Oh, dearest NY Gov. Kathy Hochul, don’t you know there is no such thing as a “legal insurrection”
Texas Gerrymandering: “This is what I call a legal insurrection. Legal insurrection.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul wants to gerrymander NY State congressional districts to offset potential Republican gains in Texas gerrymandering. In Texas it’s legal. In NY not so much. So Hochul would have to amend the state constitution to do so, and it appears she will attempt to do that.
Hochul has been on the media warpath.
Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Hochul asserted (emphasis added):
We are also reviewing every legal and legislative option to redraw our own maps in New York. If Republicans are changing the rules, we’ll meet them on the same field, with strategy, with resolve and without apology.
Some will say this is too aggressive. I say it’s necessary.
What Texas Republicans are doing under Trump’s direction is nothing short of a legal insurrection on our Capitol. But using a legal system doesn’t make it legitimate. It’s a hijacking of democracy. And it must be stopped.
I laughed. Perhaps chortled would be a better term.
Okay, no longer a chortle. A guffaw.
Today on Fox News, Hochul repeated the claim (emphasis added):
Shannon Bream, FOX: Well, it is legal there in Texas, at least the way that they’re doing it for now. And there will be court challenges, I’m sure when they get done with their map if it ever gets voted on. But here’s a little bit more of what New York’s highest court said in ruling against those maps. They said the legislature created maps in a non-transparent manner controlled exclusively by the dominant political party doing exactly what they would’ve done had the 2014 constitutional reforms never been passed. They said the maps were no good.
Governor Hochul: Well, we went back and redrew the maps. We followed the process and here we are, and we didn’t intend to do this again until the 2032 elections, but because we’re in a different situation altogether, that demands that leaders stand up and say, “I’m not going to let our democracy be eroded away because there’s a blatant power grab to maintain power in our nation’s capital.”
This is what I call a legal insurrection. Legal insurrection. Just let the rules stay the way they are. We’ll do it the way we always have. But here we have Texas and now going to other states — JD Vance, why aren’t you looking out for how to lower the costs like he promised? Instead, he is going like a lapdog around the country in a different state saying, “Oh, can we pick up some here? Can we pick up here?” [Transcript]
Okay, no longer a guffaw. We’re into LMFAO territory.
I’ve told the story a million times how I came up with the name Legal Insurrection not long before our launch on October 12, 2008.
I had dinner in late August 2008 with a former client from when I was a plaintiffs’ securities contingent fee lawyer. At that point I already had joined Cornell Law School about 10 months earlier. Although we had been friendly for many years, we never talked politics. He probably assumed I was one of them.
So he asked who I was voting for, and when I said ‘John McCain and Sarah Palin’ we got into a long argument. At the end he said, I’ve never heard anyone explain your side as well as you do, you should start a blog. I didn’t know what a blog was, I wasn’t political and I didn’t read blogs. So I found Google Blogger, which was free and easy to use. I picked a basic template (yikes, it’s like looking at your middle school photos – awkward), but I needed a name.
So I did word association, and the word that came to mind was ‘insurrection’ because I was feeling so frustrated from the media bias in favor of Obama. I looked it up, and by definition an ‘insurrection’ is illegal. I thought maybe it’s not a great idea, since I just started as job as a law professor, to pick a blog name that means illegal.
So I came up with Legal Insurrection, which is a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as a legal insurrection.
If you look on the banner of the website, I just took the dictionary definitions to explain this thing that cannot be:
“a rising up against established authority; rebellion; revolt” “in conformity with or as permitted by law”
The lettering of Legal Insurrection also was copied from the dictionary with the syllables separated by a dot.
We’ve maintained the punctuation and definition.
The name has confounded people ever since. What do you mean by that?
Is it an uprising using the legal system, or a non-legal uprising that is not criminal? It’s not only self-contradictory, it’s ambiguous.
I don’t mean anything by it. It is what it is. But it works.
Are you Mr. Legal Insurrection? That’s a question I’ve been asked many times. Yes, yes I am, I’m that self-contradictory ambiguous person.
It’s not without its problems. Establishment types are very leery of anything with the word “insurrection” in it, particularly after J6. I’m convinced that the name is why it’s hard for us to get insurance, or for me to get speaking appearances before mainstream groups. Multiple times “professionals” have suggested we change the name. NFW.
So we’ll keep being that thing that doesn’t and can’t exist.
Just like Kathy Hochul’s ‘legal insurrection’ bogeyman. Or should I say:
bo·gey·man
a person or thing that is widely regarded as an object of fear
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Comments
do yu have to send Hochul a royalty/residual payment ??
or maybe a cease and desist as she used this sites name as a pejorative????
And, you know, if the Professor had a marketing team, they might suggest the “cease and desist.” Because even a silly lawsuit might make it into the press, and “no press is bad press,” right? 🙂
She reads this site and had a Freudian slip during the interview.
