Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, threatened to arrest Democratic legislators who have left the state to prevent quorum on a bill that would restrict voting rights.
Appearing on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Abbott said he would arrest the lawmakers and force them to vote on the legislation he and Republican legislators have proposed.
The bill includes provisions that would ban drive-through voting, ban 24-hour voting, prevent election officials from sending out unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters, empower partisan poll workers, and add additional and unnecessary restrictions to voting by mail.
Democratic lawmakers left Texas earlier in the day on Monday. In a statement from legislative party leaders, they explained that they did so in order to “refuse to let the Republican-led legislature force through dangerous legislation that would trample on Texans’ freedom to vote.” It is the second time this year that Democratic lawmakers in Texas have left the state in order to block restrictive voting rules changes.
Abbott admitted he couldn’t actually force Democrats to vote on the bill by arresting them until they returned to Texas. “Once they step back into the state,” he said, “they will be arrested and brought back to the Capitol and we will be conducting business.”
Abbott also said that he would keep calling 30-day special sessions until the Democratic lawmakers return to vote on the restrictive bill.
“We have special sessions that last 30 days,” Abbott explained on the Fox News program. “And the governor calls them, and I will continue calling special session after special session because over time it is going to continue until they step up to vote.”
Texas state Rep. Jasmine Crockett, one of the Democrats who left the state to block quorum on the bill, said she’s not concerned about Abbott’s threats because he can’t actually arrest her or other lawmakers.
“The most that can happen,” Crockett said on CNN’s “New Day” program on Tuesday, “is that I can be detained” to be forced to vote.
The governor’s threat to continue issuing special sessions is also an empty one, Crockett added, since he vetoed funding to keep the legislature open through the summer.
“The governor got so frustrated that he vetoed the legislative branch,” Crockett said. “… that means that we can’t function anyway. There is no money after September 1 [to run the legislature]. So he can call as many special sessions as he wants to, but there’s no funding” to hold a vote after that date.
Texas Democrats are now in Washington, D.C. where they plan to encourage lawmakers there to pass the For the People Act, legislation that would address and supersede many of the restrictive provisions being sought in the Texas Republicans’ bill. But the federal voting rights bill faces its own challenges as Republicans in the Senate have already filibustered it once, preventing a vote on the bill.
Several Democratic lawmakers have called for changes to the filibuster rules, or for ending the filibuster altogether, in order to protect voting rights for all Americans, particularly those in states where Republicans are putting up additional barriers to voting in the wake of their 2020 election losses.
“Call me radical, but I do not believe a minority of Senators should be able to block voting rights for millions of people,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said following the filibuster last month. “But I guess I’m just from that far-left school of thought that legislation should pass when a majority of legislators vote for it.”
President Joe Biden plans to deliver a speech in Philadelphia later on Tuesday to discuss the “moral case” for protecting voting rights across the U.S. Biden “will redouble his commitment to using every tool at his disposal to continue to fight to protect the fundamental right of Americans to vote against the onslaught of voter suppression laws,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday.
But Biden has not yet called for changes to the filibuster, nor is he likely to do so in his speech on Tuesday, rendering the prospects of the For the People Act being passed as slim as they stood prior to this week.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.