Democratic Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier has now spent over 24 hours on the Texas House floor in protest after refusing a Republican demand to be placed under the watch of the state Department of Public Safety.
When Texas House Democrats returned to the Capitol in Austin on Monday, after having fled the state earlier this month in order to prevent a vote on a controversial Republican redistricting plan, House Speaker Dustin Burrows put constraints on their movements.
Burrows announced that the Democrats could only leave the House floor if they received written permission and agreed to be under law enforcement escort until the chamber reconvenes on Wednesday morning.
The Democrats who skipped out on previous attempts to meet quorum for a special session to approve the redrawn congressional maps will have an around-the-clock DPS escort to ensure their presence when the House convenes Wednesday, a legislative aide told CNN….
Category Archives: chicanery
California Democrats’ Proposed Retaliatory Gerrymander Against Texas Could Be Triggered if Another Democratic State Engages in Its Own Partisan Gerrymander
California Democratic leaders are preparing to put a measure before voters that would temporarily suspend congressional redistricting maps drawn by an independent commission for the rest of the decade as retaliation for Texas (or other Republican) states engaging in their own Republican gerrymanders. We’ve been told that the law would be written with a trigger, so that if California approves it, the measure would only kick in as a tit-for-tat against a Republican gerrymander in Texas or elsewhere.
Yet this released bill, which is perhaps still a work in progress, would seem to kick in if any state does any mid-decade redistricting, even if that’s another Democratic state going a gerrymander. (There’s an exception for court ordered redistricting and a special rule for Ohio that is already slated to redraw their maps). Here’s the relevant text of the trigger:
(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution or existing law, the single-member districts for Congress reflected in Assembly Bill 604 of the 2025–26 Regular Session shall temporarily be used for every congressional election for a term of office commencing on or after the date this subdivision becomes operative and before the certification of new congressional boundary lines drawn by the Citizens Redistricting Commission pursuant to subdivision (e).
(c) (1) Subdivision (b) shall become operative only if Texas, Florida, or another state adopts a new congressional district map that takes effect after August 1, 2025, and before January 1, 2031, and such redistricting is not required by a federal court order.
(2) The condition described in paragraph (1) shall include a new congressional district map adopted by the State of Ohio only if the map is adopted pursuant to division (F)(3) of Section 1 of Article XIX of the Ohio Constitution.
Now maybe this is just a drafting glitch and it will be fixed before it goes to the voters. But one could easily see a Democratic-dominated state such as Illinois or Maryland tweak their maps JUST to trigger the California re-redistrict. It could also be triggered if a state voluntarily makes changes in light of Supreme Court rulings on the Voting Rights Act or otherwise.
Stay tuned.
“NY state Senate candidate allegedly paid homeless people to lie about donations to net matching funds: report”
An upstate GOP state senate candidate’s campaign allegedly paid homeless people to claim they made donations to him, allowing him to net matching taxpayer funds, a report says.
Several homeless men in Auburn told the Albany Times Union in a story published Friday that Caleb Slater’s campaign offered them $30 a pop to sign paperwork saying they donated $250 to his run in November.
This way, Slater, who ultimately lost his bid for office, could allegedly receive public funds from the state that match contributions up to $250, the paper noted.
At least seven people who spoke to the outlet say they never contributed to Slater‘s campaign but were paid to submit contribution forms. One man said he was asked to recruit other straw donors as well.
“Hispanic Democratic Officials in Texas Plead Not Guilty to Voter Fraud”
Nine Latino Democratic officials and political operatives pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in South Texas to charges of criminal voter fraud, accusations that their defenders called blatant voter suppression and political intimidation by the state’s Republican attorney general.
Gerry Goldstein, a lawyer for the most prominent defendant, told the presiding judge that he had filed a motion Wednesday morning to dismiss the charges and challenge the constitutionality of the state law used to prosecute his client, Juan Manuel Medina, a former chairman of the Democratic Party of Bexar County, the fourth largest in the state.
Gabriel Rosales, the director of the Texas chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, called the charges “a complete attack on democracy.”
“This is voter suppression 101,” Mr. Rosales said.
The nine defendants, including Mr. Medina, were indicted last month by a South Texas district attorney working with the state’s famously conservative attorney general, Ken Paxton. Six of the defendants appeared in person in a courtroom in Pearsall, Texas, while three others, including Mr. Medina, appeared via Zoom. A state judge is expected to consider the motion to dismiss the case in early October.
It was the second time in less than four months that Mr. Paxton has charged prominent Latino Democratic officials with criminal “ballot harvesting,” the usually routine act of collecting absentee ballots and bringing them to drop boxes or polling sites to be counted. A half-dozen people, including a county judge, two City Council members and a former county election administrator, were charged with voter fraud in May.
