Texas Supreme Court May Have Just Melted the Runaway Dems' Last Hope With Latest Move

By Nick Arama | 3:00 PM on August 10, 2021

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The runaway Texas Democrats have just about run out of options.

The runaways fled to Washington, D.C. to avoid a quorum in the Texas House, to prevent voting on an election integrity bill that they falsely cast as depriving people of “voting rights.” Yet they were unable to name even a single person who would be deprived of the right to vote.

As I reported, some of the Democrats starting to break ranks now and return to Texas, while some are pledging to stay in D.C. That’s caused a lot of infighting. But, as I also reported, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against the Democrats as to Gov. Greg Abbott’s veto of their legislative funding. That means that they run out of funding at the end of September. So their tantrum is necessarily time-limited, if they want to be paid and if they want their staffs to be paid. So it gives Abbott a big win and the ability to pressure them. My colleague Brandon Morse wrote some more about that decision today.

The one thing that they had left was that a judge had ruled in their favor, granting a temporary restraining order and blocking the ability to arrest them for 14 days. That would enable them to return to the state and not get hauled into the House so that there could be a quorum.

But now, the Texas Supreme Court has issued a stay on that restraining order, in response to an emergency motion from Gov. Greg Abbott. This would appear then to re-open the possibility of the arrest option against the Democrats.

#BREAKING: In response to my mandamus filing, the Texas Supreme Court just entered an order stopping the activist judge in Austin, TX ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/W9qXMGRZF0

— Texas Attorney General (@TXAG) August 10, 2021

That would seem to remove the last thing they had — the restraining order. Now everything else is pretty much forcing their hand back to Texas.

As we noted, several have returned and at least eight of them appeared on the floor of the House yesterday according to reports. They came very close to having a quorum as a result — with 95 people present, only five people short — and that’s what the Democrats remaining in D.C. were furious about. They’ve blocked having a quorum since mid-July. But the stunt is going to be forced to an end now.