x01a Research Archives

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After Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to have the state House Democrats who left the state to deny Republicans a quorum so that they could pass a new gerrymandered election map, Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu went on CNN’s News Central and during an interview with John Berman discussed Abbott’s threat.

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Rep. Wu said:

First of all, I would say, you know what? Today is a great day to end the corruption of Greg Abbott. This has gone on far too long.

The public has been enraged about this. How politicians continue to tell the public pretty words, but never actually do what they say they would do. This is Governor Abbott being upset about that because he’s been caught doing exactly that. And to Governor Abbott, frankly, he doesn’t know how to read the attorney general’s opinions because he used to be attorney general. And frankly, Democrats say come and take it.

CNN’s John Berman asked, “Come and take it. Do you think he could be successful taking your seats away?”

Leader Wu said, “No, it’s all bluster, sound and fury signifying nothing.”

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Texas Democrats have become famous, or infamous, depending on who you talk to, for cutting and running to try and stop Republican state lawmakers from passing legislation they don’t like, and history has repeated itself in 2025.

As RedState reported, Democrats there fled into the arms of Illinois Gov. and prospective 2028 presidential candidate JB Pritzker (D) on Sunday after Republicans unveiled a new Congressional map that some have called a “bloodbath” for Democrats headed into the 2026 midterms if enacted.

“We’re not walking out on our responsibilities; we’re walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent. As of today, this corrupt special session is over,” Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu proclaimed in a statement.

Already, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is laying the smack down on those who fled amid the special session, noting that consequences could soon be coming, including arrests on abandonment grounds and possibly appointing others to fill the vacancies created thanks to Democrats deliberately walking off the job.Though infuriating on one hand, on the other, you have to laugh at this stage in the game. I mean, as we pointed out, going to Illinois, which is home to one of the most corrupt and blatantly rigged Democrat political machines in the country, is not exactly the brightest idea these folks have had.

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In a high-stakes WarRoom segment, Steve Bannon and investigative bulldog John Solomon laid out the case that the Hillary Clinton-led Russia hoax was never a conspiracy theory—it was an orchestrated political dirty trick that corrupted our intelligence agencies, weaponized the media, and nearly derailed the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

And the most explosive part? The key players did it again in 2020—and they’re positioning to repeat it in 2026.

“This isn’t about old news,” Bannon declared. “This is about a pattern of institutional abuse that, if unpunished, will finish off our constitutional republic.”

QUICK CLIP:

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Comedian Bill Maher and Democratic Colorado Rep. Jason Crow debated President Donald Trump’s moves against universities, with Maher saying they had turned into “indoctrination camps.” Crow claimed Trump was not interested in improving universities and making them more affordable and argued that he was engaged in “his culture war” against them, prompting the comedian to point to responses to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel as an example of universities producing radicalism. The Daily Caller’s Natalie Sandoval breaks down the exchange for Media Madness. SUBSCRIBE to the Media Madness YouTube channel and please support our work by becoming a Daily Caller Patriot subscriber today.

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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood Federation of America in a bold and necessary move to protect women and uphold truth. His charge argues that Planned Parenthood lies to women, and those lies are costing lives.

Bailey’s suit, filed under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, accuses the nation’s largest abortion provider of misleading Missouri women about the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone.

For decades, Planned Parenthood has marketed itself as a health care provider and a champion of women’s rights. But behind the pink logos and the slick messaging lies a profit-driven machine that has consistently downplayed the physical, emotional, and spiritual risks of abortion, including chemical abortion. Now, under legal scrutiny, that deception is receiving the pushback it deserves.

According to Bailey’s complaint, Planned Parenthood falsely equated Mifepristone to over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol, misleading women into believing that chemical abortion is a minor and routine procedure. In reality, the risks are anything but minimal.

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Raul Luna-Perez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, killed a New Jersey mom and her 11-year-old daughter who were on their way to get milkshakes from Wawa, according to the New York Post. Perez was reportedly drunk behind the wheel of an SUV when he veered into oncoming traffic and crashed into their compact car.

 

The suspect had two previous arrests for DUIs in March and April and a domestic violence arrest in 2023.

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A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit killed California’s ammunition restrictions in July. They ruled that background checks for ammunition were unconstitutional, which opened the door.

