Texas Legislators Called Back For Special Session On Abortion Bill

Members of the gallery in the Capitol in Austin played a role in a vote on an abortion bill taking place after an official deadline. "We will not allow the breakdown of decorum and decency to prevent us from doing what the people of this state hired us to do," Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday, in calling for a special session.

After a vote on a controversial bill to restrict abortion in Texas was deemed to have fallen outside of the state's legislative session, Gov. Rick Perry has called for a special session to take up the issue, along with other topics. The session is scheduled to begin July 1 at 2 p.m., ET.

As our colleague Elise Hu reported, the proposed abortion law inspired a filibuster attempt from state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth:

"Davis stood and spoke continuously for nearly 11 hours in an attempt to block passage of SB 5, a bill that would ban all abortions after 20 weeks and could effectively close all but five abortion clinics in the state. Supporters say the new, stringent standards raise the level of care for Texas women. The majority of Texas voters polled have shown support for restrictions on abortion."

A vote approving the bill was found to have occurred after the legislative session's official deadline of midnight, rendering the vote invalid.

That immediately led to questions of whether Gov. Perry would call lawmakers back to the Capitol — something he now says he's doing — to hold a special session that will take up the abortion issue as well as transportation and crime bills.

The Dallas Morning News
reports on what it calls a "proclamation" from Perry:

"Texans value life and want to protect women and the unborn. Texans want a transportation system that keeps them moving. Texans want a court system that is fair and just," he said.

Perry also alluded to the throngs who flooded the Capitol Tuesday night and disrupted the Senate just as it was poised to break the filibuster of Sen. Wendy Davis and push through abortion regulations.

"We will not allow the breakdown of decorum and decency to prevent us from doing what the people of this state hired us to do," Perry said.

From Texas, member station KERA reports that the opponents of the measure, who disrupted proceedings in the Capitol with their chanting and yelling, "say they're prepared to do it all over again."

It's unclear whether Davis will attempt another filibuster. But as Elise reports today, Davis has raised her profile extensively with her marathon speech.

 

Clock Runs Out On Controversial Texas Abortion Bill

The Texas Capitol rotunda filled with supporters of state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, who filibustered a controversial abortion bill.


The official clock ran out on Texas lawmakers overnight, which effectively killed a bill that would have dramatically restricted abortion in the nation's second most populous state. Hours of chaos and confusion in Austin finally lifted as Texas Senate leaders decided that the vote on Senate Bill 5 did not clear a constitutionally-mandated hurdle that it pass before midnight.

The vote happened at 12:02 a.m. CT, two minutes after the Legislature's mandated end to its special session. (Special sessions in Texas are restricted to 30 days and called by the governor.) Democratic lawmakers, and throngs of protesters that filled the Capitol rotunda, had sought to run out the clock on the vote all day.

There was the daylong filibuster attempt by Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis, nearly an hour of procedural back-and-forth and roaring crowds in the gallery that disrupted order and slowed down the process. The Dallas Morning News
describes the scene:

"The extended drama came after Republicans used strict interpretations of Senate rules to knock Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, off her marathon filibuster. The final vote was delayed several minutes by loud applause from the gallery, drowning out the action on the floor."

Republicans left the Senate floor after the vote without officially adjourning the session. Then, curiously, the official time on the vote records changed. The Texas Legislature's official website at first showed the bill had passed on Wednesday, June 26, or after midnight. But it was changed to reflect passage before midnight, June 25. Who made the change is unclear.

A private caucus of the full Senate followed the chaotic final vote.

Republicans ultimately conceded that the bill did not pass in time.

"Regrettably, the constitutional time for the first called session of the 83rd Legislature has expired. Senate Bill 5 cannot be signed in the presence of the Senate at this time. Therefore, it cannot be enrolled," Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said. He added, "It's been fun, but seeya soon."

The victory for Democrats is probably temporary. There's nothing to prevent Republican Gov. Rick Perry from calling another 30-day special session, specifically on the topic of abortion legislation. Polls show Texas voters favor abortion restrictions and it's a deeply red state where Republicans control all statewide offices, the Texas House and the Texas Senate by wide margins.

 

Texas Lawmaker's 11-Hour Filibuster Ended On A Technicality

Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, donning her pink tennis shoes during a Tuesday filibuster.

