Immigration Nation, Con't

In a battle 100% certain to be headed to the Supreme Court, Texas lawmakers have voted to allow state and local law enforcement to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants in contravention of, you know, federal law and the Constitution.

 

In a direct challenge to federal power over immigration, the Texas House on Thursday approved the creation of a state-level crime for entering the country from Mexico between ports of entry, allowing local police agencies to arrest and jail unauthorized migrants or order them back to Mexico.

The legislation had been called for by Gov. Greg Abbott in what would be a sharp escalation of his multibillion-dollar border security program, known as Operation Lone Star. The Texas House also approved an additional $1.5 billion for the state to use to construct its own barriers near the international boundary.

The arrest measure now returns to the Senate, which has already approved its own version, and then head to Mr. Abbott’s desk for his signature.

“It is a humane, logical and efficient approach,” Representative David Spiller, a Republican from west of Fort Worth, said in introducing his arrest bill before the vote. “There is nothing unfair about ordering someone back from where they came if they arrived here illegally.”

Emotions ran high during hours of arguments and motions on the House floor that stretched through the night and into Thursday morning, with Democrats objecting to what they said would be a new criminal enforcement regime that could end up inadvertently targeting Hispanic Texans. At one point, tempers flared as Republicans moved to halt amendments to the bill.

“My community is being attacked,” one Latino representative, Armando Walle, a Houston Democrat, told his Republican colleagues. “Y’all don’t understand,” he said. “It hurts us personally.”

For more than two years, Mr. Abbott and Republican lawmakers have been testing the boundaries of the state’s power to enact its own aggressive law enforcement policies in response to the surging number of migrants crossing into the state from Mexico.

But the creation of a criminal offense under state law — empowering Texas officers to arrest migrants, including those seeking asylum — went a step further into a realm of immigration enforcement that is typically reserved to the federal government.

The legislative move is likely to set up a consequential court fight over immigration and, for opponents of President Biden’s immigration policies, create a chance to revisit a 2012 Supreme Court case, originating in Arizona, that was decided 5 to 4 in favor of the federal government’s primary role in setting immigration policy.

 

Needless to say, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP are picking this fight on purpose. They want the ruling against Arizona's 2021 "Papers, please" law overturned so they can start arresting Latinos left and right in the state.

 

You'd also better believe that Arizona, Florida, Georgia, NC and other big red states will follow suit should the Roberts Court allow them to, with the goal of filling as many detention centers as possible.

This is going to get bad, folks. It may not end up in front of SCOTUS before the 2024 election, but it's still potentially a horrific situation, and the GOP does not care one bit.

Throwing The Book At Them

Yet another big school district in Florida is pulling books from school libraries in order to comply with Commissar Ron's order banning LGBTQ+ folks from existing. From Judd Legum's Substack, Public Information:

 

Librarians in public schools in Charlotte County, Florida, were instructed by the school district superintendent to remove all books with LGBTQ characters or themes from school and classroom libraries.

Charlotte County school librarians sought guidance from the school district about how to apply an expansion of the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, better known as the "Don't Say Gay" law, to all grades. "Are we removing books from any school or media center, Prek-12 if a character has, for example, two mothers or because there is a gay best friend or a main character is gay?" the librarians asked. Charlotte County Superintendent Mark Vianello answered, "Yes."

The guidance by Vianello and the school board's attorney, Michael McKinley, was obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFTRP) through a public records request and shared with Popular Information. FFTRP requested "electronic records of district and school decisions regarding classroom and library materials." In response, FFTRP received a document memorializing a July 24 conversation between Vianello and district librarians, known in Florida as media specialists.

The guidance made clear that all books with LGBTQ characters are to be removed even if the book contained no sexually explicit content. The librarians asked if they could retain books in school and classroom libraries with LGBTQ characters "as long as they do not have explicit sex scenes or sexual descriptions and are not approaching 'how to' manuals for how to be an LGBTQ+ person." Vianello responded, "No. Books with LBGTQ+ characters are not to be included in classroom libraries or school library media centers."

Vianello also says teachers must ensure that books with LGBTQ characters and themes do not enter the classroom, even if they are self-selected by students for silent reading. According to Vianello, books with "[t]hese characters and themes cannot exist."

The librarians were seeking guidance on how to interpret a revised version of The Principles of Professional Conduct for the Education Profession in Florida. The revised rules, issued by the Florida Department of Education earlier this year, expanded the restrictions imposed by the"Don't Say Gay" law. According to revised Rule 6A-10.081, educators in Florida "[s]hall not intentionally provide classroom instruction to students in prekindergarten through grade 8 on sexual orientation or gender identity." (A similar provision was included in a law Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed in May.) The revised rule also extends that prohibition through grade 12, except where explicitly required by state standards or as part of "a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend."

Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has insisted that allegations that his policies, including the "Don't Say Gay" law, are being used to ban a wide range of books is a "hoax." DeSantis claimed that the only books being removed from Florida libraries are "pornographic and inappropriate materials that have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students violate our state education standards." But in Charlotte County, DeSantis' policies are being used to justify purging all books with LGBTQ characters, even if there is no sexual content.

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for Charlotte County Schools told Popular Information that books with LGBTQ characters were removed from libraries because “there are elementary schools that utilize their school library media center as classrooms… [for] elective courses that our students are officially scheduled into and attend on a regular basis.” Therefore, the library “is considered a classroom setting.” As a result, “our school board attorney advises that we do not make books with these themes available in media centers that serve as classrooms since this would be considered ‘classroom instruction’ and such instruction and/or availability of these themes may not occur in PreK- grade 8.” The spokesperson acknowledged that “high school media centers are not designated as classrooms,” but books with LGBTQ characters were excluded anyway because “if a teacher were to bring a class of students to the media center and provide instruction, books with these themes cannot be included in that instructional time unless supported by the academic standards of that course of study.”

 

And as Chris Geidner reports, Texas's statewide school book ban law is now being allowed to take effect thanks to the 5th Circuit.

A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit quickly acted Monday to issue another administrative stay, allowing the state of Texas to enforce its new law establishing a book-ban regime in the state’s schools.

The law, passed earlier this year, had not been allowed to go into effect due to significant constitutional concerns from the lower court, meaning that Monday’s stay — though presented as “administrative” — altered the status of state law in Texas, putting a new law in effect for the first time with no reasoning and in a one-sentence order.

The extraordinary move — from Judges Jennifer Elrod (George W. Bush), Catharina Haynes (George W. Bush), and Dana Douglas (Biden) — came after U.S. District Judge Alan Albright, a Trump appointee, had temporarily prevented enforcement of the law just before its effective date of Sept. 1 and then, just one week ago, issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement, finding the law likely unconstitutional on several grounds.

Texas is appealing the Sept. 18 order from Albright. The state also, on Sept. 20, asked the appeals court for a stay pending appeal or, in the alternative, an administrative stay. The court granted an administrative stay on Monday, five days later (including a weekend).