And Californians did it right.

See, while they had to deal with an absolute headache in trying to buy ammo, including not being able to get it online at all, before the ruling. While there’s a stay in place, basically, and it sure as hell sounds like they did just that for the time they had.

Lifelong hunter J.R. Young of San Jose rushed to an online ammunition dealer last week after a federal court decision overturned a California gun law that required background checks in person at every point of sale.

“Is this freedom week?” he said. “I was just curious to see if this striking down of the law is allowing companies to ship into the state again.

“The way we live in society now — when we want to buy something, we don’t want to go and take a trip to the store.”

Many bullet junkies, hunters and gun enthusiasts like Young quietly celebrated the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that may or may not ultimately put a dent in the state’s strict policies for purchasing ammunition.

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ROME — ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Sunday urged more than a million Catholic youths to “spread your enthusiasm and the witness of your faith” when they return home to some 150 countries, during a Mass closing a weeklong encounter with the next generation of faithful.

“Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are,’’ Leo urged the young faithful. “Do not settle for less. You will then see the light of the Gospel growing every day, in you and around you.”

The young people camped out in sprawling fields southeast of Rome overnight after attending a vigil service for the Jubilee of Youth on Saturday, also presided by Leo who has been ferried to and from Vatican City by helicopter.

The Vatican said more than 1 million young people were present, along with 7,000 priests and 450 bishops.

The special Jubilee celebration is part of the Holy Year that is expected to draw 32 million people to the Vatican for the centuries-old pilgrimage to the seat of Catholicism.

The week has been a joyous gathering marked by bands of youths singing hymns as they move down cobblestoned streets, praying rosaries in piazzas and standing for hours at the Circus Maximus to confess their sins to priests offering the sacrament in a dozen languages.

Irregular Warfare Center Research Bibliography No.2: Lebanese Hezbollah in Latin America– smallwarsjournal.com
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This subject bibliography is a selection of top resources on Lebanese Hezbollah in Latin America and includes journal articles, reports, books, sections of websites, and videotaped talks. The dates of the material range from 2010 to 2025, encompassing various aspects of the terrorist organization and its criminal activities which include narcotics trafficking and money laundering. The purpose is to provide ready-access resources for the study of Hezbollah and its linkages to allied organizations—both states and non-state actors—in Latin America.

Download the bibliography here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Al Fashir is being suffocated to death.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has held the capital of North Darfur hostage in a 14-month siege – blocking food or fuel from entering the locality and forcing starvation on its 900,000 inhabitants.

The entire city is currently a militarised zone as Sudan‘s army and the Darfur Joint Protection Force fend off the RSF from capturing the last state capital in the Darfur region not currently under their control.

Rare footage sent to Sky News from inside al Fashir town shows streets emptied of cars and people.

The city’s remaining residents are hiding from daytime shelling inside their homes, and volunteers move through town on donkey carts distributing the little food they can find.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic.

Sea stars – often known as starfish – typically have five arms and some species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to tapestries of orange, purple, brown and green.

Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak’s first five years.

“It’s really quite gruesome,” said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the cause.

Healthy sea stars have “puffy arms sticking straight out,” she said. But the wasting disease causes them to grow lesions and “then their arms actually fall off.”

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President Donald Trump’s administration has suspended more than $200 million in research grants to UCLA, citing antisemitism and bias as the reasons.

The suspended grants are primarily through the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, according to a memo to the community from UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk.

The Los Angeles Times reported that with the addition of halted Department of Energy grants, the censure represents $300 million in suspended grants, according to “information shared with The Times on Friday by UC and Trump administration officials.”

Frenk, in his memo, denounced the decision as wrongheaded.

“With this decision, hundreds of grants may be lost, adversely affecting the lives and life-changing work of UCLA researchers, faculty and staff,” Frenk wrote in his July 31 memo. “In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons. This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.”

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White House Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett couldn’t offer any evidence that the Bureau of Statistics was involved in any nefarious actions with their jobs reports and admitted Trump just wants to put his own people in.

After the BLS issued the worst jobs report for years for July, Trump, in a fit of rage immediately fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Making Trump’s economy look even worse, the Bureau revised their jobs report for the last two months showing Demented Donald added 258,000 fewer jobs than initially reported.

