Marc: Trey Martinez Fischer, welcome to Defending Democracy.
Trey Martinez Fischer: Thank you for having me. Such an important message.
Marc: Yes, it is very important, and I want to jump right into it. You and your colleagues in the Texas legislature have chosen to leave the state of Texas to break a quorum. Can you just start by telling us what the latest is on things?
Trey Martinez Fischer: Thank you for having me. This is a great platform because it's about voting rights. It's about our democracy. It's about waking this country up to recognize that this is being robbed right before our eyes, and we have to do something about it. We are in the Illinois area. We have been here for some time now. Today is day four, and the legislative session ends on August 18th.
Despite all the threats that we have, not just from Trump and the FBI and our Governor, we had a bomb threat at a place we were staying at just yesterday. We have increased our security. We are here as a guest of Governor Pritzker, and he and his team have been tremendous in looking out for our safety. We have hunkered down and tightened our security, but we are not giving up our ability to talk to people like you on these platforms, so they know just how much we're sacrificing for this democracy and how we're all in this together and how we all need to do our part.
But as it stands right now, Texas cannot adopt a map unless they have 100 House members on the House floor. And as of today, they are denied that number because of our quorum.
Marc: Let's start with kind of the beginning, which is that Republicans gerrymandered the state of Texas in 2021. Republicans come at this, from my standpoint, with a lot of dirty hands to begin with. These folks had really screwed over Texas voters and particularly minority voters in what they'd done in 2021. When did you get a sense that having done what I called was an obscene gerrymander, they now wanted to do a grotesque gerrymander?
Trey Martinez Fischer: I had two flags. We had the Speaker, the Governor, and Lieutenant Governor all lock arms and say that they were going to give Trump this redistricting do-over. That was flag number one. Flag number two was maybe a week before that. The Department of Justice said, "By the way, we're looking at your congressional districts, and it looks like you used race when you made these things, so you have to go fix them." And the reason that was a flag, is that Senator Joan Huffman and all the Republicans that were in charge of drawing the initial map had already testified under oath, not before just one federal judge, but before three federal judges under oath and said these maps are completely legal and had nothing to do with race. My first question was, "Who's lying?" Is the Senator lying in federal court? And that's a big problem. Or is the Trump DOJ lying? So flag number one, then the big three leaders, all Republicans, said, "We're going to do this."
And this is all happening while we've had the worst flooding event in our state's history, with over 130 people who had died, many of them children. All of a sudden, that moved to the side, and Republicans proceeded with about eight public hearings on redistricting and only one to deal with the flood. And that's when knew that the fix was in. And we knew that as this process became a sham, we knew that we had to do something. And we're one of only a handful of states that have the right to have a quorum. We do. And our founders realized how important it was. So darn it, we started going one by one to each member, gut-checking them to say, "We need to do this."
Marc: I think you make a really important point about where their priorities are. Their priorities are not helping the citizens of Texas. It's not helping their constituents. They're doing this because they are trying to help Donald Trump and Mike Johnson keep control of Congress in Washington, D.C. I paid very, very close attention to the point you made aboutHuffman’s testimony, because it did seem she had said in unequivocal terms under oath that they had race turned off.And then you had the Department of Justice saying, "Wait, you used race impermissibly." Have they squared that up? What is the latest in that? Because that does seem like a big problem for someone in that arena.
Trey Martinez Fischer: I don't think they know how because even Attorney General Ken Paxton has defended that position in court. And during the committee process, as much of a sham as it was, there was an effort to bring the DOJ to come testify as to the contents of the letter, and they didn't want to get within 100 miles of the Texas Capitol. And the lawmakers took a vote to deny that request. They're running scared, but you're right. They weren't prepared for this. They didn't think that Donald Trump was going to call Greg Abbott and say, "Hey man, bend the knee. I need five seats in Congress." They had no idea because these are their maps to begin with. They're stuck, and they're trying to figure out a way to get out of it.
Marc: Let's talk a little bit about the process. You mentioned that you need 100 members of the House present on the floor of the State House. Just assume that me and the audience are not familiar with the Texas legislature. How big is it? Republicans control it, right? What's the state of play for them to get 100 members on the floor?
Trey Martinez Fischer: It's going to require Democrats showing up. There are 62 Democrats.
Marc: OK, and how big is the chamber overall?
Trey Martinez Fischer: 150, so they need a hard 100.
Marc: So without Democrats there, they cannot bring this forward. The other thing you mentioned is a deadline of August 18th. When does the legislative session end? I know Texas has a part-time legislature, right? So you're not in all the time. Walk people through what the calendar here is.
