Once, just an idiotic Republican, Greg Abbott, and other Republican leaders have joined the fascist movement sweeping the country and stop at nothing to maintain control.
Greg Abbott and other Texas Republicans are out of control. From racial oppression, killing Texans, stopping people from voting, and supporting an insurrection on the American government, Texas has become a fascist and pandemic-ridden nightmare. The only way to prevent it from getting worse is to turn Texas blue.
Dictionary.com defines fascism as a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
Now that we are all on the same page let’s talk about what Abbott and other GOP members have done to turn Texas into a fascist state.
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White nationalism.
After being in office for seven years, all of a sudden, Greg Abbott and other Republicans are hyper-focused on our Southern border. Abbott has taken extreme steps to militarize the border and illegally use private property to implement a useless wall. In addition, he has been using ugly, tribal, racist, and divisive tactics on his “Stop Immigration” campaign in a state where the population is less than 40% white.
LULAC has called Abbott’s rhetoric about the border Texas-sized B.S. and lies.
Residents of McAllen and Laredo have said, “The data is really clear. Laredo and border towns are among the safest cities in the U.S.”
The Texas Observer has called Abbott’s border rhetoric fear-mongering and a manufactured crisis.
Countless civil rights groups, activists, and journalists have called Abbott’s words lies. But, unfortunately, Texas Republicans from Congress to Austin have repeated his lies, time and time again. Some Republicans, who live far away from the border, repeat these lies on social media daily. Brian Babin and Bryan Slaton, to name a few.
Texas Republicans use racist language, like “invasion,” when speaking about immigration.
This is the same word that the El Paso shooter used in his manifesto before driving across the state and slaughtering 23 innocent people.
Recently, Abbott signed a racist and unconstitutional executive order demanding state troopers to pull over Hispanic people and demand to see their papers. The order has since been blocked by a Federal Judge and led to the United States Department of Justice suing the Governor.
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Aside from his “invasion” rhetoric, Abbott and other Texas Republicans have recently been using the racist trope of diseased immigrants to blame the rise of Covid in Texas.
The data and experts all say Abbott is scapegoating and Covid is spreading because of the high un-vaccination rates and lack of precautions, like mask-wearing.
Abbott’s opposition to proven public health measures is killing us.
Before September, 55,000 Texans will have died from Coronavirus. Texas and Florida account for 40% of all coronavirus hospitalizations in America. There are no pediatric ICU beds left in all of North Texas. 96% of ALL ICU beds in Texas are occupied at the moment.
Despite that, Greg Abbott has refused to allow any mask or vaccine mandates and, in fact, issued a mandate prohibiting local governments from keeping their residents and students safe. Despite that, dozens of school districts and county governments have implemented public safety measures. Now, Greg Abbott and American traitor Ken Paxton are suing these local entities to stop them from saving people’s lives.
Abbott’s dictatorship will kill people. He is killing people. And he still refuses to act on keeping the citizens of Texas safe.
Authoritarian control.
Abbott’s order removing local control from county and city governments goes against everything the Republican principles were supposed to represent. Republicans say they oppose big government, while Abbott has made himself a big government.
Trump and Abbott are two peas in a pod, wannabe authoritarian leaders. Now, Texas has threatened to pull liquor licenses for restaurants that ask customers to show proof of vaccination.
What about free markets?
As Abbott has now shown us, there will be no free markets in an authoritarian state. Private businesses cannot make their own rules and policies. Not in Texas.
On top of Abbott’s authoritarian dictator moves to kill children and immunocompromised Texans, he has also taken outlandish steps with the Texas Legislators to implement a hate-filled, racist, and fascist agenda.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]At least Texas Democrats are fighting for us.
During the regular session of the 87th Legislature, Republicans pushed a far-right agenda. Much of it was thwarted by Texas Democrats, and in the final hour, the Democrats broke quorum to prevent one of the most racist voting restriction bills ever written by a state legislature since the days of Jim Crow.
It was a win for democracy. It was a win for Texas.
In his rage, Abbott vetoed the paychecks for over 2,000 people, staffers, and other Capitol employees and called a special session, demanding that legislators pass his far-right-wing wish list for those people to get paid and have their insurance funded.
Items on that wish list included:
- Voter suppression
- Implementing white supremacy in schools
- Making sure people accused of petty crimes couldn’t bond out of jail while awaiting trial
- More abortion bans.
- Banning social media companies who remove hate speech on their platforms from Texas
- Adding more militarization at the border
It was absurd.
Democrats showed up to the first special session.
The first hearings in the House and Senate were on “Election Integrity.” Again, Republicans outnumber Democrats on these committees. They listened to 22-hours of straight testimony where over 400 people showed up and testified against the bill.
When public testimony was completed, Democrats repeatedly tried to offer amendments that would have softened the bill’s blow. Republicans refused to make any amendments, they declined to discuss the bill, and despite listening to 22-hours of how the bill would disproportionately disenfranchise communities of color, the disabled, and the elderly, they voted the bill out of committee on straight party lines.
It was then that Democrats knew that Republicans would not negotiate or be fair. So, they fled the state.
While in DC, breaking quorum a second time, Abbott’s power-driven madness grew.
He went on TV telling the nation of Fox viewers that Democrats would be arrested and thrown in jail for not passing his voter suppression bill. Even though he had no authority to do so.
Only authoritarian dictators would threaten the arrest of political dissents.
Democrats did not return during the first special session. So, Abbott called a second special session to begin one day after the first one ended. This time, he added more right-wing extremist wish-list items.
Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court, 9-0 Republicans, refused to block Abbott’s veto of staffer pay.
We are now on Day 7 of the second special session. Thankfully, Democrats are still fighting for democracy. Unfortunately, they have 23 more days of quorum breaking before it ends.
If Democrats fail to hold the line and allow a quorum, it will have devastating consequences for millions of Texans.
Every chance you get, please remember to tell the Texas Democrats, “Thank you.”
Abbott has once again called for the arrests of Texas Democrats. Dade Phelan, House Speaker, signed an order to have Democrats escorted by arrest back to the Texas House. Another constitutional violation was blocked by a Texas judge and then overturned by our Republican-led Supreme Court. Now, Texas law enforcement has been deputized to bring the missing Democrats to the House for Abbott to pass his extremist agenda.
Texas is supposed to gerrymander redistrict our maps this year.
Only 39.75% of Texas’ population is white. However, the Republican government, which is supposed to be leading us, is 97% white.
The reason for this inequality is years of voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Since 95% of our population growth is from people of color, Republicans will have to do some severe gerrymandering to stay in control.
This is also the reason why the GOP is pushing so hard for voter suppression legislation.
We can win.
Murphey’s law dictates that anytime you say, “It can’t get any worse,” it will get worse.
It will get worse.
The Republican Party of Texas and every elected official who places an (R) next to their name are no longer flirting with fascism. Texas is a full-blown fascist state, led by an authoritarian dictator.
Texas Republicans will kill children in the Covid pandemic because they no longer believe in local control and strip away schools’ ability to keep their kids safe.
The Texas GOP will take away the rights of millions to vote because white supremacy is no longer a majority in Texas.
They will poison your children through pollution for their own riches, they let you freeze in winter without electricity to pad their pockets, and they will ban schools from talking about Martin Luther King and Fredrick Douglas because they want to maintain power.
It will get worse unless we all stand up.
We have to fight them in every way we can.
Democrats have to continue to block quorum. Local officials need to continue to break Abbott’s ridiculous orders. We all have to protest. We all have to stand against them. And every single one of us needs to make sure they never sit in public office in Texas ever again.
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