Earlier in the interview, Hassett tried to claim the BLS numbers were propaganda, which is absurd.

WELKER: So is the president prepared to fire anyone who reports data that he disagrees with?

HASSETT: No, absolutely not. The president wants his own people there, so that when we see the numbers, they’re more transparent and more reliable.

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Over the past two decades, the posture of the United States towards China has evolved from economic cooperation to outright antagonism. US media outlets and politicians have engaged in persistent anti-China rhetoric, while the US government has imposed trade restrictions and sanctions on China and pursued military build-up close to Chinese territory. Washington wants people to believe that China poses a threat.

China’s rise indeed threatens US interests, but not in the way the US political elite seeks to frame it.

The US relationship with China needs to be understood in the context of the capitalist world system. Capital accumulation in the core states, often glossed as the “Global North”, depends on cheap labour and cheap resources from the periphery and semi-periphery, the so-called “Global South”.

This arrangement is crucial to ensuring high profits for the multinational firms that dominate global supply chains. The systematic price disparity between the core and periphery also enables the core to achieve a large net-appropriation of value from the periphery through unequal exchange in international trade.

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In a stunning display of the Democratic Party’s ongoing effort to blur the line between citizenship and lawbreaking, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) claimed that illegal immigrants—who by definition broke federal law to enter or remain in the country—are merely “long-term residents of the United States who happen to be undocumented.” The remark highlights the Left’s continued push to downplay the rule of law in favor of feel-good rhetoric, redefining criminal entry into the country as nothing more than a paperwork issue.

During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Padilla doubled down on his defense of illegal immigration, claiming his mission is to protect the millions of undocumented individuals living in the United States from what he called an “aggressive” and “cruel” approach to enforcement. Padilla criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to arrest, detain, and deport those who entered the country illegally, painting law enforcement and immigration officials as the villains, rather than acknowledging the legal consequences of breaking U.S. immigration laws.

Padilla is just one of many left-wing voices in Congress that continue to weaken immigration enforcement, reward illegal entry with taxpayer-funded benefits, and vilify anyone who dares to demand secure borders. By rebranding illegal immigrants as “undocumented residents,” Padilla and his fellow Democrat colleagues are attempting to erase the distinction between those who respect the nation’s laws and those who break them.

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The shock and outrage over President Donald Trump firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner because of weak jobs numbers seems increasingly bipartisan.

Several Republican senators told NBC News that they did not support Trump’s firing of Erika McEntarfer if it was, in fact, motivated by his displeasure over the poor jobs numbers released on Friday. (All indications are that it was.) Democrats, meanwhile, said Trump’s latest move was the behavior of an authoritarian.

On Friday, Trump quickly claimed without any evidence that the revised jobs numbers, which showed weaker job growth in May and June than previously projected, had been “manipulated.” But experts on the work of the BLS, which is part of the Department of Labor, pushed back, saying Trump’s claim is not plausible.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who served in the Clinton administration, said on ABC’s This Week that Trump’s firing “is way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did.” Summers explained: “These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals. There’s no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number.”

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The Trump administration declined to provide a guest to ABC News after the leader of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was fired over a poor jobs report.

On Sunday, This Week host George Stephanopoulos revealed that ABC had contacted the White House after President Donald Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.

“After the president fired the head of the BLS on Friday, we invited the White House to provide a guest to respond,” the host explained. “They declined.”

Instead, Stephanopoulos spoke to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers about the BLS shakeup.

“I mean, this is way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did,” Summers remarked. “I’m surprised that other officials have not responded by resigning themselves, as took place when Richard Nixon fired people lawlessly. This is a preposterous charge.”

“These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals,” he continued. “There’s no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number.”

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China and Russia began joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan on Sunday as they seek to reinforce their partnership and counterbalance what they see as a U.S.-led global order.

Alongside economic and political ties, Moscow and Beijing have strengthened their military cooperation in recent years, and their relations have deepened since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The “Joint Sea-2025” exercises kicked off in waters near the Russian port of Vladivostok and would last for three days, China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The two sides will hold “submarine rescue, joint anti-submarine, air defense and anti-missile operations, and maritime combat.”

