that the Democrats had the slimmest margin in the House of Representatives they’ve enjoyed since the 1940s and you can’t get any closer in the Senate than a tie broken by the vice-president.“So the fact of the matter is that Joe Biden won a fairly significant personal victory but the 2020 elections were hardly a victory for the Democratic party as a whole. Anything but. So I really had to shake my head and chuckle when I read all of those early comparisons to FDR and LBJ.”The balance of power leaves Biden’s entire legislative agenda subject to the whims of any individual senator. He got a taste of this last weekend when Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, declared his opposition to the For the People Act, a voting rights bill that many activists regard as crucial to protecting democracy and a direct response to restrictive new voting laws being passed in Republican-led states.In a newspaper column, Manchin described the bill as the “wrong piece of legislation to bring our country together” and a barrier to Senate bipartisanship. This was despite polls showing clear support for it in his home state. His stand provoked anger among progressives and prompted civil rights leaders to meet Manchin on Tuesday.Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, a member of the Just Democracy coalition, said: “There is nothing partisan about this. What’s partisan is what’s happened since 2020 where you have Republican state legislatures proposing bills and enacting laws that will restrict Black and brown people all over this country from being able to participate in our democracy.“That’s sad to me. especially because some of the Black men that we talk to voted for the first time in 2020 in ways that are no longer legal in some of the states in this country, simply because Republicans saw that if they allow people to vote by mail or use drop boxes, which are some of the most secure ways to vote, they lose elections.”Manchin has also joined the Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in publicly refusing to end the filibuster, a procedural rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, meaning that at least 10 Republicans would need to cross party lines to help Democrats achieve their priorities. Some senators propose reducing the voting threshold to 51.Activists increasingly regard blowing up the filibuster as essential and fundamental. Robinson added: “The fact that Joe Biden has been more progressive than I thought is a testament to him understanding the moment and I feel like some other elected officials aren’t reading the tea leaves. Roosevelt had a majority that Joe Biden can only dream for and we don’t have those majorities right now.What our lawmaking process does is make it all but impossible to enact sweeping, comprehensive change“So what it all leads back to is a need to eliminate the filibuster. We need to continue to make it clear to Senator Manchin he has a choice to do something or do nothing, and then someone has to press upon him that history will remember those choices.”America’s founding fathers constructed a government of checks and balances that guarded against rash action: a chief executive, a bicameral Congress with veto power, an independent judiciary. Washington mythology held that they invented the filibuster to guard against the tyranny of the majority but this has repeatedly been debunked by scholars who say it was created by mistake and first used in 1837.William Howell, a political scientist at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, said: “The framers didn’t create the filibuster. It’s excessive even by their standards.“What our lawmaking process does generally, and what the filibuster does in particular, is make it all but impossible to enact sweeping, comprehensive change. It leaves in its wake pervasive gridlock and sporadic opportunity to make incremental changes and that’s about it.”Every major piece of legislation successfully enacted over the past decade has circumvented the filibuster through a process called budget reconciliation, Howell noted. This tool may allow Democrats to go it alone with the American Jobs Plan, which would invest heavily in bridges, railways and roads, “soft” infrastructure such as caregiving and clean energy.Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator for Rhode Island, tweeted that he is “nervous” about Congress doing too little to address the climate crisis. “We must get Senate Dems unified on climate on a real reconciliation bill, lest we get sucked into ‘bipartisanship’ mud where we fail on climate,” he wrote.The filibuster is hardly the only design fault. It comes on top of a Senate that is deeply unrepresentative because each state gets two seats, no matter the size of its population. That means small, predominantly white states carry as much heft as huge, racially diverse states such as California. An effort to make the District of Columbia the 51st state would begin to redress the balance but Manchin has again vowed opposition.Levin, the Indivisible organiser, said: “The 50 Democratic senators represent 41 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators. I think anybody objectively looking at how legislation is passed in this country has to come away with the conclusion that we are not set up to tackle 21st-century problems with a 19th-century democracy.”I don’t think it’s fair to say that an op-ed from a single senator dictates the future of that legislationDespite these headwinds, Levin is not giving up on Biden’s progressive project, pointing out that Democratic presidents have been here before. In 1964, under Johnson, the Civil Rights Act passed the Senate after overcoming a 54-day filibuster, and the following year the Voting Rights Act took more than a month of full Senate debate to escape the threat.