Feb. 3, 2024 - Epoch Times
13:28
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| Good evening, and right before we dive into the main story, I'll quickly mention that my team and I recently traveled to Connecticut and we uncovered ballot fraud that was so egregious that a judge actually had to throw out the results of the entire election. | |
| We were able to interview the local people on the ground, the candidate who was actually affected, as well as get access to the surveillance footage that was leaked by an internal government whistleblower within the city compound. | |
| It's a phenomenal special report that we just published over on Epic TV, our awesome no censorship video platform. | |
| If you want to check out that episode, the link to it will be right there at the top of the description box below. | |
| You can just click on that link and watch the episode right away. | |
| Now, diving into the main topic, the State Supreme Court of Oregon. | |
| They've just ruled that almost all of the Republican senators in the state are now banned from running for re-election. | |
| For your reference, this ruling means that 90% of Oregon's Republican senators are being, essentially, kicked out of the chamber. | |
| Now, in terms of why, in terms of how we got to this point, let me back up and set the stage for you properly regarding what's really going on here. | |
| Now, on a previous episode, we already discussed how 11 counties within the state of Oregon have formally voted to secede and to join the state of Idaho. | |
| These are all rural counties in the western part of the state where the people's values are, you can say, very much at odds with the people over in Portland. | |
| And seeing that the state legislature is dominated by Portland, these counties have been trying to secede. | |
| However, that is a very long-term solution that, if it ever even goes through, is many years away. | |
| In the meantime, the people of both South and Western Oregon, they've just had to live with their state politics being dominated by the progressive ideology of Portland and Salem. | |
| Now, because of this setup, the makeup of the Oregon state legislature skews heavily Democrat. | |
| For instance, at this very moment, 57% of Oregon's Senate seats are held by Democrats, and only 37% are held by Republicans. | |
| The remaining 7% are held by independent candidates. | |
| And since the Oregon State Senate does not have anything akin to a filibuster, this means that in practical terms, the minority Republicans can do nothing. | |
| Looking into the foreseeable future, there is nothing that conservatives can do in the state Senate there. | |
| And so, with that as the general backdrop, the Republicans in the Oregon State Senate have been using, you can say, a new tactic to try to jam up the progressive agenda from getting pushed through the chamber. | |
| They've simply just been walking out. | |
| That's because Oregon is one of the few states in the country that has a requirement that the State Senate must have a two-thirds quorum in order to conduct legislative business. | |
| That means that if, let's say, two-thirds of the senators are not present on a particular day, well, they're not able to get anything done at all. | |
| In most states, minority party lawmakers can't block legislation they don't like by failing to show up for session. | |
| Oregon, Texas, Indiana, and Tennessee are the only states with a two-thirds quorum requirement, and Republicans easily meet that in Indiana and Tennessee because they currently have overwhelming majorities. | |
| And so what that means is that this tactic really only works in the two states of Oregon and Texas. | |
| And in Texas, you might remember that two years ago, back in 2021, Democrats literally fled the state. | |
| They flew over to Washington, D.C. in order to stop a voter integrity bill from going through. | |
| They were praised as essentially heroes by the national media. | |
| Meanwhile, over in Oregon, in order to take advantage of this very same loophole, starting in the year 2019, Senate Republicans have been skipping legislative sessions in order to prevent the Democrats from being able to patch legislation that's related to things like climate change, COVID lockdowns, anti-gun legislation, pro-abortion bills, pro-transgender-related child laws, and so on. | |
| They've been skipping legislative sessions to make sure that these bills can't go into effect. | |
| However, after about three years of these tactics, the state Democrats, they came up with a solution. | |
| In the year 2022, they introduced something known as Oregon Measure 113. | |
| This was a proposed amendment to the state constitution which says that if a legislator misses 10 or more days without a proper excuse, he or she will no longer be eligible for re-election. | |
| This ballot initiative was voted on by the people of Oregon alongside the 2022 midterm elections back in November of 2022, and it passed overwhelmingly. | |
| Over 68% of Oregonians voted in favor of this ballot initiative, and as such, it became law enshrined in the Oregon state constitution. | |