Four Chinese vessels, including guided-missile destroyers Shaoxing and Urumqi, are participating in the exercises alongside Russian ships, the ministry said.

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Now, three mathematicians have finally provided such a result. Their work not only represents a major advance in Hilbert’s program, but also taps into questions about the irreversible nature of time.

“It’s a beautiful work,” said Gregory Falkovich, a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science. “A tour de force.”

Under the Mesoscope

Consider a gas whose particles are very spread out. There are many ways a physicist might model it.

At a microscopic level, the gas is composed of individual molecules that act like billiard balls, moving through space according to Isaac Newton’s 350-year-old laws of motion. This model of the gas’s behavior is called the hard-sphere particle system.

Now zoom out a bit. At this new “mesoscopic” scale, your field of vision encompasses too many molecules to individually track. Instead, you’ll model the gas using an equation that the physicists James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann developed in the late 19th century. Called the Boltzmann equation, it describes the likely behavior of the gas’s molecules, telling you how many particles you can expect to find at different locations moving at different speeds. This model of the gas lets physicists study how air moves at small scales—for instance, how it might flow around a space shuttle.

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Elon Musk’s Neuralink is revolutionising the way humans interact with technology by merging the power of thought with advanced computing. Its flagship innovation, a coin-sized brain implant called “the Link,” enables individuals to control computers, smartphones, and even games just by thinking. The implant has already transformed lives, helping paralysed patients regain digital independence and communication ability. Early recipients like Noland Arbaugh, Audrey Crews, Alex, and RJ showcase how neural signals can bypass damaged pathways to restore essential functions. Beyond assisting people with disabilities, Neuralink envisions a future where humans could communicate brain-to-brain, boost memory, and even merge with artificial intelligence. However, this pioneering technology also faces significant challenges, including complex surgeries, device reliability, and ethical concerns over neural privacy and long-term brain safety. Check how Neuralink works, the individuals already benefiting from it, and how it could change the future of humanity.

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DHAKA, Bangladesh — Abdur Rahman Tarif was talking to his sister Meherunnesa over the phone when the voice on the other end of the call suddenly fell silent.

In that moment, Tarif knew something bad had happened. He rushed home, dodging the exchange of fire between security forces and protesters on the streets of Dhaka. When he finally arrived, he discovered his parents tending to his bleeding sister.

A stray bullet had hit Meherunnesa’s chest while she was standing beside the window of her room, Tarif said. She was taken to a hospital where doctors declared her dead.

Meherunnesa, 23, was killed on Aug. 5 last year, the same day Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country in a massive student-led uprising, which ended her 15-year rule. For much of Bangladesh, Hasina’s ouster was a moment of joy. Three days later, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over the country as head of an interim government, promising to restore order and hold a new election after necessary reforms.

A year on, Bangladesh is still reeling from that violence, and Hasina now faces trial for crimes against humanity, in absentia as she is in exile in India. But despite the bloodshed and lives lost, many say the prospect for a better Bang

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The bloc’s economy is weakening due to reduced cooperation with Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko has said

The EU’s decision to reduce energy and trade cooperation with Moscow over the Ukraine conflict has cost the bloc more than €1 trillion ($1.15 trillion), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko has said.

In an interview with Izvestia on Monday, Grushko said the figure is based on various expert estimates of the economic consequences of the EU’s decision to impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia, adding that it accounts for lost profits from energy and trade cooperation.

According to Grushko, trade between the EU and Russia dropped from €417 billion ($482 billion) in 2013 to €60 billion ($69 billion) in 2023 and is now “approaching zero.” He added that Europe’s economy has subsequently taken a hit and is losing competitiveness.

“Natural gas in Europe is four to five times more expensive than in the US, and electricity is two to three times higher,” he said. “That is the price Europe has to pay for ending all economic contacts with Russia.”


 

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that refusing Russian gas supplies had cost EU countries around €200 billion ($231 billion). In late 2024, Russian officials also estimated that total EU losses tied to sanctions against Russia had reached $1.5 trillion. Meanwhile, Moscow has said it has acquired a “certain immunity” to Western sanctions.

