August 7, 2025

Thursday, August 7, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

The GOP is learning - Trump doesn’t have the best ideas.

Trump and Johnson face escalating GOP revolt on redistricting

A growing number of blue-state House Republicans — at risk of being drawn out of their own seats — are speaking out against their party's mid-decade redistrictingefforts.

Why it matters: Their comments represent a sharp break with President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who have both endorsed efforts in Texas and other states to carve out more Republican House seats.

• Democrats in states like California and New York have threatened to respond in-kind by attempting to redo their maps.
• Caught in the crossfire are a cohort of blue-state Republicans, who tend to be more moderate than the average House Republican and often represent swingier districts.

Driving the news: Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.), a swing-district member, took a shot at Johnson on Tuesday, saying in a Fox News interview that he "needs to step up and show some leadership" on the issue.

• "This is not something that is popular among members of our conference," added Kiley, who has introduced legislation to ban mid-decade redistricting in all states.
• Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said Monday that he will introduce similar legislation after saying in PBS News interview over the weekend: "I don't think Texas should do it."
• Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said in a Bloomberg interview: "I don't care if it's the Republicans or the Democrats that are doing it — it's wrong and it should not be done."

What we're hearing: "It's gross. It's not the way we should do it," another House Republican from a blue state, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer candid thoughts, told Axios.

• The lawmaker proposed legislation to tell states: "'You don't get federal money unless you succumb to this fair, non-partisan way of drawing maps every 10 years.' Because it really is f***ing silly."
• "Politicians shouldn't be picking their voters," they added.

The intrigue: These Republicans may be able to find support for their legislative efforts from centrists outside of blue states as well.

• Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who previously expressed concerns about the mid-decade redistricting efforts, told Axios he will "consider" Kiley's legislation.
• Democrats, though, are skeptical about Republicans' motives — noting their own failed efforts to outlaw gerrymandering in 2021 as part of a broader election reform bill that had no Republican support.

Zoom out: Texas Republicans are forging ahead in their efforts to squeeze as many as five additional Republican seats out of their map by packing Democrats into as few districts as possible.

Texas Democrats, with support from the national party, have fled to Illinois in an effort to deny Republican legislators the quorum they need to pass the maps.

Several blue-state Democratic governors, including California's Gavin Newsom and New York's Kathy Hochul, have threatened to gerrymander their states in response to the GOP efforts in Texas.

The other side: A Johnson spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a CNN interview last month, the House speaker expressed skepticism about the idea of cracking down on partisan redistricting.
"The devil's always in the details ... some of these blue states have had [independent] commissions, and they have worked out so that they've eliminate Republican seats in their states," he said.

Johnson has also wholeheartedly endorsed Texas Republicans' redistricting push, saying on Fox News: "We will probably have a few more seats out of that and, of course, that's good news for me."

Trump has been a vocal cheerleader of the Texas efforts, urging GOP lawmakers to take a no-holds-barred approach to redrawing their map.(Axios)

What will the Originalists say?

Share this and ask - whatever happened to patriotism?

GOVT. WEBSITE ‘GLITCH’ REMOVES TRUMP’S LEAST FAVORITE PART OF CONSTITUTION.

The online Constitution website is maintained by the Library of Congress, which Trump is trying to take over.

Earlier in the month, Trump was asked about due process, and whether as president he has an obligation to uphold the Constitution. “I don’t know,” he replied.

Within the past few weeks, Section 9 from Article 1 of the Constitution — which states, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” — disappeared from the Library of Congress’ Constitution Annotated webpage.

By Wednesday morning, officials in Trump’s government were quietly telling staff that the deletions were the result of a technical “glitch,” sources familiar with the matter say. As a result, personnel scrambled to fix the issue, figure out how exactly it happened, and also review other parts of the website to see if there were any other conspicuous deletions.

Some federal staffers raised their eyebrows at the blame-a-glitch explanation, given the apparently coincidental nature of the deletions affecting sections of the Constitution that the second Trump administration is openly working so hard to shred. “Funny coincidence,” one federal employee who was dealing with this situation tells Rolling Stone dryly.

The Library of Congress posted on X Wednesday morning that the deletion was the result of a “coding error.”

“It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated website,” the library wrote. “We’ve learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been working to correct this and expect it to be resolved soon.”

The website added a banner stating: “The Constitution Annotated website is currently experiencing data issues. We are working to resolve this issue and regret the inconvenience.”