“Neither of those things were passed with the snap of a finger,” he said. “It is fair to say the For the People Act is a tough fight. I don’t think it’s fair to say that an op-ed from a single senator dictates the future of that legislation. It’s always easy to be cynical about these things but there’s reason to hope. There are very real pathways forward to get this done.”Groups supporting the legislation intend to press ahead with a $30m campaign pressing Democratic senators to rewrite filibuster rules and pass the bill. Manchin has talked about supporting another voting bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, but activists insist that both pieces of legislation are needed.LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said: “What we are seeing is that, as America becomes younger and more diverse, the reality is we currently do not have a political infrastructure that can support the kind of democracy that is laid out in the constitution where people have free and fair access to the ballot.“We need the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as a step closer to strengthening our democracy and protecting those elements that have literally been fought and won through protest, through giving of lives.” More

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      Texas business leaders reluctant to take sides in heated voting rights battle

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      After Democrats derailed one of Texas’s most restrictive voting bills at the 11th hour – all but guaranteeing yet another partisan showdown in the near future – business leaders in the state have gone eerily silent as they plot their next steps.“Now would be a good time for them to say something like, ‘We’re glad it was defeated, we’re hoping that this does not move forward into a special session’,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund.“They can actually be proactive.”With a whopping 49 restrictive voting bills, Texas led a countrywide charge to undermine voter access, even as voting rights advocates warned the proposals amounted to a new version of Jim Crow and would disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.The targeted attack on voting rights sparked national outrage, including among the local business community, until Democratic lawmakers walked out of the Texas House to block Senate Bill 7 – one of the most controversial, far-reaching measures.But their last-minute maneuver has already set the stage for legislative overtime, rendering celebrations premature and forcing risk-averse corporate executives to consider whether they’ll re-enlist in the fight for round two.“If the fight is still ongoing, I think most businesses are gonna hold their fire, for lack of a better term, until they understand whether or not this thing is gonna come back – and in what form, and at what pace,” said Nathan Ryan, co-founder and CEO of Blue Sky Partners, which is part of the Fair Elections Texas coalition of business and civic leaders.Though timing remains unclear, Texas’ Republican governor Greg Abbott has expressed his intention to reconvene the state legislature for a special session, forcing lawmakers to address so-called “election integrity” after SB7’s failure.The sweeping legislation threatened public officials with state jail felonies for soliciting or distributing unrequested vote-by-mail applications, banned 24-hour and drive-thru voting, and made it easier to overturn an election, among other provisions.Already, Texas has earned the unenviable title as the hardest place to vote in the United States. Further obstacles to the polls could prove disastrous for the state’s economy, in part by making it harder to recruit workers, cutting into productive work time, alienating major events or conferences and deterring would-be tourists.“I certainly know, when I make my travel plans, if I was thinking about going to Texas, I wouldn’t want to go,” Albright said.By 2025, measures restricting voter access would cause Texas to shed an estimated $14.7bn in annual gross product and more than 73,000 jobs from lower earnings, employment losses and reduced household purchasing power.An additional $16.7bn and 149,644 jobs would be lost from hits to tourism and economic development, according to economic research and analysis firm The Perryman Group.That financial blowback would persist for decades, with a cumulative drop in gross product in the trillions by 2045. It would also slice tax revenue, costing state and local entities billions.“Voter suppression is bad for business. Period. