The consultant maps violate federal and state law by splitting precincts into two or more congressional districts. And guess who was targeted? And believe me, as the CD 6 National Delegate I take it fucking personally. My precinct, the second largest of 77 precincts in all of Irving, a city of 260,000 people, was split 3 ways! Yup it is that fucking bad. And where did they put ME? In CD 12! You cannot make this up. Just my neighborhood. Everyone else in the precinct is in 24 or 26. But I am in 12, with Parker County. They took the 54 Irving Precincts in CD 6 and split them into 4: CD 33, 12, 24 and 25. Then they took the 4 blue very blue like 98% blue precincts in Johnson County and cut them out of CD 6 and put them in CD 25. They chopped up all the blue that we have build in CD 6 to make sure it wouldn’t get bluer. So yeah, given how vocal I have been, how I called out Jake Ellzey in person for his lies and selling out his constituents, for all the grass roots that Kelly Blackburn and I have done to turn out the vote. How we got Beto and Colin to come to the district, how we defeated Tim Dunn in the municipal run off. Yeah I take this really fucking personally. And believe me, whatever happens in Austin, I am driving down there and am going use my lawyer skills to make sure it is on the fucking record that what they are doing violates federal law by silencing the voices of this minority majority city. They say Hell hath no furry like a woman scorned? You better fucking believe it. Sorry, not cleaning up my language. It is time for Democrats to fucking show some teeth and fight.
Some say too much. But the whole reason I got involved was I was so pissed about being gerrymandered out of CD 24 after the 2020 election. I vowed I would do all I could. So I took what we were given in CD 6 (which by the way is still the subject of a federal lawsuit from 2021 that just went to its first hearing a few weeks ago). I ran for delegate on a platform of finding common ground in our rural, suburban, urban district and working with all 9 counties to turn out the vote. Well apparently it got fucking noticed.
Well "Jimmy" will be in Plano on Tuesday but Clayton Tucker who has a real chance to unseat Sid Miller will be in Tarrant on July 27 at 7 PM. Check out his website.
call me old fashioned...i am not on everyones email or FB list....what i am on is TCDP email and FB list and would expect them to notify us when any notable comes to town
PS: Dallas went Dem , James , Tarrant did not , mainly because of non-voting hispanics....
If the PS is for me, I do not understand. I just try to follow other groups and candidates themselves for appearances. Also, the Plano event came from Blue Nation which is part of TDP. If you have not seen them, there are many but they are set to recruit people to run n for office.
nope, sorry to confuse: the PS is for any candidate who goes to visit the choir while avoiding the ugly throng......'choir' being places that are already D, "throng" is Tarrant County where Hispanics don't vote but if they did, they would likely vote D.....they didn't sit out for Trump, they came out....so any non voter signaled Dems didn't inspire them to vote........i haven't kept a daily log but so far no one that i know of has reached out to one non-voter in TC....not Scudder and his 3 visits, not Beto and the gang, not Talrico and NOT definately NOT Allison and TCDP
My understanding is the rally in Ft. Worth with Bernie was managed by either Bernie's team or the TDP or both. Beto will be back there because he realizes what has been going on with the County Judge grab and general tenor since the Judge was elected. During the last major election, however, the voter turnout was much higher than Dallas or Houston. Likely anti-Democratic voters but I don't know.
Thank you Michelle, once again brilliant stuff. I have some thoughts on redistricting. Just before I saw your clip on Talarico on BTC, I listened to Channel 8 Y'allatics' latest pod on redistricting. It was fascinating to hear our adversary's political consultant lay out his so-called case for redistricting. Basically, the entire case is Trump wants it. Therefore, it must be done. But also, Trump has had enough of Crockett and Green and wants them gone because they spout "liberal rhetoric". Duh. They are liberals. That is not a crime. What I heard between the lines, and this is so scary, is him dog whistling the word "uppity".
