#texas republicans

[republikkkanorcs]

#texas republicans #greg abbott #republican assholes #maga morons #resist

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Greg Abbott is a human trafficker and Ted Cruz and the rest of the Congressional delegation are insurrectionists.

#republican hypocrisy #gop #corporate greed #republican party #Tex-ass #texas republicans #human trafficking #insurrection #Jan 6th insurrection #busing migrants #Greg Abbott #Ted Cruz

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Doesn’t animal control put down rabid dogs.

#republican assholes #ken paxton #texas republicans #Tex-ass

[rejectingrepublicans]

#republican assholes #texas republicans

[injuredcyclist]

Nothing says ‘hey, we’re assholes!’ like voting to censure a guy that represents Uvalde, TX for voting for a gun reform bill.

#texas republicans #Fuck the GOP #gun control

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Republican members of the Texas state legislature introduced a slate of bills Thursday designed to subvert election processes and curb voting rights in the state. One of them would even allow the Texas Secretary of State to overturn election results in the state’s largest Democratic-leaning county, with very little rationale for doing so.

On Thursday, Republican state senators introduced Senate Bill 1993, a bill targeting Harris County, a diverse region that includes Houston and is also the most populous county in Texas, to a Senate committee for debate.

SB 1993 would grant Secretary of State Jane Nelson (R) the authority to order a new election in Harris County “if the secretary has good cause to believe that at least 2% of the total number of polling places in the county did not receive supplemental ballots,” according to the bill text. Secretary Nelson would have the same authority granted to a district court.

The bill would “allow really low thresholds” for ordering a new election, Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas, told TPM. “Anything from a machine malfunction, which can necessarily be the fault of the county or of an election administrator getting stuck in traffic—which in Houston is incredibly likely—and having a delay in providing election results to the central count station,” she said.

The bill was introduced alongside over a dozen other bills seeking to restrict voter access and overhaul the state’s elections process. Senate Bill 260, for example, would allow the Secretary to suspend election administrators without cause, and Senate Bill 1070 would enable Texas to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a bipartisan program that maintains voter rolls across state lines that has recently been targeted by far-right propaganda.

State Republicans quietly introduced the bills in the State Affairs Committee on Thursday morning—without giving the mandatory 48-hour notice. “Every part of today’s hearing highlights the subversive attacks on elections in Texas,” Ehresman said, “and (SB) 1993 is a part of that.”

With a population of nearly 5 million, Harris County is the most populous county in Texas and the third most populous in the U.S. It became the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories back in 2020, when the county experienced some technical difficulties as election officials tried to change procedures to make voting safer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Secretary of State’s office conducted an audit of the general election. They found that the county “had very serious issues in the handling of electronic media,” but none of those issues actually amounted to voter fraud.

Harris County saw issues again in 2022, however, as state and local Republicans went after the county’s election administrations by recruiting and deploying poll watchers throughout the county. This prompted local Democrats to request federal observers instead. On Election Day, the county did experience several issues that often take place in more urban counties, like polling sites opening late and some running out of paper ballots, among other things.

The Texas GOP, including Gov. Greg Abbott, seized the opportunity to accuse county officials of “election improprieties,” and 22 right-wing candidates used it as an excuse to challenge their losses. Still, there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

State Democrats argue that the introduction of a flood of anti-voting legislation targeting Harris County has all been a retaliation against the county turning blue back in 2018.

“A lot of what we see is Harris County as an example of a need to invest in election administration and not penalize or detract from it,” Ehresman said.

#us politics #news #voter disenfranchisement #texas #gop #conservatives #republicans #texas republicans #gov. greg abbott #2023 #Texas Secretary of State #Senate Bill 1993 #Harris County #Houston #Jane Nelson #talking points memo #Senate Bill 260 #Senate Bill 1070 #Electronic Registration Information Center

[snowwhitelass]

Vote all the Republican cowards out of office in the 2022 midterm elections. 🗳

#texas shool shooting #texas republicans #republican party #uvalde #texas #gun violence #san francisco giants #gabe kapler #us politics #nra #gop #mlb #beto orourke #us elections #2022 midterm elections

[tomorrowusa]

What would it take for major news media to quit normalizing Nazism in the Republican Party?

