Over the weekend, it was reported that redistricting plaintiffs (minority and Democratic groups) were poised to win big in a settlement over the map used for the 2012 elections, in return for the ability to hold an early April primary that makes Texas more relevant in the Republican presidential primary.
Sources cautioned, though, that there are many moving pieces to the deal and that it is not clear whether it will be possible to get all plaintiff groups on board. Some closely involved in the process are said to be concerned that the state is attempting to divide and conquer plaintiff groups in negotiations and that any partial deal could prove to be divisive.
Makes sense, right? The State of Texas -- which in this case has aims that are essentially identical to those of the Republican Party -- would try to split up the plaintiff group to eke out the least-bad settlement that preserves as much of the Legislature's map and ensuing Republican seats as possible.
If some members of the plaintiff group consider working with Attorney General Greg Abbott on a short-sighted settlement that only benefits some, not all members of the plaintiff group, that's bad news for everyone in Texas.
The plaintiffs look poised to win in court, so it's in the best interest of Abbott, the State of Texas, and the Republican Party to settle and try to eke out any gains they can, while they still have a chance. Since the Republicans' prime motivation seems to be an early primary, that gives extreme urgency to the proceedings, since maps need to be finalized and county elections divisions need to know to get a move-on to be able to hold April primaries.
The incumbent and establishment Republicans seem to want an early primary not only so our state matters in the overall Presidential nomination process, but also to avoid a split primary where Tea Party challengers would have a much easier time knocking out incumbent State Senators, congress members, and legislators.
The DC Circuit court is poised to rule on the pre-clearance trial over the Legislature's initial illegal racist gerrymandered maps, which most people involved expect to be out within two weeks. That ruling could toss the Legislature's maps for good, and in turn result in the San Antonio panel being instructed to draw a new map that's much closer to the interim maps previously tossed by the Supreme Court. However, such a timeline makes an April 3 primary essentially impossible. The issue for the Republicans here is timing -- they want their early April primary, which means all parties need to get on the same page regarding maps ASAP. Hence, the push to settle.
However, if settlement isn't in the best issue of the combined aims of the plaintiffs, then it's not in the best interest of the people in Texas, all of whom deserve fair representation.
It's bad if Abbott convinces plaintiffs to split off and benefit a few, rather than all members of the group. It's even worse if any members of the plaintiff group seek out a private settlement that doesn't help solve all of our redistricting woes. Dividing and conquering for immediate political gain is short-sighted, as it destroys coalitions and makes it harder for all of us to win the big stuff: specifically, the statewide races we need to take back Texas.
If a settlement deal is on the table that doesn't benefit all plaintiffs and all minority groups and regions of Texas, then it's a bad deal, and plaintiffs should get back together to work out a deal that benefits everyone.
Here in Texas, the only way for Democrats, progressives, minorities to win is if we all stick together. We win sooner and we win bigger if we're all in it together. Let's hope that this deal never happens and the plaintiffs get together on a settlement that benefits everyone in Texas who has been harmed by the Republican Legislature's illegal gerrymandered maps.
We'll keep you updated on this story as it develops.
When you have an overtly political law to defend, file an overtly political lawsuit.
Back in September, we predicted that the new Voter ID law (Senate Bill or SB 14) passed by the Texas Legislature and signed into law by Governor Perry would find its way into federal court. Better late than never, the state did not disappoint. Yesterday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit in federal district court in the District of Columbia demanding a declaratory judgment by the court that SB 14 take effect immediately "because it neither has the purpose nor will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, nor will it deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote because he is a member of a language minority group."
Briefly, Texas has been unable to implement SB 14 because it has been awaiting preclearance to do so from the U.S. Department of Justice pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (the "Act"). For background on why this is the case, as well as more information on preclearance and Sections 2 and 5 of the Act, see our past articles here and here.
The gravamen of yesterday's lawsuit is that the state of Texas must seek relief from the federal court because DOJ is taking too long to decide whether to grant SB 14 preclearance. Normally, such complaints are reserved for a deli or the department of motor vehicles. Maintaining that conceit, however, the state has pulled the number two - as in recent memory, it is the second state, right behind South Carolina, the voter identification laws of which have drawn the critical eye of DOJ. As the Texas lawsuit notes several times, DOJ ultimately refused to preclear the voter identification law at issue in South Carolina.
