By Robert Downen, The Texas Tribune

May 28, 2024

By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune

May 31, 2024

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The Texas Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the most significant challenge to Texas’ new abortion laws yet, ruling Friday that the medical exceptions in the law were broad enough to withstand constitutional challenge.

The case, Zurawski v. Texas, started with five women arguing the state’s near-total abortion laws stopped them from getting medical care for their complicated pregnancies. In the year plus it took to move through the court system, the case has grown to include 20 women and two doctors.

In August, a Travis County judge issued a temporary injunction that allowed Texans with complicated pregnancies to get an abortion if their doctor made a “good faith judgment” that it was necessary. The Texas Office of the Attorney General appealed.

The Texas Supreme Court overturned that ruling Friday, saying it “departed from the law as written without constitutional justification.” While the opinion was unanimous, Justice Brett Busby issued a concurring opinion that left the door open to a broader challenge to the law.

Zurawski v. Texas was a pioneering case in post-Roe America, the first challenge to a state’s abortion bans on behalf of women with complicated pregnancies. At least three other states have followed suit, and it led to a related case, in which Kate Cox, an actively pregnant woman in Dallas sued to be allowed to terminate her pregnancy.

The Texas Supreme Court rejected Cox’s plea in December, which many saw as a likely foreshadow of how the court might rule in Zurawski v. Texas. On Friday, those suspicions were confirmed when the court offered a ruling very similar in nature to the Cox case.

“A physician who tells a patient, ‘Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,’ and in the same breath states ‘but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances’ is simply wrong in that legal assessment,” the court wrote.

How the case unfolded

The initial lawsuit was filed in March 2023, and unlike previous wholesale, pre-enforcement challenges to abortion bans, this case focused on a very narrow argument — women with complicated pregnancies were being denied medically necessary abortions because doctors were unclear on how and when they could act.

After the overturn of Roe v. Wade in summer 2022, Texas banned all abortions except to save the life of the pregnant patient. Almost immediately, women began to come forward with stories of difficult pregnancies worsened by doctors’ hesitations and uncertainty.

Amanda Zurawski, the named plaintiff in the suit, was 18 weeks pregnant with a daughter they’d named Willow when she experienced preterm prelabor rupture of membranes. Despite the condition being fatal to the fetus and posing significant risks to the pregnant patient, her doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy because there was still fetal cardiac activity. Eventually, Zurawski went into sepsis and spent three days in the intensive care unit. While she survived, the infection has made it difficult for her and her husband to conceive again.

At a press conference outside the state capitol announcing the lawsuit, Zurawski said she was fighting for all Texans who are “scared and outraged at the thought of being pregnant.”

“The people in the building behind me have the power to fix this, yet they’ve done nothing,” Zurawski said. “So it’s not just for me, and for our Willow, that I stand here before you today — it’s for every pregnant person, and for everyone who knows and loves a pregnant person.”

Soon after the laws went into effect, Lauren Hall, a 27-year-old North Texas woman, told The Texas Tribune about learning her first, much desired pregnancy was developing without a skull or brain, and would not survive after childbirth. Unlike some other states, Texas’ law does not allow for abortions in cases of lethal fetal anomalies, unless they threaten the mother’s life.

But when Hall considered carrying this high-risk, no-reward pregnancy through to the end, she felt like she was “losing my mind. I would consider what I experienced that weekend a medical emergency.”

Denied an abortion in Texas, Hall and her husband ended up scrambling to travel to a clinic in Seattle that specializes in these cases, where she was greeted by angry protesters who had also traveled from Texas.

She returned home a few days later mired in a confusing mix of grief and anger, and a few months later, signed onto the lawsuit with the hope that no one would ever have to undergo that experience again.

“Providers are scared to treat cases like ours without guidelines from the state, and more people will suffer (and lose their lives) if a change is not made,” Hall said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “I love Texas, and it kills me that my own state does not seem to care if I live or die.”

In July 2023, almost a year after the laws went into effect, three of the plaintiffs testified at a historic hearing, the first time individual women have testified about the impact of abortion laws on their pregnancies since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

As they told their stories of much wanted pregnancies gone awry, and the way their doctors’ inability to act worsened their pain, the women were overcome — one sobbed, unable to get her words out; another fled the courtroom immediately after; another threw up in her hands.

An Austin judge sided with the plaintiffs and granted an injunction, ruling that the attorney general should not be able to prosecute doctors who, in their “good faith judgment” terminate a pregnancy that presents a risk of infection; if the fetus will not survive after child birth; or when the pregnant patient has a condition that requires regular, invasive treatment.

Immediately, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed to the state Supreme Court, temporarily blocking the order from going into effect. The Supreme Court heard arguments in November.

At that hearing, assistant attorney general Beth Klusmann said the Texas Legislature had set a high bar for when a patient might qualify for an abortion, “but there is nothing unconstitutional in their decision to do so.” Justice Jimmy Blacklock, former general counsel for Gov. Greg Abbott, said he believed the injunction the plaintiffs were requesting “could open the door far more widely” for people seeking abortions.

Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the plaintiffs, acknowledged that the district court ruling is “doing more work than normal,” but said it was because “legislators don’t usually write laws that people who are regulated by those laws simply do not understand.”

The Cox case

In that hearing, Klusmann argued that the women who filed this lawsuit didn’t have a right to sue because they were not currently seeking abortions. A week later, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old Dallas mother who was actively pregnant and seeking an abortion.

Cox’s pregnancy was nonviable and, her lawyers said, she had been to the emergency room repeatedly for complications. Her case made many of the same arguments as the Zurawski case, but asked for an immediate ruling.

For the first time since before Roe v. Wade, a judge intervened to allow a competent adult woman to terminate her pregnancy.

“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble.

Paxton appealed that ruling to the Texas Supreme Court, which put it on hold. He also sent letters to Houston area hospitals threatening them with legal action if they allowed Dr. Damla Karsan, Cox’s OB/GYN, to perform an abortion at their facility.

While the court deliberated, Cox’s condition deteriorated to the point that she needed to travel out-of-state to get an abortion, her lawyers said.

The court ultimately rejected Cox’s request for an abortion, ruling that while “any parents would be devastated to learn” of a fetal diagnosis like this, “some difficulties in pregnancy…even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses.”

The court did call on the Texas Medical Board to issue guidance to help doctors better understand when they can perform an abortion in the eyes of the law. That guidance, which has not yet been finalized, has been criticized for offering little reassurance and, in some cases, confusing the issue further.

Friday’s ruling

In Friday’s ruling, the court ruled that only one of the 22 plaintiffs in the Zurawski suit had standing to sue — Karsan, the Houston OB/GYN who had agreed to perform Cox’s abortion.

“We conclude that the Attorney General directly threatened enforcement against Dr. Karsan in response to her stated intent to engage in what she contends is constitutionally protected activity,” the justices wrote. “A state official’s letter threatening enforcement of a specific law against a plaintiff seeking relief from such enforcement is a sufficient showing of a threat of enforcement to establish standing to sue.”

The trial court ruled in the injunction that a doctor should be allowed to perform an abortion when they deemed it necessary in their “good faith judgment.” Friday’s ruling found the trial judge overstepped, and said the way the law is written — allowing abortions based on a doctor’s “reasonable medical judgment” — is clear enough.

While the Center for Reproductive Rights raised concerns in the lawsuit that a doctor would have to defend their reasonable judgment against a panel of other doctors who might have decided differently, the court said it was actually the opposite — to bring a case against a doctor, the state would first have to “prove that no reasonable physician would have concluded” that the abortion was the right call.

In the ruling, the justices acknowledged the tragedy of these cases, but agreed with the state that the laws are clear — and it was doctors who were misinterpreting them.

“With a diagnosis based on reasonable medical judgment and the woman’s informed consent, a physician can provide an abortion confident that the law permits it,” they ruled. “Ms. Zurawski’s agonizing wait to be ill ‘enough’ for induction, her development of sepsis, and her permanent physical injury are not the results the law commands.”

The trial court also ruled that Texans should be allowed to terminate their pregnancies if the doctor has determined the fetus would not survive after birth. The supreme court rejected that argument.

