Texas

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Texas, Spurred By Trump, Announces Election Audit in 4 Counties

      by

      Eight and a half hours after former President Donald J. Trump made a public demand for Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to back legislation to create a “forensic audit of the 2020 election,” the Texas secretary of state’s office announced a “comprehensive forensic audit” of the results from four of the state’s largest counties.The quick response by state officials in Texas, which Mr. Trump carried last year by more than five percentage points, was the latest example of the former president’s enduring influence over the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to his efforts to undermine public confidence in the legitimacy of his loss last year to President Biden.“Governor Abbott, we need a ‘Forensic Audit of the 2020 Election,’” Mr. Trump said in a midday open letter to Mr. Abbott. “Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties.”Texas is currently without a secretary of state, after the May retirement of Ruth Ruggero Hughs. Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has yet to appoint a successor.Nevertheless, the office released a two-sentence statement late Thursday stating that it would examine ballots from the 2020 election in Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant Counties. The news release called those counties the “two largest Democrat counties and two largest Republican counties” in the state, but of the four, only Collin County backed Mr. Trump against Mr. Biden in the 2020 election. The statement said the audit process had already begun.Since Arizona Republicans began a review of more than 2 million ballots in Maricopa County, Trump-aligned Republicans across the country have sought to replicate the effort. In Wisconsin, a former State Supreme Court justice is investigating the election results and said Monday that an audit of ballots is possible. Pennsylvania Republicans last week sought driver’s license data and Social Security numbers for every voter in the state as part of an inquiry into the 2020 election there.The various reviews have not uncovered any significant evidence of fraud or impropriety in the vote counting. But they have created a new kind of security risk as third parties gain access to voting equipment and raised questions about the use of public resources to investigate Republican conspiracy theories.To date, there have been no serious allegations that the Texas election was flawed.Texas Democrats called the audit the latest attempt by Mr. Abbott and the state’s Republicans to cater to Mr. Trump.“This is all an organized effort to overturn the will of the people in an effort to fuel the ‘Big Lie’ and stroke Trump’s ego,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Beto O’Rourke Draws Closer to Entering Texas Governor’s Race

      by

      Mr. O’Rourke has been calling Democratic leaders in Texas to tell them he is seriously considering challenging Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022. HOUSTON — Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman who became a darling of Democrats after nearly defeating Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, is inching closer to announcing a run for governor of Texas, according to three people who have spoken with him.In recent weeks, Mr. O’Rourke has been making calls to Democratic leaders across Texas to inform them that he is seriously considering taking on Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who is up for re-election next year. And he has begun talking to supporters about having them join his campaign staff. A decision could be made in the coming weeks, the three people said, possibly as soon as October. Democrats in Texas have been urging Mr. O’Rourke to get into the race for governor almost from the moment he dropped out of the 2020 race for president, a quixotic effort that stumbled early and failed to gain traction amid a crowded primary field. But despite his troubles on the national stage, Mr. O’Rourke has maintained a deep wellspring of support in Texas, where many Democrats still display the black-and-white Beto signs from the 2018 campaign on their lawns and on their cars. Mr. O’Rourke did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. David Wysong, a longtime adviser to Mr. O’Rourke, cautioned that “no decision has been made” on a run for governor. The three people who discussed their conversations with Mr. O’Rourke are Democratic officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about conversations that were meant to be private.No Democrat has been elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards in 1990. And no prominent Democrat has emerged to take on Mr. Abbott next year. The governor, who has built up a war chest of more than $55 million, has appeared more concerned with insulating himself from challengers on his right in a Republican primary than worrying about the general election. But Democrats see a potential opening. Over the last few months, Texas has bounced from crisis to crisis — including a surge in pandemic deaths and a winter failure of the electric grid — while Republican leaders in Austin have steered the state even farther to the right on issues from guns to elections to abortion. In a survey last month, a majority of Texans told pollsters they thought the state was heading in the wrong direction.Amid the political turmoil, Mr. O’Rourke has stayed active in the state. “He’s been not just making pronouncements, he’s been out there knocking on doors, leading marches, setting up rallies all over the state,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Mr. Hinojosa said the Supreme Court’s decision to let a strict new abortion law passed by the Texas Legislature go into effect had galvanized many Democrats in the state. The new law effectively bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy and is structured in such a way as to avoid an immediate court challenge.“This whole abortion legislation has changed the dynamics incredibly,” he said. In the 2018 campaign, Mr. O’Rourke showed that he was able to energize Democrats, raise significant sums of money and campaign aggressively across Texas, a large and notoriously difficult place to run a statewide campaign. Even in defeat, his margin against the incumbent Mr. Cruz — 51 to 48 percent — helped lift Democratic candidates in local races and led to gains in the State Legislature that year. The prospect of a run by Mr. O’Rourke against Mr. Abbott — reported by Axios on Sunday — would present Democrats with the biggest and most direct test yet in their attempts to loosen the Republican grip on power in Texas. During his failed presidential run, Mr. O’Rourke took positions, including a hard line on confiscating assault weapons, that could make him vulnerable in any new campaign in Texas. “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” Mr. O’Rourke said during a Democratic debate in Houston in 2019, referring to military-style rifles that have been used in mass shootings.David Carney, a campaign adviser to Mr. Abbott and a longtime Republican political consultant, said that he would not be surprised if Mr. O’Rourke jumped into the race. “O’Rourke has been planning to run since he got crushed in his presidential flop,” Mr. Carney said. “He is a target-rich environment with positions way, way out of the mainstream.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas’s largest companies stay silent on state abortion ban despite outrage

