Texas2 Bak
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see main for older, also tag
MERRI OK here
see abortion
see voter suppression --> takeover
see state gop wackos
see xian nationalist
xian --> abortion ban and book censor
bak 4 24
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mebbe we shd've let the sombitches secedewhen we had the chance(s):
iterative voter suppression consolidates power minority rule
texas kill roe and voting in one day?! abbott
tx ct ordered baby jail reboot in 1 wk?! backed by scotus (no names ruling?]
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tex trib an 4 24
when David Dzul approached his principal about setting up a voter registration drive on campus in 2019, he quickly realized why voting participation rates are so abysmal among his peers.
Texas high schools have long been required to distribute voter registration forms to older teens twice a year. But Dzul said that wasn’t happening at Houston’s DeBakey High School, and he initially couldn’t nail down who the school’s designated voter registrar was — or if the school was even complying with the decades-old state law at all.
*Get the data and visuals that accompany this story →
Dzul was trying to galvanize civic engagement after hearing about low participation rates among young voters at a meeting of Mi Familia Vota, a group that encourages Latinos to cast ballots. He eventually organized a group of peers to track classmates when they turned 18 years old, help them register and follow up with a link to confirm they could cast a ballot in the next election.
“I don’t think the administration supported the initiative so much as they tolerated it,” Dzul said. “They weren’t actively setting up tables and telling students to register, but they allowed us to occupy space and get volunteer deputy voter registrars into the schools.”
Texas is home to about 409,000 18-year-old U.S. citizens, according to 2022 U.S. Census Bureau data. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 39.6% of Texans ages 18 to 24 were registered to vote in November 2022. And that was the biggest decline in voter registration for any age group compared to the previous midterm election in 2018.
And even once younger adults are registered, they cast ballots at lower rates than other age groups. During the 2022 midterms, only 49% of registered Texas voters between 18 and 24 participated. That compares to 86% of voters 65 and older.
Research has found that voting is habit-forming, and high schools are a critical training ground to initiating that pattern. The 2023 Harvard Youth Poll found that two-thirds of 18-to-29-year-olds who definitely plan to vote said their high school education made voting feel important. But only 47% of less committed voters in that age group feel that way about their high school education.
“Starting that habit early is a predictor of lifelong voting,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “We want the students to start this process early and then bring that forward through their civic lives.”
The 1983 law requiring high schools to distribute voter registration forms to students who are 17 years and 10 months old or older was intended to boost turnout among young voters. But the secretary of state’s office, which was charged with creating the instructions to implement the law, doesn’t track compliance. And schools that fail to distribute registration forms to eligible students aren’t penalized.
The University of Houston’s Election Lab estimated in 2021 that only a quarter of schools were complying with the law, though that number is not conclusive. Some high school seniors told the Tribune they had never been given a voter registration form at school, and nonprofit leaders said they have spoken to school administrators who are unaware of the law.
https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/Ju_c3l31PGJEbF6O9deLLFuU4io=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/083e5d01308f5e953fdc0f1750f0059f/0405%20DeBakey%20HS%20Voting%20JB%20TT%2003.jpg)}:
Tania Cora, left, education coordinator at the Harris County Elections Department, provides guidance on how to use a voting machine at DeBakey Civics Club’s voter education conference in Houston. Only 49% of registered Texas voters ages 18 to 24 year old participated in the 2022 midterm election. Credit: Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune
And many critics of Texas voting laws — including new limits passed in 2021 — say getting registered outside of school isn’t very friendly to teenagers. While other states have online voter registration, Texans must complete a paper application, creating a possible barrier to young people who do everything — from shopping to banking — digitally.
State lawmakers in 2021 also restricted how educators can teach current events and history. The law, designed to keep “critical race theory” out of Texas public schools, also prohibits teachers from discussing “a widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs.” Without defining “controversial,” the law created widespread confusionabout what topics teachers could and could not legally cover.
“It’s not enough to just tell people, ‘voting is important,’” said Maggie Stern, who promotes youth civic engagement through the nonprofit organization Children’s Defense Fund Texas.
“Young people are motivated by the issues affecting their community, so as they understand the ways elected officials have power over those issues, they are more motivated to vote — that piece of civics education is really lacking in Texas.”
*:{[How a fraction of voters decide who runs Texas]
Efforts to change Texas’ legal landscape
Kevin Brown can still vividly remember learning how to vote in his government class as a high school student in San Marcos in the mid 80s. A nonprofit brought a voting booth into his classroom and taught students how to punch in their selections. Students ran a mock election, and the tally was shared the following day in the morning announcements.
Brown, who now serves as the executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators, said administrators took civics education seriously when he later became a public school teacher. They wanted to develop citizens who would be engaged with the world and the issues around them.
Now, he has trouble imagining a school running a mock presidential election without raising concerns that doing so might create controversy. Senate Bill 3, the same 2021 law that limits lessons about racism in American history, also prohibits teachers from giving students class credit for any public policy advocacy.
“That produced a really big chilling effect on anything related to civics education,” Stern said. “It has really deterred a lot of schools who used to be doing this work from having any sort of conversation with students around voting and civic participation.”
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/9e3b4d04e4c8158c4986b03909ec2a0a/0405%20DeBakey%20HS%20Voting%20JB%20TT%2010.jpg)
TaKasha Francis, who won the Democratic nomination for judge of a state district court, speaks to DeBakey Civics Club students on the importance of voting. Credit: Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune
SB 3 requires the Texas Education Agency to create a civics training program that will outline the knowledge and skills students are expected to have. The program is supposed to be implemented no later than the 2025-2026 school year. A TEA spokesperson said the agency is in the “planning phase” for developing the program.
Although public school students in Texas are required to take a government class to graduate, many students say they do not learn about civic engagement or voter registration in the course. That’s despite the fact that the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills states that students who complete the class should be able to “describe the voter registration process and the criteria for voting in elections.”
“It’s a daunting task to learn what is a primary, what is a general election and who are all the candidates running,” said Ashton Sanchez, a senior at Sam Houston Math, Science and Technology Center High School in Houston. “We need to find a way to integrate that into the classroom.”
Voting rights advocates argue that the state should do more to ensure students are registered to vote, for example, by documenting compliance with the high school voter registration law.
Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas, noted that some states reward schools that register students. Tennessee acknowledges schools that reach a certain voter registration threshold, and Pennsylvania has a governor’s civic engagement award to celebrate schools that register 85% of eligible students to vote, for example.
Common Cause also recommends that the secretary of state’s office mail each school voter registration applications, instead of requiring schools to request them twice a year. Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, introduced a bill in 2021 that would require the secretary of state to mail the applications directly to all high schools, but the bill never got a hearing before the House Elections Committee.
Alicia Pierce, spokesperson for the secretary of state, said mailing applications is expensive and that it might not address noncompliance.
“I’m not sure you would get much better results,” Pierce said. “If it just shows up at their door and they weren’t already planning to use them, then you just have these registration forms sitting there.”
Student action
Some students have taken matters into their own hands. Rice University has partnered with the League of Women Voters to create an internship program where students, most of whom are in the Houston Independent School District, organize voter registration drives at their high schools. The goal, according to Rice University professor Melissa Marschall, who leads the program, is to get students to take ownership of the activity and encourage their friends to register.
“I’ve never heard of a school where the principal takes charge of the event, because technically, most of them are not trained as deputy voter registrars,” Marschall said. “We prioritize events with peer to peer civic education.”
About 130 students applied to the internship and 10 are participating, Marschall said. She said she hopes the program makes it easier for organizations like the League of Women Voters to enter schools. The organization has historically relied on relationships with administrators, who are not always amenable to welcoming outside organizations. Administrator turnover, which has increased this year due to the state’s takeover of HISD, creates additional hurdles.
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/660305a9d339f3b5a26576fc65e72db5/0405%20DeBakey%20HS%20Voting%20JB%20TT%2017.jpg)
DeBakey Civics Club Vice President Mihir Relan fills out a voter registration form. Some Texas high school students have organized voter registration drives to increase the participation of younger voters. Credit: Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune
At Round Rock High School, a student chapter of Junior State of America has taken the lead on organizing a voter registration drive. Junior Indira Moparthi recalled an uphill battle to create a drive during her freshman year. She said administrators rejected the idea because they thought the event would be partisan.
“Seniors and parents got involved, and a petition went around saying we weren’t supporting a particular political party,” Moparthi said. “Finally the administration signed off.”
For some students, school is the only place where they can gain critical information about voting. Among immigrant families who have historically been marginalized for voting, civics participation is rarely talked about in the household.
For Dzul, whose parents did not grow up voting in the U.S., it was frustrating to see 18-year-olds who could vote fail to take advantage of their right. That motivated him to create a civics club, which has continued to hold registration drives since he graduated.
“We need to get more power to marginalized communities, and voter registration is the first step to getting people that power,” Dzul said
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rww 3 24
Texas state Rep. Matt Schaefer appeared on a Christians Engaged livestream[, where he put his radical Christian nationalist worldview on full display, declaring that every elected official at every level is obligated to “worship God” and ensure that biblical commands are turned into public policy.
Schaefer, who insists that every elected official must “really understand what the Bible says” before running for office, proclaimed that any government that failed to use its power to uphold “biblical mandates” is in direct rebellion against God.
“The first biblical command for all rulers and all persons in authority is to worship God,” Schaefer said. “It’s all over the Bible. Look at the cycle of Israel and all the kings and the rulers that came along; when they obeyed, they had blessing, and then when they disobeyed, they had curses. The overriding command to every person, and every king, every state representative, every county commissioner—doesn’t matter what level—is to worship God and to love him. If you’re not doing that, then you’re out of his will.”
“All government is established by God, and if you’re not doing it his way, then you’re in disobedience,” he added. “There’s only two courses: there’s obedience or rebellion. Those are really the only two options for any elected official.”
Later in the interview, Schaefer explained just what this means in practice when he asserted that right-wing Christians have a “biblical mandate” to use the power of the state to outlaw abortion in the name of “pure religion.”
“A Christian has to be a steward of civil government,” Schaefer said. “I think there are very practical issues like the issue of abortion. In the book of James, it talks about pure religion, and that’s taking care of sick, going into the widow and the orphan in their distress. That is pure religion.”
“If you look at that word ‘orphan,'” he continued, “when a woman has gone into a Planned Parenthood clinic and she’s sitting in the waiting room, and she’s filling out the paperwork, and she signs that bottom line—that consent—for that doctor to kill her child, and she puts the pen down on the clipboard and hands it back to the nurse, in that moment, that child has become an orphan because no earthly mother or father stands there to protect that little girl or a little boy anymore. And so as Christians, we have a biblical mandate to visit the orphan in their distress. And we do that through public policy. We do that through our elected representatives. How can you neglect that? How can we neglect the orphan inside the mother’s womb when we have a chance to vote on people who will decide whether that is legal or not?”
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WALSH KIRK BLAZE?
In response to a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing Border Patrol agents to cut razor wire Texas laid along the border with Mexico, right-wing pundits are claiming the Biden administration has sparked a second American Civil War. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, two members of the court’s conservative block, sided with the three liberal justices in ruling for the federal government.
The issue stems from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to stretch razor wire over dozens of miles along the state’s southern border, a cruel policy that has failed in its stated objective of deterring unauthorized border crossings. The Biden administration opposes the measures, and has ordered the Border Patrol to remove the barriers. The stand-off between Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard escalated earlier this month, with federal officials blaming Abbott for the deaths of a mother and her two children who drowned in the Rio Grande. (Texas authorities dispute this version of events.)
For his part, Gov. Abbott pledged that Texas will “continue to deploy this razor wire to repel illegal immigration.” Although it may appear that Abbott is in direct defiance of the Supreme Court, the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick explained that the ruling overturned an “order saying Border Patrol COULDN’T remove Texas razor wire to process migrants. It didn’t affirmatively rule that the Border Patrol COULD remove Texas razor wire.” Or, as the New Republic's Matt Ford put it, the Supreme Court “lifted an injunction” on the Department of Homeland Security, so there's “nothing in this case for Texas to obey or defy at the moment.”
This simmering confrontation is the new backdrop for an old story. During election years, conservative media outlets generally ramp up their attacks on immigrants. Separately, over the last year, conservatives have become increasingly comfortable calling for, threatening, or warning about a coming civil war in the country. Responses to the recent court ruling have married these two trends.
As the news broke on January 22, conservative YouTube streamer Tim Pool said it “looks like a Fort Sumter-esque type scenario,” referencing the first battle of the Civil War, adding that “it does feel like it could be escalating to this federal versus state conflict.”
That evening, former Fox News star Tucker Carlson posted on X (formerly Twitter), asking: “Where are the men of Texas? Why aren’t they protecting their state and the nation?”
The same night, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote that “the feds are staging a civil war, and Texas should stand their ground.”
Then on January 23, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon appeared to favorably reference that post, saying “as Clay Higgins said” there is “kind of a civil war between the federal government and the state of Texas.”
Hours later, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk fantasized about Gov. Abbott openly defying the court’s ruling at the barrel of a gun.
Video CitationFrom the January 23, 2024, edition of Salem Media Group's The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble
“So someone says right here, ‘Charlie, what would happen if Texas ignores the ruling? Will the government go to war with Texas?’” he asked.
“The federal government would come in, and some people would say, ‘Well, that's the seeds of a civil war.’ Is that what you want? Where does this end?” Kirk added moments later. “By the way, I'm all on board.”
“If we had an actual governor of Texas that was willing — 100% defy this,” Kirk continued, before advising Abbott on the logistics.
“If you're going to defy, here's how it works: press conference flanked by your most loyal Texas Rangers. ‘I am ignoring the Supreme Court's decision,’” Kirk said, adopting Abbott’s point of view. “‘I will enforce the border of Texas. If you're going to arrest me, you have to go through the Texas Rangers.’”
“If we had more governors on the border, it would be even more powerful,” he added, implicitly invoking the Confederacy. “Get every red state on board. Fly in every Republican governor.”
On Wednesday afternoon Abbott issued a statement invoking “Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” which he claimed is “the supreme law of the land.” Throughout the day, at least nine governors backed Abbott on X, even if they fell short of Kirk’s demand that they travel to the border. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp all posted their support for Texas, as did Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
In the same episode, Kirk told his audience that they had “better buy weapons,” and “have a lot of guns at your disposal.”
That afternoon, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh echoed Kirk. “Red state governors will need to ignore the Supreme Court and do what needs to be done to protect their citizens and the border,” Walsh said. He later added, “The last civil war was unimaginable until it wasn't.”
In the early evening, Bannon returned to the topic with guest Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). “That Supreme Court decision that was made has now put the federal government at war with the state of Texas,” Greene said.
“If they fund a war in Ukraine when Zelensky is raising the white flag, asking for peace talks in Switzerland, and they weaken our border policy while the federal government is at war with Texas, that is truly, possibly the start of a civil war in this country,” she added.
Blaze TV’s Steve Deace also invoked the memory of the Civil War. “Basically, the Supreme Court has told Texas your choices are: be invaded or secede,” Deace said.
Video
CitationFrom the January 23, 2024, edition of BlazeTV's The Steve Deace Show
On January 25, Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade adopted the same framing on Fox & Friends.
Video
CitationFrom the January 25, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
“It feels like almost like a soft civil war,” Kilmeade said. “You’ve got all the Republicans saying, ‘Can we secure our borders?’ the Democrats saying, ‘I want this to go away’ and blaming Republicans, the President against the governor of Texas — the most independent state in the union. I mean, this is getting a little crazy.”
Fox News sounded little different than the fringe. “This is a constitutional crisis,” said conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in a video titled: “Supreme Court Decision Provokes Civil War in Texas.”
The story was the same in the right-wing blogosphere, too, with conservative news site PJ Media asking, “Is Joe Biden Mounting a Civil War at the Border?”
Conservative influencer Jordan Peterson posted: “So is it the case that@TheDemocrats are truly ready to go to war with Texas?”
While right-wing media figures fantasize about a new civil war, their rhetoric has real implications for immigration policy. They are stoking xenophobia and nativism, and endorsing cruel policies that are already injuring and killing some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
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12 23
Texas businesses are rebelling against draconian GOP rule - Alternet.org
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an 11 23 no lnx
in July, Florida became the first state to allow schools to incorporate instructional videos with a conservative viewpoint from vendor PragerU into their classroom materials.
Oklahoma and Montana rapidly followed. New Hampshire in September approved the use of online PragerU videos to satisfy financial literacy requirements in public schools. PragerU and one state education board member announced it was on the approved vendor list in Texas as well, but other state education officials denied it.
The growing movement concerns many researchers and scholars, who say the videos share misinformation and who worry that it may set a precedent for allowing other such distorted content into public schools.
The videos are available free of charge for any classroom. Despite its name, PragerU is not a university. It is a conservative nonprofit that produces short videos on historical, economic and climate topics. The organization, formally the Prager University Foundation but known as PragerU, is founded and run by conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager and funded by a number of like-minded philanthropists. PragerU touts its conservative view as a “free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.” But critics say it distorts science and whitewashes unpleasant aspects of historical events.
In a fundraising plea in his organization’s 2023 biannual report, Prager wrote: “Do you think the left is scaling back? You know the answer. They will use our nation’s problems to push for more government control. They are following the Marxist playbook we are well familiar with. The left is a force for chaos.” He then said PragerU is expanding to fight that narrative.
At a Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia in June, people demonstrating against the conservative parents’ group accused him of “indoctrinating children.” Prager didn’t deny it. “All I heard was, ‘Well, because you indoctrinate kids.’ Which is true, we bring doctrines to children. But what is the bad of our indoctrination?” he said.
The organization markets kids videos in subject areas such as economics, character development and Judeo-Christian values. A PragerU video in its history series, in which two modern-day animated kids, Leo and Layla, travel back in time to talk to abolitionist Frederick Douglass, has come under some of the harshest criticism from historians and academics.
The video suggests that Douglass, who had been enslaved, believed that the founders’ decision not to abolish slavery in the U.S. Constitution was worth it because it helped convince the Southern colonies to join the Union. “Our system is wonderful, and the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. We just need to convince enough Americans to be true to it,” he says.
The “glorious liberty document” is taken out of context. It comes from Douglass’ 1852 speech on the Fourth of July, in which he also says Black Americans like himself “are not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
It is this sort of cherry-picking that has led scholars to say that the PragerU videos are slanted and incomplete.
The video is an “appalling” misuse of Douglass and mischaracterizes his role in U.S. history, Andrew Hartman, a history professor at Illinois State University, told Education Week.
Later in the video, the animated Douglass criticizes fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who burned a copy of the Constitution because it didn’t outlaw slavery. The Douglass character tells Leo and Layla that “radical” behavior like Garrison’s is out of line, and working within the system is a better way to effect change. In a veiled reference to modern-day protest movements, the kids in the video respond with: “We’ve got that type in our time,” followed by an exchange about supporting the U.S. government.
Shaken by post-pandemic disruptions, some states take a harder line on school discipline
According to the PragerU Kids website, Leo and Layla’s historic time travel adventures, which include travels to meet biblical characters, are meant for third to fifth graders. The Around the World series is meant for grades six and up.
Another animated PragerU video, “Florian Feeds the World,” features a Dutch farm boy who fears that government regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will destroy his way of life. And one called “Mateo Backs the Blue,” starring a Hispanic boy in Los Angeles, criticizes the Black Lives Matter movement. Both are part of the Around the World series.
“The Prager videos are flag-waving tripe,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania. “The one where they have [a cartoon] Frederick Douglass talking about slavery is highly distorted.”
“They are highly inaccurate,” Zimmerman added. “They paint a story of unbending liberty and freedom providentially inspired from beginning to end.”
Zimmerman said he is not out to censor the videos, but that they shouldn’t be incorporated into schools’ curricula. “This isn’t an issue of free speech. Everyone is free to look at these videos. I’m not saying they should be prohibited in any way. But they should not be embraced by school districts.”
PragerU’s website also includes videos of its news programs, talk shows and short documentaries that express a point of view on hot-button social issues. “Detrans: The Dangers of Gender Affirming Care” is one. It shows a person, Daisy Strongin, who became a trans man but then regretted it. It also shows people saying that gender-affirming procedures are “barbaric pseudo-science,” a view at odds with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association.
This isn’t an issue of free speech. Everyone is free to look at these videos. I’m not saying they should be prohibited in any way. But they should not be embraced by school districts.
– Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania
The Florida Department of Education approved the use of PragerU videos in classrooms across the state.
The agency “reviewed PragerU Kids and determined the material aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards,” Cassie Palelis, deputy director of communications for the department, said in an email to Stateline.
Those standards are very broad, requiring teachers, for example, to “review causes and consequences of the Civil War.”
“PragerU Kids is no different than many other resources, which can be used as supplemental materials in Florida schools at district discretion,” Palelis wrote.
In New Hampshire, the State Board of Education unanimously agreed to allow high school students to use PragerU courses to satisfy a financial literacy requirement.
The series of 15 five-minute videos includes sessions on pay stubs and taxes; money management and budgeting; credit, debit and debt management; borrowing, student loans and credit and debit cards; and videos on investing.
A video on taxes shows young people screaming, wincing and groaning every time it’s explained that taxes are taken out of a paycheck to pay for things such as the military, roads, fire and police. The video ends with the statement that taxes are an “unavoidable and frustrating fact of life.”
While not overtly political, the videos are simplistic and don’t give students the depth of knowledge they need to handle finances, said Micaela Demeter, a member of the Dover School Board in New Hampshire, who testified at a public hearing in mid-September against the use of the PragerU videos.
“I think financial literacy is an essential human skill,” she told Stateline in a phone interview, while underscoring that her views were her own and she was not speaking for the Dover board. “But I do not believe what PragerU is putting out is sufficient. It’s ‘edu-tainment.’ It is not the caliber that New Hampshire students or any students need.”
She added that her larger concern is “that this is just the foot in the door for PragerU,” echoing several others who testified at the three-hour hearing.
She said she believes that PragerU is looking at the financial literacy curriculum as “the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship.”
“It is hyperpartisan and that does not belong … in any district in New Hampshire,” Demeter said.
GOP Lawmakers Intensify Effort to Ban Critical Race Theory in Schools
Stateline tried repeatedly for comment from PragerU, but the organization did not answer requests nor respond to emailed questions.
Adrienne McCarthy, an academic researcher within the Kansas State University College of Education and co-author of a study on PragerU, said in a phone interview that while she agrees financial literacy should be taught, “why use a non-credentialed organization with a clear agenda to be in part of your curriculum?”
“By adopting any part of the curriculum, you are providing them with a sense of credentials and authority on the matter,” she said. “The recommendation by the school board means this is a credible source.”
She said the financial videos point out how “taxes are a ball and chain, and just state abuse, rather than looking at why taxes are used as they are.”
PragerU solicits contributions at the end of some of its videos. The organization did not list its contributors on its nonprofit tax form, saying the information was “restricted.” But McCarthy and media reports said contributors include Dan and Farris Wilks, who made their fortune by founding an oil and gas hydraulic fracturing company, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, an organization that supports conservative policy priorities such as the “teaching of American exceptionalism.”
In September, PragerU posted a video featuring CEO Marissa Streit and Julie Pickren, a member of the Texas State Board of Education, announcing that the company is “now in Texas,” saying that “children in thousands of K-12 Texas schools now have the opportunity to learn from PragerU’s wholesome, patriotic, and age-appropriate content.” But after numerous news articles questioning whether the state education board had approved the platform, Pickren posted a clarification on Facebook, saying that PragerU had been “placed on the Comptroller’s master bidder list” to be allowed to bid on contracts with Texas schools.
However, a search of the site did not show Prager as one of the bidders, and Jake Kobersky, director of media relations for the Texas Education Agency, said in an email to Stateline that PragerU “has not been approved by either the Texas State Board of Education or the Texas Education Agency as a curriculum vendor and is not included on any supplementary curriculum lists.”
Elsie Arntzen, Montana’s superintendent of public instruction, also appeared in a Prager video announcing her state’s partnership with the organization. PragerU is listed as a “bonded textbook dealer” on a Montana state website. Arntzen said the PragerU videos would provide an opportunity to “enhance learning, wherever learning takes place,” at home or at school.
In September, the Oklahoma Department of Education launched its partnership with PragerU Kids. State Superintendent Ryan Walters, in an announcement, said the relationship “will help ensure high quality materials rich in American history and values will be available to our teachers and students.”
The next month, the nonprofit advocacy group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State announced it is looking into both Oklahoma’s and Florida’s use of the videos, saying they promote religion and particularly Christianity.
“Public schools are the building blocks of our democracy. We owe it to our children to ensure their public schools provide a high-quality education that is free from religious coercion and rooted in facts, not theology or political ideology,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United, said in announcing the effort.
The group particularly pointed to a cartoon video about George Washington, in which the first president is depicted as saying that “having a religious and moral population is important for a healthy republic.”an 11 23 no lnx
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Texas state senator reveals plan to 'put God back in government' - Alternet.org
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Why this South Texas county closed half its early voting sites for 2024 - Alternet.org
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MAY 2023 2X?
The Religious Right has repeatedly claimed that the "separation of church and state" concept is not in the U.S. Constitution, and that the United States is a "Christian nation." But there is nothing in the Constitution that favors one religion over another.
The Constitution's 1st Amendment, adopted in 1791, reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This means that while Catholics and Protestants enjoy freedom of religion, Christianity will not have preferential treatment over Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or any other faith.
When Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), both Muslims, were sworn into Congress using the Koran, it was perfectly in keeping with the 1st Amendment. Similarly, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois), a Hindu, used the Bhagavad-Gita for the swearing-in ceremony.
READ MORE:Most Republicans are now sympathetic to Christian nationalism
A variety of faiths are being practiced in Texas. But according to liberal Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman, far-right Republicans in the state legislature are expressing their disdain for that diversity by trying to legislature white Christian nationalism.
"Texas is growing more purple with each passing year, which is exactly why the Republican-dominated legislature is reasserting the right's political and cultural power with ever more radically conservative laws," Waldman explains in his May 9 column. "Part of that effort is a series of bills meant to impose not just religion, but Christianity, into public schools.
The columnist continues, "One bill would allow schools to mandate 'a period of prayer and Bible reading on each school day.' Another says school personnel must be allowed to 'engage in religious speech or prayer while on duty.' Yet another would allow schools to replace school counselors with 'chaplains' — no training or certification required. The centerpiece is the bill requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments, which has already passed the (Texas) State Senate."
Waldman notes that one of the outspoken opponents of the Ten Commandments bill is Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico, a Mainline Protestant who is enrolled in a Presbyterian seminary in Austin. Talarico said the bill "not only violates our American values, but I think it violates my Christian values."
READ MORE:'QMaga': How QAnon, MAGA and 'Christian nationalism' have pushed the GOP into 'madness'
The Post columnist argues, "Christian nationalism rejects our legal and cultural tradition of religious pluralism. It holds that the United States was a Christian nation from its founding and that Christianity should be the basis of public policy and political power. Prominent national Republicans are increasingly emphasizing Christian-nationalist themes…. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) calls herself a 'proud Christian nationalist.'"
Talarico describes Christian nationalist-inspired bills as "the death rattle of a dying worldview."
The Texas Democrat told Waldman, "In some ways, the far right is like a wounded animal here in Texas. They know that Texas is becoming increasingly diverse, Texas is becoming younger, and that new Texas is not going to stand for these extreme policies."
*ReadPaul Waldman's full Washington Post column at this link (subscription required).
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an 10 23
texas GOP chair stays silent on allies’ connections to antisemitic extremists" 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.
Faced with ongoing scandals this month involving his allies' ties to antisemitic extremists, the leader of the Republican Party of Texas has come out strongly — to attack other conservatives who’ve criticized his friends.
For three weeks, Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi has been defiant in the face of calls from members of his own party to cut ties with Defend Texas Liberty leader Jonathan Stickland, who recently hosted avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his office for nearly seven hours. And he’s gone after those who’ve been critical of Defend Texas Liberty, a political action committee that is funded by two of the Texas GOP’s most prolific donors.
Separately, Rinaldi is at the center of a parallel controversy involving a group for young conservatives that he recently embraced despite warnings about its leaders’ openly antisemitic views and ties to white nationalist figures.
*[Nick Fuentes is just the latest white supremacist embraced by Defend Texas Liberty]
For some Republicans, the dual scandals have raised serious questions about the party’s willingness to denounce racists — and its leader’s proximity to those who embrace them.
“He has put his friends’ interests above what is in the best interest of the party,” said Mark McCaig, an attorney and chair of the Texas Republican Initiative. “He is more concerned about protecting them and their gang.”
To be sure, Rinaldi was quick to distance himself from Fuentes. The Texas Tribune spotted Rinaldi earlier this month at the office building where Fuentes, an Adolf Hitler admirer who has called for a “holy war” against Jews and encouraged his followers to beat women, was being hosted by Stickland.
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/58ae5caba94100de08d475567b4f1c15/1006%20Fuentes%20TT%2008.jpg)
Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi is seen entering the offices of Pale Horse Strategies outside of Fort Worth on Oct. 6, 2023. Credit: The Texas Tribune
Asked about the Oct. 6 meeting, Rinaldi told the Tribune that he had no idea Fuentes was inside and would never meet with him. As for Stickland? Rinaldi said he would wait until more facts came out before commenting on his longtime political kin.
“I’m not going to make assumptions based on what I'm told by a reporter,” he said on Oct. 8.
Since then, neither Rinaldi nor the Republican Party of Texas has commented on Stickland, even as other major figures — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Kyle Rittenhouse — have issued statements that confirmed the Tribune’s reporting. Nor has Rinaldi responded to concerns from fellow Republicans and some party executive committee members who’ve called for a break with Defend Texas Liberty, which has donated $257,000 to the party since 2021.
Instead, Rinaldi has reserved his ire for House Speaker Dade Phelan, accusing the Beaumont Republican of politicizing antisemitism before demanding his resignation. Phelan has also demanded Rinaldi step down as the party’s leader and give money the Texas GOP received from Defend Texas Liberty to pro-Israel charities.
Since news of the Fuentes meeting broke, Rinaldi has posted or amplified attacks on Phelan or the Texas House on X, formerly Twitter, more than 40 times. He has not, however, publicly criticized Stickland or Defend Texas Liberty at all — even as new information continues to emerge about their close ties to white supremacists.
On Monday, the Tribune reported that, in just the last month, at least five current and former Fuentes associates have worked with groups that are closely tied to Stickland, Rinaldi and Defend Texas Liberty. That includes True Texas Project, whose leaders have sympathized with the racist gunman who murdered 22 people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019, and who are set to host Rinaldi for a fundraiser and softball game this weekend.
On Wednesday, the Texas Observer reported that a swastika-clad neo-Nazi who was spotted handing out antisemitic flyers in Fort Worth this month had previously interned for Luke Macias, a longtime GOP consultant and Rinaldi ally who just replaced Stickland as president of Defend Texas Liberty, according to the group’s website.
And this week, the Tribune reported that the president of Texans For Strong Borders, Chris Russo, has for years been a prominent figure in Fuentes’ racist movement, and has continued to post on anonymous, hate-filled social media accounts as his group —with help from Rinaldi and Defend Texas Liberty — has emerged as an influential voice that’s pushed lawmakers to crack down on legal and illegal immigration.
Rinaldi and the Texas GOP did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
‘A moral obligation’
The controversies come amid an internecine fight between the state’s far right and the Texas GOP’s more moderate, but still deeply conservative, wing. That strife has exploded into all-out war since the impeachment and acquittal of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Rinaldi ally who has received nearly $4.65 million from West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris and Dan and Farris Wilks. Those billionaires also fund Defend Texas Liberty and, before that, bankrolled Rinaldi’s career in the Texas House.
Defend Texas Liberty has been one of the most important players in the state party’s ongoing civil war. Campaign finance records show that, since 2021, it has given nearly $15 million to right-wing movements and candidates. The group made headlines this summer after giving $3 million to Patrick, months before he presided over Paxton’s impeachment trial. Defend Texas Liberty also gave $3.6 million to Don Huffines, a former state senator who helped push Gov. Greg Abbott to the right by attacking him on immigration and other issues during last year’s Republican primary.
Meanwhile, the Texas GOP’s far right has continued to embrace groups and individuals that others have warned are a bridge too far. Fuentes was the best-known of those extreme figures; but his visit and the ensuing controversy were punctuated by a separate-but-related, scandal involving the party and white supremacists.
That ordeal dates back to August, when the 66-year-old Texas Young Republican Federation voted to end its partnership with the Texas GOP until Rinaldi — who the group accused of initiating a “smear campaign” and partnering with far-right figures to undermine their newly-elected leadership — was removed from his position.
Things escalated last month, when Rinaldi pushed for the Texas GOP to bring a newly-formed spinoff group into the party despite warnings that its leaders included avowed white nationalists.
The warnings proved to be right: Days after the Tribune first reported on Fuentes’ visit with Stickland, an independent journalist reported that leaders of the new young Republicans group had praised Hitler online, and published photos of some of its leaders outside of an event for Fuentes’ vitriolically antisemitic “groyper” movement.
“There was a time in my life when I hated Nick Fuentes and his white supremacy views,” one of the group’s leaders, Rylie Rae, reportedly wrote on social media last year. “Now I recognize that he is one of the smartest people in our country and we need white nationalism. Oh how the tides have turned.”
Responding to the controversy, the new group’s leadership said in a statement that it “condemns bigotry in all forms” and had removed the individuals in question.
But before that, other young Republicans said they made clear to Rinaldi and the leaders of the new group that they were in bed with extremists. Those concerns were rebuffed, a move that one person said is emblematic of a broader problem and power struggle that has allowed extremists to flourish in Republican circles.
“There is a tendency among the populist right to essentially say, ‘It doesn’t matter how awful the person is, as long as they are on our side,’“ said Matt Wiltshire, finance director for the Young Republican National Federation. “We believe that we have a moral and ethical duty to be uncompromising in our stance that there is right and there is wrong.”
One of those removed was Konner Earnest, who led the group’s Parker County chapter and also recently became involved with the European American Community, a white nationalist group that argues American citizenship should be based on European ancestry.
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/d7f8232dbebbc8c49e23f6ff0c924add/Konner%20Earnest%20TT%2003.jpg)
Konner Earnest outside of the offices of Pale Horse Strategies outside Fort Worth on Oct. 6, 2023. Earnest is an associate of Nick Fuentes and also worked on former state Sen. Don Huffines' gubernatorial campaign in 2022. Credit: The Texas Tribune
Earnest has other ties to Rinaldi and Defend Texas Liberty: He was spotted outside the Fuentes meeting with Stickland, and has appeared in videos for Russo’s Texans For Strong Borders, which has received considerable financial support from Defend Texas Liberty. Earnest has also written anti-immigration articles for Texas Scorecard, a prominent right-wing media website that is financed by Defend Texas Liberty’s billionaire funders.
Rinaldi does not appear to have released any public statement or made any comment on social media about the young Republicans scandal.
Meanwhile, the Texas GOP’s executive committee remains at an impasse over how to respond to the party’s ongoing white supremacist problem.
Last week, after Stickland was quietly removed as Defend Texas Liberty’s president, roughly one-third of the executive committee's 64 members, including Vice Chair Dana Myers, signed a letter saying that the party had a “moral obligation to speak boldly, publicly, and clearly on this matter” and demand an explanation for the Fuentes meeting.
“Fuentes' views and Stickland’s tactics are abhorrent and totally antithetical to the principles of the Republican Party of Texas and to the conservatives who have trusted [Defend Texas Liberty] for the cause of liberty and patriotism,” they wrote. “Whether this was caused by a lapse in judgment, conscious disregard, poor leadership, or a faulty moral compass –– Stickland and [Defend Texas Liberty] must ultimately accept responsibility.”
*..."}:
Since then, the party’s disagreements have continued to escalate in public view, as Rinaldi and his allies remain largely silent on the scandal. Two weeks ago — and after a Tribune reporter reached out to more than a dozen members of the party’s executive committee regarding Defend Texas Liberty — the Texas GOP removed contact information for executive committee members from its website.
The Texas GOP did not respond to a request for comment on the move, which has been publicly blasted as an attempt to keep members from being contacted by the public.
“You don’t stand for ‘we the people’ unless they have access to you,” said Cat Parks, a former executive committee member and vice chair of the Texas GOP. “It’s not like controversy didn’t happen during my tenure.”
For now, it’s unclear what comes next for the Texas GOP and its relationship with Defend Texas Liberty, which released a two-sentence statement saying it opposes Fuentes’ “incendiary” views but has yet to provide any other details on the meeting. Stickland may no longer be leading the group, but his removal is likely cosmetic given that he also owns Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm that is used heavily by Defend Texas Liberty-funded groups and candidates.
Members of the party’s executive committee have said as much this week, and reiterated their calls for the party to speak out against Defend Texas Liberty and Stickland.
The Texas GOP “must renounce [Defend Texas Liberty] until a full explanation of the Fuentes meeting is provided, those responsible are held accountable and there’s new entirely new leadership (not just the same players swapping job titles),” executive committee member Rolando Garcia wrote this week on social media.
“Don’t excuse the inexcusable just to spite your political enemies,” he added.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/27/matt-rinaldi-texas-gop-republicans-nick-fuentes/.
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west Texas A&M University has received a $20 million gift — the largest gift from an individual donor in the university’s history — to create a new institute to promote American values.
The donation is a gift from Amarillo businessman Alex Fairly and his wife, Cheryl. Both graduated from West Texas A&M.
The new university center will be called the Hill Institute, named after the university’s second president, Joseph Hill.
“The mission of The Hill Institute is to encourage reflection upon the importance of ten West Texas, Texas, and American values and, through study and scholarship, promulgate the values among students within the diverse disciplines of the University and the extended community,” a flier for the new institute reads.
The institute’s website lists those ten values: trust; family life; hard work and persistence; regard for others; personal responsibility and free will; compatriotism and patriotism; exercise of virtue; the free and open exercise of faith; personal and civic loyalty; and rugged individualism.
“Ultimately, the goal is to have the work of scholars impact every profession and area of study represented on [West Texas A&M’s] campus through the firmly held and highly esteemed values of The Institute,” the newly created website reads. “A challenge in contemporary higher education is the retreat of disciplines into silos with little common ground from which to produce engaged citizens. The Institute will illuminate the founding values of our nation as embodied in our region as a means of cementing intellectual processes to make the world a better place to live.”
The Texas A&M Board of Regents approved the creation of the institute in February 2022 and the university had been searching for a donor to fund the center since. West Texas A&M President Walter Wendler said he worked with Fairly on crafting the institute’s mission for three years. He said he sees the university and this new institute as a “launching pad for the future of higher education.”
“Higher education is in the need to continually be reshaped, especially now with forces at work that affect every aspect of university life and the students who come here to study [and] the faculty and staff who come here to work who take care of their families,” Wendler said Wednesday during an event to announce the new center. “The enterprise of higher education is being drawn into a universalist perspective, one which says all institutions should all look the same. There are many forces at work that drive us in that direction and it's a mistake.”
Wendler, who has served as the university’s president since 2016, is known for being outspoken about his Christian beliefs, often publishing articles about his faith on his personal website and in messages to the university community.