“As painful as such circumstances are, that the law does not authorize abortions for diagnosed fetal conditions absent a life-threatening complication to the mother does not render it unconstitutional,” they wrote.

Justice Busby, joined by Justice Debra Lehrmann, issued a concurring opinion raising the potential for future challenges on the grounds of vagueness, writing that “at first glance, respondents’ expressed confusion about this exception is understandable.”

“We must keep in mind the Legislature’s obligation—and our own—to speak clearly and specifically lest we unintentionally resolve an ambiguity in the statutory language or contribute to confusion where no ambiguity exists.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/31/texas-supreme-court-zurawski-abortion/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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Conventioneers listen to speeches during the Texas GOP Convention Friday, May 24, 2024 in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

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

“Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Republican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.

Other proposed planks of the 50-page platform included proclamations that “abortion is not healthcare it is homicide”; that gender-transition treatment for children is “child abuse”; calls to reverse recent name changes to military bases and “publicly honor the southern heroes”; support for declaring gold and silver as legal tender; and demands that the U.S. government disclose “all pertinent information and knowledge” of UFOs.

The party hopes to finalize its platform on Wednesday, after Saturday’s votes on each proposal are tabulated.

Passed by delegates at the party’s biennial convention, the platform has traditionally been seen not as a definitive list of Republican stances, but a compromise document that represents the interests of the party’s various business, activist and social conservative factions. But in recent years — and amid a party civil war that’s pushed it further right — the platform has been increasingly used as a basis for censuring Republican officeholders who the party’s far right has attacked as insufficiently conservative, including Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez, R-San Antonio.

As the party has drifted further right, its platform has done the same. In 2022, it called for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

Many of those planks were also included in this year’s platform, which was debated late into Friday night and presented for a vote Saturday afternoon.

One proposal asserts that illegal immigration is the “greatest threat to American security and sovereignty” and calls for the state and federal governments to devote all available resources to deporting undocumented immigrants.

Perhaps the most consequential plank calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college.

Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office. In 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott carried 235 counties, while Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried most of the urban, more populous counties and South Texas counties. Statewide, Abbott won 55% of the popular vote while O’Rourke carried 44%.

However, some attorneys question whether such a proposal would be constitutional and conform with the Voting Rights Act because it would most likely limit the voting power of racial minorities, who are concentrated in a relatively small number of counties. (The party’s platform also reiterates its previous calls for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act).

The platform also takes a step further some of the party’s previous calls for more Christianity in public life. The 2022 platform proclaimed that the United States was “founded on Judeo-Christian principles,” for instance, and demanded the repeal of federal prohibitions on political activity by churches.

The 2024 platform goes significantly further: It urges lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools — which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.

Though more subtle, another proposed plank could also aid Republicans’ ongoing attempts to further infuse Christianity into public education. This year’s platform also calls for Thomas Jefferson’s “Letter to the Danbury Baptists” to be included in the list of “original founding documents” to be taught in history classes, along with the U.S. Constitution or The Federalist Papers. Jefferson’s Danbury letter is often cited by activists such as David Barton, a Texas pastor and self-described “amateur historian” who has spent decades arguing that church-state separation is a “myth” that has been used to shroud America’s true Christian roots — a claim that has been thoroughly debunked by actual historians and experts, many of them also conservative Christians.

The new platform comes as Republicans increasingly embrace once-fringe theories such as Christian nationalism, which argues that the United States’ founding was God-ordained, and therefore its institutions and laws should reflect conservative, Christian views. Barton’s ideas have been a key driver of that movement, and were repeatedly cited by lawmakers last year during debates over the chaplains bill and in legislation that would have required the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms. Barton’s group, WallBuilders, was also an exhibitor at this year’s Texas GOP convention, and the party has increasingly aligned with two far-right, fundamentalist Christian billionaires, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks.

The draft platform also leans into the Texas GOP’s open hostility toward Texas House leadership and Phelan, with positions that would weaken the power of the House speaker and distribute power to the GOP caucus in the House as a whole. One plank advocates for limiting the speaker to two consecutive terms. Another calls for a discharge petition process, which would allow members to send bills to the House floor for a vote even if they haven’t passed the House committee process.

On Friday night, the convention elected former Collin County GOP Chair Abraham George as the next party chair, a vote that is expected to continue the party’s trajectory. During his candidate speech on Thursday, George called for the party to fight Democrats, radicals and “RINO” Republicans who go against “everything we stand for.”

During a speech on the convention stage on Saturday, former gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Don Huffines carried a printed version of the platform with him. He noted that Republicans have controlled the Legislature and the governor’s mansion for two decades, but the party still struggles to secure its priorities.

“We could get any piece of legislation done anytime we want, but, every session, we struggle to get our platform into law,” Huffines said.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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Border Vigilantes Are Blurring the Lines of Law Enforcement

Armed groups in Arizona and Texas are collaborating with and courting police and immigration agents—with alarming results.

by Francesca D’Annunzio and Avery Schmitz

May 23, 2024, 8:00 AM, CDT

Editor’s note: This story is a collaboration between the Texas Observer and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. 

It was late afternoon when a small group traveling in a white Ford F-150 approached a humanitarian aid camp near Sasabe, a remote Arizona community along the U.S.-Mexico border. The visitors walked among tents, blue tarps, and nonperishable food—surveying the camp and filming its occupants. The uninvited guests, who appeared to have left their firearms in the pickup, aimed cameras at immigrants who dotted the cluttered encampment; some had traveled thousands of miles to reach the United States. 

Humanitarian workers with the Arizona-based advocacy group No More Deaths immediately confronted them: “This man is filming. He’s refused to stop,” one volunteer told migrants clustered nearby. The camera continued to pan across the camp. Only when an aid worker again implored them to leave did the group begin to move. As he left, the leader—a 27-year-old man by the name of Cade Lamb—audibly accused volunteers of “aiding and abetting false asylum-seekers.”

Soon after, the video appeared in a fundraising email for Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, a longshot U.S. Senate candidate in the July GOP primary—and Cade’s father. In a campaign Instagram post, Sheriff Lamb said he’d sent his son to film the camp. “Look at all these military age men! … Does this not look like a terrorist camp right here on our southern border?” he exclaimed, echoing inflammatory slogans used by other right-wing politicians to target charities that serve immigrants in Arizona and Texas.

Cade Lamb is the founder of the Sonoran Asset Group—one of various vigilante organizations that target aid workers and migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

On January 20, just three days after Cade’s aid camp visit near Sasabe, another group assembled on a ridge overlooking the Rio Grande in Texas and stood over five seated migrants. Some of those standing were armed with long guns or pistols and one wore tactical gear; they questioned the migrants, all young men or boys, while filming them.

“Y’all look sketchy as shit today,” said Greg Gibson, leader of the North Carolina United Patriot Party.

Gibson had driven from North Carolina to Eagle Pass, a small city on the Texas-Mexico border, where he ended up searching for migrants alongside other armed vigilantes he told the Texas Observer he’d recruited mostly online. They congregated at the border for an organized mission that Gibson called “Operation Hold the Line”—a reference to a 1990s Border Patrol operation in El Paso meant to deter migrant crossings.

Gibson and his recruits traveled around Eagle Pass in a caravan, guided by two right-wing bloggers from San Antonio who frequently post videos talking about the “invasion,” to patrol an area already highly militarized by Governor Greg Abbott’s multibillion-dollar border enforcement project Operation Lone Star.

Up on the ridge above the river, Gibson ordered the migrants to stay put. “Tell ‘em to stay here!” he yelled. “Quédate aquí,” one of the Texas bloggers translated for the migrants, who remained seated and looked concerned in the video. 

Soon after, Border Patrol vehicles drove up the ridge, and a helicopter whirled overhead. Then, the vigilantes climbed into their private vehicles and continued their tour of Eagle Pass.

The same day, spotters in an FBI surveillance plane saw someone pointing a weapon at a migrant, and agents reported that people were “possibly being held at gunpoint.” The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) dispatched officers, who confronted and questioned Gibson’s group. No one was arrested for pointing a gun at migrants, though one of the armed men had a domestic violence conviction, public records show, and could not legally carry a weapon. An officer also warned group members that they were trespassing according to a police report and federal court records.