By Wednesday afternoon, the deleted portions of the Constitution had been added back to the webpage. “Due to a technical error, some sections of Article 1 were temporarily missing on the Constitution Annotated website. This problem has been corrected, and the missing sections have been restored,” the Library of Congress tells Rolling Stone in an email.

It should be noted that simply deleting sections of the U.S. Constitution on a webpage — for an institution that isn’t even the official custodian of the Constitution — doesn’t change American law. But no matter what the document does or doesn’t say, the president and his senior appointees have made clear their intention to violate the Constitution as best they can.

The modification to the Constitution website comes as Trump attempts to seize control of the Library of Congress — even though the agency is technically part of the legislative branch. It functions as Congress’ research arm, while also maintaining the world’s largest collection of books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and recordings.

In May, Trump announced he was firing Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress, before the end of her 10-year term, and he moved to replace her with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal attorney.

After a judge refused to block Hayden’s termination, she filed an appeal last week to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (Rolling Stone)

Can Democrats stop Texas Redistricting?

Gov. Greg Abbott’s options to force a redistricting vote are more limited than they appear.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had a message Sunday for the dozens of Democratic legislators who fled the state to derail a mega-partisan gerrymander: “This truancy ends now.”

But Abbott’s options to compel those Democrats — whose departure to Illinois and other states is preventing the state Legislature from conducting any business — to return and vote are more constrained and legally uncertain than he let on. And they may take significant time to resolve in court.

Abbott and other Texas Republicans face a hard deadline as they are preparing to adopt maps that could net the GOP five seats in the U.S. House, potentially cementing the party’s majority in Congress. Maps need to be completed before the end of the year so that election officials can prepare for the state's March 3 primaries. The move has also prompted retaliation threats by Democratic governors in other states and roiled expectations for the 2026 elections, when Democrats hope to take the House and act as a check on President Donald Trump.

Here’s a look at the central questions as Abbott’s standoff with Texas House Democrats deepens into a monumental political and legal brawl.

Why did Texas Democrats leave the state?

Texas’ constitution requires two-thirds of the state’s 150 House members to be present to conduct business. That gives the 62-member House Democratic minority a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option to grind the Capitol's business to a halt even if they would be outnumbered on an up-or-down vote.

By absconding from Austin — and the state altogether — Democrats ensured that the Legislature lacked a quorum to convene for a special session called by Abbott to address redistricting. There is some recent history on this: Democrats mounted a similar effort to “break quorum” in 2021 in protest of election-related legislation. The effort ended after Democrats gradually trickled back into the state, amid a similar flurry of arrest threats and lawsuits.

Importantly, breaking quorum is not a crime. However, if the absentee Democratic lawmakers remained in Texas, Abbott could order state troopers to haul them to the Capitol. That’s why they fled for the friendlier confines of Illinois and other blue states, where Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other allies have vowed to shelter them from Texas’ demands to bring them back.

What are Abbott’s legal options?

Federal laws allow states to demand the return, or “extradition,” of criminal fugitives from other states. But because breaking quorum is not illegal, Abbott can’t seek help from the courts to compel the Democrats’ return.

Instead, Abbott threatened to take another action against the absentee lawmakers: Ask Texas courts to remove them from office altogether. State law permits a Texas district court to determine whether a public official has “abandoned” his or her office, declaring it vacant — enabling the governor to set new elections to fill the empty seats.

“Come and take it,” dared state Rep. Gene Wu, the Texas House Democratic Caucus leader, in an appearance Monday morning on CNN. Wu declared Abbott’s threat to be “all bluster.”

The governor’s threat is rooted in a nonbinding legal opinion issued in 2021 by Attorney General Ken Paxton, amid the last attempt by Democrats to break quorum. Paxton, notably, took no position on whether breaking quorum is constitutional.

The republican AG also declined to say whether fleeing Democrats could or should be removed from office. Rather, he called it a “fact question for a court” that he said was beyond the scope of his office to decide. He noted instead that he could file what are known as “quo warranto actions” in court, asking a judge to determine whether the missing lawmakers had officially vacated their seats.

How would a judge make that call? Paxton said he wasn’t certain.

“We find no constitutional provision or statute establishing an exhaustive list for why a vacancy occurs or the grounds under which an officer may be judicially removed from office,” he wrote.

How long could it take Abbott to force the Legislature back into session?

