Some of the Texas Democratic elected officials who’ve left their state in hopes of thwarting Trump’s redistricting plans are now in California, talking strategy with Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi.

You may have heard about the saga where Texas statehouse Republicans are trying to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts to give Republicans five extra seats in Congress. Redistricting normally happens right after the US Census, but this year they’re trying to pull this in the middle of 2025. The goal, of course, is to try and preserve the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives, which they might lose next year in the midterm elections, because continuing inflation, tariffs, and Epstein have Trump’s approval ratings in the toilet.

Hoping to prevent this gerrymandering, many state-level Texas Democrats have fled the state in a (so-far successful) attempt to prevent the statehouse from being able to meet quorum and hold a vote on the gerrymandering. They’ve apparently run off to several different states, but KTVU reports that several of them are in Sacramento today, meeting with none other than Governor Gavin Newsom and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi to discuss strategy.

Newsom has taken a particularly active role in the fight. He’s proposing we redistrict California to add more Democrat seats, which could offset the seats that Republicans gain. California redistricting is usually handled by an independent committee, Newsom’s gambit would eliminate that committee and put the whole process in the hands of the statehouse, which is exactly what Texas is doing.

But doing that would require voter approval, via a special election this coming November. For what it’s worth, illegitimate son-fathering former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would campaign against Newsom’s measure.  

It’s still a mystery what Pelosi, Newsom, and Texas Democrats discussed. They were scheduled to have a 2 pm PT press, which started late, but The Hill is covering it with live video.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Related: Gavin Newsom Sues Fox News For Saying He Lied About Phone Call With Trump [SFist]

Image: Tobias Haase via Wikimedia Commons

A Kentfield family is among the missing after Friday's flash floods in Central Texas. Mark Walker, 52, who's the brother of former Giants pitcher Tyler Walker, Mark's wife, Sara, 50, and their son Johnny, 14, were visiting Hunt, Texas. Their daughter Ellie was reportedly rescued from summer camp.

As the Chronicle reports, Mark's cousin wrote on Facebook that the family disappeared during the flooding. Mark’s brother Tyler Walker, who pitched for the Giants from 2004 to 2008, currently lives in San Rafael and declined to comment.

As KTVU reports, friends and family shared the Walkers’ photos and urged the public to come forward with any information as the death toll from the flooding climbed past 80. In Kerr County, search teams have recovered 68 bodies—including 28 children—along the Guadalupe River, where several summer camps were hit hard.

At sunset on Sunday, around 400 people gathered on the baseball fields at Bacich Elementary in Kentfield for a candlelight vigil. Adults and children stood in silence, many holding candles or white roses. “We all love them,” one speaker told the crowd. “Keep the faith.”

“She was from there. I think her mom lived down there,” said Pete Johnson, a nearby resident, as reported by KGO. “They were just up the street from us. I know our kids went to the same school about the same age. It’s just a terrible tragedy.”

Marin Catholic High School, where the Walkers have connections, is planning a prayer service on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the St. Francis Chapel. “We are still praying for a miracle in hopes that Ellie will be reunited with her mom, dad, and brother,” the school wrote in a statement.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said 41 people remain unaccounted for statewide, and that number could still rise. Search efforts continue, including for 10 girls and a counselor from one of the flooded camps.

This story is developing.

Image: Angela Walker Murphy/Facebook

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

A dozen undocumented immigrants arrived in San Jose on a bus from Texas this past weekend, and San Jose is making no apologies for rolling out the welcome mat with food, clothing, and medical care.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are continuing their political stunt of shipping busloads of migrants to blue states, but the blue states like California have largely been taking them (though there is a growing crisis with mostly Venezuelan migrants in New York City).

There has been political pushback here over these governors' treatment of the migrants. California Attorney General Rob Bonta is investigating the possibly shady circumstances of the transport, in which the immigrants have allegedly been deceived or not told where they’re going, and he's called the practice “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”

This past weekend, San Jose got its first busload from Texas, according to KTVU. That station describes the bus as bringing “more than two-dozen migrants seeking asylum in the United States,” and notes that they originated in El Paso.

"Migrants were previously detained in El Paso, Texas and were put on a bus with a choice of Colorado or California. And those that chose California were dropped in Downtown San Jose," Santa Clara County Office of Immigrant Relations manager Aundraya Martinez, told KTVU.

The East San Jose arrivals include seven adults and five children, and several Santa Clara County nonprofits are accommodating them with food, clothing, medical services, and temporary shelter.

It’s the first such busload to arrive in San Jose, but the city anticipated this by forming a Welcoming Migrants Plan. KGO identifies two of the nonprofits providing services as the Amigos de Guadalupe Center and Ayudando Latinos A Soñar (ALAS).