In the spring, the university's facultyissued a vote of no confidence in Wendler's leadershipafter he canceled a student drag show on campus, which he called “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.” They accused him of abusing his role as president by running the university based on his own religious ideology and said he has exhibited a pattern of “divisive, misogynistic, homophobic and non-inclusive rhetoric that stands in stark contrast with the core values of the university.”
Wendler emerged from the controversy unscathed. He’s also received early support from a federal judge who is overseeing a lawsuit that a campus LGBTQ student group filed against Wendler in March, alleging he violated their free speech rights by banning the drag performance. Recently, the judge declined the student’s request for injunctive relief, stating that Wendler acted within his authority when he canceled the campus drag show.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who attended the event announcing the donation Wednesday, said he supported the center as a way to bring Texas “panhandle values” to the rest of the country.
“This is the America that all America used to be, it should be again,” Patrick said of the sprawling, pastoral region whose rural counties and smaller outposts have long been a Republican stronghold. “These are American values here.”
The Hill Institute will seek to embed students and faculty members “to better understand how these values impact daily life, create a better community, prepare us for engaged citizenship and shape our nation,” Wendler said. “We want the mission of the Hill Institute to have an impact far beyond our region.”
“Hill scholars” will also share their ideas and insights through regular publications and speaking engagements, according to a press release announcing the institute.
University officials said the institute will be funded through private donations, not state resources.
Alex Fairly, the donor funding the Hill Institute, told the crowd Wednesday that when Wendler approached him to serve on the committee for the university’s comprehensive fundraising campaign, the One West campaign, he was skeptical that his values aligned with those of higher education broadly.
“We wrestled with the decision to give to higher education because we were no longer sure we trusted the direction we saw higher education taking,” Fairly said. “What Texas and America need today is a leadership of intelligence and virtue. Education must take more account of permanent values.”
Fairly said he and his wife were convinced to make their donation because of Wendler, who they believe is leading higher education in the right direction, and the principles of Joseph Hill, who often spoke publicly about the values of the region.
According to the Texas Ethics Commission, Fairly has sporadically donated to local and state Republican lawmakers over the past few years. In 2022, Fairly and his entity, dealOn LLC, donated $100,000 to Attorney General Ken Paxton and $250,000 to Patrick. He has also made smaller donations to House Speaker Dade Phelan.
This year, Fairly and his wife donated $145,000 to the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a political action committee led by former Rep. Jonathan Stickland. The PAC was a vocal supporter of Paxton after he was impeached by the Texas House this spring and throughout his impeachment trial in the Senate. In June, the PAC donated $3 million to Patrick, who presided over the trial.
At the event Wednesday, Patrick told Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp that he would work with him to get similar institutes at all A&M campuses by the end of Sharp’s tenure.
“Start from here, make this a national policy program because we need leaders in America,” he told the crowd. “We need to turn our face back to God. Stand on that foundation.”
This isn’t the first time Patrick has supported an institute at a public university that had the financial backing of conservative donors.
In 2021, Patrick worked with private donors and university leaders at the University of Texas at Austin to create the now-called Civitas Institute. Originally called the Liberty Institute, the proposed think tank would be “dedicated to the study and teaching of individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets,” according to draft plans of the center.
Patrick later said the original concept for the center was “shot down” by UT-Austin professors because they wanted to have control of hiring. Faculty who were involved in the creation of the institute told the Tribune that university leaders diverted from the original plans after faculty pushed back against the idea.
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Texas eighth graders will soon be required to learn about climate change — but not without a showdown
man and woman sitting on chairs
Erin DouglasandThe Texas TribuneAugust 30, 2023
Starting next year, Texas will require that eighth graders learn about climate change as part of a science curriculum overhaul approved two years ago.
But which textbooks they’ll use to learn about it will largely depend on the state board charged with setting curriculum standards, and questions during a Tuesday meeting to hear testimony on the proposed teaching materials showed that the 15-member body — which has taken a rightward turn since 2021 — could make its decision along partisan lines.
One Republican member of the State Board of Education asked whether students ought to learn about the benefits of burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, Democrats advocated for texts that emphasized the scientific consensus on climate change.
Dozens of publishers submitted textbook proposals for the state’s overhaul of its science curriculums. Any resident of Texas can submit written comments on the instructional materials before Oct. 30. The board plans to adopt instructional materials in November; the new science standards and textbooks will take effect at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.
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Many critics say the new curriculum standards, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, don’t go far enough to teach kids that climate change is caused by human activities, primarily burning fossil fuels. And while the TEKS changes will require eighth graders to describe how human activities “can” influence climate, students won’t be required to learn about how “a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” could mitigate climate change after the board previously declined to include that language.
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Publishers can choose to include information in textbooks that go beyond the state’s new minimum requirements for teaching climate change — the question is whether the board, which strengthened its Republican majority during last year’s election, will approve such textbooks.
The board’s decision could impact how science is taught in Texas classrooms for years. And while school districts aren’t required to use board-approved textbooks, many do so for the assurance that those materials meet the state’s standards.
At least one Republican board member, Will Hickman, who represents Houston, indicated that he’d advocate for instructional materials that do not include climate change solutions in science courses. He argued those solutions would be a better fit in social studies.
Hickman also asked one testifier if the textbooks should “also include the benefits we get from burning carbon,” arguing that many facets of modern society, such as air conditioning, are powered by fossil fuels. Hickman, an attorney who was elected to the board in 2021, has worked as in-house counsel forShell OilCompany since 2004.
The testifier, Susan Meredith, an Austin-based energy and education consultant who had testified that students should be presented with instructional materials that prepare them for climate change related jobs in the future, told Hickman he was conflating topics.
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“What you’re collapsing is that electricity has to come from gas and oil, and it doesn't,” Meredith said.
Another Republican SBOE member, Pat Hardy, who represents Tarrant and Parker counties and parts of Dallas County, has previously said she wants children to learn about the good fossil fuels have done for human society, such as helping the Texas economy grow. Texas is the nation’s largest oil and gas producing state.
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Texas is one of only six states that does not use the Next Generation Science Standards to guide its K-12 science curriculum. The standards — developed by states and a committee convened by the National Research Council in 2013 — emphasize that climate change is real, severe, caused by humans and can be mitigated with actions that reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
A 2020 analysis of science curriculums in all 50 states by the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund gave Texas an F grade for how well schools in the state taught about the scientific consensus on climate change.
Some Democrats on the board pushed back on the soft-on-fossil-fuels language proposed by their Republican colleagues.
“We absolutely should say humans do impact climate change,” said Marisa Perez-Diaz, a Democrat who represents San Antonio on the board, in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “It doesn’t have to be political — it is just fact. But I think because sometimes we get into these culture-war conversations, it blurs what should and shouldn’t go into the standards.”
Although all the textbooks that have been submitted for approval explain that climate change is happening and “can” be due to human activity, not all of them explicitly say that human activities are the primary reason or include information on how to mitigate climate change. In other words, some of the textbooks don’t say that humans will need to quickly and dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions, largely by phasing out fossil fuels, to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change, as international climate scientists have long warned.
During the Tuesday board meeting, Perez-Diaz asked the other board members to be cautious of only supporting textbooks that meet the state’s minimum requirements and nothing more.
“When publishers take the time to include additional information past the TEKS [standards], for me, that is a text that stands out above and beyond the others,” she said.
Some educators, former teachers and education advocates are concerned that the political influence of the fossil fuel industry in Texas has prevented, and may continue to block, robust education on climate science ahead of the board’s November vote on science instructional materials.
“Climate change might be politically controversial, but the scientific consensus is clear,” said Carisa Lopez, a senior political director for Texas Freedom Network, during a Tuesday press conference. “It’s past time for the board to be clear about textbooks: that textbooks in public schools should teach the truth.”
Judy Dickey, a graduate lecturer at Texas A&M in the department of atmospheric sciences, said she thought some of the textbooks were trying to “soft-peddle” climate change by not explicitly saying humans were the cause, casting doubt on the scientific consensus or not including solutions.
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But Dickey, who reviewed the textbooks for a Texas Freedom Network analysis of the proposals, said most of them did a good job of explaining climate science, treated climate change seriously and explained how it occurs.
“To me, that is a huge step forward,” said Dickey, who was previously a science teacher in Florida. “I was pleasantly surprised. … It was nice to see that no one was trying to pretend it was volcanoes.”
One 11th-grade student who testified during the Tuesday meeting, Marygrace Beinke, said none of her teachers have ever told her that climate change is a hoax or that evolution isn’t real. She emphasized to the board that all students in Texas should be given the opportunity to learn about those topics, which she said have reinforced her faith in God.
“I’ve never felt closer to God as when I’ve been learning about how fragile, beautiful and complex our Earth is,” Beinke told the board.
Geoff Carlisle, who taught eighth-grade science at a KIPP school in Austin for a decade, said in an interview with the Tribune that like Beinke’s teachers, he taught his students about climate change, even though it was not required by the state’s standards. Carlisle incorporated information about climate science into his own lesson plans — something he said most teachers in Texas don’t likely have the time or resources to do.
He said many of his students understood that climate change was happening and that it might have something to do with burning fossil fuels, but they could not explain the greenhouse gas effect or what role burning fossil fuels had in it. He wants the state to go further and require climate science to be taught at all levels. Other states, such as New Jersey, have such standards.
“When I think about the alarming emergency that our students are going to face or are facing, it’s unethical to not be talking about this in all grade levels,” Carlisle said. “Our students deserve the right to understand what’s happening.”
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https://www.alternet.org/rittenhouse-texas/
Kyle Rittenhouse launches nonprofit with far-right Texans as he ramps up political engagement in the state
Kyle Rittenhouse speaking at the 2021 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. (Gage Skidmore)
Robert DownenandThe Texas Tribune August 16, 2023
Kyle Rittenhouse, the right-wing activist who was famously acquitted of killing two Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, is stepping up his involvement in Texas politics.
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Already this year, he’s rallied with a Texas secessionist movement leader, endorsed ultraconservative midterm candidates, and railed against Texas gun control legislation and the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.
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Now, Rittenhouse is creating a nonprofit in the state — with help from well-connected, far-right political actors.
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In a July 23 filing with the Texas secretary of state’s office, he described “The Rittenhouse Foundation” as a nonprofit that “protects human and civil rights secured by law, including an individual’s inalienable right to bear arms” and “ensures the Second Amendment is preserved through education and legal assistance.”
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The foundation’s directors are Rittenhouse, Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt and Shelby Griesinger, treasurer for Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a key financier of far-right candidates in the state. The foundation’s registered agent is the law firm of Tony McDonald, who has for years represented Empower Texans and other deep-red organizations.
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Defend Texas Liberty and Empower Texans have received tens of millions of dollars from a trio of West Texas oil tycoons — Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks — who have for decades funded campaigns, nonprofits and movements to promote their ultraconservative religious and social views.
McDonald declined an interview request Tuesday. Other foundation officials could not be reached for comment.
Rittenhouse moved to Texas last year after being acquitted of homicide charges in the fatal shooting of two people at a 2020 protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He’s since steadily ramped up his political involvement in Texas, often railing against the media, “cancel culture” and gun control groups.
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In January, Rittenhouse appeared at a Conroe “rally against censorship” with Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, which advocates for Texas to secede from the United States. The event drew national media attention after a Conroe brewery said it was inundated with threats and harassment after pulling out as the event’s host venue.
In May, Rittenhouse joined Texas Gun Rights in opposing a House bill that would have raised the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. And he’s been active on social media,condemning the Texas House impeachment of Paxton and endorsing pro-Second Amendment, ultraconservative candidates who were also backed by groups affiliated with Dunn and the Wilks brothers.
Rittenhouse has endorsed Andy Hopper, a primary challenger to state Rep. Lynn Stucky, R-Denton. Hopper, who came close to unseating Stucky in a runoff in 2022, had the support of Defend Texas Liberty in that primary and is expected to have it again.
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Rittenhouse more recently backed Brandon Herrera, a gun rights activist and YouTube star known as “The AK Guy” who is running against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio. Gonzales represents the district where the 2022 Uvalde school shooting took place, and he was the only Texas Republican in the U.S. House to vote for a bipartisan gun law afterward.
Last year, Rittenhouse announced plans to attend Texas A&M University, only to walk back the claim after the university said he had not been accepted. Rittenhouse, an Illinois native, later said he planned to attend Blinn College, a two-year school in Brenham. It’s unclear if Rittenhouse is attending the school, which said he had not enrolled in classes after he announced his intention to go there.
Rittenhouse’s foray into Texas politics comes as Republicans continue efforts to reach out to younger Americans who are increasingly supportive of liberal policies. On Monday, The Texas Tribune reported on a new company, Influenceable, with ties to Dunn that has been quietly recruiting Gen Z social media influencersto do undisclosed political promotions.
Patrick Svitek contributed reporting.
The full program is now LIVE for the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 21-23 in Austin. Explore the program featuring more than 100 unforgettable conversations coming to TribFest. Panel topics include the biggest 2024 races and what’s ahead, how big cities in Texas and around the country are changing, the integrity of upcoming elections and so much more. See the full program.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/16/kyle-rittenhouse-texas-foundation/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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https://www.alternet.org/texas-gop-lawmakers-control-elections/
8 23 voter suppress?
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paxton
https://www.alternet.org/texas-blocks-order-complicated-pregnancies/
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https://www.alternet.org/extreme-texas-heat-9-billion/ $ biz
10 comm
https://www.alternet.org/texas-public-schools-2659732308/
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an 7 23 ~ AA
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Houston schools eliminate librarians and 'repurpose' libraries into 'discipline centers'
David Badashand The New Civil Rights Movement July 27, 2023
The Houston Independent School District, the largest in Texas and the eighth-largest in the United States, will eliminate librarian positions in 28 schools and turn libraries into what are being called “discipline centers,” according to Click2Houston.
Mike Myles, the state-installed schools superintendent and former charter schools CEO, earlier this month announced cuts of up to 600 central office positions.
Texas has a $32 billion state surplus but rather than allocate needed funds to public schools, lawmakers in the majority-Republican state legislature, at the behest of Governor Greg Abbott, just delivered a massive property tax cut.
The move to gut librarians and massively reduce access to books and other material does not appear to be budget related, as librarians will be allowed to apply for other positions.
READ MORE: Nancy Mace Tells Prayer Breakfast About Refusing Sex With Her Fiancé This Morning: ‘I’ll See Him Later’
KHOU reports libraries at those 28 schools “will be repurposed into ‘team centers’ where students who had to be removed from class due to behavioral issues will be placed to watch their class virtually.”
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Former HISD librarian and Manager of Library Services, Janice Newsum, says, “When students engage in reading as an activity of choice, they are not only building that reading muscle, but they are also developing their vocabulary they are understanding a bit about the world that exists outside their block radius.”
Mayor Sylvester Turner appeared to suggest the schools that are losing their librarians are already underserved.
“You don’t close libraries in some of the schools in your most underserved communities, and you’re keeping libraries open in other schools,” Turner said.
Watch Click2Houston’s report below or at this link.
: report
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6 23 heat wave dome saves day
https://www.alternet.org/environment/solar-texas/
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ca is officially a devil term/ verb
no lnx twit vid
'So we’re legislating nothing': Texas Democrat stumps GOP sponsor of anti-'tyrannical government' bill
Brandon Gage
May 07, 2023
Texas State Representative Jarvis Johnson [AA] (D-Houston) stumped State Representative Carrie Isaac (R-Dripping Springs) during last Thursday's debate over a proposal that Isaac sponsored to supposedly shield Texans from California's "tyrannical government."
Chron explained on Friday that "House Bill 3137 stops a municipality from instituting regulations surrounding the transfer, possession, wearing, carrying, ownership, storage, transportation, licensing, or registration of firearms, air guns, knives, ammunition, or firearm-related gun supplies or accessories. At the same time, the bill prohibits local governments from requiring gun owners to get liability insurance for damages resulting from negligent or willful acts involving firearms."
The outlet also noted that "according to a February report by Reuters, the San Jose bill passed in January 2022 with an ordinance requiring gun owners to obtain liability insurance to cover negligence or accidents from using firearms. The San Jose bill also requires gun owners to pay a yearly fee to gun violence prevention organizations the city manager picks. Due to pending litigation, the bill hasn't been enforced in the city yet."
READ MORE: 'Now it’s God’s fault': Texas Republican slammed for claiming 'the almighty' controls shootings
Bit by bit, Johnson poked holes in Isaac's assertions.
"What does your bill specifically do?" Johnson asked Isaac.
"It will not allow municipalities to require insurance on firearms," Isaac replied.
"So otherwise, other words, does your bill prohibit mayors, city councils, and county commissioners from legally governing themselves when it comes to guns?" Johnson wondered.
READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene blames Texas mall shooting on 'mental illness' and 'evil forces'
"They do not have this right," Isaac declared.
"They don't have the right to do what?" Johnson followed up.
"To infringe upon our second amendment," Isaac said.
"Who — you mean again, cities, mayors," Johnson clarified.
"Correct," Isaac confirmed.
"Do mayors, city councils, and county commissioners have a right to pass laws that protect the citizens of their community?" Johnson posited.
"As long as it doesn't infringe on our constitutional rights," Isaac responded as her comrades began surrounding her.
"The constitutional right to do what?" Johnson pressed.
"To protect ourselves with our Second Amendment," Isaac proclaimed.
"From what?" Johnson continued.
"From a tyrannical government," Isaac reiterated.
"A tyrannical government. Which government currently is being tyrannical?" Johnson asked.
"Say that again, I'm sorry," Isaac requested.
"Which government is currently being tyrannical?" Johnson repeated.
Isaac struggled to provide a coherent answer.
"Yeah. It would prevent any tyrannical gun, any tyrannical," she said amid whispers from her colleagues.
"Is there a municipality currently that this law is in place?" Johnson asked.
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"That's not what this is about," a male voice grumbles.
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"Yes, actually there is," Isaac stated.
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"Where?" asked Johnson.
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"San Jose, California," Isaac said.
"Oh, I, I didn't know we were California. I'm asking in Texas..." Johnson quipped.
"I'm sorry, say that again," Isaac requested again.
:{
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"Is there a city in Texas?" Johnson asked more forcefully.
:{
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At this point, Isaac was being fed answers.
"Answer every question. Keep saying what you want us say," Isaac was told.
"Um, no, there is not, and that's the, and this still will prevent that from happening here in Texas," Isaac insisted.
"So then that means we're legislating nothing?" Johnson pointed out.
"We're preventing it from happening here in Texas," Isaac shot back.
"So it hasn't happened yet," Johnson said.
"That's correct," Isaac agreed.
"So, again, we're legislating nothing," Johnson added.
"Don't California my Texas," Isaac snapped.
"Are we legislating nothing?" Johnson asked one last time, albeit in vain. "So we're legislating nothing."
Watch below or at this link.
READ MORE: 'Uvalde would like a word': Texas Republican scolded for blaming Friday’s mass shooting on 'the migrants'
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bill allows gop guy to negate only biggest cty = dem; 2nd bill any cty?
https://www.alternet.org/republicans-texas-sweeping-power-grab/
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lone star --> death star
an 6 23
texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation earlier this week that "poses serious health risks" to construction workers, Texas Public Radio (TPR) reports.
Per TPR, HB 2127 — known as the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act — "bars cities and counties from passing regulations that are stricter than state ones. It also overturns local rules such as ordinances in Austin and Dallas that mandate rest breaks for construction workers."
Republican State Rep. Dustin Burrows, who proposed the "Death Star Bill," insisted "the law is needed to end 'the current hodgepodge of onerous and burdensome regulations,'" but TPR notes "for construction workers in two of the state's fastest-growing cities, advocates say, it poses serious health risks."
READ MORE: Neither 'compassion' nor 'leadership': Greg Abbott blasted for calling shooting victims 'illegal immigrants'
Mario Ontiveros told TPR "he once saw a co-worker lose consciousness and fall from a ladder," and due to his previous "safety training," the Texas construction worker "was the only one on the job site who knew how to help — performing CPR and asking his co-worker basic questions to keep him conscious — until paramedics arrived, he said."
The Texas Tribune reports:
Texas is the state where the most workers die from high temperatures, government data shows. At least 42 workers died in Texas between 2011 and 2021 from environmental heat exposure, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Workers’ unions claim this data doesn’t fully reflect the magnitude of the problem because heat-related deaths are often recorded under a different primary cause of injury.
Furthermore, according to TPR, "Research published in 2018 — eight years after Austin passed its rest-break ordinance — found that construction workers were 35% more likely to get a break because of the rule."
Daniela Hernandez, state legislative coordinator for Texas advocacy group Workers Defense Action Fund, said, "We know that workers do pass out and experience heat stress and different types of heat illnesses."
READ MORE: Gov. Greg Abbott leaves experts stunned as he injects politics into Texas' criminal justice system
Paul Puente, executive secretary of the Houston Gulf Coast Building and Construction Trades Council, said the "Death Star Bill" is expected to "strike down construction-worker protections in southeast Texas," and "negatively impact construction safety as a whole," even though "labor unions can still negotiate for rest breaks."
He emphasized "Science has already shown that individuals need to have time to take a break, collect their thoughts, and then return back to work to ensure a safe working environment," and "Without allotted rest breaks in extreme heat," he told TPR "workers can easily become fatigued, disoriented, dehydrated — effects that endanger their lives."
Calling the state "unsafe" for construction workers, Puente added, "when you're trying to encourage businesses to come to your state, this is not a good look."
TPR reports the law is set to go into effect Sept. 1.
READ MORE: 'Absolutely insane': Texas Governor Greg Abbott seeks pardon for man convicted of murdering BLM protester
Texas Public Radio's full report is available at this link. The Texas Tribune's report is here.
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an raw 5 23
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been accused of citing illegally leaked children’s medical records as part of a vendetta against trans kids and their families.
Paxton announced an investigation Friday of trans care by Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, according to the Houston Chronicle.
But Harris County attorney Christian Menefee is firing back that Paxton’s move was predicated by conservative-media reports based on illegal leaks from his office, the report said.
“Menefee called for ‘swift and appropriate action’ in response to the apparent records leak and described Paxton’s investigation as ‘legally baseless,’” the Chronicle reported.
“This illicit release of medical records puts children and their families at risk, and swift action must be taken to ensure that this does not happen again," he said in a statement.
"I have spoken with representatives at Texas Children’s Hospital and understand that the hospital will fully investigate how this happened and notify all impacted families if their information was released.
“I expect they will fully disclose what they find to the United States Department of Health and Human Services. If a hospital employee leaked these medical records, they must be fired. If it was a hospital vendor, their contract must be terminated.”
The Chronicle said the AG's investigation followed as series of tweets from an activist that shared what he called evidence that the hospital "secretly" provided gender-affirming care. The tweets included details from medical records, with the patients' names redacted.
Menefee, the first Black person to serve as the top lawyer in Texas’ largest county, which is home to Houston, “noted that unauthorized disclosures of medical records may violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, commonly known as HIPAA,” the newspaper reported.
Hospital officials fired back at Paxton as well: “At Texas Children’s Hospital, our mission is to provide high-quality care for all patients. Throughout the policy debate surrounding gender medicine, our healthcare professionals have always and will continue to prioritize the care of our patients within the bounds of the law.”
The Chronicle said the AG's investigation followed as series of tweets from an activist that shared what he called evidence that the hospital "secretly" provided gender-affirming care. The tweets included details from medical records, with the patients' names redacted.
Menefee, the first Black person to serve as the top lawyer in Texas’ largest county, which is home to Houston, “noted that unauthorized disclosures of medical records may violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, commonly known as HIPAA,” the newspaper reported.
Hospital officials fired back at Paxton as well: “At Texas Children’s Hospital, our mission is to provide high-quality care for all patients. Throughout the policy debate surrounding gender medicine, our healthcare professionals have always and will continue to prioritize the care of our patients within the bounds of the law.”
“Though many unhinged activists compromising the healthcare field think otherwise, children are not to be treated as science experiments. Doctors and hospitals should not be pushing mutilative and irreversible ‘gender transitioning’ procedures that will negatively impact innocent children for the rest of their lives.”
As the Texas Tribune reported Friday, Paxton’s newest investigation is part of an ongoing effort aimed at trans care.
The Texas Legislature recently passed a bill that would bar minors from receiving that medical care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and related surgery — though such surgery is rare for minors, the Texas Tribune reported. “Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will sign the bill, and it is expected to go into effect in September.”
Paxton’s targeting of Texas Children’s Hospital was only the latest salvo in an ongoing campaign, according to the Tribune.
“Two weeks ago, Paxton announced a similar investigation into Dell Children’s Hospital in Austin, citing allegations from a hidden camera video investigation from the conservative activist group Project Veritas," it reported.
“The same day Paxton announced the investigation, parents began receiving calls from Dell Children’s, telling them their appointments were canceled and their doctors had parted ways with the adolescent health clinic.”
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ref tex trib legit
no lnx
attorney General Ken Paxton has once again waded into the conservative fight to restrict access to gender-affirming care for trans youth, announcing Friday that he was opening an investigation into “potentially illegal” practices at Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas.
The investigation comes in the wake of a video report that alleges to show a social worker at Dell Children’s saying the Austin-based hospital provides certain gender-affirming treatment for patients “as young as eight, nine.”
Gender-affirming care is an umbrella term for the treatment of gender dysphoria, or the discomfort that comes when someone’s gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Gender-affirming care ranges from “socially transitioning” — using different pronouns or dressing differently — to puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions.
Project Veritas, a far-right activist group that engages in deceptive practices to do hidden camera-style investigations, filmed health care professionals at Dell Children’s and other facilities around the country as they discussed gender-affirming care.
The clip of the social worker at Dell Children’s takes up less than a minute of the 11-minute edited video package. In the video, the woman is seen saying that patients could potentially be prescribed puberty blockers after just one appointment with a doctor.
“It’s not something that we want to gatekeep and require you to, you know, come to us 10 times before it’s prescribed,” the woman in the video said.
In a statement, Dell Children’s said they are reviewing the situation and will take appropriate action “to the extent that care provided at our clinic may have been inconsistent with our organization’s position on this important issue. The statement also noted that Dell Children’s does not prescribe hormone therapy or use surgery to treat gender dysphoria, but does “provide a safe and welcoming place for children to receive other forms of primary care and treatment.”
On Friday, Paxton filed a “request to examine” letter with Dell Children’s parent organization, Ascension Seton, asking them to turn over documents relating to the use of puberty blockers and counseling for trans youth.
It’s not clear what law Paxton believes Dell Children’s has broken; Texas does not currently have age limits on gender-affirming care, nor does it require doctors to see patients a specific number of times before prescribing puberty blockers.
But that could soon change. Paxton announced this investigation on the day of a crucial House vote on Senate Bill 14, which would prohibit transgender youth from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapy. In the two years since the Legislature last met, gender-affirming care for trans youth has emerged as a central issue for Republicans, led in many ways by Paxton.
Last session, the Legislature did not approve a measure that would have classified gender-affirming care as child abuse. But during the interim, Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion, claiming that existing state law allowed for parents who provide their trans children with gender-affirming care to potentially be classified as child abusers.
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Citing this opinion, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s child welfare agency to pursue investigations into families with trans children. The subsequent investigations sent shockwaves through Texas’ LGBTQ communities as parents of trans children lawyered up or left the state out of fear of persecution.
The Texas Supreme Court said in a ruling that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services erred in following Abbott or Paxton’s guidance on this, and a court order has broadly blocked the agency from opening new investigations.
But this has not stopped Paxton from continuing to push the issue. He has opened deceptive trade investigations into two pharmaceutical companies that produce puberty blockers and joined multistate coalitions opposing other state laws allowing for gender-affirming care.
In a statement Friday, he urged the House to pass SB 14, “to ban acts of child abuse such as so-called ‘gender transitioning’ surgical procedures and prescribing puberty-blocking drugs for minors.”
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an no lnx
Texas Republicans double down on white 'Christian nationalism' as state 'grows more purple'
Alex Henderson May 09, 2023
The Religious Right has repeatedly claimed that the "separation of church and state" concept is not in the U.S. Constitution, and that the United States is a "Christian nation." But there is nothing in the Constitution that favors one religion over another.
The Constitution's 1st Amendment, adopted in 1791, reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This means that while Catholics and Protestants enjoy freedom of religion, Christianity will not have preferential treatment over Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or any other faith.
When Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), both Muslims, were sworn into Congress using the Koran, it was perfectly in keeping with the 1st Amendment. Similarly, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois), a Hindu, used the Bhagavad-Gita for the swearing-in ceremony.
READ MORE: Most Republicans are now sympathetic to Christian nationalism
A variety of faiths are being practiced in Texas. But according to liberal Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman, far-right Republicans in the state legislature are expressing their disdain for that diversity by trying to legislature white Christian nationalism.
"Texas is growing more purple with each passing year, which is exactly why the Republican-dominated legislature is reasserting the right's political and cultural power with ever more radically conservative laws," Waldman explains in his May 9 column. "Part of that effort is a series of bills meant to impose not just religion, but Christianity, into public schools.
The columnist continues, "One bill would allow schools to mandate 'a period of prayer and Bible reading on each school day.' Another says school personnel must be allowed to 'engage in religious speech or prayer while on duty.' Yet another would allow schools to replace school counselors with 'chaplains' — no training or certification required.The centerpiece is the bill requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments, which has already passed the (Texas) State Senate."
Waldman notes that one of the outspoken opponents of the Ten Commandments bill is Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico, a Mainline Protestant who is enrolled in a Presbyterian seminary in Austin. Talarico said the bill "not only violates our American values, but I think it violates my Christian values."
READ MORE: 'QMaga': How QAnon, MAGA and 'Christian nationalism' have pushed the GOP into 'madness'
The Post columnist argues, "Christian nationalism rejects our legal and cultural tradition of religious pluralism. It holds that the United States was a Christian nation from its founding and that Christianity should be the basis of public policy and political power. Prominent national Republicans are increasingly emphasizing Christian-nationalist themes…. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) calls herself a 'proud Christian nationalist.'"
Talarico describes Christian nationalist-inspired bills as "the death rattle of a dying worldview."
The Texas Democrat told Waldman, "In some ways, the far right is like a wounded animal here in Texas. They know that Texas is becoming increasingly diverse, Texas is becoming younger, and that new Texas is not going to stand for these extreme policies."
READ MORE: 'Patriots might have to resort to violence': Survey shows 'most' GOPers sympathize with Christian nationalism
Read Paul Waldman's full Washington Post column at this link (subscription required).
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same weekend PU truck plows into migrants
https://www.alternet.org/texas-state-rep-almighty-shootings/
https://www.alternet.org/texas-democrat-greg-abbott-explain/ dem call out
gop wants more guns https://www.alternet.org/texas-lawmaker-god-responsible-shooting/
https://www.alternet.org/she-had-no-face/
an 5 23
no lnx vid twt
texas Governor Greg Abbott declined to say whether he would support measures to reduce gun violence during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.
Abbott's remarks come a day after eight people were murdered in Saturday's mass shooting — the 199th so far in 2023 — at the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas.
Speaking with anchor Shannon Bream, Abbott blamed "the government" for the massacre.
READ MORE: 'Now it’s God’s fault': Texas Republican slammed for claiming 'the almighty' controls shootings
"And I'll be going up to Allen [DOGGED BY UVALDE FUNDRAISER FAIL?] later today to begin the process, uh, providing hope and, and healing. But I gotta tell you that there are questions that are lingering that the families want answers to, and that is, why did this happen? Why did the government do this? How did this happen? And I know that those families need an answer as quickly as possible," Abbott said. "And then the last thing I'll tell you, and, andI just wanna reiterate my gratitude and the gratitude of all Texans for the swift response of that police officer — you had just a single police officer who had to confront, uh, that dangerous gunman — and did the right thing by taking swift action to eliminate the gunman. [just happened to be there on another case?] And we are great for that officer's heroism."
Bream addressed recent Fox News polling showing that reasonable restrictions have enormous public support.
"Just out from Fox News. When you ask people what they wouldfavor, background checks for guns, enforcing existing gun laws, legal age to 21, requiring mental health checks, flagging people for danger to self, all of those score at more than eighty percent. Are there things that you would consider in Texas or that you think Congress should consider at a federal level along those lines?" Bream asked.
"Well, on the federal level, as you know, some laws were passed last year to begin to address this. At the state level, listen, this is something that we've been grappling with over the past year. And there are some potential easy solutions such as passing laws that we're working on right now to get guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals [AA?] and to criminals into increased penalties for criminals who possess guns," replied Abbott, who has loosened firearm laws in the Lone Star State in spite of the recent spikes in violence.
READ MORE: 'So we’re legislating nothing': Texas Democrat stumps GOP sponsor of anti-'tyrannical government' bill
"But, Shannon, we need to, to recognize a reality. What we've seen across the United States over the past year or two. And that is a, an increased number of shootings in both red states and blue states. Shannon, we've seen an increased number of shootings in states with easy gun laws as well as states with very strict gun laws," Abbott continued. "I think that the state in which the largest number of victims, uh, have occurred this year is in California where they have very tough gun laws where 11 people died."
That statement is demonstrably false. According to WiseVoter.org, California ranks 44th in terms of gun deaths per capita, with 8.5 per 100,000. Texas, however, sits at 26th, with 14.2 per 100,000.
"And so one thing that we can observe very easily, and that is there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of anger and violence that's taking place in America," Abbott stated. "And what Texas is doing in a big-time way, we are working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it."
But the governor was not quite finished.
"One, one last thing about this, Shannon, and that is, it truly seems today that America is more divided than we've been in decades," he declared, adding that "we gotta find a way in this country where we can once again reunite Americans as Americans and come together as one big family, and in that regard, find ways to reduce violence in our country."
Watch the clips below or at this link.
READ MORE: 'She had no face': Witness and father recalls 'carnage' from Saturday’s Texas mass shooting}}
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10 cmds
https://www.alternet.org/texas-public-schools-2659732308/
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no lnx
jonathan Mitchell, the attorney behind Texas' vigilante law that acted as an end-run around Roe v. Wade, allowing anyone to sue anyone who even assisted someone getting an illegal abortion, is now reportedly drafting legislation to not only ban "immoral" books in schools, but allow anyone to sue librarians and other school staff over the book, or even if they express support for LGBTQ people.
"Draft city ordinances allegedly written by Mitchell could lead to Texans suing librarians and others for their decisions about which books to put on shelves — or for expressing LGBTQ+ support," Axios reports.
The legislation would ban events known as "drag queen story hours," and any recognition of LGBTQ Pride month.
"The draft ordinance — a copy of which, marked privileged and confidential, was obtained by Axios — says the library may not purchase any item containing 'immoral content' or allow people in drag to read to children."
READ MORE: ‘Radical Gender Ideology’: Mike Pence Goes to Iowa to Attack Transgender Children in the Name of God (Video)
"Librarians also may not put on the shelves any book in the young adult section that includes descriptions of nudity, 'any type of sexual act between individuals,' masturbation, cross-dressing, suicide, self-harm, or ‘excretory functions,'" Axios adds. "The draft ordinance also bars librarians and any other city employees from displaying LGBTQ+ flags or emblems — or 'tak[ing] any action that … acknowledges the month of June or any other period of time as LGBTQ Pride Month.'"
Citizens who successfully sue librarians or other school personnel can expect to win at least $10,000 per violation, plus attorney fees.
Mitchell is a former Solicitor General of Texas, appointed by then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He clerked for ant-LGBTQ Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and was a Trump nominee.
Mitchell's biography at the Federalist Society's website brags about his vigilante legislation.
READ MORE: Legal Experts: Fulton County Grand Jury Report Means ‘Trump Likely Committed Crimes’ and ‘Expect Charges to Follow’
"Mr. Mitchell devised the novel enforcement mechanism in the Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as Senate Bill 8, which avoids judicial review by prohibiting government officials from enforcing the statute and empowering private citizens to bring lawsuits against those who violate it," it reads. "This produced an end-run around Roe v. Wade and allowed Texas and other states to impose pre-viability abortion bans despite the continued existence of Roe."
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https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-promotes-texas-secession-movement
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https://www.alternet.org/texas-wrongful-death-lawsuit-abortion/
no lnx an 3 23
'Absurd and inflammatory': TX activists condemn 'outrageous' wrongful death lawsuit over abortion medication
Maya Boddie March 11, 2023
A Texas man has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against three women for allegedly assisting his now-ex-wife with acquiring abortion medication, and activists are calling the move "outrageous," The Associated Press (AP) reports.
Per AP, Marcus Silva of Galveston County "alleges assisting in a self-administered abortion is tantamount to aiding a murder," and is pursuing a $1 million settlement.
In favor of Silva's legal action, Texas GOP Rep. Briscoe Cain, said, "Anyone involved in distributing or manufacturing abortion pills will be sued into oblivion."
READ MORE: Women denied abortions sue Texas to affirm exceptions to the laws
The Texas Tribune reports:
Joanna Grossman, a law professor at SMU Dedman School of Law, said this lawsuit is 'absurd and inflammatory.' Since the pregnant patient is protected from prosecution, there is no underlying cause of action to bring a wrongful death suit in a self-managed abortion, she said.
"But this is going to cause such fear and chilling that it doesn’t matter whether [Mitchell] is right," Grossman said. "Who is going to want to help a friend find an abortion if there is some chance that their text messages are going to end up in the news?
She continued, "And maybe they're going to get sued, and maybe they’re going to get arrested, and it’s going to get dropped eventually, but in the meantime, they will have been terrified."
AP reports:
Lawsuits challenging abortion restrictions have arisen across the U.S. as clinics have shuttered in Republican-dominated states. Earlier this week in Texas — which has one of the strictest bans in the country, outlawing the procedure in nearly every case with the exception of medical emergencies — five women who said they were denied abortions even when pregnancy endangered their lives sued the state.
READ MORE: GOP senator vows to 'make abortion unthinkable'
"This is an outrageous attempt to scare people from getting abortion care and intimidate those who support their friends, family, and community in their time of need," Autumn Katz, a Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer, said. "The extremists behind this lawsuit are twisting the law and judicial system to threaten and harass people seeking essential care and those who help them."
READ MORE: Federal judge says there may still be a constitutional right to abortion: report
Associated Press' full report is available at this link. Texas Tribune's full report is here.
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Report typos and corrections to: feedback@alternet.org.
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rick Scarborough—a self-described “Christocrat,” strident anti-LGBTQ activist, and longtime critic of public education—has his sights set on taking over public education in Texas this year. He intends to do so by taking over school boards and fearmongering about public school students “being groomed by homosexuals and the trans perverts [and] recruited into their evil lifestyles.”
Last week, Scarborough revealed another aspect of his strategy.
about his intention to take over school boards at an event organized by the Texas Tea Party Republican Women, Scarborough admitted that he is trying to “take over America” for Jesus and is working to “expunge this entire state of every immoral book in the library.”
Scarborough began his remarks by recounting how, earlier in his career, he had been portrayed in the media a right-wing theocrat intent on forcing his far-right Christian views on the nation. That was an accurate assessment, Scarborough now admits.
“They went after me as trying to take over the town, trying to take over America,” Scarborough said. “And, in all honesty, I was, but I couldn’t say that. I mean, why not take it over for Jesus?”
