hotze, steve tx

related to fox doc?

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at Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare]

(https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platform/)" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

SAN ANTONIO — From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.

For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGTBQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.

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From left: Conservative activists Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill enter the Senate gallery during the afternoon session of Day 1 of the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate on Sept. 5, 2023. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

“People that aren’t in Christ have wicked, evil hearts,” he said. “We are in a battle, and you have to take a side.”

Those beliefs were common at the party’s three-day biennial convention last week, at which delegates adopted a series of new policies that would give the party unprecedented control over the electoral process and further infuse Christianity into public life.

Delegates approved rules that ban Republican candidates — as well as judges — who are censured by the party from appearing on primary ballots for two years, a move that would give a small group of Republicans the ability to block people from running for office, should it survive expected legal challenges. The party’s proposed platform also included planks that would effectively lock Democrats out of statewide office by requiring candidates to win a majority of Texas’ 254 counties, many of which are dark-red but sparsely populated, and called for laws requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools.

Those moves, delegates and leaders agreed, were necessary amid what they say is an existential fight with a host of perceived enemies, be it liberals trying to indoctrinate their children through “gender ideology” and Critical Race Theory, or globalists waging a war on Christianity through migration.

/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/da9c4842dbc8e8cb35ddbcee11590f3b/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2031.jpg)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on Thursday, May 23, 2024 in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

Those fears were stoked by elected officials in almost every speech given over the week. “They want to take God out of the country, and they want the government to be God,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday morning.

“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said Friday. “It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

”Look at what the Democrats have done,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Saturday. “If you were actively trying to destroy America, what would you do differently?”

*[“The house is on fire”: Texas GOP plots its next chapter amid civil war, depleted staff, funding drops]

Controlling elections

The Texas GOP’s conventions have traditionally amplified the party’s most hardline activists and views. In 2022, for instance, delegates approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

The 2024 convention went a step further.

It was the first Texas GOP convention set against the backdrop of a civil war that was sparked by the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and inflamed by scandals over white supremacists and antisemites working for the party’s top funders:{, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks.}: This year’s convention was also sparsely attended compared to past years, which some longtime party members said helped the Dunn and Wilks faction further consolidate their power and elect their candidate, Abraham George, for party chair.

“What we're seeing right now is a shift toward more populism,” said Summer Wise, a former member of the party’s executive committee who has attended most conventions since 2008, including last week’s. “And the [party’s] infrastructure, leadership, decision-making process, power and influence are being controlled by a small group of people.”

(https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/_X93OkVqWjKf0MF0YqIovXarXM4=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/37d777dfbb61f282f112bd04a575cbbc/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2055.jpg)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, wave to attendees during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

That shift was most evident, she said, in a series of changes to the party’s rules that further empower its leaders to punish dissent. The party approved changes that would dramatically increase the consequences of censures — which were used most recently to punish House Speaker Dade Phelan for his role in impeaching Paxton, and against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for voting for gun safety legislation.

Under the changes, any person who is censured by the party would be banned for two years from appearing on GOP primary ballots — including judges, who are elected in partisan races but expected to be politically neutral once on the bench. The party also voted to unilaterally close its primaries, bypassing the Legislature, in a move intended to keep Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.

“It’s pretty hypocritical,” Wise said of the changes, which legal experts and some party members expect will face legal challenges. “Republicans have always opposed activist judges, and this seems to be obligating judges to observe and prioritize party over law — which is straight-up judicial activism.”

The convention came amid a broader embrace of Christian nationalism on the right, which falsely claims that the United States’ founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should reflect their conservative, Christian views. Experts have found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to migration, religious pluralism and the democratic process.

*[Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office]

Wise said she has seen parts of the party similarly shift toward dogmatic political and religious views that have been used “to justify or rationalize corrupting the institution and stripping away its integrity, traditions, fundamental and established principles" — as if “‘God wants it, so we can rewrite the rules.’”

“Being Republican and being Christian have become the same thing,” she said. “If you're accused of being a (Republican in Name Only), you're essentially not as Christian as someone else. … God help you if you're Jewish.”