Among other requirements, the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources (READER) Act, H.B. 900, requires private companies to create and produce lists of every book they wish to sell to public schools, determining which books are to be banned as “sexually explicit” and restricted as “sexually relevant.” The law then allows a state board to change those lists, with no appeal apparently available to the booksellers. The timeline for when the lists need to be submitted goes into next year, but, as the plaintiffs and district court explained, harms will accrue immediately. First, it’s not clear what school districts are supposed to do between the law going into effect and the lists being posted. And companies are certainly going to have difficulty selling books that could even possibly be covered by the new law to those schools in the meantime — particularly given that the law also requires booksellers to “recall” books previously sold that are later deemed to be banned.

Additionally, and as Albright explained in his decision last week, the state lacked answers to many basic questions about the law and its enforcement.

Nonetheless, on Monday, the appeals court said the state could go ahead and begin implementing the new law for now. Again, with no reasoning, and posed as an “administrative” action.

Remember, Donald Trump not being able to threaten witnesses and taint a jury pool with tirades against judges, prosecutors, and court officers violates the First Amendment, but a law forcing schools to pull books for the crime of existing LGBTQ+ characters or whatever bowdlerization Texas wants, with no appeal mind you, is fine, if not necessary.

Funny old world, huh.

Last Call For Paxton, Repaxtonated

As widely expected after Donald Trump made it clear earlier this week that any Texas state Republican senator who votes for AG Ken Paxton's removal would face political extermination, Paxton easily survived his Texas Senate impeachment trial and has been fully reinstated to office with the Texas House charges dismissed.

 

Impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was acquitted on 16 impeachment articles on Saturday, thwarting an effort to remove him from office over allegations of corruption.

"Attorney General Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr. is hereby, at this moment, reinstated to office," said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Republican president of the Senate who also presided over the trial.

While two Republican senators broke with their party to vote for conviction on some articles of impeachment, the vast majority of Paxton's party voted to acquit him following a two-week trial and a day of deliberations behind closed doors. Four impeachment articles that had been put on hold during the trial were dismissed immediately after the acquittal vote.

Paxton had been suspended without pay from his post after he was impeached in the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives in May by an overwhelming vote.

"The attorney general is excited and ready to get back to work, and that's what he's gonna do," said Paxton attorney Tony Buzbee.

 

Only two Republicans voted to remove Paxton on any of the 16 charges he faced, meaning he never got closer than 14 of the 21 votes needed to convict him on any of the charges. Nobody wanted to tangle with Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the armed Texas MAGA mob.

Paxton, who attended just two days of the trial and was not present to witness his exoneration, was characteristically defiant.

“The sham impeachment coordinated by the Biden Administration with liberal House Speaker Dade Phelan and his kangaroo court has cost taxpayers millions of dollars, disrupted the work of the Office of Attorney General and left a dark and permanent stain on the Texas House,” Paxton said in a statement. “The weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences is not only wrong, it is immoral and corrupt.”

The dramatic votes capped a two-week trial where a parade of witnesses, including former senior officials under Paxton, testified that the attorney general had repeatedly abused his office by helping his friend, struggling Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, investigate and harass his enemies, delay foreclosure sales of his properties and obtain confidential records on the police investigating him. In return, House impeachment managers said Paul paid to renovate Paxton’s Austin home and helped him carry out ­and cover up an extramarital affair with a former Senate aide.

In the end, senators were unpersuaded.

"This should have never happened," Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, told reporters outside the chamber. He criticized what he called a rushed and flawed investigation by the House.

But acquittal was not a foregone conclusion during the eight hours of deliberation, Sen. Royce West said. The Democrat from Dallas said some Republicans supported conviction but switched their votes when it became clear it did not have the required two-thirds support.

 

Retribution, I expect, will be swift for Texas House Republicans and the two Republican state senators who broke ranks. The real battle will be between Ken Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the coming years over Gov. Greg Abbott's job...if Abbott doesn't run for a record fourth term himself in 2026.

Ultimately though, Paxton's impeachment was meaningless. We'll see if the federal case against him goes anywhere, although it hasn't in years.

Last Call For The (Red) State Of (Blue) Cities

Texas Republicans have passed legislation that all but eliminates home rule for Texas cities, making nearly all municipal laws void in Democratic controlled cities and subject to GOP state legislative control instead.

A sweeping Texas bill stripping authority from cities passed the state Senate on Tuesday and is now headed to the governor’s desk.

House Bill 2127 takes large domains of municipal governing — from payday lending laws to regulations on rest breaks for construction workers to laws determining whether women can be discriminated against based on their hair — out of the hands of the state’s largely Democratic-run cities and shifts them to its Republican-controlled legislature.

According to the Austin American Statesman, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has been a vocal supporter of the bill.

Progressive critics argue the legislation — which one lawyer for Texas cities called “the Death Star” for local control — represents a new phase in the campaign by conservative state legislatures to curtail the power of blue-leaning cities.

Opponents of the bill include civil society groups like the AFL-CIO — and representatives of every major urban area in Texas, along with several minor ones.

They argue the shift in power it would enable would hamstring cities’ abilities to make policies to fit their unique circumstances.

“Where the state is silent, and it is silent on a lot — local governments step into that breach, to act on behalf of our shared constituents,” state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt (D) told the Senate on Tuesday.

“We should be doing our job rather than micromanaging theirs.”

But the bill’s Senate sponsor, state Sen. Brandon Creighton (R), said it was necessary to protect “job creators” from “cities and counties acting as lawmakers outside of their jurisdiction.”

Both the legislation’s sponsors and the principal trade group that backed it — the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) — have argued local regulation poses an existential threat to Texas businesses.

“As prices escalate, property taxes increase, and workers remain in short supply, small business owners are continuing to struggle in this economic environment,” said Annie Spilman, state director of the NFIB, in a statement earlier this month. “Arduous local ordinances, no matter how well-intended, exacerbate these challenges.”

 

And once again it's that businesses don't want to be forced to pay higher wages or to supply better benefits in larger cities.  They want to buy labor at well below the going rate and force workers to be miserable because there's no competitors willing to pay more and forcing even anything close to a living wage or standard benefits found in every other western country is an "arduous challenge" for the corporate class. 

In Texas, the second-biggest border state, the supply of cheap labor cannot be curtailed for any reason, either. Stripping protections provided by cities for workers has to go, you see.

We all float down here, Billy.

Last Call For Greg's Gone Wrong, Too

Not to be outdone by Florida making Black history illegal, Texas is making both Black and Latino history illegal, with new legislation that would ban Black and Latino studies courses and end diversity at Texas universities.

Latino and Black leaders in Texas pushed back on claims that diversity and inclusion hiring programs are illegal as the vast University of Texas System put a hold on such programs at its institutions and campuses.

Kevin Eltife, chairman of the system's board of regents, announced Wednesday that he was delaying new policies on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and launching a review of all of them. The announcement at a board meeting, with no discussion or vote, was reported first by The Austin American-Statesman.

Eltife, a former state senator appointed to the board by Abbott, also a Republican, said that within UT campuses “some DEI efforts have strayed from the original intent to now imposing requirements and actions that rightfully has raised concerns of our policy makers.”