“Sixty-eight percent of the teachers in Texas, by poll … now believe that the LGBTQ agenda should be taught and embraced,” Scarborough complained later in his speech. “We’re grooming our children for pedophiles. That’s what’s happening. Now, let me tell you what I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing—and by God’s grace, if I can raise the budget and get people behind me: In four years, I want to expunge this entire state of every immoral book in the library. Call me a Nazi, call me a book-burner, I’ve been called worse." [vid]
scarborough has plenty of company. Right-wing politicians and political groups are restricting the freedom to learn by demanding the removal of books they don’t like—often those featuring Black or LGBTQ characters—from schools and public libraries. In Texas, the author of the state’s anti-abortion bill is drafting local ordinances that would allow citizens to sue librarians over “immoral content.”
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https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/03/rio-grande-lng-carbon-capture-greenwash-brownsville-texas-nextdecade/
As the Mexican Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, festivities drew to a close, Dina Nuñez called to order a meeting of women grassroots activists in a modest home in the heart of Port Isabel, Texas. Top of her agenda: how to stop a Houston-based oil and gas company from building a $10 billion project to export liquefied natural gas on a nearby stretch of coast.
For Nuñez and her friends, the fight against the scheme — known as Rio Grande LNG — is about protecting their community from air pollution; preserving shrimping and tourism; and defending habitats for pelicans, endangered ocelots, and aplomado falcons at the project site on unspoiled wetlands between Port Isabel and the larger city of Brownsville.
The claim by developer NextDecade to be building the “greenest LNG project in the world” has thrust the women to the forefront of a global struggle. At a time when scientists warn there can be no new fossil fuel developments if the world is going to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, oil and gas executives are turning to a technology known as carbon capture and storage, or CCS, to convince investors, politicians, and the public their expansion plans are climate-safe.
“This is a poor community, yes. We’re not saying we don’t need jobs,” Nuñez said, shortly before the meeting of volunteers with the Neighbors for the Wellness of the Coastal Community group, known in Spanish as Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera. “But we don’t need work that affects the environment, and ultimately, the health of the community.”
A prime example of the ups and downs of the American liquefied natural gas industry, plans to build Rio Grande LNG faltered in 2020 as demand for energy cratered during the Covid-19 pandemic, and concern over its climate impact grew. But the scheme has been resurrected thanks to a European scramble for LNG triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a new twist on the original design — the use of CCS to portray the facility as a source of “clean” energy.
These claims hinge on a proposal by NextDecade to use CCS to capture more than 5 million tons a year of the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced during the process of supercooling the gas for loading on to specialized tankers for export. The company says it will be one of the biggest CCS systems in North America — and the first LNG terminal to reduce its CO2 emissions by more than 90 percent.
“NextDecade is a clean energy company accelerating the path to a net-zero future,” NextDecade chief executive Matthew Schatzman told a conference call to present the CCS plan to financial analysts in March 2021. “Efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions are at the very foundation of our company.”
Opponents point out there’s a big catch, however. Only 6-7 percent of the overall emissions associated with such projects are generated during the process of cooling the gas, according to a 2019 study by the Department of Energy. That means that the proposed CCS plant could only ever mitigate a small fraction of Rio Grande LNG’s total climate impact.
And that impact could be considerable. The Sierra Club estimates that building Rio Grande LNG could generate up to 163 million tons of CO2 equivalent emissions a year — comparable to 44 coal plants, or more than 35 million cars. That analysis factors in the potential emissions of CO2 and methane, a powerful climate pollutant, associated with the production, transport, and end-use of the natural gas.
NextDecade did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“Carbon capture is like trying to put a Band-Aid on a bullet hole.”
– Bekah Hinojosa, a Brownsville artist & community organizer
“Carbon capture is like trying to put a Band-Aid on a bullet hole,” said Bekah Hinojosa, a Brownsville artist, community organiser, and Gulf Coast campaign representative for the Sierra Club. “The project itself is highly destructive in so many different ways, and would still release a tremendous amount of toxic air pollution into our impoverished brown and Indigenous community.”
Technical and economic hurdles mean that there are only 30 commercial CCS projects in operation worldwide — many of which are used to extract more oil by re-injecting CO2 into wells. The industry-backed Global CCS Institute estimates the capacity of these existing installations is 43 million tons of CO2 a year — about 0.1 percent of global emissions.
Nevertheless, as calls for oil and gas companies to reduce their climate impacts have intensified, interest in CCS has grown. In September, the total capacity of commercial CCS projects in the planning stages grew 44 percent over the previous year, to 244 million tons per annum of CO2, according to the Global CCS Institute.
At least 15 planned or existing LNG export or upstream gas projects globally have announced plans to add CCS, according to a tally by non-profit climate news service DeSmog. These include five in Louisiana and Texas planned by companies including NextDecade, G2 Net-Zero LNG, Venture Global, Sempra Energy, and French giant TotalEnergies.
Revived Project
First proposed in 2015, Rio Grande LNG stirred opposition from residents concerned about the kinds of fossil fuel mega-projects seen on other parts of the Gulf Coast arriving on their doorstep. Building the terminal would bulldoze a Central Park-sized area of land sacred to the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas to erect giant storage tanks and flaring towers, and force local fishers to contend with LNG tanker ships three football fields long.
The plan suffered a public blow when French utility Engie pulled out of talks with NextDecade to buy LNG for 20 years for $7 billion in November 2020. Media reports at the time said the French government, a part-owner of Engie, was concerned about methane emissions from the production of the fracked gas for the facility in the Permian Basin.
The next March, NextDecade announced it would add CCS to the planned project. The company has also unveiled plans to procure “responsibly sourced” gas, and work with Project Canary, an environmental data company, to measure the greenhouse gas intensity of its LNG exports.
But the project may not have been revived were it not for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which injected new life into the LNG industry as Europe rushed to secure alternatives to Russian pipeline gas. In May, NextDecade announced it had signed a 15-year agreement with Engie, with the first LNG shipping as early as 2026. Engie did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Preliminary tree-felling work at the site has since started, though the company has yet to make a crucial final investment decision on the project. It is also unclear precisely where NextDecade plans to store any CO2 captured by its planned CCS plant. The company said in an August presentation to investors that geologic storage sites were being assessed, but opponents of the plan question whether the local area is suitable.
“They haven’t even done a basic geological study of the land and the area to see if it would even support a carbon capture facility,” said Christopher Basaldú, a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, who volunteers with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. “I can tell you that it doesn’t; it’s all sand and clay.”
Carbon Credits
The Biden administration gave CCS a boost in August by expanding a tax credit for storing carbon — known as 45Q — in the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act. Given the huge cost of carbon capture projects, the industry is working on an additional source of finance: getting other big polluters to help pay for them.
In June 2021, oil companies formed a coalition called the CCS+ Initiative, which aims to establish a carbon accounting framework to enable the industry to sell carbon credits to aviation, steel, cement, or other carbon-heavy companies seeking to offset some of their own emissions. Founding members included TotalEnergies and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a unit of American driller Occidental Petroleum.
“CCS was always greenwash for oil and gas production. Carbon credits for CCS for oil and gas production is greenwash on top of the greenwash.”
– Polly Hemming, carbon market specialist at the Australia Institute
The CCS+ Initiative says it aims to support the huge, global buildout of carbon capture projects envisaged in many models for reaching the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
But NextDecade, which has joined the CCS+ Initiative via its subsidiary NEXT Carbon Solutions, says it hopes to sell carbon credits to help finance its planned CCS plant at Rio Grande LNG. That prospect has been dismissed by experts, who say carbon credits should be used to finance absolute reductions in emissions — not add a green veneer to new fossil fuel production.
“CCS was always greenwash for oil and gas production. Carbon credits for CCS for oil and gas production is greenwash on top of the greenwash,” said Polly Hemming, a carbon market specialist at the Australia Institute thinktank.
The CCS+ Initiative declined to comment.
‘The Companies Have a lot of Power’
Nuñez’s Vecinos,a shrimper’s association, the City of Port Isabel, the Sierra Club, and other groups wrote a joint letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in December 2021 to raise a series of questions over the CCS plan.
Tom Gosselin, an associate attorney with the Sierra Club, said the organisations were concerned that NextDecade may seek to cut costs by running any CCS system only intermittently — or reneging on its pledge to install the equipment altogether. “We think it’s essentially greenwashing because the developer hasn’t actually committed to using CCS but seems to want the benefits of claiming that it will use CCS,” Gosselin told DeSmog.
Rio Grande LNG said in a response published on the FERC website that the claims in the letter were “baseless,” “near-conspiratorial,” and demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of CCS technology, global energy markets, and commercial agreements. “Singling out the LNG export project that is proposing the most aggressive means of capturing CO2 emissions of any project in the US does not make sense in light of the demonstrated increasing global demand for natural gas,” the response said.
As the Vecinos meeting in Port Isabel drew to a close, candles still burned on an ofrenda bearing gifts for the spirits of the dead: cigarettes, pan de muerto, and a can of Coca-Cola. The women served spicy chicken salad and tostadas while taking care of their children.
“I really believe, unfortunately, that there is a possibility that LNG will come here, because there’s a lot of money in the game. And the companies have a lot of power,” Nuñez said. “Unfortunately, people see opportunities for new jobs, but they don’t see the other side of the story.”
This story is a collaboration between Floodlight and DeSmog. Gaige Davila contributed reporting from Port Isabel. Matthew Green reported from London.
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https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-deciding-moment/
https://www.youtube.com/ 404
https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-influence-there-are-politicians-who-work-on-behalf-of-corporations-and-those-who-work-on-behalf-of-humans/
...How Public Opinion Is Influenced by Concentrated Money
Poll after poll has shown that Americans overwhelmingly support reform of our health-care system. People are concerned about costs and quality of care. Yet in 1993, when President Bill Clinton proposed that the government offer some form of health-care protection to the nation’s 40-plus-million uninsured, the insurance industry spent an estimated $100 million on lobbying and $60 million on advertising and provided members of Congress with about 350 free trips.
What actually happened as a result of all this spending is extraordinarily ironic. Industry polls showed that people cared more about being able to choose their own doctor than most other medical issues. Taking advantage of this, an infamous series of ads featuring “Harry and Louise” warned Americans that under a government-run health insurance program they would lose their ability to select the doctor of their choice.
The advertising worked. People panicked, and American public opinion swung from strong support for Clinton’s proposals to overwhelming fear of them. The Internet became flooded with insulting e-mails about the evils of “Hillary’s” insurance proposal.
Even more ironically, those fears have been realized today—without the Clinton proposal. Back in 1993 you could pretty much go to any doctor you wanted (assuming you were insured), and your insurance would almost always pay for it. Overtly restricting that ability was never part of the Clinton proposal, but because of the power of the Harry and Louise ads people came to believe that it was.
And within a few years, insurance companies and HMOs (health maintenance organizations) began to crack down on consumers who wanted to select their own doctors. Today fewer Americans have that privilege than in 1993, even though it’s fully available to citizens of virtually every country that has a national health-care program…which is every developed country in the world except the United States.
It turns out there is a strong reason why the insurance industry was eager to invest so much cash in advertising and lobbying to keep the government from competing with it in the realm of health care: profits. For every $100 that passes through the hands of the government-administered Medicare programs, between $2 and $3 is spent by Medicare on administration, leaving $97 to $98 to pay for medical services and drugs. But of every $100 that flows through corporate insurance programs and HMOs, $10 to $45 sticks to corporate fingers along the way. As Yale University Professor of Public Policy Theodore R. Marmor, author of The Politics of Medicare, said, “The costs of administering private insurance are somewhere between 5 and 10 times the costs of administering Medicare.”5
After all, Medicare doesn’t have lavish corporate headquarters and corporate jets, nor does it pay expensive lobbying firms in Washington to work on its behalf. It doesn’t pay out profits in the form of dividends to its shareholders. And it doesn’t compensate its top executives with more than $1 million a year, as does each of the largest of the American insurance companies. The result, as Professor Marmor points out, is that Canadians—who receive health care at one-half the cost of comparable services in the United States because no insurance companies are in the middle—“are somewhat healthier than citizens of the United States, use more hospital days per thousand, and visit their physicians more often” because services are freely available.6
Yet most citizens of the United States have no idea what it’s like to live in a country with national health care. When our family lived in Germany for a year in the late 1980s, we were amazed at how smoothly its health-care system worked: we could make any appointment with any physician, and they were excellent at what they did. But even describing the reality of that experience draws uncomprehending stares from Americans, who have been fed a steady corporate diet of very one-sided information.
This is why when President Obama decided he wanted one of the main legacies of his presidency to be a solution to America’s health-care mess, he first met privately and secretly with the pharmaceutical, hospital, and health insurance industries. He cut a deal with them, if news reports are to be believed (and they were not denied by the Obama administration), that he would protect their interests and give them tens of millions of new customers if they would hold back and not spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy his attempts the way they had with Clinton.
Something really rotten has taken hold of the American political system when the president of the United States must go to big corporations on bended knee and get their approval before suggesting legislation.
Polluters Pass “Go”
In 1995 the new governor of Texas responded to the needs of the “polluting industries” that had contributed more than $4 million (about 20 percent of his total) to his election campaign the year before. Thus, as soon as he was in office, George W. Bush signed into law the Texas Environmental Health and Safety Audit Privilege Act, also known as the “polluter immunity law.” This new law, which has since been emulated in twenty-five other states and was tried at the federal level during the Bush presidency, allows polluting industries to avoid prosecution for pollution violations if they themselves report their own crimes to themselves in an internal audit. It also gives them the ability to prevent the public from knowing about their violations.
As Arizona’s assistant attorney general, David Ronald, said, “Only the business with something to hide would benefit from a law that turns data gathered from environmental audits into secret information.”:{7}::{ }:Some of these laws even provide for a year in jail and a $10,000 fine for any human who reveals to the public or to government agencies any corporate pollution discovered in an audit, thus discouraging investigative reporting orwhistle-blowing employees.
Like with health-care policy, these laws that increase the power and the profitability of the nation’s largest corporations at the expense of smaller companies who play by the rules—and to the detriment of average citizens—from the beginning are influenced by enormous amounts of “corporate free speech” in the form of cash for politicians and political parties.
In a Democracy…
The point for a democracy is, “What is the will of the people?” That will may change over time, but it is undemocratic when it is shaped by the single voice that shouts the loudest because there are profits to be made. Democracy is more important than any single debate, and this is a classic example of how democratic republican processes have been twisted because of the concept of corporate personhood.
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food threat
https://www.alternet.org/texas-agriculture-agency-climate-change/
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an 9 22
Since Dobbs, many of the nightmare scenarios about abortion access have come true. Trigger bans have gone into effect. Healthcare for miscarriages has been delayed. Common prescriptions that can cause abortion (abortifacients) aren’t being filled at pharmacies.
Despite assurances from anti-choice people, total abortion bans are not making exceptions for emergency healthcare situations or they are so confusing that they’re making doctors scared to perform abortions even when it’s necessary to save the person’s life.
While abortions should be legal and accessible no matter the reason, it’s particularly dangerous when one can’t get one in a life-or-death situation. There isn’t time to cross state lines or the pregnancy is too far along for a self-managed abortion.
The White House has issued guidance that abortions must be performed to save the life of the pregnant person or prevent serious risk, but this week a court sided with a Texas argument against saving lives – of course, celebrated by the “pro-life” movement.
While the response to Dobbs from the current administration has been mixed, a clarifying guidance from the US Department of Health and Human Services is a vital tool in saving pregnant people’s lives.
In 1986, the Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The law required any hospital that accepts Medicare payments to provide emergency treatment to anyone regardless of their ability to pay or their legal status.
Obviously, this included emergency conditions related to pregnancy, including labor or miscarriage. The EMTALA requires hospitals to provide medical screenings as well as stabilization (or a transfer to a hospital that can provide medical care to accomplish stabilization).
READ MORE: How GOP candidates are 'feeling the pressure' navigating abortion in the post-Roe era: conservative
In July, after Dobbs, the HHS clarified that the federal guidance under the EMTALA required performing an abortion if it’s necessary to save the pregnant person’s life or to prevent serious health risks.
HHS ensured its policy guidance had teeth.
Secretary Xavier Becerra emphasized that this federal policy preempts state law and that hospitals risk their Medicare payments if they do not comply. Such a policy from the HHS should protect emergency abortion in all 50 states despite individual state law.
The policy guidance makes it irrelevant if an abortion ban has a carve out for the life of the mother, because such abortions would be required (with the patient’s consent) under federal law as part of “stabilizing” the patient. While they didn’t issue an exhaustive list of pregnancy conditions that would warrant a federally required emergency abortion, “ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders, such as preeclampsia with severe features” were explicitly stated as qualifying conditions.
Unfortunately, states are challenging the HHS policy guideline in federal court and through total abortion ban legislation. State attorneys general are arguing against saving a pregnant person’s life.
Keep in mind, in many relevant cases, the choice is between allowing the pregnant person and fetus to die, and performing an abortion to save the pregnant person (or in the case of miscarriage, the fetus is already dead and they still want to let the pregnant person die).
The remaining cases are a choice between letting the mother die in the hopes that the fetus can be saved and performing an abortion to save the life of the mother. As far as I am aware, the HHS policy guidance doesn’t touch on the maternal fetal conflictwhen a pregnant person is diagnosed with cancer and might be denied treatment because said treatment could harm the fetus.
So State attorneys general in Texas and Idaho want to let pregnant people die even though denying abortion won’t save the fetus.
Ironically, part of their argument that the federal policy guidelines should be enjoined by a judge is that abortion bans in Texas and Idaho, and every other state, have life-of-the-mother exceptions.
In the opinion written by the Texas court enjoining the HHS guideline, the judge argues that policy guidelines are unnecessary and there is no conflict between state and federal law.
This is weird given that the Texas attorney general said that the HHS policy guidelines would require Texas doctors to violate state law.
Texas also argued that the EMTALA did not guarantee access to a specific treatment (and obviously didn’t mention abortion), so the federal government cannot require abortions using that law.
However, as some legal experts argue, if abortion is the only way to stabilize a patient, requiring such a procedure clearly falls under the EMTALA. There are many cases in which an abortion would be necessary in order to save the life of a patient. Therefore, denying one is tantamount to denying stabilizing care under the EMTALA.
The Texas opinion went further. The language of the EMTALA requires stabilizing the mother as well asthe fetus, but it was passed in 1986 when Roe was still law and abortion was legal in all 50 states.
It’s ahistorical and nonsensical to suggest that the law wouldn’t protect abortion to save the life of the mother since abortions for any reason were legal at the time the law was written.
Despite that clear rational interpretation, the Texas judge used the mention of the fetus in the law to argue it should protect the mother as well as “unborn children” (his wording - the EMTALA uses “fetus”).
Therefore, not only does this opinion enjoin federal policy guidance. It also elevates the fetus to the standing of a patient under the EMTALA, which supports the argument for the fetus’s personhood. (Again, this is why we need to embrace abortion as self-defense).
The Idaho case is more encouraging.
Unlike the Texas case, this suit resulted from the DOJ challenging the restrictive Idaho law that, the DOJ argued, violated the federal policy guidelines. Idaho’s trigger ban only allowed abortions when necessary to prevent death, which is more restrictive than the federal policy guidance that requires an abortion be performed if the pregnant person faces death or serious health risk.
The Idaho judge issued a temporary injunction on Idaho’s trigger abortion ban, because, “Allowing the criminal abortion ban to take effect, without a cutout for EMTALA-required care, would inject tremendous uncertainty into precisely what care is required (and permitted) for pregnant patients.”
The Texas and Idaho cases are ongoing. There are sure to be more lawsuits brought by state attorneys general as well as by the Department of Justice. We will have to wait and see if the HHS policy guidance requiring abortions to prevent death or serious risk stands.
Do not come away from reading this assuming the conflict is only about abortions in the case of serious risk or that abortions will always be allowed to save the life of the mother. Quibbling over bodily risk or death will absolutely result in pregnant people dying.
The more restrictive exceptions require doctors to delay care until sure the pregnant person is at risk or until a fetal heartbeat stops.
They also create confusion for doctors and care providers about when an abortion can be performed under state law. That confusion will result in the delay or refusal of care even when the pregnant person presents with a complication that will cause death.
Any abortion ban will delay care and result in higher maternal mortalities, but fighting against medically necessary abortions guarantees you’re fighting to explicitly let pregnant people die.
READ MORE:Pink wave? Women rise up for reproductive rights — as conservatives scramble to stop them
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/uvalde-mom-says-police-harassing/
she rescue dtr
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an 6 22
Sewell Chan and Eric Neugeboren, The Texas Tribune
June 18, 2022
"Texas Republican Convention calls Biden win illegitimate and rebukes Cornyn over gun talks" 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.
HOUSTON — Meeting at their first in-person convention since 2018, Texas Republicans on Saturday acted on a raft of resolutions and proposed platform changes to move their party even further to the right. They approved measures declaring that President Joe Biden “was not legitimately elected” and rebuking Sen. John Cornyn for taking part in bipartisan gun talks. They also voted on a platform that declares homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice” and calls for Texas schoolchildren “to learn about the humanity of the preborn child.”
The actions capped a convention that highlighted how adamantly opposed the party’s most active and vocal members are to compromising with Democrats or moderating on social positions, even as the state has grown more diverse and Republicans’ margins in statewide elections have shrunk slightly in recent years.
Votes on the platform were collected at the end of the party's three-day convention in which party activists moved to add multiple items to the official Texas GOP platform. As the convention closed, two separate sets of ballots — one allowing delegates to choose eight of 15 legislative priorities and another allowing delegates to vote on the 275 platform planks — were gathered. Those will now need to be tallied and certified in Austin, but it is rare for a plank to be rejected, according to party spokesperson James Wesolek.
The convention reinforced the extent to which former President Donald J. Trump’s unfounded claims of a stolen election continue to resound among the party faithful — even though his claims have repeatedly been debunked, including by many of his own former aides, and after a week of televised hearings about the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The denunciation of Cornyn represented a remarkable rebuke to a Republican who has served in the Senate since 2002. The hall at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston filled with boos on Friday as he tried to explain the legislation, which would allow juvenile records to be incorporated into background checks for gun buyers younger than 21 and encourage “red flag” laws that would make it easier to remove guns from potentially dangerous people, along with more funding for school safety and mental health.
Meanwhile, the party platform vote on Saturday by roughly 5,100 convention delegates would argue that those under 21 are “most likely to need to defend themselves” and may need to quickly buy guns“in emergencies such as riots.” It also would say that red flag laws violate the due process rights of people who haven’t been convicted of a crime.
About 9,600 delegates and alternates were eligible to attend; organizers said turnout was a bit more than half that.
The new platform would call for:
- Requiring Texas students “to learn about the humanity of the preborn child,” including teaching that life begins at fertilization and requiring students to listen to live ultrasounds of gestating fetuses.
- Amending the Texas Constitution to remove the Legislature’s power “to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime.”
- :{
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- Treating homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” language that was not included in the 2018 or 2020 party platforms.
- Deeming gender identity disorder “a genuine and extremely rare mental health condition,” requiring official documents to adhere to “biological gender,” and allowing civil penalties and monetary compensation to “de-transitioners” who have received gender-affirming surgery, which the platform calls a form of medical malpractice.
- Changing the U.S. Constitution to cement the number of Supreme Court justices at nine and repeal the 16th Amendment of 1913, which created the federal income tax.
- Ensuring “freedom to travel” by opposing Biden’s Clean Energy Planand “California-style, anti-driver policies,” including efforts to turn traffic lanes over for use by pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit.
- Declaring “all businesses and jobs as essential and a fundamental right,” a response to COVID-19 mandates by Texas cities that required customers to wear masks and limited business hours.
- Abolishing the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, and guaranteeing the right to use alternatives to cash, including cryptocurrencies.
Not every far-right proposal was advanced. The party chair, Matt Rinaldi, ruled that a motion to defend the due process rights of those who rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and to “reject the narrative” that the riot was an insurrection was out of order and could not be voted on.
Taken together, the new provisions would represent a shift even further rightward for the Republican Party of Texas, once known as the party of Presidents George Bush and his son George W. Bush. Land Commissioner George P. Bush, a grandson and nephew of the two presidents, was defeated handily in May in his runoff race against Attorney General Ken Paxton, an arch-conservative who sued to challenge the 2020 election outcome and convinced voters that he was the truer Trump loyalist.
Party platforms are mission statements rather than legal doctrines and, in Texas, they have long reflected the opinions of the most activist wings of the parties. Republican elected officials are not bound to adhere to the platform, and party activists at times have expressed frustration that some parts of their platform and legislative priorities have not become law, despite complete Republican control of the state Legislature.
But the platforms are broad indicators of the sentiments of the most active Republican voters — those who dominate party primaries. Republicans have controlled every statewide elected office in Texas since 1999 and both houses of the Legislature since 2003, so the wishes of the party’s populist, pro-Trump base inevitably affect actions taken in Austin.
“The platform is largely symbolic but important as a measure of ideological drift,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “Party platforms are often used as a cudgel in party primaries. A more muscular ideological platform eventually leads to a more conservative legislature as challengers knock off more moderate members.”
The convention was noteworthy for the relatively low profile of top officeholders. Gov. Greg Abbott, who is seeking a third term in the November election, only appeared at a reception on Thursday on the sidelines of the convention. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who effectively controls the state Senate, addressed the convention, but House Speaker Dade Phelan only spoke at a luncheon, not to the main body of delegates.
Tensions within the party at times got personal. Video posted online showed far-right activists physically accosting U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, calling the conservative Republican “eye-patch McCain” over his criticism of Russia. The group included self-identified Proud Boys and Alex Stein, a social media activist from North Texas. A Navy SEAL veteran, Crenshaw lost his right eye to a bomb in Afghanistan.
“A more aggressive party platform sends a clear message to politicians about where the base is going,” Rottinghaus said. “Donald Trump radicalized the party and accelerated the demands from the base. There simply aren’t limits now on what the base might ask for.”
Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston, said the 2022 platform indicated how emboldened hard-right party activists now feel — a far cry from 2020. Significant gains by Texas Democrats in state House elections in 2018 raised the prospect of the Republican Party losing its dominant status in Texas, making it moderate its platform in 2020 to focus on bread-and-butter issues. Texas Republicans did well in the 2020 elections — even though Biden won 46.5% of the Texas vote, the highest proportion for a Democrat since 1976 — and this year, culture-war issues were once again at front and center.
Jones said that Republican redistricting has made incumbents safer and less inclined to appeal to moderates. Moreover, inflation, the risk of a recession, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and growing acrimony over race, gender and sexuality make it seem increasingly likely that Democrats will lose the U.S. House in the November midterm elections.
“As a result, the 2022 GOP feels free to veer to the right to its heart’s content, confident that it won’t come back to haunt the party in November, except perhaps in a half dozen races,” Jones said. “And even the party’s pragmatic center right conservatives lack the ability to argue, as they did successfully in 2020, that an ultra conservative platform could cost the GOP its majority status in the Lone Star State. This year, even the absolute worst case scenario has the GOP winning statewide, increasing its number of U.S. House seats, boosting its Texas Senate majority by a seat, and maintaining the 83 seats it held in the 2021 Texas House.”
Before delegates voted on the platform, party activists delivered fiery speeches attacking Democrats.
“They want to destroy the racial progress we have made by saying that we are a racist nation,” said Robin Armstrong, a Black doctor in Texas City who treated COVID patients with unapproved drug therapies touted by Trump, including hydroxychloroquine. “The Democratic Party are now a party of chaos. They benefit from causing us to question the foundations that this country was built upon. The misery, the crime, the drug abuse, the high gas prices are all by design, so that the Democratic Party can permanently transform society. We Texans cannot and we will not allow this to happen.”
The Republican-dominated Legislature last year passed new voting restrictions that prompted Democratic lawmakers to flee to Washington to break quorum in an ultimately futile protest. However, Republican leaders said repeatedly on Saturday that it was the other side that was a threat to fair elections.
“The Democrats wants three things: Their goals are to steal elections, suppress Republican votes and federalize elections,”said Cindy Siegel, the chairperson of the Harris County GOP and a former mayor of Bellaire.
Immigration continued to be a major theme, with delegates lamenting Biden’s reversal of Trump-era border policies. U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, of Lubbock, described an “unprecedented, unmitigated, self-inflicted disaster that is creating the worst humanitarian and national security threat to the American people in the history of our southern border,” adding, “this is an invasion, folks.”
“President Biden has ceded control of our borders to paramilitary, narco-terrorist cartels,” Arrington told delegates.
The mood of this convention was not hopeful. The themes ran dark, and activists spoke in apocalyptic, even cataclysmic, terms about the state of the country.
“Everything is topsy-turvy. What’s right is wrong and what’s wrong is right,” said state Sen. Donna Campbell, an emergency room doctor in New Braunfels, reflecting a state of uncertainty that is shared by Americans of many political backgrounds, even if they don’t agree on the causes. “Our country is on a trajectory to self-destruct, unless we change the direction.”
Campbell and other activists frequently spoke of their Christian faith.
“I believe that in the sovereignty of God, you and I were purposely born into this moment, into this confusing time that we face,“ Campbell said. “We’re meant to be alive, at this time, right now, and here in this state.”
===
6 22
odd split?
the United States Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Texas violated the Constitution with a bill banning social media companies from the regulation of hate speech on their platforms.
"Supreme Court halts Texas social media law that critics say would require Facebook and Twitter to require hate speech, extremism," Bloomberg News court reporter Greg Stohr reported.
The majority decision was supported by Chief Justice John Roberts along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Jr., Elana Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
"To be clear, the headline here is *not* the dissent; it’s that Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett *all* voted to block HB20," wrote University of Texas Law Prof. Steve Vladeck.
"That’s a pretty powerful sign of where #SCOTUS is heading on this case—and issue—even if the dissent’s analysis is … alarming," he explained.
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an 3 22
no lnx no twt
Texas librarian fired for refusing to remove books that had been banned: ‘That was censorship’
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaking at the WTTC Global Summit 2016]
Alex Henderson March 23, 2022
Far-right culture warriors in Texas have been declaring war against books that offend them not only in public schools, but also, in public libraries. And in Llano County, Texas, librarian Suzette Baker has been fired from her position as head librarian for the Kingsland Branch Library for refusing to remove some books that had been banned.
Baker told KXAN-TV, an NBC affiliate in Austin, “The books in my library in Kingsland were not taken off the shelves. We did not move them. I told my boss that was censorship.”
According to Baker, a local group wanted to remove books they called “pornographic,” including one about a transgender teen — and Baker maintained that there was nothing wrong with that book.
Baker told KXAN, “It is her biography of her life growing up as a transgendered teenager, and obviously, this group thought that was too much for their children to read…. No one is forcing their kids to read anything.”
Leila Green Little, described by KXAN reporter Nabil Remadna as a “patron of the Llano County libraries,” speaks highly of Baker — telling the station, “I always thought she was extremely professional, very knowledgeable, has a strong character, and did her job well to the best of my knowledge.”
Little has set up a GoFundMe page for Baker, raising more than $17,000 as of March 23. And she has a problem with the way in which books are being removed from the Llano County Library.
Little told KXAN, “I have now counted 12 books that I know have been removed from Llano County Library, and I can’t get clarification from the library system on why…. There are very clear rules that should be followed with regards to censorship to books in the public library. Those rules were not followed.”
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abbot order child prot serv to pick up trans kids? court temp order ~
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texas primary: Climate hawk Casar wins big, Cisneros forces runoff with PetroDem Cuellar
Published on March 2nd, 2022 | by Jake Johnson
Former Austin City Council member Greg Casar handily won the Democratic primary for an open seat in Texas’ 35th Congressional District on Tuesday while progressive immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros forced Rep. Henry Cuellar—a corporate-funded Democrat under FBI investigation—into a runoff contest in the state’s 28th district. By Jake Johnson Common Dreams Casar, a democratic socialist endorsed by Rep. Alexandria […]
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When Texas held its GOP and Democratic primaries on Tuesday, March 1, Rep. Van Taylor survived primary challenges from fellow Republicans who attacked him for being insufficiently MAGA — and he was scheduled to go to a runoff against former Collin CountyJudge Keith Self in May. But Taylor, Reuters reports, has dropped out of the race, admitting that he had an extramarital affair with the widow of an American man who joined the terrorist organization ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria).
The Dallas Morning News quoted Taylor as saying, “About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world. I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life.”
The widow was named Tania Joya, a resident of Plano, Texas who is originally from the U.K. Joya married Plano native John Georgelas, who became an ISIS fighter in Syria before being killed in 2017. The affair, Joya told the Dallas Morning News, lasted from October 2020 to June 2021.
Joya also said that she contacted Suzanne Harp, one of the Republicans competing with Taylor in that primary, about her affair with the GOP congressman and hoped that she would privately persuade Taylor to drop out of the race. Instead, according to Joya, Harp sent someone to interview her and shared the information with some right-wing websites.
In MAGA circles, Taylor has been attacked as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) for voting to certify now-President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory on January 6, 2021 and for voting in favor of a congressional panel to investigate the insurrection that occurred that day. And the congressional primary in Taylor’s district found the incumbent battling four other Republicans for the nomination.
Taylor got the most votes, but Self, who was endorsed by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, was in second place — and the runoff election in May would have been a contest between Taylor and Self. But with Taylor having dropped out of the race, Self becomes the nominee and will be going up against a Democrat in the general election.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/big-lie/
https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/the-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association-cspoa-and-richard-mack
no lnx
report
Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and Richard Mack: How Extremists Are Successfully Infiltrating Law Enforcement
Constitutional Sheriffs
Sections
Key PointsIntroductionThe Emergence of Richard MackMack’s Public Speaking Crusade - Including White Supremacist VenuesRichard Mack and Indoctrinating Law EnforcementMack and CSPOACounty Membership'Training' Law EnforcementPolicy Recommendations
FULL REPORT
KEY POINTS
The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) is an anti-government extremist group whose primary purpose is to recruit sheriffs into the anti-government “patriot” movement.
CSPOA is led by Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who gained celebrity on the right in the 1990s after suing to overturn a prominent gun control measure, the Brady Law, especially after the Supreme Court ruled largely in his favor.
The central tenet of CSPOA, borrowed from the anti-government extremist sovereign citizen movement, is that the county sheriff is the ultimate authority in the county, able to halt enforcement of any federal or state law or measure they deem unconstitutional.
Mack primarily marketed this (false) claim as a way to oppose gun control measures, but in 2020-21, he has also used it to exploit anger and frustration over federal and state measures to combat Covid-19.
Mack crisscrosses the country for speaking engagements where he promotes himself, CSPOA and his county sheriff thesis.
Increasingly, he seeks out law enforcement audiences, billing his extremist events as “trainings.”
In a disturbing development, in 2021, Mack was able to win official state approval for his “trainings” in Montana andTexas,which allows attendees to receive continuing education credit for attending Mack’s events.
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/whistelblowers-ken-paxton-corruption-scandals/
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"Partisan tactic by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s campaign delays thousands of requests for mail-in ballots from Texas voters" 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.
Thousands of applications for mail-in ballots submitted by Texas voters have been delayed — and some voters may ultimately not receive ballots — because Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's campaign instructed eligible voters to send requests for absentee ballots to the Texas secretary of state’s office instead of their local elections offices.
A mass mailing by Patrick went out to Republican voters across the state in January, ahead of the March primary, and included a two-page letter emblazoned with the seal of his office encouraging voters to submit the requests following “three easy steps.” The problem was the third step, which instructed voters to return the applications in an enclosed reply envelope that was addressed to the state.
The lieutenant governor’s campaign said it used the secretary of state's address because “many Republican voters are rightly suspicious of Blue County election officials.”
“The decision to direct return mail to the Secretary of State (SOS), someone who is trusted and respected, gave voters an added layer of comfort,”Allen Blakemore, a campaign consultant for Patrick, wrote in an email.
But the campaign’s approach forced the secretary of state, which had a stated policy of rejecting applications erroneously sent its way, to sort and forward the Patrick-inspired forms to the counties where they should have been sent originally.
The delayed delivery could put voters’ requests for mail-in ballots at risk as counties continue to see higher-than-normal rejection rates of applications under new ID requirements enacted by Republicans last year. Any issues with defective applications must be resolved by Friday so voters can receive a mail-in ballot.
State workers have been forwarding the waylaid applications to respective counties, which this week were still receiving packages containing hundreds of misdirected applications.
The fiasco has further muddled the first election held since Patrick, as head of the state Senate, presided over last year's passage of new laws tightening voting processes, including a measure making it a crime for local election officials to send out applications for mail-in ballots to people who did not request them.
“Everyone age 65 and older has earned the right to vote early by mail. As Republicans, we have fought to make it easier to vote while protecting election integrity, so we need to make sure we increase our turnout by taking full advantage of this convenient and secure voting option,” Patrick wrote in a letter dated Jan. 20 that was attached with the applications.
Though the letter contains the official state seal for the lieutenant governor, as allowed by law,the materials were labeled as being sent out by Patrick’s campaign and not at taxpayer expense.
The mailing went out to voters in Harris County and central Texas, with Patrick endorsing area Republican candidates in different versions of his letter obtained by The Texas Tribune. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently reported the mailer also reached Tarrant County residents.
Unsolicited mailing campaigns from candidates and political parties are not uncommon. But Republicans’ penchant for encouraging voting by mail for their voters has come under scrutiny as they've worked to limit expansions of mail-in voting during the pandemic and criminalized the mailing of applications by county election administrators to voters who did not request them.
Republican lawmakers last year made it a state jail felony for local election officials to send out unsolicited applications for mail-in ballots, even to voters 65 and older who automatically qualify under the state’s strict eligibility requirements. They also prohibited local officials from even encouraging people to vote by mail.
The full scale of Patrick’s mailing efforts is unclear; his campaign did not answer a question about the reach of the mailings. But the secretary of state’s office previously told some county officials that it had received at least two pallets of applications, and some local election officials have indicated they were receiving hundreds of delayed applications.
“The SOS has always accepted ABBMs and quickly and efficiently routed them to the proper local offices,” Blakemore said, referring to applications for a ballot by mail. “We believe that this will ensure that Blue County election officials are more likely to properly handle our ABBMs when they know they are being watched and monitored by the SOS.”
In an email responding to questions about the misdirected applications, a spokesperson for the Texas secretary of state did not address the mailing campaign by the lieutenant governor.
“Generally speaking, we request that voters do not mail, fax, or email completed applications for Ballot by Mail to the Secretary of State Office,” wrote Sam Taylor, the spokesperson, noting that the office would forward applications to early voting clerks “as a courtesy to help the voter.”
“It is not the voter’s fault if a third party put the incorrect return address on an ABBM, so we want to ensure voters are not adversely affected by that,” Taylor said.
This appears to be a departure from the office’s previous stance on applications wrongly sent to its office. The secretary of state’s website previously warned voters against sending applications to its office, noting that “all applications received by this office will be rejected.” That language was removed from the website at the beginning of the month, according to a screenshot of the same page archived by the Wayback Machine.
County election officials receiving the waylaid applications this week are now under a time crunch to process them and reach out to voters if their applications are defective. Hundreds of applications to vote by mail in the primary have been initially rejected in recent weeks after voters did not fill out new ID rules that require them to provide a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number.
Voters can correct the issue but must do so by the Friday deadline for counties to receive applications for the primary election. Otherwise, their application will be finally rejected.
Taylor said the secretary of state’s office had been working to “expedite” the forwarding of applications it received and planned to label those that came to them before the deadline to request mail-in ballots.