The “rabbit hole”

Bob Harvey is a proud member of the “Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” a group in Montgomery County that he said pushes back against Fox News and other outlets that he claims have been infiltrated by RINOs.

“People trust Fox News, and they need to get outside of that and find alternative news and like-minded people,” Harvey, 71, said on Friday, as he waited in a long line to meet Kyle Rittenhouse, who has ramped up his engagement in Texas politics since he was acquitted of homicide after fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters.

Rather, Harvey’s group recommends places such as the Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News or the Epoch Times, a far-right website that also had a booth at this year’s convention and is directly linked to the Falun Gong, a hardline anti-communist group.

Such outlets, Harvey said, are crucial to getting people “further down the rabbit hole,” after which they can begin to connect the dots between the deep-state that has spent years attacking former President Donald Trump, and the agenda of the left to indoctrinate kids through the Boy Scouts of America, public schools and the Democratic Party.

Harvey’s views were widely-held by his fellow delegates, many of whom were certain that broader transgender acceptance, Critical Race Theory or “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives were parts of a sinister plot to destroy the country and take over its churches.

The culprits behind the ploy differed — Democrats, socialists or “globalists,” to name a few. But their nefarious end goals loomed over the convention. Fearing a transgender takeover of the Republican Party of Texas, delegates pushed to explicitly stipulate that the party’s chair and vice chair must be “biological” men or women.

At events to recruit pastors and congregations to ramp up their political activism, elected leaders argued that churches were the only thing standing between evil and children. And the party’s proposed platform included planks that claim gender-transition care is child abuse, or urge new legislation in Texas that's "even more comprehensive" than Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.

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Kyle Rittenhouse shakes hands with conventioneers at a meet and greet during the Texas GOP convention on Thursday in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

“Our next generation is being co-opted and indoctrinated where they should have been educated,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, said at a Friday luncheon for pastors and churches. “We are in a spiritual battle. This isn't a political one.”

For at least a half-century, conservative Christian movements have been fueled by notions of a shadowy and coordinated conspiracy to destroy America, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in public schools.

“It's like the boogeyman that won't go away, that gets summoned whenever a justification is needed for these types of agendas,” he said. “They say that somebody is threatening quintessential American freedoms, and that these threats are posed by some sort of global conspiracy — rather than just recognizing that we're a pluralistic democracy.”

In the 1950s, such claims were the driving force behind the emergence of groups such as the John Birch Society, a hardline anti-communist group whose early members included the fathers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump. After decades of dwindling influence, the society has seen a revival since Trump's 2016 election. And in the exhibit hall last week, so-called Birchers passed out literature and pamphlets that detailed the New World Order's secret plans for "world domination."

Steve Oglesby, field director for the Birch Society's North Texas chapter, said interest and membership in the group has been on the rise in recent years — particularly, as COVID-19 lockdowns and international climate change initiatives have spurred right-wing fears of an international cabal working against the United States.

"COVID really helped," he said, adding that the pandemic proved the existence of a global elite that has merely shifted its tactics since the 1950s. “It’s not just communism — it’s the people pulling the strings.”

Throughout the week, prominent Republicans invoked similar claims of a coordinated conspiracy against the United States. On Friday, Patrick argued that a decadeslong decline in American religion was part of a broader, “Marxist socialist left” agenda to “create chaos,” including through migration — despite studies showing that migrants are overwhelmingly Christian. Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those claims in his own speech minutes later, saying migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."

“The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote,” he said.

/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/f65ff0a8564b0acdb321e69bd3b233c7/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2011.jpg)

Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest watch as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, the first day of the gathering. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

As Paxton continued, Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest held hands and nodded their approval from the convention hall’s front row. Last year, the two were spotted outside of a Tarrant County office building where Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Adolf Hitler fan, was hosted for nearly seven hours by Jonathan Stickland, then the leader of Dunn and Wilks' most powerful political action committee. They eventually lost their jobs after The Texas Tribune reported on their ties to Fuentes or white nationalist groups.