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for the economy,” Albright said.During the regular session, corporate giants and local businesses alike waded into the political debate to make rare public remarks discouraging attempts to roll back voting rights.In a letter by Fair Elections Texas, dozens of coalition members – including American Airlines, Microsoft, HP, Salesforce, Etsy and Patagonia – urged elected officials to “oppose any changes that would restrict eligible voters’ access to the ballot”.“We wanted to make a strong statement against any kind of legislation that would make voting less convenient, and cause lower turnout as a result,” Ryan said.Separately, Dell Technologies lambasted state lawmakers for trying to silence citizens’ voices, while American Airlines “strongly opposed” Texas’s restrictive voting bills.“At American, we believe we should break down barriers to diversity, equity and inclusion in our society – not create them,” the Fort Worth-based airline said in a statement.Texas’s Republican leaders hit back with bitter barbs that verged on intimidation, questioning companies’ understanding of the legislation and hinting at retaliation.“They need to stay out of politics, especially when they have no clue what they’re talking about,” Abbott said.“They might come down the street next session, have a bill they want us to pass for them. Good luck!” Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick added.Those incendiary comments likely influenced companies that ultimately decided against speaking out – and may have even chilled activism among some that had already made statements, Albright said.But “it’s not like these businesses just have to be completely intimidated by these threats coming from these governors, right?” he added. “’Cause at the end of the day, these governors need these businesses.”As company executives stare down the near-inevitability of a special session, Ryan believes the appetite remains to push back against voting restrictions.Part of that boils down to the potential for financial losses if a measure such as SB7 becomes law. But it’s also about safeguarding their employees and community members.“Companies don’t see this as Democratic party vs. Republican party. They truly do see this as small ‘d’ democratic,” Ryan said. “It’s the main civil right in our country.” More

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      Republicans are out to create the rigged voting system they claim to be victims of | Lawrence Douglas

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      “Our entire democracy is now at risk.” That was the note of alarm sounded last week by a group of prominent intellectuals on both the left and the right. The source of their concern are the Republican efforts, underway across the nation, to operationalize the “big lie”: the bogus claim that a vast conspiracy of fraud cost Trump the 2020 election.Consider the audit recently ordered by the Republican-controlled state senate in Arizona of the 2.1m votes cast in Maricopa county in the 2020 presidential contest. Lest the audit confirm what has already been proven ad nauseam – that the count was accurate and free of fraud – the senate chose an obscure company called Cyber Ninjas to conduct the recount. Based out of Florida, Cyber Ninjas has no record of ever having conducted an election audit and neglected to even submit a bid for the Arizona job. But the tiny firm did have one thing going for it: its CEO, Doug Logan, a self-proclaimed “follower of Jesus Christ” and proud father of 11, was on record attacking the 2020 election as riddled with fraud.Inspired by the Arizona case, Republicans in Georgia have demanded that their state undertake a similar “forensic” audit of the 2020 presidential count. And last Wednesday, a group of Republican state lawmakers from Pennsylvania paid a visit to the Arizona audit site, demanding that their home state conduct a like review.The aim of these efforts is not to overturn the result of the 2020 election, despite Donald Trump’s fantasies to the contrary. Evidently the former president anticipates his reinstatement in the White House roughly two months from now, and his coming rallies will no doubt give him the opportunity to grandly cast himself as a latter-day Napoleon returning triumphantly to power from his palmy exile. But the audits are not designed to stamp Trump a ticket back to DC – at least not at present. The goal is not to oust Biden now, but to conspire against his reelection in 2024.Suppressing the Black vote has been a staple of Republican politics for decadesIn this, the audits are of a piece with larger Republican campaigns to disenfranchise huge numbers of voters – specifically Black voters. The very Arizona Republicans who retained Cyber Ninjas recently passed a law that dramatically restricts the distribution of mail-in ballots. Republicans in Georgia have passed a sweeping law that limits the use of drop boxes and criminalizes the simple act of offering water to citizens stuck on long voting queues. And Texas Republicans are on the cusp of passing the most restrictive law of all: one that would restrict absentee ballots and ban drive-through voting altogether. Dozens of other states with Republican-controlled legislatures are racing to pass similar measures.True, suppressing the Black vote has been a staple of Republican politics for