The unsolicited mailings come as the Texas attorney general argues in federal court that the restrictions on county election officials in regard to voting by mail are intended to limit “official encouragement” of voting by mail. In a hearing for a related case, a lawyer for the attorney general indicated to a federal judge last week that the state preferred people vote in person even if they qualify to vote by mail.
On Thursday, Blakemore defended the new prohibitions as “guard rails” established by the Legislature following Harris County’s unsuccessful attempt to send applications for mail-in ballots to all of its registered voters in 2020.
“It was that overreach, as well as drive-thru-voting, that brought about SB1,” Blakemore said.
In 2020, Patrick referred to vote-by-mail expansion efforts as a “scam by Democrats to steal the election,” saying there was no reason anyone under 65 should be “able to say I am afraid to go vote” during the pandemic. Patrick himself has used the voting option, opting to vote by mail in a 2007 Houston municipal election and an ensuing runoff.
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/kevin-brady/
proxy war tx
https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/texas-voting/
mail in suppress
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an 1 22
no lnx twt
The 'radicalized, weaponized' Texas GOP is pushing Republicans all over the US to the extreme right: journalist
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas speaking at the 2021 Young Latino Leadership Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona,]
Alex Henderson January 31, 2022
Although Texas is still a red state, it is by no means the reddest of the red. Trump carried Texas by about 6% in the 2020 presidential election compared to 43% in Wyoming, 26% in Alabama or 30% in Idaho. And former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who is running for governor in the 2022 midterms, came within striking distance of Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas’ 2018 U.S. Senate race, losing by only 2%.
Texas Republicans, however, haven’t responded to Democratic gains in their state by becoming more moderate, but rather, by becoming increasingly extreme. And journalist Wajahat Ali, in an op-ed published by the Daily Beast on January 30, argues that Texas Republicans are having a destructive influence not only in Texas, but all over the United States.
“Everything is bigger in Texas, including a radicalized, weaponized and emboldened GOP’s audacious abuse of power to fuel their culture wars and subvert democracy,” Ali warns. “If you want to see a sneak preview of the GOP’s national project to maintain white, minority rule, then look no further than Texas, the second-most populous state in the nation, that now serves as a trendsetter for Republican state legislatures across the nation.”
Ali continues, “Texas Republicans, led by Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, are committed to one-upping their colleagues by introducing the most extreme versions of voter suppression, open carry laws, anti-abortion bills, and critical race theory (CRT) bans…. The Lone Star State has become the ‘laboratory’ for GOP politicians and their hard-right agenda, according to Democrat Ben Chou, who is running to be commissioner of Harris County Precinct 4.”
Chou believes that Abbott and Cruz are trying to “one-up” far-right Republicans in other states, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Houston-area Democrat told the Beast, “This is all for a national platform for when they go into the Republican primary.”
Abbott, Cruz and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to Ali, are pandering to the extreme right in a variety of ways— from voter suppression to anti-vaxxer extremism.
“Texas serves as a warning for Democrats across the nation to pay particular attention to state legislature races,” Ali writes. “Currently, both houses in Texas have a Republican majority. As a result, the GOP controls redistricting.”
Nonetheless, Texas is more accurately described as light red rather than deep red at this point. Democrats still struggle in statewide races in Texas, but they perform well in some of Texas’ congressional districts — and major urban centers like Houston, Austin, Dallas and El Paso lean Democrat.
Chou and Jen Ramos, committeewoman for Texas Senate District 21, both stressed to the Beast that Democrats shouldn’t be pessimistic about the Lone Star State.
“A great hope and test for Democrats is the upcoming governor’s race featuring former Rep. Beto O’Rourke,” Ali writes. “Both Ramos and Chou believe O’Rourke has a shot, having mobilized grassroots communities — specifically leaning heavily into health care and rural broadband, and avoiding right-wing bait on divisive culture war issues. Although it seems hopeless for Democrats in Texas, Ramos urged people not to ignore Texas as unwinnable or dismiss it as a radically conservative state. Texas is far from a left-leaning state, she said, but Democrats are still mobilized, especially in large metropolitan areas where there is still hope for systemic change.”
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texas GOP candidate won’t ditch overt white nationalist staffer — blames 'cancel culture': report
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abbott ban vax mandates approach 70K KIA 2 to CA
no lnx many
GOP pushes strategy to prolong the pandemic
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott feels the heat: analysis
Amanda Marcotte and Salon October 12, 2021
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, has once again proven his stalwart commitment to aiding the virus that causes COVID-19 in its goal of spreading as far as possible. Late Monday, the Republican state leader issued an executive order banning all entities in the state — including private businesses — from requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. (All other vaccine requirements remain untouched, because the "principled opposition" to vaccine mandates is an inch deep.)
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dead of night
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/texas-gerrymandering/
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textbook
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/republican-pushes-resolution-to-make-the-bible-texas-official-state-book/
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an 921 salon
Decades of _{strategizing by anti-abortion forces}_ and a _{relentless conservative focus}_ on winning the courts culminated this month in the _{U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 decision}_ to allow the nation's _{most restrictive rollback of reproductive rights}_ to go into effect. The decision _{effectively prohibits most abortions in Texas}_ and provides a road map for _{red state legislatures nationwide}_ to evade judicial review and undo Roe v. Wade in their states as well.
But that wasn't the only careful right-wing project that contributed to this back-door assault on five decades of constitutional protections and Supreme Court precedent. This decision is inextricably bound to the long-term GOP war on voting rights, itself a two-front effort between red state legislatures and a conservative Supreme Court majority.
You might even call it a Texas two-step. First, unelected, tenured judges did what _{elected Republicans didn't feel empowered to do in 2006}_ and _{put a stake into the Voting Rights Act}_. Then, after blessing a new generation of sophisticated voter suppression methods, as well as providing a green light for _{partisan}_ and _{racial}_ gerrymanders, uninhibited lawmakers — untethered from nearly any accountability — can _{pass laws dramatically out of step with voters}_, like the new Texas abortion bill. This court then smiles on those efforts as well. (And of course, all this is amplified and encouraged by the right-wing media ecosystem.)
It's a nifty closed loop that has the added benefit of sheltering Republicans from any consequences for their extremism, and from any real fear that a _{changing electorate}_ will threaten entrenched one-party rule.
This isn't even the first time that the Supreme Court and Texas legislature have danced in this fashion, though nearly a decade ago, it was the Roberts court that led.
When Chief Justice John Roberts authored a 5-4 decision in the 2013 _{Shelby County}_ case, hobbling the Voting Rights Act and putting an end to _{pre-clearance in states, like Texas, that had a longstanding history of racially motivated voting chicanery}_, Texas did not wait long before showing America that, contrary to Roberts' sense that things were "_{dramatically}_" different in the South, in reality little had changed.
That very afternoon, _{Texas jumped to take advantage}_ of Roberts' decision by enacting a _{deeply restrictive voter ID law}_ that requires specific forms of identification to vote. This would be the first post-Shelby voting restriction in Texas, but hardly the last. The new law demanded an ID that _{600,000 Latino citizens lacked}_; it allowed a ballot to be cast with a gun license but not a student ID. It enabled Republicans to place barriers before the rising electorate of young and Hispanic voters who lean Democratic and help ensure themselves a hold on power.
It was a magnificent two-step. When a Republican Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006, _{nearly unanimously}_, and the 25-year extension was signed into law by President George W. Bush, GOP leaders whipped the votes for passage, fearing that it would be bad for the Republican brand to be seen as hostile to voting rights. It's a story that Jesse Rhodes tells brilliantly in his book "Ballot Blocked." GOP leaders wanted to make inroads with Latino and Black voters, and worried that Hurricane Katrina and the souring economy and Iraq war might make that a challenge during a tough midterm year. They didn't want to also be seen as keeping minorities from the polls.
So the voting rights putsch was outsourced to the courts. Bush appointed, and the GOP Senate confirmed, two Supreme Court justices known to have a very limited view of the Voting Rights Act's scope and relevancy: Roberts as chief justice and Samuel Alito to replace the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor. Roberts, as a young Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, had _{lobbied aggressively against the 1982 reauthorization}_ of the VRA.
When the court did the GOP's dirty work, hollowing out the pre-clearance mechanism that Republicans viewed as untenable to take on through the political process, the Roberts decision _{offered Congress the option to revisit and update}_ the pre-clearance formula. But once the courts had dealt its blow, the _{Republican majority had no appetite to revisit the VRA}_ and those efforts crashed in Congress. That's the case to this day: When the Democratic House voted on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act earlier this summer, _{every House Republican opposed the bill}_, and it would appear to have little chance of surviving a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
Texas Republicans may well have seen the Shelby County decision coming when they passed a draconian voter ID bill — _{initially blocked under pre-clearance in 2012}_ — ahead of the court's ruling. During that same period, Republican lawmakers also prepped new state legislative and congressional maps that were the _{subject of much complicated litigation}_ from 2011 through 2018.
The legal history here becomes _{convoluted}_: Courts originally blocked the first maps enacted by Republicans in 2011. A federal court rejected them under pre-clearance, finding that these lines made it tougher for minority voters to elect a candidate of their choosing. As the 2012 elections neared, a three-judge panel ordered tweaks to the legislative maps — but these were supposed to be temporary fixes while the legal challenges worked their way through the courts.
But when the Shelby decision came down, as the _{Texas Tribune observed}_, Texas suddenly no longer needed to pre-clear its maps. Republican leaders disingenuously cloaked themselves in a map they could claim was drawn by the courts, when really those judges had only approved the first step in a much longer process. How could we be diluting minority voters, the state protested, when we just took the courts' map? Lower federal courts disagreed, and developed a rich evidence file that delved deep into the 2011 mapmaking process and referred to the 2013 GOP strategy as "_{discriminatory at its heart}_."
Once again, however, the Supreme Court stepped in. In 2018's _{Abbott v. Perez}_, the Supreme Court overturned those lower court decisions that found Republicans had diluted minority votes in multiple state house districts. They OK'd what had been called a racial gerrymander of the state legislature which judges said went "out of its way" to preserve GOP power at the expense of Latino voting power, with "serious costs to our democracy."
That 5-4 _{decision}_, written by Justice Alito, insisted that when it comes to redistricting, the good faith of the legislature must be assumed. Alito blithely dismissed _{a 150-page lower court report }_that laid out, county by county, the precise machinations that Republican mapmakers used to crack and pack growing numbers of Latino voters, and even a careful study of which Latino voters were most likely to turn out. (Those unlikely to vote could also be carefully distributed in order to make districts appear to resemble a "minority opportunity" district, without actually being one.)
In her _{dissent}_, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of ignoring "undeniable proof of intentional discrimination," contributing to the deliberate underrepresentation of minority voters and doing "great damage" to both equal opportunity and equal participation in the political process. The majority decision, she wrote, "blinds itself to the overwhelming factual record" in order to "allow Texas to use electoral maps that, in design and effect, burden the rights of minority voters."
Texas isn't a red state or a blue state. It's a voter suppression state, with some of the lowest turnout numbers in the country, in part because the state — with the full support of the U.S. Supreme Court, since the 2013 Shelby County case — makes it so difficult to vote. By 2014, Texas turnout had plunged to the lowest in the nation, just 28.3 percent according to the _{Elections Project}_. A sexy 2018 U.S. Senate race between Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke helped push that number higher, but the _{Elections Project still found Texas mired among the lowest 10 states}_ in the nation.
Political scientists will long debate the impact of redistricting, voter ID laws and other restrictive techniques, as well as the Roberts court's rulings on the VRA and gerrymandering, on the democratic backsliding that has become a feature of so many red state legislatures and contributed to the growing crisis of GOP minority rule. But no one needs an advanced degree to see the effects of this two-step on _{extreme legislation on reproductive rights}_, among other issues, coming from Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, Missouri and elsewhere — despite zero indication that _{voters in these states}_ _{desire these new restrictions}_ or have moved anywhere near as far right on these issues as their representatives.
Perhaps the problem is that this Supreme Court has made it exceptionally difficult for voters to get rid of their representatives when they go too far, and that this has emboldened lawmakers who no longer fear that their extremism might lead either to defeat or reproach from the courts. Indeed, this Supreme Court, under Alito's lead, has encouraged legislatures to go a step further. After the ruling on the Texas law, in which justices threw up their hands at the novel workaround created by empowering citizens to turn in anyone involved in making an abortion possible, the signal to every other state was this: Go as far as you want. This court has your back.
The message to the rest of the nation is clear as well. When voting rights are hollowed out, it opens the door to an assault on every right you hold dear and any policy that matters to you, whether that's reproductive rights, labor rights, gun control, the environment, or whether or not your kids can be asked to wear masks at school during a pandemic.
If voters want to change those policies, Samuel Alito says tough. He can't be voted out of office — and his colleagues just keep tilting the rules so your legislators can't be either.
As redistricting begins in state legislatures nationwide, Republican state legislators are building up their own walls of protection. If Democrats want to reverse course before a potential generation of GOP minority rule, 2022 could be the last chance. Congress must protect voting rights. And we all must prioritize state legislative and secretary of state races. We invest now to win next November — or the Texas two-step could be playing in your state next.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-mastermind-behind-the-draconian-heartbeat-bill-banning-abortion-as-early-as-6-weeks/
Americans woke up last Wednesday morning to a new reality: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark legislation granting a woman a right to an abortion, was violently under attack through the passage of a new “heartbeat bill” in Texas.
That law—which bans abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, makes no exception for rape or incest, and allows private citizens to sue anyone who performs or aids a woman in getting an abortion—is the first so-called heartbeat bill to have become law and actually be enforced. The Supreme Court did not swoop in and prevent the law’s enforcement as some had hoped: That evening, the top court allowed the law to stand in a 5-4 decision, with the five right-wing lawmakers firmly in camp against Roe simply claiming it was a procedural issue that abortion providers had not addressed, voting in effect for Texan women to lose the right to abortion provided under Roe.
For Janet Porter,the Texas law was a dream come true. The longtime religious-right activist took to Rumble, a posterboard of her book, “A Heartbeat Away,” propped up in the background as she announced the news. “That makes Texas the first state in the nation to actually enforce their heartbeat law of the 14 states who have passed them,” she told the camera.
“Grasp this for a moment,” she said, ecstatic, a smile spread across her face, her hands gesturing in excitement. “There is a place in the United States where nearly every child facing abortion is now legally protected. It is historic.”
“Today in Texas, if a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected,” she said. “Soon, the nation will follow.”
Porter is often seen as the mastermind behind so-called heartbeat legislation, which bans women from having abortions after a “heartbeat” is detected—as early as six weeks in some cases and, for many women, before they’re aware that they are pregnant.Medical expertssaythe term “fetal heartbeat” is scientifically inaccurate, noting that at six weeks, the embryo—which is not yet a fetus—will have not yet developed a heart.But the term “fetal heartbeat” pulls at heartstrings, and its marketability, for a lack of better term, has Porter to thank.
While Porter has made restricting access abortion her main priority, the longtime religious-right activist’s extremism has been well documented on these pages. As Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, Porter took to her radio program to spread the racist birther conspiracy theory championed by Donald Trump. Once Obama was elected, the conspiracies didn’t stop: As Right Wing Watch reported, she falsely claimed “Obama would orchestrate food shortages to starve conservatives to death, use a swine flu outbreak as an excuse to lock them up in concentration camps, and use Obamacare to deny them healthcare and eliminate them.” On the pages of World Net Daily, a far-right conspiracy website, she frequently penned columns—her last, published Dec. 11, 2020, refused to accept Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
When she wasn’t spreading noxious conspiracy theories, the activist was attempting to beat back the advance of gay rights, claiming Christians would be labeled criminals, rounded up, and tossed in jailif gay people had rights.She also trumpeted “conversion therapy,” a range of dangerous and discredited practices meant to change one’s sexual orientation, and was labeled the “The Architect of the ‘Conversion Therapy’ Campagin” by the New York Times. The activist, purportedly so concerned about the lives of children, even served as a spokeswoman for Roy Moore, the former Alabama chief justice who unsuccessfully ran for Senate, defending him after he was accused of child molestation and attacking the woman who accused him.
At the heart of Porter’s activism is an effort to spread a fundamentalist version of Christianity. In 2010, her views became so extreme that VCY, the Christian radio station broadcasting her show,**canceled**it, citing “the drift of the program toward ‘dominion’ theology”—that is, the idea that Christians are called to take complete control over every aspect of human life in order to bring about the return of Christ. Among those aspects of human life: abortion and women’s bodies.
And so in 2011, Porter, working as the head of anti-choice group Faith2Action, found anOhio state legislator, Rep. Lynn Wachtmann, R-Napoleon, to champion legislation she had drafted to restrict access to abortion. The Ohio bill was the first “heartbeat bill” of its kind and so extreme—limiting abortion at the detection of a “heartbeat,” making no exceptions for incest or rape—that other anti-choice groups and legislators balked at it. Questioning the constitutionality of such a measure, they wondered whether the legislation would do more harm than good for their cause. Supporters of the bill said incremental steps weren’t working and were eager to directly challenge Roe. Porter herself was explicit about her goal, stating in 2017, that her “heartbeat bill” was “the foot in the door” to totally outlawing abortion.
“It was not my original idea, but I’ve been a pro-life leader here in Columbus for 26 years, and I’m committed to pushing the courts as far as we can go to protect human life, and that’s clearly what this bill is all about,” Wachtmann stated in February 2011 shortly before he introduced the bill.
At that point, Faith2Action already had a full-throttle pressure campaign underway to get the legislation passed. Under Porter’s leadership, the group urged its supporters to send heart-shaped red balloons to the Ohio governor and state representatives ahead of Valentine’s Day, “encouraging their support of the Heartbeat Bill” and to “Have a Heart!”—a message Porter repeated in a column for the far-right WND site. The bill passed in the state House later that year.
When the legislation stalled in the state Senate in 2012, Faith2Action took out a full-page ad in the Columbus Dispatch and made thousands of robocalls asking its supportersto contact state senators. That ad featured Dr. John Willke, founder of the National Right to Life and another sponsor of the bill. Revered in anti-abortion rights circles, Willke had perpetuated the**false myth**that a woman’s body can resist conception in rape, which may be among the reasons why the bill did not provide exceptions for abortion in case of rape. Another is that Porter doesn’t think women should be allowed to have any abortion, stating in 2017, “We’re not for killing any child, especially an innocent child for the crime of his father.”
The bill had wide support among religious-right figures both in state and out of state. An archived version of Faith2Action’s site for the bill lists E.W. Jackson, Samuel Rodriguez, Mat Staver, James Robison, Rick Joyner, Wendy Wright, Ken Blackwell, Jay Sekulow, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, and Frank Pavone as supporters. It also featured a list of current and former elected officials: former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Jim Jordan (then an Ohio state legislator), Rep. Louie Gohmert, former Sen. Rick Santorum, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Rep. Michele Bachmann, then Rep. Steve King, and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.
When the bill did reach then Gov. John Kasich, he vetoed it twice, preferring to signanother strict abortion banat 12 weeks and citing constitutionality issues with the “heartbeat” legislation.But the bill found a champion in his Republican successor, Gov. Mike DeWine, who signed Ohio’s “heartbeat bill” into law in 2019 before Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics represented by the American Civil Liberties Union sued. A federal judge issued a temporary stay on theabortion ban and extended it again this spring.
A slew of red states followed suit, passing their own “heartbeat” abortion bans. The legislation mostly faced the same fate as the Ohio law—that is, except for Texas.
The Texas law provides a loophole those others did not: Instead of the state attorney general or other state officials enforcing the law, the law explicitly prevents state governments from enforcing it and essentially deputizes every citizen to sue anyone who performs an abortion or aids a woman in getting one. That leaves abortion clinics at a loss of who to sue. The purpose by the law’s drafters: to prevent intervention from federal courts.
So when the Supreme Court had a chance to stay the legislation, the conservative majority essentially said that the nation’s top court had its hands tied, that abortion providers in the state had not addressed the “complex and novel” procedural questions and would have to do so before the Supreme Court would take it up.
The Texas law also provides a bounty to incentivize enforcement: Any person who successfully sues would get $10,000 and their legal fees covered. Defendants who are successful are not entitled to have their legal fees covered, and anyone who aided a woman in getting an abortion could be sued multiple times. The effect is that most if not all clinics in the state have stopped providing abortions after six weeks for fear of bankruptcy.
The Texas law was sponsored by Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes, who asked conservative litigator Jonathan F. Mitchell how anti-abortion legislation could avoid the fate of other “heartbeat bills” that languished without enforcement after federal judges issued injunctions. Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general and active member of the Federalist Society, was already steeped in the religious-right effort to overturn Roe, **representing**towns sued by the ACLU over their ordinances that made abortion a crime. In 2017, while working alongside with Alliance Defending Freedom on a case about religious freedom, he trotted out a theory that he’d go on to use in Texas, claiming that no matter how unconstitutional a law was, if it did not charge a state official with the duty of enforcement, it couldn’t produce a federal lawsuit. Mitchell would become the primary architect of the Texas abortion law’s private-enforcement provision.
“We knew we had to have another way,” said Hughes, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We were going to find a way to pass a heartbeat bill that was going to be upheld.”
It’s unclear how much Porter, who was a supporterof the Texas law, had to do with this particular loophole, but the drafters of that particular bill have Porter’s popularization of the “heartbeat bill” to thank and the religious right’s decades-long campaign to overturn Roe of which she was a part.
National religious-right organizations, like ADF, have championed a state-by-state approach to chip away at the landmark legislation. This spring, the Supreme Court announced it will hear a case about a Mississippi law banning abortions at 15 weeks, a law that was based on ADF’s model legislation and a major threat to a woman’s right to an abortion. But so far, no effort has dealt as big of a blow to Roe as has Porter’s “heartbeat” legislation. Already, other states are consideringa law based on Texas’ version of the “heartbeat bill.”
As she celebrated last Wednesday, Porter, too, looked forward.
“The National Association of Christian Lawmakers just adopted the Texas version of the heartbeat law as their model legislation,” she said, a smile dancing across her face between sentences. “That means we’re about to see a lot more heartbeat bills become law and actually get enforced.”
Tags: Bryan HughesJanet PorterJonathan MitchellAbortionHeartbeat BillReproductive RightsAlliance Defending FreedomFaith 2 ActionWorld Net Daily
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/texas-freeze/
com dr
New research published Friday suggests that melting Arctic sea ice caused by global heating may be responsible for the deadly deep freeze that devastated much of North America and plunged millions of Texans into darkness in February.
While climate researchers have previously connected the phenomena of polar heating and mid-latitute freezes, a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Scienceis the first to link Arctic warming and February's cold snap. Authorities said the four-day extreme weather event—which left millions of residents trapped in sub-freezing darkness as Texas' largely independent power grid failed. State officials said the freezing temperatures killed more than 150 people in Texas, though others estimate the true death toll was likely much higher.
Polar vortices—large areas of low pressure and cold air swirling around the North and South poles—usually keep icy air contained there. However, research suggests that polar heating and ice melt fueled by the worsening climate emergency is allowing the normally trapped Arctic air to flow far southward.
Reporting on the new study, New Scientist explains:
That link still isn't fully established. However, a group led by Judah Cohen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that vanishing sea ice and greater snowfall in the Arctic over the past 40 years, effects caused by climate change, may be driving cold winter weather in North America and Eurasia via the stratospheric polar vortex, the cold winds high above the pole. The rapid warming in the Arctic appears to be disrupting—that is, stretching—this vortex in a way that has a knock-on effect on atmospheric circulations above North America, generating unusually cold spells in winter.
"If you expected global warming to help you out with preparing for severe winter weather, our paper says the cautionary tale is: don't necessarily expect climate change to solve that problem for you," Cohen told New Scientist. "This is an unexpected impact from climate change that we didn't appreciate 20 years ago."
Continuing a decadeslong pattern of Texas Republicans denying the climate emergency, Gov. Greg Abbott blamed solar and wind power for February's blackouts, while calling the proposed Green New Deal "deadly" as people in his state were actually dying in darkness.
Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, told the Associated Press that "the Texas cold blast of February 2021 is a poster child" for the Arctic link theory. Francis, who was not involved in the new study, said the research "takes this controversial hypothesized linkage and moves it solidly toward accepted science."
"By analyzing both observations and model simulations," Francis told New Scientist, "the conclusions are well supported and help explain how extreme cold spells like the debilitating one in Texas this past February are still likely—and perhaps more so—as the climate crisis unfolds."
Writing in The Conversation, Cohen and Mathew Barlow, two of study's five authors, conclude that "our research reinforces two crucial lessons of climate change: First, the change doesn't have to occur in your backyard to have a big effect on you. Second, the unexpected consequences can be quite severe."
"In this case, large changes in the Arctic are not just a local concern—they also have wide-ranging impacts across North America and parts of Asia," they note. "And those impacts are not always what people are expecting. The results highlight another reason to rapidly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving global warming and at the same time theneed to develop better strategies for managing extreme weather events, both hot and cold."
===
rove takeover pioneer?
tex state scotus backed gov idiocy on mask mandate
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/15/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine
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dems fled quorum? tx rangers and helo?! 8k$/yr?!
texas Gov. Greg Abbott vows to defund state Legislature after voting restrictions bill fails
Patrick Svitek The Texas Tribune
June 01, 2021
May 31, 2021
"Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vows to defund state Legislature after voting restrictions bill fails, threatening salaries" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a...
===
===
aha see CRT // texas law to praise alamo heroes https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1007186936/challenging-the-myths-of-the-alamo
; urban legend anxiety; simple story to explain complex, make hearer center/hero of story, wht ppl here before nat am:
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/tucker-carlson-2653475417/
salon
The American people live in the same country. That does not mean they share a common reality. This inability to agree upon basic empirical facts and the nature of the truth is undermining the country's democracy.
===
One need only compare now-President Joe Biden's losses in Texas in 2020 to his losses in Idaho or Wyoming to see that Texas has gone from deep red to light red. Biden lost Texas by 6%; he lost Wyoming by 43%, Idaho by 30% and North Dakota by 43%. Nonetheless, the Democratic Party has, historically, had a turnout problem in the Lone Star State; Democrats are going to need a heavier turnout in the Democrat-leaning parts of the state if they are going to win statewide races (presidential, gubernatorial or U.S. Senate) in the future. And Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, during a June 4 appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast, essentially admitted that voter suppression helped former President Donald Trump win Texas in 2020.
Paxton told Bannon, who served as White House chief strategist in the Trump Administration in 2017 following his years as chairman of Breitbart News, that had his office not blocked Harris County from sending out mail-in ballot applications to its residents, Trump would have lost Texas in 2020. Harris County includes Democrat-leaning Houston.
"Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas," Paxton told Bannon. "(The) Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million. Those were all illegal, and we were able to stop every one of them."
What Paxton described as "mail-in ballots" were mail-in ballot applications. There's a difference between sending out 2.5 applications for mail-in ballots and actually sending out 2.5 mail-in ballots. And there was nothing evil or sinister about the applications that Harris County officials wanted to send out, as Paxton claimed.
Nonetheless, Paxton's comments were revealing, as they underscore the fact that far-right Republicans like Paxton and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are scared to death of the possibility of Democrats ramping up voter turnout in the more Democratic parts of the state — which include not only Houston (which hasn't had a Republican mayor since the early 1980s), but also, Austin, El Paso, Dallas and San Antonio. However, the Texas GOP has a very strong ground game in countless rural counties in North Texas and Central Texas, and they really know how to turn out the Republican base in those areas of the state.
Journalist Sharon Zhang, reporting on the interview in Truthout on June 7, stresses that it's "unclear" whether or not Trump "would have actually won the state if Harris County had been allowed to follow through on its plan to make voting more accessible."
"While President Joe Biden won the county by a 13-point margin or nearly 220,000 votes, with record-breaking voter turnout, Trump carried the state with over 600,000 votes," Zhang explains. "Regardless of whether the results would have been any different for Biden had Harris County been able to send out mail-in ballot applications, Paxton's statement about the election results seven months after the fact is revealing of how conservatives view elections and voting rights. Rather than ensuring that elections are conducted fairly, they openly support blocking access to the ballot by any means necessary — especially among voters in more Democratic leaning and non-White areas."
Zhang continues, "Paxton, after all, is the same person who sued to disenfranchise millions of voters in battleground states following Biden's victory in the 2020 elections. Regardless of whether Paxton's lawsuit against the mail-in ballot applications handed Trump his victory in Texas, it was certainly one more tool in the GOP's voter-suppression toolbox for the state."
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fec trainor worked w
| Carlos Cascos | January 21, 2015 – January 6, 2017 | Greg Abbott |
|---|---|---|
| Rolando Pablos | January 6, 2017 – December 15, 2018 | January 6, 2017 – December 15, 2018 |
| David Whitley | December 17, 2018 – May 27, 2019 | December 17, 2018 – May 27, 2019 |
| Ruth Ruggero Hughs | August 19, 2019 – present | August 19, 2019 – present |
staffer cut and paste racist stuff, did not know?
an 621 Texas GOP blames 'typo' as Democrats force their retreat on controversial voter suppression bill: report
Greg Abbott consulted an infamous climate change denier before Texas' energy debacle: reporter?]
ncil
Meaghan Ellis June 11, 2021
Republican lawmakers in Texas are scrambling as their already-flawed voter suppression bill falls apart at the seams. Some of the features that critics were most concerned about may not end up in the final version at all because of the state Democrats' efforts.
On Friday, June 11, independent journalist Judd Legum took to Twitter with a timeline of the events unfolding in Texas as Democratic lawmakers push back against the controversial bill.
He noted that Republican lawmakers' actions on May 31 assumed they would be passing sweeping legislation to restrict voting practices across the state. However, Democrats took a stand by walking out and denying Republicans a quorum, meaning a final vote on the bill couldn't happen. While the frustrated lawmakers are preparing to revisit the bill during a special session, Legum noted that an "extraordinary" occurrence is underway.
There are a number of discrepancies that are now coming to light. With this particular bill, the devil is in the details, and the Democrats' stunt gave the details time to come out. While some critics said that walk-out merely delayed the inevitable passage fo the bill, Legum argued that the delay is actually resulting in signficiant changes to the legislation.
Apparently, there are a number of "typos" within the bill that Republican lawmakers were attempting to expedite.
"Republicans are COMPLETELY UNPREPARED to defend the substance of the bill and are abandoning major provisions," Legum tweeted. "First, the GOP claimed the ban on Sunday voting before 1PM was a typo This isn't credible because they defended the ban as the bill was debated But [it's] out."
He added, "Now Republicans are scrapping a provision to allow Texas judges to void an election based on thin evidence of fraud (w/o regard to whether the alleged fraud changed the result) A chief House sponsor of the bill now calls the provision 'horrendous!'"
On June 1, state lawmaker Rep. Travis Clardy (R-Texas), who also serves on the state's Elections Committee, spoke with NPR about the typographical errors in the piece of legislation.
"Actually, that's one of the things I look forward to with fixing the most," Clardy said. "That was not intended to be reduced. I think there was a — you know, call it a mistake if you want. What should have been '11' was actually printed up as '1.'"
Legum wrote, "There may not be a special session until the Fall. How many more 'typos' or horrendous provisions will be found before then? When defending the indefensible, time is not on your side."
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musk // thiel decamps to tex just mfg/ live where?
NRA bankrupt fail abbott invite?
no lnx
new inauguration date is set': Inside the latest QAnon conspiracy theory to 'reinstate' Trump
Zachary Petrizzo Salon June 02, 2021
Hundreds of people gathered in Texas for a QAnon-sponsored conference over Memorial Day weekend to hear the biggest boosters of Donald Trump's Big Lie downplay the Capitol riot and bandy about new threats of a coming coup.
Key Trump allies, including Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, Allen West; and perhaps most notably Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex., attended the three-day event, dubbed "For God & Country Patriot Roundup," at the Omni Hotel in Dallas.
The QAnon conference came amid reports that Trump is attempting to orchestrate another election coup from his far-off kingdom at Mar-a-Lago. According to a Tuesday tweet from the New York Times' Maggie Haberman, the former President has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August." Trump's reported thinking echoes that of hisformer lawyer's, Sidney Powell. On Saturday, Powell told attendees to the QAnon conference that Trump "can simply be reinstated."
"A new inauguration date is set, and Biden is told to move out of the White House, and President Trump should be moved back in," she explained. "I'm sure there's not going to be credit for time lost, unfortunately, because the Constitution itself sets the date for inauguration, but he should definitely get the remainder of his term and make the best of it."
Powell was not the only speaker at this past weekend's event who spoke directly about the possibility Trump could reclaim his throne soon.
Michael Flynn, apparently looking to encourage another election coup, asking the crowd why "what happened in Myanmar" can't happen in the U.S?
"No reason," Flynn answered. "I mean, it should happen here."
Flynn's comments drew widespread scorn but during his speech on Saturday, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert promulgated a number of baseless conspiracies about the Capitol riot, claiming that "there's no evidence" that the event constituted "an armed insurrection."
Although "armed" in legal terms extends beyond that of just firearms, police nevertheless found a number of guns on rioters in the aftermath of the insurrection. Furthermore, CNN reported that the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia, were planning on trafficking a number of guns across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. in an effort to support the insurgency.
During his speech, Gohmert also criticized his Democratic colleagues' push to assemble a commission to investigate the riot – an effort that was effectively killed with a filibuster last week by Senate Republicans. Back in January, Gohmert baselessly accused Black Lives Matter and antifa of infiltrating the Capitol riot. Over the weekend, the representative appeared to double down on this theory, claiming that "it wasn't just right-wing extremists" who were involved. Allegations of left-wing agitation and infiltration have been routinely debunked.
The Texas lawmaker also accused the FBI of "unfairly" targeting Trump supporters in their federal probe into the riot. "Where is the outrage about young people being unfairly treated?" he rambled. "Joe Biden's Justice Department is criminalizing political protest." Gohmert later echoed on CNN: "Any violence should not be downplayed. But people who are not engaged in violence should not be charged with crime."
Following his speech, Gohmert posed and took a picture with known QAnon conspiracy theorist and podcaster RedPill78, who openly admitted to storming the Capitol building on January 6.
Around the time of the riot, Gohmert distinguished himself as a loyal Trump booster, spreading the baseless conspiracy theory of systematic fraud at the ballots in the 2020 general election. Back in January, Gohmert filed a lawsuit on Trump's behalf, arguing that a judge should be compelled to tell former Vice President Mike Pence that he had the right to overturn the electoral college votes in President Joe Biden's favor. (Pence in fact did not have this right.) The suit was dismissed twelve hours after its filing.
Many have speculated that Trump is attempting to overturn the election by cheerleading fallacious election audits in various GOP-led states, the largest of which has now dragged on for months now in Maricopa County, Arizona with no end in sight.
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521 an
Texas House votes to remove state funding from sports teams that don't play national anthem at games
The Texas Tribune May 25, 2021
"Texas House votes to yank state funding from sports teams that don't play national anthem at games" 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.
Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
The Texas House gave preliminary approval on Monday to the so-called“Star Spangled Banner Protection Act," a conservative-backed bill that would require any professional sports teams with contracts with the Texas state government to play the national anthem before the start of a game.
Senate Bill 4 was passed on a voice vote, with no changes by the House. It is expected to receive a record vote and final passage on Tuesday and head to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk.
House Republicans defeated several proposed amendments along partisan lines, signaling more division on the issue in the lower chamber than was seen in the Senate, which passed the bill last month with overwhelming bipartisan support and only two votes against it.
Athletes protesting the national anthem has become a divisive and partisan issue since NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling in 2016 to protest police brutality against Black Americans.
In February, Patrick named the bill one of his legislative priorities after Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, stopped playing the anthem before home games, which went largely unnoticed during the pandemic with no fans in the stands.
That decision quickly drew the ire of conservative lawmakers in the state.
“Sell the franchise & some Texas Patriots will buy it," Patrick said in a tweet at the time. “We ARE the land of free & the home of the brave."
In a public response to the outcry condemning his decision, Cuban expressed support for the anthem, but he said team executives “also loudly hear the voices of those who feel that the anthem does not represent them." The NBA later said all teams would play the anthem before games.
During Monday's debate on the House floor, opponents questioned the constitutionality of a law that they said ties funding to free speech by threatening negative action against sports teams that choose to express their opinions by declining to play the anthem.
“Once again, we're carrying legislation that is openly and aggressively unconstitutional," said state Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who unsuccessfully tried to turn the bill into a resolution, allowing the House to take a stand in favor of the anthem without the force of law.
The bill's House sponsor, state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, said the bill does not violate free speech because teams can still choose not to play the anthem and forgo the funding and business relationship with the state.
“It's very simple. If they do not want to play the national anthem, they don't take the tax dollars," Burrows said. “If we're going to go ahead and subsidize with hard-earned American dollars the sporting facilities and the teams in the different ways that I think is articulated in this bill, then this would apply."
Attempts by Democrats to require teams to play both the “Star-Spangled Banner" and “Lift Every Voice and Sing," or to choose between them, were shut down along partisan lines.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing" is commonly known as “the Black national anthem," said Rep. Jasmine Felicia Crockett, D-Dallas, who authored one of the amendments.
“I don't even understand why we would feel the need to force someone into singing any song," Crockett said. “But if we are going to force people to sing a song, we should at least be mindful of the people playing on these teams, the people that are actually in the stands supporting these teams."
Burrows opposed the amendments “with the deepest amount of respect to my friend and colleague" because he wanted to avoid any changes to the bill, which would slow its progress to the governor's desk during the final week of the legislative session.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/24/texas-house-national-anthem/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/texas-education-bill/
no lnx twt
Texas’ divisive bill restricting how students learn about current events, history, and racism passed by Senate
Kate McGee and The Texas Tribune May 22, 2021
After hours of passionate debate about how Texas teachers can instruct school children about America's history of subjugating people of color, the state Senate early Saturday morning advanced a new version of a controversial bill aimed at banning critical race theory in public and open-enrollment charter schools.
Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, introduced a reworked version of House Bill 3979 that also requires the State Board of Education to develop new state standards for civics education with a corresponding teacher training program to start in the 2022-23 school year. The Senate approved the bill in an 18-13 vote over opposition from educators, school advocacy groups and senators of color who worry it limits necessary conversation about the roles race and racism play in U.S. history.
:{
}:
The bill now heads back to the Texas House, which can either accept the Senate's changes or call for a conference committee made up of members from both chambers to iron out their differences.
The Senate-approved version revives specific essential curriculum standards that students are required to understand, including the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers. But it stripped more than two dozen requirements to study the writings or stories of multiple women and people of color that were also previously approved by the House, despite attempts by Democratic senators to reinstate some of those materials in the bill.
The Senate did vote to include the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 13th 14th and 19th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the complexity of the relationship between Texas and Mexico to the list of required instruction.
Yet the most controversial aspects of the bill remain, including that teachers must explore current events from multiple positions without giving "deference to any one perspective." It also bars students from getting course credit for civic engagement efforts, including lobbying for legislation or other types of political activism.
:{
}:
Educators, historians and school advocacy groups who fiercely oppose the bill remained unswayed by arguments that the bill is merely meant to ensure students are taught that one race or gender is not superior to another.
:{
}:
"Giving equal weight to all sides concerning current events would mean that the El Paso terrorist ideology would have to be given equal weight to the idea that racism is wrong," said Trinidad Gonzales, a history professor and assistant chair of the dual enrollment program at South Texas College. "That is the problem, white supremacy would be ignored or given deference if addressed. That is the problem with the bill."