The most maddening raw application of power I heard out of the consultant's mouth was that it did not matter that Republicans were contradicting themselves in court about whether their gerrymanders were racial or not because (paraphrasing) the courts have been very good to Republicans in Texas and he was confident they would bless whatever Republicans drew. This echoes how Matt Krause looked us Democrats in the eye at the public hearing on Tarrant County redistricting and said the 5th Circuit was going to give them whatever they wanted and there was nothing we could do about it. Texas Republicans are baring their fangs. They do not hide the fact they could care less about democracy. We have to make a stand.
But, something I wonder about is California and other states playing the gerrymander game that Trump set up. I'm always wary of playing by his 'rules'. I know how angry I felt when Matt Krause in our Tarrant County redistricting public meeting, told me to my face he was going to take away my vote and there was nothing I could do about it. I know CA has an independent redistricting board, but when Newsom promises to provide more Blue seats, then the appearance of independence is gone. Will Californians' voting rights be diluted? Well, that's not right. And besides, strategically, redistricting could backfire if Republicans can successfully use it to drive some wedges in Democrats.
Yes, I understand we need to be just as ruthless as Republicans, but I balk at violating the rights of Californians and other Blue staters. Redistricting is extremely technical. Retaliatory redistricting appeals to the very online activist/political hobbyist types. However, I wonder whether an average apolitical Californian is going to appreciate being redistricted. They might even feel like voting against Democrats because of it.
And then, it doesn't seem like Talarico is very gung ho on other states retaliating with redistricting although he welcomes their interest. Talarico correctly states that we must not lose our moral compass yet we can and must fight hard with every ethical tool we have. We can still get down in the mud, the blood and the beer and beat the crap out of them fair and square. We must do both. This is not appeasement. Appeasement is failing to contest the argument. We lose credibility with apolitical voters when we act just like them.
Our political advantage is that Republicans are worried about Texas. They are so proud of how they keep gerrymandering us, but having to gerrymander means they are having to actively prevent people from electing Democrats. Which means, people want to vote for Democrats. It might be a good idea to work that angle.
Finally, I saw Beto in some video recently proposing to run out the clock on Abbott's special session redistricting. If I heard him correctly, the clock will die after three special sessions. We would need donor/financial support for Democrats to leave the state and deny them a quorum for their maps. Heck, they are being so obnoxious about cramming this down on us we might as well counter with a boycott of their sham legislative process. And make a big national stink about what assholes they are.
Everyone should listen to the Y'allatics podcast. There are a lot of political minefields in this redistricting process for Republicans. Trump is actually not a very good strategist. Let's not let him call the shots again by retaliating from California and other Blue states.
Very well written analysis but I might disagree about other states if I understand you are saying they should not change to meet/help Texas/Congress. I used to be in the middle of all political leanings but no longer. We have got to stop being "correct" otherwise we might never get to vote again. The other thing is Beto was likely saying the Democratic legislators would have to be out for however many months it took. I have not analyzed but someone said it could be 120 days they would have to be gone. I am sure they are thinking about options but that would be way too long to be gone for many.
There are no good options here, are there? I am questioning whether it will help or hurt for other states to gerrymander. Gerrymandering is a bad thing that Democrats have spent decades battling. To gerrymander may help Texas and Congress, but we must realize it will be based on the ethically dubious logic of the ends justifying the means. Hypocrisy is a strategic weakness that Republicans will exploit. If we think in a Machiavellian way and assume for argument’s sake that Democrats should gerrymander some Blue states, the issue is will it blow up in our faces and do more damage than good?
We just need to be aware that retaliatory gerrymandering is fraught with peril. If we do it, we own it. I am thinking of the law of unintended consequences. One such consequence can be the blowback from voters that will come from Republican messaging about the evil Democrats being the ones who don’t believe in democracy. We won’t have a good comeback to that.
Other states are free to make their own decisions. The political calculus at the Texas legislature level is extremely complex. This is minefield.