decades. But what distinguishes these new laws is both their sweep and the cynicism of their justification. For it is one thing to use the specter of possible fraud to justify such measures; another, to operationalize a lie about history to justify restrictions in the name of electoral integrity.Indeed, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these new laws is that they lower the bar for partisans to challenge and alter election results. In Georgia, for example, the new law prohibits the secretary of state from certifying results, a move designed to target Brad Raffensperger, the intrepid Republican who refused Trump’s demand that the secretary “find” enough votes to overcome Biden’s victory in the Peach State. And in Texas, partisans would no longer need to show that improper votes had materially affected the outcome of an election in order to seek to reverse the results.In the words of the bipartisan group, thanks to these changes, “several states … no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections”. Here I might add –that is precisely what the Republicans want. Fair elections entail uncertainty, and Republican lawmakers want to have none of it. They no longer trust the democratic process, not because they genuinely believe it corrupt, but because they legitimately fear that they cannot fairly win. And so, in good Orwellian fashion, they labor to create the very rigged system they falsely claim to be the victims of. Should their efforts to systematically restrict the voting opportunities of millions of citizens fail to secure them the White House in 2024, they will have in place the mechanisms Trump invoked but could not fully control in 2020. If Republicans have their way, come 2024, Trump or his rough successor will not have the likes of a Brad Raffensperger standing in their way.
      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2o2o and is also a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US. He teaches at Amherst College More

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      Joe Manchin opposes For the People Act in blow to Democrats’ voting rights push

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      In a huge blow to Democrats’ hopes of passing sweeping voting rights protections, the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin said on Sunday he would not support his party’s flagship bill – because of Republican opposition to it.The West Virginia senator is considered a key vote to pass the For the People Act, which would ensure automatic and same-day registration, place limits on gerrymandering and restore voting rights for felons.Many Democrats see the bill as essential to counter efforts by Republicans in state government to restrict access to the ballot and to make it more easy to overturn election results.It would also present voters with a forceful answer to Donald Trump’s continued lies about electoral fraud, which the former president rehearsed in a speech in North Carolina on Saturday.In a column for the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin said: “I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act.”Manchin’s opposition to the bill also known as HR1 could prove crucial in the evenly split Senate. His argument against the legislation focused on Republican opposition to the bill and did not specify any issues with its contents.Manchin instead endorsed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a measure named for the late Georgia Democratic congressman and campaigner which would reauthorize voting protections established in the civil rights era but eliminated by the supreme court in 2013.Manchin’s op-ed might as well be titled, Why I’ll vote to preserve Jim CrowManchin also reiterated his support for the filibuster, which gives 41 of 100 senators the ability to block action by the majority.Democrats are seeking to abolish the filibuster, arguing that Republicans have repeatedly abused it to support minority positions on issues like gun control and, just last month, to block the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the attack on the US Capitol.Republicans have used the filibuster roughly twice as often as Democrats to prevent the other party from passing legislation, according to a study by the Center for American Progress.“I have always said, ‘If I can’t go home and explain it, I can’t vote for it,’” Manchin wrote. “And I cannot explain strictly partisan election reform or blowing up the Senate rules to expedite one party’s agenda.”In a sign of growing frustration within Manchin’s own party, Mondaire Jones, a progressive congressman from New York, tweeted that his op-ed “might as well be titled, ‘Why I’ll vote to preserve Jim Crow.’”Jim Crow was the name given to the system of legalised segregation which dominated southern states between the end of the civil war in 1865 and the civil rights era of the 1960s.On the Sunday talk shows, hosts pressed Manchin on whether his expectations of a bipartisan solution on voting rights were realistic in such a divided Congress, and with a Republican party firmly in thrall to Donald Trump.Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace told him that if he were to threaten to vote against the filibuster, it could incentivize Republicans to negotiate on legislation.