I really appreciate commentors like yourself that add value to posts with clarifying details. Thank you!

Clearly against the spirit but not letter of that rule.

MAGAs have been playing this game for a long time. It's about time the Dems demonstrated that it's a two-edged sword that can be welded against them as well.

Democrats used the technique of “editing” an existing bill by replacing all the text. Its not technically new legislation, its an edit, which doesn’t require 30 days before passage. Clearly against the spirit but not letter of that rule.

The national Congress pulls this trick regularly, also in order to get around rules limiting the speed at which legislation can be introduced. I believe the PPACA was passed out of the body of another bill, after Republicans tried to use calendaring rules to obstruct the legislation, back in 2010. One of the bigger tax bills - either Trump's or Bush's, I can't recall - was passed in a similar manner.

Maybe we'll see a federal court block this on a technicality, but if they do it would be a huge shift in how legislation is moved in the face of minority obstruction.

Often called “zombie bills”… Georgia Republicans do it all the time.

Letter of the law has effectively (and unfortunately) been the law of the land for some time now, the only time judges try to consider the "spirit" of the law these days is when they are corrupt and trying to skew their decisions a certain way while claiming to be impartial.

I have no qualms with people trying to use that fact to maintain the power of the people when we are up against fascists thugs who disregard all laws, spirit or written, whenever it suits them. Fuck them.

This is either the beginning or the end of democracy.

I know its retaliatory and probably necessary for blue states, but in the long run it will get worse for votes to count.

You have determined why this is such a big deal that our grandkids or grandroids will look back at this moment as pivotal in American history, and the beginning of the end. It's fucking sad and nobody really gets it.

This is the beginning of a power struggle between states that will eventually, effectively dissolve the union. Democracy on the national stage dies when the states just start inventing their own power structures in order to stay on the stage at all. After a point, federal government in states will become more of a liability than a benefit, particularly for states or coalitions of states who make more money than they receive from the federal government, and they will start making their own decisions how to use their tax money. And we should all have a pretty good idea where it goes from there.

And it's not even the wrong choice either, it HAS to be done, it's just the outcome of what happens when you have a democracy-destroying dictator take over a nation. We didn't think it could happen, and broadly, the country still doesn't think it could happen... even as it's happening.

California knows it's not ideal, which is why it has an expiration date when it would have to be voted in again by the people (unlike in Texas). Have to fight fire with fire or you lose before you even start.

What's better, civil war or Fourth Reich?

I've been calling Trump's administration the Confederate victory 160 years later. They played the long game and people got cozy with the racists around.

It will take a lot longer than our generation.

This will indeed result in the dissolution of the United States, but before it becomes armed conflict, a lot of things have to happen.

Once every state has "restructured" their representational maps to whatever the fuck they want and it becomes an ongoing stalemate, eventually many states or coalitions of states who bring in more money than they receive from the federal government are going to start withholding their tax money and making their own decisions how to spend their funding. This will start slow so it doesn't immediately get squashed by the army or national guard, it will be a bill here or there, some will get stopped by courts, some won't.

Eventually, enough of a region's money will stay within-region that the whole idea of belonging to a union will seem arbitrary and pointless. People will still elect clowns to speak and vote on bills and such, but it will slowly become both more performative and more contentious.

When the country starts to resemble power-blocs with bold lines between alliances of states representing different ideals or values, that's when a soft form of segregation begins. The Southern Alliance will have beef with the Cascadian Union, the Northern Heartland will have corn disputes with the nation-state of Neo York. The Eastern Pedophile Coalition will get in fights with the small province of RaytheonDisneyTimeWarnerJohnsonAndJohnson, and as these tensions heat up over years, it will become cultural divides, languages will start to drift, accents will become stronger.

Once we have the clear dividing lines between groups of people, THAT is when all-out war is far more likely than ever. It may take a long time to come to that, but there may also be a lot of "spats" leading up to it. For the immediate future it's more likely to be civil unrest, riots, national guard crackdowns and protests and counter protests until the violence just starts to feel normal.

Exposes? Everybody that pays attention has known about the bullshit that is gerrymandering forever.

Oh it won't be a wash. Republican gerrymandering is basically all in place. gerrymandering becomes less effective/ more risky the more extreme you do it, to when you take it to it's extreme or go past it, it backfires.

Blue states have largely kept their powder dry is what's really going on. So there was little benefit and much to lose with Trump picking this fight.

This is sad that america is being shown how little voting matters when district manipulation occurs.

Single representative geographically constrained districts are already a bad system. The fact that these districts have swollen from 15-20k (at the nation's founding) to 600k+ (in the modern day) have only escalated the degree to which politicians (and their donors) get to pick their voters.

If you want to talk about fixing our broken political system, we need to consider uncapping the total number of House Reps (an artificial limit imposed back in the 1920s to benefit incumbents) and shrink district sizes and afford voters the freedom to select representatives outside the constraint of voting districts.

Bemoaning the gamesmanship over district shapes, at this stage, is just arguing over how you want the game to be rigged. But the idea that districts which are more swing-y are somehow "more fair" than ones that are entrenched by a particular party ignores the dynamics that swing a district to begin with (money, media access, internal party politics). People outside the party duopoly are still wholly unrepresented. People on the losing end of an election are also unrepresented. And people who can't access their elected representative (because they can't afford a $2000/plate fund raising lunch) are also unrepresented.

Actually, the supreme courts of Texas and California are separate and distinct from each other.

Texas courts failing to stop partisan gerrymandering aimed at political parties choosing their voters rather than the other way around wouldn't make it hypocritical for those in California to protect the concept of "one person, one vote".

If anyone is being hypocritical here, it's Mike Johnson (for being against California doing it but for Texas doing it) and zero sum Democrats (for being against Texas doing it but not against California doing it) with no regard for the damage to representative democracy and any third party or independent candidates trying to take on the Neoliberal behemoth that is the California DNC from the left.