Hughes denied that the bill would require teachers give moral equivalency to perpetrators of horrific violence.
Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who sponsored the Senate version of the bill, said in a statement to the Tribune thatTexas schools should emphasize "traditional history, focusing on the ideas that make our country great and the story of how our country has risen to meet those ideals."
But Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, raised concerns on the Senate floor that the historical documents required in the bill only reflect the priorities of white senators.
"There were documents that were chosen, not by Hispanics, not by African Americans in this body, but by Anglos," he said. "No input from us in terms of what founding documents should in fact be considered by all children in this state."
Hughes also told members there have been instances in various school districts where parents have raised concerns about lessons where students have been taught one race is inherently superior to another. He pointed to a particular instance in Highland Park Independent School District where parents were concerned about a book called Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness.
"We do have teaching now that we want to get out that one race or sex is inherently superior to another, or the individual by virtue of the individual's race or sex is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously," Hughes said. "I think we agree we don't want that taught in schools. That's why we need this bill."
But Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, pushed back against that premise, reading a passage from the book's author about its intent to help children dismantle white supremacy.
"My point is that we cannot just pick and choose what we are going to teach as history and expect to change things and make things better," Miles said. "It doesn't work that way. This bill is eliminating and excluding some things, and including what you want to say."
Educators also worry the legislation will change how teachers can engage students in hard, but important, conversations about American current events that teachers often use to trace back to historical events.
"Kids get engaged and kids want to dig into your class when they get the relevance and they have some buy-in," said Jocelyn Foshay, a Dallas Independent School District middle school teacher.
The bill, which mirrors legislation making its way through state legislatures across the country, has been coined the Critical Race Theory bill, though neither the House or Senate versions explicitly mention the academic discipline, which studies the way race and racism has impacted America's legal and social systems.
The latest version of the bill also reintroduced an explicit ban of the teaching of The New York Times' 1619 Project, which examines U.S. history from the date when enslaved people first arrived on American soil, marking that year as the country's foundational date. That 2019 work from journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize and was recently thrust back into the national spotlight after the University of North Carolina did not grant her tenure after conserative criticism of her work.
"To suggest that America is so racist at its core to be irredeemable and to suggest that people based on the color of their skin can never overcome biases and can never treat each other fairly, that's a real problem," Hughes said of the project.
Educators also worry the bill language is too vague and will allow students and parents to potentially use the legislation against them if they disagree with how they're teaching history curriculum, regardless of the primary sources and historical texts teachers use to back up their lessons. It's also unclear who would enforce these requirements and how schools or districts would handle these issues.
"It makes it so open for anyone to interpret it the way they want to interpret it," said Juan Carmona, a history teacher in the Rio Grande Valley town of Donna
He sees this bill as a pushback to including more historical voices and perspectives in the teaching of history. In recent years, Texas started to offer Mexican American and African American studies courses to all high school students.
Over the past year, the phrase "critical race theory" has turned into a Republican rallying cry in an apparent pushback against increased conversations about diversity and inclusion and unpacking implicit bias.
This week, 20 state attorneys general sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and expressed concern with critical race theory and, specifically, the 1619 Project. The letter says critical race theory analyzes history through "the narrow prism of race."
Georgina Perez, who serves on the State Board of Education, slammed the bill and its supporters, saying they are using buzzwords for political gain rather than to improve education.
"They have no idea what critical race theory is, what it does, who the founders are. They've never read a book, much less a paragraph on it," said Perez. "I understand that maybe some white people are uncomfortable. Well, dammit, when Black people were being lynched, they sure as hell weren't comfortable. Native Americans being removed from their land and Mexican Americans being shot to death in the middle of the night, that shit wasn't comfortable either."
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===
In a North Texas suburb outside of Dallas, conservatives and far-right Republicans are clashing on a number of issues. And according to the LA Times, Texas Republicans are facing a sharp difference in opinions regarding how America should "look, sound and feel like."
McKinney Texas Mayor George Fuller (R) recently expressed concern about the direction his party is heading in. As a moderate Republican, Fuller's personal views have also impacted his family life as his Trump-supporting siblings no longer speak with him.
"It's just not the party I recognize anymore," said Fuller. "We are at a place where families are torn apart by political ideologies that are so skewed and out of whack."
The publication notes how the Trump era widely influenced Texas Republicans' views and belief systems as the state's GOP is now comprised of "anti-vaccination protesters, QAnon conspiracy theorists" and those who harbor a deep distrust in President Joe Biden.
Out of the 377 individuals arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol, more than three dozen were reportedly Texas residents described as "lawyers, retirees, tech executives, and veterans." The findings prove that radicalized right-wing believers come from many walks of life, but share the same ideology and beliefs where politics are concerned.
Similar to the growing problem in Texas, other states across the country are also facing an increase in far-right extremism. And Fuller noted that the rise of pro-Trump political candidates challenging moderate and traditional Republicans could backfire and cause the party to self-destruct.
"We are either going to destroy ourselves from within or have a reset," Fuller said.
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===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/texas-agriculture-commissioner/ pot bribes
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/texas-lt-gov-patrick-claimed-that-most-non-white-texans-dont-drive-but-the-data-clearly-says-otherwise-report/
===
===
1b$ ~ Griddy texas freeze 221 class action lawsuit
==
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/extreme-weather/
salon
The catastrophe that swept Texas last week was 90 years in the making. Its roots lie in a decision during the 1930s to escape federal regulation of power rates under the terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal by forcing all Texas utilities to avoid importing or exporting power across state lines, thereby pretending that Texas electricity was not actually part of the national economy.
As the biggest oil and gas producer in the world, Texas had already set itself up in the business of regulating the global price of oil through the Texas Railroad Commission, which set limits on oil and gas production to keep oil prices artificially high. So going it alone on electricity prices seemed like a logical extension — except that in the case of electricity, Texas business wanted low prices, not high ones.
Implicit in the creation of what Texans call their "power island" was an understanding that cheap electricity was the only significant goal. Reliability came a distant second and clean air wasn't even on the radar screen. When Texas deregulated its electricity sector in 1999, it went further than most states. ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, kept prices low by refusing to pay utilities for keeping standby generation capacity in case of an extreme weather event. Since Texas also remained disconnected from other regions which might have provided backup power in the case of a shortage, the state denied itself any kind of safety net, either in-state or elsewhere.
Extreme heat waves were very much on the Texas radar, because high-demand summer days were frequent — and _{profitable for generators.}_ So money was made, and summer blackouts were few, for almost 20 years. As the climate spun out of control, however, even in summer Texas barely avoided resorting to rolling blackouts to manage record demand during worsening hot spells. (In fact, in El Paso, on the state's western border, they happened.)
Meanwhile, the pretense that it never gets cold in Texas _{kept obstructing efforts}_ to make the ERCOT grid winter-hardened. In _{1989, federal regulators}_ pointed out that Texas lacked simple weatherization measures common to more northern states.In 2011, winter storms triggered rolling blackouts. In 2014, the term "polar vortex" came into common use as Texas once again lost winter power. In 2018 and 2019, the polar vortex struck two years in a row.
Yet Texas business and political leaders kept insisting that the cost of winterizing the power system was simply not worth it. The state's major industrial power users didn't want to pay their share of the bill. Any conversation about providing backup by connecting the Texas grid to the rest of America remained totally off limits.
This year, of course, disaster became catastrophe. Those who doggedly opposed investments in reliability have had to find a new tune — their favorite being to blame renewable energy, in spite of manifest evidence that this is untrue.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry _{went to bat}_ for the state's electron isolationism: "Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business." Perry went on to blame the state's reliance on wind power for the crisis, a richly ironic canard. It was Perry himself who led the campaign to create Texas's innovative and wind-power targeted CREZ transmission project, which was largely responsible for the fact that 2020 was the first year in which Texas got more electricity from wind than from coal.
Perry's scapegoating of his own wind revolution for the blackout was echoed by current Gov. Greg Abbott, who said, "Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis." That was a lie. As the chart below shows, most of the collapse in power generation came from natural gas, coal and nuclear, since even in a normal winter Texas gets relatively little of its power from wind and solar. (Although Texas wind turbines lack simple weatherizing technology used by wind farms in other states to its north.) [grf]
as the disasters cascaded — no power, shut-down oil and gas production, no water, unreliable food — voices from urban communities suffering freezing homes flooded by burst pipes began to fire back, blaming the state regulators for their refusal to invest in winter-hardy generation for the state. It was "_{just horrible to see,"}_ said Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson. "The power and water outages in Texas have created a situation that's worse than even the early days of the pandemic," warned Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from San Antonio.
But deeply ingrained in the Texas power sector was the governor's belief that hard freezes didn't happen often enough to be worth preparing for. That misguided belief was os deeply ingrained that when _{the Texas Monthly asked}_ ERCOT CEO Bill Magness if the savings from failing to build resilience were worth it to consumers, he dismissed the question: "I am not aware that we have ever conducted a real cost-benefit analysis on that topic." That wasn't true. ERCOT had analyzed this, and it turned out that the agency's _{eight-year-old estimate}_ of the daily cost of such a blackout was $2.8 billion — enough to cover a lot of weatherization.The 2020 freeze brought a whole new class of costs to bear. Not only was electricity generation shut down, but as a result so were many oil fields. IHS Markit estimated that the Texas freeze had shut down at least 20% of the nation's oil and gas production, largely in the Permian Basin, which made it harder to get gas-fired electricity back on line.
As more and more voters got more and more upset, a new refrain was heard, even from Abbott: _{Texas needed to weatherize}_. The governor called for a special legislative session to get it done, and was suddenly outraged. "Everyone knows how challenging the past few days have been for our fellow Texans," Abbott said. "All of us in the state of Texas believe it is completely unacceptable that you had to endure one minute of the challenge that you faced."
So can we write off the Texas tragedy to Lone Star exceptionalism? A quasi-secessionist electricity island, with inadequate requirements for getting ready for winter, pays the price?
Up close it looks like it. But pull back and include the summer of 2020, and it's clear that what went wrong in Texas has a lot do with the fires that brought California to its knees six months earlier. The summers of 2017 and 2018 had made it clear that California didn't have nearly enough firefighters standing by for an event like the lightning strikes that rained down in August 2020. It was also clear the state had allowed PG&E and its other utilities to invest too little in fire hardening rural power lines. Worse yet, most communities in the fire-hazard areas had failed to adopt or enforce adequate fireproofing measures on homes and businesses. But California's politics are — in the American context — at polar opposites to Texas. (In fact, California's problem is significantly harder to fix than the polar vortex threat to Texas.)
To understand why neither red nor blue America can reliably and safely provide electricity to its population, we need to contrast the American attitude towards natural disasters — they happen, but we recover — with the Dutch approach to flooding, which is more like: We can't prevent the storms, but we can protect ourselves against the damages. Since the Dutch adopted this attitude as national policy 70 years ago, not a single citizen has died in a flood. Prevention has proven cheaper than rescue and repair: Even though a third of the nation lies below sea level, Holland's annual expenditures for flood prevention, at $1.5 billion, are a fraction of American costs for flood recovery, even on a per capita basis.
If President Biden is looking for another issue on which he can unite the country, starting a conversation on the need to massively invest in fire, flood and storm resilience in a climate-stressed world offers a promising opportunity. How about "Build it back safely" as a subset of "Build it back better"?
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===
===
polar vortex AGW
wind blamed (by abbott?] ~ AOC GND
https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/texas-green-energy/
https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/gov-abbott/
https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/texas-power-grid
by Kate Galbraith, The Texas Tribune Feb. 8, 2011
"Texplainer: Why does Texas have its own power grid?" 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.
Why does Texas have its own electric grid?
Texas' secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection — and Texas.
The Texas grid is called ERCOT, and it is run by an agency of the same name — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT does not actually cover all of Texas. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas. This presumably has to do with the history of various utilities' service territories and the remoteness of the non-ERCOT locations (for example the Panhandle is closer to Kansas than to Dallas, notes Kenneth Starcher of the Alternative Energy Institute in Canyon), but Texplainer is still figuring out the particulars on this.
The separation of the Texas grid from the rest of the country has its origins in the evolution of electric utilities early last century. In the decades after Thomas Edison turned on the country's first power plant in Manhattan in 1882, small generating plants sprouted across Texas, bringing electric light to cities.
Later, particularly during the first world war, utilities began to link themselves together. These ties, and the accompanying transmission network, grew further during the second world war, when several Texas utilities joined together to form the Texas Interconnected System, which allowed them to link to the big dams along Texas rivers and also send extra electricity to support the ramped-up factories aiding the war effort.
The Texas Interconnected System — which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities, one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas — had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. "Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal — more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s," writes Richard D. Cudahy in a 1995 article, "The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection." (Self-reliance was also made easier in Texas, especially in the early days, because the state has substantial coal, natural gas and oil resources of its own to fuel power plants.)
ERCOT was formed in 1970, in the wake of a major blackout in the Northeast in November 1965, and it was tasked with managing grid reliability in accordance with national standards. The agency assumed additional responsibilities following electric deregulation in Texas a decade ago. The ERCOT grid remains beyond the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which succeeded the Federal Power Commission and regulates interstate electric transmission.
Historically, the Texas grid's independence has been violated a few times. Once was during World War II, when special provisions were made to link Texas to other grids, according to Cudahy. Another episode occurred in 1976 after a Texas utility, for reasons relating to its own regulatory needs, deliberately flipped a switch and sent power to Oklahoma for a few hours. This event, known as the "Midnight Connection," set off a major legal battle that could have brought Texas under the jurisdiction of federal regulators, but it was ultimately resolved in favor of continued Texan independence.
Even today, ERCOT is also not completely isolated from other grids — as was evident when the state imported some power from Mexico during the rolling blackouts of 2011. ERCOT has three ties to Mexico and — as an outcome of the "Midnight Connection" battle — it also has two ties to the eastern U.S. grid, though they do not trigger federal regulation for ERCOT. All can move power commercially as well as be used in emergencies, according to ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark. A possible sixth interconnection project, in Rusk County, is being studied, and another ambitious proposal, called Tres Amigas, would link the three big U.S. grids together in New Mexico, though Texas' top utility regulator has shown little enthusiasm for participating.
Bottom line: Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with the feds.
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/state-gop
the attempted Republican coup against our democracy is not over. It is changing form, now that Joe Biden has been formally sworn in as the nation's new president, but not abating. State Republican parties, in particular, are continuing to aggressively embrace the hoaxes, conspiracy theories and cult notions justifying the attempted violent insurrection to reinstall Donald Trump as an illegitimate leader. They are also retaliating against those Republicans who refused to abet those efforts.
Long a extremist hub, the Arizona Republican Party has been moving the swiftest to dole out consequences to anti-fascist Republicans. The party voted yesterday to censure Cindy McCain, Gov. Doug Ducey and ex-Sen. Jeff Flake, while reelecting far-right crackpot Kelli Ward as their state party leader. (All three censured Arizonans attended Joe Biden's inauguration just days before in a show of support for our continuing democracy, which may or may not be coincidental.)
Ducey was condemned for his imposition of pandemic-battling restrictions, as the party continues its obsessions with anti-science, anti-book-learning contrarianism even as the pandemic death toll inches towards a half million souls.McCain, however, was called out not only for her insufficient Trump support but for supporting "globalist policies," a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory supposing that global "elites" are working behind the scenes to undermine national identity. To her credit, McCain responded by telling her state party to pound sand.
Lurching farther rightward still, the Texas Republican Party encouraged its allies to travel to neo-Nazi friendly site Gab while identifying itself with a pro-"Q" conspiracy trope.
After 2016, there was an avalanche of punditry about what Democrats needed to do to rebuild their party — mainly, e… https://t.co/ARCdePG4jU
— Matt McDermott (@Matt McDermott)1611496999.0
"We are the STORM" is, if the symbolism did not give it away already, a Q-ism borrowed directly from the neo-Nazi movement. The "storm" refers to a violent revolution to murder the enemies of the far-right, from antifa to Democratic and social leaders to insufficiently pure neighbors, under the premise that those enemies are secretly murdering children to harvest their blood. Once again, it is the thinnest possible veneer on fringe-right anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have animated neo-Nazi justifications for violence since before they were neo-.
Donald Trump may be gone, left to stew for the moment on his loss and whether he truly wants to form a new far-right party or simply blow it off and go golfing, but the party that chose him as its incompetent, dishonest, blustering, and criminal figurehead has, if anything, only solidified its embrace of fascist techniques and principles. They are redoubling their efforts to radicalize their base, battle truths with hoaxes and to further impede the ability of non-white, non-conservative Americans to cast votes at all.
That they are doing so even after stoking a genuine violent insurrection is not surprising; the intent of the hoaxes to begin with was to overturn the election by any means necessary through the promulgation of hoaxes intended to so inflame the base that the citizenry itself would rise up to demand it. It remains the intent now. Violence is not a side effect of these efforts, but a tool. They will use it when they can.
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---
===
see effing hypocrisy eg state rights except swing states rights to ct own votes; trump pass one bill rest XO
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/biden-republicans
Ross Ramsey, The Texas Tribune
Jan. 22, 2021
"Analysis: Top Texas lawyers skipping the honeymoon with the Biden administration" 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.
Have a look at what the top attorneys for the state of Texas were offering on the day Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as president and vice president.
“My statement on Inauguration Day," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxtontweeted from his agency's official account. “Congrats, President Biden. On Inauguration Day, I wish our country the best. I promise my fellow Texans and Americans that I will fight against the many unconstitutional and illegal actions that the new administration will take, challenge federal overreachthat infringes on Texans' rights, and serve as a major check against the administration's lawlessness. Texas First! Law & Order always!"
One of his deputy attorneys general, Aaron Reitz,retweeted that with his own topspin on the new chief executive of the United States: “Excited for the fight ahead. We will fight Joe Biden and the Democrats at every turn, because virtually everything they do is unconstitutional, illegal, bad for Texas, and bad for America."
Warms your little red, white and blue heart, doesn't it?
While the Republican attorney general and his deputies were suiting up for fights that haven't had time to start and tagging the newly seated Democrats as lawless before those Democrats have actually done anything, the new president was calling for unity.
“The answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don't look like you or worship the way you do or don't get their news from the same sources you do," Biden said. “We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural vs. urban, conservative vs. liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts. If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we're willing to stand in the other person's shoes, as my mom would say, just for a moment, stand in their shoes."
Unity was the theme of Biden's inaugural address. “Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path," he said. “Every disagreement doesn't have to be a cause for total war."
It's like trying to reason with a cloud of hungry mosquitoes. To be more charitable about it, calming the partisans is going to require a lot of political rehab.
And to be fair, a number of elected Texas Republicans said they'd like totry working together. At least on the first day, people like U.S. Reps. Van Taylor of Plano and Beth Van Duyneof Irving unclenched their fists and offered to pitch in.
Paxton's contrarian streak isn't new; he was one of the speakers at the Trump rally in Washington two weeks ago that spawned the invasion of the U.S. Capitol. And he's not speaking outside the tradition of his state office. His predecessor, Gov. Greg Abbott, served as AG during the Obama administration. Abbott turned his resistance intoa campaign line: “My job's pretty simple. I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and then I go home."
It sounds like a state-federal beef, but this isn't about federalism and states' rights — it's about Republicans vs. Democrats.
While Biden is trying to de-escalate — and he's not alone here; there are Republicans working on the same project — the public will have to weigh in before the conversation will change.
The partisans are putting on these shows for the rest of us, for voters who have been so anxious and excitable about politics in recent years — and particularly during the presidency of Donald Trump. His skill at holding the crowd's attention and driving the public's emotion provided a lesson for the lesser lights in politics and government.
Trump has helicoptered away, but his devotees in public office are still following the playbook, confident that the same crowds who followed him will now turn and follow them.
It's the voters themselves who are being tested. Do they yearn for more of the kind of political tension they've been getting for the last four years — and honestly, for a good long time before that — or do they want something to happen after all the bickering?
More of the same, or something different?
Texans in office at all levels of government do a lot of the things that they do for an audience of voters. They are remarkably sensitive to public sentiment, and here's the thing about that: If they perform in a particular way, that's their read on what the public wants. What you see from them is what they think you want.
Maybe that means Texans want to hobble the new federal administration with lawsuits. Maybe they want everybody in public office to settle down for a little while. Maybe voters are still split; this unity thing is hard.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/22/biden-texas-republicans/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
---
talking to texas
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/wyoming-secession
===
dingdong?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/nra/
"Thoughts and prayers."
"The NRA's claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt."
—NY Attorney General Letitia James
That is what many opponents of the National Rifle Association wryly stated in response to news that the pro-gun lobby group had officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday in the United States.
In a statement on its website, the NRA—which promotes the interests of the gun industry and gun owners unbothered by the unparalleled level of gun violence seen in the country—said it was leaving New York state, where it is currently registered, to restructure in Texas as part of a "new strategic plan" it is implementing.
"Thoughts and prayers to the NRA fanatical fiends who bear the blood of tens of thousands on their paws," said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) in response. "The world will be a better place when the NRA is finally destroyed. Looks like that day is closer."
While the NRA claims in the statement that it is "in its strongest financial condition in years," it said the strategic plan "involves utilizing the protection of the bankruptcy court" and "dumping New York" so that it can reincorporate in Texas to continue its activities without such a "corrupt political and regulatory environment."
Brady United, which has called for the NRA's dissolution for decades, said Friday that "news of the NRA filing for bankruptcy is just the latest proof that the NRA has cheated its members and American taxpayers in pursuit of an extremist agenda that has made our country markedly less safe."
They told us the @NRA was too powerful, that the politics were too difficult. They were wrong. Today, the @NRA fi… https://t.co/DirmJAZAay
— Peter Ambler (@Peter Ambler)1610746222.0
David Hogg—one of the survivors of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida who later became a vocal gun control advocate—was among those who welcomed the news late Friday afternoon and thanked all the tireless activism over the years focused on the NRA's deadly brand of influence peddling.
Thoughts and prayers https://t.co/bEkZ29n3WU
— David Hogg (@David Hogg )1610745956.0
"Don't read this as the NRA is going away," Hogg added. "They are not yet," he said, "but this is one step closer."
NRA fleeing New York, filing for bankruptcy, due to NY AG lawsuit (via @KLBKNews) https://t.co/xKtFWMVspi
— Violence Policy Center (@Violence Policy Center)1610749230.0
In August, as Common Dreams reported at the time, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against the NRA which sought to dissolve the organization based on widespread evidence of corruption and financial self-dealing that violated the state's requirements for nonprofit status.
In a tweet on Friday responding to the NRA's move to divorce itself from New York, James said: "The NRA's claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt."
"While we review its bankruptcy filing," she added, "we will not allow the NRA to use this or any other tactic to evade accountability and my office's oversight."
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===
===
https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/texas-supreme-court/
truscott salon
they didn't bother with writing articles of secession this time. No, Ken Paxton, the disgraced attorney general of the state of Texas, did that for them when he filed a lawsuit directly with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the presidential election. On Wednesday, Missouri and 16 other states filed a brief with the court seeking to join the Texas lawsuit, which alleges that the four decisive swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia violated the Constitution by allowing mail-in voting in the November election. On Thursday, a majority of the Republican caucus in the House, 126 members of Congress, signed on to the lawsuit along with the instigator in chief, Donald Trump. Twenty-five states and territories signed a brief opposing the Texas lawsuit. Friday evening, the Supreme Court rejected the suit out of hand.
The 18 states and 126 members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, are seceding from democracy. It amounts to nothing less than an act of sedition by the entire Republican Party, 70 percent of whom believe that Joe Biden's election was illegitimate, according to a Quinnipiac poll released on Thursday. In contrast, 98 percent of Democrats think Biden's victory was legitimate, along with 62 percent of independents.
The last time anything like this happened was in 1860, when the election of Abraham Lincoln led almost immediately to declarations of secession by seven states between Dec. 20, 1860 and Feb. 1, 1861. Two months later, on April 12, the bombardment of Fort Sumter began, and the Civil War was underway.
It's not a shooting war — yet — but Texas didn't just file a lawsuit this week, it set a match to the Constitution of the United States. It isn't just that these Republicans don't recognize Joe Biden as our next president. They don't want to be part of the democracy that this country was founded on. They don't respect the votes of their fellow citizens. They don't want what more than 80 million people wanted when they cast their votes in this election. They want what Donald Trump wants.
Thankfully, it's not the whole country. The Quinnipiac poll found that 60 percent of registered voters think that Biden's victory was legitimate. But it wasn't the whole country in 1860, either. It was only after the election of Lincoln that the Southern states seceded from the Union over the issue of slavery.
This time there isn't a single issue, there's a single man: Donald Trump. In this way, what's happening right now in this country is eerily similar to what happened in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s with Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Trump has identified and used the same sort of mass hysteria Hitler did — a sense of resentment among his supporters that somehow they have been left behind and misunderstood and humiliated, and that only he, Trump, understands them and is willing to stand up for them and will bring back their rightful way of life.
So far, Trump has only played around with the kind of violence that Hitler made use of to achieve power and then consolidate it. Trump used implied violence in the chants of "Lock her up" that energized supporters at his rallies in 2016 and throughout the campaign of 2020. By staying silent this year when armed protesters occupied the State Capitol in Michigan, Trump implied his support, and his exhortations to "liberate" states that were mandating lockdowns to fight COVID were taken by many as invitations to violence.
Now armed protesters have gathered outside the home of the Michigan secretary of state, and Georgia election officials report that they are receiving death threats and racist voice mails. The Republican Party of Arizona has retweeted exhortations from those who say, "I'm willing to give up my life for this fight," suggesting it's time to "die for something." The New York Times _{reported this week}_ that the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission has said that "people on Twitter have posted photographs of my house." Another tweet mentioned her children and threatened "I've heard you'll have quite a crowd of patriots showing up at your door."
The conservative website The Bulwark _{reported this week}_ that far-right websites have been posting addresses and other personal information about Republican elected officials in Georgia, superimposing target crosshairs over images of their faces. Right-wing Republicans are in full cheerleader mode trying to turn Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of murdering two people and wounding another at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, protest, into a hero of the Trump cause. A Democratic state representative in Pennsylvania told the New York Times that "we've been getting emails all the time, all hours of the day and night," and that "they're getting more angry, and a lot of calls are saying we won't be forgetting."
This kind of stuff is not a joke. The fantastic lie that has gripped the Republican Party started out with everyone going along with Trump's fantasy and kind of humoring him. But now it's taken a deadly turn. Trump has been calling Republican state representatives on the phone and pressuring them to go along with his demands that they ignore the votes that have taken place in swing states and appoint electors that will vote for him. If they step out of line, they're branded as traitors, cowards, RINOs. He's doing this kind of stuff to his own people, to loyal Republicans who have voted the party line since they were in short pants.
When you add in what's been happening in red states with COVID, it's jaw-dropping. Governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures are so intimidated that they won't pass mask mandates and bar closures, not to mention rules against mass gatherings. COVID cases and hospitalizations in red states are off the charts. They are lining up refrigerated trucks outside hospitals in states like North and South Dakota. Republicans are killing their own people in craven attempts to keep Donald Trump from attacking them on Twitter. God only knows what's going to happen in those states when the COVID vaccines become widely available, although we're getting some idea with reports of people standing up at meetings of county commissioners pledging not only that they won't wear masks, they'll also refuse to be vaccinated.
The Mason-Dixon line is psychological this time. These people have lost their minds. They have seceded from sanity and reason. This Civil War isn't being fought with rifles and pistols. It's a war fought with lies and delusions. This week it passed the number of Americans killed in World War II, and its victims are just as dead as the bodies buried at Anzio and Normandy. Americans are dying every time Mitch McConnell stands up and blocks a COVID relief bill. They are dying every time a Republican senator like Ron Johnson presents testimony from an anti-vaxxer as if it were a sane person instead of an outright idiot. They're dying by the thousands with their mask-less hubris. They're dying for Donald Trump, but at least for now, our democracy has not died with them.
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===
an 1220
:{
}:
doctor in Houston, Texashas revealed that "more than half of the nurses in his unit" are not willing to take the coronavirus vaccine due to politically motivated reasons, despite the state's healthcare systems being inundated with increasing positive coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
During an interview with NPR on Wednesday, Dr. Joseph Varon, critical care unit chief at the United Memorial Medical Center, was notified that the healthcare staff in his hospital would be among the first vaccine recipients."I had a friendly argument with more than 50 percent of my nurses in my unit telling me that they would not get the vaccine," Varon said.
While some of Varon's staff members were elated to hear the news, others weren't exactly thrilled about the new vaccine. Now, Varon is concerned for those who have opted not to receive the vaccine as they care for the hospital's most critical COVID cases. He also noted most of the opposing nurses have reservations based on political beliefs.
"At the end of the day, like I have said before, coronavirus has become a political toy," Varon said, adding, "Most of the reasons why most of my people don't want to get the vaccine are politically motivated."
Many Americans are apprehensive about the effectiveness of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, which — the LA Times reports — is "95% effective in preventing COVID-19."
As of Thursday, Dec. 17, the United States has reported more than 17.3 million coronavirus cases across the country. Public health experts estimate that approximately 70 to 75 percent of Americans will need to be vaccinated in order for the country to return to normalcy.
===
1220 an
Some Texas Republicans are threatening to secede from the United States over President Donald Trump's election loss, but one GOP strategist says that's the last gasp from a dying majority.
Party leaders and lawmakers threatened to leave the country after Texas attorney general Ken Paxton failed in his bid to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election, but GOP strategist Susan Del Percio says in a new column for NBC News that they're fighting another type of losing battle.
"Even as the Texas GOP attempts to pledge its undying loyalty to Trump, the reality is that Texas will eventually go blue," Del Percio wrote. "While 2020 polls showed a tight race, it was always highly unlikely that Biden would win Texas. However, he was able to close the gap to just 6 points, an improvement on Hillary Clinton's 9-point gap in 2016. Yes, 6 points is a solid victory, but Trump won the same 52 percent in 2020 as he did in 2016, showing no growth for the Republican on the ballot."
Texas added about 3.9 million people in the last decade, the largest population growth in the country, and Hispanics make up about half of that growth, and those changing demographics will strengthen Democratic chances there — just as they did in Georgia.
"When this change does come to Texas, will Republicans work to recognize the diversity in their state — or will they become even more outspoken as they become outnumbered?" Del Percio wrote. "In a state where elected officials are already willing to incite sedition or propose sedition, the future looks bleak. Politicians of all stripes eventually lose their power, unless they learn that governing is about respecting the needs of the constituents — all of them."
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===
https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/texas-secession/
cody f
after the Supreme Court decisively shut down a lawsuit attempting to overturn the 2020 election, Texas GOP Chair Allen West issued a disturbing statement floating the idea of possible secession over the result.
The case was brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, though it was widely panned by legal experts. Some believed that Paxton, currently under investigation by the FBI, was using the lawsuit as a vehicle to win President Donald Trump's favor and obtain a presidential pardon. Despite the lack of merits, the president and his allies rallied behind the lawsuit, with Trump himself calling it "the big one" — apparently trying to distinguish it from the more than 50 additional failed election lawsuits filed on his behalf.
From the start, the lawsuit never had the chance. Paxton tried to exploit a feature of the constitutional system that allows states to sue each other before the Supreme Court. But Paxton's arguments that four key swing states had violated the Constitution in conducting their elections were specious, and there was no reason to take them seriously. The court concluded, unsurprisingly, that Texas didn't even have the standing to bring a challenge to other states on this ground and rejected the argument without it even being officially filed.[2 sorta dissent thomas and ----]
For West, this absolutely predictable and expected result was a galling affront.
“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 US congressman, have decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law," he said in a statement. "Resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences. This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable."
[vid?]
this was mostly just a comical tantrum. But the ending became deeply disturbing, as he explicitly floated the idea of seceding from the United States.
He continued: "This decision will have far reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution."
This is exactly why many have argued that Trump's disinformation campaign against the election and attempts to overthrow the result are so dangerous. While there was no reason to expect the effort to be successful, it would clearly succeed in convincing millions of Americans, perhaps a majority of Republicans, that the constitutional order was fundamentally broken. That raises the possibility of violence, disorder, and conflict....here is no legitimate way for an American state or group of states to secede from the rest. That's why the American Civil War began. Suggesting secession is essentially threatening war.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois was sharply critical of the statement:[twt] my man abe said no...
today safe harbor for electors?
cruz offers go to scotus, dobbs po'd at s miller for not? --> 9-o loss
https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/texas/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/texas-election-lawsuit/
Legal experts weighed in on Tuesday with their disapproval of the state of Texas' latest lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court against four battleground states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin — over the outcome of the presidential election.
The president and his legal team have claimed widespread fraud marred the election results, but their attempts to provide even a sliver of convincing evidence for this bold claim have fallen flat as judges have tossed out more than 45 of their lawsuits in states across the country. The new :{lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) accuses states of " electoral irregularities.}::{"}: Although President-elect Joe Biden has already been declared the winner of the election, and the vote counts have been rigorously vetted, the lawsuit claims the so-called "flaws" within the election process "preclude knowing who legitimately won the 2020 election," according to Law & Crime.
"Plaintiff State respectfully submits that the foregoing types of electoral irregularities exceed the hanging-chad saga of the 2000 election in their degree of departure from both state and federal law. Moreover, these flaws cumulatively preclude knowing who legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections," Texas said.
It adds: "Taken together, these flaws affect an outcome-determinative numbers of popular votes in a group of States that cast outcome-determinative numbers of electoral votes. This Court should grant leave to file the complaint and, ultimately, enjoin the use of unlawful election results without review and ratification by the Defendant States' legislatures and remand to the Defendant States' respective legislatures to appoint Presidential Electors in a manner consistent with the Electors Clause and pursuant to 3 U.S.C. § 2."'
Legal experts see this lawsuit as yet another likely dead end for the Trump campaign. Steve Vladeck, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, pilloried the effort with a string of fiery tweets criticizing the lawsuit.
Vladeck tweeted, "It looks like we have a new leader in the 'craziest lawsuit filed to purportedly challenge the election' category: The State of Texas is suing Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin *directly* in #SCOTUS."
According to Vladeck, the Supreme Court will "never" hear this case.
Although the Supreme Court has “exclusive” jurisdiction over disputes between states, it does not automatically hea… https://t.co/KGzhLlmIrV
— Steve Vladeck (@Steve Vladeck)1607436791.0
Josh Douglas, election law and voting rights professor at the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law, also had critical remarks about Paxton and the lawsuit, which he described as "insane."
He tweeted, "Texas AG Ken Paxton--who is under FBI investigation for using his office to benefit a political donor and whose top lawyers blew the whistle and resigned--is now trying to have Texas sue PA, GA, MI, and WI over the presidential election. Insane."
Texas AG Ken Paxton--who is under FBI investigation for using his office to benefit a political donor and whose top… https://t.co/xikhafPvao
— Josh Douglas (@Josh Douglas)1607437990.0
The lawsuit is also being seen as an attempt to delay the Electoral College vote. However, like many of Trump's other post-election lawsuits, most legal experts are expecting this one to fail, as well.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-texas
Some supporters of President Donald Trump in Texas [also az] say they're willing to take up arms against the American government the minute that Trump gives them the order.
In an interview with *Reuters*, Texas-based chiropractor Brett Fryar says he has joined a militia group called the South Plains Patriots who are conducting firearms training sessions in case they need to stage an armed revolt against the American government.
"If President Trump comes out and says: 'Guys, I have irrefutable proof of fraud, the courts won't listen, and I'm now calling on Americans to take up arms,' we would go," he explained.
In total, Reuters interviewed 50 different Trump supporters across the country and found that all of them believe that President-elect Joe Biden had stolen the election from Trump.
What's more, only 20 expressed a willingness to accept that Biden had won, but only if presented with evidence that no fraud had occurred.
Janet Hedrick, a 70-year-old Trump supporter from West Virginia, told Reuters that she believes all of the president's debunked conspiracy theories about the election being stolen.
“There's millions and millions of Trump votes that were just thrown out," she said. “That computer was throwing them out."
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===
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....
Rove pioneered in Texas?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/texas-gop-asks-state-supreme-court-to-trash-over-117-000-votes/
===
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/texas-leads-fight-to-end-protections-for-native-american-children/
===
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/this-single-sentence-from-a-federal-courts-ruling-exposes-the-dark-conservative-plot-against-voting/
cody f
Three judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday stayed an injunction by a lower district court that sought to protect the voting rights of Texans voting by mail.
The majority decision, written by Judge Jerry E. Smith, blocked the lower court's orders to Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs that would have required officials to notify Texans whose mail ballots were rejected because of an apparent signature mismatch and give them an opportunity to address the issue. Under current law, election officials can reject a mail ballot if they determine that the signature does not match the voter's signature on file; officials must notify the voter of the rejection within 10 days. But even then, the voter may not be given an opportunity to fix the problem.
As the result of an ongoing lawsuit, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ordered Hughs to adopt procedures that would allow voters to address a signature mismatch, or to stop rejecting ballots based on signature issues altogether. Judge Orlando Garcia said the existing policy "plainly violates certain voters' constitutional rights." But the Fifth Circuit rejected this injunction, saying Hughs should follow the law as written — rejecting ballots without necessarily giving voters any due process.
In a remarkable sentence encapsulating the emerging right-wing view of voting rights, the decision explained:
Because Texas's strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state's voting procedures place on the right to vote, we stay the injunction pending appeal.
While this may sound like dry legalese, it's a dramatically bold and unambiguously dangerous idea. The court's claim is that "any burden" on the right to vote can be justified if it is meant to restrict the opportunity for voter fraud.
This notion sounds like a farcical caricature of Republicans' views on voting, but it's an actual statement from right-wing judges defending a right-wing administration. It falls apart under even the mildest scrutiny though. While preventing voter fraud is surely a legitimate interest of the state, there must be some reasonable limits on how far the government can go in trying to prevent it. Is it reasonable to, say, create so many obstacles to voting that 10,000 fewer ballots will be cast in an election if doing so will also stop a handful of fraudulent ballots?...
===
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/this-is-the-hardest-state-to-vote-in-analysis/
How hard is it to register to vote and then to vote in Texas? it's harder than in 49 other states, according to a “cost-of-voting index" compiled by political scientists at Northern Illinois University, Jacksonville University and Wuhan University in China.
Obviously, it's not impossible to vote in Texas; more than 10% of the state's registered voters — about 2 million citizens — had already cast their ballots, either in person or by mail, by Thursday night. That's certainly a sign of enthusiasm, and could either be a signal of a bigger-than-normal turnout or that a lot of Texas were itching to vote and did so as soon as they could.
But the state has erected obstacles throughout the voting system, and when you compare the comfort and convenience of voting in Texas with other states, Texas ends up at the bottom of the list.
Voting and election law is a persistent struggle in Texas between those who want to knock down impediments to voting and those who think more safeguards are needed to secure the process and the results — though the evidence for this is both anecdotal and thin.
That particular battlefield ranges from voter ID to current legal battles over how many drop-offs each county is allowed to provide for voters who would rather not put their absentee ballots in the mail, who's eligible to vote by mail and whether counties with curbside voting are making things too simple.
