Editorial Roundup: Texas
Fort Worth Star-Telegram. February 10, 2024.
Editorial: Border is a crisis but can wait until after election? This is why Congress is broken
It’s clear now that Senate negotiators badly miscalculated in their attempt to craft a bipartisan border-security and immigration bill. Republicans misread what their Senate brethren would accept, and they clearly had no idea about sentiment in the House.
But the vitriolic response to the bill that failed Wednesday, not just to the substance but also to the mere attempt at reaching compromise, was disappointing. Republicans, including some leading Texans, have spent years telling us — correctly — that the border is a crisis in need of immediate action. In a matter of days, they changed their tune to: It can wait until next year.
The Senate deal would have allowed far too much illegal immigration to continue mostly unchecked. It contained some useful asylum reform, but not nearly enough. It fell short of what’s needed to deal with the millions who have been released into the country in recent years, let alone stop future waves of migration.
Rather than negotiate a better bill, Republicans, joined by some progressive Democrats, walked away. The fate of this bill demonstrates the impulses that plague politics. The desire to have all or nothing, despite narrow majorities. The push to force through sweeping bills rather than tackle distinct problem-solving. The top-level negotiating that blunts the input of the rank and file. And most of all, the disdain for compromise.
There’s also, always, looking ahead to the next election. Some Republicans surely want a politically useful issue in the broken border. Some may hope that they can win majorities so large in November that they can enact legislation much more to their liking — or worse, just let a re-elected Donald Trump take executive action that the next Democratic president will quickly reverse.
If it’s the first, politics, that’s cynical but understandable. If it’s the second, it’s fanciful thinking. The country has had divided government, often with narrow majorities, for most of the last 30 years. Rarely in that time has either party had enough votes to be able to ram through its priorities. And this year’s battles for control of the White House, the Senate and the House are a toss-up.
Polls look good for Republicans right now, but there’s a long way to go. Betting on a large majority is a big risk; it’s just as likely Democrats end up with at least one center of power in Washington and thus the ability to block grand GOP wishes on the border or anything else.
Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz countered with a House bill that contains the Republican dream version of legislation. But it’s unknown if that bill could even pass the House, now down to a one-seat GOP majority, and it would obviously go nowhere in the Senate.
If Republicans genuinely believe that the very fabric of the country is at risk from unchecked illegal immigration, they would be better off working to win incremental legislative victories to their liking. That’s not to say they should have swallowed the Senate deal; it clearly fell short on what Republicans want in physical barrier construction and curtailing migration.
But where is the willingness to negotiate and compromise? To hear some corners of the right, anything short of everything is not just disappointing, it’s a betrayal. The message becomes nonsensical: The status quo is a disaster, but let’s keep all of it in place for another year.
A useful step would be to choose a few absolute priorities and offer to deal, finally, with “Dreamers,” people brought to the country illegally by their families when they were young. Doing so could force Democrats into significant concessions and remove the legal and moral stain of leaving hundreds of thousands of people who know no home other than America in legal limbo.
Some Republicans argued that the entire effort was useless because President Joe Biden wouldn’t use border-closing authority even if Congress granted it. That’s an argument for not trying, for leaving the entirety of governing to the executive branch, even at the same time when Republicans say it’s Biden’s executive choices that got us into the mess.
If compromise in Congress on major issues is impossible, we’re in trouble. There was a telling moment Wednesday when, after the border package was clearly headed to the trash heap, House Speaker Mike Johnson tweeted that the president “must immediately use his executive authority to take action now.” Gosh, if only there was a Republican in charge of a key government institution that could try to force the president’s hand …
Choosing to do nothing and then griping isn’t an option. At least, it shouldn’t be. Nor should throwing up your hands on an issue that got you elected because you can’t get every single thing you want.
And yet, for many in Congress, that seems to be the entire playbook.
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AIM Media Texas. February 9, 2024.