All along the border, a monthslong investigation by the Observer and Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting has found, organized vigilante groups are filming themselves conducting patrols, taking photos of themselves alongside law enforcement, and sharing footage online to solicit donations, promote their work, and recruit new members. These vigilantes wear camouflage and tactical gear, issue orders, and detain and even point guns at migrants. The vigilantes have forged relationships with local and federal law enforcement, particularly in several border counties in Arizona and Texas. These ties appear to elevate the risk of violence in already volatile areas, and such collaboration raises questions about the extent to which vigilantes are illegally attempting to do the work of law enforcement or violating other laws.

“It raises a level of concern on my behalf that the law is not being applied fairly and equitably,” said Ken Magidson, who oversaw prosecutions along a wide swath of the border as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas from 2011 to 2017. “If the facts as you just stated are true, then apparently some people are above the law.”

Law enforcement collusion with vigilantes in Texas and Arizona runs the gamut from sheriff’s deputies showing groups around to police collaborating with—and not arresting—members with prior criminal convictions who were illegally carrying guns, according to social media posts, public records, court documents, and interviews. 

In several cases, law enforcement failed to arrest or charge individuals who were repeatedly filmed committing suspected crimes in front of officers, including one case in which multiple alleged violations of the law were documented in a police report. 

Some members of vigilante groups portray themselves as the border’s “neighborhood watch,” promoting themselves on social media as humanitarians who pray over migrants, rescue them from the Rio Grande, and offer medical care for minor wounds. But some have also spread conspiracy theories, threatened unarmed individuals, and damaged humanitarian aid and water stations meant to keep migrants from dying of thirst in remote swaths of land along the border. A few have deployed drones to surveil migrants. In 2009, three anti-immigrant militants murdered Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia, in the small Arizona border community of Arivaca. All three were convicted; two were sentenced to death, and one to life in prison.

Citizen militias are illegal in both Arizona and Texas, but in some cases police appear to be tacitly approving border vigilantism, which experts say will embolden bad actors.

When local authorities do nothing or express approval, vigilantes feel they can operate without consequences, “which is in my view very very problematic,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution. 

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Armed anti-immigrant vigilante groups have a long history along the U.S.-Mexico border. Since at least the 1970s, white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan have scoured the border, often attempting to enforce immigration on their own. Following the birth of the modern anti-immigrant movement in the 1970s and ’80s, vigilantes reorganized into “Minuteman” groups, imploring the George W. Bush Administration to crack down on migrants illegally crossing the southern border. Today’s border vigilantes have become emboldened amid increasing political rhetoric about a border “invasion” and fears of migrants “replacing” white Americans.

In the leadup to the 2024 election—with border crossings surging last year and former President Donald Trump planning a migration crackdown if he retakes the White House—bearing arms to “secure the border” has become a siren call for many on the far right.

Some leaders, including the Texas governor, have arguably endorsed using violence to stop migrants. “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder,” Abbott said in a January 5 radio interview. At a press conference a week later, Abbott backpedaled on these comments, saying he was simply distinguishing between what actions are legal, and which are not.

At a February 4 press conference, when asked by the Observer if he would denounce vigilantism, Abbott said, “Law and order needs to be left to states, to law enforcement, to authorized entities. We don’t want anybody taking any type of vigilante action. We believe in public safety, and that means the safety of everybody. The lives of everybody are important, and we don’t want anybody to be harmed in any way. All that we want is to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.” 

In Arizona, lawmakers this year proposed to amend the state’s “castle doctrine,” which already allows property owners to use or threaten deadly force if they feel threatened by a trespasser in their home or yard, in certain circumstances. House Bill 2843 would have expanded where such force could be used, to include land owned by farmers and ranchers along the border. The bill passed the legislature in April, but was vetoed by Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs. 

In both Arizona and Texas, some prominent law enforcement personnel and politicians have closely aligned themselves with border vigilantes. 

Rising right-wing Sheriff Mark Lamb, the outgoing top cop of Pinal County, has enjoyed the limelight after appearances on networks like Fox News, and speaking engagements with  Trump at the White House and his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he warned against an “invasion” of immigrants. Now, Lamb is publicly elevating his son Cade’s vigilante group as part of his U.S. Senate campaign. The campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Cade Lamb founded his organization in September 2022 as an LLC based in a one-story house in Eloy, Arizona, a town of 15,000 people that is home to a massive for-profit private prison used as an immigrant detention center.

Lamb’s company has no website, and he is listed as its manager on its state filings. On its Instagram account, Sonoran Asset Group says it does political consulting.

On his personal Instagram page and Sonoran Asset Group’s Instagram profile, Lamb shares footage of himself questioning and harassing migrants, whom he claims are collaborating with Mexican cartels. He often describes migrants as “military-age males.”

“We’re gonna see a real live border crossing, boys!” he declares in one video, while filming four men traversing a section of the border wall beneath the desert sun.

Several years before Cade’s father, Sheriff Lamb, launched his Senate campaign, he’d formed relationships with other vigilantes and far-right organizers. Toward the end of Trump’s presidency, he catapulted himself into far-right celebrityhood with public declarations of his refusal to enforce certain laws like Arizona’s extended COVID-19 stay-at-home order. His county does not touch the border and his office in Florence is more than 100 miles from Mexico, yet he’s fashioned his public image as a border sheriff, headlining a 2023 Turning Point USA documentary series called Border Battle.

At a June 2021 event hosted by the far-right Federation for American Immigration Reform in Sierra Vista, Arizona, Sheriff Lamb posed with dozens of other sheriffs alongside right-wing vigilantes to call for aggressive border security measures. Months before speaking at that event, he escorted U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn on a guided borderlands tour with Christie Hutcherson, the leader of the Florida-based anti-immigrant group Women Fighting for America—a self-described “frontline freedom organization.” 

Hutcherson addressed a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C. on the eve of the January 6 insurrection and was named in a presidential records request as part of the congressional January 6 investigation. In 2021, Hutcherson visited the border in Arizona and Texas with a drone that can fly miles away from the operator and detect people using thermal imaging. Hutcherson has said in Facebook videos and an interview that she’s partnered with Sheriff Lamb and Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona, to help them surveil the border using drones. But she denies she assists in arrests: “We let law enforcement do law enforcement’s job. It’s not our job to detain them,” she said. “If they’re short-staffed or short-handed, and they asked us to—that’s a whole different ball game.”

In an email, a spokesperson for Dannels said the sheriff’s office does “not encourage outside organizations to participate in any patrol/enforcement actions,” though the sheriff prioritizes “maintaining autonomy and collaborations with non-law enforcement groups” and considers that “community policing is an internal function utilized for the betterment of our communities.”

A spokesperson for the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office said the agency does not have formal contracts or partnerships with Hutcherson or her group, Women Fighting for America.

In an interview, Hutcherson said she offered her tech and time to U.S. Border Patrol agents and to local law enforcement, for free.

She also has tried to solicit drone contracts with at least one border county, Kinney County, and and state law enforcement in Texas, though there is no record of her receiving a contract with either agency, according to the state comptroller’s office and interviews.

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Patriots for America (PFA), a North Texas-based Christian vigilante group led by Samuel Hall, a former missionary and longtime car salesman, claims to have worked with the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office to intercept migrants since 2021. In social media posts, Hall describes his team as a militia, though private paramilitary groups are illegal under the Texas Government Code. In livestreams, he emphasizes the group’s goal is to be the “hands and feet of Christ.”

In an interview, Kinney County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Matt Benacci denied Hall’s group has any formal arrangement with the department, though PFA members have frequently posted information about their patrols. Benacci also told the Observer that some PFA members couldn’t pass when the sheriff’s office conducted background checks in the fall of 2021, when they first offered to volunteer. Hall declined to comment for this story and turned down multiple interview requests.

Photos and videos posted online show PFA members patrolling rural Kinney County and other swathes of the Texas-Mexico border.