Here's how the researchers wrote up our state's position on the list: “Texas maintains an in-person voter registration deadline 30 days prior to Election Day, has reduced the number of polling stations in some parts of the state by more than 50% and has the most restrictive pre-registration law in the country, according to the analysis."
States at the top of the list — where it's easiest to vote — have voting conveniences that aren't available here, like online voter registration, automatic voter registration and allowing voters to register as late as Election Day. (The Texas deadline was Oct. 5.)
Some have universal mail-in voting, which the study considers a hallmark of a state where it's easy to vote. In Texas, voting by mail is only available to people ages 65 and older, to eligible voters confined to jail, for voters who are out of their county of residence during voting, and for voters who cite a disability that prevents them from safely going to the polls.
And higher-rated states require only a signature for in-person voting, instead of tight voter photo identification laws like the one in Texas.
Texas has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country, turning out 45.6% of its population of eligible voters in 2018, compared with a national average of 49.4%, according to the United States Election Project. In the last presidential race, in 2016, turnout was 51.4% of the state's eligible voters, a number that includes adults eligible to vote whether they registered or not. The national average was 60.1%.
The cost-of-voting index is an update of a study that includes indexes for elections back to 1996. In 2016, Texas was fifth from the bottom of the list, in company with Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia and Mississippi. This time around, Texas is behind every other state, in the bottom of the barrel with Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Maybe the low turnout in Texas is related to the state's restrictive voting laws. Maybe eligible adults in Texas are less interested in voting, and the state's voting laws are just an excuse for the low civic engagement.
There's a way to find out, if state lawmakers' goal is to get more Texans voting. If they wanted more people to vote, they'd make it easier.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/19/texas-voting-elections/.
===
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/texas-counties-can-offer-only-one-drop-off-ballot-location-federal-appeals-court-rules-upholding-gov-greg-abbotts-order/
Emma Platoff, The Texas Tribune Oct. 13, 2020
"Texas counties can offer only one drop-off ballot location, federal appeals court rules, upholding Gov. Greg Abbott's order"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.
Texas counties may collect mail-in ballots at only one location, a federal appeals court ruled late Monday, once again upholding an order from Gov. Greg Abbott that restricts voting options.
Abbott in July acted to lengthen the early voting period and allow voters to deliver completed absentee ballots in person for longer than the normal period. But after large Democratic counties including Harris and Travis established several sites where voters could deliver their ballots, Abbott ordered Oct. 1 that they would be limited to one.
A number of civil rights groups sued in at least four lawsuits, calling the order an act of voter suppression that would disproportionately impact low-income voters, voters with disabilities, older voters and voters of color in Democratic counties. A federal judge on Friday sided with those groups, blocking Texas from enforcing the ruling.
But a three-judge panel on the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appealstemporarily halted that ruling on Saturday and on Monday gave a more formal word on the matter in a written opinion.
“Leaving the Governor's October 1 Proclamation in place still gives Texas absentee voters many ways to cast their ballots in the November 3 election. These methods for remote voting outstrip what Texas law previously permitted in a pre-COVID world," wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan for the panel of three judges all appointed by President Donald Trump. “The October 1 Proclamation abridges no one's right to vote."
Travis County had designated four locations and Harris County — home to 2.4 million registered voters and spanning a greater distance than the entire state of Rhode Island — had designated a dozen before Abbott's order forced them to close most sites. Fort Bend and Galveston counties also planned to use multiple locations, according to court documents.
Voting rights advocates and local election administrators said the extra sites were critical for helping voters cast their ballots safely during the coronavirus pandemic. Texas is set to receive an unprecedented number of absentee ballots this year, and amid concerns over U.S. Postal Service delays, advocates say, in-person drop-off locations are critical.
Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins has not hesitated to say the governor's decision amounts to voter suppression.
“To force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches over nearly 2,000 square miles is prejudicial and dangerous," Hollins said earlier this month.
In some states, voters can simply leave their ballots in boxes outside town halls or local churches. Not in Texas, where voters must show an election worker an approved form of identification and can only bring their own ballot.
Abbott had argued that the measure was necessary to ensure election integrity, but he did not provide any evidence and his office did not answer questions about how limiting the highly regulated drop-off locations would do so. In court filings, lawyers for the Texas Attorney General's Office wrote that some counties wouldn't provide “adequate election security, including poll watchers" — “inconsistencies" that the state argued “introduced a risk to ballot integrity."
Abbott said that poll watchers must be allowed at the drop-off sites, as they are at in-person voting sites. Experts say voter fraud is rare, but Republican officials in Texas and nationally have sought to cast doubt on the security of absentee ballots even as their political party calls on its own voters to use them.
The appeals court ruled Monday that Texas did not need to show evidence of voter fraud to justify its decision to limit counties to one location.
“Such evidence has never been required to justify a state's prophylactic measures to decrease occasions for vote fraud or to increase the uniformity and predictability of election administration," Duncan wrote for the court.
One voter who sued the state over the order, 82-year-old Ralph Edelbach, said in court documents that closing the site nearest his Cypress home will mean he adds an extra 20 miles each way to his trip to deliver his ballot, forcing him to spend nearly 90 minutes round trip.
That inconvenience will only be greater, advocates say, for voters with disabilities or those without reliable access to transportation.
The groups that sued the governor include the Texas and National Leagues of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters of Texas, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Legislative Black Caucus.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballot-drop-off/.
The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state. Explore the next 10 years with us.
===
===
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/socialist-propaganda-texas-voters-lash-out-after-gop-chairman-gets-covid-and-party-calls-for-masks
omg
republicans in Texas expressed outrage at the Dallas County Republican Party after it called for people to wear face masks.
The plea for facial coverings came this week after Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Rodney Anderson tested positive for COVID-19. The announcement was made on Facebook.
"The Chairman was exposed at a personal event over the weekend and immediately started the process of self-quarantining," a statement from the party said. "He and his family will continue to quarantine for the next two weeks – no Dallas County Republican Party staff or volunteers have been exposed. The Chairman is expected to make a full and quick recovery, and wants to remind everyone to continue to wear their masks and make safe social decisions."
The post was accompanied by a graphic that said,"Y'all wear masks."
Many followers of the Dallas County Republican Party lashed out at the call for personal safety measures."So bc he tested positive you are now demanding we all wear a mask," Tami Cooke wrote. "This is not the Republican Party I want to be associated with.Stop with your agenda."
"Stop promoting the ridiculousness of masks," Michael Wilcox chimed in. "A mask does nothing outside of a controlled environment. It's simply a psychological comfort to those whom live in fear."
"So, Dallas County Republicans are pushing the socialist propaganda…. very interesting!" Shane Pratt complained.
"Time to reform the party in certain counties! Let's start with Dallas!!" Christy Bee agreed.
Other commenters lamented the negative reaction to the public safety announcement.
"I wish you and our nation a speedy recovery from the effects of COVID," Rudy Oeftering wrote. "I'm very sad to see the comments here. To those mocking mask-wearing; if we Republicans lose in November it will be largely due to your obstinance and defiance of simple public health requests. Why do you think R's are so upside down in attracting voters over 65?"
Read Dallas County GOP's post below.
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920 polls bad //?
foreign hackers cripple Texas county’s email system — raising election security concerns
Pro Publica September 25, 2020
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Last week, voters and election administrators who…
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/national-democratic-group-to-spend-6-2-million-in-effort-to-flip-the-texas-house/
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https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/515317-biden-lead-evaporates-in-texas-poll
920 cornyn doing well
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texas assistant attorney general Nick Moutos lost his job following a Media Matters report on his threatening social media posts.
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trump funders 0ct? 2016
STATESMAN austin
no lnx
https://www.statesman.com/article**/2016**1017/NEWS/310179774
:{
}:
Texas money has played an important part in Donald Trump’s campaign for president. Texans provided nearly 35 percent of the contributions to Trump Victory in the second quarter of the year when the general election fundraising operation was just getting underway. For the third quarter, Texas accounted for just under 14 percent of all its contributions.
RELATED: Trump raises money in October swing through Texas
Texas donors also gave $7 million directly to Republican nominee through the end of August — more than any state, although less than half of what Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign raised in the Lone Star State.
While individual donors cannot give more than $2,700 to his campaign committee, they can give up to $449,400 to Trump Victory, a joint fund raising committee of the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, and a number of state Republican parties, not including Texas, which divide the proceeds.
Among the top Texas contributors to Trump Victory:
Houston Texans owners Bob McNair and his wife, Janice, were the biggest Texas contributors to the Trump Victory Committee this quarter, with each contributing $449,000. McNair originally made his fortune in cogeneration.
Julianna Holt of Corpus Christi, who with her husband, Peter, owns the San Antonio Spurs,made a third-quarter contribution of $249,400 bringing her to the maximum of $449,400. Peter Holt is CEO of HoltCat, the largest Caterpillar dealership in the United States and Julianna Holt is the Spurs CEO.
Daniel Andrew “Andy” Beal, chairman of Beal Bank in Dallas, made a $50,000 contribution this quarter that brought him to the $449,400 limit.
Shale oil billionaire George Bishop of The Woodlands was close behind with a contribution of $446,500.
Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, who hosted a Trump fundraiser at his River Oaks home in June, contributed $250,000.
Oil and gas money
Trump has made four general election swings through Texas to raise money for Trump Victory, including an August event at the Headliners Club in Austin.
Trump’s success in raising Texas money from big donors has followed a familiar formula. He largely looked to folks who made their fortunes in oil and gas:
Houstonian James Flores, chairman of Plains Exploration and Production Company, gave $250,000.
Faith Gutierrrez, the wife of Joe Gutierrez, co-founder and co-president of NET Midstream — a natural gas pipeline and gas marketing company — gave $250,000
Michael Herd of Tyler, vice president of Herd Producing Co., an oil and gas exploration and drilling company, donated $225,000.
Simon Kukes of Houston, a retired oil industry executive who was formerly co-owner of the Russian oil company, ZAO Samara-Nafta, gave $173,000. A Russian emigre, Kukes is now a U.S. citizen.
Al G. Hill Jr., of A.G. Hill Partners Investment, of Dallas, grandson of iconic oil billionaire H.L. Hunt, gave $149,400
Cary Maguire of Dallas, president of Maguire Oil, gave $100,000 in the third quarter, on top of an earlier $25,000 contribution. Marcia French, president of Furth Oil, gave $50,000 bringing her total to $100,000. Fort Worth oilman W.A. “Tex” Moncrief, president of Moncrief Oil, gave $110,000.
Charles Saulisbury, president and CEO of Saulisbury Industries in Odessa, which does engineering, construction, and fabrication for heavy industrial clients, gave $100,000.
Anne Marion of Fort Worth, the president of Burnett Ranches and chairwoman of the Burnett Oil Company, gave $100,000, as did Lissa Noël Wagner, the widow of Midland oilman Cy Wagner and a partner in Wagner Brown LTD.
Rancher Emily Dial of San Antonio, gave $100,000 bringing her grand total $125,000
Kenny Troutt of Dallas, a telecom billionaire as founder of Excel Communications, and owner of Mt. Vernon Investments, gave $12,500 on top of $100,000 he previously gave.
Jay Adairof Dallas, CEO of Copart Inc., a provider of online vehicle auction and remarketing services, gave $100,000, as did Al Boenker of Fort Worth, who owns the insurance agency that bears his name.
Other donors
Other $100,000 donors included Ronald Lockard of McKinney, founder of Transaction Application Group, an insurance third party administrator company, and Thomas Rouse of Dallas, retired chairman and CEO of Transfirst, a leading provider of credit card processing services.
Annettee Simmons, the widow of Harold Simmons, a legendary billionaire businessman, pioneer of the leveraged buyout and epic Republican donor, gave $100,000, as did Houston real estate developer Jerrald Witten.
RELATED: Donald Trump’s day in Texas aimed to raise cash and GOP spirits
Dana Powell, the wife of Gene Powell, gave $100,000 this quarter, bringing her total contribution to $150,000. But her husband, who was a state finance co-chairman of Trump Victory and hosted a fundraiser that Trump attended in San Antonio last week, said that, in the aftermath of comments Trump had made about women, that was the last thing he was doing for Trump.
Among Austinites, John Markham Green, executive chairman of Owner Resource Group, who had given $45,000 the second quarter, gave another $2,700.
Jay Novik, chairman of theProsperity Life Group, gave $2,700 to bring his total to $10,200; James Tracey, CEO of Great Stuff Inc., gave $40,000, and real estate investor Shelton Boyce donated $25,000.
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geoSouthern Energy Corporation is a petroleum and natural gas exploration and production company headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/there-is-something-to-learn-from-texas-but-its-not-what-fox-news-wants-you-to-believe/
no graphs key
here is something to learn from Texas — but it’s not what Fox News wants you to believe
Laura Ingraham speaking with attendees at the 2018 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. // Gage Skidmore
AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER
Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos July 30, 2020
12
On Wednesday evening, Fox News person Laura Ingraham issued a tweet bragging that Texas was “looking pretty good” and sneering that this is “Bad news for the ‘Shut it all Down’ Democrats.” And then, with perfect timing, Texas announced another 9,200 new cases of COVID-19 and a record-shattering 313 deaths. Which isn’t exactly evidence that it’s time to throw a party in Texas.
Still … there’s actually a kernel of truth behind Ingraham’s post. It’s not that Texas is doing “good,” and the still-rising numbers of recorded deaths is a gut-punch. However, the rate of growth has slowed in Texas. It’s just that it’s slowed for a reason that Ingraham, Fox, or Trump are not going to mention—for a name that Democrats fully support.
Here’s Ingraham’s original tweet, which shows just how ridiculous the “looking good” comment really is.
But here’s the same data with something else in the picture.
[graf]
What can be seen in this image is something that happened on July 2. That’s when Governor Greg Abbott, facing a rising tide of cases, abruptly reversed himself and issued a mask mandate for the majority of Texas counties.That action didn’t have immediate effect, because the virus takes some time to be transmitted from person to person, and days more for symptoms to appear. However, just ten days after that order went into effect, the 7-day trend line of cases in Texas leveled off. Two weeks after that order went into effect, the number of new cases began to drop.
There are definitely problems with enforcement in some counties, and Abbott’s order could be simpler and less easily waved away with “exceptions,” but Texas appears to demonstrate, once again, that masks work.
What’s the evidence that masks have something to do with what’s happening in Texas and not some mystical effect of hitting a magic percentage of the population? Florida. That’s the evidence. Until the mask order went into place, the trends in the two southern states was remarkably similar.
On the day that Abbott issued the mask mandate, the difference in the total number of cases in Florida and Texas was less than 7000. For the next week, the two states went up in tandem. Then … Florida began to edge ahead. From a 4,000 case gap on July 11, Florida moved ahead by over 47,000 cases on July 28. Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has stubbornly refused to take any definitive action, is paying a price in tens of thousands of cases. Those cases will turn into hundreds of deaths.
If Abbott continues the mask mandate, and counties step up enforcement, it’s likely that in another month things in Texas will look better. Not “good” as Ingraham would have it, but better. Better as in a sharp reduction in new cases, an ease in overcrowded hospitals, and a drop in the indicator that always lags behind the others — deaths.
In the meantime, Florida’s numbers are about to start looking a whole lot better without a mask mandate. Because the state testing authority has announced that, with the tropical storm about to strike the state, testing is going to be suspended for at least five days.
Just enough time for DeSantis to run a quick victory lap.
Thursday, Jul 30, 2020 · 9:08:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time · Mark Sumner
One addition note: It’s now clear that Texas, like Florida, has been under reporting COVID-19 deaths. The scheme in both states appears to involve overlooking the rulings made by county officials and failing to incorporate deaths into the state-wide reporting. How Texas will handle these previously unreported deaths is not yet clear.
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in middle of new spike mind you, abbott somewhat better on no contin open econ?!
Texas GOP votes to hold 6,000+ in-person convention in state’s COVID-19 hotspot
an 720
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~ gov abbott?
an 620
texas GOP leaders call George Floyd’s death a hoax and compare MLK to a monkey
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/republican-elected-officials-are-peddling-a-conspiracy-theory-that-george-soros-is-paying-protesters/
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a statewide elected Republican official, has posted multiple memes and comments on his Facebook page in recent days falsely claiming that billionaire George Soros orchestrated nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd.
The posts are similar in nature and tone to some of the racist posts bylocal GOP officials in recent days that suggested the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis police custody was done with the intent of starting a race war or to erode black support for President Donald Trump. The posts from those local officials have prompted calls for resignation from the state’s top GOP officials.
One post from Miller on Sunday included an image of Soros with accompanying text that read, “Climate change didn’t work. Impeachment didn’t work. The virus didn’t work. Start the race war.”
“The man is pure evil!” Miller commented.
“Folks this is not a protest,” read another post from early Sunday morning. “It is a well orchestrated attack on America’s major cities with plans to attack the police, riot, loot, and burn buildings. The so-called ‘protestors’ are, in fact, domestic terrorists who were organized and paid for by George Soros to further divide our country.These terrorists were bused into these large cities. We must repel this attack and hold those responsible for their actions. This must be brought to a stop now or we will lose control of our country!”
Soros, who has spent billions of dollars supporting liberal and pro-democracy causes around the world, has long been a target of conspiracy theorists on the ideological right. Some theories note his Jewish heritage and invoke antisemitic tropes. The Anti-Defamation League has reported that hundreds of thousands of social media posts in recent days have falsely suggested that he is behind the recent protests. Fact-checkers have debunked multiple fake flyers circulating on social media purported to be from organizations linked to Soros that were offering people money to protest.
“Although the vast majority of Soros-related conspiracy theories do not mention his Jewish heritage, the concern remains that they can serve as a gateway to the antisemitic subculture that blames Jews for the riots,” the ADL said in a blog post this week.
In a statement addressing Miller’s posts and others written or shared by local GOP officials, Texas Democratic Party Communications Director Abhi Rahman said ” the onus falls on Governor Greg Abbott and other Texas Republican leaders to put an immediate halt on racially hostile actions from within their own ranks.”
On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott and other top Texas Republicans called for the resignation of the GOP chairs in Bexar and Nueces counties after they shared on social media a conspiracy theory that Floyd’s death was a “staged event,” apparently to gin up opposition to Trump.
A spokesman for Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Miller’s posts.
Miller has a history of posting incendiary and false statements on his social media channels, including on a Facebook page that has more than 800,000 followers.He posted — and then deleted — a tweet in 2016 that called Hillary Clinton the C-word and in 2015 wrote a Facebook post that endorsed the atomic bombing of the “Muslim world.” Late last year, after he read a Facebook post that accused officials running a Veteran’s Day parade in his hometown of Stephenville of denying entry to a Confederate group, he commented, “Who told them to leave? Get a rope.”
In December 2016, a Texas Tribune analysis of a portion of Miller’s social media history identified 10 postings of demonstrably false, misleading or unsupported information.
Disclosure: The Foundation to Promote Open Society, founded by George Soros, 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.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Three top Texas GOP officials who oppose expanding mail-in voting have each used it
Three of Texas’ top Republican leaders are vigorously fighting efforts to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, arguing it will lead to increased voter fraud, yet all three have…
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/furious-texans-revolt-after-governor-gets-caught-on-hot-mic-admitting-his-reopen-order-will-worsen-the-pandemic/
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permian only possible place to make $ frack vs bakken
chevron got outbid by occid, walked away w/ 1 billion free? : chev api, exxon want no bailout covid for small co's so they can buy cheap
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https://www.npr.org/2020/03/14/815039722/trump-steps-in-to-help-oil-industry-facing-its-own-coronavirus-crisis
he tired to play it like shrewd bottom feed strat but actually bailout to frakkers?
npr 3/14?
...Oil prices bounced back a bit after President Trump said the Department of Energy would buy crude for the nation's strategic petroleum reserve.
"We're going to fill it right to the top," Trump said Friday in a wide-ranging news conference at the White House. He said it will save taxpayers "billions and billions of dollars" while helping an industry that's been reeling.
While oil prices increased nearly 5% after Friday's announcement, that was just a fraction of the amount they lost earlier in the week.
In South Texas, Rudy Martinez immediately experienced the effects of the past week's collapse in crude oil prices.
"I actually have a little man camp and these guys are on the way out because they lost contracts," says Martinez, who has eight rooms he rents to out-of-town oilfield workers in Karnes City, Texas.
"The workers get their per-diem and I charge them $100 a person [per week]. Actually I'd like to charge them a little more than that, but now that it's tapered off, it's hard to charge them that because they can't pay it," he says.
The Coronavirus Crisis
Back when the oil business was really booming in Karnes City, Martinez says he could charge up to $2000 a week per person.
This is one small example of what declining oil prices mean for the rural communities that depend on the oil business. And there's a lot at stake for the U.S., the world's largest producer of crude oil.
Oil prices had been falling out of fears the coronavirus epidemic threatened world economic growth. Demand was also down as large gatherings were canceled and people started staying home to avoid getting sick.
Then prices plunged after Saudi Arabia and Russia failed to agree on production cuts and instead entered a price war last Sunday. In a stunning reversal, Saudi Arabia said it would actually boost oil production and offer a massive discount for its customers.
U.S. oil companies, especially smaller ones, are now looking to make deep cuts. Industry analysts warn of possible bankruptcies, especially if oil remains where it's fallen to, in the $30 per barrel range. Companies operating in Texas's Eagle Ford Shale need prices between $40 to $60 a barrel to remain profitable....
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aN 320
no lnx
Former FBI agent stunned by GOP’s willingness to die for 401ks: I dealt with suicidal cults — this is a ‘new level of craziness’
Written by Sky Palma / Raw Story March 24, 2020
During an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News this Monday, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said that he’s willing to bet there’s plenty of senior citizens in America who would be willing to risk contracting COVID-19 if it meant getting the economy back on track.
Patrick said that he, as a senior citizen himself, would be “willing to take a chance” on his survival “in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves” for his children and grandchildren, adding that people he’s talked to say the same thing.
The interview went viral and plenty of critics weighed in with reactions, including former FBI Special Agent Ali H. Soufan, who suggested Patrick’s sentiment isn’t unlike the “suicidal death cults” he’s dealt with in the past.
“I dealt with suicidal cults before,” he tweeted. “I encountered people who are willing to die for their faith, ideology, race, etc. But, I never encountered anyone who is willing to die for someone else’s 401k. This is a whole new level of craziness.”
Ali H. Soufan
@Ali_H_Soufan
I dealt with suicidal cults before. I encountered people who are willing to die for their faith, ideology, race, etc. But, I never encountered anyone who is willing to die for someone else’s 401k. This is a whole new level of craziness. https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1242245135129346050 …
Andrew Lawrence
@ndrew_lawrence
Tx Lt Gov Dan Patrick says grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren
Embedded video
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tx state supre ct justice woman selfish by ~
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/judge-calls-opponent-selfish-for-wanting-to-break-barriers-as-first-elected-female-chief-justice-of-texas-supreme-court/
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Texas Petroleum Chemical Plant Explosion, And Our Petrochemical 'Collective Suicide'
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/30/texas-petroleum-chemical-plant-explosion-and-our-petrochemical-collective-suicide
teqc says no problem w/ air
indicted Texas attorney general sides with anti-gay judge instead of state agency in legal fight
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is refusing to defend a state agency that’s being sued by a a bigoted justice of the peace who got pissed that she was disciplined for refusing to follow the law and marry…
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120 desmog
January 18, 2020 - 13:20 • JULIE DERMANSKY
On the afternoon of January 15, activist Diane Wilson kicked off a San Antonio Estuary Waterkeeper meeting on the side of the road across from a Formosa plastics manufacturing plant in Point Comfort, Texas. After Wilson and the waterkeeper successfully sued Formosa, the company agreed to no longer release even one of the tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles into the region’s waterways. The group of volunteers had assembled that day to check whether the plant was still discharging these raw materials of plastics manufacturing.
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https://theconversation.com/the-made-up-crisis-behind-the-state-takeover-of-houstons-public-schools-128346
school bd pipeline for ppl of color into politics, TX abbott
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we keep hearing about purple or flip, but for now villain: (and va joining rggi, )
Who's Missing?
But can the United States fight climate change with only half the states engaged? America's Pledge stresses that, yes, it has the potential. The states, cities, businesses and other institutions in its coalition represent 68 percent of U.S. GDP, 68 percent of the population, and 51 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
But the most carbon-intensive economies in the U.S. are still not part of the fight.
Sixty-five percent of the remaining U.S. coal power capacity, for example, is located in the 25 states that arenot part of America's Pledge, led by Texas, Indiana and Kentucky. The America's Pledge analysis found that the U.S. could still make progress without the help of these states. It calculated that if just a handful of the states that have already shown some willingness to act adopted stronger policies, like those set by climate leaders like California, the U.S. could cut emissions up to 37 percent by 2030, even if the most carbon-intensive states and the federal government refuse to act. But that's not where the U.S. needs to be if it hopes to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, as the science says is necessary to stave off climate change's worst ravages.
"None of the states who are climate leaders would say that what they're doing is enough," said Arroyo. "But you've got to start to do what you can do, and prove the concept that you can do this without breaking the bank, and in fact you can do it while growing your economy, creating jobs and enhancing the quality of life."
RMI's Frisch said the real lesson of the state and local climate effort so far in the United States is that it is essential, but not sufficient.
"The states are the reason for the progress that we've had so far," she said. "And their effort will still be fundamental going ahead. But we can't get where we need to be without the federal government, and the federal government can't do it without the states. We need to have both."
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-31/perry-s-friends-in-texas-discover-donations-dovetail-with-state-contracts
Business
Perry’s Texas Friends Find Donations Dovetail With Contracts
Alison Fitzgerald
When Texas billionaire Harold Simmons wanted to build a radioactive waste dump, one data point that would loom large in the permitting process wasn’t required on the application: He is a major donor to Governor Rick Perry.
“Everybody was aware that this was an important item for the people that were seeking the license as well as for the governor’s office,” said Larry Soward, a Perry-appointed, Republican member of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality at the time of Simmons’s permit application.
Simmons, who has donated more than $1.2 million to Perry’s campaigns, was granted the permit over the objections of some TCEQ staffers concerned the site threatened the Ogallala Aquifer, a water source for much of the plains.
At least three commission employees resigned in protest and Soward voted against the permit. Meanwhile, a state employee who advanced the permit became a lobbyist for the company a month after it was approved.
The permit process for the site, run by Simmons’s company Waste Control Specialists LLC, a subsidiary of the publicly traded Valhi Inc., is one example of how Perry’s donors’ close ties to the governor can influence government grants, appointments and permits.
Perry’s Aug. 13 entry into the 2012 Republican presidential primary is casting new light on his record and adversaries are using it to challenge his candidacy.
...
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texas’ 2019 inauguration cost millions. Much of it went to fundraising and staff
Shannon NajmabadiNovember 18, 2019
By Shannon Najmabadi and Jay Root, The Texas Tribune Nov. 18, 2019 “The inauguration of Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick cost millions. But much of it went to fundraising and…
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el paso and odessa same month?
Texas eases gun laws one day after Odessa massacre leaves 7 dead, 22 injured
A gunman killed seven people and injured 22 others on Saturday, including a 17-month-old girl. Police have identified the shooter as 36-year-old Seth Ator.
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cmd grab 819
ALEC Fails to Denounce Dangerous and Racist Views of Its Leaders and Members By Scott Zimmerman — White nationalist statements and ties draw fire from many within GOP, but not ALEC. | |||||||
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ALEC Doubles Down on Trump, Corporate Agenda at Annual Meeting in Texas By David Armiak — The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meets this week in Austin, the capital of the Lone Star State, for its 46th Annual Meeting at the posh JW Marriott hotel. | |||||||
Everything Is Bigger in Texas, Including ALEC’s Influence By Scott Zimmerman — Texas tops chart for number of ALEC legislators, with 59 politicians tied to corporate bill mill, the local delegation might be the largest delegation at this week’s meeting. | |||||||
New Report Documents Pervasive Influence of ALEC in Texas By ExposedByCMD Admin — As corporate lobbyists and legislators prepare to gather in Austin, CMD and Common Cause release a report detailing the pay-to-play group’s firm grip on Texas politics. | |||||||
David Armiak, david@prwatch.org, 608-229-6801 MADISON – The Center for Media and Democracy and Common Cause released a new report today detailing the profound influence of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Texas. The report comes as ALEC prepares to hold its Annual Meeting in Austin tomorrow, where legislators and corporate lobbyists will meet behind closed doors to adopt model legislation on a broad range of public policy issues. “This report exposes the pervasive influence ALEC enjoys in the Lone Star State,” said David Armiak, research director at the Center for Media and Democracy. “ALEC’s corporate-backed agenda tramples on the rights of hard-working Texans and the environment in favor of global corporations and special interest groups.” A**LEC claims “one-quarter of the country’s state legislators” are members,** but keeps their identity secret. The report identifies 58 Texas legislators have known ties to ALEC, or almost one third of the legislature. CMD tracks legislator ties to ALEC and maintains an up-to-date list on alecexposed.org. “ALEC’s history of rigging the rules against everyday Texans on behalf of their corporate funders is not how democracy is supposed to work,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. “This report will help Texas voters understand who their legislature really works for and what special interests are behind some of the most harmful bills we’ve seen in recent years.” Here are some of the **key findings from the report:**
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“ALEC’s corporate pay-to-play lobbying scheme serves to hide special interest influence so the public never knows who writes the laws that affect our daily lives and environment,” said Arn Pearson, CMD’s executive director. “We’re working to shine a light into the dark corners of ALEC’s policy making.” For more on ALEC’s annual meeting, stay tuned to ExposedbyCMD.org and ALECExposed.org. * * * | ||
BREAKING: ALEC Plans “Confidential” Helicopter Border Tour in Texas for Board Members By ExposedByCMD Admin — Two biggest private prison companies backing ALEC get millions in ICE contracts to run controversial immigrant detention camps, raising questions about who is paying for the tour and why. |
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Prisoners Feeling the Effects of U.S. Climate Crisis
(The Guardian)
https://YYY.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/02/people-are-in-danger-the-prisoners-feeling-the-effects-of-us-climate-crisis
no lnx
People are in danger': the prisoners feeling the effects of US climate crisis
A majority of Texas prisons have no air conditioning and no plans are in place to deal with global heating trends
@olliemilman
Tue 2 Jul 2019 01.00 EDT Last modified on Tue 2 Jul 2019 01.02 EDT
The Wynne Unit is one of the seven prison units in Walker county, Texas.
Rodney Adams had a job hauling luggage for airlines before bereavements and a back injury took their toll and he was convicted of drink driving in 2012. Just two days after his arrival at the Gurney unit in eastern Texas, Adams had a seizure and collapsed in the August heat. His body temperature was nearly 110F (43.3C).
His daughter, Ashley Frantom, was 38 weeks pregnant and slumbering when the call came from a prison chaplain to inform her that Adams was in hospital.
Frantom drove three hours in the middle of the night to find her father shackled to a hospital bed. “We stayed in the hospital all night and then had to make the call in the morning to take him off life support,” she said. “I don’t think prisoners are treated like humans in this state. If there was air conditioning in that prison, my dad would be alive, out of jail and rebuilding his life right now.”
Adams’s autopsy found he died of hyperthermia – excessive body temperature – one of at least 23 prisoners to die in Texas this way since 1998. Prisons that bake dangerously in the heat are dotted across the American south but are now found even in cooler states such as Wisconsin, with experts warning that inmates face increasingly deadly risks as global temperatures rise.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/texas-republicans-double-down-on-voter-suppression-push-as-session-ends
Texas Republicans are pushing two new bills that critics say are aimed at suppressing voter turnout after a similar bill died days before the end of their legislative session.
On Sunday, a State Senate bill that was passed with only Republican support, which would have increased criminal penalties for voter registration-related crimes and made it harder for volunteers to help elderly and disabled voters get to the polls, effectively died after it missed a legislative deadline in the House, The Texas Observer reported.
With the legislative session drawing to an end, Republican lawmakers have passed two more bills that critics say are intended to reduce voter turnout.
House Bill 1888 would ban mobile polling stations, which help college students, the elderly and low-income residents cast ballots, from being mobile. The bill would require these temporary branch polling places to remain in just one location for the duration of the early voting period. Mobile polling stations are currently used as a way to address demand and wait times for groups that may have difficulty getting to a polling location, like rural voters, college students and residents at long-term care facilities.
State Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who sponsored the bill, said that the mobile polling places were being abused by “targeting desirable voting populations at the exclusion of others.” She rejected concerns from Democrats about disadvantaged groups being hurt by the move, saying that those who need to make arrangements to vote “have time to do that.”
...
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/texas-bill-would-make-protesting-pipelines-a-felony-on-par-with-attempted-murder/
A bill making its way through the Texas legislature would make protesting pipelines a third-degree felony, the same as attempted murder.
“It’s an anti-protest bill, favoring the fossil fuel industry, favoring corporations over people.” — Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations
H.B. 3557, which is under consideration in the state Senate after passing the state House earlier this month, ups penalties for interfering in energy infrastructure construction by making the protests a felony. Sentences would range from two to 10 years.
The legislation was authored by Republican state Rep. Chris Paddie. It passed the state House May 7 on a 99 to 45 vote, with two abstentions. The bill is being cosponsored in the state Senate by Republican state Sen. Pat Fallon.
In remarks on the state House floor during the bill’s passage, Paddie sought to assuage the fears of those who believe the legislation will target non-violent protest.
“This bill does not affect those who choose to peacefully protest for any reason,” said Paddie. “It attaches liability to those who potentially damage or destroy critical infrastructure facilities.”
But opponents of the measure don’t agree, pointing to the bill’s language.
“It’s an anti-protest bill, favoring the fossil fuel industry, favoring corporations over people,” Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations, told The Austin American-Statesman.
A hearing on the law in the state Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Economic Development on Wednesday drew opponents of the measure to speak out against the law, but it’s unclear if their testimony will make a difference.
The Texas bill is just the latest piece of legislation at the state level to target pipeline protests. In the wake of a spike in anti-pipeline actions over the past few years, Gristreported Tuesday, a number of states have come down on environmental activists.
The effort to punish pipeline protestors has spread across states with ample oil and gas reserves in the last two years and, in some cases, has garnered bipartisan support. Besides Louisiana, four other states — Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa — have enacted similar laws after protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline generated national attention and inspired a wave of civil disobedience.
The bill is drawing national attention as well.
“Texas aims to make pipeline protest a third-degree felony, same as attempted murder,” climate activist Bill McKibben tweeted on Friday.
In a tweet, the advocacy group Public Citizen described the legislation as “an oil and gas backed effort to squash environmental protest.”
“This needs to be a nation-wide story,” the group said.
===
https://www.ecowatch.com/hurricane-harvey-trump-epa-response-2630918498.html
Andrea Germanos
President Donald Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Texas state officials rejected an offer from NASA scientists in 2017 to use their state-of-the-art flying laboratory to evaluate air quality in Houston after Hurricane Harvey,new reporting by the Los Angeles Times reveals.
"This is disturbing," said Lina Hidalgo, judge for Texas's Harris County.
Harvey brought historic rainfall, catastrophic flooding and triggered potentially dangerous environmental and public health impacts: Houston's many refineries and petrochemical released pollutants into the air and waters, and area residents began to complain of worrisome smells and toxic sights near the facilities, as well as symptoms including headaches. The EPA asserted that the air quality posed no threat.
NASA, it turned out, was in a good position to gather data on air quality in the area with its DC-8. The jet, whose ability to ability to gather data dwarfs that of the EPA's air pollution plane or the hand-held devices used by Texas state officials, was already set up for testing because of a scheduled six-hour test flight to Lamont, Oklahoma on Sept. 14.
The response to NASA's offer? Thanks but no thanks.
Susanne Rust and Louis Sahagun reported for the Times:
On Sept. 9, David Gray, the EPA's deputy regional administrator in Texas and leader of the agency's emergency response, wrote to NASA and Texas officials that he was "hesitant" to have the jet "collect additional information that overlaps our existing efforts" until he learned more about the mission. He noted that media and nongovernmental organizations were releasing data that was "conflicting" with the state and EPA's.
The NASA scientists offered assurances that their fact-finding would not get in the way, but noted that the data would eventually be seen by the public. Texas and the EPA were unmoved.
The state-level response came from director of toxicology Michael Honeycutt, who now heads EPA's Science Advisory Board and is known for expressing views well out of the reach of mainstream science, such as the idea that lowering ozone would be bad for public health.
On Sept. 11, Honeycutt wrote in an email to NASA and EPA officials that state data showed no sign for concern, and "we don't think your data would be useful for source identification while industry continues to restart their operations."
Gray agreed with Honeycutt: "EPA concurs with your assessment and we will not plan to ask NASA to conduct this mission."
Associated Press reporter Frank Bajak noted that the new investigation adds weight to his own news agency's previous reporting showing that "Texas environmental regulators had little interest in exposing most post-Harvey industrial contamination."
Reacting to the reporting on Twitter, Dr. Chelsea Thompson, a research scientist in atmospheric chemistry, wrote, "It's worth noting that, over a year later now, all of us involved are still stunned by how this played out."
...
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===
https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/heres-what-we-know-about-the-texas-voter-citizen-checks-and-its-not-what-donald-trump-claimed/
Alexa Ura, The Texas Tribune
Jan. 25, 2019
“Texas officials flag tens of thousands of voters for citizenship checks”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.
The Texas secretary of state’s office announced Friday it would send local election officials a list of 95,000 registered voters who the state says counties should consider checking to see whether they are U.S. citizens and, therefore, legally eligible to vote.
In an advisory released Friday afternoon, the office said it was flagging individuals who had provided the Texas Department of Public Safety with some form of documentation — including a work visa or a green card — that showed they were not a citizen when they were obtaining a driver’s license or an ID card. Among the individuals flagged, about 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections from 1996 to 2018, the secretary of state’s office said.
It’s unclear exactly how many of those individuals are not actually U.S. citizens and whether that number will be available in the future. In its notice to counties, the secretary of state’s office said the names should be considered “WEAK” matches, using all capital letters for emphasis.
That means counties may now choose to investigate the eligibility of the individuals who were flagged, which would require them to send a notice asking for proof of citizenship within 30 days, or take no action. By law, the counties aren’t allowed to automatically revoke a voter’s registration without sending out such a notice.
It’s possible that individuals flagged by the state — who provided DPS with documentation that indicated they were authorized to be in the country — could have become naturalized citizens since they obtained their driver’s license or ID card. A spokesman for the secretary of state said officials are “very confident” that the data received from DPS is “current.”
In announcing the review of the rolls, Secretary of State David Whitley — who was appointed to the post last month after serving as deputy chief of staff to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — immediately handed the data over to the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who said his office will “spare no effort in assisting with these troubling cases.”
But without additional verification, you can’t say these individuals all engaged in illegal voting, said Chris Davis, the head of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators.
“People get naturalized,” Davis said. “It’s entirely too early to say that.”
The numbers were released just a few weeks into a legislative session during which lawmakers may take up proposals to require some form of citizenship verification before registering to vote. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 rejected states’ efforts to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Other federal courts have knocked down more recent efforts.
“Integrity and efficiency of elections in Texas require accuracy of our state’s voter rolls, and my office is committed to using all available tools under the law to maintain an accurate list of registered voters,” Whitley said in a statement.
But Beth Stevens, voting rights legal director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the announcement echoed efforts around the country to remove eligible voters from the rolls.