…
“Texas Democrats to return home for second special session, ABC13 sources confirm”
ABC13 has confirmed with multiple sources that House Democrats will return to Texas.
Eyewitness News has not confirmed the date, but we do know that Democrats believe they’ve accomplished their mission by killing the first special session and by raising national awareness about the mid-decade redistricting effort.
It is unclear which day they will be in Austin at the Capitol, but they stress that they will push for Hill Country flooding relief to be the priority.
“Texas Republicans dare Democrats to stay out of state another month”
Texas Republicans said Tuesday that they would kick off a second special legislative session Friday to redraw the state’s congressional maps in favor of the GOP, putting pressure on absent Democrats to quickly return to the state or commit to remaining away for another month.
Dozens of Democrats in the Texas House fled the state last week to block a Republican plan to shift five congressional districts sharply to the right ahead of next year’s midterm elections. They have said they are committed to staying away long enough to kill the measure during a special session slated to last until as late as Aug. 19.
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) said Tuesday that if Democrats do not return by Friday, Republican lawmakers will end the special session that day. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said he would immediately call a new 30-day special session, which Burrows would gavel in later Friday.
The move essentially restarts the clock, forcing Democrats to decide whether they’re willing to stay away for another four weeks — or longer. Democrats have not said whether they would stay away beyond the current special session. Abbott said Tuesday that he will keep calling special sessions until the Democrats come back….
“Voter Intimidation: Forging a Judicial Standard”
Ben Goldstein has written this article for the Journal of Law and Politics. Here is the abstract:
In the last few years, federal courts have seen a notable increase in voter intimidation cases. Empirically, instances of voter intimidation, whether litigated or not, may be increasing as well. After briefly offering explanations for this trend, this Article reviews federal laws aimed at voter intimidation, especially Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act. It then considers how courts can reconcile First Amendment speech protections with the need to regulate conduct that interferes with voting, drawing lessons from two recent lawsuits in the 2022 midterm elections
in Arizona.
Rather than solely balancing competing individual rights, courts should embrace a more expansive conception of the governmental interests at stake in voter intimidation cases. In particular, courts should recognize that voting is a separate sphere of civic life—a unique method of public decisionmaking distinct from day-to-day public discourse. As such, the act of voting merits stricter levels of protection than the laissez-faire system governing public discourse.
This Article also suggests that in our post-pandemic era of extended voting, a regime requiring narrowly tailored speech restrictions may be inadequate to safeguard voters from intimidation and interference. Given voting’s essential role in democratic self-governance, courts should not hesitate to enjoin intimidating conduct under Section 11(b), even absent a showing of subjective intent or threatened physical violence. Furthermore, courts should evaluate alleged intimidation not in isolation, but in light of its broader historical and social context and its actual impact on voters.
This looks to be an important piece.
Yale “MFIA Clinic Report Provides Roadmap for Attorneys to Challenge Election Disinformation”
Important report released by Yale Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic:
Students from Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access (MFIA) Clinic have released a new white paper titled “Using the Ku Klux Klan Act to Combat Election Disinformation: A Guide for Practitioners.”
The guide offers a roadmap for attorneys seeking civil remedies against certain forms of digital election disinformation, such as lies about how to vote, impersonation of candidates or officials, and misinformation intended to intimidate voters.
Read the white paper: Using the Ku Klux Klan Act to Combat Election Disinformation: A Guide for Practitioners
The report focuses on two underutilized provisions of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871: the “Support-or-Advocacy” clauses of 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) and the companion “Neglect-to-Prevent” provision of 42 U.S.C. § 1986. Though originally passed to combat Reconstruction-era voter intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan, these statutes remain powerful tools for modern election protection, according to the clinic. The white paper argues that § 1985(3) can provide a private cause of action when election-related disinformation arises from a conspiracy and amounts to a common-law tort (such as intentional interference with the right to vote, misappropriation of likeness, or false-light invasion of privacy) carried out “on account of” someone’s support for a federal candidate.
Additionally, § 1986 may create liability for third parties like robocall vendors, group leaders, or public officials who knowingly fail to prevent such conspiracies when they have the power to do so.
While the First Amendment rightly shields much false speech about elections, the report outlines scenarios where challenges to election disinformation may prevail despite the First Amendment, such as when the disinformation at issue constitutes a lie about election mechanics or an impersonation of a candidate, or when it is particularly likely to undermine election integrity. Drawing on legal precedent, historical context, and real-world examples — including social media ads that promote “texting to vote” and robocalls that impersonate candidates — the report offers a path forward for legal practitioners aiming to challenge harmful election lies without infringing on protected speech….
(Disclosure: I gave feedback on an earlier version of this report as well as worked with the clinic and Protect Democracy on the amicus brief filed in the Mackey case.)