(More great coverage from Michael Li. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
As expected, the State of Texas asked the U.S. Supreme Court today to block the interim state house and senate maps approved last week by a San Antonio federal court.
A similar request for a stay on the interim congressional map is expected shortly.
In his papers, Abbott suggests that the primaries for state house and state senate (and presumably Congress as well) be moved to May 22, the date scheduled for primary runoffs. The state says that the primary for local and county races and the State Board of Education should remain March 6.
It's not clear under the state's proposal when runoff elections would be if legislative primaries are moved to the end of May, but compliance with the law on military ballots would put a runoff in mid-July- not a lot of time for candidates to raise more money and begin campaigning for the general election.
State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, chair of the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus, wasted no time in blasting Abbott's move:
Today, Attorney General Greg Abbott applied for an emergency stay of the maps from the United States Supreme Court, once again, putting the 2012 election cycle in jeopardy. The leadership in the legislature chose to ignore overwhelming Latino growth in our state and refused to adhere to the Voting Rights Act, now the courts have had to step in and apply the law.
The leadership of Texas defaulted on their opportunity to enact fair and legal legislative maps. Instead, they sought to expand their politcal power on the backs of African American, Latino, and Asian American Texans. To date, six federal juges have rejected Attorney General Abbott's fiction that Texas' redistricting maps comply with the law and should be implemented for Texas elections.
This evening Justice Scalia asked redistricting plaintiffs to submit file responses by 4 p.m. this Thursday, December 1. Except a ruling from the court to come perhaps as early as Friday.
Oh, this tidbit being reported by the Texas Tribune, apparently Abbott has bolstered his legal team by bringing in outside lawyers:
Abbott hired Paul Clement, a noted Supreme Court advocate, to help his office with the case (at a rate of $520 an hour, which he called "a steep discount").
Clement, who was solicitor general under George W. Bush, looks to be busy. As reported in the New York Times:
At the moment, he is defending both Arizona's tough new law against illegal immigration and Congress's prohibition against federal recognition of same-sex marriages. And if, as expected, the Supreme Court soon announces that it will hear a challenge to last year's health care law, it seems increasingly likely that it will be Mr. Clement who argues, in the thick of the 2012 campaign, that President Obama's signature domestic achievement is unconstitutional.
Nearly four years after the Texas Youth Commission was overhauled after a sex abuse and cover-up scandal, four leading advocacy groups for incarcerated youths said Tuesday that little has changed. Widespread unsafe conditions and various forms of abuse and mistreatment continue to plague the agency, they say.
The news last week reads a lot like reports of sexual abuse and cover-up from 2005-2007, when it was discovered that drastic acts of sexual abuse of children at the West Texas State School were swept under the rug and ignored by TYC officials, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, and Texas Governor Rick Perry. In fact, Governor Rick Perry claimed he knew nothing about the abuse until he read about it in the paper -- only for it to be later discovered that his office was informed of a stalled investigation into the abuse as early as February 2005, two years before news reports first came out.
In the coming weeks, the most recent scandal at the Texas Youth Commission will be discussed at length. In order to put these allegations at TYC in context, it is necessary to look back at what happened the last time the public learned of misconduct at TYC. The recap below is an attempt to re-tell the TYC scandal from 2007, using facts and quotes gathered from news stories. The following sources are used repeatedly, and are an excellent starting point for anyone who wants to dive deeper into the scandal:
Back in 2005, Attorney General Greg Abbott announced with a flourish a rash of arrests in South Texas on various counts of voter fraud. These arrests, some of which were announced while the Lege was debating a voter ID bill, were cited as evidence by Abbott of an “epidemic”, for which voter ID was naturally the solution. Many of these cases ultimately wound up being dismissed, with the last batch in Hidalgo County getting dropped last week.
Despite the fanfare, nearly all the charges have been dismissed five years later.
What was once trumpeted across the state as one of the premier examples of the “epidemic of voter fraud” plaguing Texas polls evaporated even as debate over the divisive reform measures it helped spawn continues.
See here, here, and here for some background. One thing that’s been true in all of the cases Abbott has pushed is that they involved mail in ballots, which as I’ve observed would be unaffected by any legislation that required photo ID to vote in person. Abbott and his allies, of course, never drew that distinction, since the purpose of the voter ID legislation that keeps getting pushed in the Lege isn’t about stopping the kind of voter fraud that actually happens, it’s about making it harder for certain people to vote. In the end, even the fraud cases that Abbott claimed to have found turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. It’s no surprise to me.