Trey Martinez Fischer: TheTexas founders made the legislature a place for ordinary citizens. The idea is we work for 140 days every two years, and then we go back to be citizens. So we had finished our regular 140-day session in June. We were all home, living the life of citizens. And for someone like me, I'm making things up with my wife, I'm making up with my kids, I'm making sure that I still have a law license, that I didn't get disbarred over the last six months. And so I'm back at home, and then a special session is called. They can only be called for 30 days, and the Governor can call them anytime he wants. The Constitution says only for extraordinary reasons. I guess bending the knee to Trump must fall in that category. And so we're in the middle of a 30-day session. It should end August 18th, August 19th. And then the Governor, if history is a guide, could call us back into a second session immediately upon the conclusion of the first. We're still trying to figure that out. This does horrible things to congressional districts across the state. It is worse for people of color, for Latinos, African Americans, and Asians. If you don't know anything about Texas, it is minority demography that's growing the state. We have received six new congressional seats in Congress in the last two cycles. 90% of all that growth is because of a minority, half of it alone Latino. But these seats don't go to Latinos and African Americans.
They just get divided and cracked and dispersed all over the state so that people who don't have their interests at heart get elected to Congress and then vote against their interests, like cutting all their care and benefits. So they get a bad deal. But what no one's talking about, there are a lot of Republicans that are kind of on pins and needles because their districts have changed, too. And they're on the whisper like, "Hey man, we can't do that. Hey man, I have a certain religious faith that doesn't do very well in rural communities. I can't have my district go out to the rural parts of the state, you know?" And so I wish Republicans would be a little bit more bold and speak out about these ramifications because it's going to hurt some congressional districts that are occupied by minority lawmakers that are Democrats, but this will likely also hurt Republicans.
Marc: I want to highlight what you said. I was involved in the litigation over the 2010 census map drawn by the state of Texas in 2011. And one of the points that we made repeatedly was that Texas had gained four House districts. It was entirely the result of minority population growth. Overwhelmingly Latino population growth, but also some African American population growth. Republicans, just to put it bluntly, screwed over the minority community. It's the same thing. The victims of this process have been the very communities that they are demonizing. The very communities that they are screwing over in this revision process are the communities that are causing the state to gain additional power in Washington, D.C. So talk a little bit about what this Republican map does. Because it seems to me all it does is, again, screw over minority voters.
Trey Martinez Fischer: I chaired the Latino caucus in 2011. The minority community creates explosive growth. People don't realize that the largest African American population in the country is in Texas. People get surprised when they hear that, but it's true. Latino numbers are through the roof. But again, as hard as you work and as your allies work, you and I both know in Texas, fighting the bad guys on redistricting will take seven years if it's happening super.
Marc: At least seven years. I'm thrilled if we get done in seven years with the 2011 case that got filed, I still occasionally see notices of things in that case. The Republicans in Texas, they can stall redistricting like nowhere else in America.
Trey Martinez Fischer: We get this dynamic growth, we get these benefits, they reset the clock by dispersing these minority communities, and then we grind back over the course of the decade, and we get close again, the decade comes and they reset the clock. And so this is intentional. This is the business model. When someone says, "Well, what do you mean minority communities are impacted?" I'll give you a great example. There is a congressional district that runs from San Antonio out to West Texas. There's a county, Maverick County, that is 99.9% brown. They just split the county in half. If you live in one half of the county, you vote for one member of Congress. If you live in the other half of the county, you vote for the other member. That is exactly how you silence a voice. And no matter how hard those folks in Maverick County work to elect somebody, they will never win.
So I don't care what your analogy is, you play sports, you know, what would you play the game if you knew the score was going to be, you were going to be on the losing side, no matter how hard you fought? That's exactly what's going on here. And the technology is ridiculous. They're drawing maps with precision technology. And in the courtroom, this stuff has not kept up with the technology that these folks are using to slice and dice and crack and pack communities of color, especially in the state of Texas.
Marc: I'm so glad you said that, Representative, because I make this point over and over again to people. People say there's always been gerrymandering. What I tell them is, "Yeah, there was gerrymandering where a politician took out a paper map and had a general sense: I like this neighborhood, this county is good for me, this I don't like so much. "The amount of computer power, the amount and quality of the software and the demographic data that has been collected allows Republicans in the state of Texas to do something that to even use the same word as what was happening with paper maps does not come close to underscoring how targeted and pernicious they can be with modern technology and a political party that has no political constraint on them. In other words, they have no shame. There's no political limit to what they are willing to do. So when they produce the maps they're producing now, it is light-years different from what people think about when they say, "There's always been gerrymandering."
