rights. also in the forefront in terms of how insistent texans are about the fact they need help to protect their voting rights, they need federal help here, they have been making this public case that texas republicans won t stop any of this. it s likely to get worse and worse as long as they can keep changing the election rules to keep themselves in power. this weekend, there s going to be a rally in texas in austin that is effectively being framed as a plea to washington, a plea to the united states senate that the senate should pass the for the people act, the federal voting rights act, so in states like texas, republicans no longer have the option of stripping voting rights even further. joining us is texas state representative fisher. he led the walkout of democrats
thatstopped the bill there. representative, thank you for being with us. i appreciate you taking the time. happy friday. indeed. it has been, i know, a big week and likely a big weekend with this capital steps rally in austin. let me ask you where you think you are in the fight. how durable you think the victory is that you achieved in the legislature, you and your caucus, and how hopeful you are about further progress. listen, we are at that crucial moment. you have to go hard or go home. america is now talking about voting rights. we need real reform. we have a chance. we are holding the line in texas. we walked out, but that s not forever. republicans are silencing voices all over this country. they started in georgia. they silenced voices there. they went on to florida. when they were down in arizona,
we have a celebration to die for. a tiny little park called sycamore park, we had 30,000 people. oh, my goodness. the paper said in a three-day period 10,000 people a day. oh, but did we have fun. we were partying. well, the park s supposed to close at 10:00, and all they did was to pull the plug that turned the lights off. that meant we were supposed to go home. why did i get on a flatbed truck and put that plug back in and partied until dawn. 94-year-old opal lee reminiscing about celebrating juneteenth in fortt worth texas. we talked on the show last night
a brick wall on the way of passing it through the senate. would more time help? if senator joe manchin is trying to move republicans to vote for some kind of voting bill, would more time for him to do that help? probably not. wouldn t move any republicans, i don t think. would more time convince him it s never going to happen and there are ways to pass voting rights without republicans? which he should support, since he gave it his all. maybe that would help. it would probably help more than senators catching up on their summer reading while they burned up another month off their time holding the majority. the pressure is coming from the states, including the republican-controlled states where the lack of federal protections for voting rights mean that republican-led legislatures and republican governors are actively rolling back voting rights in the states as quickly as they can number the new bills to do so. texas is perhaps foremost among the states in terms of how aggressive republ
40,000 latinos, they came off the voting rolls. if we can silenced in texas, republicans will march all over this country until our democracy is destroyed. we will do it for daisy, just like on that video clip. we need to do it now. now is the time. when you were in washington forgive me if i m wrong. i understand the among the people you met with is senator joe manchin, one democrat who is not signed on to support the for the people act. is that true? how did it go? yes. i met with senator manchin s chief of staff, for 45 minutes. everybody is telling me by washington standards, that s almost a lifetime. i will be very frank. they couldn t have been more kind. we went through s1 blow by blow. all of the compromise points released 24 hours later, we went through them. really, what really hit them over the head is as they were