No examples of DEI programs that have strayed were provided at the meeting or in response to an NBC News request.

Eltife’s stop on new policies follows a declaration by Abbott's chief of staff in a letter dated Feb. 4 to state agencies that DEI "has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others." The letter, first reported by The Texas Tribune and posted on Twitter by KHOU in Houston, went on to say that a state agency spending tax dollars to pay for DEI initiatives and resources connected with them is illegal.

That declaration from a higher education system of 13 institutions and more than 244,000 students is drawing pushback from Black and Latino lawmakers and organizations.

Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said DEI programs are set up through legal departments and are conservative in nature so as not to run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws.

"It is a complete misrepresentation to say that DEI programs are illegal and that they violate the Constitution or any statute, because they don't," said Bledsoe, who also is a founder of the Black and Brown Dialogue on Policy. The multiracial, cultural group seeks to confront what it says is a "growing threat of racism and policies meant to undermine our human dignity and humanity."

 

It's racist to teach Black American and Latino American history, you guys!

 

Of course the real reason is to get Black and Latino folks to leave the state, and destroy the culture and history of those who remain.

 

So that white folks aren't made "uncomfortable".  That's all that really matters.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

The next step after Republicans end affirmative action programs in colleges and universities with an expected Supreme Court ruling this summer is to end diversity in hiring and gutting the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, as Texas is not only ending diversity hiring in state government agencies, it's declaring diversity programs to be illegal, almost certainly giving SCOTUS the future case they'll need to destroy the EEOC for good. 

 

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office is warning state agency and public university leaders this week that the use of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — policies that support groups who have been historically underrepresented or discriminated against — is illegal in hiring.

In a memo written Monday and obtained by The Texas Tribune, Abbott’s chief of staff Gardner Pate told agency leaders that using DEI policies violates federal and state employment laws, and hiring cannot be based on factors “other than merit.”

Pate said DEI initiatives illegally discriminate against certain demographic groups — though he did not specify which ones he was talking about.

“The innocuous sounding notion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others,” Pate wrote.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a moniker used for policies developed to provide guidance in workplaces, government offices and college campuses intended to increase representation and foster an environment that emphasizes fair treatment to groups that have historically faced discrimination. DEI policies can include resources for underrepresented groups, which can include people with disabilities, LGBTQ people and veterans. In hiring, it can include setting diversity goals or setting thresholds to ensure that a certain number of diverse candidates are interviewed. At universities, DEI offices are often focused on helping students of color or nontraditional students stay in school and graduate.

The governor’s directive represents the latest effort by Republican leaders fighting back against policies and academic disciplines that Republicans nationwide have deemed “woke.” DEI, along with critical race theory, has become a target of conservatives who argue that white people are being unfairly treated or characterized in schools and workplaces.

“Rebranding this employment discrimination as ‘DEI’ doesn’t make the practice any less illegal,” Pate wrote. “Further, when a state agency spends taxpayer dollars to fund offices, departments, or employee positions dedicated to promoting forbidden DEI initiatives, such actions are also inconsistent with the law.”

 

Texas is certainly going to get the pants sued off them over this, and that's exactly what they want. I expect other red states to do the same in the months ahead, ending diversity and inclusion efforts for private employers as well.

They're going to gut the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, just like they have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. And once again, doing this during Black History Month sends a clear message to everyone.

The Night The Lights Went Out In Texas, Con't

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott keeps bragging about how he's "fixed" the state's independent power grid, but nothing could be further from the truth as the fourth-largest city in the US is under a boil water notice today after power went out at a Houston city water treatment plant.

 

A boil water notice has been issued for the City of Houston's main water system after a water treatment plant experienced a power outage Sunday morning. City officials say it's going to be several more hours before the problem gets resolved.

Houston Water Director Yvonne Williams Forrest said she thinks it could take until Tuesday morning for the notice to be lifted.

On Sunday at 10:30 a.m., the water pressure dropped below the city's required minimum of 20 PSI due to a power outage at the East Water Purification Plant, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Forrest said the city's pressure system was never at zero, just below the regulatory limit. That pressure is important because it prevents anything from infiltrating the water system.

Over 2.3 million people are said to be impacted by this notice, which was sent out six hours after the initial outage.

The timeline of this issue has left many people questioning why it took so long for the notice to be issued.

"This is not an instantaneous automatic notice. Just because the power went out, doesn't mean the power went out in the system. We had to verify that the pressure drop was real and reach out to TCEQ. There are a number of steps to take before issuing a boil water notice," Forrest said.

City officials said they are testing the water across the city, collecting samples that will be submitted to the state.

If you get your water from the City of Houston, you are being urged to boil tap water for at least two minutes before consumption. That includes if you're making coffee.

 

So more than two million Houston residents under a boil water notice, schools closed, I can't imagine many restaurants will be open today either in Houston. But this is going to affect hospitals, clinics, medical practices, nursing homes, day care centers, and a lot more too.  Expect more of this and red states take Joe Biden's infrastructure aid package and use it to pay for more tax cuts to starve water and power repairs and replacements.

Oh, and Jackson, Mississippi went through this for three solid months, with the city's water treatment plant only now functioning again safely and the state of emergency there lifted only last week with GOP Gov. Tate Reeves blaming the city, and the city blaming Gov. Reeves.

Don't expect red states to take care of their cities or their citizens, folks. Not under GOP control. This is Republican "government" in a nutshell, broken water and power systems and no money to fix it because it's all being used for sports stadiums and tax cuts for the rich.

You're increasingly on your own.

Sunday Long Read: Austin's City Limits

The self-proclaimed Weirdest City in Texas has gone full bougie thanks to explosive population growth, tech giants, and red state exurban pressure and residents aren't just lamenting the Austin of ten years ago, they're leaving the state altogether.

On a late summer evening, friends of John Stettin gathered at a bar called Kitty Cohen’s in East Austin to say good-bye. A carrot cake with “Good Luck” written in orange icing softened in the heat, but as far as they were concerned, the occasion was his birthday. “You can’t say, ‘Happy going away!’” said Jeff, his best friend, greeting him with a hug. “We’re just not happy. We’re all very sad about it.” Good-bye parties are inherently not that fun. They’re even less fun when they’re driven by a far-right takeover of the state government.

“Tell him he can’t leave,” whispered a woman seated under an umbrella. “There are too many Republicans.”

To hear Stettin tell it, that is precisely why he is moving out of what Rick Perry once described as the “blueberry in the tomato soup,” a predominantly Democratic city full of liberal expats like himself seeking progressive politics and an urban lifestyle at a red-state cost-of-living discount. “It was easy to just be in Never Neverland, floating with a bunch of other transplants having a good time,” said Stettin, who relocated from Dallas to Austin five years ago.

But then 2020 happened. As the pandemic raged, Governor Greg Abbott banned municipalities including Austin from implementing COVID measures such as mask mandates. The following year, amid a brutal winter storm, the state’s electric grid failed, killing hundreds and leaving millions freezing in the dark, and it has yet to be fixed. That summer, Abbott codified permitless carry and further restricted voting access. This past February, he ordered investigations into the parents of trans children for child abuse. By June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas was ten months ahead, having already effectively banned abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest and topped it with a $10,000 reward for informants.