Maulding has been particularly vocal about her support for Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to replace white people through migration, LGBTQ+ acceptance or interracial marriage. Once a fringe, white nationalist worldview, experts say that Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly mainstreamed as Republican leaders, including some who spoke last week, continue to claim that migration is part of a coordinated effort to aid Democrats. The theory has also been cited by numerous mass shooters, including the gunman who murdered 22 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019.

Five hours after Paxton and Patrick spoke, Maulding took to social media, posting a cartoon of a rabbi with the following text: “I make porn using your children and then make money distributing it under the banner of women’s rights while flooding your nation with demented lunatics who then rape your children.”

David Barton

Kason Huddleston has spent the last few years helping elect Christians and push back against what he believes is indoctrination of children in Rowlett, near Dallas. Far too often, he said, churches and pastors have become complacent, or have been scared away from political engagement by federal rules that prohibit churches from overt political activity.

Through trainings from groups like Christians Engaged, which advocates for church political activity and had a booth at this year’s convention, he said he has been able show more local Christians that they can be “a part of the solution” to intractable societal ills such as fatherlessness, crime or teen drug use. And while he thinks that some of his peers’ existential rhetoric can be overwrought, he agreed that there is an ongoing effort to “tear down the family unit” and shroud America’s true, Christian roots.

“If you look at our government and our laws, all of it goes back to a Judeo-Christian basis,” he said. “Most people don’t know our true history because it’s slowly just been removed.”

He then asked: “Have you ever read David Barton?”

Since the late 1980s, Barton has barnstormed the state and country claiming that church-state separation is a “myth” meant to shroud America’s true founding as a Christian nation. Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian” who served as Texas GOP vice chair from 1997 to 2006, has been thoroughly debunked by an array of historians and scholars — many of them also conservative Christians.

/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/7acf1f2412dd7df9c6f492e50a5f07ee/BD%20INC%20Barton%20David%20748%202012)

David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

Despite that, Barton’s views have become widespread among Republicans, including Patrick, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. And his influence over the party was clear at last week’s convention, where his group, WallBuilders, maintained a booth and delegates frequently cited him.

This year’s platform, the votes for which are expected to be released later this week, included planks that urged lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools — which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.

Warren Throckmorton, a former Grove City College professor and prominent conservative, Christian critic of Barton, told the Tribune that the platform emblematized Barton’s growing influence, and his movement’s conflicting calls to preserve “religious liberty” while attempting to elevate their faith over others. The platform, he noted, simultaneously demands that students’ religious rights be protected, and for schools to be forced to teach the Bible.

“What about the other students who aren’t Christians and who don't believe in the Bible?” he said. “This is not religious liberty — it’s Christian dominance.”

As Zach Maxwell watched his fellow Republicans debate and vote last week, he said he was struck by the frequency and intensity with which Christianity was invoked. Maxwell previously served as chief of staff for former Rep. Mike Lang, then the leader of the ultraconservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, and he later worked for Empower Texans, a political group that was funded primarily by Dunn and Wilks.

He eventually became disillusioned with the party’s right wing, which he said has increasingly been driven by purity tests and opposition to religious or political diversity. This year’s convention, he said, was the culmination of those trends.

“God was not only used as a tool at this convention, but if you didn’t mention God in some way, fake or genuine, I did feel it was seen as distasteful,” he said. “There is a growing group of people who want to turn this nation into a straight-up theocracy. I believe they are doing it on the backs of people who are easily manipulated.”

Nancy Leclerc poses for a photo in front of a GOP elephant statue during the Texas GOP convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platf

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A federal judge with a lengthy history of deciding against LGBTQ people and in favor of the far Christian right has ruled the Affordable Care Act and the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services cannot require companies to cover the cost of an HIV prevention drug referred to as PrEP.

The plaintiffs sued the federal government claiming their business is a “Christian for-profit corporation” that “objects” to “coverage of preventive care such as contraceptives and PrEP drugs” on “religious grounds.” The plaintiffs, the lawsuit also says, “claim that compulsory coverage for those services violates their religious beliefs by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.”

HIV is not exclusive to people who engage in same-sex intimate relations, drug use, or sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.