“The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine; How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.”
Must-read from Adam Bonica:
The digital deluge is a familiar annoyance for anyone on a Democratic fundraising list. It’s a relentless cacophony of bizarre texts and emails, each one more urgent than the last, promising that your immediate $15 donation is the only thing standing between democracy and the abyss.
The main rationale offered for this fundraising frenzy is that it’s a necessary evil—that the tactics, while unpleasant, are brutally effective at raising the money needed to win. But an analysis of the official FEC filings tells a very different story. The fundraising model is not a brutally effective tool for the party; it is a financial vortex that consumes the vast majority of every dollar it raises.
We all have that one obscure skill we’ve inadvertently maxed out. Mine happens to be navigating the labyrinth of campaign finance data. So, after documenting the spam tactics in a previous article, I told myself I’d just take a quick look to see who was behind them and where the money was going.
That “quick look” immediately pulled me in. The illusion of a sprawling grassroots movement, with its dozens of different PAC names, quickly gave way to a much simpler and more alarming reality. It only required pulling on a single thread—tracing who a few of the most aggressive PACs were paying—to watch their entire manufactured world unravel. What emerged was not a diverse network of activists, but a concentrated ecosystem built to serve the firm at its center: Mothership Strategies.…
The core defense of these aggressive fundraising tactics rests on a single claim: they are brutally effective. The FEC data proves this is a fallacy. An examination of the money flowing through the Mothership network reveals a system designed not for political impact, but for enriching the consultants who operate it.
To understand the scale of this operation, consider the total amount raised. Since 2018, this core network of Mothership-linked PACs has raised approximately $678 million from individual donors. (This number excludes money raised by the firm’s other clients, like candidate campaigns, focusing specifically on the interconnected PACs at the heart of this system.) Of that total fundraising haul, $159 million was paid directly to Mothership Strategies for consulting fees, accounting for the majority of the $282 million Mothership has been paid by all its clients combined.
But the firm’s direct cut is only part of the story. The “churn and burn” fundraising model is immensely expensive to operate. Sending millions of texts and emails requires massive spending on digital infrastructure. For instance, FEC filings show this network paid $22.5 million to a single vendor, Message Digital LLC, a firm that specializes in text message delivery.
The remaining hundreds of millions disappeared into a maze of self-reported categories: $150 million to consulting/fundraising, $70 million to salaries and payroll. There are some disbursements to what seem to be legitimate advocacy and organizing–for instance Progressive Turnout Project reports paying Shawmut Services $19 million for canvassing. However, most of the unclassifiable expenditures appear to be administrative costs or media buys that feed back into the fundraising machine itself.
After subtracting these massive operational costs—the payments to Mothership, the fees for texting services, the cost of digital ads and list rentals—the final sum delivered to candidates and committees is vanishingly small. My analysis of the network’s FEC disbursements reveals that, at most, $11 million of the $678 million raised from individuals has made its way to candidates, campaigns, or the national party committees.
But here’s the number that should end all debate:
This represents a fundraising efficiency rate of just 1.6 percent.
Here’s what that number means: for every dollar a grandmother in Iowa donates believing she’s saving democracy, 98 cents goes to consultants and operational costs. Just pennies reach actual campaigns….
“Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces investigation by Office of Special Counsel”
WaPo:
The U.S. Office of special counsel said Saturday it is investigating Jack Smith, the former Justice Department official who oversaw two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump, for potentially violating the law barring federal officials from political activity.
The independent agencytasked with overseeing investigations into partisan influence and coercion confirmed its investigation of Smith over potential Hatch Act violations.
The Hatch Act prohibits most federal employees from using their official authority to influence elections or engage in overt political activity on the job. If the office concludes a federal employee has violated the law, it refers the case to the president. Discipline can range from a reprimand to a removal from federal service. Criminal penalties are rare.
Smith, who resigned from the Justice Department in the days before Trump’s inauguration this year, became the public face of the department’s efforts to hold Trump accountable for two sets of alleged crimes. Trump was accused of trying to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and, after leaving the White House upon completion of his first term, mishandling highly classified documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them. Neither case went to trial.
“Democratic governors advise strong counteroffensive on redistricting”
A group of Democratic governors is urging its colleagues to get tough in countering Republican-backed efforts to gerrymander Texas’ congressional districts.
“It’s incumbent upon Democrat governors, if they have the opportunity, to respond in kind,” outgoing Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly told reporters at a Democratic Governors Association meeting Friday. “I’m not a big believer in unilateral disarmament.”
The advice from Kelly, who chairs the DGA, came two days after Texas Republicans proposed congressional lines that would create five GOP-friendly House districts ahead of next year’s midterms. Democrats need only to net three seats to regain control of the lower chamber.