“The secretary’s actions threaten to result in tens of thousands of eligible voters being removed from the roles, including those with the least resources to comply with the demand to show papers,” Stevens said.
In a state where about 15.8 million Texans are registered to vote, the AG’s office has recently pursued a small number of convictions of illegal voting by non-citizens. Past reviews of the voter rolls by other states ultimately found that only a small number of the thousands of non-citizens they initially flagged had actually voted. For years, researchers have found that voter fraud is rare and claims that non-citizens are voting in large numbers have not been substantiated.
Read related Tribune coverage
- Trump election fraud commission bought Texas election data flagging Hispanic voters
- Judge blocks Texas secretary of state from giving voter information to Trump commission
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bush41 part of mod gop WASP exodus from NE to sun belt
==
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/confederate-plaque-can-be-debunked-minutes-so-whats-taking-texas-so-long-remove-it
State government acts quickly when it needs to. That’s why you can tell when state officials don’t think they need to act quickly.
To be clear, this is not about faceless bureaucrats bogging things down. It’s about elected state leaders with faces too politically cautious to make easy decisions.
The governor, the attorney general and presumptive Speaker of the Texas House have lately turned their attention to a controversial and false plaque in the Texas Capitol that commemorates the Civil War.
It’s been a long time coming.
Credit state Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, for raising a stink about this, and for showing all of us just how slowly state government can move, even when presented with what looks like a simple problem. Johnson pointed out well over a year ago that the memorial was an embarrassment, calling for the immediate removal of the plaque on August 17, 2017 in a letter to Rod Welsh, executive director of the State Preservation Board. He copied Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Joe Straus and House Administration Committee Chairman Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth.
A month later, Straus agreed that it should come down. Nothing happened.
The brass plate remains screwed to the wall in the Texas Capitol and also screwed up in its version of Texas and American history. It’s second paragraph: “We, therefore, pledge ourselves to preserve pure ideals; to honor our veterans; to study and teach the truths of history (one of the most important of which is, that the war between the states was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery), and to always act in a manner that will reflect honor upon our noble and patriotic ancestors.”
There is an impressive amount of malarkey packed inside those parentheses.
Here’s a “truth of history” that every Texas student should have learned in school: The state seceded from the Union — that is, bailed out of the United States — after adopting “A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union” on February 2, 1861.
That document referred to Texas’ admission to the union as a state just 16 years earlier, and it were pretty clear about where Texans thought the U.S. had run afoul of the original deal:
“She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery — the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits — a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
“The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States.”
That’s not all. They got even more specific a little further on in the document:
“In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color — a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.”
That “truth of history” promise carries some real baggage, doesn’t it? Wonder why anyone said the Civil War was about slavery.
It wasn’t only slavery, but that was the recurring subject in the secession document. The Confederate Texans also said the federal government had done too little to protect the state from “Indian savages” and “the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our state government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refused reimbursement therefor...”
That last bit could have been written last month, come to think of it.
Toward the end, that document contains another historical gem:
“And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.”
The bad hombres in that paragraph were Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. Perhaps there’s a plaque somewhere commemorating those guys.
So much for fact-checking the Texas plaque. With its content so easily debunked, the real question is why it’s still there for all the citizens and their kids to see.
A related tidbit: The plaque dates to 1959, but survived a renovation of the Capitol that was completed in 1995. The Confederacy apparently lasted longer than one might have thought.
It lingers in spirit, still. The plaque is still in place. But the elections are behind us all. The attorney general says the Preservation Board has the power to remove it and so does the Legislature. Straus is about to retire but his apparent replacement, state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, agrees the plaque should go. Abbott, who earlier promised to “look into” the issue, also said earlier this year that the Legislature should take it down. Meanwhile, the Preservation Board will meet next month; the governor chairs that panel, and the lieutenant governor and speaker are co-vice chairs.
Maybe they’ll do something. It’s no model of efficiency, but sometimes it takes months, years or even decades of legal opinions, committee meetings, political spats and thumb-sucking to accomplish what could have been done by a single Texan with a crowbar and the tacit backing of a high state official or two.
===
AN
Wednesday, the Dallas Morning News reported that the Tarrant County Republican Party will be meeting with the leader of an anti-Muslim hate group on December 29, less than two weeks before their upcoming January 10 vote on whether to remove county GOP Vice Chairman Shahid Shafi for being a practicing Muslim:
John Guandolo, a former FBI agent and founder of the Dallas-based group Understanding the Threat, trains police and other officials on dealing with the perceived threat of Muslims in the United States.
Guandolo has made statements equating all Muslims with terrorists and tweeted a picture of an unidentified Southwest Airlines employee earlier this year, calling the man a jihadi. His Twitter account was suspended in October after he claimed that Democrats were to blame for an attack that left 11 people dead at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Understanding the Threat as a hate group.
Lest there be any speculation that the timing of these events is a coincidence, emails obtained by the Texas Observer show a Republican precinct chairman saying county officials "need to learn the truth" before taking the vote on Shafi.
By all accounts, Shafi, a trauma surgeon at Baylor Scott & White Health and Southlake city council member, is a hardline conservative who has served at several Texas GOP state party conventions. But a small contingent of Republican activists has been pushing for his removal anyway. Chief among them is Dorrie O'Brien, a GOP precinct chair in Grand Prairie affiliated with the anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America. O'Brien has repeatedly claimed, with no basis whatsoever, that Shafi is connected to terrorist groups and plans to take over the United States and impose Sharia law.
Many Texas Republicans are pushing back on the campaign to oust Shafi, including Land Commissioner George P. Bush, outgoing state House Speaker Joe Straus, and Travis County Republican Chairman Matt Mackowiak.
The fight is leading to rifts in the Texas GOP, which was rattled in the midterms as Democrats captured two House seats, 12 state House and 2 state Senate seats, and dozens of judgeships amid the groundswell of turnout for Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke. The epicenter of that tension is Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth and Arlington, which for years has been the largest red county in Texas but narrowly went for O'Rourke this year.
Unfortunately for Texas Republicans, at the exact moment they need to reflect on their failure with suburban voters and become more inclusive, their crazier elements are demanding attention.Last week, GOP activist Ray Myers posted"Damn Right, I'm a WHITE NATIONALIST and very Proud of it," on Facebook. Myers worked on the committee that helped the Texas GOP draft their party platform, which calls for abolishing the Voting Rights Act, hate crime laws, state vehicle inspections, divorce, Medicaid, the Seventeenth Amendment, the IRS, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Departments of Commerce, Labor, Energy, Education, Interior, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development.
So a bitter fight over whether a loyal conservative should be ejected from a party office because he's Muslim is the last thing the Texas GOP needs right now.
===
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GERRYMANDERING (back to delay? rove sup ct?):
The U.S. Supreme Court, dominated by right-wingers until Justice Kennedy’s retirement last summer, has shown repeatedly that it will not protect the franchise.Beyond crippling the Voting Rights Act, it allowed voter purges in Ohio by contorting the language of federal law. It approved all but one of the 11 Texas congressional districts that a lower court had ruled discriminatory. And it sent back to a lower court for review North Carolina’s congressional district map.
===
https://www.alternet.org/texas-board-education-hillary-clinton
According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, the Texas State Board of Education on Friday issued a preliminary vote to sharply cut back the social studies curriculum in the state.
One major change is the elimination of required teaching about Hillary Clinton:
As part of an effort to "streamline" the social studies curriculum in Texas, the State Board of Education voted on Friday to change what students in every grade are required to learn in the classroom. They approved the removal of several historical figures, including Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller.
Hillary Clinton has been a significant figure in recent U.S. history even before she became the first woman nominated for president by a major political party. She was also highly instrumental in both domestic legislation and foreign affairs as a First Lady, senator, and secretary of State, advancing the cause of equal rights on the world stage and shaping policy on everything from health care, to family leave, to violence against women, to the cleanup of New York City after the 9/11 attacks.
For their part, the Texas Board of Education asserts that they are simply following the advice of the workgroup, which ranked Clinton and other deleted historical figures against a rubric to determine whether they are "essential" to learning about history, as part of an effort to ensure kids do not have to memorize too many names and dates.
Curiously, however, this rubric gave perfect scores to local members of the Texas Legislature.
Additionally, the board is refusing to make several other changes to the curriculum recommended by experts for elimination, including the deletion of references to "Judeo-Christian values," and the alleged influence of Moses on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Also recommended for deletion but still kept in by the board: references to the "heroism" of defenders of the Alamo, which is problematic because those men were fighting, in part, for the right to practice slavery.
Decisions made by the Texas Board of Education often spill over into the rest of the country, because textbook manufacturers have historically geared their material toward the requirements of the state's market — although thisinfluence has declined somewhat in recent years. Nonetheless, the board's changes to school material are often closely followed by educators nationwide, including multiple battles in the past few years over how to teach evolution.
==
==
...Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence wright examines the history, culture, and politics of the Lone Star state.
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texas2918
format mesed up
...Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence wright examines the history, culture, and politics of the Lone Star state.
2 diff pgms?
https://www.c-span.org/video/?449746-20/lawrence-wright-discusses-god-save-texas
===
PORT ARTHUR, Texas (AP) — As the nation plans new defenses against the more powerful storms and higher tides expected from climate change, one project stands out: an ambitious proposal to build a nearly 60-mile “spine” of concrete seawalls, earthen barriers, floating gates and steel levees on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Like other oceanfront projects, this one would protect homes, delicate ecosystems and vital infrastructure, but it also has another priority — to shield some of the crown jewels of the petroleum industry, which is blamed for contributing to global warming and now wants the federal government to build safeguards against the consequences of it.
The plan is focused on a stretch of coastline that runs from the Louisiana border to industrial enclaves south of Houston that are home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of petrochemical facilities, including most of Texas’ 30 refineries, which represent 30 percent of the nation’s refining capacity.
Texas is seeking at least $12 billion for the full coastal spine, with nearly all of it coming from public funds. Last month, the government fast-tracked an initial $3.9 billion for three separate, smaller storm barrier projects that would specifically protect oil facilities.
That followed Hurricane Harvey, which roared ashore last Aug. 25 and swamped Houston and parts of the coast, temporarily knocking out a quarter of the area’s oil refining capacity and causing average gasoline prices to jump 28 cents a gallon nationwide. Many Republicans argue that the Texas oil projects belong at the top of Washington’s spending list.
“Our overall economy, not only in Texas but in the entire country, is so much at risk from a high storm surge,” said Matt Sebesta, a Republican who as Brazoria County judge oversees a swath of Gulf Coast.
But the idea of taxpayers around the country paying to protect refineries worth billions, and in a state where top politicians still dispute climate change’s validity, doesn’t sit well with some.
“The oil and gas industry is getting a free ride,” said Brandt Mannchen, a member of the Sierra Club’s executive committee in Houston. “You don’t hear the industry making a peep about paying for any of this and why should they? There’s all this push like, ‘Please Senator Cornyn, Please Senator Cruz, we need money for this and that.’”
Normally outspoken critics of federal spending, Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both backed using taxpayer funds to fortify the oil facilities’ protections and the Texas coast. Cruz called it “a tremendous step forward.”
Federal, state and local money is also bolstering defenses elsewhere, including on New York’s Staten Island, around Atlantic City, New Jersey, and in other communities hammered by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Construction in Texas could begin in several months on the three sections of storm barrier. While plans are still being finalized, some dirt levees will be raised to about 17 feet high, and 6 miles of 19-foot-tall floodwalls would be built or strengthened around Port Arthur, a Texas-Louisiana border locale of pungent chemical smells and towering knots of steel pipes.
The town of 55,000 includes the Saudi-controlled Motiva oil refinery, the nation’s largest, as well as refineries owned by oil giants Valero Energy Corp. and Total S.A. There are also almost a dozen petrochemical facilities.
“You’re looking at a lot of people, a lot of homes, but really a lot of industry,” said Steve Sherrill, an Army Corps of Engineers resident engineer in Port Arthur, as he peered over a Gulf tributary lined with chunks of granite and metal gates, much of which is set to be reinforced.
The second barrier project features around 25 miles of new levees and seawalls in nearby Orange County, where Chevron, DuPont and other companies have facilities. The third would extend and heighten seawalls around Freeport, home to a Phillips 66 export terminal for liquefied natural gas and nearby refinery, as well as several chemical facilities.
The proposals approved for funding originally called for building more protections along larger swaths of the Texas coast, but they were scaled back and now deliberately focus on refineries.
“That was one of the main reasons we looked at some of those areas,” said Tony Williams, environmental review coordinator for the Texas Land Commissioner’s Office.
Oil and chemical companies also pushed for more protection for surrounding communities to shield their workforces, but “not every property can be protected,” said Sheri Willey, deputy chief of project management for the Army Corps of Engineers’ upper Texas district.
“Our regulations tell us what benefits we need to include, and they have to be national economic benefits,” Willey said.
Once work is complete on the three sections, they could eventually be integrated into a larger coastal spine system. In some places along Texas’ 370-mile Gulf Coast, 18 feet is lost annually to erosion, threatening to suck more wetlands, roads and buildings into rising seas.
Protecting a wide expanse will be expensive. After Harvey, a special Texas commission prepared a report seeking $61 billion from Congress to “future proof” the state against such natural disasters, without mentioning climate change, which scientists say will cause heavier rains and stronger storms.
Texas has not tapped its own rainy day fund of around $11 billion. According to federal rules, 35 percent of funds spent by the Army Corps of Engineers must be matched by local jurisdictions, and the GOP-controlled state Legislature could help cover such costs. But such spending may be tough for many conservatives to swallow.
Texas “should be funding things like this itself,” said Chris Edwards, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Texans are proud of their conservatism, but, unfortunately, when decisions get made in Washington, that frugality goes out the door.”
State officials counter that protecting the oil facilities is a matter of national security.
The effects of the next devastating storm could be felt nationwide,” Rep. Randy Weber, a fiercely conservative Republican from suburban Houston who has nonetheless authored legislation backing the coastal spine.
Major oil companies did not return messages seeking comment on funding for the projects. But Suzanne Lemieux, midstream group manager for the American Petroleum Institute, said the industry already pays into programs such as the federal Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund and the Waterways Trust Fund, only to see Congress divert that money elsewhere.
“Do we want to pay again, when we’ve already paid a tax without it getting used? I’d say the answer is no,” she said.
Phillips 66 and other energy firms spent money last year lobbying Congress on storm-related funding post-Harvey, campaign finance records show, and Houston’s Lyondell Chemical Co. PAC lobbied for building a coastal spine.
“The coastal spine benefits more than just our industry,” Bob Patel, CEO of LyondellBasell, one of the world’s largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies, said in March. “It really needs to be a regional effort.”
==
WOW, 1st state tag denier
==
2x
PORT ARTHUR, Texas (AP) — As the nation plans new defenses against the more powerful storms and higher tides expected from climate change, one project stands out: an ambitious proposal to build a nearly 60-mile “spine” of concrete seawalls, earthen barriers, floating gates and steel levees on the Texas Gulf Coast.
State officials counter that protecting the oil facilities is a matter of national security.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01)
["Apparently this climate change was global freezing back in the 1970s. Then global warming and then, when it quit warming, now it's climate change."
[](https://www.c-span.org/video/?444658-1/god-save-texas)The Washington Times]
Call him: (903) 561-6349 | Email him
Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX-02)
Climate change denier
"The consensus has been for some time that global warming, climate change, continues because man is the perpetrator. Now we are beginning to learn that may not be true, that there is not a consensus that there is global warming or climate change."
Call him: (281) 446-0242 | Email him
Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX-03)
Poor climate change voting record
Introduced the Wasteful EPA Programs Elimination Act of 2015 (H.R. 2111), which would eliminate funding for the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of greenhouse gases, and terminate "all existing grant programs of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), its National Clean Diesel Campaign, and its environmental justice programs."
"American taxpayers certainly don't need to be paying for the EPA's empty and unused buildings and its wasteful programs."
[Sam Johnson, Congressman for the 3rd District of Texas]
Call him: (469) 304-0382 | Email him
Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX-04)
Poor climate change voting record
"I do not support congressional action to reduce the output of greenhouse gasses."
Call him: (903) 823-3173 | Email him
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX-05)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of S.J. Res. 24, a "resolution of disapproval" under the Congressional Review Act that would nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan—the first nation-wide limit on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and key climate change policy.
[League of Conservation Voters]
Call him: (214) 349-9996 | Email him
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX-06)
Climate change denier
"I don't deny that the climate is changing. I think you can have an honest difference of opinion on what's causing that change without automatically being either all-in that it's all because of mankind or it's all just natural. I think there's a divergence of evidence. I would point out if you're a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change. And that certainly wasn't because mankind overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy."
Call him: (817) 543-1000 | Email him
Rep. John Culberson (R-TX-07)
Climate change denier
"This week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided that the air we exhale, carbon dioxide, is toxic and poses a danger to our well-being. The EPA plans to use this 'endangerment' finding to issue costly new emissions regulations on Americans – once again putting Washington in charge. This deeply undemocratic process is an arrogant attempt by the Obama Administration to enact by regulation what they could not pass through the people's Congress. Such a disturbing and cynical effort to take away your voice should cause all Americans to stop and wonder 'what is next?'"
[US Congressman John Culberson]
Call him: (713) 682-8828 | Email him
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX-08)
Climate change denier
"Climategate reveals a serious lack of integrity in the underlying data and models, such that it is doubtful that any process can be trusted until the data and models are validated and their integrity assured."
[Environmental Protection Agency]
Call him: (936) 441-5700 | Email him
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX-10)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 (H.R. 910), which relied on climate change denial to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions—additionally excluding carbon dioxide from the definition of "air pollutant"—as a means to prevent further global warming and harm to human health.
Call him: (512) 473-2357 | Email him
Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-TX-11)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 (H.R. 910), which relied on climate change denial to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions—additionally excluding carbon dioxide from the definition of "air pollutant"—as a means to prevent further global warming and harm to human health.
Call him: (325) 247-2826 | Email him
Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX-12)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of S.J. Res. 24, a "resolution of disapproval" under the Congressional Review Act that would nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan—the first nation-wide limit on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and key climate change policy.
[League of Conservation Voters]
Call her: (817) 338-0909 | Email her
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX-13)
Climate change denier
"Any decisions we make should be based on sound science rather than political, social or personal profit agendas. No computer model yet has correctly predicted the Earth's actual temperatures. We simply do not understand enough about the causes and effects related to our weather. Yet, some in Washington continue to push for new regulations and added taxes based upon those flawed models."
Call him: (806) 371-8844 | Email him
Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX-14)
Climate change denier
"I may want to get your cell phone, because if we go through cycles of global warming and then back to global cooling, I need to know when to buy my long coat on sale. I just don't know how y'all prove those hypotheses going back fifty, hundred, what you might say is thousands if not millions of years, and then postulate those forward."
Call him: (409) 835-0108 | Email him
Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX-17)
Climate change denier
"It is time we stopped putting petty politics based on dubious "agenda-driven, scientific" research ahead of creating more American energy. We literally have hundreds of years of energy resources under our feet and below our waters waiting to be produced with safe, environmentally sound practices – we just need the will of Congress to change so we can begin developing more of our own oil, natural gas, oil shale, clean coal, and geothermal resources."
Call him: (254) 732-0748 | Email him
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX-19)
Climate change denier
Regarding man-made climate change, "Mr. Arrington said the facts fall both ways, so he's not yet convinced," according to a local voter guide.
Call him: (325) 675 - 9779 | Email him
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX-21)
Climate change denier
"I believe climate change is due to a combination of factors, including natural cycles, sun spots and human activity. But scientists still don't know for certain how much each of these factors contributes to the overall climate change that the Earth is experiencing."
Call him: 210-821-5024 | Email him
Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX-22)
Climate change denier
"I mean, I've said over and over our climate is changing, that's been a fact since God created the Earth. The problem is right now we don't know how much man is making that change happen. So let's take a deep breath and do some studies, and then do some studies about water, because right now all the studies are on land around cities. Let's diversify, actually see what's happening to our planet, see what we can control and not control. Again, I am not this—well, let's just say I disagree with the president's attack on people who just question his motives, because this is not so much for the world, this is politics."
Call him: (281) 889-7134| Email him
Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX-23)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of S.J. Res. 24, a "resolution of disapproval" under the Congressional Review Act that would nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan—the first nation-wide limit on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and key climate change policy.
[League of Conservation Voters]
Call him: (830) 422-2040 | Email him
Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-TX-24)
Poor climate change voting record
Vowed to oppose all legislation pertaining to climate change "that includes a net increase in government revenue," by signing the No Climate Tax pledge in 2010.
Call him: (972) 556-0162 | Email him
Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX-25)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of an amendment to the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2015 (H.R. 4923), which would prohibit federal agencies from using funds "to design, implement, administer or carry out specified assessments regarding climate change."
Call him: (512) 473-8910 | Email him
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX-26)
Climate change denier
"My opinion, for what it is worth, is that the science behind global temperature changes is not settled. And the fact that we have this panel of experts in front of us today, who, I suspect at some point, will disagree with each other, is indicative of that."
[Committee on Energy and Commerce record]
Call him: (940) 497-5031 | Email him
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX-27)
Climate change denier
"Global warming is scare tactic used by groups with a political agenda. While I support protecting the environment, the green agenda pushes it way beyond common sense, with ideas like cap and trade which would destroy American industry."
Call him: (361) 884-2222 | Email him
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of S.J. Res. 24, a "resolution of disapproval" under the Congressional Review Act that would nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan—the first nation-wide limit on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and key climate change policy.
[League of Conservation Voters]
Call him: (956) 725-0639 | Email him
Rep. John Carter (R-TX-31)
Climate change denier
"Global warming is simply a chicken-little scheme to use mass media and government propaganda to convince the world that destruction of individual liberties and national sovereignty is necessary to save mankind, and that the unwashed masses would destroy themselves without the enlightened global dictatorship of these frauds.
We do face a global threat. But it is not global warming, it is global tyranny from this crowd of liars – the Warmers."
Call him: (512) 246-1600 | Email him
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX-32)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of S.J. Res. 24, a "resolution of disapproval" under the Congressional Review Act that would nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan—the first nation-wide limit on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and key climate change policy.
[League of Conservation Voters]
Call him: (972) 392-0505 | Email him
Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX-36)
Poor climate change voting record
Voted in support of S.J. Res. 24, a "resolution of disapproval" under the Congressional Review Act that would nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan—the first nation-wide limit on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and key climate change policy.
[League of Conservation Voters]
Call him: (832) 780-0966 | Email him
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
Climate change denier
"Taxpayer funded research by NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) concerning the warmest years on record has been the subject of dispute and after challenges, has been changed and re-released. What is less known is why the changes were made and what inherent flaws existed in the original data, if any."
[John Cornyn, United States Senator for Texas]
Call him: (713) 572-3337 | Email him
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Climate change denier
"The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened. You know, back in the '70s—I remember the '70s, we were told there was global cooling. And everyone was told global cooling was a really big problem. And then that faded."
==
The Trump administration has repeatedly returned to Texas to find nominees who’ve been exceptionally friendly to business interests. Last year, Trump nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, an aggressively pro-industry former chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to lead the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality. (Her nomination was ultimately pulled after it became clear she wouldn’t be confirmed). The administration also tapped former Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, a critic of the Endangered Species Act, for a top position at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Trey Trainor, a Texas attorney who tried to shred the state’s already-weak ethics laws, was nominated last year to a post on the Federal Election Commission. In April, Trump nominated to the federal bench a former deputy attorney general who stymied the Texas investigation into Trump University.
==
omg
... ref
The civil war within the Texas Republican Party — billionaires, enormous egos, blood grudges, subterfuge, religion, debauchery — is one of the best and most under-told stories in American politics, but it also has a Tolkien-length backstory. The simplified version is this: A decade ago, as the Bush administration started melting down, the Texas GOP began to split into two. One faction aligned with a more genteel and traditional form of business conservatism; the ideology of the other was nativism, Christianism and a nihilistic approach to government.
The second faction eventually won. But at the beginning, all they had were a few ideologically aligned millionaire and billionaire donors — Tim Dunn, Jeff Sandefer, the Wilks brothers — who wanted to buy legislators, a long-standing trade in Texas. The state’s weak ethics laws inhibited, albeit very modestly, their ability to do so. So they went guerrilla. They set up a constellation of organizations to quietly funnel their money into legislative races, and they used the threat of that money to put enormous pressure on elected officials. It was very effective: They didn’t always win elections, but they changed the way politics is done in Austin.
==
https://www.ecowatch.com/coal-ash-oklahoma-pruitt-2579396022.html
Pruitt Grants Oklahoma Leniency to Dispose of Toxic Coal Ash Without Federal Oversight
On Monday, Oklahoma became the first state to be granted a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to dispose of its own coal ash, The Associated Press reported.
The move displaces the federal government as the body responsible for coal ash disposal in EPA head Scott Pruitt's home state. Coal ash is the residue left over from burning coal for power that often contaminates groundwater. It is a change that industry has lobbied for and environmental groups have opposed.
States have demonstrated that "they don't care about the health and safety of communities near coal ash dumps," Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans told The Associated Press.
About 100 million tons of coal ash is produced by U.S. plants every year, often left in disposal ponds that leak into groundwater, contaminating it with pollutants like arsenic and radium. Tests ordered by the EPA this spring of groundwater around plants in various states found elevated pollution levels, according to The Associated Press.
Despite this, "industry has asked for leniency, less stringency. That's the direction they're going," Evans said.
According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, switching coal ash oversight to states was part of an "action plan" proposed by coal industry executive Robert Murray this spring to Pruitt and other officials in the Trump administration.
Pruitt defended the decision, saying in a statement that the move empowered "those who are best positioned to oversee coal ash management—the officials who have intimate knowledge of the facilities and the environment in their state."
Pruitt also moved to weaken Obama-era coal ash disposal regulations in March, but the rule change allowing states to control coal ash disposal was actually passed by Congress and signed by former President Barack Obama in 2016, according to NPR. The law said that state rules had to be "as protective as" federal guidelines.
"I am pleased that Oklahoma is the first state in the nation to receive approval of its Coal Combustion Residuals permit program. We actually incorporated the federal rule into our state permitting rules program over a year ago," Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Executive Director Scott Thompson said in an EPA press release about the decision.
But at a hearing in February, Oklahoma environmental groups said the DEQ was not prepared to adequately regulate coal ash.
"The DEQ rules are weaker than the EPA rules," Oklahoma Grand Riverkeeper and activist Earl Hatley told NPR in February. "This is just a boon for industry to do what they want."
Waterkeeper Alliance senior attorney Kelly Foster further expressed concerns that the DEQ plan did not provide enough information on how companies would be made to comply with regulations and how the DEQ would take on new responsibilities with existing resources.
Georgia andTexas are following Oklahoma in taking steps to control coal ash disposal, The Associated Press reported.
...
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conaway huse agric comm ~ agw, pesticides
===
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/20/earth_day_2018_ending_plastic_pollution
We speak to Marcus Eriksen of the 5 Gyres Institute, who has led 20 expeditions around the world to research plastic marine pollution, and Priscilla Villa of the #BreakFreeFromPlastics movement.
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cracker EJ houston and gulf exxon
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cf hurricane harvey houston
Soot Makes You Live Longer
One of the 10, toxicologist Michael Honeycutt, failed to secure a seat on the EPA’s seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee when he was nominated for one last fall — with good reason. Over the last decade, Honeycutt, who heads the toxicology division of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, rolled back the state’s relatively weak protections for 45 toxic chemicals, including arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde and hexavalent chromium, the carcinogen that made Erin Brockovich a household name.
Honeycutt also has attacked EPA rules for ground-level ozone (smog), which aggravates lung diseases, and particulate matter (PM) (soot), which has been linked to lung cancer, cardiovascular damage, reproductive problems and premature death. In October 2014, Honeycutt argued that there would be “little to no public health benefit from lowering the current [ozone] standard” because “most people spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors” and “systems such as air conditioning remove it from indoor air.” And despite the overwhelming scientific evidence directly linking fine soot particles to premature death, Honeycutt testified before Congress in June 2012 that “some studies even suggest PM makes you live longer.”
Better Living Through Chemistry...
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==
RPS?
==
dance w/ stars
b43 signed wind law texas
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/18/1654064/-Rick-Perry-forgets-that-wind-energy-works
First Rick Perry forgot about the Department of Energy. Then he forgot what the Department of Energy did. Now that he’s actually, unbelievably, in charge of that same department, ThinkProgress reports that Perry seems to have forgotten where energy comes from.
Perry wrote in the memo, first reported by Bloomberg, that the United States is “blessed as a nation to have an abundance of domestic energy resources, such as coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric.” These sources provide a “stable, reliable and resilient grid,” he explained. Nowhere in the memo did Perry list wind, solar, or energy storage as options for grid reliability.
Rick Perry is from Texas. Texas now produces more than 20,000 MW of electricity from wind, making the state the largest producer of wind energy in the nation. Over 12 percent of power in the Lone Star State comes from the abundant breeziness that’s all too familiar to anyone who has spent time in the western part of the state. Wind power in Texas was boosted because thestate senate passed a renewable energy standard in 1999 that was actually signed by George W. Bush. In fact, the blog Knowledge Problem reports that wind power in West Texas grew so quickly that transmission capacity has been the real limiting factor and price of energy in the area has been so low that consumers were actually paid to use power.
In the first half of 2008, prices were below zero nearly 20 percent of the time.
Who was governor of Texas when consumers were getting power for less than free? That would be James Richard "Rick" Perry. But now Perry is not only carefully leaving wind out of his memos, he’s sliding in hints that he has an axe ready for windmills.
The former Texas governor has been tasked by President Donald Trump with prioritizing fossil fuels and nuclear energy over renewables.
While jogging his memory, Perry might want to note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that wind already accounts for twice as many jobs in America as coal, and that while coal has been trending down, wind jobs have been rising.
As the wind energy industry continues to grow, it will provide many opportunities for workers in search of new careers. These careers extend beyond the wind farm: it also takes the efforts of workers in factories and offices to build and operate a turbine.
no link
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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/inside-total-catastrophe-ensued-after-elected-libertarian-mayor-promised-freest
... In 2006, fearing annexation by rapidly encroaching San Antonio, some in Von Ormy proposed incorporating as a town. But in government-averse rural Texas, incorporation can be a hard sell. Unincorporated areas are governed mainly by counties, which have few rules about what you can do on private property and tend to only lightly tax. There’s no going back from what municipal government brings: taxes, ordinances, elections and tedious city council meetings. Still, the fear of being absorbed by San Antonio — with its big-city taxes and regulations — was too much for most Von Ormians.
Enter Art Martinez de Vara. At the time, Martinez de Vara was an ambitious third-year law student at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, a local boy with a penchant for Texas history and right-wing politics.
Martinez de Vara suggested a compromise of sorts. Von Ormy could become a “liberty city” — a stripped-down, low-tax, low-government version of municipal government that’s currently en vogue among the tea party in Texas.
Initially, the city would impose property and sales taxes, but the property tax would ratchet down to zero over time. The business-friendly environment would draw new economic activity to Von Ormy, and eventually the town would cruise along on sales taxes alone.
There would be no charge for building permits, which Martinez de Vara said would be hand-delivered by city staff. The nanny state would be kept at bay, too. Want to shoot off fireworks? Blast away. Want to smoke in a bar? Light up. Teens wandering around at night? No curfew, no problem.
Martinez de Vara and his mother, Sally Martinez, along with other prominent residents, started the Commission to Incorporate Von Ormy. He gave Von Ormy a motto: “The Freest Little City in Texas.”
Folks in Von Ormy liked what they heard and in May 2008 voted to incorporate. Martinez de Vara was elected mayor that November.
In a 2015 presentation he gave at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, Martinez de Vara said that a group of people with no political experience took it upon themselves to do everything a large city like San Antonio does but at a lower cost. He touted Von Ormy’s ability to provide animal control services, a 20-officer police department — a mix of paid officers and volunteers — and an online city hall.
“We were blessed with this unique opportunity to experiment with democracy,” hesaid.
Today, there is no city animal control program and stray dogs roam the streets. The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office patrols the town instead of city police, and City Hall resides in a mobile home with one full-time staffer — though that’s a step up from the dive bar where City Council met until the owner bounced them out. If you go to the city’s website, you’ll be informed that it’s still under construction....
==
Art Martinez de Vara (born April 29, 1975) is an American politician of Von Ormy, Texas.
Contents
[hide]
- :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Early life}:
- :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Incorporations of new cities}:
- :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Mayor}:
- :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Energy policy}:
- :{5:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Texas Legislature}:
- :{6:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Immigration policy}:
- :{7:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{*Von Ormy Star*}:
- :{8:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Electoral College}:
- :{9:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Historian}:
- :{10:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Von Ormy Film Commission}:
- :{11:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References}:
Early life
Martinez de Vara was born in Houston on April 29, 1975. He is a graduate of DeBakey High School for Health Professions and attended the Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin. While at UT, Martinez de Vara founded the internet service provider AustinNet. The company later merged and re-located to Denver, Colorado. He graduated in 2007 from University of Colorado, majoring in History. He later graduated from St. Mary's University Law School. He also holds two Master of Arts degrees, one in Theology and one in History. While in law school, he interned for the Hon. Xavier Rodriguez, U.S. district judge for the Western District of Texas.
Incorporations of new cities
In the summer of 2006, Martinez de Vara led a group of Von Ormy residents who incorporated the city.[1] Von Ormy was the first city in Bexar County in over thirty years. Since that time, Martinez de Vara has assisted in establishing over half of the new cities in Texas, including Providence Village, Texas, Ivanhoe, Texas, Sandy Oaks, Texas and Kingsbury, Texas.[2]
Mayor
In 2008, Martinez de Vara became the first Mayor of Von Ormy, Texas,[3] becoming one of the youngest mayors in the United States. He is a 6th generation Von Ormian.
He sought to establish himself as a leader on issues of economic development, education, and suburban independence. Martinez de Vara's tenure is also notable for its consecutive annual tax cuts of 10% each leading to the elimination of property taxes in 2015.[4] The newly formed city embarked on a large master planning project immediately after the first council took office. The formation of the city of Von Ormy and its policies of reliance on consumption taxes and avoidance of restrictions on personal liberties spurred a movement of suburban city formation in Texas termed the "Liberty City Movement". [5]
During he tenure as mayor, Martinez de Vara’s prioritized luring chain stores with the town’s low-taxes. The primary issue which faced Martinez de Vara was the lack of a sewer system within Von Ormy. The San Antonio Water System informed town officials that a connection would cost $4 million to $5 million. City Administrator James Massey recommended floating a bond, but Martinez de Vara rejected the recommendation. The reasoning behind the rejection was likely due to Libertarian ideologies behind the city, which is against the taking on of debt. “You want to be a liberty city? No taxes,” said a town official. “We could only afford to put in $500,000, if that, but where would we get the rest from?” The sewer system was never installed, and the town still relies on septic.[6]
Martinez de Vara promised that the property tax within Von Ormy would be eliminated altogether by 2015, the bold step he’d envisioned at the town’s inception. Three council members thought it was foolish to eliminate property taxes altogether, due to sales taxes rising and falling with the economy, because very few cities rely on sales taxes alone. In September 2014, Martinez de Vara had formally proposed zeroing out the property tax, but it was voted down in a 3-2 vote. However, to formally ratify the rate, per state law, at least four council members needed to hold another meeting to vote, but Sally Martinez and Debra Ivy refused to show up to any hearing with ratification on the agenda. The result: Martinez de Vara achieved his goal and the property tax rate was eliminated.[7]
Von Ormy has been in near-constant turmoil over basic issues of governance: what form of municipal government to adopt, whether to tax its residents, and how to pay for services such as sewer, police, firefighters and animal control. Further, three City Council members were arrested for allegedly violating the Open Meetings Act, and the volunteer fire department collapsed for lack of funds.[8]
Martinez de Vara serves as President of the South Texas Partnership of Governments and the Vice-President of the Texas Municipal League, Region 7.[9]
In 2013, citing the social enterprise tone set by Mayor Martinez de Vara, Brooks Academy of Science and Engineering announced plans to establish a charter school in Von Ormy.[10] As of 2017 the charter school has yet to break ground in Von Ormy, leaving its future in uncertain.
Energy policy
Martinez de Vara was recognized by the Business Journal for establishing and running a notable public policy think tank on energy policy.[11] CAN ^NOT ^FIND
Texas Legislature
In 2011, Martinez de Vara served as Chief-of-Staff/Legislative Director for State Rep. John Garza, District 117, becoming the first sitting mayor to serve in the capacity in the Texas Legislature. Garza has authored or co-authored over thirty-five bills dealing primarily with property tax reform, rural and suburban water rights, election integrity, greater accountability in government, and homeowner association reform.[12]
In 2014, Martinez de Vara was hired as Chief of Staff for Texas State Sen. Konni Burton.[13]
Immigration policy
In the 82nd Texas Legislature, while serving as Chief of Staff for State Rep. John V. Garza, Martinez de Vara drafted HCR 88, which outlines a framework for modernizing the national immigration system utilizing a national guest worker program.[14] At its 2012 State Convention, the Republican Party of Texas adopted this framework under the name of "The Texas Solution", making Texas the first state Republican Party to do so.[15]Martinez de Vara chaired the Platform Subcommittee that drafted the Texas Solution.[16] The guest worker program framework adopted by the Republican Party of Texas was later incorporated into the 2012 National Republican Party Platform, marking a significant shift in Republican policy.[17]
Von Ormy Star
In 2008, Martinez de Vara founded The Von Ormy Star newspaper, which covers local and regional news.
Electoral College
In the 2008 General Election, Martinez de Vara was elected as a Republican to serve in the Electoral College representing the 23rd Congressional District of Texas.[18]
Historian
Martinez de Vara is an award winning Historian of Texas History and has been published in the Handbook of Texas, Encyclopedia of Texas Music and various periodicals.[19] His writings focus on early Tejano history and Jose Francisco Ruiz. He is the author of several books on Texas history, and won the 2014 Presidio La Bahia Award for The Jose Francisco Ruiz Papers, Vol. 1: Report on the Indian Tribes of Texas in 1818.[20] He was the recipient of the 2014 Texas State Genealogical Society Books Award for History and Records of Mission San Patricio de Bexar at Bexar, Texas.[21]
Von Ormy Film Commission
In 2012, Martinez de Vara co-founded the Von Ormy Film Commission with directors Emmanuel Delfin and Brian Ramirez. Von Ormy is now home to a budding South Texas film industry centered on the Von Ormy Film Commission. In 2013, the San Antonio Express News declared Von Ormy the "Farm Film Capitol of South Texas." [22]
==
texas $ 2015?
While Iowa and New Hampshire have the first presidential nominating contests, there’s also a key Republican primary fight going on right now in Texas: the money chase.
The ring-kissing is occurring in every metropolitan area in the state and in oil-rich Midland.
And the efforts are worth it for the potential candidates. In 2012, Texas ranked only behind California in presidential campaign contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Texas delivered more than $1 million to six different candidates. Texas gave the most — $36 million — to Mitt Romney's primary and general election campaigns.
But it’s a new era in Texas fundraising, now that GOP megadonors Bob Perry and Harold Simmons have passed away. There are so many millionaires and billionaires in Texas, though, that the hopefuls seeking to mine the state for cash have plenty of options.