By midnight Texas time, it was all over but the parliamentary inquiries. After a nearly 11-hour filibuster attempt by state Sen. Wendy Davis to block sweeping restrictions on abortion, the Republican-dominated Texas Senate successfully shut down the filibuster on points of order. (See update at the bottom of this post.
)
"This is probably the worst night that I've experienced since I've been in the Senate, maybe since I've been in public life," said state Sen. Kirk Watson, a Democrat from Austin.

Davis stood and spoke continuously for nearly 11 hours in an attempt to block passage of SB 5, a bill that would ban all abortions after 20 weeks and could effectively close all but five abortion clinics in the state. Supporters, in a largely pro-life state of 26 million, say the new, stringent standards raise the level of care for Texas women.

The dramatic restrictions in the bill had already drawn national attention for their reach. But her riveting, one-woman attempt to stop it put Wendy Davis' name on the national map. A single mother at 19 who raised her children while putting herself through Harvard Law School, Davis has represented a Fort Worth swing district in the Texas Senate since 2008. To catch a glimpse of her, the line outside the Texas Senate gallery wound down three floors of the Texas Capitol for hours. President Barack Obama tweeted a link to the livestream, saying, "Something special is happening in Austin tonight." Fueled by a popular Twitter hashtag, #standwithwendy, more than 100,000 people were still watching a parliamentary debate over Roberts Rules of Order on the livestream at midnight.

Davis' chair was removed before she began speaking at 11:18 a.m. CT Tuesday. Donning pink tennis shoes, she started by saying, "I'm rising on the floor today to humbly give voice to thousands of Texans who have been ignored. These voices have been silenced by a governor who made blind partisanship and personal political ambition the official business of our great state."

Had the filibuster continued until midnight, Davis would have blocked the controversial abortion bill from passage because the legislature's special session was constitutionally-required to come to a close by then. A successful filibuster would have prevented the Senate getting a chance to take a final vote on the bill.

The quirky filibuster rules in Texas made Davis' attempt both fascinating and perilous. In Texas, lawmakers aren't allowed to lean on a desk or chair during a filibuster and everything discussed while speaking continuously must be germane — you can't talk about topics unrelated to the bill. Anything deemed not germane is subject to a point of order, and Davis went up against a three-strikes-you're-out-rule on those points. In the seventh hour of her filibuster, Davis donned a back brace, but state Sen. Tommy Williams, a Republican, called a point of order on it. She had to lose the brace and take a strike. And the third strike was for speaking about a sonogram bill, which sounds related but the chair sustained the point of order on germaneness, and it ended her filibuster attempt.

Wildly outnumbered in the Texas Legislature, Democrats didn't have the votes to beat back the bill earlier in the special session. Republican Gov. Rick Perry added abortion bills to the special session's allowed bill topics late in the game, which created the opportunity for Democrats to try to run out the clock and stop the bill from final passage before the session ended at midnight Tuesday night.

Republicans in Texas hailed the bill's earlier passages in the legislative process as wins for women's health. But Texas Monthly
's longtime political scribe Paul Burka wonders whether the national attention on the legislation — and the very public fight to stop it — could be a victory for Democrats in the long run. He writes, "The more Republicans take actions that are anathema to younger women, the more we will hear from Democrats about the Republican War against Women. In the age of the Internet and the social media, it is impossible to build a wall around Texas."
The line to enter the Senate Chamber spills into multiple levels of the Texas Capitol rotunda as Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, filibustered an abortion bill in Texas.

 

'Prince Avalanche' Trailer: Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch Get Testy in the Texas Heat (Video)

The first official trailer for David Gordon Green's indie-comedy surfaced on Monday and showcases more antics and banter from the films mismatched protagonists.

While Magnolia Pictures previously released a short teaser for the film, the new trailer gives viewers a deeper look at the story.

Adapted from the 2011 Icelandic film Either Way by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson, Prince Avalanche is an atypical buddy comedy that follows the exploits two highway road workers, Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch), who spend their summer in solitude, repainting the traffic lines on a Texan backcountry road that was ravaged by a 1988 wildfire.

PHOTOS: Sundance Film Festival 2013: THR's Video Diaries

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it was acquired by Magnolia, and also screened at SXSW and the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival -- where Green was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director.

The Hollywood Reporter’s   David Rooney,   in his Sundance film review, praised Green’s minimalist film. “Perhaps Green’s chief accomplishment in this odd little gem of a movie is that he coaxes that mutual compassion out of the characters without having to put it into words,” he writes.

Prince Avalanche opens in theaters and on demand on August 9.