Grushko’s comments come after the EU agreed a trade deal with the US, which commits the bloc to purchasing large volumes of American energy – which Moscow says will come at a much steeper cost than that provided by Russia – and imposes 15% tariffs on key EU exports. Numerous EU politicians have described the agreement as lopsided and damaging to the bloc’s interests.

Commenting on the US-EU deal, Putin claimed that the EU had essentially lost its political sovereignty, and that this directly leads to losing economic independence.

The EU began imposing sanctions on Russia in 2014, following the start of the Ukraine crisis, and expanded them drastically in 2022. Measures have targeted banking, energy exports, and other industries. Moscow considers the sanctions illegal, saying they violate international trade rules and harm global economic stability.

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Poland has signed a new contract to acquire an additional 180 K2 main battle tanks from South Korea, with the deal marking the first delivery of tanks in the Polonized K2PL configuration.

The agreement, finalized on Aug. 1 at the Bumar-Łabędy plant in Gliwice, was signed by General Artur Kuptel, head of the Armaments Agency, and Yongbae Lee, president of Hyundai Rotem, the South Korean manufacturer of the tanks.

As reported by Interia Biznes, the signing ceremony was attended by Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back. Kosiniak-Kamysz called the moment “a great history unfolding before our eyes” and emphasized that the Polish arms industry is poised to become a key engine of the national economy.

“This contract means the development of the arms industry, new jobs, and opportunities. Today, the entire government and local government are committed to building security,” he said. He also praised the K2 tanks, citing strong reviews from Polish soldiers, and reaffirmed NATO’s expectation for Poland to build competencies in armored warfare. “Poland is fulfilling this task diligently,” he added.

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CBS News is tracking the rising cost of products, including those most likely to be impacted by tariffs imposed earlier this year and new ones announced by President Trump on August 1, from the cost of common grocery items to the price of owning a vehicle.

Economists and other experts say consumers can expect to see higher prices in coming weeks and months for imported items.

Perhaps the most impacted day-to-day purchases for American families will be at the grocery store, where a large share of our most commonly purchased fruits and vegetables are imported from Mexico, Canada, China and other countries facing tariffs. Experts suggest the cost of those tariffs will be passed on to consumers in the grocery checkout lane.

The categories in this tracker reflect a selection from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index and average price data. We focused on goods and services that make up a meaningful share of household budgets and have noted with a special orange marker those that could be affected most by tariffs.

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The new Texas congressional map has a lot of perks.

If passed, the redistricting would give Republicans five more seats.

And, as a bonus, it would also mean no more Jasmine Crockett!

The redistricting map would literally draw Democrat ‘rising star’ Rep. Jasmine Crockett out of her own district, most likely costing Jazzy her seat.

Check it out:

 

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The US Department of Veterans Affairs is proposing to end certain abortion services to veterans, rolling back a Biden-era move to expand abortion rights.

In a proposed rule filed Friday, the department said that it is seeking to revoke access to abortions and abortion counseling for veterans and the beneficiaries of the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“We take this action to ensure that VA provides only needed medical services to our nation’s heroes and their families,” the department said in the filing.

Under the Biden administration’s rule, the department currently provides access to abortions when a pregnant veteran’s life or health is at risk if their pregnancy were carried to term, or if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest — regardless of state laws.

The proposed rule would allow abortions in cases where “a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term,” which, according to the filing, had been permitted even before the 2022 expansion.

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The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, has vowed to protect the Democratic members of the Texas house of representatives who left the state in an attempt to block Republican efforts to redraw Texas’s congressional maps.

“We’re going to do everything we can to protect every single one of them and make sure that – ’cause we know they’re doing the right thing, we know that they’re following the law,” Pritzker said at a press conference on Sunday in Illinois alongside some of the the Texas Democratic lawmakers.

The Texas Democrats fled the state on Sunday in an effort to prevent the Texas house from reaching the quorum on Monday needed to vote on a newly proposed congressional map.

In response to the Democrats’ actions, Greg Abbott, the Republican Texas governor, threatened to expel the Texas Democrats from the state house if they do not return by Monday at 3pm CT – when the legislature is set to resume. Ken Paxton, Texas’s Republican attorney general, also condemned their actions on Sunday and threatened their arrest.