The Rural Caucus has set hearing in Houston, Austin and Arlington (for DFW) this is the one for us:
Calling all Rural Texans to join us at this Public Hearing with the Redistricting Committee of the Texas Legislature, Monday, July 28 — Arlington, U T Arlington, 5 pm to voice your concerns over this outrageous power grab by the Republican National Party and the Texas Republican Party to take away Democratic representation. Sign up today and we'll follow up with the specifics on location.
How to prepare:
We'll update with the specific information on the location at UT Arlington.
Yeah, that's the same days and times I was initially told as well, then committee members said the meeting in DFW was subject to change and we should know for sure in the next few days.
That Arlington meeting is being put on by the rural caucus, it isn’t until next Saturday and who knows what will be then, but you should see my city. The consultant map is awful. So not sure in what form but I am going to be a loud fucking voice because you can see my neighborhood on the proposed maps. It is like they worked really really hard to make sure I am put on 12 where democrats have absolutely no prayer.
My GOD, Middleton calling Talarico a fake christian is hilarious. Middleton is behind all the anti DEI, the vouchers, the locking up of undocumented people. That weak-jawed face is just looking for a punching.
The consultant maps violate federal and state law by splitting precincts into two or more congressional districts. And guess who was targeted? And believe me, as the CD 6 National Delegate I take it fucking personally. My precinct, the second largest of 77 precincts in all of Irving, a city of 260,000 people, was split 3 ways! Yup it is that fucking bad. And where did they put ME? In CD 12! You cannot make this up. Just my neighborhood. Everyone else in the precinct is in 24 or 26. But I am in 12, with Parker County. They took the 54 Irving Precincts in CD 6 and split them into 4: CD 33, 12, 24 and 25. Then they took the 4 blue very blue like 98% blue precincts in Johnson County and cut them out of CD 6 and put them in CD 25. They chopped up all the blue that we have build in CD 6 to make sure it wouldn’t get bluer. So yeah, given how vocal I have been, how I called out Jake Ellzey in person for his lies and selling out his constituents, for all the grass roots that Kelly Blackburn and I have done to turn out the vote. How we got Beto and Colin to come to the district, how we defeated Tim Dunn in the municipal run off. Yeah I take this really fucking personally. And believe me, whatever happens in Austin, I am driving down there and am going use my lawyer skills to make sure it is on the fucking record that what they are doing violates federal law by silencing the voices of this minority majority city. They say Hell hath no furry like a woman scorned? You better fucking believe it. Sorry, not cleaning up my language. It is time for Democrats to fucking show some teeth and fight.
Go get them “Chingona”! ♥️
I’m a Latina from the westside. Unfortunately I didn’t get that gene but sounds like you did. 😎
Some say too much. But the whole reason I got involved was I was so pissed about being gerrymandered out of CD 24 after the 2020 election. I vowed I would do all I could. So I took what we were given in CD 6 (which by the way is still the subject of a federal lawsuit from 2021 that just went to its first hearing a few weeks ago). I ran for delegate on a platform of finding common ground in our rural, suburban, urban district and working with all 9 counties to turn out the vote. Well apparently it got fucking noticed.
Try to be proud for what you have done. Then work hard to get up and do more. 🙏🏼
wait ..hold on...ur in CD-12, from Irving? I am in CD-12 , Tanglewood , TCU area...and it runs out past Aledo and Weatherford.....Irving, for real?
the law is a quaint notion to SCOTUS
Tell Jimmy to come up and talk to some FTW Hispanics that didn't voter
"1.7 million Texans could lose health coverage under expiring tax credits, ACA changes in GOP megabill"- TT
Well "Jimmy" will be in Plano on Tuesday but Clayton Tucker who has a real chance to unseat Sid Miller will be in Tarrant on July 27 at 7 PM. Check out his website.
call me old fashioned...i am not on everyones email or FB list....what i am on is TCDP email and FB list and would expect them to notify us when any notable comes to town
PS: Dallas went Dem , James , Tarrant did not , mainly because of non-voting hispanics....
