Texas Democrats in the state legislature denied its speaker a legislative quorum Monday by leaving the state, forestalling plans proposed by the White House to redistrict Texas’s congressional lines to more greatly favor Republicans.
Democrats hold 62 of the 150 seats in the legislature’s lower chamber, so as long as at least 51 members remain out of Austin, the Texas legislature cannot move forward with any votes, including a plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps to give Republicans five more seats in Congress.
In an extraordinary escalation, the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said he he had 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”
Quick question: What condition is the Rule of Law in the United States right now?
Do you honestly think jurisdiction has any meaning to a rising fascist oligarchy?
But here you tut-tut ‘But it’s illllleeeeeegaaaaaallll!’ when that has NEVER stopped fascists before
Texas isn’t going to be sending their police to Illinois to kidnap people and then traffic them across State lines without Illinois law enforcement at least getting in the way.
Man I wish I was as confident of that as you seem to be. I would have said three quarters of the shit that’s happened in the USA in the past five years would never happen, and then it did.
No but they sure as fuck will stochastic terrorism the MAGA cultbase into action and who the fuck knows then
It’s pretty funny to see so many good-intentioned people parroting the “Everything’s fine, this is normal, trust the rule of law” when it hasn’t been for almost a decade now
This is how you sound to me. Pigs almost unilaterally support the president as a quasi-religious figure and you somehow think that the state they are stationed in affects their loyalty?
Can you honestly tell me with no doubt that if a van of Proud Boys showed up at the hotel where the reps are being housed, that the cops would do anything but assist?
When are you people going to realize that the coup is over, he HAS the military, he HAS the police, he HAS the judiciary, the executive, AND congress.
The rule of law has been absent since his inauguration and you people STILL insist that propriety will save us
No wonder we fell so hard and quick, half the fucking people who should be fighting fascism is telling the other half ACTUALLY fighting that ‘everything is fine’.
Stop
Counter: You can bet on pigs fighting over “juris-my-dick-tion” crap.
Say I have one of these legislators in my living room right now and Texas Rangers show up. I’m calling the county cops, and they will not be fucking amused to find Texas cops on their turf, hassling “their” citizens.
Also, consider that cops mainly fall on the “lawful” side of the alignment chart. They’re sticklers for chain of command and paperwork and procedure. In my made-up scenario, the Rangers would have to present some sort of legal justification or the county cops would tell 'em to get fucked. Can you imagine a county pig explaining to his boss, the sheriff pig, “Meh. They rolled up. What are you gonna do?”
Think cops are bad when civilians challenge their authority? Imagine them meekly rolling over for out-of-state cops. Their collective testosterone would boil. Every cop in the fucking county would roll out to back the locals. Only men they’d roll over to would be soldiers, and even then they would want paperwork for CYA.
tl;dr: turf war
If there is any sort of legal justification for this, yeah, they gonna cooperate, but I cannot see how Abbot gets away with this.
But I get your rage and I share it! Yes, the rule of law is now too weak to protect us. Yes, it will get worse and worse. No, this is not fine.