Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport @ RawStory
October 16, 2021
Screengrab.
Apparently, the Republican argument suggests, we should just forget about the coronavirus and ignore a disease that has killed 700,000 Americans, variously overrun our hospitals, interrupted jobs, businesses, and lives, and has spurred a strong political resistance movement.
Even as some courts have already endorsed the idea of government mandates for masks and protections against contagion, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is challenging the right of President Joe Biden to act for public health as "yet another instance of federal overreach."
It's apparently okay for Abbott to mandate against mandates not only for the state's employees but for its private businesses as well. But, by contrast, it's not okay for the federal government to tell Texas, Florida, or any state what to do about a pandemic that knows no bounds, or for companies with more than 100 employees.
That Texas is only now beginning to emerge from two months or more of spiraling covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths is not the focus of this dust-up over the rules. Rather, it's a bald political showdown.
Frankly, it's disgusting, no matter what one's politics are. No, this drawdown borders on insanity. Why do we have time, energy, and money available for endless court battles over who's really in charge?
Has Abbott not heard of the telephone, to simply call Biden and engage in some debate if they disagree?
In any event, airlines based in Texas are moving ahead with mandates anyway, guaranteeing more tumult, not less.
Why It's Strange
It is such a strange battlefield that we need to look at it for what underscores this continuing Texas rebellion, especially since it spreads so quickly to other Republican-led states. Several things that question our general understanding are coming to the surface simultaneously.
Discussion about countering a pandemic seems futile. Whenever one side of our cultural divide talks about medicine, the other is talking about rights, including the right to be as sick as one chooses and the right to infect others. We've passed the time of legitimate discussion about immediate health effects of vaccines; that is not even on the table in these moves by Abbott, who has been vaccinated and who has undergone a mild form of covid. The anti-vax position has become nearly fully a political one. By all medical standards, having had covid is no guarantee about carrying the contagion further or even to protection beyond some undetermined but finite time.
Blame for covid under anti-vax is limited now only to the also endless debate over its origin from nature or from a man-made process in a China laboratory, either as the result or by-product of some National Health Institute grant over a study of interspecies transmission. There is no acknowledgment that keeping more than 30% of adult Americans unvaccinated is a problem that manifests as a continuing public petri dish of mutation. Meanwhile, the Right is actively blaming Biden for high gas taxes, for a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, clogged supply lines and sagging international dominance—because they all are happening on Biden's watch.
Spending zillions of dollars on treatments for those who already have covid may blunt hospitalizations but does nothing to halt the spread of an airborne contagion. Yet, we're seeing tons of support across the political spectrum to spend $2,000 a dose for antibody treatments now emerging, even in pill form, rather than a $20 vaccine. For those who also argue against Biden's big-spending proposals as wasteful, this position seems, well, incongruous.
The legal arguments here are arcane, as well as, frankly, ludicrous to you and me and our jobs. Is this more about state power versus federal power in a constitutional republic than about a chance to jack up Biden and ignore a public health menace? The force of law seems to favor the federal government acting in an emergency. The practical concerns for businesses like American Airlines based in Dallas pulled among conflicting mandates from the feds, the state and demands of consumers are simply not as important to this governor as a political principle.
By all accounts from all political viewpoints, telling businesses what they cannot do is seen as antithetical to a "conservative" view that wants government restraint.
If It Quacks. . .
It is much more understandable to see the Texas challenge over covid mandates right alongside the Texas challenge over abortion, over voting rights, over the environment and even over issues of immigration.
That is, Texas politics demand that Abbott, running at least for reelection if not for president, must protect himself from absolutists even more right-wing than he himself believes. This week, we saw hardliner Republican candidate Allen West continuing to tweet from his covid hospital bed against vaccine mandates and for expensive alternative treatments. Don Huffines, a former Texas state senator who is challenging Abbott, tweeted that "Greg Abbott is a political windsock and today proves it, He knows conservative Republican voters are tired of the vaccine mandates and tired of him being a failed leader." Apparently, in response to a Huffines criticism that a state website to help teen suicide might be fostering trans discussions, Abbott had the site pulled.
About 15 million Texans have been fully vaccinated, or just over half, lagging the national average.
