“Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s short-lived policy of requiring state troopers to conduct secondary inspections of trucks crossing into Texas from Mexico cost the United States almost $9 billion in just 10 days, Axios reported Tuesday.
The policy, which Abbott enacted on April 6, snarled truck traffic at the border and led to a protest by Mexican truckers that stopped trade at some major crossings. On April 15, Abbott ended the double inspections, for which he’d received withering criticism from both sides of the border and the aisle, after striking deals with the governors of the four Mexican states that border Texas.
Per Axios, Abbott implemented the policy “in response to the Biden administration’s announcement that it would lift Title 42,” a Trump-era public health policy that denied migrants entry into the United States.
An analysis by the Perryman Group showed that the U.S. lost an estimated $8.97 billion in GDP due to delays at the border, while Texas alone lost $4.23 billion.”
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has long held that his state is facing an “invasion,” which consists of thousands of migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico over the Rio Grande. Now, in an attempt to resist “the Biden open border policies” he claims are endangering Texans and compromising national security, Abbott is prepared to implement a policy that drew scrutiny as soon as he announced it.
“To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigrants,” said Abbott, “Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington, D.C.””
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“immigration advocates and those with a passing respect for individual rights pointed out that Abbott’s proposal, as stated, is both immoral and illegal. Transporting migrants across state lines against their will “sounds dangerously close to federal felony kidnapping,” argued Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. Further, Title 8 of U.S. Code Section 1324(a) states that “any person who…knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise…shall be punished.”
Perhaps those snags are why the governor’s office has since softened its tone on busing migrants north. A press release published after the press conference stressed that “a migrant must volunteer to be transported” in order to board a bus or flight to Washington, D.C.”
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“the new busing policy sits atop a heap of misguided, expensive, and dubiously legal initiatives the governor has undertaken in order to keep migrants out of his state—people who have the right under U.S. immigration law to seek asylum in Texas.
This policy comes from the man who proposed building a border wall of his own after former President Donald Trump’s never came to fruition. Abbott’s project, which is ongoing, ran into many of the same issues as Trump’s—exorbitant costs, tension between federal and state jurisdiction, and the need for egregious eminent domain claims in order to get the job done (not to mention a lack of widespread support). “The elected officials in border communities don’t support [Abbott’s] plans,” American Civil Liberties Union of Texas attorney David Donatti told Reason last year.
The governor’s border-securing mission—Operation Lone Star—has been similarly fraught. While Abbott and other state officials bragged about “more than 11,000 criminal arrests, drug seizures that amount to millions of ‘lethal doses,'” and tens of thousands of undocumented immigrant referrals to the federal government for deportation, watchdogs reported “arrests of U.S. citizens hundreds of miles from the border,” “claiming drug busts from across the state,” and changing statistics and metrics of success, according to The Texas Tribune. Several Texas National Guard soldiers stationed at the border committed suicide during the operation, while dozens more criticized the mission’s execution in an internal survey. With its spotty track record, the still-active Operation Lone Star costs taxpayers more than $2.5 million each week.
With that background in mind, it isn’t surprising that Abbott would opt for a blusterous anti-migrant spectacle that comes at the expense of Texas taxpayers and neglects any humanitarian or legal obligations to asylum seekers.”
“Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has declared all medical treatment of transgender minors to be child abuse and says that his office could prosecute parents of transgender children, as well as “mandatory reporters” who fail to report medical treatment of transgender children to the state. In tandem, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has urged state officials to begin investigating any families that may be giving their trans kids puberty-blocking drugs or hormones, or allowing them to undergo surgical treatments.”
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“Paxton’s argues that helping a child transition can cause them physical and psychological damage and that it deprives the child of the “right to procreation.” Essentially, Paxton is borrowing from the argument against forced sterilization, which he references, as an argument against voluntary trans medical treatment.
However, no one believes that any child—or adult—should be exposed to these treatments against their own wishes. To the extent that minors in Texas are receiving medical treatment for trans issues, it is likely because they requested it. Meanwhile, physicians in the U.S. are largely aligned behind the idea that sex reassignment surgery should not take place until a patient is 18.
But Paxton’s policy announcement is not meant to prevent surgeries that mostly are not happening. He’s also going after the use of puberty-blocking drugs and hormone treatments, which do begin when transgender patients are still minors, and the effects are more easily reversed. Drug therapy is not equivalent to surgery, and it appears Paxton has lumped them together in order to confuse the issue and undermine the legitimacy of any kind of transgender health care.”
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“What about the rights of patients? And of parents? Paxton’s memo argues that the Texas “Legislature has not provided any avenue for parental consent, and no judicial avenue exists for the child to proceed with these procedures and treatments without parental consent.”
Apparently, it’s impossible to consent to your child receiving medical care without the Texas Legislature passing a new law. That’s an interesting version of conservatism.”
“Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, responding to a memo from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, ordered the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to launch these investigations. Paxton argued in his memo that any sort of medical treatment of a trans minor constituted child abuse because some treatments may interfere with the child’s ability to reproduce.
However, this threat didn’t just cover gender reassignment surgery—something that normally doesn’t happen to minors anyway—but also hormonal treatments that block the impacts of puberty on a trans teen—something that doesn’t sterilize them and is reversible. The order also came with a massive threat to any government official or health worker inclined to look the other way: They could also be prosecuted if they knew a parent was pursuing medical treatment for a trans child and did not report them to the authorities.