Editorial: Congress blows opportunity to start work on reasonable border, immigration reform
Last Sunday’s announcement that Senate negotiators had reached a deal that would free up foreign aid to the embattled states of Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan might have raised the hopes of some people. Soon after Congress members arrived at the Capitol on Monday, however, it was clear that those hopes would be futile.
Unsurprisingly, the killing point to the bill was the border security package that Republican lawmakers had tacked on to it. While the U.S. border has nothing to do with foreign aid or government support for the countries’ military campaigns, it has become a convenient way to hold legislation hostage and increase the attention given to a major campaign issue.
Unrelated issues should never have been part of the foreign aid package, and lawmakers should have fought to split them into separate bills.
Supporting our country’s allies overseas is important, but the focus of this debate was almost entirely on immigration. And the speed with which the deal was killed suggests lawmakers were more interested in scoring political points during this heated campaign season than with working together to build workable, bipartisan and necessary immigration reform.
Immigration is the biggest issue during the current campaign season, at both the national and state levels. It certainly affects our Rio Grande Valley, where residents see growing numbers of migrants, law enforcement and military personnel, and protesters and grandstanders swarm through the area every day, drain public resources.
To be sure, the proposal offered Sunday was not perfect; it had some good points, including fast-tracking asylum claims, a policy Trump initiated and Biden continues. Speeding up resolution of those claims helps ensure that people who have valid claims are given legal status along with its benefits, including the ability to take jobs that many employers, especially in the agriculture and construction industries, can’t fill. Just as important, those without valid claims can be deported quickly, reducing the strain that many create at social services and aid centers here and nationwide.
Moreover, an August 2023 Harvard study found a major flaw in the fast-track process. A lack of access to legal counsel made it more difficult for migrants to defend their cases adequately, meaning some who had valid refugee claims were rejected.
The compromise package also set daily limits to border crossings, mandating closure of ports of entry if the limits were reached. Some have criticized such hard limits, saying they aren’t humane, while others say the limits are too high. Such concerns should have been addressed, and would have under normal procedures. The compromise proposal was torpedoed quickly, however, and didn’t receive the debate and amendment process that is vital to the passage of reasonable legislation.
As the campaign heats up, it’s likely that the rhetoric will as well. The failure of a bipartisan effort to address what a majority of Americans say is the most important issue facing our country today — and certainly in the Rio Grande Valley — suggests we have little hope for substantive legislation coming from Congress anytime soon.
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San Antonio Express-News. February 6, 2024.
Editorial: West Texas communities have crossed the line with abortion travel bans
A year and a half ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court took away the constitutional right of women to receive an abortion, this state’s junior U.S. senator, Ted Cruz, wanted to have it both ways.
Cruz had long advocated for the repeal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal throughout the country, and he celebrated that repeal as the culmination of 49 years of hard work by anti-abortion activists.
Nonetheless, Cruz also understood that the 2022 decision, which came in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, would alarm millions of voters in this country, so he tried to soften its impact.
“While the left manically argues that the Dobbs decision makes abortion illegal throughout the country, that is false,” Cruz said. “What this decision does is leave abortion policy up to the states and returns power to the American people — which is exactly how questions of abortion were handled before Roe.”
It is bad enough for women in this country to be returned to a pre-Roe world in which their reproductive rights vary depending on the state in which they reside. But the reality we’re facing, at least in Texas, is worse than that.
Prior to the Roe decision, Texas had a strict ban that allowed abortions only to save the life of pregnant women. But Texas women seeking abortions back then had services available to them.
Problem Pregnancy Information was a referral agency that facilitated abortions for 6,000 women a year — including some from San Antonio — in states such as California and New York, where abortion was legal. PPI provided a package of services: air and ground transportation, doctor, hotel, hospital and counseling.
Texas’ Medicaid system even paid for out-of-state abortions for women who qualified for Medicaid.