"Santa Clara County is proud to be a sanctuary county. And we are committed to supporting all members of our community, regardless of status," Martinez added to KTVU.

Regardless, ALAS executive director Belinda Hernandez Arriaga says they’re committed to providing the new arrivals with help and services.

"You know when you see it on the news, you just see a group, but when you're with them individually you see that mom, you see that dad, that child, that aunt, that grandparent just like you — just like me," Arriaga told KGO.

Related: In Cold, Cruel Christmas Eve Stunt, Buses of Migrants End Up at Kamala Harris’s DC Home [SFist]

Image: Immigrants who have illegally crossed into the US and caught by authorities, have had shoe laces removed before they are released as they await deportation at the McAllen, Texas bus station on June 23rd, 2014 (Photo by Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images)

Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, the woman who had been sought for over a month in the May homicide of San Francisco-based competitive cyclist Moriah Wilson, was arrested Wednesday in Central America by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Armstrong, 34, was located at a hostel on Santa Teresa Beach in Provincia de Puntarenas. As CBS News reports, via a statement from the Marshals Service, investigators believe Armstrong flew from Austin to Houston shortly after being questioned by police last month, and then flew to the New York area where she boarded a plane to Costa Rica via Newark International Airport, using a fake or borrowed passport.

The case rocked the local cycling community back in May, when it was learned that 25-year-old Anna "Mo" Wilson had been found dead while on a trip to Austin. The soap-opera-esque details soon emerged that an SUV belonging to Armstrong had been seen on surveillance video at the home where Wilson was killed — and that this appeared to be a love triangle situation, or at least that is what Armstrong's likely motive was.

Wilson had previously dated cyclist Colin Strickland, who was Armstrong's boyfriend, and the two had apparently hung out while Wilson was in Austin for a cycling event. Strickland was not considered a suspect in the case, and was never charged.

Armstrong was quickly brought in for questioning on May 13, following the discovery of Wilson's body on May 11, and investigators say she "continued to remain very still and guarded" when she was confronted with the evidence of her car at the murder scene. She then made a quick getaway, and the Marshals Service says it elevated the case to major-case status after the arrest warrant for Armstrong was issued May 19.

A source in the investigation told detectives that Armstrong had previously text Wilson telling her to "stay away" from her boyfriend, and she had been under the impression that Strickland and Wilson were somehow romantically involved going back to January.

Wilson's family, as CNN reports, issued a statement saying, "While we will not elaborate about the ongoing investigation, we do feel it's important to clarify that at the time of her death, those closest to her clearly understood, directly from Moriah, that she was not in a romantic relationship with anyone."

Earlier reports suggested Wilson may have been planning to move to Austin at the time of her death, but her family said she had been planning to leave the SF Bay Area and move back home to Vermont.

Wilson was called the "winningest woman in the American off-road scene" when it came to cycling, and specifically "gravel racing" which is a recently established hybrid of road racing and mountain biking. As CNN notes, she had also excelled as a skier in younger years before switching to cycling.

Strickland told investigators that the relationship was "platonic and professional," but to combat Armstrong's jealousy he had apparently changed Wilson's name in his phone, deleted texts, and attempted to hide the fact that he was having dinner with her the night of the murder.

"There is no way to adequately express the regret and torture I feel about my proximity to this horrible crime," Strickland said in a statement to the Austin American-Statesman. "I am sorry, and I simply cannot make sense of this unfathomable situation."

Armstrong is currently expected to be returned to the United States, if she hasn't already returned, and she faces a murder charge in Texas.

Photo of Armstrong via the US Marshals Service

Republicans' memories are painfully short when it comes to anything anyone said longer than a few days ago. But if there's one terrific thing about Twitter, it's that it keeps a record of their nonsense that we can at least throw back in their virtual faces when need be.

Case in point: Senator Ted "Grandpa Munster" Cruz was among the many Republican politicians and pundits who used California's wildfires and power outages in 2020 to make spurious political claims about the ineptitude of Democratic leadership. But now that a much vaster swath of his own state of Texas has been plunged into darkness and cold in the dead of winter due to a similarly aging power grid and the unpredictable forces of climate change, Twitter is making sure Ted's dumb tweets get bubbled back to the surface this week.

On August 19, 2020, Senator Cruz retweeted a notice from Gavin Newsom's office asking Californians to conserve energy before 10 p.m. by setting thermostats to 78 and turning off unnecessary lights and appliances.

"California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity," Cruz said. "Biden/Harris/AOC want to make CA’s failed energy policy the standard nationwide. Hope you don’t like air conditioning!"