Thankfully, Texans have a much better choice than Abbot on the ballot. Barbara Ann Radnofsky is challenging Abbott for the AG spot this November. Last week was her turn in the Texas Democratic Party's "Meet the Statewides" campaign -- a great series that highlights every statewide candidate with a video, op-ed, issue piece, biography and more. Here's the latest from Radnofsky and the TDP:
Republicans continue to fall all over themselves defending BP. All are likely up to their eyeballs in donations from the oil and gas industry.
God forbid should BP be expected to pay every claim proposed by those whose loved ones have been killed and those whose businesses and careers have been destroyed by BP's reckless, irresponsible and apparently unstoppable oil volcano and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile here in Texas our Attorney General is doing the same thing. According to a press release issued by Democratic candidate Barbara Radnofsky today Abbott seriously underestimated the devastating long term impact of the Gulf oil leak.
OILmageddon is what happens when two oil boys are in charge of our federal government. G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney appointed lobbyists to run our federal regulatory agencies.
The BP, Deepwater Horizon and Halliburton's unstoppable oil volcano, enabled by the W. Administration crusade to drill, baby, drill, continues to spew devastation into the Gulf regions of Louisiana and Alabama. Mississippi and Florida are next in line as recipients of the same ecological and economic carnage.
A Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen of Alabama and volunteer pilot Tom Hutchings of SouthWings flew over the Gulf of Mexico on Friday to get a look at the massive oil slick spreading from the site of the BP disaster.
It should come as no surprise to anyone (except for the Rush and Glenn teabagging Republicans) to learn that the Bush/Cheney Administration appointed lobbyists to serve as federal government "regulators."
For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the extractive industries - and I'm not just talking about Dick Cheney's energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In 2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to Jack Abramoff.)
Given this history, it's not surprising that the Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry - although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior's inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" - cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees' minds.
Now, President Obama isn't completely innocent of blame in the current spill. As I said, BP received an environmental waiver for Deepwater Horizon after Mr. Obama took office. It's true that he'd only been in the White House for two and half months, and the Senate wouldn't confirm the new head of the Minerals Management Service until four months later. But the fact that the administration hadn't yet had time to put its stamp on the agency should have led to extra caution about giving the go-ahead to projects with possible environmental risks.
Ben Philpott, who works for KUT and the Texas Tribune, has put together an excellent series on the state budget this week. I'm working on a series of posts unpacking what he's discussed, but something in today's report was too much:
Arlene Wohlgemeuth was one of Tom Craddick and Rick Perry's top lieutenants in 2003, when Republicans slashed the state budget and set Texas' social services back almost a decade. It was her work that led, directly, to 230,000 kids losing their CHIP coverage. And now she's laughing about it.
Wohlgemeuth laughed about her cuts in the interview w/ Philpott (transcribed below):
The budget just went through one hell of a scrub in 2003.
"Well we call that low-hanging fruit. (Chuckles). I think most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. (Chuckles). I think thy're going to have to get the ladder and get way up in the tree to find that efficiency, and, uh, but they're going to have to do it."
Arlene Wohlgemeuth is Executive Director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative state policy think tank. She helped trim the budget in 2003 as Chair of the House Human Services Committee. Some people say she cut way too much back then. Others, she didn't cut enough. Wohlgemeuth says that session was simply about priorities.
"Getting the services to the people who needed it the most. And, so, in those judgment calls, you have to say, 'OK, who really, really needs the services?', and make sure those services are delivered."
Such prioritization led to elgibility changes to the state's children's health insurance program. Eye and dental services were cut, and more frequent checks were institututed to see if parents were making little enough money to qualify for CHIP. As a result, about 230,000 kids lost coverage, but the state was expected to save about $350 million over five years.
Help is on the way for uninsured Texans with pre-existing conditions.
According to new federal regulations, Rick Perry and the health insurance companies in Texas have 90 days to deliver a plan that will cover uninsured Texans.
Texas, we finally have a solution to the health care insurance debacle here.
Federal law now dictates that the majority of uninsured Texans will have access to affordable health care insurance.
On Friday, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent letters to governors and state insurers, laying out the requirements for these pools and asking states to decide whether they'll participate.
