Friday, April 30, 2021

"Briscoe Cain is His Name"* Week-Ending Wrangle


And Cain is what he raised yesterday at the state capital.

(Yesterday afternoon, self-described 'parliamentary guru') Rep. Briscoe Cain, the chair of the House Elections Committee made an unexpected move when he tried to replace the Senate’s priority voting bill with his own. His scheming fell short thanks to one abstention from Republican Travis Clardy and led to the bill being withdrawn, but it signals how contentious voting legislation has become.

Update 8:50 pm, April 29: The House Elections Committee passed SB 7 on a party-line vote 5-4 late Thursday night. In a committee substitute, Chairman Cain replaced the text of SB 7 with his bill, HB 6, and then proceeded without a public hearing because he argued the text of the substitute already received a hearing two weeks ago. Despite claims by Cain and Speaker Dade Phelan that the House priority voting restriction bill is very different from SB 7, they used this maneuver to move the Governor’s emergency item on election integrity faster as the session enters its final month. It also allows the two chambers to negotiate what they like (known as "conference committee") in each of their omnibus voting restriction bills to send to the Governor’s desk.

Before voting it out of committee, Democrats tried to add amendments to prevent intimidation by poll watchers and voter assistants’ mistakes from being criminalized and to collect data on the disparate racial impact of penalties in SB 7 and AG investigations opened from them. All were voted down also on party lines.

The outrage from the afternoon move couldn't even catch up to the evening's. That's how fast this House is working under Speaker Phelan's lead. Expect more of the same on the rest of their agenda.


And RoofieGate was quickly swept under the rug.


Yeah, they just don't give a shit what anybody thinks (unless you're voting in their primary election, that is). Speaking of elections, there's several happening around the state happening tomorrow, and one in the Fort Worth area for the Congressional vacancy. There should be a runoff in that one.


Some Texas Democrats were giddy, some more practical after Biden's speech Wednesday night, and the announcements previously that two Texans are heading to Washington to serve the president.


Not all good news for Team Donkey, though.


With respect to Gonzalez and ICE, I've already done all the pushing back on Twitter I'll be doing for now. Will wait to see what he does before commenting further, but don't have much in the way of expectations on reforms. ACAB.


I'll dedicate the rest of this post to catching up on topics I've neglected for awhile, so first up: environmental news.


Your takeaway from the poll below? Eleven percent of self-identified Texas Democrats either do not think -- or are unsure -- that climate change is happening.


'Not as bad as the TXGOP' is a bar too low, y'all. Do better.


And yes, we still have to fight our legislators to stop rewarding the oil companies and punishing the greens for trying to fix things.


A few COVID updates:


And some criminal and social justice developments.


I'll wrap this Wrangle with the latest from Boca Chica, or Starbase, or whatever they're calling it.


And a few soothers.


*With all apologies to Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson.
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