Damn, When he said we didn’t exist I was hoping we were like how Democrats describe Antifa. We are a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, hidden from view by our ninja stealth…..
Meh….Hochul meant to say Texas is Cvounter-Revvvoulutionary Imperialist scum….. like she was taught on college….
Except that the only constitutional amendment so far offered up by the Dems doesn’t change the ban on political gerrymanders. All it does is allow the legislature to redistrict once in between censuses, but it still requires the boundaries to be drawn on a strictly party-neutral basis.
Of course the Dems will step over that line, as they always do and as they did in 2024, but they can’t do it so blatantly that the courts will have to strike it down, as they did the map the Dems came up with in 2022.
If Hochul is serious about this she’ll have to come up with an amendment that suspends that clause too. And the earliest election that can be affected by any amendment is 2030; it’s too late to affect 2026 or 2028.
I wonder if she’s planning on using the same strategy NY uses with gun control laws? Pass the law, proceed with unconstitutional conduct, fight it in the courts while drawing out any legal resolution for as long as possible. Make the argument that the imminent election is too soon to change the ballots, the people have a right to choose their representatives even with a flawed map, etc. Right before the final smackdown from the courts, repeal the law and request dismissal due to the changes (preferably after the new map has been used in the election).
It depends how blatant it is. The 2022 map was so blatantly gerrymandered for the Dems that the first court to look at it threw it out. The 2024 map is also gerrymandered for the Dems, and thus illegal, but it’s not blatant enough that a court will throw it out, so the Reps decided not to sue. So she knows what they can get away with.
If this amendment passes in 2028, the Dems may try to redraw the map for 2030, even knowing that it will only last one election; but there’s a limit to how much they can do before their own courts have no choice but to say it’s too much.
“There is no such thing as a legal insurrection.”
I always thought it was when Jim Sokolove’s staff went on strike.
Well played, sir. Well played.
I’d suggest that the governor’s use of the term is slander or defamation against this blog, but that’s just me and what little my opinion is worth, what with IANAL and all.
It’s not.
She’s not actually talking about the blog at all so it can’t be.
She could be doing it in her head and cleverly avoiding legal liability but it could also backfire if traffic goes up from people Googling the term.
Who am I kidding? No one listens to that harpy.
So she’s saying she has no idea what the map will look like and hasn’t seen it. Don’t we have to pass the map to find out what it does? I was assured by Pelosi that that’s how it works.
To Democrats and Marxists the laws are what they say they are, nothing more and nothing less.
Watch out, The libs might launch Unlawful Conformity.
Funny how she claims New Dork does it legal after their liberal court throw out their last maps. Just proving how full of it liberals are.
bo·gey·man
a person or thing that is widely regarded as an object of fear
You might add, “irrationally” or “often imaginary.”
Great ar-ti-cle!
Hochul the Jochul is an aggressively stupid partisan hack.
As one example, on July 3, 2024, she and other Democrat Governors met with Biden after his disastrous debate. Afterwards, she told reporters that he was “in it to win it and all of us said we pledged our support to him.” Not only did her remarks not sit well with other Dem Govs, but it had a shelf life of less than three weeks. Sharp as a tack? Not so much.
Hochul was plucked from obscurity by Andy Cuomo, became an accidental governor when Cuomo resigned, and was nearly voted out of office in that deep blue state when challenged by Lee Zeldin. Too bad for NY that Zeldin lost, as she continues to drive that state to ruin.
“It’s not without its problems. Establishment types are very leery of anything with the word “insurrection” in it, particularly after J6. I’m convinced that the name is why it’s hard for us to get insurance, or for me to get speaking appearances before mainstream groups.”
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Nope, it’s because you’re a conservative.
Those who cry the most about the un-gerrymandering of Texas come from the most gerrymandered states.
Oh, dearest Professor Jacobson, you do know you have held my hand(read brain) all these years.
Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion alway has comforted me as the cognitive dissonance has escalated.
Democrats cry “Democracy is hijacked”… but a majority voted…the definition of democracy.
Democrats cry “Political Retaliation”… but retaliation is in response to a grievance.
Sigh. Dearest Professor Jacobson, please keep holding my hand(brain) the cognitive dissonance is strong these days.
But I thought Democrats love lawfare?
Only when they’re committing it. Otherwise it’s labeled an “existential threat to democracy.”
“I’m not going to let our democracy be eroded away because there’s a blatant power grab to maintain power in our nation’s capital.”
Demoncrats love their hypocrisy, lies, and projection.
Every day various Democrat hacks decry Texas redistricting and threaten revenge. Even the clueless Massachusetts governor, where Dems long ago gerrymandered the state to allow zero Republican representation. As I always say, every Democrat lie is also an insult to the intelligence of every normal American. They assume we won’t look up the truth that Dems have been the gerrymandering kings for decades—assuming we are the same stupid dolts Democrat voters are. Sick of these liars squealing like the pigs they are when they get some of their own medicine.