“It’s like how a frog boils one degree at a time,” Stettin said. “They trigger-banned all abortion and they’re offering a bounty! What more do you need if you are a remotely liberal person to get the fuck out of here?” His destination was Massachusetts. “At least if I’m going to get into an argument with a guy in Boston,” he said, “he’s probably not carrying an AR-15 in his trunk.”

This summer, that anxiety pervaded a stratum of liberal Austin, namely women, LGBTQ+ folks, parents, and people of color who fear a future in Texas and have the means to escape. The overturning of Roe seemed to remove the last obstacle in the state’s march to the far right, which is likely to be cemented in the upcoming election where Beto O’Rourke is way behind Abbott. While the Democratic mayor and the liberal city council institute token measures such as decriminalizing abortion, it’s cold comfort. One 25-year-old woman said she had her tubes tied, fearing the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. One couple may relocate to the Northeast to carry out their pregnancy. Some job candidates are refusing to relocate. At Stettin’s party, his friend Jeff swiped open his phone to a note entitled “New Austin Cities” — a list of places that are what Austin used to be to him before he moved here from New York. It read, “Pittsburgh, Durham, Boise, Columbus, Jackson Hole, Chattanooga. Factors: Climate change, demographics, economy, location, taxes, nature, weather.” He plans to stick it out at least for now. “Global warming in the next ten years,” he said. “That’s gonna be fucking real.”

The alarm was acute among transplants. Bri Jenkins is moving home to Hamden, Connecticut, after six years working with various nonprofits in Austin. “It could be three weeks before I saw another Black person, and that was such a mindfuck for me,” she recalled feeling when she first moved to Austin. After a far-right gunman killed 23 people in El Paso in 2019, she stopped going to parades. “Too many vantage points,” she said. “White men with guns and Army fatigues are protected, but people who are peacefully protesting … are always bombarded by the police,” she said, referring to the police crackdowns during 2020’s George Floyd protests. As a queer woman, she fears for the fate of gay rights, which Senator Ted Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton have expressed could be next. “I just want to be back in a state that isn’t trying to strip away all of my rights at every turn,” she said.

However many people leave, it will be small in comparison with how many keep coming. Austin is the fastest-growing metro in the U.S., and its population has increased by one-third over the past decade, with people from across Texas and the nation lured to the hippie-cowboy capital by tech jobs. In some cases, this explosive growth has bred at least as much discontent as the shifting political landscape. What was once seen as an affordable, creative haven is now a runaway boomtown, pricing out most of whatever was left of Austin’s proclaimed weirdness and drawing frequent comparisons to San Francisco. In the past year, rent soared more than 20 percent, and the median home price rose almost as much over the same period (before home prices dropped thanks to interest-rate hikes). The airport has new direct flights to Vail, Colorado, and Texas’s first Soho House opened there last year. Elon Musk has built a $1.1 billion “gigafactory” nearby, turning “Tesla” into shorthand among some to describe the city’s bougification. “There’s nothing weird about Austin,” said one Soho House patron, who recently flew home to California for an abortion. “Lululemon is everywhere.”

 

And of course, driving out all the impure, inhuman communist scum out of our Godly American Christian Red State is exactly what the plan has been. It's all related, the dehumanization of the "other", Christianity as a cudgel, bigotry and hatred, racist redlining, it's all part of the same plan, to turn entire states into white supremacist enclaves.

It's working.

Last Call For Dispatches From Gunmerica

Open, permitless carry of firearms has been legal in Texas for over a year now, and the results are pretty scary. Violent crime and shootings are up, and homicide deaths have exploded.

Tony Earls hung his head before a row of television cameras, staring down, his life upended. Days before, Mr. Earls had pulled out his handgun and opened fire, hoping to strike a man who had just robbed him and his wife at an A.T.M. in Houston.

Instead, he struck Arlene Alvarez, a 9-year-old girl seated in a passing pickup, killing her.

“Is Mr. Earls licensed to carry?” a reporter asked during the February news conference, in which his lawyer spoke for him.

He didn’t need one, the lawyer replied. “Everything about that situation, we believe and contend, was justified under Texas law.” A grand jury later agreed, declining to indict Mr. Earls for any crime.

The shooting was part of what many sheriffs, police leaders and district attorneys in urban areas of Texas say has been an increase in people carrying weapons and in spur-of-the-moment gunfire in the year since the state began allowing most adults 21 or over to carry a handgun without a license.

At the same time, mainly in rural counties, other sheriffs said they had seen little change, and proponents of gun rights said more people lawfully carrying guns could be part of why shootings have declined in some parts of the state.

Far from an outlier, Texas, with its new law, joined what has been an expanding effort to remove nearly all restrictions on carrying handguns. When Alabama’s “permitless carry” law goes into effect in January, half of the states in the nation, from Maine to Arizona, will not require a license to carry a handgun.

The state-by-state legislative push has coincided with a federal judiciary that has increasingly ruled in favor of carrying guns and against state efforts to regulate them.

But Texas is the most populous state to do away with handgun permit requirements. Five of the nation’s 15 biggest cities are in Texas, making the permitless approach to handguns a new fact of life in urban areas to an extent not seen in other states.

In the border town of Eagle Pass, drunken arguments have flared into shootings. In El Paso, revelers who legally bring their guns to parties have opened fire to stop fights. In and around Houston, prosecutors have received a growing stream of cases involving guns brandished or fired over parking spots, bad driving, loud music and love triangles.

“It seems like now there’s been a tipping point where just everybody is armed,” said Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of Harris County, which includes Houston.

No statewide shooting statistics have been released since the law went into effect last September. After a particularly violent 2021 in many parts of the state, the picture of crime in Texas has been mixed this year, with homicides and assaults up in some places and down in others.

But what has been clear is that far fewer people are getting new licenses for handguns even as many in law enforcement say the number of guns they encounter on the street has been increasing.

Big city police departments and major law enforcement groups opposed the new handgun law when it came before the State Legislature last spring, worried in part about the loss of training requirements necessary for a permit and more dangers for officers.

But gun rights proponents prevailed in the Republican-dominated Capitol, arguing that Texans should not need the state’s permission to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

Recent debates over gun laws in Texas have not been limited to handgun licensing. After the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, gun control advocates have pushed to raise the age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle. And after the Supreme Court struck down New York’s restrictive licensing program, a federal court in Texas found that a state law barring adults under 21 from carrying a handgun was unconstitutional. Gov. Greg Abbott has suggested he agreed, even as the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the state police, is appealing.

 

As the article says, 24 US states now offer open, permitless carry, with Alabama joining those states in January. America is awash in firearms, with more guns than people in the US. Everyone is getting armed, because everyone else is getting armed.

 

It's insanity. The rest of the world must think we're mad, and that we constitute a threat to them. 

At some point, the rest of the planet is going to do something about us, if only for their own survival.