If the PS is for me, I do not understand. I just try to follow other groups and candidates themselves for appearances. Also, the Plano event came from Blue Nation which is part of TDP. If you have not seen them, there are many but they are set to recruit people to run n for office.
nope, sorry to confuse: the PS is for any candidate who goes to visit the choir while avoiding the ugly throng......'choir' being places that are already D, "throng" is Tarrant County where Hispanics don't vote but if they did, they would likely vote D.....they didn't sit out for Trump, they came out....so any non voter signaled Dems didn't inspire them to vote........i haven't kept a daily log but so far no one that i know of has reached out to one non-voter in TC....not Scudder and his 3 visits, not Beto and the gang, not Talrico and NOT definately NOT Allison and TCDP
My understanding is the rally in Ft. Worth with Bernie was managed by either Bernie's team or the TDP or both. Beto will be back there because he realizes what has been going on with the County Judge grab and general tenor since the Judge was elected. During the last major election, however, the voter turnout was much higher than Dallas or Houston. Likely anti-Democratic voters but I don't know.
Sorry Blue Texas
Thank you Michelle, once again brilliant stuff. I have some thoughts on redistricting. Just before I saw your clip on Talarico on BTC, I listened to Channel 8 Y'allatics' latest pod on redistricting. It was fascinating to hear our adversary's political consultant lay out his so-called case for redistricting. Basically, the entire case is Trump wants it. Therefore, it must be done. But also, Trump has had enough of Crockett and Green and wants them gone because they spout "liberal rhetoric". Duh. They are liberals. That is not a crime. What I heard between the lines, and this is so scary, is him dog whistling the word "uppity".
The most maddening raw application of power I heard out of the consultant's mouth was that it did not matter that Republicans were contradicting themselves in court about whether their gerrymanders were racial or not because (paraphrasing) the courts have been very good to Republicans in Texas and he was confident they would bless whatever Republicans drew. This echoes how Matt Krause looked us Democrats in the eye at the public hearing on Tarrant County redistricting and said the 5th Circuit was going to give them whatever they wanted and there was nothing we could do about it. Texas Republicans are baring their fangs. They do not hide the fact they could care less about democracy. We have to make a stand.
But, something I wonder about is California and other states playing the gerrymander game that Trump set up. I'm always wary of playing by his 'rules'. I know how angry I felt when Matt Krause in our Tarrant County redistricting public meeting, told me to my face he was going to take away my vote and there was nothing I could do about it. I know CA has an independent redistricting board, but when Newsom promises to provide more Blue seats, then the appearance of independence is gone. Will Californians' voting rights be diluted? Well, that's not right. And besides, strategically, redistricting could backfire if Republicans can successfully use it to drive some wedges in Democrats.
Yes, I understand we need to be just as ruthless as Republicans, but I balk at violating the rights of Californians and other Blue staters. Redistricting is extremely technical. Retaliatory redistricting appeals to the very online activist/political hobbyist types. However, I wonder whether an average apolitical Californian is going to appreciate being redistricted. They might even feel like voting against Democrats because of it.
And then, it doesn't seem like Talarico is very gung ho on other states retaliating with redistricting although he welcomes their interest. Talarico correctly states that we must not lose our moral compass yet we can and must fight hard with every ethical tool we have. We can still get down in the mud, the blood and the beer and beat the crap out of them fair and square. We must do both. This is not appeasement. Appeasement is failing to contest the argument. We lose credibility with apolitical voters when we act just like them.
Our political advantage is that Republicans are worried about Texas. They are so proud of how they keep gerrymandering us, but having to gerrymander means they are having to actively prevent people from electing Democrats. Which means, people want to vote for Democrats. It might be a good idea to work that angle.