“Haven’t you empowered Republicans to be obstructionists?” Wallace asked.“I don’t think so,” Manchin said. “Because we have seven brave Republicans that continue to vote for what they know is right and the facts as they see them, not worrying about the political consequences.”Seven Republican defections from the pro-Trump party line is not enough to beat the filibuster, even if all 50 Democrats remain united. Manchin said he was hopeful other Republicans would “rise to the occasion”.Wallace asked if he was being “naive”, noting that the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said in May: “One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.”“I’m not being naive,” Manchin said. “I think he’s 100% wrong in trying to block all the good things that we’re trying to do for America. It would be a lot better if we had participation and we’re getting participation.”With the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, Manchin has emerged as one of the most powerful figures in Washington, by virtue of his centrist views in a Senate split on starkly partisan lines. In Tulsa this week, in a remark that risked angering Manchin, Biden said the two senators “vote more with my Republican friends”, though their voting record does not actually reflect this.On CBS’s Face the Nation, host John Dickerson asked Manchin if his bipartisan ideals were outdated.Dickerson noted that since the 2020 election put Democrats in control of Washington, Republicans in the states have introduced more than 300 bills featuring voting restrictions. Furthermore, Republicans who embraced baseless claims about the election being stolen are now running to be chief elections officials in several states.Dickerson asked: “Why would Republicans, when they’re making all these gains in the statehouses and achieving their goals in the states, why would they vote for a bill someday in the Senate that’s going to take away all the things they’re achieving right now in those statehouses?”Manchin said those state-level successes could ultimately damage Republicans.“The bottom line is the fundamental purpose of our democracy is the freedom of our elections,” Manchin said. “If we can’t come to an agreement on that, God help us.” More

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      Biden trumpets democracy abroad in Post op-ed – as threats spread at home

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      Joe Biden will use his visit to Europe this week to “rally the world’s democracies” in a reset of US foreign policy after four turbulent years under Donald Trump – all while threats to American democracy, stoked by Trump, proliferate at home.The president’s plan for the trip was set out in a column for the Washington Post on Saturday night, as Trump spoke to Republicans in North Carolina.Previewing meetings with “many of our closest democratic partners” and Vladimir Putin, Biden promised to “demonstrate the capacity of democracies to both meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new age”.Critics may point out that the president would do well to face up to attacks on democracy at home. He has put Vice-President Kamala Harris in charge of the matter but there are many fronts to the battle.In the states, Republicans have passed laws to restrict ballot access and to make it possible to overturn election results.On the stump, Trump continues to peddle his lie that Biden’s victory in November was the result of fraud. In Greenville on Saturday, the former president called his defeat “the crime of the century”.In Washington last month, Republicans in the Senate blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, by supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” in his cause.In Biden’s own party, centrist senators stand in the way of voting rights protections.In his column for the Post, Biden tied another domestic priority – infrastructure spending, currently tied up in seemingly doomed negotiations with Republicans – to a chief foreign policy aim.“Just as it does at home,” he wrote, “honing the ability of democracies to compete and protecting our people against unforeseen threats requires us to invest in infrastructure. The world’s major democracies will be offering a high-standard alternative to China for upgrading physical, digital and health infrastructure that is more resilient and supports global development.”In North Carolina, Trump said China should pay the US and the world $10tn in reparations for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, while nations should cancel debt to Beijing.Biden touted domestic successes – progress against the coronavirus and the passage of his relief and stimulus package (without a single Republican vote) – and said: “The United States must lead the world from a position of strength.”He saluted the announcement on Saturday by G7 finance ministers of a global minimum corporate tax rate. Further distancing himself from Trump, who withdrew from the Paris climate deal, he said: “We have an opportunity to deliver ambitious progress that curbs the climate crisis and creates jobs by driving a global clean-energy transition.”In office, Trump attacked Nato. Biden saluted the “shared democratic