 

Doing The Immigration Shuffle

As Steve M. points out, the cruelty *is* the point in GOP governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott illegally kidnapping undocumented immigrants from their states and shipping them to blue state sanctuary cities as a wildly awful MAGA campaign stunt version of "reverse freedom rides", it's just not directly being cruel to the immigrants.

 

DeSantis, and Greg Abbott before him, haven't been separating parents from children. They haven't been shooting or beating or caging the immigrants. (They aren't legally allowed to, obviously, but I'm not sure they're allowed to do what they're doing, either.) They haven't sent them to parts of the country that are full of armed white supremacists who might terrorize them and kill them.

I'm not saying that DeSantis and Abbott are nice people. They're terrible people. But while forcibly relocating the immigrants is cruel, it's not maximally cruel. And they're being sent to places where they're greeted with compassion and provided with some social services.

Why aren't DeSantis and Abbott being maximally cruel to these immigrants? Because to them, and to their national audience of right-wing rage monsters, this isn't about the immigrants.

It's about us.

Every time DeSantis, Abbott, and their rooting section talk about these stunt shipment of human beings, what makes them slaver is not the idea that the immigrants will suffer, but that we will suffer, in our posh liberal enclaves. They exult every time a mayor or governor expresses resentment or declares a state of emergency. We're the ones DeSantis and Abbott want to treat with cruelty. We're the ones they want to hear howl.

This means, obviously that the immigrants themselves are reduced to weapons used against us. DeSantis and Abbott care no more about them than a rock thrower cares about the feelings of a rock. This is sociopathic indifference to the humanity of the immigrants. But we're the enemy they really want to hurt right now.

 

You have to remember that MAGA jackasses like DeSantis and Abbott and the FOX News Cargo Cult believe that undocumented immigrants are the primary source of crime, drugs, and disease in their states. On top of all that, dealing with immigrants also cost gigantic amounts of state taxpayer dollars over decades, and that immigrants are a huge drain on resources.

There a few better wins in the MAGA playbook than shipping "filthy criminal junkie illegals" to "rich, liberal enclaves" in blue states.  Enough of these busloads and planeloads and these sanctuary cities will collapse into misery, you see. That's what the MAGA CHUDs want to see. Sending immigrants to blue states will eventually cause liberals to turn against immigrants and start adopting Republican immigration policies.

Enough of this, and they get blue states to agree to Build The Wall, and these states will become newly converted red states, and MAGA forever.

At the very least, FOX News will cover every bus, plane, train, dirigible, catapult, and caravan of this behavior where immigration is "weaponized" like this. So they'll keep doing it, with more immigrants, and more often.

"But isn't this illegal?"

Yes, it is. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is leading that charge, and believe me, while it's necessary to do, it also means DeSantis and Abbott will have a national fight over immigration right before midterms, which is what they want. They want voters to focus on that, and not abortion, Trump's coming indictments, or Biden's rapidly improving numbers.

This is the plan to put Republicans in charge of Congress.

It may very well work.

Last Call For A Texas-Sized Burial

The release of several years' worth of Texas health data on maternal mortality and the effects of the state's "bounty hunter" abortion ban will be pushed back until 2025, well after both midterm and presidential elections.

 

Texas health officials have missed a key window to complete the state’s first major updated count of pregnancy related deaths in nearly a decade, saying the findings will now be released next summer, most likely after the Legislature’s biennial session.

The delay, disclosed earlier this month by the Department of State Health Services, means lawmakers won’t likely be able to use the analysis, covering deaths from 2019, until the 2025 legislative cycle. The most recent state-level data available is nine years old.

In a hearing this month with the state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, DSHS commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt said the agency wanted to better align its methodology with that of other states, and that there hadn’t been enough staff and money to finish the review for a scheduled Sept. 1 release.

“The information we provide is not easily understood, and not easily and readily comparable to what goes on in other states,” Hellerstedt told the committee. “And the fact it isn’t easily understood or easily comparable in my mind leaves room for a great deal of misunderstanding about what the data really means.”

In a statement, DSHS spokesman Chris Van Deusen said the agency is reviewing its “internal processes” to try to develop more timely data.

“I expect we’ll be having conversations with legislators about what could be done to speed up the lengthy review process,” he said.

The setback comes four months before the start of the legislative session and two months before the midterm election, which has been dominated in part by the state’s new Republican-led abortion ban. Those restrictions have placed more scrutiny on the state’s maternal mortality rate, which is among the 10 highest in the country, according to national estimates that track pregnancy-related complications while pregnant or within a year of giving birth.

“There are a lot of us that want to know whether or not pregnancy in Texas is a death sentence,” said state Rep. Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat and member of the Texas Women’s Health Caucus. “If we’ve got a higher rate of maternal mortality, we sure want to figure it out. You can’t figure it out if somebody’s sitting on the numbers, and that’s my worry.” 

Like in other states, maternal outcomes in Texas are worse for Black women, who have died at about three times the rate of non-black women. This year’s findings were expected to drill further into the causes behind those disparities.

Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Houston Democrat who has described going through her own dangerous birthing experience, said the data is critical for understanding the role cesarean sections play in maternal deaths and whether implicit bias is playing a factor in the quality of maternal care for Black women.

“There is so much to unpack from the data,” Thierry said, adding that “no woman who chooses life should have to do so in exchange for their own.”

Members of the state’s maternal mortality committee, which compiles the official report, said they were disappointed by the decision to hold the preliminary findings.

“(We) do the work to honor the lives of women who lost their lives, and families that are forever impacted by the loss of a mother,” said Dr. Carla Ortique, the committee chair. “So there’s disappointment on both fronts: that we’re not honoring those women and families, and that we may be negatively impacting efforts to improve maternal health outcomes in our state.”

 

Texas won't release this data because a preliminary study earlier this year found the state's abortion ban means twice as many women are dying in childbirth. 

This is happening all over the Gilead states.

For women of color, the mortality rate is most likely far higher than just doubling.

Texas Republicans want Black and brown women dead.

Full stop.

Abbott, Elementary Con't

First-term Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott, busy reducing women to second-class citizens, running a third-world power grid, covering up for a fourth-grade police force, giving kids a fifth-rate education and with his sixth sense on immigration an absolute failure, is all shaping up to give Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke a seventh heaven of a chance in November.

One of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The revival of a 1920s ban on abortion. The country’s worst episode of migrant death in recent memory. And an electrical grid, which failed during bitter cold, now straining under soaring heat.

The unrelenting succession of death and difficulty facing Texans over the last two months has soured them on the direction of the state, hurting Gov. Greg Abbott and making the race for governor perhaps the most competitive since Democrats last held that office in the 1990s.

Polls have shown a tightening, single-digit contest between Mr. Abbott, the two-term incumbent, and his ubiquitous Democratic challenger, the former congressman Beto O’Rourke. Mr. O’Rourke is now raising more campaign cash than Mr. Abbott — $27.6 million to $24.9 million in the last filing — in a race that is likely to be among the most expensive of 2022.

Suddenly, improbably, perhaps unwisely, Texas Democrats are again daring to think — as they have in many recent election years — that maybe this could be the year.