Of Course They Do: Texas Republicans Say Associating With Nazi Sympathizers Is Fine

Trump’s insane language concerning his opponents

Historian Meacham links Trump ‘vermin’ comments to ‘most ghastly kinds of crimes’

When Trump tells you he’s an authoritarian, believe him He's talking like a fascist. He's planning fascist policies. He's staffing up with fascists.

Commentary: With ‘vermin,’ Donald Trump crosses fully into Nazi territory

#donald trump #normalizing trump #nazism #tell the media to quit normalizing trump's nazism #vermin #authoritarianism #fascism #extremism #texas republicans #the gop #election 2024 #nick anderson

[shotofchinaco]

The Texas House unanimously voted to expel Bryan Slaton on Tuesday, one day after the Royse City Republican submitted his resignation after an internal investigation determined that he had sex with a 19-year-old aide after getting her drunk. 

[...]

Ahead of the vote, members of the committee told the House that Slaton had not disputed the allegations and still had not expressed remorse or regret. They also said Slaton likely committed multiple crimes, including providing alcohol to a minor.

[...]

Slaton, a prominent anti-LGBTQ lawmaker who has described drag performers as “perverted adults,” allegedly invited the woman to his Austin apartment and gave her a large cup of rum and coke, then refilled it twice. The committee said she was rendered unable to “effectively consent to intercourse and could not indicate whether it was welcome or unwelcome.”

The bipartisan committee also said Slaton tried to obstruct their investigation, including by what they described as intimidation tactics against the aide and other witnesses. Five members of Slaton's staff also refused to be interviewed by the committee.

Slaton, a married father who portrayed himself as a “family values” conservative, submitted his written resignation to Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday. In the letter, Slaton said he planned to spend more time with his family but did not address the inappropriate conduct.

[...]

Slaton was previously a youth pastor at several Southern Baptist churches and ran for the Texas House in 2021 on a family-values campaign that was financed heavily by Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which is mostly funded by ultra-right West Texas oil and gas tycoons. In the House, he gained a reputation as an anti-LGBTQ bomb-thrower who was unafraid to needle those in his own party from the right.

Last year, Slaton called for a blanket ban on minors at drag shows, saying they needed to be protected from “perverted adults,” and proposed giving per-child tax credits to married, heterosexual couples — while excluding LGBTQ or divorced people. Slaton, who is previously divorced, also called this year for a referendum on Texas’ secession from the United States, despite legal experts overwhelmingly saying such a move would be illegal.

#republican lawmaker #texas republicans #anti-lgbtq #anti-drag #obstruction #family values #'spend more time with his family' #youth pastor #texas oil money #general hypocrisy #this story has everything

[socialjusticeinamerica]

#Tex-ass #texas republicans #Greg Abbott molests farm animals #reproductive justice #reproductive rights #reproductive health

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Tex-ass Republicans are a direct threat to democracy. Oligarch millionaires and billionaires run amok in Texas while ordinary people struggle to survive living in aging trailers and a failed electric grid. Never have citizens been so taken advantage of and neglected as are modern Texans. Many of them don’t even know how much they are being ripped off. Yet they continually fall for the mindless boosterism of Texas as some larger than life bastion of days gone by when it has become a failed third world state and embarrassment to the US.

My sympathies for the hardworking Texas Dems fighting an uphill battle against a crooked Republican Party determined to make that state a model of Republican crime and fascism.

#republican assholes #Tex-ass #Texas republicans #Ken Paxton #Medicaid fraud #republican values #republican family values

[uboat53]

Yeah, just in case anyone thinks that support of Israel has anything to do with being pro-Jewish, the Texas Republican Party just approved a resolution in support of Israel but explicitly removed a clause that would have banned party members from meeting with Neo-Nazis.

It's frankly disturbing sometimes how much support Israel gets from antisemites.