Here’s a look at 10 Texas GOP donors and 10 bundlers — super fundraisers — who are in high demand during the money chase. This list is based on interviews with two dozen state and national operatives, Federal Election Commission records and data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. While dozens of influential Texas Republican donors and bundlers are not on this list, their impact could expand as the 2016 presidential race further takes shape.
Donors
Few developments changed politics more radically than the introduction of super PACs in 2010.
These outside groups, which are often aligned with but not allowed to coordinate with candidates, mean that Texas billionaires are no longer restricted in how much money they can spend to support a presidential contender.
Texas, with its bounty of J.R. Ewing-level rich Republicans, have given generously to such efforts.
Here are 10 donors who are reputed to be in the best position to back those efforts:
Bundlers
Some money brokers don’t need to be super-rich to play at the presidential level.
While limited in contribution size, bundled dollars are harder to round up. But some campaign operatives say they still put a premium on bundlers — the supporters who flip through Rolodexes and twist arms for direct campaign donations.
Among the key benefits for bundled dollars: Federal candidates get a lower television advertising rate than super PACs, which means the dollars go further on the airwaves.
To be sure, many of these supporters rank among the wealthiest people in the country and are as prolific in their giving as in their networking.
Here’s a look at 10 key Texas GOP bundlers.
Phil Adams
Profession: President of an insurance firm
City: Bryan/College Station
Influence
There is no more important fundraiser in Aggieland. Adams is a dual threat – a donor and a bundler. A member of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, Adams has a workaholic reputation and a zeal for throwing fundraisers around Texas A&M events.
Ramona Bass
Profession: Philanthropist
City: Fort Worth
Influence
The Basses, heirs to oil tycoon Sid Richardson’s fortune, are so mysterious that many GOP operatives have no idea what exactly they do in politics. But a few GOP insiders say the Basses are consequential. The billionaires cut checks to both parties, but also, GOP operatives say the Bass name all but guarantees local Republicans will show up to events. The key family member to win over? Ramona Bass. “It’s like daylight and dark if she gets involved,” one operative said.
Tilman Fertitta
Profession: Chairman and CEO of Landry’s Restaurants
City: Houston
Influence
This billionaire restaurateur donates to both Republicans and Democrats – including George W. Bush and former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who is married to his friend Mark Kelly. Fertitta is a prolific donor to campaigns and committees from both parties. But Texas Republicans anticipate he will be a major bundler in their presidential primary. An expert in the hospitality industry, Fertitta has a reputation as a top-notch event host.
Gaylord T. Hughey Jr.
Profession: Oil and gas attorney
City: Tyler
Influence
Want to raise money in the Piney Woods? Go through Hughey, who is known among Texas GOP operatives as “the don of East Texas.” His base is in Tyler, but Texas Republicans say that Hughey’s support probably helps deeper into East Texas.
Mickey Long
Profession: President of Westex/WLP Well Service
City: Midland
Influence
Long is the key fundraising player in the Permian Basin, according to multiple operatives. There is mixed opinion of his capacity to personally give, but his efforts were enough to be chairman of the Texas Tech Board of Regents.
John L. Nau III
Profession: President & CEO of Silver Eagle Distributors, an Anheuser-Busch distributor
City: Houston
Influence
One of the most frequently mentioned money players in the state, one Texan called Nau a “tireless networker.” Closely associated with Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, Nau is a solid donor in his own right. In 2014, he donated $750,000 to conservative outside groups.
Ross Perot Jr.
Profession: Chairman of Hillwood, a real estate developer
City: Dallas
Influence
Son of the 1990s-era third-party presidential candidate, the younger Perot is a dual threat as both a check writer and gatherer. Sources say he surrounds himself with savvy advisers who help him leverage North Dallas money – including some of his own.
Gene Powell
Profession: Real estate developer
City: San Antonio
Influence
Operatives name Powell as a gatekeeper for San Antonio’s clubby, old money world. A longtime Perry ally, Powell is a member and former chairman of the UT Board of Regents.
L.E. Simmons
Profession: Chairman of SCF Partners, an oil industry investment firm
City: Houston
Influence
In the same tier as Harlan Crow, Simmons is a top get for any political campaign. No relation to Harold Simmons, Simmons has deep ties to the Mormon donor community and was a top fundraiser for Mitt Romney.
Ray Washburne
Profession: M Crowd Restaurant Group, which owns the Mi Cocina Mexican food chain
City: Dallas
Influence
Washburne is one of the few Texans who’s already announced his 2016 alliance – he’ll be a finance chairman on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s team. Washburne is a familiar player in national politics because of his stint last cycle as the Republican National Committee’s national finance chair. And also, he is related by marriage to the Dallas Hunt family.
==
ExxonMobil has engaged in a March advertising blitz, repeatedly airing a new commercial during national cable news channel breaks and prominently, during TV timeouts during the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I basketball tournament, better known as March Madness.
The commercial vaguely promotes what Exxon says is a new jobs initiative, which it claims will create 45,000 positions along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, without specifying details about the source of the jobs. Yet far from Madison Avenue advertising firms, a local battle has taken place the past several months in Gulf Coast communities over the prospective siting of and tax breaks for a proposed Exxon refinery co-owned by the Saudi Arabian state-owned company, SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries Corporation).
A mere three weeks into the ad blitz, two Texas entities voted to give tax subsidies to the proposed facility, dubbed Gulf Coast Growth Ventures. Both representing San Patricio County, Texas, the San Patricio County Board of Commissioners and the Gregory-Portland Independent School District offered Growth Ventures over $1.4 billion in tax breaks for the $9.4 billion Exxon-SABIC plant.
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Freedom Caucus, including Tinderholt, Jonathan Stickland and Kyle Biedermann,
off bs
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Jonathan Stickland is a conservative Christian Republican serving his second term in the Texas State House for House District 92. He supports limited government, the right to life, individual liberties and personal responsibilities, and most of all strives to represent his constituents, not the lobbyists and special interests in Austin.
Jonathan was born in Plano, Texas in 1983. At age 5, his family moved to Hurst, Texas. He attended schools in the Birdville School District before getting his GED. He spent time at Tarrant County College and Parkland College studying sales and marketing. Jonathan currently runs his own oil and gas consulting business. He works with many local oil and gas companies assisting in data management, on-location oversight, marketing and sales of new exploration opportunities, and current producing interests. Being in business for himself allows Jonathan the time to do the things he feels truly defines him, his family and his faith.
Jonathan has been married to his wife Krissy since 2006 . They have two beautiful daughters, Andie Michelle (8) and Carlie Anne (6). Family is the core of Jonathan’s life both personally and politically. He and his family have been members of First Baptist Church of Hurst since 2008. Jonathan is a member of the Church’s One Life Group, softball team, choir, and also helps teach 5th and 6th grade boy’s Sunday school.
Jonathan’s strong family values and conservative roots were an integral part in his voting record during the 83rd Legislative Sessions. Jonathan has been awarded 100% scorecards from Empower Texans, the Texas Eagle Forum, and Concerned Women for America. Jonathan was also ranked as the most conservative Representative of the 83rd session by Professor Mark Jones of Rice University.
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off bs
Tinderholt is the representative of Texas’ House District 94.
He is serving on the Corrections Committee and the County Affairs Committee.
Tinderholt is a veteran. He served in the Air Force. He worked as a Spanish Cryptologic Linguist, taking part in counter drug missions across South and Central America. He later re-entered active duty in January 2002 after the events of September 11th. He worked as both a platoon leader and executive officer at the Company level and then as detachment commander for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Tinderholt then ran operations for the largest Recruiting Battalion in the U.S. Army Recruiting Command. His was later Commander, Fort Worth Recruiting Company in which he was hand chosen by the Brigade Commander for excellence and leadership abilities in his previous position. He then volunteered to deploy to Iraq.
In his 21 years in the Armed forces, Tony earned many badges, awards and certifications to include the following Combat Awards: the Bronze Star and the Combat Action Badge
Tinderholt has worked as a professor of Spanish at Columbia College in Fort Worth. He serves as Director of Training & Recruiting for Eliot Management Group, LLC.
Tinderholt has two children, Kayley and Nathan. He and his wife Bethany, volunteer with Spirit of Hope, providing Christmas to over 180 children from the Boys and Girls Club in Arlington, TX and Catholic Charities in Fort Worth, and also with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and St. Jude Medical Center. Tony and his family attend St. Vincent De Paul Catholic Church in Southwest Arlington.
==
off bs kb
I have been blessed to live in Texas for the past 30 years and I have been working as hard as I can to provide for my family and my community at Biedermann’s Ace Hardware in Fredericksburg.
As a small business owner I know what it means to keep up with a payroll, take care of customers and to make ends meet and I will not be swayed by the power brokers and the unethical influences in Austin.
As a Christian and a conservative Republican I am proud to serve as State Representative in the great district covering Gillespie, Comal and Kendall counties. I am proud to be a conservative and dutiful citizen legislator, not a career politician.
My campaign was a grassroots, positive and focused solely on the issues that affect the hardworking people and seniors in this district like rising property taxes, water conservation, the second amendment, unfunded state mandates on our schools, over regulation and higher taxes on our businesses and our God given private property rights.
At the federal level, and in Texas, I have watched our already bloated government continue to overtax, over spend and rip away our God given freedoms. We need real conservative leadership in our Capitol and this is exactly why I made the sacrifice to run for office.
As more and more folks move to Texas, and as this district grows, we need to be vigilant in protecting life, the constitution, our economy and our very way of life. We must act now to keep Texas free and prosperous.
While there are no simple or easy answers, together we can accomplish great things!
--
Famed political humorist Molly Ivins liked to call Texas the“National Laboratory for Bad Government,” which is why the nation as a whole should look with trepidation at the events that transpired last week in the state legislature. While the national press was riveted — for good reason! — by the ongoing scandal surrounding President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Texas legislature upped the ante when it comes to destroying the government in the name of right-wing ideological purity.
In sum, the self-described “Freedom Caucus” in the Austin legislature, claiming that the Republican-controlled body is somehow not conservative enough, decided to go on a bill-blocking spree, using procedural machinations to run out the clock for more than 100 bills, effectively killing off those bills.
The event was dubbed the “Mother’s Day Massacre” by observers. It’s a nickname that had an uncomfortably literal side to it, as two of the bills that were killed off with delaying tactics were meant to address Texas’ alarming maternal mortality rate, which doubled from 2011 to 2014, making the state’s maternity mortality rate the highest in the developed world.
It wasn’t just mothers who were victims of the Freedom Caucus stunt. Multiple bills meant to help children were decimated as well, including one aimed at protecting children from sexual predators, legislation intended to stop schools from shaming children who don’t have lunch money and a bill to encourage early literacy.
The caucus members were angry because the House’s leadership, which is also dominated by conservative Republicans, caused the demise of a handful of Freedom Caucus-friendly bills covering a range of far-right hobbyhorses, including attacks on abortion rights and public schools. In response the caucus killed dozens more bills.
It’s not easy to write a bill that’s so radical in its right-wing politics that it ends up being rejected by the Texas branch of Republican Party, a point that GOP state Rep. Dennis Bonnen emphasized to the Austin American-Statesman. “So ‘sanctuary cities’ is not a conservative issue for them?” Bonnen complained, referring to a bill signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott that is so racist and oppressive that the American Civil Liberties Union had to issue a travel advisory warning people who might be perceived as immigrants about the dangers of harassment and illegal detention by the police. In response the caucus killed dozens more bills.
Caucus member Rep. Jeff Leach said, after watching the killing of a handful of radical right-wing bills: “We’ve learned time and time again, when a bully punches you again and again and again. You can walk away. You can be kind. But sometimes you got to punch back.”
This behavior by the Texas Freedom Caucus suggests that the newly hardened far right of the Republican Party is not merely not going away, but it may be more willing than ever to use the tactics of blackmail to try to turn the red states — and eventually the country — into a “Handmaid’s Tale”-style dystopia of their dreams.
A version of this, of course, has been happening on the national level, as the Freedom Caucus of the House of Representatives was able to push the American Health Care Act, also known as “Trumpcare,” even further to the right through obstructionist politics. These hardball tactics resulted in a bill that would strip away coverage mandates, slash Medicaid and allow discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
It’s hard not to see the Lone Star State’s version of the Freedom Caucus as an escalation of this strategy. This isn’t just about changing one bill or even a handful of bills; it’s about demanding that the Republican Party move even further to the right and at an even more breakneck speed than before.
The anger that the Republicans aren’t moving hard enough or fast enough to the right is doubly alarming when one considers how far the party has already traveled. Political polarization has been a major political trend over the past few decades, :{but}::{ most of the shift is due to Republicans stampeding rightward}:. Yes, it’s also true that Democrats have become more liberal, at least on social issues. But as Nolan McCarty of The Washington Post explained in 2014, “Despite the widespread belief that both parties have moved to the extremes, the movement of the Republican Party to the right accounts for most of the divergence between the two parties.”
To be clear, the Texas legislature’s Freedom Caucus didn’t succeed, in the short term anyway, with its temper tantrum. Its too-far-right-for-Texas bills didn’t end up being reinstated on the legislative calendar and the caucus’ members aren’t going to get a debate on them, much less a vote. But the caucus did manage to derail all other business in the legislature, and it’s hard to not notice that a lot of the dead bills dealt with issues that will get you called a “snowflake” on social media for caring about them — saving women’s lives, stopping school bullying, encouraging literacy.
The bigger issue lies in the very existence of “freedom caucuses,” largely composed of right-wing radicals who are willing to grind the government to a halt rather than compromise on their ideological purity. The members of this caucus held a self-pitying press conference when they identified as victims of bullying because they didn’t get what they wanted. This is a narrative that not only justifies their behavior but that also encourages other extremist politicians to take a hard-line approach to getting their way. As the Republican Party has already shifted so far to the right, there’s good reason to worry that these zealous tactics could actually work.
==
frack, local ord
===
March 7, 2005, Leonard Leo tapped out an email on his BlackBerry to Mary Beth Buchanan, then the director of the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, suggesting a candidate to replace Carol Lam, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. "You guys need a good candidate?" Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, wrote to Buchanan, herself a member of the influential conservative lawyers' group. "I'd strongly recommend the current GC [general counsel] of the Air Force, Mary Walker."
At the time, White House and Justice Department officials were in preliminary talks about replacing an unspecified number of "underperforming" federal prosecutors, a plan that would culminate almost two years later in the forced resignations of nine U.S. Attorneys, including Lam, and ignite a scandal that has claimed the jobs of at least four high-ranking Justice Department officials. Leo's email, written so early in the process, speaks to the close relationship that has developed between the Federalist Society—an organization whose aims include "reordering priorities" within the judicial system to fit its conservative agenda—and key Justice Department decision makers, many of whom are members of the group.
While perhaps not a prerequisite for employment at the highest echelons of Justice, membership in the society has become a standard by which political appointees at the agency identify candidates who share their agenda. Some officials at the agency view it as such an indicator of conservative virtue that membership in the society was included as a category—along with Hill and campaign experience—on a spreadsheet that was used to rank the qualifications of the 93 sitting U.S. Attorneys, a document included in the reams of Justice Department memoranda released by the House Judiciary Committee this spring.
Beyond highlighting the organization's role as the administration's de facto headhunter for conservative lawyers and judges, Leo's correspondence raises the question of what, if any, role the Federalist Society played in the prosecutor firings. Leo did not respond to messages left at his office and on his cell phone, but he told the New York Times last night that, when he emailed Buchanan, he was unaware that a plan was in the works to replace multiple U.S. Attorneys. But, he acknowledged, his recommendation was not unsolicited. "The only way I could have possibly made that recommendation is if somebody said to me, 'Gee, do you know anyone who would be good?'" he said.
Leo's email, released yesterday as part of an ongoing congressional investigation into the prosecutor firings, marks the second time in as many days that his name has been raised in connection with the probe. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Bradley Schlozman—the controversial Justice Department official who replaced Todd Graves as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri—acknowledged seeking Leo's advice on candidates to fill career positions at the agency.Unlike his former colleague, Monica Goodling, who testified that she "crossed the line" in vetting the political bonafides of job applicants, Schlozman denied subjecting potential hires to a political litmus test.
His record would suggest otherwise. Schlozman is a member of the Federalist Society, and in May the Boston Globe reported that half of the career lawyers hired during his tenure were members of the society or the conservative Republican National Lawyers Association; among the eight hires during the previous two years, none had been. According to Joseph Rich, a 37-year veteran of the Justice Department who served as the head of the agency's voting rights section until 2005, Schlozman was among a cadre of appointees who have presided over an unprecedented wave of politicization at the agency. Within the Civil Rights division, where Schlozman served until March 2006, "there appeared to be a conscious effort to remake the Division's career staff," Rich told Congress in March. He described "major" changes in hiring procedures "which virtually eliminated any career staff input into the hiring of career attorneys." As a result, he went on, the attorneys hired for the division had "little if any experience in, or commitment to, the enforcement of civil rights laws."
The politicization of Justice went well beyond hiring practices, according to Rich, extending to efforts to "influence elections." Schlozman, he says, was part of a group of political appointees thatgreenlighted Tom DeLay's controversial redistricting plan, which resulted in Texas Republicans winning a record number of U.S. House seats in the 2004 election. Later, while serving as the interim U.S. Attorney in Missouri, Schlozman indicted four voter registration recruiters for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on charges of voter fraud days before the mid-term elections. (During his Senate appearance this week, Schlozman maintained that he was unaware of ACORN's political leanings.)
The Federalist Society's advice has been sought not only on Justice Department hires: Leonard Leo is one of the Bush administration's go-to experts on the federal judiciary. When the time arrived for the president to fill two open Supreme Court slots, Leo took a temporary leave from the Society in order to advise the administration. The administration did end up selecting two Federalist Society members for the high court, bringing to four the number of Supreme Court justices (Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito) who claim membership in the organization.
Leo was less successful in selling Justice on his pick to replace Carol Lam. This owed, perhaps, to Mary Walker's controversial past. In addition to being accused of whitewashing an investigation of rampant sexual assault at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Walker also headed the group of Pentagon lawyers that produced a report arguing that the president was not bound by the Geneva Conventions. When Lam stepped down in February, she was replaced by one of her deputies, Karen Hewitt—also a member of the Society.
Daniel Schulman is Mother Jones' deputy Washington, DC, bureau chief. Reach him at dschulman (at) motherjones.com. Dan is the New York Times best-selling author of Sons of Wichita
===
==
https://movetoamend.org/corporate-rule-examples-2
State Denies Texas Community’s Anti-Fracking Rights
The elections of November 2014 brought anti-fracking triumphs in Ohio and California communities, but the ultimate victory was won in the city of Denton, Texas. Denton is the most heavily fracked community in the U.S. with 275 urban wells. It sits above the Barnett shale and is considered the birthplace of this mining technology. The vote was a convincing 59% in favor despite the oil and gas corporations outspending supporters ten to one in this heavily Republican city.[1]
These votes in support of local bans encouraged opponents of hydraulic fracturing everywhere. It’s estimated that more than 15 million Americans live within a mile of an oil or gas fracking well.[1] Hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking or “fracking” involves the high-pressure injection of millions of gallons of chemical-laced water and sand into deep rock formations setting free oil or natural gas that can’t be captured through conventional drilling.
Frack Free Denton, a citizen group, said: “Simply put, without the ban, fracking will continue unchecked all across Denton less than 200 feet from homes, schools and playgrounds. The negative health and safety impacts of living close to fracking are well established. Fracking requires heavy truck traffic, poses risks of industrial-scale accidents, uses undisclosed proprietary chemicals, and has permanently contaminated over one billion gallons of Denton’s fresh water.”[3]
Community activists used creative means against their well-funded adversaries, captivating residents through puppet shows, flash-mob dances, original tunes by the Frackettes trio, and coffin races.
Fracking Bans Banned by Texas Legislature and Governor
The oil and gas corporations and their industry-wide front groups, the Texas Oil and Gas Association and the Texas Land Office, immediately rose up to whine, initiating a lawsuit against the ban claiming it is “inconsistent with state law and therefore violates the Texas Constitution.”[2] But that legal assault on a community’s right to define its future and protect its citizens’ health and safety will not be necessary. State’s lawmakers passed and Governor Greg Abbott signed a law in mid-May 2015 declaring null and void Denton’s hard-fought victory by forbidding and preempting local laws against fracking.
pix Texas fracking wells.
Despite a Texas Home Rule Law that grants local jurisdictions authority to zone-out industrial activity deemed harmful, this recent law subordinates the people to corporate authority. It denies citizens the power to protect their community. Corporations and their complicit politicians claim that such democratically defined protections take away corporate “rights.”
Indeed, U.S. courts granted corporations plenty of legal rights and powers over the past 200 years—rights associated with their property and profits that gave them great power over people, workers and nature--rights equal to those of “persons under law.” More recently, the Supreme Court granted corporations and wealthy individuals the right to donate without limit in our electoral campaigns. Corporate actors used and use these illegitimate “rights” to foil people’s self-governance. The corporate initiated lawsuit against Denton’s fracking ban is merely the most recent assault on our diminished democracy.
“It was the oil and gas industry’s contempt for impacted residents that pushed Denton voters to ban fracking… and now the oil and gas industry, through state lawmakers, has doubled down by showing every city in Texas that same contempt,”[4] said Sharon Wilson of Earthworks and a Texas organizer for the Denton ban.
Move to Amend applauds the people of Denton for building a movement to assert the community’s rightful self-governing authority. MTA’s national grassroots work seeks to legalize such actions, end corporate rule, and make democracy real.
To learn more:
1. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/05/birthplace-fracking-boom-votes-ban-denton-texas
2. http://www.myfoxdfw.com/story/27272660/denton-residents-could-ban-fracking-in-historic-vote
3. http://www.commondreams.org/election-2014-fracking-bans-ballot
4. http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/05/19/banning-fracking-bans-texas-picks-gas-drillers-over-local-democracy
===
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/private-prison-companies-openly-boast-about-soaring-profits-locking-children-and
The largest private prison companies in the United States are assuring their shareholders that profits are up, thanks in part to the windfall from locking up women and children in controversial “family detention centers.”
"We are pleased with our first quarter financial performance, which exceeded our first quarter guidance despite incremental startup expenses incurred during the operational ramp of our Trousdale Turner Correctional Center," said Damon Hininger, chief executive officer of the private prison behemoth Corrections Corporation of America, in a press statement issued earlier this month. "Our financial performance was driven primarily by stronger than anticipated demand from our federal partners, most notably Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
According to the company’s assessment, the spike in revenue was “primarily attributable to a contract at the South Texas Family Residential Center,” which brought in over $70 million during the first quarter of 2016 alone—roughly double levels seen in the first quarter of 2015.
The prison-like facility is located in Dilley, Texas and holds up to 2,400 women and children. Atlanticmagazine writer J. Weston Phippen reports that more than half of the people incarcerated there are children whose average age is nine.
Remarkably, the company’s statement came the same day a judge imposed a two-week restraining order on the facility to temporarily prevent the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services from implementing a childcare license for the prison. The advocacy organization Grassroots Leadership has vigorously opposed such licensing, arguing that the facilities are prisons, not childcare accommodations.
“We’re talking about prison-like conditions, in that people are locked up with their kids in these facilities,” said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, in an interview with AlterNet. “When you talk to the moms there, they say that their kids are really suffering in detention.”
Meanwhile, Brian Evans, senior vice president and chief financial officer of the private prison giant GEO Group, reported in a late April conference call with shareholders, “Our revenues for the first quarter 2016 increased to approximately $510 million from $427 million a year ago.” This was attributed, in part, to the “activation of the 626-bed expansion of the Karnes residential center in December 2015.”
The Karnes camp, also located in Texas, has been the site of repeated hunger strikes over inhumane conditions, including nearly free labor, lack of legal representation and contaminated drinking water. In 2014, some women detained at the prison alleged that guards sexually assaulted them.
“The conditions in which our children find themselves, are not good. Our children are not eating well and every day they are losing weight,” dozens of women at the camp declared last year in a joint statement. “In the name of the mothers, residents of the Center for Detentions in Karnes City, we are writing this petition whereby we ask to be set free with our children. There are mothers here who have been locked in this place for as long as 10 months.”...
==
Austin, Texas –Today, the Texas League of Conservation Voters unveiled scores for the Texas delegation released this morning as part of the League of Conservation Voters 2013 National Environmental Scorecard. The Scorecard covers a range of votes of specific importance to Texas, including construction of a border fence, the Keystone XL Pipeline, and the health of the Gulf. The Scorecard also reflects how continued attacks on our environment and public health safeguards have led to all-time low scores for House Republicans.
“It was another year of extreme attacks on our environment from far too many in Congress, but allies like Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and Congressmen Lloyd Doggett, Jaoquin Castro, Marc Veasey, and Beto O’Rourke stand out for putting Texas’s values first,” said Texas League of Conservation Voters Executive Director David Weinberg. “Despite a record-breaking year of climate change impacts, members like Congressmen Ralph Hall, Joe Barton, Mike Conaway, Pete Olson, and Blake Farenthold put their polluting special interest allies first.”
The 2013 Scorecard covers votes during the first session of the 113th Congress. It includes 13 Senate votes and 28 House votes on issues ranging from public health protections to clean energy to land and wildlife conservation. It comes on the heels of another record-breaking year of climate change impacts with more than 100 climate change deniers serving in Congress.
In Texas, five House members earned a score of 90 percent or greater on the 2013 Scorecard, while Senator John Cornyn and 23 House members earned an abysmal score of 10 percent or less. The average House score in 2013 for Texas was 29% percent and the average Senate score was 12% percent.
Nationwide, the average House score in 2013 was 43% and the average Senate score was 58%. Members who defeated 2012 members of LCV’s Dirty Dozen have an average 2013 score of 92 percent, while the Dirty Dozen members that they replaced had an average lifetime score of just 12 percent.
“There is a jarring disconnect between the frightening climate change developments of 2013 and the results of the 2013 National Environmental Scorecard,” said LCV President Gene Karpinski. “Together with our allies in the Senate, the Obama Administration was able to defend against the worst attacks on our environment and protect public health.”
For over 40 years, the National Environmental Scorecard issued by LCV has been the nationally accepted yardstick used to rate members of Congress on environmental, public health, and energy issues. LCV has released an interactive National Environmental Scorecard, which allows users to easily see how every member of Congress voted since the launch of LCV’s first Scorecard in 1971. It can be found online athttp://scorecard.lcv.org/
Texas_ Senate Scores:_
| Cornyn | 8 |
|---|---|
| Cruz | 15 |
Texas_ House Scores _
| Gohmert | 7 |
|---|---|
| Poe | 4 |
| Johnson, S. | 4 |
| Hall | 4 |
| Hensarling | 7 |
| Barton | 0 |
| Culberson | 11 |
| Brady, K. | 7 |
| Green, A. | 89 |
| McCaul | 4 |
| Conway | 0 |
| Granger | 7 |
| Thornberry | 4 |
| Weber | 4 |
| Hinojosa | 82 |
| O’Rourke | 96 |
| Flores | 4 |
| Jackson Lee | 82 |
| Neugebauer | 4 |
| Castro | 96 |
| Smith, Lamar | 7 |
| Olson | 0 |
| Gallego | 64 |
| Marchant | 7 |
| Williams | 4 |
| Burgess | 4 |
| Farenthold | 0 |
| Cuellar | 29 |
| Green, G. | 54 |
| Johnson, E. | 93 |
| Carter | 29 |
| Sessions, P. | 4 |
| Veasey | 93 |
| Vela | 46 |
| Doggett | 96 |
| Stockman | 4 |
==
158 fam
hunt bro
energy transfer partners
Dallas Royalty
The Preston Hollow neighborhood, home to former President George W. Bush and other leading Dallas Republicans, accounts for nearly $13 million of the money flowing to the presidential candidates and their super PACs. Much of it went to help Jeb Bush, who has leveraged his family and political connections in both Florida, where he was governor, and Texas, where his brother George held the same office. But some of the neighborhood’s biggest donors backed Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who has since dropped out of the race. The Dallas pipeline owner Kelcy Warren gave a super PAC supporting Mr. Perry’s committee $6 million, while another neighbor, Darwin Deason, pitched in $5 million.
==
2015 forbes released its annual Billionaires List this week, with 536 of the world’s 1,826 billionaires residing in the United States. Among those American billionaires, 49 are from Texas.
The list ranked a record number of billionaires this year—a 181-person increase from 2014’s list of 1,645. Aggregate net worth on the list totaled $7.05 trillion this year, with average net worth of individuals on the list coming in at $3.86 billion. Only California and New York had more billionaires than Texas, and of the 49 Texas billionaires, 22 hail from Dallas-Fort Worth.
Among the top 500 of the world’s billionaires are these 16 Texans, listed in order of real-time net worth as of March 4, 2015:
- Alice Walton, Fort Worth- #11, $38.1 billion
- Michael Dell, Austin – #47, $18.8 billion
- Charles Butt, San Antonio – #94, $12 billion
- Richard Kinder, Houston – #100, $11.8 billion
- Andrew Beal, Dallas – #105, $11.7 billion
- Dannine Avara, Houston – #230, $6.2 billion
- Scott Duncan, Houston – #230, $6.2 billion
- Milane Frantz, Houston – #230, $6.2 billion
- Kelcy Warren, Dallas – #230, $6.5 billion
- Randa Williams, Houston – #240, $5.8 billion
- Ray Lee Hunt, Dallas – #265, $5.5 billion
- Robert Rowling, Dallas – #277, $5.6 billion
- Jeffery Hildebrand, Houston – #318, $4.6 billion
- Trevor Rees-Jones, Dallas – #381, $4.3 billion
- Jerry Jones, Dallas – #393, $4.2 billion
- H. Ross Perot Sr., Dallas – #462, $3.7 billion
Other Texans on the list are, in order of net worth:
- Dan Friedkin, Houston
- Ray Davis, Dallas
- Mark Cuban, Dallas
- John Paul DeJoria, Austin
- Richard Rainwater, Fort Worth
- Robert Bass, Fort Worth
- George Bishop, The Woodlands
- John Arnold, Houston
- David Bonderman, Fort Worth
- Tilman Fertitta, Houston
- Timothy Headington, Dallas
- Robert McNair, Houston
- Drayton McClane Jr., Temple
- Fayez Sarofim, Houston
- Gerald Ford, Dallas
- Rodney Lewis, San Antonio
- Edward Bass, Fort Worth
- Lee Bass, Fort Worth
- Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, San Antonio
- Ross Perot Jr., Dallas
- Sid Bass, Fort Worth
- Herbert Hunt, Dallas
- Joe Jamail, Houston
- Leslie Alexander, Houston
- David Booth, Austin
- Darwin Deason, Dallas
- Paul Foster, El Paso
- Christopher Goldsbury, San Antonio
- Todd Wagner, Dallas
- Kenny Troutt, Dallas
- Dan Wilks, Cisco
- Farris Wilks, Cisco
- James Leininger, San Antonio
===
Texas company behind California oil spill a repeat offender
California declared a state of emergency this week following Tuesday's spill from an onshore pipeline into the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara County. Responding to reports of an overwhelming smell, the local fire department discovered crude pouring into a culvert from a ruptured 24-inch pipeline that carries oil produced offshore from an Exxon Mobil processing plant to a pump station and then on to refineries.
As much as 105,000 gallons spilled, with an estimated 21,000 gallons ending up in the ocean. The oil has contaminated some nine miles of coastline, including Refugio State Beach, and it's injured birds and fish and at least one sea lion. The spill occurred in the same area as a 1969 oil spill disaster that helped shape the modern environmental movement.
The cause of this latest spill remains under investigation. But the company responsible — Plains All American Pipeline, headquartered in Houston — was already on federal regulators' radar as an operator with a history of problems.
The company has been the target of 20 federal enforcement actions since 2006,
according to an analysis of U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration data by the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group. In all, Plains racked up 175 infractions in that time — mostly for spills, many involving pipeline corrosion control and maintenance issues.
A Los Angeles Times analysis of the same federal data calculated that Plains' rate of incidents per mile of pipe is more than three times the national average. Only four companies reported more infractions. Among the states where Plains' pipelines were cited for problems wereMississippi and Alabama. The company also has operations in other Southern states including Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas.
Plains' various mishaps have caused more than $23 million in property damage. But even though the company has total assets valued at over $22 billion, it was assessed a total of just $115,600 in civil penalties.
Miyoko Sakashita with the Center for Biological Diversity called Plains' record "disturbing." The group noted that the company had five incidents in California in 2014 alone, including the one that dumped oil into a Los Angeles neighborhood.
Coming soon to a beach near you?
Pipeline breaks are among the many risks that come with offshore oil and gas development.
An analysis of federal pipeline data commissioned last year by the Center for Biological Diversity tallied almost 8,000 serious pipeline breaks nationwide since 1986. They spilled more than 80 million gallons of pollution into waterways and caused more than 2,300 injuries and nearly $7 billion in property damage. Most of those incidents involved oil pipelines.
Residents of the Southeast Atlantic Coast could soon be facing these risks: Earlier this year, the Obama administration proposed opening an area off the coast of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to drilling. A recent Facing South investigation found that a coalition of coastal state governors led by North Carolina's Pat McCrory (R) has been working closely with politically powerful oil and gas interests to make that proposal a reality.
The governors' pro-drilling efforts got a boost earlier this month with the introduction of bills in the U.S. Senate to expand offshore oil and gas development. Sens. Bill Cassidy and David Vitter of Louisiana, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, andJohn Cornyn of Texas are sponsoring a measure to extend drilling to the Eastern Gulf. Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Tim Scott of South Carolina introduced similar legislation targeting the Atlantic, while Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska sponsored legislation to expand drilling in the Arctic. All are Republicans except Warner, a Democrat.
But the Senators face opposition from within their own ranks: U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, introduced a billthis week that would extend the current moratorium on oil drilling in the Eastern Gulf. In a floor speech, Nelson pointed to the unfolding disaster in California to illustrate what's at stake.
"Drilling off the coast is not what the people of Florida want," he said. "We want fishing vessels hauling in prize catches, not Coast Guard vessels skimming oil."
===
ecowatch.comhttp://ecowatch.com/2015/05/19/texas-prohibits-local-fracking-bans/?utm_source=EcoWatch+List&utm_campaign=4f7022ec41-Top_News_5_19_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_49c7d43dc9-4f7022ec41-85920373
It’s Official: Texas Prohibits Local Fracking Bans
Earthworks, Denton Drilling Awareness Group, Earthjustice and Natural Resources Defense Council
Yesterday Texas Gov. Abbott signed HB 40 into law. Written by former ExxonMobil lawyer Shannon Ratliff, the statute forces every Texas municipality wanting common sense limits on oil and gas development to demonstrate its rules are “commercially reasonable.” It effectively overturns a Denton ballot initiative banning fracking that passed last November.
“HB 40 was written by the oil and gas industry, for the oil and gas industry, to prevent voters from holding the oil and gas industry accountable for its impacts,” said Earthworks’ Texas organizer Sharon Wilson. Wilson, who played a key role in the Denton ballot initiative, continued, “It was the oil and gas industry’s contempt for impacted residents that pushed Dentonvoters to ban fracking in the first place. And now the oil and gas industry, through state lawmakers, has doubled down by showing every city in Texas that same contempt.”
By a 59-41 percent vote, including 70 percent of straight ticket Republican voters, the residents of Denton banned hydraulic fracturing within city limits. The ban was a last resort after more than five years of fruitlessly petitioning oil and gas companies, the city and the state for help. “By signing HB40 into law, Governor Abbott just declared that industry profits are more important than our health, our homes and our kids,” said Adam Briggle, president of the Denton Drilling Awareness Group and a leader in the Frack Free Denton effort. He continued, “The letter of Texas law now says no city can ‘effectively prevent an oil and gas operation from occurring,’ no matter the threat to families’ health and safety or damage to private property.”
The City of Denton is fighting a lawsuit brought against it by the oil and gas industry over its ordinance. Until HB40, attorneys for the city felt fairly confident their ordinance would stand. The Denton Drilling Awareness Group and Earthworks have intervened in the case in support of the city. They are represented by Earthjustice, attorneys from the Natural Resources Defense Counsel and the Texas law firm Brown & Hofmeister, LLP.
“The Texas courts have upheld a long tradition of local control, so the Governor and the Legislature took matters into their own hands. Now, they have capitulated to the greedy but powerful oil and gas industry at the expense of their own constituents’ health, well-being, and property rights,” said Earthjustice attorney Deborah Goldberg, who is co-counsel for the citizen groups and successfully defended the town of Dryden, New York, in a similar court case. “We have been proud to represent the proponents of Denton’s ban, and we know they will regroup and fight back against this legislative over-reach.”
“The people of Denton exercised their democratic right to keep a nasty industrial process out of their community–and now big oil and their friends in high places are steamrolling them, along with everyone else in Texas,” said NRDC attorney Dan Raichel, co-counsel for the citizen’s groups. “The interests of a powerful industry should never take priority over the health and safety of American families. Texans should be able to keep dangerous activities and chemicals away from their homes, schools, and hospitals—just as hundreds of other communities across the country have already done.”
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http://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/13/as_internal_docs_show_major_overreach
As Internal Docs Show Major Overreach, Why Is FBI Spying on Opponents of Keystone XL Pipeline?
A new report confirms for the first time that the FBI spied on activists in Texas who tried to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Documents from the FBI reveal it failed to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened its investigation, which was run from its Houston field office. The files document "substantial non-compliance" with Department of Justice rules. The Tar Sands Blockade mentioned in that report was one of the main groups targeted by the FBI. Agents in Houston office also told TransCanada they would share "pertinent intelligence regarding any threats" to the company in advance of protests. We are joined by Adam Federman, contributing editor to Earth Island Journal and co-author of the new investigation published by The Guardian, "Revealed: FBI violated its own rules while spying on Keystone XL opponents." In February, he also revealed how the FBI has recently pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington and Idaho for "little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A new report confirms for the first time that the FBI spied on activists in Texas who tried to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The report is based on FBI documents obtained by The Guardian and the Earth Island Journal. The documents also reveal that the FBI failed to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened its investigation, which was run from its Houston field office. The files document, quote, "substantial non-compliance" with Department of Justice rules. Much of the FBI’s surveillance took place between November of 2012 and June 2014.
AMY GOODMAN: The Tar Sands Blockade mentioned in the report was one of the main groups targeted by the FBI. Agents in Houston also told TransCanada they would share, quote, "pertinent intelligence regarding any threats" to the company in advance of protests.
For more, we are joined by Adam Federman, contributing editor to Earth Island Journal, co-author of this new investigation that was published by The Guardian. It’s headlined "Revealed: FBI Violated Its Own Rules While Spying on Keystone XL Opponents." In February, he also revealed how the FBI has recently pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington and Idaho for, quote, "little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations."
Adam Federman, thank you so much for joining us from Burlington, Vermont. Talk about this most recent exposé. How do you know the FBI was spying on those who are opposed to the Keystone XL?
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http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/05/texas-ban-on-fracking-bans/
Texas state legislature voted yesterday to ban fracking bans. Ever since the people of Denton, Texas voted to ban fracking last November, state lawmakers in cahoots with the oil and gas industry and the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, have attempted to strip municipalities like Denton of home rule authority to override the city’s ban.
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