Trey Martinez Fischer: Honestly, this is an insult to gerrymandering. This is not gerrymandering. When I hear people say they're gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is easy. This is hard. We were in the courtroom together in 2011 in that challenge. The court itself had to appoint a map drawer from the Texas legislature because they don't have the tools or the technology. We're going into a courtroom, and these judges are in the 1.0 world where they have pen and paper, and we're going up against folks that bring their own maps to the legislature. This map that's being considered — that's awful — nobody knows who made it.
Marc: I was going to ask you who drew this map.
Trey Martinez Fischer: The Texas government didn't draw it.
Marc: And you know that for sure?
Trey Martinez Fischer: We get an alibi from all the committee members. I don't know, I haven't seen it. I don't know where it is. We've only seen it one time. They've only presented it once and have taken no public testimony on it. When this was initially done in Wisconsin, that map drawer who created all those districts found himself in Texas. His law firm all of a sudden had, not just a Madison office, but an Austin office. I wouldn't be surprised if folks like that are involved. With surgical technology, think about all the apps that we have. They know what we buy, they know what we like, they know where we live, they know our credit scores. They know that when you have a certain score, you have a tendency to vote a certain way. They're just using that based on race and zip codes and taking people out that they don't want and keeping the ones that they think will vote for them.
Marc: Do your Republican colleagues know that this is wrong? Do they realize that what they are doing is so deeply immoral, so deeply destructive to democracy? What is going on in the Republican Party that leads them to think that doing this is okay?
Trey Martinez Fischer: It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz. If you find the one that has a heart, you can ask them that. There are some folks that are bots. They're going to do what they're told. There's no thinking. The discipline of the Republican Party is: you do what they say or you face a primary. Then there are those that do think for themselves, and they go home and have to look their spouses in the eye and talk to their family members. They have to shop on aisle five of the grocery store where they run into real people. But they've gotten so used to it. I think that they're now just sort of tone-deaf because it's not just voting rights. It's, "We're going to take away somebody's healthcare," or, "We're going to tell you you can only love certain people."
Democrats aren't the only ones that have LGBTQ+ partners, right? And all the things they do with transgender children, that's just not for Democratic transgender children. So they have gotten so used to maybe saying an extra prayer at night or doing something to try to redeem themselves. But if they're not running for re-election, we might get them to rise up and say, "I'm going to vote no," or, "I'm not going to go. I'm not going to participate." But I think right now, you mention "I have an idea" and "Donald Trump" in the same sentence, and it's like, "OK, jump. How high?" It's kind of the vibe.
Marc: I have to take advantage of your expertise on tea leaf reading in Texas Republican circles. Abbott files his case, and then Ken Paxton comes in and says, "Oh, no, Your Honor, don't grant what Governor Abbott wants. He's wrong. It's filed prematurely. Dismiss his lawsuit," which, I hate to say, I agree with Ken Paxton on anything, but I agree with him on that. Then Paxton says, "I'm going to find my own lawsuit." And then you have Cornyn, who says, "Have the FBI come find these people," which is a complete non-sequitur. First of all, you guys have not done anything wrong. Number 2, there's no criminal anything. The Speaker of the House has issued some civil thing. Also, the FBI is not a law enforcement collection agency for state law enforcement. It's a clown show, these three people. Is this all about the Senate primary and Abbott wanting to run for president? It’s the gang that can’t shoot straight.
Trey Martinez Fischer: I want to reveal my age. It reminds me of an old episode of Benny Hill, to be honest with you. "Comedy Capers." It's 100% currying favor with Trump, absolutely all three of them. And then there's also some jousting going on between Paxton and Cornyn as they are facing each other in a primary. Just earlier, before all of this action took place, you had John Cornyn criticizing Ken Paxton for not working on this because he was golfing in Scotland at a Trump golf course. So it was like, "Hey man, can you get to work for a change? This is important." And I think that's why Paxton ended up coming in. Oh, I love the Governor's vigor on this and his enthusiasm, but the jurisdiction really lies with me and the local DA if we're going to do something.
So it is a thousand percent trying to be that guy that's going to curry favor with the president. And it just shows, "the hell with everybody else." There are 31 million people in Texas, 254 counties, two time zones, right? And all they care about is not the commander-in-chief; they care about their commander-in-cheat. He's just cheating his way to steal these maps. It's like a dog whistle. They're just focused on that.