These days, some anti-abortion elected officials in Texas are not content with a state ban. They want to regulate and restrict the ability of women to travel to other states to receive abortion services.
Six West Texas localities, including Lubbock County, have passed ordinances prohibiting anyone from traveling through their communities to take a woman to receive an abortion, even if the travelers are going to a state where abortion is legal.
These communities are all close to the border with New Mexico, where abortion is allowed.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of reproductive choice, it should be clear that these ordinances constitute a governmental overreach. They are also likely to be found unconstitutional.
Two months ago, Kate Cox, a 31-year-old Dallas woman carrying a fetus that had full trisomy 18, a lethal fetal anomaly, was prevented by the Texas Supreme Court from receiving an abortion in Texas, despite the fact that the pregnancy posed a threat to her life and future fertility.
Cox left the state to terminate her pregnancy. Under the kind of ordinances being passed in West Texas, women in similar situations could be blocked from leaving the state.
How far does this kind of thinking go? Recreational marijuana use is illegal in this state. Does anyone think it would be a good idea for Texas cities or counties to prevent someone from traveling to New Mexico for the purpose of smoking pot?
“First and foremost, everyone has a fundamental right to freely travel to engage in conduct where that conduct is legal,” said Elizabeth Myers, a Dallas attorney with a history of representing abortion providers.
Even Lubbock County Judge Curtis Parrish, who supported the anti-abortion sentiment in the ordinance approved by county commissioners last October, acknowledged that it “has many legal problems.”
Parrish added, “We shouldn’t need a piece of paper that says you can’t drive on our roads to be known as a pro-life county.”
Putting aside the ideological and moral debates about reproductive rights, there are the practical implications of how these laws are meant to be implemented.
Private citizens are expected to enforce the ordinances by filing lawsuits against the travelers. It’s beyond creepy to think about how these vigilantes are expected to gather information on women traveling through their communities to determine whether they plan to have an out-of-state abortion.
The architects of these West Texas ordinances aren’t satisfied with returning us to the days before the Roe decision. They want to carry us into an environment in which self-appointed arbiters of morality are weaponized to police our travel and snoop into our private lives.
That should be abhorrent to everyone who lives in this state.
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Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel. February 6, 2024.
Editorial: There’s liars, damned liars and Greg Abbott
As the old saying goes, there’s three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
Gov. Greg Abbott employed all three strategies in a single statement Monday during a stop at the Fredonia Hotel as he confidently fed a ravenous crowd the baloney they wanted to hear instead of the truth.
Many politicians lie or twist facts to fit voters’ preconceived notions and follow up the falsehoods by blaming the media who tries to correct them.
But we expected better from Abbott, whose service to this great state as both governor and attorney general has been marked — until recently — by a respect for the truth and rule of law.
Now it appears the old-fashioned sins of wrath and avarice might have gotten the better of the governor.
Abbott was doing well staying within the bounds of political truth and opinion until he began speaking on his pet project of ramming school vouchers down the throats of Texans.
“It’s extraordinarily popular in House District 11,” Abbott said. “If you recall when you voted in the primary just two years ago, there was a ballot initiative for you to vote on, one of which was ‘Do you support school choice?’ The results from this district were resounding. Eighty-nine percent of you said ‘Yes, we want school choice in Texas,’” Abbott said.
Spot the lie.
Voters did not actually cast a ballot on that specific of a question, and here’s where statistics also come into play.
In Nacogdoches County, 86.7% of voters who chose to vote in the Republican primary and fill out the ballot propositions — a total of 6,297 people — said yes to the statement below:
“Texas parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, whether public or private, for their children, and the funding should follow the student.”
We’ll forgive Abbott’s error on the exact percentage. The figures are similar, and a smaller than 3 percentage point difference doesn’t skew his facts.
His statistical analysis, however, is garbage, and even a high school student with an elementary knowledge of statistics could tell him so.
Around 1,200 Republican Primary voters chose not to vote on the proposition, and at the time Nacogdoches County had 38,339 registered voters.
