ask you if you had made contact have been reached out to by the democrats from your state about having a meeting? They haven't reached out to you. If they did, is that a meeting that you would take on the interest of bipartisanship? Are you not interested at all?
I think they need to get back to Texas and do their job. What the Texas democrats are doing right now is a political stunt. And and it is a stunt trying to block voter integrity legislation and legislation that consists of common sense steps to prevent voter fraud at for whatever reason, elected Democrats have decided that politically, it's in their advantage to block voter fraud legislation.
And so they have hinted that they might be here all the way until August, if they're going to be here anyway. And they do reach out about wanting to take a meeting, is that something that you would be interested in or not at all in the interest that you think it's a political? Yeah,
you know, I'm not particularly interested in participating in their political stunt. And at the end of the day, their effort is going to fail. They're going to come back to Texas. The governor has already announced that he intends to call another special session and if need be another and another and another. And under the Texas Constitution, the Speaker of the House has the authority to order their arrest. And and, you know, back in 2003, I was serving at the time as the Solicitor General of Texas and and one of the very first projects ever worked on concerned a call from the Speaker of the House, who then his name was Tom Craddick, the state legislature was taking up redistricting. And Texas democrats tried the same stuff than that they tried now, which is they fled the state in 2003. The House Democrats went to Ardmore, Oklahoma, the Senate Democrats, went to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Speaker of the House back then asked the attorney general who was then Greg Abbott, my boss asked him, Do I have the authority to arrest fleeing House members? Abbott asked me I researched it turns out the Texas constitution has a provision that explicitly authorizes laying House members to be arrested, that provision is copied word for word from a provision in the US Constitution. Okay. And so there is clear legal authority to handcuff and put in leg II are legislators that are trying to stop the legislature from being able to do business and to and to physically compel their presence and not to ensure a quorum. And so in 2003, the democrats failed. And it's gonna fail again this year.
And so with all of the research that you've done on this issue, is that something that you wish to see happen when they were turned, you want to see them
arrested? Well, the governor's already announced that's his intention that they will not be allowed to grind the wheels of government to a halt, that they were elected to do a job. And they can't abuse their power by refusing to do their job and trying to shut down the legislature. And so isn't it a form of legitimate response, possibly for Senate Republicans in the US Senate? I
mean, if all 50 of you decided to leave town, I mean, is that something that should be taken off the table completely for Senate Republicans? Any 51
overtime at both the federal level and state level, we have seen legislators try to deny for it is not a strategy that works over the long term. And one of the reasons we were just discussing a minute ago, the Texas constitution explicitly has a provision that authorizes the arrest of fleeing legislators who are trying to deny forum and and the Texas constitution copies that provision word for word from the US Constitution. And so there's long precedent in Congress, that if legislators have of either party tried to deny a quorum and shut down the operations of government, that government has the authority to utilize force and compel their presence and if Texas democrats continue this political stunt I expect that's where this ends. Thank you.