#politics #us politics #republicans #texas politics #texas republicans #israel #antisemitism

[mon-mothmas-collar]

texas republicans are sooo funny cause they’ll kill a bunch of people in a winter storm and won’t apologize for it then when those same people are dying in a heatwave they are actively removing preventative measures to keep their citizens alive

#turn texas blue #democrat #fuck the gop #greg abbott #winter storm #Texas #texas republicans #texans stay in an energy crisis #there are blackouts almost every week here in my city #ercot

[doncar09]

The witch-hunt State!

#digital art #political satire #texas republicans #greg abbott #ted cruz #ken paxton #john cornyn #new puritans #fuck misogynists #vote beto #doncar09

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Food does not contain aborted fetuses, but the total lack of existence of such a product hasn’t stopped one Texas Republican from trying to regulate it.

Ahead of the opening of the Texas state legislature last week, Republican state Sen. Bob Hall introduced a bill to mandate that food containing “human fetal tissue” be “clearly and conspicuously labeled.” If passed, this bill would also apply to food that is “manufactured using human fetal tissue,” or “derived from research using human fetal tissue.” Medical and cosmetic products that have links to fetal tissue would also be subject to these requirements. 

Fetal tissue, according to the bill, is “tissue, cells, or organs obtained from an aborted unborn child.”

To be clear, food with fetal tissue in it? Not a thing. It doesn’t exist.

“There are no conditions under which the FDA would consider human fetal tissue to be safe or legal for human or animal consumption,” an FDA spokesperson told VICE News in a statement. Eating food with fetal tissue would also likely constitute cannibalism, which is typically frowned upon.

Cannibalism has found its way into the news quite a bit lately. Prominent conspiracy theory movements like QAnon hold (falsely) that elite Democrats are running a cannibalistic, Satan-worshiping, child sex-trafficking ring. QAnon’s beliefs are linked to antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ tropes that hold that Jewish and LGBTQ people are trying to hurt children, and even drink their blood. These conspiracies, which have flourished partly through lockdown isolationism and election denialism, have radicalized a stunning number of Americans and torn families apart.

Although food would not be impacted if Hall’s bill became law, medicine and science could be, since fetal cell lines can be used to develop and test drugs. These lines can be collected from a single miscarriage or abortion, then replicated in labs, over and over again, for decades. (Cell lines derived from aborted fetal tissue can be preferable, both because it’s easier to collect and because fetal tissue derived from a miscarriage may carry whatever genetic or chromosomal problem may have caused the miscarriage in the first place.) Fetal cell lines have led to development of many major vaccines, such as the vaccines against chickenpox and Hepatitis A.

After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, a split erupted in the anti-abortion community over the morality of taking COVID vaccines that may have been developed or tested using fetal cell lines. The Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines do not include any fetal cells, although fetal cell lines were sometimes used in the development stages.

Hall’s office did not immediately return a VICE News list of questions about the bill. However, his office told HuffPost in a statement, “Unfortunately, many Texans are unknowingly consuming products that either contain human fetal parts or were developed using human fetal parts.”

“While some may not be bothered by this, there are many Texans with religious or moral beliefs that would oppose consumption or use of these products,” the statement continued.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has previously said that, although vaccines with links to fetal cell lines can cause “a problem of conscience for some Catholic parents,” they can take them in service of the greater good of public health. In 2020, the conference urged people to get vaccinated against COVID.

“A well-informed consumer can make whatever choice they decide on purchasing a product so long as they have all of the information in hand to make the choice,” Hall told HuffPost.

So far, Hall’s bill has not been assigned to a committee.

#us politics #news #aborted fetal tissue #texas #2023 #Bob Hall #conservatives #republicans #gop #texas republicans #abortions #miscarriages #fetal tissue #food and drug administration #Cannibalism #qanon #fetal cell lines #vaccines #huffington post #U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops #republicans be like #conservatives be like #vice news

[geezerwench]

#texas #greg abbott #fuck greg abbott #texas republicans #republicans #this is how they roll #texas healthcare #healthcare in texas