{"id":58692,"date":"2025-08-04T00:04:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T00:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58692"},"modified":"2025-08-04T00:04:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T00:04:01","slug":"yes-block-gop-effort-to-redraw-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58692","title":{"rendered":"Yes, block GOP effort to redraw boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This will surprise no one who reads this blog regularly … but I am going to back Texas legislative Democrats’ efforts to stop the Legislature’s Republican majority from redrawing the state’s congressional districts to ensure the election of even more GOP members to Congress.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Democrats who comprise the Legislature’s minority have fled the state. At least 51 Texas Democrats are holed up somewhere to prevent a House vote on a plan urged by Donald Trump and endorsed by his GOP pals Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to re-jigger boundaries to bolster the Republican majority in the U.S. House.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This reapportionment matter takes place every decade when the Census is taken. It falls on the Legislature to redraw these lines. I remember the late state Sen. Teel Bivins, an Amarillo Republican, bemoaning the task. He said it gave legislative Republicans a “chance to eat their young.” I still am not sure what he meant by that, but I took it to mean partly that he didn’t like having to redraw the lines.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It’s not clear to me or to many others how long this strategy will hold up. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton calls Democrats “cowards” for shirking their duty. He vows to arrest them, although leaving the state in this fashion is a civil offense, so arresting legislators remains an iffy proposition.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Legislators have tried this before. Previous walkouts have ended when Democrats who vowed to hang tough forever gave in, enabling Republicans to get their way.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I am just aghast that Donald Trump would encourage this form of political bullying and I am delighted that Texas Democrats — so far! — are standing firm in opposition to this interference in Texas politics. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n\n

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This will surprise no one who reads this blog regularly … but I am going to back Texas legislative Democrats’ efforts to stop the Legislature’s Republican majority from redrawing the state’s congressional districts to ensure the election of even more GOP members to Congress. Democrats who comprise the Legislature’s minority have fled the state. At … Continue reading Yes, block GOP effort to redraw boundaries<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[1424,9663,4622,4653],"class_list":["post-58692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-reapportionment","tag-texas-gop","tag-texas-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58692"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58694,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58692\/revisions\/58694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}