If you instantly recognize these logos, you will want to be sure to join the Wise County Democratic Party to learn more about Trade Unions and collective bargaining.
If you don’t, you need to learn why, in 2025, America needs Trade Unions more than ever, and the battle is to bring back more union organizing.
Our guest speaker for January 13 will be Ben Wright- Texas State Legislative Board Chairman and Chairman of the Brotherhood Of Locomotive Engineers And Trainmen
Chairman, Texas State Legislative Board
Chairman, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen
Teamsters Rail Division
Benjamin Wright was born and raised in the Boyd/Springtown area. He began his career with BNSF Railway right out of high school as a conductor and was promoted to engineer service a few years later.
In 2008, he became active in his local union as an officer, serving as Vice Local Chairman and a Legislative Representative. He was elected to the Texas State Legislative Board as 2nd Vice Chairman in 2011 for a four-year term. He then was elected 1st Vice Chairman in 2015, reelected in 2019, and elected as the Chairman of the Board in 2023.
Ben represents 3,000 locomotive engineers in the state of Texas across 40 local divisions. The BLET has 60,000 members and is part of the Teamsters Rail Conference, making the IBT 1.7 million strong. He also handles all political sponsorship and legislative activities in Texas, as well as regulatory matters and works directly with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), including safety and sanitation in the railroad workplace.
As always our 2nd Tuesday meetings are free and open to the public. We start at 6PM with conversations & Serious Snacks. Then at 6:30 our presentation.
Fairfield Inn & Suites, 1910 SH 380 Decatur Texas 76234.
The Supreme Court Messes with Texas’s Voting Map
The 2026 midterms could see an unprecedented loss of representation for Black and Latino communities in Texas.
n increasingly familiar story played out earlier this month when the Supreme Court issued yet another after-hours “shadow docket” order undermining voting rights. This time, the order put a hold on a 160-page lower court ruling that had struck down Texas’s congressional map, which was controversially gerrymandered last summer in a bid to secure new Republican House seats through racially discriminatory means. The high court’s decision means that Texans will vote in the 2026 midterms using a map that the trial court found had been aggressively redrawn to target the seats of five Black and Latino members of Congress.
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The 2026 midterms could see an unprecedented loss of representation for Black and Latino communities in Texas. With the new discriminatory map in place for 2026, Black and Latino communities in Texas are on track to see the first legislatively enacted reduction in their electoral power since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, though the magnitude of losses could be tempered somewhat by midterm dynamics. Over the years, voters of color in Texas have not always been victorious when bringing litigation seeking new congressional districts where their communities can elect their preferred representatives. Last decade, for example, courts rejected claims seeking a new Latino-majority district in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. But never in the state’s history has a federal court allowed Texas to dismantle existing districts where Black and Latino voters have been successful in electing candidates — in some cases, for decades.
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law
© 2025 Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law
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Michael Li December 16, 2025
2026Primary Candidate Filing Update
Texas Democrats have officially filed candidates in every State House, State Senate, U.S. Congressional, Statewide Judicial, and State Board of Education race for the 2026 election cycle. This marks the first time in modern Texas history that either party has filled the entire slate.
For a complete list of Democratic Candidates that have filed for state & national seats, click here.
For the first time in nearly sixty years, the Texas Legislature created a new appellate court. In 2023, the Legislature passed S.B. 1045 creating the new Court of Appeals for the Fifteenth District, which covers all counties in Texas.
Gov. Greg Abbott, of course, got to appoint all three Justices to the 15th. Also, unlike the other 14 Appeals Courts in the state, which each have a defined district, the 15th is statewide and has jurisdiction over all cases pending in the other 14 courts of appeals filed after September 1, 2023.
The good news is there are Democratic candidates running for all three Republican held justice positions!
District Court Justices are elected by voters only in that district. Justices in the 15th will be elected statewide.
As always our 2nd Tuesday meetings are free and open to the public. We start at 6PM with conversations & Serious Snacks. Then at 6:30 our presentation.
Fairfield Inn & Suites, 1910 SH 380 Decatur Texas 76234.
DON’T FORGET TO BRING ITEMS FOR OUR FOOD DRIVE COLLECTION BOX
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FACTS ABOUT VOTER REGISTRATION IN TEXAS
Texas Makes it extremely difficult to register to vote so it is critical to check that you are still registered. Gov. Greg Abbott claims to have purged over One Million Voters based on often inaccurate or outdated information.
Since Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021, Texas has removed over 1 million people from the voter rolls.
Check here to find if you are still registered: https://teamrv-mvp.sos.texas.gov/MVP/mvp.do
You CANNOT register to vote online in Texas, you can only complete a mail-in application to receive a voter application which must be filled out and returned to your County Elections Administration office or a Wise County VOLUNTEER DEPUITY REGISTRAR.
If you have NOT VOTED in the last two elections you can be dropped from voter rolls. Check here.
If you have changed your name, address or county of residence you need to update your VR certificate information.