This is the most uncertain aspect of Abbott’s gambit. Paxton’s office would need to file “quo warranto” actions in various judicial districts for more than 50 fleeing lawmakers. Judges may take up these cases on different timelines and reach different conclusions, requiring appeals that could wind their way to the Texas Supreme Court.

Paxton acknowledged in an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that the timeline would be problematic.

“The challenge is that [it] wouldn't necessarily be an immediate answer, right?” he said. “We'd have to go through the court process, and we'd have to file … in districts that are not friendly to Republicans,” Paxton said. “So it's a challenge because every, every district would be different. We'd have to go sue in every legislator’s home district to try to execute on that idea."

And even if Abbott and Paxton win a clean sweep in removing the Democrats from office, it would then require a time-intensive process of calling special elections to fill the vacancies — and guaranteeing that the winners of those elections also remain in the state as well.

That timing matters when the GOP-led redistricting plan is on a fixed timeline: A new map must be adopted by early December in order to be in place for the 2026 midterm cycle. That would require Democrats to remain out of state for about four months while they accumulate $500-per-day civil fines. The current special Legislative session is slated to end on Aug. 19, but Abbott could call another one.

Could the Democrats be charged with crimes?

Abbott’s letter, though sharply critical, stopped short of actually accusing Democrats of breaking the law. Rather, he suggested that if outsiders are helping them fundraise to cover their fines, they might run afoul of bribery laws.

“It would be bribery if any lawmaker took money to perform or to refuse to perform an act in the legislature,” Abbott said in a Fox News interview Monday. “And the reports are these legislators have both sought money and offered money to skip the vote, to leave the legislature, to take a legislative act."

If Texas prosecutors in fact level any such charges, then Abbott’s authority to return them grows stronger. He could then ask courts in Texas and Illinois to seek the return of the missing lawmakers.

“I will use my full extradition authority to demand the return to Texas of any potential out-of-state felons,” he said in his Sunday statement.(Politico)

Becoming a tradition in Texas. 2022.👇

Remember - Texas is not alone. Gerrymandering defines America.

Once again. Yesterday.

And this sad thing, of course.

One good thing- Women continue to advance in sports. 🫢

MLB names first woman to umpire a regular-season major league game.

Major League Baseball has announced that a minor league veteran umpire will become the first female umpire ever to work a regular-season Major League game.

Why it matters: When Jen Pawol walks on the field during this weekend's Marlins-Braves series in Atlanta, she'll be breaking another barrier in a league that helped break the color line with Jackie Robinson nearly 80 years ago.

Driving the news: MLB said Wednesday that Pawol, a Minor League Umpire since 2016, will work the bases in both games of Saturday's doubleheader.

She is one of 17 current Triple-A call-up umpires eligible to substitute in Major League games.

The doubleheader necessitated adding a fifth umpire to the crew, since each home plate umpire skips the other game they're not working.

What they're saying: "This historic accomplishment in baseball is a reflection of Jen's hard work, dedication and love of the game," Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred, Jr. said in a statement.

"She has earned this opportunity, and we are proud of the strong example she has set, particularly for all the women and young girls who aspire to roles on the field."

Pawol said last year, "This is a viable career becoming a professional umpire – men and women, girls and boys. I didn't know that the first several years when I got into umpiring in amateur ball for 10 years."

Context: Pawol has climbed the umpiring ranks since starting her pro career in Rookie ball in 2016.

She reached Triple-A in 2023, becoming the first female umpire at that level in 34 years.

She was the home-plate ump for the Triple-A Championship that September.

The intrigue: Upon hearing the news, the Jackie Robinson Foundation sent out a public congratulation to Pawol.

"The Jackie Robinson Museum offers a heartfelt congratulations to Jen Pawol," the foundation posted on Instagram.

"The trailblazing legacies of Jackie and Rachel Robinson live on through those who continue the fight for equality in today's game."

Flashback: Pamela Postema became the first woman to umpire a Major League Baseball spring training game in 1988.

Houston Astros pitcher Bob Knepper drew national attention after he said women should umpire games and that it conflicted with his Biblical views.
Knepper said he held no personal animosity toward Postema but believed women shouldn't serve as umpires because they shouldn't have authority over men.

Between the lines: The move comes as MLB faces uncertainty about its diversity initiatives and the immigration status of international players.

Earlier this year, MLB removed the word "diversity" from its MLB Careers home page in reaction to the executive order ending "equal opportunity" for people of color and women in recruiting.

Go deeper: MLB celebrates Jackie Robinson Day amid DEI uncertainty. (Axios)