Texas vs Texas

The drama surrounding voting rights in Texas continues. The State House voted yesterday to send law enforcement to track down—and possibly issue warrants for the arrest of—Democratic lawmakers who walked out on the legislature's special session on Monday. Fifty-seven Democratic House legislators abandoned the chamber and traveled to Washington, D.C., to deny the Texas legislature quorum and prevent Republicans from advancing a restrictive new voting bill.

• — The Texas Republicans voted to order a "call of the House," which stops members from arriving at or leaving the chamber, and for the sergeant-at-arms to "send for all absentees…under warrant of arrest if necessary." The sergeant-at-arm's authority only applies in Texas, however, so the defectors can't be detained until they return.
   
• — With a Republican majority in the legislature, Gov. Greg Abbott has signaled that the ruling party will pursue all necessary legislative avenues in the meantime to enact the voting reforms, vowing to prolong special sessions, if necessary. Abbott added that the Democrats would need to stay out of the state for "well over a year" to kill the bill.
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• — Abbott also promised that the itinerant Democrats "will be arrested" and "cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done." Democratic State Sen. Royce West said the Texas Democrats are "buying time," lobbying federal lawmakers with the hope that "something gets done at the national level." —National Review

A step closer to a new New Deal

Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee announced a plan last night to enact President Biden's domestic agenda without Republican votes. The proposal sets an overall limit of $3.5 trillion for a spate of policy ambitions, like two years of free community college and paid family leave, that won't make it into the bipartisan infrastructure deal. If the budget resolution clears both chambers with the full support of all Democrats, it will allow them to circumvent a GOP filibuster and pass the legislation via the reconciliation process. Keep your eye on moderate Sens. Joe Manchin and Jon Tester, who say they need time to sort through the plan. "We need to pay for it," Manchin said. "I'd like to pay for all of it. I don't think we need more debt." —Politico

MORE: Republicans waver on bipartisan infrastructure deal —Yahoo! News

Rathje, Van Bavel & van der Linden: No incentive for Facebook to fight hate

"[A]lgorithmically amplifying out-group hate could damage society and democracy. Such content may increase engagement and boost profit in the short term, but research finds people say they do not want politicians to express out-party animus. What's more, the storming of Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 suggests polarizing rhetoric and misinformation on social media can inspire real-world political violence. However, so long as polarizing content is a fundamental part of the social media business model, it's unlikely social media platforms will see it as a problem, much less solve it." —Steve Rathje, Jay Van Bavel & Sander van der Linden in The Washington Post

Steve Rathje is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge. Jay Van Bavel is an associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. Sander van der Linden is a professor of social psychology in society at the University of Cambridge.

MORE: Facebook saw signs of violence ahead of the Capitol riot, but was too scared to bring it up with Trump, book says —Insider

Charges filed against two 'Moors'

Rhode Island officials have issued arrest warrants for two members of the sovereign-citizen militia group "Rise of the Moors," who were involved in an armed standoff with police along Interstate 95 in Massachusetts on July 3. The standoff began when a state trooper stopped to offer assistance to two vehicles parked on the side of the highway. Members of the group—dressed in military-style clothing and body armor, armed with unlicensed long guns and pistols, and reportedly traveling from Rhode Island to Maine for unspecified "training"—ran into the woods nearby, forcing the shutdown of the Boston-area stretch of highway. About 150 police officers responded, and a sonic weapon was used to incapacitate the suspects and take them into custody. —NBC News

MORE: 'Rise of the Moors': What to know about the group affiliated with 11 men arrested in Massachusetts —ABC News

Panetta: The lesson from Afghanistan we can't forget

"The Taliban cannot be trusted when it comes to terrorism. It is up to the United States to make sure that Afghanistan does not collapse and become a base of operations for terrorists again. Already in recent weeks we have seen senseless deaths at the hands of the Taliban, with the killing of 22 members of an Afghan Special Forces unit." —Leon Panetta on CNN

Leon Panetta served as secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2013 and is chair of The Panetta Institute for Public Policy.

MORE: Taliban surge in north Afghanistan sends thousands fleeing —Associated Press

Focus on the Starr-Epstein connection

In "Perversion of Justice," a forthcoming book by Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, she writes about the role of Ken Starr in securing the secret 2008 deal that granted notorious sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein effective immunity from federal prosecution. Brown previously published an exposé in the Herald on the "non-prosecution agreement" that had been reached covering up Epstein's sex trafficking operation.

• — Starr is best known as the independent counsel in the investigation of former President Bill Clinton that ultimately led to his impeachment. He was brought into Epstein's legal team to help pressure the Justice Department to drop the case. Starr wrote to Mark Filip, then the deputy U.S. attorney general, accusing prosecutors involved in the case of misconduct.
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• — Lead federal prosecutor Marie Villafaña warned fellow prosecutors at the time that Epstein was likely still abusing underaged girls. But, according to an unnamed prosecutor quoted by Brown, "it was clear that she had to find a way to strike a deal," because someone in Washington was "calling the shots on the case."
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• — Following Brown's 2018 exposé, a judge ruled that the secret agreement was illegal. Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and died in jail the following month in what was ruled a suicide. In the fallout, Alex Acosta, who as Miami's top federal prosecutor in 2008 had signed off on the Epstein sweetheart deal, was forced to resign as labor secretary. —The Guardian

Waldman: Upstart Republicans struggle to stand out

"Back in 2009 and 2010, old-school Republican politicians like House GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor were caught off-guard by the venom bubbling up from their party's base. Their efforts to feed that base what it wanted were insincere, and the base knew it. Some key GOP politicians lost primaries to hard-right upstarts running against 'the establishment.' But that probably won't happen in too many cases next year. With just a couple of exceptions, the Republican establishment has moved so far to the right, and is so eager to embrace whatever pernicious lie comes out of Trump's mouth, that there just isn't much room to their right." —Paul Waldman in The Washington Post

Paul Waldman is a political columnist at The Washington Post.

MORE: In escalating drama for Massachusetts GOP, some donors say they won't give unless the party makes major changes —The Boston Globe

From the Christian populism article, I believe that many issues on the right actually stem from intolerance on the left: allow me to explain. If liberal politicians were to more eagerly listen to Christians, such as they apparently do in Germany, it seems as though the extreme secular group of voters on the left would freak out, for lack of better words. There are many on the left that leave no room in their platforms for religious ideals. While both sides can be intolerant, I would suggest the left has much easier access to voice (hence why right-wing extremists are driven to secretive social platforms to speak to their ideals; you can see extreme leftist ideals every day on Twitter, if you wish). Thus the left simultaneously complains about and helps drive the populism on the right. —Dillon K., Utah

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