Why kowtowing to a minority of voters in hopes of reelection is a bit of a mystery to me. But the reason for anyone to run for governor or president should be to solve problems.
It's hard to see what problem this governor is solving other than his own political dreams.
Texas GOP advances new maps that would tighten slipping grip
- In this Tuesday, June 30, 2009 file photo, The south side of the Capitol and its surrounding grounds are shown in Austin, Texas. TTexas Republicans are set to approve redrawn U.S. House maps that would shore up their eroding dominance as voters peel away from the GOP in the state’s booming suburbs. The Texas House on Saturday Oct. 16, 2021 is expected to send the maps to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck, File)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans on Saturday night closed in on redrawn U.S. House maps that would shore up their eroding dominance as voters peel away from the GOP in the state’s booming suburbs.
In a key late-night vote in the Texas House, Republicans gave early sign-off to new congressional boundaries that would give them more breathing room after some close calls in 2018 and 2020, while also opening a new path for the GOP along the border with Mexico.
But in a preview of legal challenges to come, Democrats spent hours blasting the maps as discriminatory and all but blind to the state’s surging number of Latino residents, who made up more than half of the nearly 4 million new Texans over the past decade. Many live around Dallas and Houston, where under the GOP-engineered maps, there would be no new districts that give Latinos a majority.
Republican state Rep. Todd Hunter, who has presided over the redrawn maps in the House, defended the changes and said they comply with the law.
The maps will still need final negotiations in the coming days between the House and Senate before being sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign them.
The redrawn congressional districts would make make it easier for many incumbents to hold their seats, but critics say they also threaten Black and Hispanic communities’ political influence, even as those voters drive Texas’ growth. The new lines, the product of a once-in-a-decade redistricting process, create two new districts and make several less competitive for Republican lawmakers.
Texas was the only state to gain two congressional seats following the 2020 census, which showed that people of color accounted for more than 9 of 10 new residents in Texas.
“Race is clearly the factor here,” Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia said of how the maps were drawn. “Not partisanship, but rather race.”
One revision by the Texas House during hours of debate Saturday would increase the number of Hispanic voters in two districts, but those changes must still make it through another round of approval.
Democrats and voting rights advocates are preparing to challenge the maps in court in what would be yet another high-profile, high-stakes legal battle over Texas politics — already the epicenter of disputes over abortion and voting rights.
Republicans who control both chambers of the Legislature have nearly complete control of the mapmaking process. They are working from maps that experts and courts have already declared as gerrymandered in their favor, and the state has had to defend their maps in court after every redistricting process since the Voting Rights Act took effect in 1965.
But legal challenges face new hurdles this round — the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Texas and other states with a history of racial discrimination no longer need to have the Justice Department scrutinize the maps before they are approved. Plaintiffs must now wait to file claims and must show that maps were intentionally meant to discriminate by race. Drawing maps to engineer a political advantage is not unconstitutional.
Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, who authored the maps and leads the Senate Redistricting Committee, has told lawmakers they were “drawn blind to race.” She said her legal team ensured the proposal followed the Voting Rights Act.
The proposal would make 24 of the state’s 38 congressional districts safe Republican districts, with an opportunity to pick up at least one additional newly redrawn Democratic stronghold on the border with Mexico, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of data from last year’s election collected by the Texas Legislative Council. Currently, Republicans hold 23 of the state’s 36 seats.
Republicans with newly fortified advantages include Rep. Van Taylor, whose district in Dallas’ exurbs went for President Donald Trump by a single percentage point last year. Under the new maps, Trump would have won the district by double-digits.
Rep. Michael McCaul, who Democrats aggressively targeted the last two cycles, would now represent a solidly pro-Trump district under lines that exclude Houston’s suburbs and liberal parts of Austin.
And a long, vertically drawn district stretching from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio that President Joe Biden won by just over 2 percentage points would now slightly tilt toward Trump voters.
In a late-night win for Democrats, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat who is serving her 14th term, had her home drawn back into her Houston district, which was restored nearly entirely to its former shape. So, too, was the nearby district of U.S. Rep. Al Green after both had seen longtime constituents of minority communities drawn out of their districts.
Texas lawmakers are also redrawing the maps for their own districts, with Republicans following a similar plan that would keep their party in power in the state House and Senate. Those proposals are also expected to be sent to Abbott by next week.