| If a state lawmaker, either in the Oregon Assembly or in the Oregon Senate, misses 10 or more days without an excuse, they will no longer be allowed to run for re-election. | |
| And pretty much as soon as the ink had dried on that new amendment to the state constitution, Oregon's Senate Democrats, they began to push through two serious pieces of legislation. | |
| One of them was, quote, HB2005, a package of gun control measures. | |
| It included a ban on ghost guns. | |
| It raised the age to purchase and possess most guns from 18 to 21. | |
| And it allowed municipalities to decide whether they want to prohibit all firearms in public buildings and on public grounds. | |
| And so that was the first bill. | |
| The other piece of legislation was a sweeping abortion and transgender surgery for children bill. | |
| It was called HB 2002. | |
| Under existing Oregon law, people 15 and older can make their own medical decisions, up to and including presumably abortion. | |
| As passed in the House, HB 2002 would not only make that right explicit, it would extend the right to an abortion to minors 14 and younger without parental permission or consent. | |
| It would also require that insurers cover medically necessary gender-affirming care, among other things. | |
| With gender-affirming care being a euphemism for transgender-related medical procedures. | |
| And so these were the two new laws that Democrats were trying to push through as soon as the ink had dried on that amendment to the state constitution. | |
| The anti-gun law and the pro-abortion and pro-transgender child surgery law. | |
| And despite the risk of walking out, that's exactly what Oregon state Republicans did once again. | |
| On May 3rd of last year, on May 3rd of 2023, the Republican senators initiated the longest walkout in state history. | |
| Breaking the quorum for 43 consecutive days. | |
| Now, initially, the leader of the Republican Senate caucus, Mr. | |
| Tim Knopp, he claimed that the walkout was due to the fact that Democrats broke Senate rules regarding the bills being written in language that was not plain. | |
| Here's what he said at the time of the walkout. | |
| Quote,"...when the majority of bill summaries written demand a postgraduate degree to understand what the bills do, we disenfranchise Oregonians across the state and violate the law in the process." However, on the flip side, the leader of the Senate Democrats, well, she did not really buy that explanation. | |
| And she said that very obviously, the walkout was due to the content of the bills, not in how they were written. | |
| Here's specifically what Senate Democrat leader, Ms. | |
| Kate Lieber, here's what she said in the matter, again, during the start of the walkout. | |
| Quote, It is no coincidence that Republicans are employing these embarrassing antics as the Senate is about to vote on bills that protect reproductive health freedom and establish common-sense gun safety laws. | |
| All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, this President's Day, Which is February the 19th, you can honor the legacy which shaped this country by joining today's sponsor, AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens. | |
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| That's F-A-C-T-S. I'll also throw a link to that page down in the description box below. | |
| Now eventually, the walkout ended, the impasse was resolved, and both of those two bills were pushed through and eventually signed into law by the governor, meaning that the walkout really did not accomplish its objective. | |
| However, the fact that the walkout happened at all means that the new constitutional amendment It was triggered. | |
| And indeed, last year, the Oregon Secretary of State, she announced that these Republican senators, the ones who walked out, will not be allowed to run for re-election. | |
| As a part of her announcement that was, again, made last year, here's what she said, quote, It is clear that voters intended Measure 113 to disqualify legislators from running for re-election if they had 10 or more unexcused absences in a legislative session. | |
| My decision honors the voters' intent by enforcing the measure the way it was commonly understood when Oregonians added it to our state constitution. | |
| However, these Republican senators did not take it lying down. | |
| Instead, they filed a lawsuit against the Oregon Secretary of State, arguing the decision based on technical grounds. | |
| Quote, Lawyers for the senators said they viewed the measure language as meaning that the lawmakers could run in 2024 since a senator's term ends in January while elections are held the previous November. | |
| They argue the penalty doesn't take effect immediately, but rather after they've served another term. | |
| All parties in the suit had saw clarity on the issue before the March 2024 filing deadline for candidates who want to run in this year's election. | |
| And so their case has been making its way through the various levels of the state legal system until finally arriving all the way up to the state Supreme Court. | |
| And indeed, just yesterday, the Oregon State Supreme Court, they issued their official ruling saying that these Republican senators are indeed blocked from running for re-election. | |