“It seems like some the worst things that are happening in this country have their roots in Texas,” said James Talarico, a Democratic state representative from north of Austin. “We’re seeing a renewed fighting spirit.”

At the same time, the winds of national discontent are whipping hard in the other direction, against Democrats. Texans, like many Americans, have felt the strain of rising inflation and have a low opinion of President Biden. Unlike four years ago, when Mr. O’Rourke challenged Senator Ted Cruz and nearly won during a midterm referendum on President Donald J. Trump that lifted Democrats, now it is Republicans who are animated by animus toward the White House and poised to make gains in state races.

But in recent weeks there has been a perceptible shift in Texas, as registered in several public polls and some internal campaign surveys, after the school shooting in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that brought back into force a 1925 law banning all abortions except when the woman’s life is at risk.

“Dobbs at the margins has hurt Republicans in Texas. Uvalde at the margins has hurt Republicans in Texas. The grid has hurt Republicans in Texas,” said Mark P. Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University who helped conduct one recent poll. “Biden and inflation have been their saving grace.”

Most voters polled did not rank guns or abortion among their top issues in the recent survey, by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, but many of Mr. O’Rourke’s supporters did, suggesting the issues could help to energize his voters, Mr. Jones said.

And the issue of gun control was a top concern among another group that Republicans have been fighting hard to win away from Democrats: Hispanic women.

A separate poll, conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and released this month, showed 59 percent of respondents thought Texas was on the “wrong track,” the highest number in more than a decade of asking that question. Another, from Quinnipiac University, found Mr. O’Rourke within 5 percentage points of the governor.

 

I think Abbott has fouled up so badly that Beto has a real chance, and I think this race is only going to get closer.

 

We'll see.

Image

A Border Line Tragedy

Some 50 migrant workers were found dead in the back of a semitruck in San Antonio, and Republicans are falling all over themselves blaming Biden.

Fifty migrants are dead after they and others were found in sweltering conditions in a semitruck in San Antonio, a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson said Tuesday.

The death toll, which the city's fire chief had given Monday as 46, includes migrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, according to a federal law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The discovery came as US federal authorities have launched what they described as an "unprecedented" operation to disrupt human smuggling networks amid an influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border.

"An alleged human smuggling event" was alerted by San Antonio police to the US Department of Homeland Security's investigation unit, which is leading the probe, an ICE spokesperson said Monday. The incident appears to be among the most deadly in recent years for migrants near the southern border.
Three people detained away from the trailer site are in police custody, though their connection to the situation is unclear, Police Chief Bill McManus said at a news conference Monday night.

Authorities were alerted to the scene just before 6 p.m., when a worker in a nearby building heard a cry for help, McManus said. The worker found a trailer with doors partially opened and saw people deceased inside, he said.

Forty-eight people died on the scene, and two died at hospitals, the federal law enforcement official told CNN on Tuesday, noting the toll is preliminary.

Sixteen people -- 12 adults and four children -- were taken alive and conscious to medical facilities, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said at Monday night's news conference.

 

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott could barely contain his glee at being handed a new campaign commercial. 

 

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday night quickly blamed President Biden for the deaths of at least 46 people found in the back of an 18-wheeler in San Antonio.

“These deaths are on Biden,” Abbott tweeted. “They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”

Reaction to the tweet was fast and furious.

“We don’t need your partisan political bs,” tweeted the Rev. Chuck Currie, a minister in the United Church of Christ (UCC). “What the United States needs is comprehensive immigration reform. But the GOP keeps standing in the way.”

The abandoned tractor-trailer was found near Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, and three people were taken into custody, authorities said.

Abbott has made immigration a focal point of his reelection campaign; the Republican Party has long blamed Biden for the nation’s immigration ills.

 

It's always the same. Republicans break things, Democrats draft legislation to fix it, Republicans block any and all legislation that might improve anything, and then blame Democrats for it. Immigration and border enforcement is no different.

 

And that's not accounting for the decades of Republicans looking the other way on exploiting immigrants as unpaid and underpaid labor.

 

Pendejos.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

As President Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden visit Uvalde, Texas today in the wake of last week's deadly school shooting, the Justice Department says it will investigate the conduct of the local police response to the attack, which by all indications was a complete failure that directly contributed to the deaths.

The critical incident review, requested by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, will include a report on law enforcement actions on May 24 — the day of shooting. The report will be conducted by the department's Office of Community Oriented Policing.

“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events," said Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley.

“As with prior Justice Department after-action reviews of mass shootings and other critical incidents, this assessment will be fair, transparent, and independent."

Local police have admitted to a number of failures in responding to the shooting that left 21 people, including 19 children, dead.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said Friday that police made the "wrong decision" by waiting to confront the shooter.

“There were plenty of officers to do what needed to be done, with one exception, is that the incident commander inside believed he needed more equipment and more officers to do a tactical breach at that time," McCraw said. “From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. There’s no excuse for that.”

 

By all accounts, the Uvalde response team refused to go into the building because they already thought the kids were dead, and that there was no reason to rush to risk their lives in a shootout that was now a hostage situation.  Of course, that was 100% nonsense as 911 calls were still coming from kids in the school building for 40 minutes.

 

The reality is cops are generally bullies, and all bullies are cowards deep down. They were afraid of an 18-year-old with an AR-15 who had shown he was willing to kill with it, and frankly that's the best argument yet that "police were too scared to go after the shooter given his firepower" for an assault weapons ban.

 

Again, three big things here, separate but related.

 

One, it's easier to get an AR-15 in Texas than to vote. Texas has one of the lowest Medicaid coverage rates for mental illness in America, less than 10%. The shooter should have been red flagged, the resources should have been there to prevent this, but he walked into the local gun store, got the rifle, got the ammo, and killed 21 people with it, 19 of them children.

Two, police lied to the press open-faced in the first 24-48 hours and the press believed them. The shooter "was engaged" and "had body armor", someone the Uvalde police were unable to stop despite training, because he was too much of an armed killer. None of that was true either, and it was only after parents of the victims were allowed to tell their stories that it became clear that Gov. Abbott and Texas Republicans were all helping to cover up this failure.

Three, Sen. Mitch McConnell is already plotting to blame the failure of any new legislation on Democrats. The fix is already in as Greg Sargent reminds us.

We’ve seen this before. When the House impeached Donald Trump over the violent Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt, McConnell signaled openness to convicting Trump. This produced headlines proclaiming “McConnell open to convicting Trump in impeachment trial.”

But in the end he voted to acquit Trump, as was surely his intention all along. Then as now, he got headlines advertising his reasonableness at exactly the moment when public emotions (over the attack on the Capitol) were at their height.

Any basic reading of McConnell’s incentives implies that this is likely to happen again. Killing a deal on gun control avoids the risk of a backlash from the Republican base, which might recoil at any deal as an unconscionable betrayal.

McConnell also knows that the Democratic base is frustrated with their leaders, in general and on this issue in particular. Congressional failure on guns could demobilize that base, making them more likely to stay home in November in disgust, boosting GOP chances.