      by

      TexasTexas’s largest companies stay silent on state abortion ban despite outrageCorporations, including American Airlines and ExxonMobil, have not made statements about the ban that all but outlaws abortion Lauren ArataniWed 15 Sep 2021 04.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 15 Sep 2021 04.51 EDTDespite the widespread outrage over a new Texas law that all but outlaws abortion in the state, only a handful of major companies have spoken out against the legislation that went into effect on 1 September.The law relies on private citizens to carry out the ban by allowing people to file civil lawsuits against anyone who assists a woman in getting an abortion after embryonic cardiac activity is detected. A divided US supreme court declined to block it, allowing it to remain in effect as its legality is worked out in lower courts.Salesforce offers to help staff leave Texas as abortion law takes effectRead moreTexas’s largest corporate employers, including American Airlines, ExxonMobil, Dell Technologies, Oracle Corporation and Hewlett-Packard Enterprises – all of which are headquartered in the state – have not made any public statements about the law.Texas has some of the most business-friendly tax and regulation laws in the country, making it unsurprising that many businesses, including Apple, Toyota and Tesla, have been luring millions of workers to Texas’s major cities through recent expansion of their operations in the state.After the law went into effect, Governor Greg Abbott said that “a lot” of residents and businesses in the state approved of the law.“This is not slowing down businesses coming to the state of Texas, it is accelerating the process of businesses coming to Texas … They are leaving the very liberal state of California,” he told CNBC, a nod to the number of high-profile big tech companies that have opened Texas offices in recent years.In the interview, Abbott said that he speaks to Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, “frequently” and said Musk approves of the state’s social policies. Musk quickly responded on Twitter that he believes “government should rarely impose its will upon the people and when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness”.“That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics,” he added.While it may be easiest for companies to similarly stay away from “politics”, a recent poll has found that the college-educated workforce the major companies hope to attract to Texas are likely to stay away from the state because of the law. Nearly 75% of women and 58% of men said that Texas’s abortion ban would discourage them from taking a job in the state.“Other states are competing for people,” Tammi Wallace, CEO of the Greater Houston LGBT Chamber of Commerce, told Bloomberg News. “If you look at what our state is doing, and then you see another state where they’re not doing some of those things, you might say, ‘Well, the money’s good, but where do I want to raise my family?”Silence from major corporations is particularly notable given that companies have started to become vocal about progressive causes like LGBTQ rights, gender equality and racism within the last five years.Most recently, hundreds of companies and CEOs signed a statement against restrictive voting laws in April as Georgia’s legislature was passing a series of voting restrictions. The CEOs of American Airlines and Dell were vocally critical of similar voting restrictions that were going up through the Texas legislature.Companies have also been vocal about other abortion bans in the past. Leaders of more than 180 companies signed a statement in June 2019 that took up a full-page ad in the New York Times criticizing abortion restrictions in light of the blitz of abortion bans that were being passed in several states.“Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortions, threatens the health independence and economic stability of our employees and customers,” the statement read. “Simply put, it goes against our values and is bad for business.”When Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, signed an abortion ban in May 2019, leaders from major Hollywood studios, including Netflix and Disney, voiced concerns over the bill and said they would boycott filming in the state, which offers lucrative entertainment tax incentives.“I think many people who work for us will not want to work there,” Bob Iger, then-CEO of Disney, said at the time. A federal judge ultimately blocked the Georgia bill.Jen Stark, senior director of corporate strategy at Tara Health Foundation, said that the law had “just really hit companies by surprise” and that many companies were trying to come up with a response.In 2019, “there was a much longer runway as multiple states were passing restrictions in succession and a longer media spotlight”, Stark said.“There are many, many conversations being had behind the scenes with large, well-known brands,” Stark said, adding that the Don’t Ban Equality coalition, which organized the 2019 corporate statement, was working on a statement against the law they were hoping companies would sign.One exception to the general silence over Texas’s law is the cloud-based software giant Salesforce which is offering to help relocate employees out of the state if they so wish. Referring to the “incredibly personal issues” that the law creates, a message to the company’s entire workforce sent last week said any employee and their family wishing to move elsewhere would receive assistance.Bospar, a small California-based public relations firm, also said that it will offer $10,000 to its six Texas-based employees for relocation out of state because of the abortion ban.Among the few other companies who have spoken out against the Texas abortion ban are the dating app companies Match Group and Bumble, ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft, Yelp and Benefit Cosmetics.The city council of Portland, Oregon, is also trying to boycott millions of dollars of goods and services coming out of Texas, including barring business-related travel to Texas, because of the ban.The Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, called the boycott a “a complete joke” on Twitter and said: “Texas’s economy is stronger than ever. We value babies and police, they don’t.”TopicsTexasAbortionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More