While this might have looked like the latest loudmouthed culture war fight—the memo doesn’t change the state’s statutory definition of child abuse—the Texas DFPS has begun investigating parents of trans kids. The first target was one of their own. The New York Times reports that the DFPS put one of its own staff members on leave as the agency investigates her over the medical treatment her 16-year-old trans daughter is receiving. The agency has attempted to demand the mother (who is not identified) provide the teen’s medical records. She’s refusing, and now with the ACLU’s help, she’s suing to attempt to stop both the investigation and enforcement of Abbott’s order.”
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“Critics of helping minors transition say parents are rushing into major decisions without a full understanding of the risks. Whether that’s true, the solution is not to put politicians and the government in control of what constitutes legitimate medical treatment.”
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“throwing the parents of trans teens under the bus is a big political winner, according to Abbott’s political strategist. Don’t trust politicians in general, but especially don’t trust politicians who only believe in certain parents’ rights and not others.”
“Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has declared all medical treatment of transgender minors to be child abuse and says that his office could prosecute parents of transgender children, as well as “mandatory reporters” who fail to report medical treatment of transgender children to the state. In tandem, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has urged state officials to begin investigating any families that may be giving their trans kids puberty-blocking drugs or hormones, or allowing them to undergo surgical treatments.”
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“This, apparently, is not just a friendly suggestion from the state’s attorney general. On Tuesday Gov. Abbott sent a memo to the commissioners of the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services summarizing Paxton’s memo and ordering the agency to investigate any parents found providing transgender medical care to their children. He threatens criminal penalties for anybody who fails to report it to the government.
What about the rights of patients? And of parents? Paxton’s memo argues that the Texas “Legislature has not provided any avenue for parental consent, and no judicial avenue exists for the child to proceed with these procedures and treatments without parental consent.”
Apparently, it’s impossible to consent to your child receiving medical care without the Texas Legislature passing a new law. That’s an interesting version of conservatism.”
“Seismologists say that one of the state’s biggest industries is upsetting a delicate balance deep underground. They blame the oil and gas business — and particularly a technique called wastewater injection — for waking up ancient fault lines, turning a historically stable region into a shaky one, and opening the door to larger earthquakes that Texas might not be ready for.
The state is finally trying to change that. In December, the Texas Railroad Commission — the state agency that regulates oil and gas operations and no longer has anything to do with railroads — suspended wastewater injection at 33 sites across a region where more than half a million people live. This is a notable turnaround for the Railroad Commission, which until recently did not acknowledge a link between oil and gas operations and earthquakes, and might be a sign of just how serious the earthquakes have gotten.”
“On first glance, it would be easy to see the Supreme Court’s decision Friday in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson as a win for abortion rights. It would also be wrong.
More than two months after the Supreme Court allowed SB 8, a Texas law that effectively bans abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, to take effect, the Court followed it up with a 5-4 decision that is an even larger defeat to proponents of abortion rights, and a victory to anti-abortion lawmakers in Texas.
The specific question in Jackson is whether abortion providers are allowed to bring a federal lawsuit seeking to block SB 8. Although Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion technically answers this question in the affirmative, it permits suits only against state health officials who play a very minimal role in enforcing the law. It does not allow suits to proceed against the Texas state officials who play the biggest role in enforcing SB 8: state court judges and clerks.
The upshot of this decision is that, while the abortion provider plaintiffs in Jackson may be able to get a federal court order declaring that SB 8 is unconstitutional, the only real relief they are likely to win is an order preventing a few state health officials from carrying out the minor role they play in enforcing the law. The most important provisions of the law — the ones that effectively prevent anyone from performing an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy by threatening them with financial ruin if they do so — will most likely remain in effect.
Though procedural sophistry, Gorsuch and the other justices who joined his opinion engineered the outcome Texas wanted. And the implications of this case could stretch far beyond abortion cases.
SB 8 was written for the very purpose of evading judicial review, and Jackson largely blesses that tactic. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in dissent, Gorsuch’s opinion “leaves all manner of constitutional rights more vulnerable than ever before.” If states can use an SB 8-style law to nullify the constitutional right to an abortion, they could very well use it to nullify any other constitutional right.”
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“Normally, private plaintiffs can’t sue a state directly in federal court — but they can sue the state official tasked with enforcing an unconstitutional law. SB 8 seeks to exploit this structure by forbidding any “officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity” in Texas from enforcing the state’s anti-abortion law. Instead, the law may only be enforced through private lawsuits.
Such lawsuits may be filed by “any person” who is not an employee of the state against anyone who either performs an abortion or who “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.” Plaintiffs who prevail in these lawsuits receive a bounty of at least $10,000, which must be paid by the defendant — and there is no upper limit on this bounty.
The idea behind SB 8 is that no one can challenge the law in federal court because there is no state official who can enforce it. And thus there is no proper defendant.”
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“A federal court, in other words, isn’t allowed to block the most important parts of SB 8 — the part allowing “any person” to seek a bounty from an abortion provider, and the part allowing state court judges to order providers to pay such a bounty. The Texas legislature, moreover, could potentially shut down federal lawsuits challenging SB 8 altogether, simply by repealing the provision of state law that permits health officials to bring enforcement proceedings against people who violate it.
So the bottom line is that Texas won. The state devised a scheme to evade judicial review, and five justices just blessed that scheme.”
“About 4.6 million people signed up for Obamacare through the fifth week of open enrollment, with roughly 923,000 people newly enrolled, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Enrollment is up 20 percent in Texas and 9 percent in Florida compared to this time last year, administration officials told reporters…crediting increased subsidies from the American Rescue Plan.”
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“These two states also have some of the highest uninsured rates in the country. Texas leads the nation with 17.5 percent of its population uninsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Florida ranks fifth, with 12.3 percent of its population uninsured.”
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“Overall, states that have not expanded Medicaid — which includes Florida and Texas — saw a 9 percent uptick in enrollment, officials said.”