Kelly didn’t cite California Gov. Gavin Newsom by name, but he is the most high profile, and likeliest, example of a Democrat considering a counteroffensive remapping effort to squeeze more seats from a blue state. On Thursday, Newsom said he’d seek a November special election to have voters approve a new House map that would boost Democrats’ numbers. It’s an expensive and potentially perilous gamble that his Democratic colleagues throughout the country appear to be backing — a notably more aggressive posture for the party….
The aggressive push by President Trump and Republicans in Texas to squeeze as many as five House Democrats out of office before a single vote is cast in the 2026 midterm elections has opened up a new chapter in an era of unconstrained partisan warfare.
For six months, Democrats have watched, sometimes haplessly and sometimes hopelessly, as Mr. Trump and his allies have bent much of the country’s political, legal and educational systems to his will.
But the bald attempt to redraw the Texas congressional map to shore up House Republicans has pushed many Democrats, including some longtime institutionalists, to a breaking point. Now, they are vowing to “fight fire with fire” and even to embrace some of the very gerrymandering tactics they have long decried as anti-democratic.
“The Texas Republicans are taking us on a race to the bottom,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who lamented in an interview that his party must reluctantly participate in “this rotten system.”…
The gerrymandering is deeply consequential at a time when a single House race can cost tens of millions of dollars. Republicans won control of the House in 2024 by only three seats, a margin the remapping in Texas alone would more than double.
One person close to the president, who insisted on anonymity to describe the White House’s political strategy candidly, summed it up succinctly: “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”
The redistricting push is only one element. Mr. Trump has targeted Democratic law firms with executive actions. He has threatened prosecutions of and ordered investigations into his political enemies, while the Justice Department has dropped lawsuits aimed at protecting voting rights. And his congressional allies are investigating ActBlue, the organization that processes an overwhelming share of online donations for Democrats….
“Forged signatures found on Mayor Adams’ petitions to run as an independent”
Mayor Eric Adams’ re-election campaign submitted faked and fraudulently obtained petition signatures in his effort to secure a spot on the November ballot as an independent candidate, a Gothamist investigation has found.
Gothamist reviewed signatures submitted from across New York City and found people who said their names were forged, as well as people who said they were deceived into signing the petitions. In at least three instances, the campaign turned in signatures from dead people.
Under state law, Adams needed to submit at least 7,500 signatures from voters who wanted him on the general election ballot as an independent. The tactic enabled the incumbent mayor to avoid a crowded Democratic primary race that was shaping up as a referendum on the federal corruption charges he once faced and his growing ties to President Donald Trump.
The Adams campaign hired several companies to deploy employees across the city and gather signatures of registered voters in New York City who supported the mayor’s re-election.
Signature gatherers were required to sign a form pledging that each signature they collected was from the person whose name appeared on the sheet. But an executive from one company said he also warned the Adams campaign that it should run additional quality control measures – a suggestion he said the campaign rejected. In response to Gothamist’s inquiries, the campaign said it expected the companies it hired to follow the law but nevertheless pledged to now conduct its own review of the signatures….
“‘Clinton Plan’ Emails Were Likely Made by Russian Spies, Declassified Report Shows”
The Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows.
The information, a 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.
The release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise….
Even as the releases shed more light on a seismic political period nearly a decade ago, Mr. Trump and his allies have wildly overstated what the documents show, accusing former President Barack Obama of “treason.”
The release of the annex was no exception. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said in a statement that the materials proved that suspicions of Russian collusion stemmed from “a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”
And Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who has a long history of pushing false claims about the Russia investigation, declared on social media that the annex revealed “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”
In reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured.
“Smithsonian removes Trump from impeachment exhibit in American History Museum”
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in July removed references to President Donald Trump’s two impeachments from an exhibit display. A person familiar with the exhibit plans, who was not authorized to discuss them publicly, said the change came about as part of a content review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake following pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director.
A temporary label including content about Trump’s impeachments had been on display since September 2021 at the Washington museum, a Smithsonian spokesperson told The Washington Post, adding that it was intended to be a short-term addition to address current events. Now, the exhibit notes that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal.”
In addition to describing Trump’s two impeachments, the temporary label — which read “Case under redesign (history happens)” — also offered information about the impeachments of presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton as well as Richard M. Nixon, who would have faced impeachment had he not resigned. The Washington Post viewed a photograph of the temporary signage….
“In reviewing our legacy content recently, it became clear that the ‘Limits of Presidential Power’ section in The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden exhibition needed to be addressed,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The section of this exhibition covers Congress, The Supreme Court, Impeachment, and Public Opinion. Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance.”
The change coincides with broader concerns about political interference at the Smithsonian and how the institution charged with preserving American history could be shaped by the Trump Administration’s efforts to exert more control over its work.