Finally, I saw Beto in some video recently proposing to run out the clock on Abbott's special session redistricting. If I heard him correctly, the clock will die after three special sessions. We would need donor/financial support for Democrats to leave the state and deny them a quorum for their maps. Heck, they are being so obnoxious about cramming this down on us we might as well counter with a boycott of their sham legislative process. And make a big national stink about what assholes they are.
Everyone should listen to the Y'allatics podcast. There are a lot of political minefields in this redistricting process for Republicans. Trump is actually not a very good strategist. Let's not let him call the shots again by retaliating from California and other Blue states.
We're stepping through a minefield, and anything could happen. I expect total chaos.
Very well written analysis but I might disagree about other states if I understand you are saying they should not change to meet/help Texas/Congress. I used to be in the middle of all political leanings but no longer. We have got to stop being "correct" otherwise we might never get to vote again. The other thing is Beto was likely saying the Democratic legislators would have to be out for however many months it took. I have not analyzed but someone said it could be 120 days they would have to be gone. I am sure they are thinking about options but that would be way too long to be gone for many.
There are no good options here, are there? I am questioning whether it will help or hurt for other states to gerrymander. Gerrymandering is a bad thing that Democrats have spent decades battling. To gerrymander may help Texas and Congress, but we must realize it will be based on the ethically dubious logic of the ends justifying the means. Hypocrisy is a strategic weakness that Republicans will exploit. If we think in a Machiavellian way and assume for argument’s sake that Democrats should gerrymander some Blue states, the issue is will it blow up in our faces and do more damage than good?
We just need to be aware that retaliatory gerrymandering is fraught with peril. If we do it, we own it. I am thinking of the law of unintended consequences. One such consequence can be the blowback from voters that will come from Republican messaging about the evil Democrats being the ones who don’t believe in democracy. We won’t have a good comeback to that.
Other states are free to make their own decisions. The political calculus at the Texas legislature level is extremely complex. This is minefield.
Yes I understand I just cannot accept another failure to combat the Texas Government.
The Rural Caucus has set hearing in Houston, Austin and Arlington (for DFW) this is the one for us:
Calling all Rural Texans to join us at this Public Hearing with the Redistricting Committee of the Texas Legislature, Monday, July 28 — Arlington, U T Arlington, 5 pm to voice your concerns over this outrageous power grab by the Republican National Party and the Texas Republican Party to take away Democratic representation. Sign up today and we'll follow up with the specifics on location.
How to prepare:
We'll update with the specific information on the location at UT Arlington.
https://www.mobilize.us/nonurbanruralcaucus/event/817143/
Yeah, that's the same days and times I was initially told as well, then committee members said the meeting in DFW was subject to change and we should know for sure in the next few days.
Are you Arlington meeting? I have been going around and around about the misinformation between a few groups and legislators.
That's why I said to wait for confirmation. Committee members put out info, then was told it could change and we should know in the next few days.
Are you sure is what I meant. Time to get off the phone.
That Arlington meeting is being put on by the rural caucus, it isn’t until next Saturday and who knows what will be then, but you should see my city. The consultant map is awful. So not sure in what form but I am going to be a loud fucking voice because you can see my neighborhood on the proposed maps. It is like they worked really really hard to make sure I am put on 12 where democrats have absolutely no prayer.
So it turns out the map was done by Gallup not the legislature, according to Nancy from Moms, which of course you heard, Liza.
My GOD, Middleton calling Talarico a fake christian is hilarious. Middleton is behind all the anti DEI, the vouchers, the locking up of undocumented people. That weak-jawed face is just looking for a punching.
just got snippets of Beto on CNN sunday....excellent points about fighting fire w. fire.....
“Texas is ground zero let’s make some noise” is my new favorite rallying cry
Michelle, this is so helpful. Waiting for you to say when and where to go. I will see how many friends can go with me. ☺️
FYI...Adrienne Elrod went to TCU....it hasn't translated into much for Tarrant County...i have never heard her say the word
fron USA Today" "Chip and Joanna Gaines cast a gay couple. Then came the backlash."