Texas officers didn’t have an issue sending 1000’s of migrants to New York, a sanctuary state, when the determined asylum seekers illegally crossed the southern border.
They despatched them right here by the busloads.
However now, when a couple of of its lawmakers come to New York in search of sanctuary from an onerous redistricting vote, Texas leaders wish to sic the FBI on them like they bombed a federal constructing or offered state secrets and techniques to overseas terrorists.
Both you imagine in state’s rights otherwise you don’t. On one hand, conservatives need the federal authorities to thoughts its personal enterprise and keep out of state affairs.
However when Democrats provide you with a inventive plan to stall a regressive redistricting vote, the Texas GOP is begging the feds to intervene.
Dozens of Texas Home Democrats are at the moment camped out in New York and Illinois to dam the state’s legislature from reaching the quorum it wants to carry a vote on a redistricting map that would additional shift the steadiness of energy and set again voting rights.
Amongst their greatest backers is New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who understands that the battle being waged by her new southern friends is larger than even the state of Texas.
“Since Donald Trump’s rise, Republicans have declared war on the American people,” Hochul wrote in an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle.
“They slashed health care, gutted nutrition programs and stacked the Supreme Court to rip away freedoms we once took for granted. And now, they’re trying to rig the rules of democracy itself.”
How tousled is the GOP’s proposed map?
The newest plan has residents of Austin, the state capital, sharing a district with rural Texans who stay greater than 300 miles away.
And that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it’s that Republicans try to redraw the map a full 5 years early.
“What Texas is doing isn’t a clever strategy, it’s political arson — torching our democracy to cling to power,” Hochul wrote. “The only viable recourse is to fight fire with fire.”
So, Hochul put out the welcome mat for the Texas Democrats, who, even by being out of the state, are doing what their constituents elected them to do — look out for his or her pursuits.
However Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. John Cornyn have branded them as outlaws, and are recruiting the FBI to trace them down.
“We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Cornyn stated in a press release.
Cornyn stated the FBI would solely help in finding the members, not apprehending them.
However the legislators can be about as onerous to seek out as a plate of pulled pork at a Texas barbecue. Most have been hiding in plain sight.
State legislatures sometimes don’t deal with redistricting till after the census taken each 10 years informs them about inhabitants shifts.
However in June, the White Home requested Texas Republicans to redraw the map 5 years early — forward of the 2026 midterm elections — to guard their fragile majority within the U.S. Home of Representatives.
Properly, two can play that recreation. Hochul stated that if Abbott and Cornyn and the remainder of them wish to cheat at Texas Maintain ‘em to win a couple of seats in Congress, she will see their gerrymander and lift them an early redistricting vote to win some extra seats in New York.