**U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor** (photo) of Texas, who ruled in 2018 that ObamaCare is unconstitutional, on Wednesday declared the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services “did not provide any ‘compelling’ evidence to argue that ‘private, religious corporations’ should be required to cover HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, commonly known as PrEP, ‘with no cost-sharing and no religious exemptions,'” as Axios reports.

READ MORE: Federal Judge Rules For-Profit Faith-Based Businesses Can Discriminate Against LGBTQ People

“O’Connor said HHS was unable to show that the Affordable Care Act’s requirement for HIV PrEP to be fully covered by insurance ‘furthers a compelling governmental interest.'”

Judge O’Connor in 2019 also overturned protections written into ObamaCare for transgender people, ruling they violate the religious rights of healthcare providers who hold religious beliefs that oppose the existence of transgender people.

Three years earlier, in 2016 O’Connor who at that point already had a record of opposing LGBT rights, handed down a 38-page order in a lawsuit brought by Texas **Attorney General Ken Paxton**on behalf of 13 states, blocking the Obama administration from enforcing its guidance that said public schools should allow transgender students to use restroom and locker rooms based on their gender identity.

READ MORE: Federal Judge Says Doctors Can Refuse To Treat Trans Patients Based On Religious Beliefs

On the very last day of 2016 Judge O’Connor ruled that physicians could refuse to treat transgender people based on their own religious beliefs. That injunction also came in response to a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Paxton.

Last year Judge O’Connor ruled that for-profit businesses and religious entities like churches can discriminate against LGBTQ people in employment.

Wednesday’s ruling was a win for Braidwood Management, a Katy, Texas company “which operates Christian health-care businesses controlled by Dr. Stephen Hotze,” Bloomberg Law has reported (incorrectly spelling Hotze’s first name.). **Steven Hotze** is a far-right Christian extremist, anti-LGBTQ activist, and GOP mega-donor. The Texas Tribune in April reported Hotze “was indicted on two felony charges related to his alleged involvement in an air conditioning repairman being held at gunpoint in 2020 during a bizarre search for fraudulent mail ballots that did not exist, according to his attorney, Gary Polland.”

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Details about a call between well-known Republican donor Dr. Steven F. Hotze and a federal prosecutor in Texas are now coming to light. According to The Washington Post, documents filed by prosecutors in a Harris County, Texas court on Friday, May 6, 2022, indicate that the call took place on October 17, 2020. The audio of the call was presented as part of Hotze's indictment.

Per The Post,Hotze claimed, "private investigators funded by his nonprofit group had been trailing a mysterious white van as it shuttled phony ballots around the city in an effort to rig the upcoming election." At the time, he reportedly requested that federal authorities stop the mysterious van and detain its driver. He also insisted that "one of his hard-nosed investigators was prepared to do the job himself."

A transcript of the phone conversation was also included in the filing. “In fact, he told me last night, ‘hell … the guy’s gonna have a wreck tomorrow night. I’m going to run into him and I’m gonna make a citizen’s arrest,” Hotze told Ryan Patrick, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, who recorded audio of the conversation.

Just two days after the recorded call, Hotze's private investigator ran the driver of the van off the road and ended up holding him at gunpoint. However, the accusations were deeply flawed as the man turned out to be an air conditioning repairman. Local police also reportedly confirmed the man's innocence and occupation as they indicated that "his truck only contained repair parts."

In addition to targeting the delivery driver, Hotze is also said to have raised concerns about an alleged election conspiracy he believed Democrats had crafted.

Per The Post: "In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Hotze received regular briefings about the private investigation from a former Houston police officer hired to run the probe, he said in his deposition. During weekly calls, he said, the ex-cop, Mark Aguirre, detailed his pursuit of a sensational theory: Democrats were using undocumented Hispanic children to forge signatures on hundreds of thousands of phony ballots to rig the election in Harris County, home to Houston."

During the deposition, Hotze said,“From what he told me, it appeared he was hot on a trail."

“The defendants were charged as part of a bizarre scheme that crossed the line from dirty politics to violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed,” she said Friday. “The entire plan was backward from the start, alleging massive voter fraud occurred and then trying to prove it happened.”