The small sample size shows us that about 31,000 Nacogdoches voters here had no opinion or didn’t vote on the issue.
Abbott is well aware that an honest “We’re not really certain based on balloting how Nacogdoches County residents feel about vouchers, but I sure love ’em thanks to boatloads of money from billionaires,” probably won’t play well with voters, but that’s the truth.
Abbott’s entanglement with GOP megadonor Jeff Yass is concerning. Yass cut the governor a $6 million check last year in an effort to expand vouchers. That money right now is being used to convince voters, against their better judgement, that school vouchers are the way to combat a “woke agenda.”
Notice that “woke agenda” is always happening elsewhere. Dallas was Abbott’s latest example. Houston’s also a frequent target, as are Austin and San Antonio.
But when megadonor money is used here in political advertising, the groups can’t differentiate between critical race theory and critical thinking. How dumb do they think we are?
Abbott thought we were dumb enough to fall for this, the damnedest of lies.
“For reasons I cannot understand, Travis Clardy voted against the 89% of the people who vote in the Republican Primary,” Abbott said. “But it gets worse. I put together a bill that not only would provide school choice, but also would provide $6 billion more for our public schools, teacher pay raises, and get rid of the dreaded STAAR test in Texas,” Abbott said. “He voted to kill that.”
Abbott knows that’s not what happened. Lawmakers never took a vote on teacher pay. Abbott wouldn’t let them. He held teacher pay hostage to force vouchers onto Texans. Blame for teachers failing to receive a raise during the most recent legislative session falls squarely on his shoulders.
Let us also point out that Democrat Beto O’Rourke campaigned for governor in 2022 in part on eliminating the state’s standardized test, known as STAAR. Abbott’s campaign was largely quiet on the issue.
The governor of Texas doesn’t want you to know that. He doesn’t want voters or lawmakers thinking critically. He wants it his way or the billionaire’s way. He’s made it clear there’s no room for compromise or the will of the people.
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Lufkin Daily News. February 7, 2024.
Editorial: Tone-Deaf Debacle: Travis Scott the biggest question mark of Grammys
When it comes to different worlds, there couldn’t be much more of a difference between Los Angeles and East Texas. So maybe the rest of the world will just have to bear with us while we wrap our minds around what we saw Sunday night.
No, this doesn’t have anything to do with Taylor Swift, who won Album of the Year in kicking off a week in which she’ll be in the spotlight for awards, a Tokyo stop and a trip to Las Vegas for Sunday’s Super Bowl.
It isn’t even about Jay-Z’s acceptance speech for the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award in which he called out various aspects of the Recording Academy.
He made some points about Beyoncé that at least have some good merit. The only minor question for that sequence would be why Dr. Dre didn’t actually present the award with his name on it.
But those two have more than enough success that we can just look at that as good entertainment.
And we’re perfectly fine with a night of entertainment involving all of those celebrities. Music lovers get their night, and we hope they enjoyed it.
Which brings us back to where we first started on the most baffling decision of the night.
Exactly who thought it was a good idea to have Travis Scott perform live on stage at this year’s Grammys?
It was his first performance at the Grammys since a tragic night at his own Astroworld Festival in 2021.
For those who don’t remember, 10 people were left dead and hundreds of others were injured at his concert.
To Scott’s credit, the Houston Police Department eventually concluded the disaster happened as a result of crowd movement and panic.
According to Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a grand jury determined “that no crime did occur, that no single individual was criminally responsible.”
He has spoken in the past on his regrets for what transpired that night.
For that reason alone, we aren’t opposed to him being up for any awards. Yet him actually performing on music’s biggest stage doesn’t make much sense to us.
We’re not sure if he’ll be asked back again any time soon after the end of his performance seemed to turn into a protest in which he could be seen breaking chairs and other onstage props. Apparently, he wasn’t happy about going home from the awards ceremony empty-handed once again.
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