Well, Californians can now clap back with "Hope you don't like heat when it's freezing out!" while 3.4 million Texans are still without power, two days after a weather system pummeled them with snow and ice, freezing gas wells and crippling the state's energy grid. As the Chronicle explains today, our state's biggest blackouts last year only affected between 250,000 and 500,000 PG&E customers, and the largest one was a pre-emptive shutoff during an extreme weather event to prevent wind-driven power-line breaks that can start wildfires. Both states have inadequate and "non-smart" grids that lack modern battery backups, but Texas has a grid that's cut off from other states, and relies even less on renewable sources — though its windmills froze this week along with the gas wells.

As one Twitterer replied today, "Just about 60 days ago Texas wanted to remove themselves from the Union. Now with 4 million without electricity they went straight to the US government for help. And Joe Biden, without even a second thought, gave them help. He didn't say 'wait a minute that's a red State'."

And what's this? Maybe without Trump to back him up on the virtual playground, Cruz backed down!!!

On Tuesday, he replied to all this online mockery, and coverage of it on The Hill, with a SHRUG EMOJI!!

You're a revolving asshole, Ted! And don't forget it!

Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images

San Francisco-based science media specialist Jessica Decker, who works at the California Academy of Sciences, jumped into the fray of volunteers looking to help victims of Hurricane Harvey — and to help volunteers coordinate their efforts and find locales at which to volunteer. On Friday, with the help of a collaborator in Boston, Danny McGlashing, she created an online relief map, mapping volunteer opportunities as well as shelters, medical aid, and other relief resources. They also created a rescue map that takes individuals' requests for rescue on social media and maps them, with color codes for levels of urgency.

As Decker tells CBS 5, "Thousands of panicked people were tweeting for help as the water rose, and 911 calls got stalled or resulted in hours-long delays. We just couldn’t let those go by." She and McGlashing decided to mobilize and build a tool themselves saying, "It became apparent there was no organized project to plug into, yet, and plenty of people on Twitter looking for one."

Now, five days into the disaster, the maps are still being used — on the rescue map as of this afternoon there are 153 rescues listed as "emergent" and 389 listed as "urgent."

Those seeking help are told to tweet their location and any details @HarveyRescue with the hashtag #HarveySOS. As rains have moved, calls for rescue and volunteers have been coming from Port Arthur via Twitter today.

Decker says she went onto Twitter Friday thinking about a possible mapping project, saying, "I have helped with other open-mapping relief efforts in the past."

Also, Decker's project itself needs data and map volunteers, and you can learn how to help on the website. Over 500 people have contributed to the project so far.

Previously: Facebook And Google Pledge Matching Funds For Hurricane Harvey Disaster Relief

In a first of its kind challenge to the "settled law" of marriage equality, the Texas Supreme Court this week heard arguments in a case that questions to what extent Texas has to treat same-sex couples equally. The case, Pidgeon v. Turner was brought by a pair of — ahem, bigoted — Houston taxpayers and "religious conscientious objectors" by the names of Jack Pidgeon and Larry Hicks who don't like the fact that the city of Houston provides spousal benefits to all couples, gay and straight. As Slate explains, their attorneys are pointing to a state law, Texas's all but defunct gay marriage ban, that specifically bars state entities from providing benefits to same-sex couples. Furthermore, they argue that the two Supreme Court cases that most legal experts would say settle the issue of marriage quality, 2013's United States v. Windsor and 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges, don't relegate Texas's law to the history bin.

Hopefully, judges at the Texas Supreme Court will shut this down quickly, however they tried to avoid hearing the case already, last September, and have now been compelled to do so by anti-gay activists and Republican officials. This despite the fact that the SCOTUS ruling in 2015 was quite sweeping and specific in saying same-sex couples deserved "equal dignity", and prohibiting states from denying "all the benefits" associated with marriage to all couples.

The argument these two Houston jerks put forth, though, is that while the state and its cities may have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, they don't have to go any further than that in providing benefits.

Justice John Devine, a conservative on the Texas Supreme Court, issued a dissent with some bizarre logic to the court's decision not to hear the case back in September, agreeing with the idea that spousal benefits aren't guaranteed under the SCOTUS rulings.

Devine wrote:

After all, benefits such as health insurance provide financial security as couples decide whether to have a child. An opposite-sex marriage is the only marital relationship where children are raised by their biological parents. In any other relationship, the child must be removed from at least one natural parent, perhaps two, before being adopted by her new parent(s). This does not diminish any child’s inherent dignity, a fact the City presumably recognizes by extending benefits to their employees’ children regardless of the employees’ marital status. But it does explain why the State might choose to direct resources to opposite-sex couples.

I guess he missed the whole in-vitro fertilization phenomenon?

Pidgeon and Hicks's attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, argued in court on Wednesday that health insurance, for instance, is not a fundamental right. And "We don’t know if Obergefell compels equal treatment with regard to nonfundamental rights."