Kinney County, which has only 3,150 residents, has been a focal point of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. In the last three years, thousands of migrants have been arrested there, often for trespassing, by law enforcement officials. In April, Abbott’s office issued a press release boasting that his multicounty effort so far “has led to over 507,200 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 41,500 criminal arrests, with more than 36,900 felony charges.”

In October 2021, Kinney County commissioners voted to approve the deputization of 10 reservists for the sheriff’s office. At the meeting, Hall seized the moment to address county lawmakers, saying his group already had a presence in the county assisting with immigration enforcement. “We’ve lost our income to come down here to protect this county when nobody else is doing it,” he said. “We’re going to bring the right quality men that realize the political atmosphere, that realize exactly what’s at stake, and we’re going to protect each and every one of these citizens.”

That fall, Sheriff Coe told The Wall Street Journal that his office was considering formally deputizing members of his group as unpaid volunteers. In a video posted to Facebook days after the meeting, PFA volunteer Terry Dean Anderson claimed the background check and deputization process was underway. 

Hall insists he vets his members, but three PFA volunteers already had criminal convictions prior to beginning their operations on the border in 2021, court records and police reports show. 

Anderson was arrested in March 2022 by state police—not the sheriff’s office—in Kinney County on charges of being a felon in illegal possession of firearms and metal body armor while traveling with the group. In December 2021, Hall posted video footage online of Anderson armed in the presence of Kinney County Sheriff’s Office deputy Sergeant Manuel Pena. 

PFA’s “captain” and second-in-command, Shawn Tredway, has a history of misdemeanor convictions in Texas spanning 1998 to 2011 that include domestic assault, possession of a dangerous drug, possession of a controlled substance, and driving while intoxicated, according to a state police criminal conviction report and court records. In March 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) sent a letter to officials in Collin County requesting documents related to Tredway’s domestic assault conviction as part of an “official federal firearms investigation.” The ATF agent overseeing the investigation into Tredway did not respond to questions sent via email.

Pena said in a phone call that he showed PFA around when they first arrived in town in 2021. Brad Coe, the sheriff, did not respond to multiple interview requests.

The Kinney County Sheriff’s Office was the subject of a formal civil rights complaint from the Texas Civil Rights Project, the ACLU of Texas, and other civil rights groups in December 2021. The complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice, updated in February 2022, alleged in part that “the Patriots for America vigilante group is directly collaborating with the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office, including through repeated meetings and–in at least one instance–in detaining migrants, and that on at least one occasion they seem to have collaborated with the Texas National Guard as well.” Advocates urged immediate action given that such activities appeared to be expanding. But the federal government never responded, David Donatti, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas said in an interview.

Separately, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center sent a letter in May 2022 to top Kinney County officials, protesting the sheriff’s relationship with vigilante groups. “[Texas] laws make clear that the usurpation of law enforcement authority by Patriots for America, Women Fighting for America, or any other private paramilitary organization is illegal under Texas law and should not be condoned or supported,” Mary McCord, the organization’s executive director, wrote.

Hall has also posted photos or boasted on social media of relationships with law enforcement in Uvalde, Val Verde, and Maverick counties, along with the former mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin.

Anderson, Hall, Tredway, and another PFA volunteer responded to the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, which claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers. For at least 8 minutes, videos show, they walked around and filmed beyond the police line. 

Before and after the Robb Elementary school shooting, Hall offered to have PFA patrol Uvalde, McLaughlin said in an interview. But the mayor said he refused and was unaware until being questioned by the Observer that some group members had shown up at the scene of the massacre.

The PFA members who showed up at Robb were not heavily armed. “It could have turned out a lot worse than it did had they shown up in force,” McLaughlin said. “Because officers are trying to deal with one scene … and [police] don’t know who they are.” 

An hour west, in Val Verde County, Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez approached several ranchers in 2021, asking if they needed PFA’s services, according to emails obtained by the Observer and a related report by the Los Angeles Times. Martinez did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Amy Cooter, a Middlebury Institute of International Studies sociologist and expert in contemporary U.S. militias, said introductions by elected law enforcement can help vigilantes: “They feel more legitimized and more like what they do will be overlooked or even encouraged by law enforcement.”

Hall has also posted pictures of himself posing inside the sheriff’s office in Maverick County, home to Eagle Pass, alongside the local sheriff, Tom Schmerber. At first, when asked, Schmerber denied Hall had ever visited there. After a reporter texted him the photo, Schmerber recalled a brief 20 minute meeting and said he had forgotten what Hall’s face looked like. In one of the interviews, Schmerber insisted he doesn’t approve of armed vigilantes. “If someone’s going to help, it’s going to have to be a law enforcement officer,” he said. 

Even if law enforcement does not directly work with anti-immigrant vigilantes, posing for pictures with them is problematic, Cooter said. “It’s almost like a free pass to do whatever you want saying, ‘I’ve cleared all this with law enforcement,’” she said. “Even the well-meaning groups I have encountered, they tend to retrospectively exaggerate just how much free license that kind of interaction gets them.”

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Other vigilantes have posted photos or videos to showcase their rapport with federal border enforcement agents. Veterans on Patrol, a militant group which has operated sporadically in southern Arizona for nearly a decade and recently traveled to eastern Washington State, has leveraged what it claims are relationships with law enforcement officials to solicit funding and members. The group’s title is something of a misnomer: Its leader and founder, Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, is not a veteran.

Vigilantes have also shared drone surveillance footage with U.S. Border Patrol agents, according to footage analyzed for this story and shared by the Western States Center, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for public policies to combat domestic extremism. 

The grainy dashcam footage, taken in 2018 or 2019, shows a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) checkpoint 25 miles west of Tucson in the Arizona desert. Meyer narrates as a green-and-white Border Patrol pickup truck pulls up. The truck stops, and an agent steps out and approaches Meyer’s vehicle.

“Hey man … you guys are very effective. You can’t talk to every agent like you can talk to me,” the agent says. 

Meyer had not traveled to the checkpoint empty-handed. He brought footage captured from a drone. The agent offered to “take the [memory] card or you can text [the footage] to me either way. I’ll get you another card back.”

During their conversation, the agent nonchalantly said he’s “not the FAA,” referring to the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates airspace. The agent continues: “If you guys can see [migrants], we can get ‘em.”

“I have a few things that go bang and go fast if you know what I mean.”

In recent years, federal border enforcement officials’ tolerance of paramilitary groups has had frightening consequences for migrants. In 2019, members of the United Constitutional Patriots were able to establish a camp, raise funds, and proliferate in New Mexico because they had the tacit blessing of the U.S. Border Patrol, according to McCord, the Georgetown-based constitutional law expert.

That militia was detaining migrants, “completely without any authority,” McCord said. Then, they would hand them over to Border Patrol. Agents weren’t actively asking the self-described militia associates to continue detaining migrants illegally, McCord said, but they also weren’t taking any action against the vigilantes for breaking the law. “They were just ignoring the fact that what these folks had done was illegal,” she said.

CBP spokespeople declined requests for an on-the-record interview and did not respond to written questions for this story. 

Like Veterans on Patrol, United Constitutional Patriots touted relationships with law enforcement to encourage prospective volunteers and vie for donations. The now-defunct paramilitary group was led by Larry Mitchell Hopkins, who had criminal convictions in multiple states for weapons charges and impersonating a peace officer. Hopkins was arrested again in New Mexico in 2019 and charged with illegal possession of a firearm—but only after footage of his group detaining several hundred migrants at gunpoint went viral. 

Border Patrol agents appear to lack top-level guidance or official policies for engaging with vigilantes. 

U.S. Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, identified this federal policy deficit in a letter last year in response to vigilante activity in Texas and Arizona by Patriots for America and Veterans on Patrol. The letter—sent to top officials at the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and CBP—described how border vigilantes have engaged in “unofficial or unsanctioned collaboration with law enforcement agents.”

Without federal action, the letter states, “Vigilante groups will continue to operate and weaken the government’s ability to maintain migrant safety, protect human rights, and defend the rule of law at the border.”

In January 2024, Markey introduced legislation that would impose criminal penalties on unauthorized armed militia activity. The bill has been referred to the Senate and House Judiciary committees for consideration.