Despite the incriminating phone call audio, Hotze's attorney Jared Woodfill argues, "the recording did not capture the complete conversation between Hotze and Patrick." He also insists, “The Ryan Patrick tape further demonstrates that the indictment of Dr. Hotze was politically motivated and that Dr. Hotze is innocent of any criminal or civil wrongdoing.”

However, Democrats argue otherwise. Democratic District Attorney Kim Ogg condemned the whole voter fraud conspiracy describing it as a “misguided fantasy.” She weighed in on the debacle on Friday.

“The defendants were charged as part of a bizarre scheme that crossed the line from dirty politics to violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed,” she said. “The entire plan was backward from the start, alleging massive voter fraud occurred and then trying to prove it happened.”

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"GOP mega donor Steven Hotze charged after a bogus election fraud scheme led a former cop to threaten a repairman" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Conservative activist Steven Hotze on Wednesday was indicted on two felony charges related to his alleged involvement in an air conditioning repairman being held at gunpoint in 2020 during a bizarre search for fraudulent mail ballots that did not exist, according to his attorney, Gary Polland.

Hotze, 71, was indicted by a Harris County grand jury and faces one count of unlawful restraint and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Court filings in the case were not available Wednesday evening. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg declined to comment.[woman lost baby arrested for murder released?]

The charges stem from Hotze’s hiring of more than a dozen private investigators to look for voter fraud in Harris County ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

One of the investigators, former Houston police captain Mark Aguirre, was arrested in December 2020 and charged with aggravated assault. Prosecutors said Aguirre used his vehicle to run an air conditioning repairman off the road before dawn on Oct. 19, 2020.

Aguirre then detained the repairman at gunpoint and ordered an associate to search his truck, according to court filings. When a Houston police officer happened upon the scene and stopped to investigate, Aguirre said the truck contained 750,000 fraudulent mail ballots prepared by Democrats.

The truck contained only air conditioning parts and equipment. Hotze’s investigators have not produced any credible evidence to support allegations that Democrats orchestrated a wide-ranging mail ballot scheme in Harris County during that election.

Polland said the charges against Hotze are “outrageous” and his client had no knowledge of the roadside incident until he read media reports of Aguirre’s arrest. He said Aguirre asked Hotze for funds to investigate alleged election fraud, Hotze agreed, and that was the extent of his involvement in Aguirre’s affairs.

“All I know is Hotze didn’t aid or abet this in any way,” Polland said. “The donation of funds was for arighteousactivity of rooting out ballot fraud.”

Grand jury subpoenas in Aguirre’s case show that Hotze paid Aguirre $266,400. Most of that sum, $211,400, was paid to Aguirre on the day after the alleged holdup.

Aguirre remains free on bond awaiting trial. One of his conditions of release is that he no longer work for Hotze.

Hotze, however, plans to continue monitoring election activity in Houston. At a “Freedom Gala” fundraiser Hotze hosted on April 2 with Attorney General Ken Paxton, Hotze said donations would be used to investigate voter fraud in Texas.

Also attending the event was Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEOwho has promoted the baseless theory that former President Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Polland said Hotze does not plan to alter his plans because of the indictments.

Hotze, a physician, has long advocated on behalf of conservative issues. He was instrumental in the 2015 defeat of Houston’s anti-discrimination ordinance, which he derided as “pro-homosexual.” He opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage spurred by a Supreme Court ruling earlier that year.

In 2020, he unsuccessfully sued Harris County in an attempt to have 127,000 ballots cast at drive-thru locations thrown out.

