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Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and you're back with The Takeaway. We just took a big look at bipartisanship in US politics. Now, we're going to go to a state where bipartisanship is even less evident than in the US Congress. Last month, dozens of Democratic state legislators in Texas, left the Lone Star State in a high-profile move to deny quorum to the state's Republican lawmakers, making it impossible for them to pass a voting bill that restricts access to the ballot for many Texans.

The state lawmakers waited out the special session call by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, but Abbott simply called another special session immediately after the first one expired, and he has promised to continue to do so. Then this week, the situation escalated when the Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan signed arrest warrants for the 52 House Democrats who refused to return for the special session.

Dave Phelan: The sergeant-at-arms or any officers appointed by him are directed to send for all absentees, whose attendance is not excused for the purpose of securing and maintaining their attendance under warrant of arrest if necessary.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yo, now on top of that Democratic state Senator Carol Alvarado, filibustered the GOP voting bill 15 hours Wednesday night, all the way through Thursday morning.

Senator Carol Alvarado: I gaze at the portrait, a true Texas giant, our President Lyndon Baines Johnson, I'm reminded of his words on the day 1965, when he signed the Voting Rights Act, and when he said, "The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible laws, which imprison men because they are different from other men."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ultimately the bill passed along party lines in the state Senate, once again, placing the pressure back on Texas House members. With me now, to help make sense of all. This is James Barragán, who is the politics reporter for The Texas Tribune. Welcome to the show, James.

James Barragán: Hi Melissa, it's good to be here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What finally led to this moment of issuing arrest warrants?

James Barragán: They've been away for quite some time at this point, about a month, and these special sessions are about 30 days long. They had effectively run it out. As you said earlier last Friday, but then, Governor Abbott called one right away. Many of the House Democrats who were still in Washington, had said publicly, they were going to stay put that they saw no need to return to the state because if they did, then that would allow for the passage of the voting legislation and they did not want that to happen.

They had said very publicly that they saw no need to come back. The arrest warrants is something that the House had been contemplating even since the first special session and when they first broke away. This time around the Democrats had planned all these legal maneuvers to try to say, "Hey, I'm protected from being arrested," but our state officials have taken those to the Texas Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has said, those orders are actually not valid right now. That's pretty much what we have a manhunt really for these lawmakers.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You're saying that they're not valid?

James Barragán: There were a lower court decision State District Court decisions that said, "Hey, we as state courts will offer protection from being arrested, because we don't think that there's any criminal law that has been broken and there's no real justification for arresting these lawmakers." Essentially, what they've done is broken a Texas House rule. There's no actual criminal law that happened here. There's no criminal act. For someone to apprehend or arrest a lawmaker, especially if you try to put bodily force on them, there's no real justification. That's what the lower courts have said.

Those lower courts are run by Democratic judges. We have elect judges here in Texas, but as you go up the rung in the state judiciary, you have more Republican justices. That's exactly what Republican state officials have done. They've appealed those court decisions to the higher courts, which are run by Republicans, and not to be cynical of the state judiciary, but they've made those decisions along what you would think are the political lines.

Melissa Harris-Perry: James, how is it that members of the public in Texas are feeling right now, with this level of standoff between these two parties and the state courts involved as well?

James Barragán: I think it's been a difficult month for Texans. On top of all of the increases in COVID cases that we have and worries about kids coming back to school, we have to worry about lawmakers getting arrested, about lawmakers not coming back for a special session. As far as how the political tea leaves are shaping up, I don't think that this is changing a whole lot of minds. I think everybody has run to basically their political camp. If you're a Democrat, you're applauding these Democratic lawmakers who were saying they are fighting for voting rights by not coming back to the legislature.

If you're a Republican, you're obviously unhappy with them. You're saying they're not doing their job and that they ought to come back and stop wasting taxpayer money. I think one of the things that's interesting is that conversation about wasting taxpayer money because this is a special session. These last two special sessions, are special sessions that didn't need to be called. The way that the Texas legislature is set up we come in once every two years for about five months and we get all our business done, we pass it through your budget and that's it.

That's how the rules are, but the governor can always call a special session for whatever he wants, and he's called these special sessions, particularly for this election bill. There's a couple of other bills, including a bail reform bill, but the Democrats were very clear from the beginning, and the quorum break is a legal procedural maneuver under the legislative rules. Here we are. I think a lot of Texans beyond Democrat or Republican and going to political camp, are just kind of tired of this stalemate.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It feels to me like that political exhaustion must also be sitting on top of some anxieties around the other big fight going on in Texas right now about local mask mandates, particularly in schools. Talk to me a little bit about how that's playing out politically?

James Barragán: Governor Abbott has taken a really clear stance that he thinks the time for mass mandates is over. In his words, he said, "It's a time for a personal responsibility." That goes along with what Governor Abbott has had as his MO all along. He's banned local officials from imposing mass mandates or other safety guidelines that could help prevent the pandemic and has said that it's up to a personal responsibility, whether they want to wear a mask, whether they want to even get the vaccine, and he has been very vocal about it.

That's been his MO throughout the pandemic. I think what's changed here is the Delta variants and the high level of how contagious it is. With kids returning back to school, I think that presents a challenge for the governor now. He stayed strong. He said there will be no mass mandates in school or in any public government place or a public institution, and he's sued a lot of the big cities and big counties, which are run by Democrats that have tried to impose these. I think the one thing that there's a risk of here politically for him is that as school returns, kids are going to be in these highly populated places.

We've seen the Delta variant is much more contagious than earlier strands. When you put kids in big crowds with not just other children, but also adults who are going about their daily lives, I think you run the risk of contaging kids. As we all know, once you have kids, it's a whole different ball game because it doesn't matter whether you're a Republican, or a Democrat, or a liberal, or a conservative. You can be completely apolitical, but what you want is what's best for your children, and if someone's going to hurt your children or put policies in place that might hurt your children, I think they might have something to say at the ballot box.

Melissa Harris-Perry: James Barragán is a politics reporter for The Texas Tribune. Thanks so much for joining us, James.

James Barragán: Thank you.

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