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In February, thousands of people around the country joined the “Take Our Border Back” trucker convoy tour, with stops in San Diego, California, Yuma, Arizona, and a ranch near Eagle Pass. 

That weekend, a few armed vigilantes roamed the small Texas border city leaving residents uncomfortable even in their own Walmart parking lot. Several members of the Carnalismo National Brown Berets, a four-decade-old Chicano civil rights group, arrived from across Texas to provide security for local residents during a counterprotest. One Brown Beret, who goes by the Nahuatl name Canauhtli, called the convoy “Woodstock for fascists.”

The convoy’s influx of armed vigilantes left some residents exasperated. “We’re tired of it. This community is exhausted,” said local activist and Maverick County Democratic Party Chair Juanita Martinez.

Despite politicians’ claims to the contrary, Martinez added, there’s no invasion in her town—except by law enforcement officials and anti-immigrant groups. “They’re lying to you, pendejos,” she said to the Observer in a downtown café.

Among the vigilantes who have visited Eagle Pass is Gibson, the United Patriot Party of North Carolina leader. 

“Should have goddamned learned English before you got over here! … Habla English here!” he barked at two migrants, according to a video he posted in November 2023.

In another, he pointed a flashlight at a group of six migrants walking in the dark, including two small children. “Sit down. Sit down. Sit! Sit!” he repeated. The migrants got on their knees. “These people put themselves and little children in danger,” he said, as his flashlight partially illuminated the faces of a woman and child, who appeared frightened and confused. 

When asked about the incident, Gibson said “they weren’t afraid of us,” but a smuggler on the Mexican side of the river. 

Despite living more than 1,000 miles from the border, Gibson, the North Carolina militia leader, returned to the border again in January. This time, however, he solicited backup.

People from other states heeded the call, including one with explosive plans. 

Paul Faye, a 55-year-old from Tennessee, made arrangements to meet Gibson in Eagle Pass. Faye was supposed to serve as a sniper, and bought tannerite to make DIY explosives, according to an affidavit filed in federal court in February 2024 from an undercover FBI agent who had been watching Faye for almost a year. “I have a few things that go bang and go fast if you know what I mean,” Faye told the agent, according to federal court records.

Faye never made it to the border to meet up with the United Patriot Party in January; he was arrested on February 5. 

Others were patrolling the Eagle Pass area with Gibson in January when the FBI surveillance plane spotted one or more people in the group pointing a gun at migrants. In an interview, Gibson said a “gentleman” with his group “did use his rifle looking through his scope” in lieu of binoculars to watch people cross the river. Gibson also told the Observer he denounces violence.

Texas Department of Public Safety officers questioned members of the group—including Gibson and 50-year-old Jeremy Allred, a Montgomery County resident, who was carrying “multiple weapons” despite a prior domestic violence conviction that made him ineligible to carry a gun, according to police reports. Officers detained Allred but released him after a federal prosecutor initially declined to accept the weapons charge.

In the aftermath, Gibson boasted to his Instagram followers that he’d only been warned by federal agents. “If any of these illegals … [said] they even felt threatened, just felt threatened by me, then I would be arrested.” 

Allred returned to the border to rejoin the group a week later. In a motel parking lot in Del Rio, he again openly carried a pistol on his hip. This time, an FBI agent arrested him. As of March, he was still being held without bail on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm. He was subsequently transferred to a private prison and no further updates were available. The federal public defender representing him declined an interview request.

Still, Gibson has boasted about what he claims are positive relationships with law enforcement, including Border Patrol and DPS officers. “I would dare say they were cool with us,” he said in an interview.

When people like him are hanging out with the police, Gibson said, “The whole ‘domestic terrorist’ thing falls apart.”

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Editor’s Note: Avery Schmitz has an agreement with Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, which Mary McCord leads, for legal services related to reporting previously published by Lawfare, a nonprofit legal and policy publication.

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Why America Needs to Know about Trump Getting Spanked in Silk Pajamas

When it comes to seizing power, Republicans apparently believe the rule of law, and thus our democracy, is merely an inconvenient impediment to be brushed aside…

Thom Hartmann

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House Speaker Dade Phelan speaks with other representatives during a special legislative session at the state capitol in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 17, 2023. Credit: Julius Shieh/The Texas Tribune

Dade Phelan directs House leaders to revisit vouchers, property taxes in the next legislative session

“Dade Phelan directs House leaders to revisit vouchers, property taxes in the next legislative session” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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House Speaker Dade Phelan directed his committee leaders to examine the use of school voucher-like programs in other states and consider new ways to further drive down property taxes for homeowners.

Released Wednesday, Phelan’s list of priorities includes a broad range of policy issues, from evaluating housing prices and the closures of rural pregnancy centers, to revisiting previous, contentious legislative debates over foreign ownership of Texas agriculture land and determining whether the state has “sufficient resources” at the U.S. Mexico border.

The Beaumont Republican issued his interim charges for the next Legislative session starting in January, even as it remains unclear whether he’ll still be a member of the body by then.

[Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick lists housing affordability, fighting antisemitism on campus among 2025 priorities]

Phelan will square off in a highly-consequential, May 28 GOP primary runoff against challenger David Covey, who has received significant support from Phelan’s political foes – including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Last month, Patrick released his own list of priorities for the Texas Senate next year and, like Phelan, highlighted border security, housing affordability, property tax relief and the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies on public investment funds.

The release of Phelan and Patrick’s respective priorities follows more than a year of vicious and public fighting between the two over, among other things, the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, school voucher programs and property tax relief.

On border issues, Phelan and Patrick are both asking for reviews of the state agencies’ involvement in Operation Lone Star, and whether they have sufficient resources. And both have also highlighted foreign ownership of Texas agricultural land and facilities as a cause for concern — potentially reviving contentious debates from last year, when a proposal to ban dual citizens from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran from owning Texas was significantly scaled back following months of protests.

On the school voucher front, Phelan has requested that lawmakers study the use of education savings accounts in other states, and to “make recommendations for a Texas program.” The directive comes after similar legislation was defeated by a coalition of rural Republicans and Democrats last year, delivering a major blow to Gov. Greg Abbott on one of his key policy objectives. In response, Abbott spent more than $6 million to oust nine incumbent Republicans who opposed the program, and the governor is hoping to notch at least two more wins in this month’s runoff elections that would likely be enough to push voucher programs across the finish line next year.

Phelan has taken heat in his own primary among Republicans who say he did not go far enough to advance school vouchers. As is often customary for the speaker, Phelan didn’t cast a vote on vouchers. But he later told The Texas Tribune he would have supported a scaled back version of the program, as opposed to the universal eligibility that Abbott promoted.

After passing a $12.7 billion property tax-cut package last year that appears to have driven down tax bills for many homeowners, the state’s top Republicans have signaled they’re not done trying to rein in Texans’ property taxes, among the highest in the nation.

Phelan, in particular, wants to revisit an idea that proved a major dividing line between him and Patrick last year as the two GOP leaders duked it out over the tax-cut package.

Phelan and House Republicans backed a proposal to tighten the state’s cap on annual increases to a home’s taxable value from 10% to 5% — an attempt to quell complaints from homeowners about fast-rising appraisals spurred by the state’s robust economic growth, which they saw as the root cause of rising tax bills. Patrick and Senate Republicans balked at the proposal, successfully pushing instead for a boost in the state’s homestead exemption. Phelan’s idea to further cap homesteads’ appraisals died, though lawmakers did pass a temporary cap on some business property appraisals.

Now, Phelan has signaled he wants to continue exploring the idea of tightening the cap — instructing the House Ways & Means Committee to explore “whether to further reduce the limit on appraised value of homesteads.” Tax-cut experts across the political spectrum have warned that tightening the appraisal cap would create greater inequities between taxpayers, disproportionately benefit wealthy homeowners and drive up housing costs.

Phelan also wants the committee to look into whether the state can afford to put more money toward cutting school districts’ tax rates as it did last year and whether to keep the state’s homestead exemption on school district taxes at $100,000.

Leaders of both chambers want lawmakers to address the state’s housing affordability crisis amid high home prices and rents.