His far-right beliefs have sometimes led to disputes with other Republicans. In June 2020, during protests following the police killing of George Floyd, Hotze left a voicemail with Gov. Greg Abbott’s chief of staff urging the governor “to shoot to kill if any of these son-of-a-bitch people start rioting.” U.S. John Cornyn called the remarks “absolutely disgusting and reprehensible.”

state gop has been wacko for a while; Hotze used to be power broker (pay for play slate) but unhinged as infl dwindles

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/texas-supreme-court-rejects-republican-led-effort-to-throw-out-nearly-127-000-harris-county-votes

under appeal to rw judge? 112/2/20

"Texas Supreme Court rejects Republican-led effort to throw out nearly 127,000 Harris County votes" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

A legal cloud hanging over nearly 127,000 votes already cast in Harris County was at least temporarily lifted Sunday when the Texas Supreme Court rejected a request by several conservative Republican activists and candidates to preemptively throw out early balloting from drive-thru polling sites in the state's most populous, and largely Democratic, county.

The all-Republican court denied the request without an order or opinion, as justices did last month in a similar lawsuit brought by some of the same plaintiffs.

The Republican plaintiffs, however, are pursuing a similar lawsuit in federal court, hoping to get the votes thrown out by arguing that drive-thru voting violates the U.S. constitution.A hearing in that case is set for Monday morning in a Houston-based federal district court, one day before Election Day. A rejection of the votes would constitute a monumental disenfranchisement of voters — drive-thru ballots account for about 10% of all in-person ballots cast during early voting in Harris County.

After testing the approach during the July primary runoff with little controversy, Harris County, home to Houston, set up 10 drive-thru centers for the fall election to make early voting easier for people concerned about entering polling places during the pandemic. Voters pull up in their cars and, after their registrations and identifications have been confirmed by poll workers, are handed an electronic tablet through their car windows to cast ballots.

In a last-minute filing to the Supreme Court, litigious conservative Steven Hotze and Harris County Republicans state Rep. Steve Toth, congressional candidate Wendell Champion and judicial candidate Sharon Hemphill sought to have the votes declared illegal. They argued that the drive-thru program was an expansion of curbside voting and under state election law should only be available for voters with disabilities. The same argument had been made in an unsuccessful previous legal challenge from Hotze and Hemphill — along with the Harris County Republican Party — filed at the state Supreme Court hours before early voting began.

Curbside voting, long available under Texas election law, requires workers at every polling place to deliver onsite curbside ballots to voters who are “physically unable to enter the polling place without personal assistance or likelihood of injuring the voter's health." Posted signs at polling sites notify voters to ring a bell, call a number or honk to request curbside assistance.

The Harris County Clerk's Office argued that its drive-thru locations are separate polling places, distinct from attached curbside spots, and therefore can be available to all voters. The clerk's filing with the Supreme Court in the earlier lawsuit also said the Texas secretary of state's office had approved of drive-thru voting. Keith Ingram, the state's chief election official, said in a court hearing last month in another lawsuit that drive-thru voting is “a creative approach that is probably okay legally," according to court transcripts.

Plus, the county argued in a Friday filing that Texas' election code, along with court rulings, have determined that even if the drive-thru locations are violations, votes cast there are still valid.

"More than a century of Texas case law requires that votes be counted even if election official[s] violate directory election laws," the filing said.

The challenge was the latest in a flurry of lawsuits on Texas voting procedures filed in recent months, with Democrats and voting rights groups pushing for expanded voting access in the pandemic and Republicans seeking to limit voting options. In this case, the lawsuit filed Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to close Harris County's 10 new drive-thru polling places and not count votes that had been cast at them during early voting.

The court has recently ruled against other last-minute challenges on voting access by noting that the cases were filed too late and that changes to voting procedure during an election would sow voter confusion.

Since the first Republican challenge to drive-thru voting was filed on Oct. 12, the Texas secretary of state and Gov. Greg Abbott had both ignored requests from reporters and Harris County officials to clarify their positions on whether the process was legal. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to all local election officials claiming that most voters can't legally vote at drive-thru locations, fueling speculation that the all-Republican Supreme Court would use the case to invalidate ballots already cast. The court rejected the case the next week, with a lone dissent from Justice John Devine.

The new challenge by Republicans again asked the court to reject drive-thru voting as an illegal expansion of curbside voting, and went further by also asking the court to issue an order rejecting votes already cast.

“Unless stopped, illegal votes will be cast and counted in direct violation of the Texas Election Code and the United States Constitution and result in the integrity of elections in Harris County being compromised," the petition to the court said.