| Here is specifically what the ruling said. | |
| Again, this was from the Oregon State Supreme Court. | |
| Because the text is capable of supporting the Secretary's interpretation, and considering the clear import of the ballot title and explanatory statement in this case, we agree with the Secretary that voters would have understood the amendment to mean that a legislator with 10 or more unexcused absences during a legislative session would be disqualified from holding legislative office during the immediate next term rather than the term after that. | |
| We used our typical methodology in construing the amendment by determining how the voters who adopted the amendment most likely understood its text. | |
| The method included considering information presented to voters, which stated that voting yes would disqualify legislators with 10 unexcused absences for the term following current term in office. | |
| Those other materials expressly and uniformly informed voters that the amendment would apply to a legislator's immediate next terms of office, indicating that the voters so understood and intended that meaning. | |
| And as such, the Republicans were banned from running again. | |
| And as you can imagine, these Republican senators, well, they were not so thrilled with the Supreme Court ruling. | |
| In fact, here is what the leader of the Republican Senate caucus, Mr. | |
| Tin Knopp, here's what he said in a statement following the ruling. | |
| We obviously disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling, but more importantly, we are deeply disturbed by the chilling impact this decision will have to crush dissent. | |
| Likewise, Ms. | |
| Suzanne Weber, she's another Republican senator who is impacted by this decision, she added the following, quote, I'm disappointed, but can't Sam surprise, that a court of judges appointed solely by Governor Brown and Governor Kotick, both of them Democrats, would rule in favor of political rhetoric rather than their own precedent. | |
| The only winners in this case are Democrat politicians and their union backers. | |
| However, on the flip side, you have the Oregon Secretary of State coming out and expressing her vindication with the Supreme Court decision. | |
| I'm thankful to the Oregon Supreme Court for providing clarity on how to implement Measure 113. | |
| Now, in terms of the specifics, out of the 11 Republicans in the state Senate, this ruling applies to 10 of them, meaning that all but one of the Republicans will be losing their seat in the Senate. | |
| However, they won't be losing their seats all at once. | |
| Mr. | |
| Knopp and three other Republican senators had already launched re-election bids before the case was considered, while two other senators have said that they're retiring at the end of their terms. | |
| The remaining GOP senators were elected in 2022 for terms that end in early 2027, so they will be barred from running in 2026. | |
| And so, there you have it. | |
| And actually, I'd love to know your thoughts on this particular matter. | |
| Do you agree with this state constitutional amendment and also the way that the state Supreme Court interpreted it? | |
| I mean, after all, these Republican state senators, they were technically refusing to go to work, but they were still getting a salary as normal. | |
| Or do you think that they were right to do what they did? | |
| I mean, within the context of the situation that they found themselves in, this was really the only way to impose their will, well, rather the will of their constituents, on the state senate. | |
| And so, even though it was messy, it still did achieve the goal that the people who elected them probably wanted to achieve. | |
| I'd love to know your thoughts on the matter. | |
| Please leave them in the comments section below. | |
| I'll be reading them tonight and also into the weekend. | |
| And also I should mention that as you're making your way down there to the comments section, well, perhaps take a super short detour to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that this information can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. | |
| And lastly, as I mentioned at the very top of the episode as well, my team and I recently went over to Connecticut to expose ballot fraud that was so egregious that a judge actually had to throw out the results of the entire election. | |
| We were, again, able to interview the people on the ground who were actually canvassing door-to-door the candidate who was affected, as well as get access to the surveillance footage that was leaked by a whistleblower within the city government. | |
| In my opinion, it's a phenomenal special report, and if you want to check it out, well, you can find it over on Epic TV, our awesome no-censorship video platform. | |
| You'll find the link to that episode. | |
| It'll be right there at the top of the description box below. | |
| You can just click on that link, and it'll take you to the episode, so you can watch it right away, no problem. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. | |
| Stay informed. |
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