One way they could do it: relaxing city restrictions on what kind of housing can be built and where. Phelan instructed a House panel to “examine factors affecting housing attainability and affordability in Texas, including state and local laws impacting supply and demand for housing, barriers to construction resulting from zoning practices and the availability and costs of housing outputs.”

Housing advocates have increasingly targeted city zoning restrictions that dictate how much land a single-family home must sit on and how many homes can be built on a particular lot. Those rules, advocates and housing policy experts argue, prevent the construction of enough homes to meet demand — and drive up home prices and rents as a result.

Texas lawmakers quietly considered tackling cities’ zoning restrictions last year, but those measures mostly died quietly in the House after passing the Senate. There could be common ground between leaders of the two chambers on the zoning front: Patrick also signaled that he wants lawmakers in his chamber to consider similar proposals. Texas Republicans and conservative policy wonks have lately shown a new appetite for such ideas.

The state’s top three Republican officials have all now expressed concerns that Wall Street is potentially playing too big of a role in the state’s homebuying market and boxing would-be homebuyers out of their first home. Phelan wants House lawmakers to “evaluate the impact on housing prices and rent caused by institutional buyers,” meaning investors and corporations that buy single-family homes to rent them out, in order to “determine what policy changes are needed to ensure families and individuals are not unfairly priced out of homeownership.”

Lawmakers are also paying increasing attention to Texans’ rising homeowners insurance premiums — among the highest in the nation. Insurance rates for Texas homeowners grew faster than in the rest of the country last year, driven by increased risk from extreme weather events.

Phelan told the House State Affairs Committee to examine what’s driving insurance premiums and to “investigate solutions to help Texans more easily and affordably obtain property and casualty insurance coverage.”

Phelan has also asked for “legislative solutions” to prevent wildfires and improve wildfire disaster response. The move follows historic fires in March that burned more than 1 million acres in the Texas Panhandle.

Phelan also directed the Health and Human Services committee to investigate the role the state should play in Medicaid contracts and managed care, an issue that has brought some heat on Texas state human services officials in recent years over hundreds of billions in canceled procurements that have spurred lawsuits.

A recent decision by Texas Health and Human Services to drop indigent health plans run by three legacy children’s hospitals from the Medicaid program triggered loud protests from some lawmakers over the methods the state used in evaluating managed care organizations for some $116 billion in new contracts. The proposed changes, which haven’t been finalized yet, would affect six managed care organizations across the state and shuffle the health plans of some 1.8 million low-income Texans, including children, in late 2025.

Karen Brooks Harper contributed to this report.

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The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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Texas Supreme Court justice implies Democrats will cheat in 2024 election

“Texas Supreme Court justice implies Democrats will cheat in 2024 election” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine is facing new questions about his impartiality after a clip went viral this week in which he implied that Democrats plan to cheat against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

“Do you really think the Democrats are going to roll over and let Trump be president again?” Devine asked in a keynote speech at the Texas Tea Party Republican Women’s 2023 Christmas event. “You think they’re just going to go away, all of a sudden find Jesus and [there will] be an honest election? I don’t think so.”

Devine is a former anti-abortion activist who claims that church-state separation is a myth and, as a state district judge in Harris County in the 1990s, fought to have a copy of the Ten Commandments posted in his courtroom. In his successful 2012 campaign for the Texas Supreme Court, he claimed to have been arrested 37 times at anti-abortion protests in the 1980s, and has since been a reliable ally of conservative, Christian voters in the state. Devine narrowly survived a GOP primary challenge last month that centered around his ethics, and now faces state district court Judge Christine Vinh Weems, a Democrat, in the November general election.

Devine acknowledged in his speech that the court could hear more election cases — including those involving Harris County, which Devine accused of trying to “bastardize” election laws when it expanded voting access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the county’s protocols were later shot down by the Texas Supreme Court.

“I think those kinds of cases are going to be back to us in this cycle,” he said.

Devine then praised Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, who championed numerous laws that were aimed at Harris County in the wake of the 2020 elections. Last year, the Texas Supreme Court declined to block a law, authored by Bettencourt, that removed Harris County’s elections administrator position.

Bettencourt, who attended Devine’s speech, returned the praise: “You’re one of the reasons why we do win fights at the Supreme Court,” he told Devine.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee blasted Devine’s comments in a Saturday statement, calling them “shockingly inappropriate” and tying them to broader distrust in the judiciary.

“Judges should be honestly evaluating and applying our state’s laws, not giving partisan speeches baselessly accusing members of a different political party of ‘cheating’ in elections,” Menefee said. “It’s shockingly inappropriate for a sitting justice to make disparaging comments about a party that has been and will continue to be before his court. I hope Justice Devine acts with integrity and recuses himself from Harris County cases moving forward, but given his concession that he views himself as aiding Republicans in a ‘fight’ against Democrats, I won’t hold my breath.”

Election disputes weren’t the only hot-button issues on which Devine opined that night. Throughout his 40-minute speech, he blasted legal challenges to Texas’ abortion laws as a “mockery of God,” and invoked apocalyptic language when discussing Democrats — saying his judgeship gave him a “front-row seat to the end of the world.”

“Our culture is dying before our very eyes,” he said. “The church seems to be weakened and not know what to do. We have a corrupted government. On a federal level, we’re run by a criminal enterprise. … None of you are going to escape this. And so I would implore you to get closer to the Lord. I would implore you to prepare. I would implore you to bring other people on board.”

Devine did not respond to a request for comment Friday about the comments or the online criticism of them. The backlash comes barely a month after the Tribune reported on another speech he gave last year, in which he again claimed that Democrats had tried to steal elections. In that speech, Devine also blasted his colleagues on the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court as “brainwashed” by “Big Law.”

“At times I feel like they would sacrifice the Republic for the sake of the process,” Devine said in that speech. “My concern is that they all bow down to the altar of process rather than to fidelity to the Constitution. And when I say that, it’s not meant to be malice towards my colleagues. I think it’s how they were trained — how they were brainwashed.”

Devine has recently faced other questions about his ethics. Earlier this year, Bloomberg News reported that he had missed more than half of oral arguments before the court this term as he campaigned for reelection.

And in February, the Tribune reported that Devine did not recuse himself in 2022, when the court considered a high-profile sex abuse lawsuit against Southern Baptist leader Paul Pressler and his longtime law partner, Jared Woodfill. Devine, the Tribune found, had worked for Pressler and Woodfill’s law firm for years — and at the same time that the plaintiff in the lawsuit alleged he was molested by Pressler while also working at the firm.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/05/texas-supreme-court-justice-john-devine-2024-election/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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Gov. Greg Abbott attends a community gathering in support of Israel at the Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin on Oct. 9, 2023. Credit: Evan L’Roy for The Texas Tribune

As Texas students clash over Israel-Hamas war, Gov. Greg Abbott orders colleges to revise free speech policies

By Sneha Dey, The Texas Tribune

March 27, 2024

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As the Israel-Hamas war continues to ignite tensions among Texas college students, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order requiring schools to discipline what he described as “the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses.”

Higher education institutions are expected to update their free speech policies to include the definition of antisemitism, as well as establish and enforce punishments for violating those policies. Expulsion from the college could be considered an appropriate punishment, Abbott said.

“Texas supports free speech, especially on university campuses, but that freedom comes with responsibilities for both students and the institutions themselves,” Abbott wrote in the Wednesday executive order.

The Israel-Hamas war has tested free speech policies at universities in Texas and across the country. As pro-Palestine and pro-Israel students engage in protests and heated discussions, school leaders have struggled to strike a balance between their roles as moderators and facilitators of intellectual debate on campus.

In the Wednesday executive order, the governor singled out Palestinian student groups on campuses — including the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine — who he says have violated free speech policies and should be subject to discipline.

Texas students with the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine will not stop their political organizing, they said in a joint statement about the executive order. They said Abbott was “resorting to racist misrepresentations to justify the blatantly discriminatory violation of our First Amendment” and using “arbitrary censorship” to slow the student movement. The students called on their university leaders to protect them and their free speech rights.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an advocacy group for free speech on college campuses, criticized Abbott’s executive order, saying it leans on a definition of antisemitism that would involve punishing students for “core political speech,” including any criticism of Israel. And while the free speech group said Texas colleges can and should go after antisemitic harassment, threats and violence, it believed the executive order goes too far.