We should offer a caveat. It’s perfectly possible that this time McConnell will decide a deal is more in his interests than failure is. He might calculate that the public’s horror over this shooting is so deep that being part of a bipartisan solution could give Republicans more benefit in the midterms than failure would.

After all, there are times that McConnell calculates that allowing bipartisanship to happen is better for him and Republicans politically, such as when the infrastructure bill passed last year.

And in this case, any deal will likely be pretty modest. As Murphy has said, such a compromise might combine a “red-flag” law with a proposal to close a loophole that allows some sellers to avoid performing background checks. That would fall well short of universal background checks, though still worth doing.

So maybe McConnell will decide that this is so modest that it carries more upside than downside. On the other hand, even if Republicans are feeling extra pressure to act, remember what happened after the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children in 2012: Senators reached a bipartisan deal seriously beefing up background checks. It had overwhelming public support. It fell to a GOP filibuster, led by ... McConnell.

The core point here is that McConnell’s calculation of what’s in Republicans’ naked political interests will carry the day either way. Substance will be largely irrelevant.

 

So no, I don't expect this time to be different, and the next school shooting will also be a national tragedy, and the next one, and the next...

 

Welcome to Gunmerica.

Last Call For The Night The Lights Went Out In Texas, Con't

Texas's third-world power grid can't keep up with demand as summer heat approaches, and instead of dying from freezing cold and no electricity to run water pumps, you can now die in sweltering heat with no cooling.

The operator of Texas' power grid asked residents to conserve electricity Friday after six power plants went offline amid soaring temperatures.

Brad Jones, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said in a statement that the company had lost roughly 2,900 megawatts of electricity — or enough to power nearly 600,000 homes, the Texas Tribune reported.

Jones referenced the unseasonably hot weather, saying it was driving the demand for power across the state. Temperatures approaching 100 degrees were forecast from Austin to Dallas over the weekend and into next week.

Jones did not say why the plants went offline, and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening.

The executive asked customers to set their thermostats to 78 degrees and avoid using large appliances in the afternoon and early evening.

The non-profit energy organization, which manages power for 90 percent of Texas' electrical grid, faced blistering criticism last year after blackouts left millions without power for days during subfreezing temperatures.

 

And yes, the state's power grid is still unfixed and completely vulnerable to total collapse to the next winter disaster, but the main issue of deregulation exists in the summer too.

The main Texas grid is an island, not connected to the country’s two major power grids. That is by design, the result of state leaders’ actions decades ago to avoid federal regulation and encourage free-market competition. Multiple state agencies, as well as a nonprofit organization, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, govern the grid’s operations, writing rules based on laws passed by state legislators.

The legislators responded to February’s disaster by passing measures to improve the power system’s preparedness for winter. They established weatherization mandates but left it to state regulators to implement them.

 

And they have done precisely none of that, meaning Texans will have to pay potentially thousands of dollars for power when the demand spikes over this summer.

Again.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

I do so hate being right about things like this.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that Texas would consider challenging a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to offer free public education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants.

"Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler versus Doe," Abbott said, speaking during an appearance on the Joe Pags show, a conservative radio talk show. "And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue. ... I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago."

The remarks came days after a leaked draft of a forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court opinion revealed that a majority of justices are poised to revoke Roe v. Wade, the landmark case establishing the right to abortion.

More:Abortion would be illegal in Texas if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

Although the court has yet to officially issue a ruling in the case, civil rights advocates have raised concerns that the court's conservative majority might be amenable to other attempts to overturn established precedent, including those related to LGBTQ rights and interracial marriage.

Abbott raised the possibility of challenging the ruling on education during a discussion about border security, after Pagliarulo asked whether the state could take steps to reduce the "burden" of educating the children of undocumented migrants living in Texas.

There are of course of possible outcomes from this when it gets to SCOTUS just in time for the 2024 election season, I figure:

 

1. SCOTUS doesn't touch it and refuses to grant cert,
2. SCOTUS rules to uphold Plyler in its entirely,
3. SCOTUS upholds Plyler but allows states to restrict funding for undocumented kids,
4. SCOTUS says Texas doesn't have to provide education for undocumented kids but does for citizens,
5. SCOTUS Texas doesn't have to provide education for kids at all and states can decide on it,
6. SCOTUS says states can decide what services, if any, for undocumented people at all.

 

One and two, well. Probably not. Abbott wouldn't be doing this or even bringing this up if he didn't have a good chance at winning this, because then it becomes a huge landmine for his 2024 hopes (Although one allows him to blame the court and come back for another bite at the apple.) 

 

Numbers 3, 4, 5, under the Alito Roe logic, then becomes an opinion where Alito/Thomas/Evil is begging for a case to then get to 6. 

And six, well, six is the end of a lot of things involving undocumented folk being here at all.

Point is, anyone who thought Repu9blicans would stop at Roe clearly has not been paying attention to the last, I dunno, 40? years. Alito's opinion now allows states like Texas and Florida to get a head start on legal bullshit they want to see gone in the next term or two, yet another point in the column of "It was leaked by the right."

We'll see, as always.

Border Line Fascism, Con't

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott sees his path to the White House going over the corpses of women needing abortions and immigrants in a culture war defending white "Christian" ethno-nationalism, and now he's dropping the pretense of war on Brown People and looking to make it official.

For the past year, Mr. Abbott has transformed an unceasing flow of migrants over the border into a potent political message, seizing the role of defending the country from unauthorized migration as he runs for a third term in November. His aggressive posture has done little to stem the tide and also exposed him to fierce criticism that he is using his authority to meddle in a policy area that belongs to the federal government. Still, his efforts to tighten border security and harden Texas’ 1,254-mile frontier have helped Mr. Abbott, a Republican, hold off challenges from his right and made the lawyerly governor into a regular on Fox News.

Now Mr. Abbott is weighing whether to invoke actual war powers to seize much broader state authority on the border. He could do so, advocates inside and outside his administration argue, by officially declaring an “invasion” to comply with a clause in the U.S. Constitution that says states cannot engage in war except when “actually invaded.”

Top lawyers for Mr. Abbott and for the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, met this month to debate the move, which would put the state in a head-on collision with the federal government by allowing state police to arrest and deport migrants, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Mr. Abbott says he remains open to the approach, but he has expressed concern about unintended consequences.

“If we do use this strategy, it could expose law enforcement in the state of Texas to being prosecuted,” Mr. Abbott said during a recent news conference. But, he added: “Is it something we’re looking into? Yes.”

Already, the governor has mobilized thousands of National Guard troops to sit at border posts, and ordered safety inspections of trucks coming from Mexico, disrupting international trade. He has overseen construction of 20 miles of new border fencing, repurposed certain state prisons to hold migrants charged with trespassing, poured money into border towns for law enforcement and paid for buses to take willing migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C.

The Biden administration has been dismissive of Mr. Abbott’s actions on the border, at times calling them a “political stunt,” and has not taken steps to intervene, despite calls from Texas Democrats to do so. Any attempt by Texas to enforce federal immigration laws would almost certainly end up in court.

Even as Mr. Abbott has directed more than $3 billion to border security, and approved an additional $500 million on Friday, he has little to show for it beyond drug seizures and arrest figures. The overlapping state actions have not held back the rush of arrivals.

