It should come as no surprise that the no holds-barred politics of our time don’t end when someone dies. Gov. Greg Abbott demonstrated that this week when he announced a special election to replace the late U.

Greg Abbott has scheduled the special election for a vacant deep-blue House seat for Nov. 4, drawing swift condemnation from Democrats over the seven-month waiting period and inviting threats of legal action.

The decision to wait until November means a narrowly divided Congress will be down a Democratic representative for most of 2025.