“State-mandated campus censorship violates the First Amendment and will not effectively answer anti-Semitism,” FIRE said in a statement. “By chilling campus speech, the executive order threatens to sabotage the transformative power of debate and discussion.”

Abbott has been unequivocal in his support of Israel, even traveling to Jerusalem in November to offer the state’s help. And in December, he told Texas colleges they had a “responsibility” to protect Jewish students.

Abbott has not commented on if and how universities should protect pro-Palestine students, who have also faced threats and harassment since the start of the war.

The governor said in a statement Wednesday that the executive order will mean campuses “are safe spaces for the Jewish community.” It comes months after the state dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion offices, whose responsibilities included making college more inclusive to students of all cultures and backgrounds.

Per Abbott’s order, the chair of the board of regents at each college has 90 days to share documentation verifying revisions were made to free speech policies and evidence that those policies have been enforced.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

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

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We can’t wait to welcome you to downtown Austin Sept. 5-7 for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival! Join us at Texas’ breakout politics and policy event as we dig into the 2024 elections, state and national politics, the state of democracy, and so much more. When tickets go on sale this spring, Tribune members will save big. Donate to join or renew today.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/27/israel-hamas-war-texas-universities/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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Paxton Charges Could be Dropped

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s securities fraud charges could be dropped under deal, according to report

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The New “Over the Top” Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Republicans are planning in the event Joe Biden wins re-election & Democrats hold the Senate and take the House this November…

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How Trump Ends Social Security

The GOP have been trying to gut or privatize Social Security ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt put it into place in 1935.

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Political News Update

• As Trump and Harris spar, ABC's moderators grapple with conducting a debate in a polarized country
• Key takeaways from a debate that featured tense clashes and closed with a Taylor Swift endorsement
• PHOTO COLLECTION: Election 2024 Debate America Watches
• To pumped-up Democrats, Harris was everything Biden was not in confronting Trump in debate
• The most notable — and quotable — exchanges from the Harris-Trump debate

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Greg Abbott, Tim Dunn spend millions in Texas GOP primary fights over vouchers, impeachment

By Robert Downen and Karen Brooks Harper, The Texas Tribune

Feb. 27, 2024

“Greg Abbott, Tim Dunn spend millions in Texas GOP primary fights over vouchers, impeachment” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas Republican leaders, megadonors and political groups are spending massively ahead of the March 5 primary, pouring millions of dollars into campaigns that have become a litmus test for the Texas GOP’s future amid deepened fissures over school vouchers and Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment.

New campaign finance reports show just how expensive the Texas GOP’s ongoing civil war has gotten, with political interest groups such as Texans For Lawsuit Reform doling out more than $6 million in the last month to a mix of incumbents and PACs; and a small group of voucher supporters, state leaders and far-right megadonors separately injecting at least another $8 million into the primaries.

From Jan. 26 to Feb 24, the most recent campaign finance reporting period, Gov. Greg Abbott spent $6.1 million as part of his ongoing quest to stack the Texas House with members who will pass school voucher legislation. Last year, about two dozen Republicans joined with Democrats to block Abbott’s yearlong crusade to pass a law allowing state dollars to subsidize private school funding. Pro-voucher groups have aided Abbott’s efforts, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into challengers’ accounts in cash and ads.

Over the same period, far-right billionaires such as Tim Dunn have ramped up their giving. In the last reporting period, Dunn’s new group, Texans United For A Conservative Majority, spent more than $2.5 million as part of their campaign to oust incumbent Texas House members who voted last summer to impeach Paxton, a key ally of the state’s right wing. Paxton was acquitted by the Senate.

Paxton, who has endorsed the roughly one-third of House Republicans who resisted his impeachment on corruption accusations, didn’t spend any money on those races. Most of his cash is going to legal fees, according to campaign finance reports.

Voucher fight goes to the districts

Abbott’s spending spree in the most recent fundraising period was largely aimed at 10 GOP primary challengers to anti-voucher Republicans in the Texas House. Abbott spent about $4.4 million on mostly ads, polling and canvassing for those challengers. For those 10 challengers, Abbott’s spending made up almost all of their campaign funding for the period.

Abbott spent another $1.5 million in open-seat races and defending House Republican incumbents — like Rep. Ellen Troxclair of Austin — who supported vouchers, but are facing heated primary contests because of their votes to impeach Paxton.

Abbott’s voucher effort has been bolstered by a record-setting $6 million contribution from pro-voucher activist Jeff Yass in December.

The top beneficiary of the governor’s funding from Jan. 26 through Feb. 24 was Marc LaHood, who received $672,410 in ad spending and other services from Abbott, representing some 81% of his fundraising for that period. LaHood is trying to unseat three-term state Rep. Steve Allison in his San Antonio district.

Close behind him was Janis Holt, who received $671,300 in ad spending from Abbott in her primary against state Rep. Ernest Bailes. That ad spend made up 92% of her total haul for the most recent fundraising period. Bailes, a Shepherd Republican and voucher opponent, lashed out at Abbott last week for his efforts to unseat otherwise loyal Republicans.

“My unwillingness to be a puppet, is why I am challenged so aggressively and by so much money this election,” Bailes said on Facebook.

Bailes and other anti-voucher Republicans were boosted by the Charles E. Butt Public Education PAC, which poured $1.3 million into 11 GOP incumbents’ campaigns.

Half of that was spent defending Allison and Bailes. Allison barely outraised his challenger with $889,000 in contributions — about $60,000 more than LaHood — while Bailes raised about $50,000 less than Holt in the most recent reporting period.

Abbott’s pro-voucher quest was aided by other PACs.

The AFC Victory Fund super PAC, formed expressly to support private school vouchers, spent some $784,000 in Texas last month and collected $2.5 million in donations from less than a dozen donors.

The PAC spent almost $450,000 on direct mail against those anti-voucher incumbents, with some of the heaviest financial firepower reserved for state Rep. Glenn Rogers, R-Graford, who is battling for his third term west of Fort Worth against Paxton and Abbott favorite Mike Olcott.

Olcott also received a $50,000 donation this month from Dunn, whose groups have for years sought to unseat Rogers, a longtime foe and vocal critic of the billionaire’s political network.

“I can’t be controlled by radical billionaire special interests. I represent YOU, the people of my district,” Rogers wrote on X this week.

The pro-voucher Family Empowerment Coalition PAC spent nearly $600,000 last month, mainly on House races. It raised nearly half a million from donors in January including $100,000 from Dallas billionaires Darwin and Douglas Deason, and a quarter-million from Andrew Price, an Austin-area billionaire investor.

Holt took in $50,000 from the Family Empowerment Coalition PAC. She got another $5,000 from Texans United for a Conservative Majority, as well as a “campaign endorsement text message” from Texans for [Lt. Gov.] Dan Patrick valued at $3,318. The rest of her $2,400 in contribution came from 11 individual donors, several outside the district.

Dunn reemerges

Dunn meanwhile gave $1.75 million in February to Texans United for A Conservative Majority, which was created late last year after another Dunn-funded group, Defend Texas Liberty, was embroiled in controversy over its ties to Nick Fuentes and other white supremacists. The PAC also received $1.3 million last month from Farris Wilks, another West Texas oil tycoon who funded Defend Texas Liberty.

After laying low in the last quarter of 2023, Dunn’s new group poured roughly $3.4 million into campaigns and ad buys amid an ongoing war with the Texas GOP’s more moderate, but still deeply conservative, wing. In February alone, Texans United for a Conservative Majority spent roughly $2.5 million.

Instead of vouchers, the group has focused more on ousting incumbents who backed Paxton’s impeachment, or supporting candidates who share their hardline views on the border or LGBTQ+ issues.

Since Jan. 26, Texans United for a Conservative Majority has given $194,000 in support to David Covey’s challenge to House Speaker Dade Phelan, who has been targeted by Dunn’s groups for his role in the Paxton impeachment, his appointment of Democrats to minor House committee chairs and his sharp criticism of Defend Texas Liberty in the wake of the Fuentes scandal.