Marc: And I assume that Ted Cruz is nowhere to be found, which, by the way, is quintessential Ted Cruz. For all we know, he's on vacation in some warm spot right now, which is why we haven't heard from him.
Trey Martinez Fischer: We hit him up for a recommendation for Cancun, but we didn't hear back from him. We wanted to see if he had any reviews for us, but no, nowhere to be found.
Marc: Let's talk about what the Republicans are not doing. You mentioned there were horrific floods in Texas. Floods don't just hurt Democrats or Republicans; they hurt everyone. A responsible governor would say, "You know what? Now is not a time to put clearly partisan division in a special session. Let's tackle the problems that are facing Texans." You might think that he'd be concerned that Congress just passed a bill that is going to strip healthcare from millions and millions of Americans, including lots and lots of Texans. I'm sure you could list five other things that Texas needs addressed right now instead of this. So talk a little bit about what Republicans are not doing when instead they're focused on a power grab.
Trey Martinez Fischer: In a special session, the Governor sets the agenda. He doesn't write the policy — we write the policy — but he sets the terms. On the issue of the flood, you raise a really good point. There might be some things that require legislation. If we're going to require how you communicate and we're going to realign our emergency systems, that maybe takes some policy.
That's going to take time. But most of the problem is funding. These local communities cannot get the funding they need to buy the expensive equipment that's going to tell you, "Hey, we have a flood coming, get out of here. "We don't even need to be in session. It really shows how callous he [Gov. Abbot] is. If he really wanted to look good and make us look bad, he could have fixed the floods all by himself in our absence. But something tells me he doesn't want to do it. And by the way, even though a flood will impact anybody, no matter what your political stripe is, those counties are pretty red counties. You would think that he'd want to take care of his counties that vote and support his politics. So not doing any of that, either by the regular means or using his budget execution authority, that's a big flag. It's not about the floods or anything else. It's just about pleasing Donald Trump.
Marc: You mentioned that Texas is a part-time legislature by design. It's a citizen legislature. You only meet every other year for a limited period of time. You also don't get paid very much. I think it's what, $7,200 a year?
Trey Martinez Fischer: You make that sound like a lot. Let's go with $600 a month.
Marc: You guys are obviously not doing this for the money. You're doing it because you're patriots. You're doing it because you love your country. You love your state. You care about the people of the state of Texas. That's why you're in the legislature. I am sure that for you and for the other Democrats, having to be out of state is a real burden. It's a burden on your families, on your employment and it's a burden psychologically, even before you get to all the threats and crazy people. In some sense, you didn't sign up for this, and yet you're doing it. Talk a little bit about what it means for your lives, for your families and for your ability to live as citizens when you're not in session.
Trey Martinez Fischer: I really want to thank you for asking that question. People sort of overlook that part. They think that we're all independently wealthy or make a big salary, and we make $600 a month. There is a rule that says for every day I'm gone without permission, I will pay a $500 fine. So one month's salary will be gone on the first day. It is difficult. It's about docket management for me. I know when I'm gone for six months, I move my cases around and get them to a place where they can hold. Then in June, I'll work as crazy as I can to catch up. Well, I can't do that now. We are citizens. Most of the people that I'm with, they signed the back of the check. They don't have their own business.
They depend on someone else for their livelihood. And imagine being gone for six months, showing up for a month, and then being told you've got to go again, and you have no idea when you're going to come back. It's hard for them. We have some folks that are single parents. These single parents are here with their children. Imagine how hard that is. And then, I've always got to look over my shoulder because I'm worried that somebody's going to nab me, either a law enforcement official or some vigilante that thinks it would be pretty cool to grab a state rep because Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton said to get them. So it's not easy. But we're doing this. We're the tip of the spear. I've been saying on this entire quorum break, you know, like the Apollo 13 mission where we had the magic line, "Houston, we have a problem," I keep saying, "America, we have a problem." We have a problem, and we need to wake up and we need to rise up because this democracy is being taken right in front of us.
The idea of them doing this in Texas in the middle of the decade should shock everybody. We can't take a day off because we think Governor Newsom is going to create some extra seats in California to offset these gains. We can't take that day off because we know Florida just assembled a redistricting committee today. We know that Missouri is thinking about it. We know that JD Vance was in Indiana today to look for more new seats in Congress. So we have our work cut out for us. And frankly, Marc, I hope we can catch enough stuff for the record because when our job is over, we hand the baton to you. You're going to be the one asserting the causes of actions and all of the flags and the flaws and the deviations from the process and the violations of rights and what's left of the Civil Rights Act that is still applicable in these fights.
Watch the full interview on YouTube here.
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