It’s hard to miss one of the biggest blockbuster stories of the week with Democrat members of the Texas legislature fleeing to friendly (and ironically, gerrymandered) blue states like Illinois and New York in an effort to thwart state Republican leaders from voting on the redrawing of the district maps.
The face of the GOP pushback against the AWOL Dems has been Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott, with both lawmakers seeking to hold the legislators accountable for their actions.
As my colleague Bonchie wrote:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has already pledged to push the red button, which includes tracking down and arresting the members who fled. The state’s constitution allows that as a specific means to combat this kind of gamesmanship.
Watch: Texas Democrat Gets Lit Up by Reporter Over Leaving Flood Legislation in Limbo
But now we’re learning more information on what alerted Texas Republicans that potentially illegal activity has been going on mainly among Democrats during elections through gerrymandering, prompting the leaders to call the session of the legislature in order to redraw the district maps. I’ll get to that in a minute.
That information was found through research by the Justice Department, according to Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillion, something she revealed in an interview on Monday.
Dhillon sat down to talk with Sean Spicer about gerrymandering across the U.S., not only about the Lone Star state’s situation, but also the current Louisiana legal case, which the Supreme Court has agreed to rule on:
They discussed what the legal arguments might be in Louisiana v. Callais. Dhillon said that “The empirical data does not support the continued, racial gerrymandering that has become habitually, and even, according to lawmakers, required.”
She added that “The concepts are really outdated, even under current Supreme Court precedent,” but that SCOTUS “might go further and ban” gerrymandering based on race “altogether.” Dhillon called that outcome a “sea-change in competitiveness of districts.”
But back to Texas. It was Dhillon whose “analysis of what was happening…in Texas” led her to expose the “racially drawn districts,” which she believes “violated the Voting Rights Act.” She swiftly passed the information on to State AG Paxton and Gov. Abbott:
I encourage you to watch her full answer above.
AAG Dhillon is no stranger to this effort of making sure states are enforcing voting rights laws, as I previously wrote.
So, all of us who care about free and fair elections have Pam Bondi and her DOJ team (along with President Trump, of course) to thank for starting to get this issue addressed before the midterms. It’s refreshing to have people in the White House again who give a darn about securing our election integrity and the rule of law across America.
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