The PAC also gave $180,000 in support to Andy Hooper, who is challenging Rep. Lynn Stucky of Denton; $180,000 to Brent Money ahead of a rematch of a January run-off in which he narrowly lost to Jill Dutton in North Texas; and $103,000 to Mitch Little, a former member of Paxton’s impeachment defense team who is challenging Rep. Kronda Thimesch, R-Lewisville .

The PAC is also backing some of its former candidates, including Shelley Luther, who ran for the Texas House in 2022 after being jailed for refusing to close her salon during Abbott’s pandemic-era shutdown; and Biedermann, whose previous tenure in the Texas House was bankrolled by groups connected to Dunn.

Since Jan. 26, Texans United has given $133,000 in contributions or ad buys for Luther’s campaign. It also gave $83,000 to Biedermann days before he was roundly criticized for defending Bryan Slaton, a former state representative who was bankrolled by Dunn’s groups until he was expelled last year for having sex with a drunk, 19-year-old aide.

Big TLR money

Meanwhile, the Texas GOP’s business wing has continued to spend big in support of incumbents in the Texas House and Court of Criminal Appeals, both of which have drawn the ire of Paxton and his allies.

Leading the way has been Texans For Lawsuit Reform, a powerful pro-tort reform PAC, associated with backing the Republican establishment, that entered the year with more than $35 million in its coffers. Since Jan. 1, TLR has spent more than $8.2 million — including more than $6.5 million in the last month.

Among the PAC’s biggest beneficiaries: Troxclair, who since Jan. 26 has received $583,000 amid a challenge from Biedermann. and Joanne Shofner, whose campaign against incumbent Rep. Travis Clardy received $408,000 from TLR. Clardy was an outlier in the House for voting against vouchers but also vocally opposing Paxton’s impeachment.

Shofner and Troxclair have also been backed by Abbott, who since Jan. 26 has given them $368,000 and $237,000 in support, respectively.

In February, TLR also matched a $477,000 contribution from Phelan’s campaign to the Secure Our Border Now PAC, which supports the speaker’s House allies. TLR also gave $250,000 to the Judicial Fairness PAC, which is supporting three incumbent judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals who have been targeted by Paxton for ruling that his office can’t unilaterally prosecute local voting crimes.

Phelan, protecting his own supporters in the House, spent some $1.3 million of his considerable war chest just since late January on incumbents battling well-funded opponents. Receiving the most were Reps. Lacey Hull of Houston with $125,000, Matt Shaheen with $130,000 and Lynn Stucky with $95,000.

Phelan raised $3.8 million in the past month as he defends his own Beaumont district against an onslaught from Abbott, Patrick, Paxton and hard-right grassroots who accuse of him of party disloyalty.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/27/greg-abbott-tim-dunn-paxton-vouchers-republican-primary-texas/.

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Women’s Lives Are on the Ballot This November

AP Photo/Eric Gay

Fifty-one years ago on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision, Roe v. Wade, which recognized a woman’s right to privacy when it comes to their reproductive health. My predecessor in Congress, Eddie Bernice Johnson, had just been sworn into the Texas House with her freshman colleague, Sarah Weddington, a lead attorney for unnamed plaintiff Jane Roe, when the call was made to the Texas House Floor that Texas women had won us the right to abortion. 

But now, I’m watching Texas women suffer because of Republican anti-freedom authoritarianism. Today, I possess fewer rights than my mother possessed during her reproductive years. Why and how did we get here? The answer is quite simple: former President Donald Trump. His right-wing Supreme Court majority overturned Roe just as he intended.

As Trump continues to boast about dismantling women’s reproductive rights, MAGA Republicans have followed his lead and passed similar draconian abortion bans and in twenty one states so far, including Texas’ S.B. 8, which banned bans abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. And we know they want to take things even further by passing a national abortion ban.

Thanks to Republicans, one in three women of reproductive age now live under an abortion ban. Here in Texas, pregnant women are filled with the fear that if they suffer a pregnancy complication, they’ll be unable to access necessary healthcare treatment.

One such harrowing example of how these abortion bans are hurting women is the case of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from my hometown of Dallas who found herself in the heartbreaking position of needing an abortion to treat a non-viable pregnancy. When Kate received the devastating news about the pregnancy she desperately wanted, she had two options: risk losing her life and her future fertility by continuing to carry a nonviable fetus to term or flee her state and risk prosecution. 

Some would argue that Kate had no good options; I’d agree. Kate deserved better from her state and her country. Kate should have been able to follow the advice of her doctors, but instead had to seek relief from the court system. Despite the glimmer of hope after lower courts granted her relief, multi-indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton decided to threaten her doctors with incarceration. Eventually, the Texas Supreme Court delivered the final blow and ruled she could not access the healthcare she needed.  

While Kate was able to flee Texas to receive the life-saving care she desperately needed, the same can’t be said for all women in her position—especially for low-income women. 

What’s terrifying is that things could get worse for women if Republicans win in 2024. This isn’t about whether you agree with abortion; it’s about whether you agree with the idea behind democracy and hold the principle that power belongs to the people—and that policies should reflect the people’s will and their constitutional protections.

Let me make it crystal clear: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democrats up and down the ballot are the only candidates running to protect women’s freedoms, our democracy, and our future. 

The stakes are particularly high for Texas women this year. This election is about the choice between more freedoms or fewer. President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats will stand together to safeguard the freedoms of Texas women, but it will take all of us engaging in this fight to win.

You hold the key to a better future. Only you can unlock your freedoms at the ballot box. Our rights are on the ballot, and we have the chance to protect them by voting for President Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot this November. Our lives depend on it. 

This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.” Link the original story here.

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Appeals court rules lawsuit seeking Jan. 6 emails from Texas governor, attorney general can move forward

By Lauren McGaughy, KUT News

Jan. 19, 2024

“Appeals court rules lawsuit seeking Jan. 6 emails from Texas governor, attorney general can move forward” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A lawsuit to force two Texas leaders to release years of their emails, including about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, can move forward thanks to a Wednesday appeals court decision.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott did not make the case for the lawsuit against them to be thrown out.

The decision was a major win for American Oversight, the Washington-DC based nonprofit that sued for access to the records after being rebuffed by the state. The group’s executive director called the decision “a tremendous victory for transparency.”

“American Oversight is seeking records related to matters of significant public interest and the appeals court was correct to reject this effort to evade accountability. We hope that Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Paxton will stop their delay and finally release these records to the public,” Heather Sawyer said in a statement.

Abbott and Paxton can appeal the decision. Neither responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.

American Oversight filed the lawsuit in June 2022 after unsuccessfully requesting communications from the two Texas leaders. The group wanted access to years of Abbott and Paxton’s communications, including both men’s emails with NRA officials and Paxton’s emails in the days around Jan. 6, 2021.

Paxton attended and spoke at the pro-Donald Trump rally before the attack on the U.S. Capitol that year. The attorney general has declined to say who paid for his trip to DC, and has refused to release his communications from before, during and after the event.

Abbott and Paxton said their offices did not have any communications with NRA officials. They refused to release the other records, citing rules protecting confidential communications with attorneys and discussions about pending lawsuits.

In their response to the lawsuit, they argued that only the Texas Supreme Court could compel the attorney general to act in this instance. They also said no court could force the governor’s hand in this case.

A lower court said these arguments did not hold water.

On Wednesday, the appeals court justices agreed, and also rejected Abbott and Paxton’s arguments that the lawsuit should be tossed because they released some very limited records in response to American Oversight’s requests.

The justices who wrote the opinion are Darlene Byrne, Chari L. Kelly and Rosa Lopez Theofanis. All three are Democrats.

This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”

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Hamilton County Texas Democrats understand the daily concerns of family and friends in Hamilton County and strive to give a voice to all.  We believe government exists to achieve together what we cannot achieve as individuals; and government must serve all people. A representative democracy is only truly representative if every single citizen is guaranteed the inalienable right to vote in fair and open elections.