values” of “the most successful alliance in world history. In Brussels, at the Nato summit, I will affirm the United States’ unwavering commitment to … ensuring our alliance is strong in the face of every challenge, including threats like cyberattacks on our critical infrastructure.”Amid proliferating such attacks, he said, it was important that “when I meet with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, it will be after high-level discussions with friends, partners and allies who see the world through the same lens as the United States”.Trump famously caused consternation among the US press corps in Helsinki in 2018, meeting Putin without aides and seeming cowed in his presence.Biden said the US and its allies were “standing united to address Russia’s challenges to European security … and there will be no doubt about the resolve of the United States to defend our democratic values, which we cannot separate from our interests.”Some have asked what Biden hopes to gain from meeting Putin – former Trump national security adviser John Bolton told the Guardian this week, “You meet when you have a strategy in place of how to deal with Russia and I don’t think he has one.”In the Post, Biden heralded his extension of the New Start nuclear arms treaty and responses to cyberattacks.“I will again underscore the commitment of the United States, Europe and like-minded democracies to stand up for human rights and dignity,” he wrote.“This is a defining question of our time: can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries?“I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it.” More

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      Texas governor threatens to defund state legislature after Democrats block voting bill

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      Voting rights advocates on Tuesday excoriated Texas governor Greg Abbott’s bizarre threat to defund the state legislature after Democratic lawmakers thwarted an 11th-hour attempt to pass his priority bill that would have made it even harder for the public to cast a ballot in elections.“At the end of the day, it’s so embarrassing that our governor can’t take a setback without throwing a tantrum about it,” Emily Eby, staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, told the Guardian.In Texas and across the United States, Republicans have tried to roll back access to the polls after last year’s election, when their rightwing supporters bought into unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.Texas’s Senate Bill 7 would have imposed felonies on public officials for certain activities related to boosting mail-in voting, banned 24-hour and drive-thru voting, emboldened partisan poll-watchers and made it easier to overturn election results, among other provisions.The legislation went through a dizzying rash of iterations and revisions to reconcile both chambers’ priorities, even as advocates and experts warned that its bedrock proposals could disproportionately disenfranchise communities of color, city dwellers, voters with disabilities and elderly people.But even after pervasive condemnation of what critics dubbed “Jim Crow 2.0”, SB7 seemed primed to clear the state legislature just before the session’s end – until Texas Democrats walked off the House floor Sunday night.“No pay for those who abandon their responsibilities,” Abbott tweeted Monday. “Stay tuned.”As Texas’s chief executive, Abbott can veto individual line items in the budget, and he said he intended to do away with Article X funding the legislature, including lawmakers, staff and adjacent agencies.But the budget he’s considering won’t go into effect until September, the Texas Tribune reported, rendering his retributive plan largely ineffective while potentially hurting future legislators.“This might be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard a politician suggest,” said Wesley Story, communications manager for Progress Texas. “But there is pretty stiff competition in that department when it comes to Texas Republicans.”For pundits and lawmakers alike, a giant question mark loomed over Abbott’s incendiary wielding of power as he tried to exercise the authority to punish a whole government branch.“He didn’t get his voter suppression bill so he’s withholding pay from not only the entire legislature, but the staff and aides who rely on it to survive,” political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen wrote online. “To their core, Republicans despise democracy.”“This would eliminate the branch of government that represents the people and basically create a monarchy,” tweeted state representative Donna Howard.Meanwhile, Abbott said he’s also planning to call a special session – what amounts to legislative overtime – in part to address the specious talking point of “election integrity”, which he still considers an emergency despite the legislature’s failure to pass SB7.When that rapid-fire round will take place remains unclear, though Republican leaders are already presenting it as an inevitability.“We will be back – when, I don’t know, but we will be back,” Texas house speaker Dade Phelan told his colleagues. “There’s a lot of work to be done, but I look forward to doing it with every single one of you.” More