we re always willing to talk, but as you mentioned in your layout, our hard-working men and women on the committee were effectively shut out of the process to even bring ideas to have some kind of normal discussion on voter suppression. there is nothing special about this session in austin. it is a suppression session.sith they are trying to take away our p right to vote, and we are not going to put up with it, and we are going to fight. do you expect they will try to compel you, literally compel you, force you back into the state of texas? do they have the ability to do that?u is that part of your sort of contingency planning at this point? well, those ideas lie with the rules of the texas house, which really don t apply in a ha court of law.co they don t even apply outside the state of texas. we reof in the nation s capitoli believe, outside of the jurisdiction of the state police. tla re welcome to come and visit the nation s capitol. but we are here as free citizens exercising
seven in desoto texas. i was recently elected this year into office. i m a veteran. i served my country proudly fore ten years, two tours in iraq. many of the things i ve seen in sb-1 directly impact the people that look just like me who have similar backgrounds as i do as a veteran. i learned really quickly how important voting was to me. so i oppose sb-1. i am very grateful to be an elected official, too, but i gr know that i don t want to choose my voters. i want my voters to choose me. many of the voters, the texans who showed up to testify against the republican bill, got to the texas legislature at 6:00 in the morning on saturday to start their waiting in line for their turn to speak. some of them didn t actually ext have a chance to testify until 1:00 a.m. on sunday.al one committee hearing on this bill lasted almost a full 24 hours.te in the end, all of the
thank you, rachel. thank you. democratic texas state representative trey martinez fischer i will get you on the union roster for that little bir of camera work there. thank you. i appreciate it my friend. fascinating. texas democrats, again, more than 50 of them, have left the n state of texas tonight. it is a tactic that, listen, texas democrats did this in 2003 ahead of a radical partisan redistricting of the state of texas.ctmo they left the state and as i said, governor at the time sent state troopers after them and i was a huge stand-off and it was a big deal and ultimately the redistricting plan went through but the eyes of the nation were upon it. in this case they haven t just fled the state because that denies the quorum. they have fled the state specifically to come to a washington because washington ie the one place this disaster in texas and this disaster in every other state where republicans are rolling back voting rights
to a month left on the clock, and according to texas house rules, lawmakers, at least theoretically, can be compelled to come backre to the state capitol if they are not present during the session. in other words, republicans maybe can sic the state capitol public safety office on them to track them down and round them all back up and, what, force them back to austin? in 2003 when texas democrats staged a similar protest out of state the texas governor ordered state troopers to go find the democrats and bring them back t texas. that said texas state troopers can t arrest somebody anywhere outside of texas including in washington, d.c.d t neither can the capitol public safety officer for that matter. that s why democrats left the state.ic that s why democrats fled texas this time. to indefinitely deny republicans a quorum in an effort to block these voting restrictions from becoming law. nbc news is reporting tonight that before texas democrats picked d.c. as their safe harbo they had o
can be fixed. if there is a federal voting rights backstop at the federal level, then states will not have the option to bring their voting rights down below a floor set at the federal level. it doesn t mean the federal government will run elections or that every state will run them exactly the same way. it will just mean there is a te floor below which voter lo suppression will not be allowed to sink. that is why the texas democrats are in washington. not just because they needed to get out of the state. they did. but they could have gone anywhere. they are in washington because the for the people act is the only answer at this point. the voting rights act has been gutted in the courts. there is not recourse in the courts.thbe there is no political recourse for republicans who do not care about the political blowback from this because they know the changes they are making will insulate them from democratic repercussions. the only way to solve this problem, senators, the only way to s