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Okay. All right. Hello, hello, hello, everybody, and welcome to this special bonus episode of the Joy Reid Show. Continuing our focus on the outrage in Texas. And surprise, surprise, things have gotten even worse. Now, I want to start by reminding you of this August 13 statement from Texas Democrats denouncing Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans for putting forward an ugly voting law that would disenfranchise black Texans in an openly racist fashion by gerrymandering four black held congressional seats and one held by an Hispanic member of Congress in order to deliver five additional Republican seats to the President at his request, it would reduce the number of black Democrats, in particular by half. The statement issued by Democratic caucus chair Gene Wu after more than 50 Democrats left the state in protest of the gerrymander bid read in part. What happens next is entirely up to Greg Abbott. After deliberation among our caucus, we have reached a consensus. Texas House Democrats refuse to to give him a quorum to pass his racist maps that silence more than 2 million black and Latino Texans. In keeping with our original promise to Texans, the first called special session will never make quorum again, defeating Abbott's first attempt at passing his racial gerrymander, unquote. And just so that you understand how diabolically racist Texas Republicans are being, in pursuit of this unprecedented off census year gerrymander, I want you to take a look at this map of Texas. You see the tiny little blue spots there? Those are where the vast majority of black Texans live. Dallas county and Harris county where Houston is, plus the majority Hispanic areas where the Latino Democrats hold seats that are being targeted. And Texas is not being subtle when it comes to race based gerrymandering in a state where the single largest population group is Latinos, just like California. Under the new proposed maps, white voters would have one congressional representative for every 445,000 people. Latinos would have one representative for every 1.4 million people. And African Americans, who are about 13% of the population, would have one representative for every 2 million people. That data comes from a Democratic state. Texas state representative named Vincent Perez. Now again, it ain't subtle. Once passed, the racist Republican maps would mean that one white vote in Texas will count three times more than a Latino vote and five times more than a vote by a black Texan. And white Texans, who make up just under 40% of the population, would control 70% of the congressional districts, despite Latino voters being slightly more than 40% of the population of the state. In other words, they are completely rigging the state to ensure permanent white rule, which is also known as Apartheid. And yet, just one week after Democrats denied Republicans a quorum by physically leaving the state, heading to Chicago and New York and Massachusetts, anywhere but the Texas state legislature with supporters raising millions of dollars, Beta o' Rourke raising money, and Illinois Governor Pritzker and Gavin Newsom in California mounting an epic vow of gerrymandering retribution, this happened. Yep, a bunch of the Texas Democrats went home, where they were greeted as liberators by their supporters, although all that they actually liberated were Republicans who finally now get to have their quorum so they can immediately pass their racist maps. Is that what democracy looks like? So sorry. I mean, what were they cheering for? Again, the messaging win. Because that's not an actual win if the maps pass. Y' all do know that right now I will note the demographics of the returnees. Many were not black. Most of the black Democrats who quit the state refused to return despite bomb threats and empty threats by Republicans that they would be hunted down by the FBI and arrested for the crime of traveling. But their absence among the returnees was visually notable. And given that we don't enforce the Constitution's fugitive Slave acts anymore, the threats were actually pretty empty. But it was quickly clear that a lot of the quorum breaking Democrats really, really wanted to go home for many reasons. Some economic, others worried about losing committee assignments or facing more Republican retaliation. And some black Democrats also went home, including State Representative Nicole Collier, who took to the House floor and wound up detained. And she remains detained even as we speak, choosing to remain in the chamber rather than consent to signing this. Why don't you take a look at this? It is a permission slip to leave the House floor with a state patrol minder who would accompany the breaking Democrats home to ensure that they return to the floor on Wednesday so Republicans can vote in their racist maps. You can't quite read it on screen, but the permission slip reads that the member, in this case, State Representative Tony Rose, is, quote, granted permission to leave the hall of the House on this day in the custody of a of a design, a designated officer of the Department of Public Safety, appointed under Rule 5, Section 8 of the House Rules of Procedure. I'm sorry, what year is it? I mean, it almost is giving the passes. Enslaved people would get to work on a nearby plantation provided they promise to return after a day's labor away from the home gulag. When Representative Collier refused to sign that permission slip, she was detained inside the House chamber, where she remains today while a live cam carried on the Texas Democrats X Twitter page has her on a kind of Like Truman Show. While outside the chamber last night, three people were arrested for conducting a peaceful sit in in support of Representative Collier, including the head of the Stonewall Democrats of Austin. And as. And I will note that the peaceful protesters were a black, an Asian, and a trans woman who got arrested for standing up for a lone black woman Democrat. There they are, Sa and there you have it, all of the marginalized converging to face the demons of autocracy. But what's clear is that the drama on the Texas House floor and just outside the chamber is not actually the main event. The main event comes tomorrow when the new special session called by Governor Greg Abbott begins and Republicans pass their new gerrymandered maps that, if you can even believe it, have gotten even worse than the ones Representative Jalanda Jones showed you on this podcast on August 11th. Oh, yes, Republicans have taken their racist maps and lowered the bar even further. And joining me now to go through those new, even more horrible maps is Texas State Representative Jalanda Jones. Representative Jones, it is always good to be with you. This is becoming a regular thing. We're kind of a dynamic duo at this point.