And, unfortunately, because this is Texas, some of the justices are sympathetic to the idea of withholding benefits from gay couples — some of them, perhaps, with a view toward not being voted off the bench by conservative constituencies. But, as Slate explains, the court is like to side-step having to rule on the merits of this case by dismissing it on standing grounds instead, because "taxpayers are rarely allowed to challenge laws they dislike just because they help fund them."

Stay tuned.

A Texas judge made her staunch stance on gay marriage publicly known on Tuesday, and her position might surprise you. Judge Tonya Parker of Dallas County made the bold decision to no longer marry couples until same-sex marriage is legal. "I do not perform them because it is not an equal application of the law. Period," she explained at a monthly meeting for the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas.

Although she will no longer conduct marriage ceremonies, she does respectfully tell amorous couples why she won't wed them and then passes them along to another judge. As reported by NY Daily News, she said:

"I use it as my opportunity to give them a lesson about marriage equality in the state because I feel like I have to tell them why I’m turning them away," she said.

"So I usually will offer them something along the lines of, 'I'm sorry. I don't perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn’t apply to another group of people.'

“And it’s kind of oxymoronic for me to perform ceremonies that can’t be performed for me, so I’m not going to do it,” she added.

Not that you need further explaining about the Lone Star state's stance on LGBT rights, but same-sex marriage is illegal in Texas.

Following her remarks at the Stonewall Democrats meeting this week, Judge Parker released the following statement to the media on Thursday afternoon:

I faithfully and fully perform all of my duties as the Presiding Judge of the 116th Civil District Court, where it is my honor to serve the citizens of Dallas County and the parties who have matters before the Court.

Performing marriage ceremonies is not a duty that I have as the Presiding Judge of a civil district court. It is a right and privilege invested in me under the Family Code. I choose not to exercise it, as many other Judges do not exercise it. Because it is not part of our duties, some Judges even charge a fee to perform the ceremonies.

I do not, and would never, impede any person’s right to get married. In fact, when people wander into my courtroom, usually while I am presiding over other matters, I direct them to the Judges in the courthouse who do perform marriage ceremonies. If my deputy is not busy, I will even ask him to escort or help these individuals find another Judge who performs the ceremonies. I do this because I believe in the right of people to marry and pursue happiness.

Parker is the first openly lesbian African-American elected official in the great state of Texas.

This morning Steve Blow, who is a columnist for the Dallas Morning News and not a club DJ in the Castro, published his thoughts on why his "Regular Joe" Rangers deserve to win the World Series. Ignoring for a moment that the team who deserves to win the World Series is actually the team who sends the most players around those four little bases the most times, Blow seems oblivious to what might happen should he invoke the ire of SFGate commenters.

As Texans are wont to do, Blow repeatedly questions our city's devotion to his great nation, feigning surprise that we even still play baseball in San Francisco. As he says, he figured that by now we would have "decided that baseball chalk isn't Earth-kind or that the game is overtly sexist or gender-role confining or some such claptrap."

Blow's column isn't really about baseball at all though: He'd rather get political and offer us all of us Nobel Prizes for being "so dang enlightened," (!) before asking us nicely to "save baseball's highest achievement for a bunch of Regular Joes who earned it."

There's even a classic "my dad is cooler than yours" offense when he goes after Mayor Newsom's beautiful coif:

Oh dear.

We received the following missive from an angry Texas resident (or troll) early this morning. While she doesn't directly point to it, we assume it is in response to this. She writes to us, saying:

I would like to know why you feel you need to attack citizens who are concerned about the Facist [sic] Obama's plan to finish the destruction of the United States of America? Why is it you hate this country so much? It has provided you with the drugs you love, the far left liberals you admire so much, good food, housing, the right to spout your far left liberal sh*t, and to spread your hate. For years while Bush was still in office he was called evey filty [sic] name, and submitted to every virile action of the far left, while you have supported on of the most corrupted politicians in Washington in Pelosi.

Our country is in ruin because of both parties, and you, as one who should be investigating and reporting the facts as you have investigated them, do nothing but add to the hate. You should be trying to build this country-not destroy it.

A country where organized idiots march in favor of a rapist who has murdered three policeman [sic] and the gay community feels it must defile the very religious institutions that are the foundation of this country is not the country I grew up in and I ache for it when I turn on the news.

Several years ago I brought my family to San Francisco. I actually saw someone defecating in a city park there, and knew then I would never go back. Shame on you people.

-- Mickey Mathis, a senior lady in Texas

Sheesh. Replace "Facist Obama" with "Fascist Bush," "Pelosi" with "Cheney," and "I actually saw someone defecating in a city park there" to "I actually saw a teenage boy raping his two-year-old sister in a trailer park there," and then, well, we'd have an angry San Franciscan. Different but the same.

Thanks, Mickey!

As always, SFist wants to hear your most private thoughts and intimate desires. You can send them to editor(at)sfist(dot)com.