___
Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber contributed to this report. Coronado is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
- In this Tuesday, June 30, 2009 file photo, The south side of the Capitol and its surrounding grounds are shown in Austin, Texas. TTexas Republicans are set to approve redrawn U.S. House maps that would shore up their eroding dominance as voters peel away from the GOP in the state’s booming suburbs. The Texas House on Saturday Oct. 16, 2021 is expected to send the maps to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck, File)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans on Saturday night closed in on redrawn U.S. House maps that would shore up their eroding dominance as voters peel away from the GOP in the state’s booming suburbs.
In a key late-night vote in the Texas House, Republicans gave early sign-off to new congressional boundaries that would give them more breathing room after some close calls in 2018 and 2020, while also opening a new path for the GOP along the border with Mexico.
But in a preview of legal challenges to come, Democrats spent hours blasting the maps as discriminatory and all but blind to the state’s surging number of Latino residents, who made up more than half of the nearly 4 million new Texans over the past decade. Many live around Dallas and Houston, where under the GOP-engineered maps, there would be no new districts that give Latinos a majority.
Republican state Rep. Todd Hunter, who has presided over the redrawn maps in the House, defended the changes and said they comply with the law.
The maps will still need final negotiations in the coming days between the House and Senate before being sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign them.
The redrawn congressional districts would make make it easier for many incumbents to hold their seats, but critics say they also threaten Black and Hispanic communities’ political influence, even as those voters drive Texas’ growth. The new lines, the product of a once-in-a-decade redistricting process, create two new districts and make several less competitive for Republican lawmakers.
Texas was the only state to gain two congressional seats following the 2020 census, which showed that people of color accounted for more than 9 of 10 new residents in Texas.
“Race is clearly the factor here,” Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia said of how the maps were drawn. “Not partisanship, but rather race.”
One revision by the Texas House during hours of debate Saturday would increase the number of Hispanic voters in two districts, but those changes must still make it through another round of approval.
Democrats and voting rights advocates are preparing to challenge the maps in court in what would be yet another high-profile, high-stakes legal battle over Texas politics — already the epicenter of disputes over abortion and voting rights.
Republicans who control both chambers of the Legislature have nearly complete control of the mapmaking process. They are working from maps that experts and courts have already declared as gerrymandered in their favor, and the state has had to defend their maps in court after every redistricting process since the Voting Rights Act took effect in 1965.
But legal challenges face new hurdles this round — the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Texas and other states with a history of racial discrimination no longer need to have the Justice Department scrutinize the maps before they are approved. Plaintiffs must now wait to file claims and must show that maps were intentionally meant to discriminate by race. Drawing maps to engineer a political advantage is not unconstitutional.
Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, who authored the maps and leads the Senate Redistricting Committee, has told lawmakers they were “drawn blind to race.” She said her legal team ensured the proposal followed the Voting Rights Act.
The proposal would make 24 of the state’s 38 congressional districts safe Republican districts, with an opportunity to pick up at least one additional newly redrawn Democratic stronghold on the border with Mexico, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of data from last year’s election collected by the Texas Legislative Council. Currently, Republicans hold 23 of the state’s 36 seats.
Republicans with newly fortified advantages include Rep. Van Taylor, whose district in Dallas’ exurbs went for President Donald Trump by a single percentage point last year. Under the new maps, Trump would have won the district by double-digits.
Rep. Michael McCaul, who Democrats aggressively targeted the last two cycles, would now represent a solidly pro-Trump district under lines that exclude Houston’s suburbs and liberal parts of Austin.
And a long, vertically drawn district stretching from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio that President Joe Biden won by just over 2 percentage points would now slightly tilt toward Trump voters.
In a late-night win for Democrats, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat who is serving her 14th term, had her home drawn back into her Houston district, which was restored nearly entirely to its former shape. So, too, was the nearby district of U.S. Rep. Al Green after both had seen longtime constituents of minority communities drawn out of their districts.
Texas lawmakers are also redrawing the maps for their own districts, with Republicans following a similar plan that would keep their party in power in the state House and Senate. Those proposals are also expected to be sent to Abbott by next week.
___
Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber contributed to this report. Coronado is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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