Federal agents recorded nearly 129,000 crossings into Texas in March, about 11,000 more than during the same month last year, when Mr. Abbott began the effort known as Operation Lone Star. The biggest increase occurred in an area of the border that includes Eagle Pass, a sun-faded city of 28,000 people, numerous stray cats and dogs and few resources to spare.

Costs have been mounting. Just maintaining the National Guard deployment through the summer will require another $531 million, state officials said this month. A 22-year-old soldier assigned to the mission drowned last week while attempting to rescue two migrants in swift water.

And now officials in Texas are bracing for an even larger influx of migrants, who are expected to come when the Biden administration ends a pandemic policy of turning back many asylum seekers under the public health rule known as Title 42.

Across from Eagle Pass in the Mexican city of Piedras Negras, large numbers of migrants are awaiting the policy change, ready to cross. Many others are not waiting.

“What’s most important is prevention,” Steven C. McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said. “And we’ve got a ways to go.”

 

At some point this summer, Abbott is going to make good on this threat to militarize the state and seize emergency war powers, and then the raids and mass incarcerations and deportations will begin as Texans are encouraged to rat out undocumented neighbors and friends with a bounty system similar to that of women getting abortions.

 

Now, we all know that Abbott being "tough" on border security is a con job, the feds are stopping drugs and trafficking but he gets to go on FOX and say they're a failure for not stopping 100% of it. He's also learned that if he disrupts the border or even closes it for a worth period of time as he did last month, he can cost America billions per day.

Now imagine him drafting state police, Texas Rangers, and the Texas National Guard to round up, imprison, and deport undocumented immigrants carte blanche. You want to talk about fear?

Do you want to bet that the Roberts Court will stop this? Do you want to bet that the Biden Administration will stop this? Because I don't think either will be able to.

Abbott's going to make good on this threat, and all the mass incarceration infrastructure that was put in place under Trump is going to get used spectacularly this summer.

I hope I'm wrong on this.

I don't think I will be.

A Border Line Jackass

Even Texas Republicans are starting to point the finger at GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, whose week-long pre-Easter truck inspection border stunt cost the state of Texas billions of dollars.

Gov. Greg Abbott increasing inspections of commercial trucks entering from Mexico in the hopes of staunching illegal smuggling activity resulted in zero migrants detentions or illegal drug seizures, despite allegedly costing the Lone Star State billions of dollars.

Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller stated in an email to supporters this week that the enhanced truck inspections cost Texas consumers and businesses an estimated $4.3 billion "despite not catching a single illegal alien or confiscating a single gram of illegal drugs."

"However, Governor Abbott successfully persuaded Mexico states to enhance security on their side of the border," Miller added. "Both of these things are true at the same time."

The Texas Tribune reports that over an eight-day period beginning on April 8, troopers conducted more than 1,400 truck inspections. Despite no drugs being discovered, troopers managed to take 850 trucks off the road for various equipment violations, including under-inflated tires, broken turn signals and oil leaks.

The inspections also created a backlog of 18-wheelers on both sides of the border, with some truckers reporting waiting more than 30 hours for a process that typically takes three hours, according to the Dallas Morning News. The delays resulted in $240 million in spoiled produce and empty shelves at local markets.

Miller's estimate roughly coincides with findings released by The Perryman Group, a Waco-based economic analysis firm, which estimates the delays cost the state $4.2 billion in gross domestic product and the U.S. nearly $9 billion in GDP.

Abbott ordered the enhanced truck inspections in response to President Joe Biden ending Title 42, a border policy that allowed federal agents to quickly deport migrants attempting to enter the country citing COVID-19 restrictions. Last week, the Republican leader called off the inspection initiative after signing agreements with leaders of four Mexican states that border Texas who said they would increase border security measures.

Despite the economic impacts of shutting down traffic at the border, Abbott isn't ruling out reinstating the policy. Asked about the impacts during a roundtable with law enforcement in San Antonio Thursday, Abbott responded, "Obviously there are concerns about the economy but there are even larger concerns about the unabated immigration that the Biden administration is promoting."

 

There's no doubt in my mind that Abbott will do this again.  He's learned that he can damage the economy, make national news, blame Biden for it, and suffer no consequences for doing so, and that he can basically do it at will. And considering the number of Democrats now openly running against Biden ending Title 42, he knows he can use it to put House and Senate Democrats on the spot this fall.

No, Abbott now knows he can do ten billion dollars in economic damage a week with a stroke of his pen. He'll use that ability again and again and again to hurt as many people as possible until the White House gives him whatever he wants.

Terrorism, you see.

Last Call For Time For Some Traffic Problems On The Border, Con't

The backlash over Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's new truck inspection regime on incoming trucks from Mexico was so massive this week that Abbott has now dropped the program completely.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday repealed his traffic-clogging immigration order that backed up commercial trucks at the U.S.-Mexico border, after a week of intensifying backlash and fears of deepening economic losses.

The Republican governor dropped his new rules that had required all commercial trucks from Mexico to undergo extra inspections to curb the flow of migrants and drugs and ratcheted up a fight with the Biden administration over immigration policy.

Some truckers reported waiting more than 30 hours to cross. Others blocked one of the world’s busiest trade bridges in protest.

Abbott, who is up for reelection in November and has made the border his top issue, fully lifted the inspections after reaching agreements with neighboring Mexican states that he says outline new commitments to border security. The last one was signed Friday with the governor of Tamaulipas, who this week said the inspections were overzealous and created havoc.

When Abbott first ordered the inspections, he did not say lifting them was conditional on such arrangements with Mexico.

Pressure was building on Abbott to retreat as gridlock on the border worsened and frustration mounted. The American Trucking Association called the inspections “wholly flawed, redundant and adding considerable weight on an already strained supply chain.”

The U.S.-Mexico border is crucial to the U.S. economy and more of it is in Texas — roughly 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers) — than any other state. The United States last year imported $390.7 billion worth of goods from Mexico, second only to China.

Abbott began the inspections after the Biden administration said pandemic-related restrictions on claiming asylum at the border would be lifted May 23. He called the inspections a “zero tolerance policy for unsafe vehicles” smuggling migrants. He said Texas would take several steps in response to the end of the asylum restrictions, which is expected to lead to an increase in migrants coming to the border.

State troopers inspected more than 6,000 commercial vehicles over the past week, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Nearly one in four trucks were pulled off the road for what the agency described as serious violations that included defective tires and brakes.

The agency made no mention of the inspections turning up migrants or drugs.

 

So the inspections failed to turn up any drugs or human trafficking that the Feds missed, which was ostensibly the whole point of the exercise, but it instead forced three Mexican governors into unenforceable agreements and cost the country at least $150,000,000 and probably closer to several billion in economic damage, all of which he can now blame on Biden.

Let's see, there's a legal term for someone who forces change in government policy through damage or disruption to systems, isn't there?

Oh right, terrorism.

This was a terrorist attack that cost billions.

Greg Abbott should be in a cell awaiting trial.