Your future Texas state representative was pardoned this week

The sound of snow melting off of my roof is the backdrop to this missive while we continue to wait for things to get started. This is what I’m reading/shuddering about:

On Monday, Trump pardoned 120 Texans who were charged or convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection. As James Henson of the Texas Policy Project put it, this is “building the pool of Texas legislature candidates,” and I hadn’t thought of it that way, but definitely watch out for these nutjobs to run for office in your town. From the Texas Tribune:

Experts on political violence and extremism fear that Trump’s mass pardon is likely to make folk heroes of figures such as Stewart Rhodes, the Granbury-based leader of the far-right OathKeepers militia sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy. Rhodes has for years argued that he is a “political prisoner” — akin to a Jew living in Nazi Germany. Rhodes was released from prison on Tuesday, as was Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the violent Proud Boys street gang who was serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy.

“We just released the leaders of two terrorist organizations,” said Elizabeth Neumann, a counterterrorism expert who served as a senior Department of Homeland Security official for three years under Trump.

When the House reconvenes tomorrow, they will be tackling the housekeeping and rules resolutions, which sounds boring, but this is when it will be decided if Democrats are allowed to serve as committee chairs. Again, this will be a fight between the far-right and the center-right, as the far-right members believe that it’s a mistake that Democrats are even allowed to run for office and that all Texans are born Republican.

Lauren Ashley Simmons filed HB1989 today: relating to the confidentiality and reporting of certain maternal mortality information to the Department of State Health Services, to an exception to certain reporting requirements for health care providers reviewing certain information on maternal mortality and morbidity, to the reimbursement of travel expenses incurred by Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee members, and to a work group establishing a maternal mortality and morbidity data registry.

This is helpful legislation. Republicans, on the other hand:

Briscoe Cain is new boot goofin’ with HB1961, which would abolish “county boards of education, boards of county school trustees, and offices of county school superintendent” for counties with more than 3.3 million residents. Which, again, is only Harris County. A cute little dance to entertain the internet commenters who hate Houston.

Sigh. And Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) tweeted that he’s going to file a bill to put up a sign on I-45 South that reads “Welcome To Galveston, Gateway To The Gulf of America.” I hope TOEFLOP is ready for a comeback.

While Republicans are declaring victory on tHe bOrDEr CRisIs because Trump is here to save the day, Texas Monthly’s Christopher Hooks (one of my favorite Texas commentators) explains that Texan leaders understand that immigration fuels the state’s economy, and that most of what’s been done so far is pure theater, so will that really change?

The big question for Texas, now, is whether Trump will follow through and change, root and branch, how the state’s economy works—its dependence on undocumented labor—or whether he intends a sort of Texas-style sleight of hand in which he performs rigidity and inflicts misery on a relative few while leaving the underlying economic relations of the country intact. Anyone who claims to know the mind of the president is fooling themself, of course. It is difficult to assess where the tough talk of politicians ends and the intent to act begins.

But we’ve had some hints. For one thing, the messaging from Texas officials has been a little more careful than might have been expected, given that Abbott and others were extremely loud on the issue throughout 2020. It’s true that Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham and the state have made a big show out of offering land to the feds for use in future deportations. Buckingham calls the program the Jocelyn Initiative, after Jocelyn Nungaray, who was murdered, allegedly, by two undocumented Venezuelans in Houston. This is classic border theater, and Buckingham got to put on her best hat for the press conference, at which she vowed one of the facilities would be for “violent criminals.”

But if the state were really interested in facilitating sweeping internal arrests and deportations, it seems like the camps would be built on state land near Houston and the Metroplex, where there are large populations of undocumented workers, and not on the border in Starr County, where Buckingham proposed putting one.

This to me is another reminder to take deep breaths when seeing headlines or tweets about mass deportation and birthright citizenship. Trump is nothing but a carnival barker, and Abbott and the suits know that major decreases in the available labor pool would be devastating to the state’s economy.

A third Trump Burger location is opening on a cruddy stretch of Chimney Rock. It’s food for people who want a safe space to say the r-word openly. I fully expect many Houston-area reps to make a beeline there for photo ops.

My hands are freezing, I’m going to go stick them in my dog’s mouth.