The county clerk's office countered that the first challenge to drive-thru voting had already been denied, and the second filing came much too late.

"Hotze filed a petition contesting drive thru locations on the third day of early voting which this Court already denied," the clerk's Friday filing said. "He filed this second petition two and a half weeks into early voting, six days before Election Day, and after fifty percent of registered voters have already voted."

The tens of thousands of votes are still in flux, however, as the federal courts now weigh the issue. Hotze and the others asked the district court this week to toss the votes, arguing the county's implementation of drive-thru voting violates the U.S. Constitution. The campaign of Texas' Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, MJ Hegar, along with national Democratic campaign groups have asked to intervene in the lawsuit — following a national trend in Republican-led fights against voting expansions during the tumultuous election.

Disclosure: The Texas secretary of state has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Rove pioneered in Texas?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/texas-gop-asks-state-supreme-court-to-trash-over-117-000-votes/

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texas Republicans have petitioned a federal court to potentially throw out more than 100,000 ballots cast in drive-thru voting in Harris County, Texas. One of the plaintiffs is right-wing commentator Steven Hotze, a QAnon conspiracy theorist who has said that the coronavirus is “much ado about nothing” and speculated that the “deep state could have been the ones that orchestrated this whole viral problem with the virus.”

Hotze is a plaintiff along with Republican congressional candidate Wendell Champion, Texas State Rep. Steve Toth, and Republican judicial candidate Sharon Hemphill. Their petition, as summarized by the Statesman, claims “that drive-thru voting is an illegal expansion of curbside voting, which state law reserves for voters who have an illness or disability that could put them at risk if forced to enter a polling place.”

That argument is bogus: The voting sites that accepted the ballots now being challenged were approved by Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs, who was appointed by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott,and the sites were set up in consultation with local Republican officials. And Texas Republicans waited until after more than 100,000 ballots were cast via drive-thru lanes to argue that those voting sites are contrary to Texas election laws.

Their petition is scheduled to be heard on November 2 before United States District Judge Andrew Scott Hanen.

Hotze has a long and disreputable history, especially regarding the coronavirus:

• In March, Hotze claimed of the coronavirus: “This is going to pass like every other one of these hysterical, infectious disease concerns have passed over the years. We’re going to be fine.”
• Also in March, Hotze dismissed COVID-19 as “not very contagious” and “much ado about nothing.” He also told people to “conduct your life normally” and “let the coronavirus run its course.” (Even though he’s dismissed concerns about the coronavirus, Hotze has attempted to profit from the pandemic by selling a line of “immune” packages to people.)
• While talking about the coronavirus, Hotze claimed that there’s a “war between the patriots and the deep state” and “this could be part of that deeper war going on. Deep state could have been the ones that orchestrated this whole viral problem with the virus. It could be, I’m not saying it happened, but it could be that.”
• Hotze is a QAnon conspiracy theorist who has repeated the slogan of the conspiracy theory (“where we go one, we go all”) and touted a key component of QAnon regarding supposed “sealed indictments.” QAnon has been linked to numerous acts of violence and the FBI has labeled the conspiracy theory a potential domestic terrorism threat.
• In June, Hotze left a voice message for Gov. Abbott saying that he should order the National Guard “to shoot to kill if any of these son-of-a-bitch people start rioting like they have in Dallas, start tearing down businesses — shoot to kill the son of a bitches. That’s the only way you restore order. Kill 'em. Thank you.”
• Hotze is an anti-LGBTQ bigot who has claimed that “‘Satanic cults’ were driving the ‘homosexual movement,’” compared LGBTQ people to “Nazis,” and said that Houston residents should “drive” LGBTQ people “out of our city.”

July 3, 2020

““Kill ’em.” Houston GOP powerbroker Steve Hotze left Greg Abbott a voicemail requesting National Guard “shoot to kill” rioters” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

In the days after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis last month, as massive protests against police brutality spread across Texas and other states, conservative power broker Steve Hotze of Houston called Gov. Greg Abbott’s chief of staff to pass along a message.

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