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

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      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

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

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      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

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      Biden administration sues Texas over abortion law: Politics Weekly Extra

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      On Thursday night, the US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the US Justice Department would launch a federal lawsuit against Texas over the extreme abortion law that the state introduced last week. Jonathan Freedland speaks to Moira Donegan about what all of this means for Roe v Wade

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: C-Span, NBC, MSNBC Read all of our Guardian coverage on the new abortion law in Texas Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      The Texas county that explains why Republicans are terrified

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      Fight to voteTexasThe Texas county that explains why Republicans are terrifiedDemographic shifts in places like Fort Bend mean the GOP is desperate to pass its extreme agenda while it can The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam LevineThu 9 Sep 2021 10.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 9 Sep 2021 11.10 EDTHappy Thursday,I’m writing from my hotel room in scorching-hot Sugar Land, Texas, a city that’s just south-west of Houston, where I’m doing some reporting for our ongoing series this summer about gerrymandering. Stay tuned for more details on that story, and you can read the first, second and third pieces in our series in the meantime.As you may have heard recently, Texas has become a kind of epicenter of conservative political extremism, as Republicans who control the legislature have pushed through the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, significantly loosened gun laws and passed harsh new voting restrictions. To understand why that’s happening, you have to understand what’s happening in Sugar Land, and in Fort Bend county.Since 2010, the population in Fort Bend county has just exploded. Last year, the census counted 822,779 people living here, a staggering 40% increase from a decade ago. It’s part of the metro and suburban growth that helped Texas’s population grow by 16% over the last decade, making it one of the fastest-growing places in the US.The county is also now extremely diverse; it is nearly 32% white, 25% Hispanic or Latino, 21% Asian and 21.3% Black.“​​Fort Bend county is probably the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,” Stephen L Klineberg, the founding director of Kinder Institute for Urban Research, who closely studies the demographics of the Houston area, told me. “And so it’s a perfect model for what the American future [will look like].”Even though Sugar Land is just a short drive from Houston, it is a bona fide city in its own right. There’s a walkable town square with shops and an array of restaurants. In the center is city hall, flanked by a huge plaza and fountains where kids were chasing each other around last night.“You walk into a new restaurant, you walk into a bar, you walk into a bookstore, you see the diversity in Fort Bend county,” said Mustafa Tameez, a Democratic political strategist. “What used to be just a suburb is now becoming very much like an urban community – highly educated, diverse voters living in close proximity to each other.”The population isn’t the only thing that’s changing – the politics are too. In 2012, Mitt Romney handily won the county over Barack Obama by about 10 points. But in 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by six points. In 2018, Beto O’Rourke won the county in his US Senate campaign against Ted Cruz. Biden carried the county in 2020.In 2018, Democrats won all the top county positions on the ballot, including ousting the county judge, the highest elected position in the county, a Republican incumbent who held the post for a decade.The winning candidate was KP George, an Indian-American immigrant and Democrat, who was trounced when he ran for county treasurer in 2010 and then became a commissioner on the school board in 2014. He decided to run for judge when he saw how many people supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. “That was an eye opener,” he told me over the phone a few weeks ago.These are the kinds of elections that are scaring Republicans in Texas, who still maintain complete control over state government. And it helps explain why they are imposing such extreme policies in the state legislature.“​​There’s been explosive growth in the suburbs of Texas and that is driving through the change in politics that is creating this kind of last hurrah kind of thing for people like [Texas Lieutenant Governor] Dan Patrick, and Governor Abbott and others that are trying to get as many conservative things as they can possibly get done. Because it’s not a reflection of the population and where the population is headed,” Tameez said.Klineberg, the demographer, added that there was no way for Republicans to stop the kind of demographic change happening in Fort Bend county. “The Republicans see the handwriting on the wall,” he said.I’m also thinking about …
      The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, signed the sweeping new legislation restricting voting access into law on Tuesday. The new law faces several challenges already in state and federal court.

      Several places are seeing a flood of people signing up for lower-level GOP positions that could play a big role in how elections are administered, according to a remarkable story from ProPublica. “I’ve never seen anything like this, people are coming out of the woodwork,” one Florida GOP chairman told the outlet.Have any questions about elections and voting?Send them to me! Starting this week, you can send me your burning questions about voting rights in America and I’ll do my best to answer them in next week’s newsletter. You can send your questions to sam.levine@theguardian.com or DM me on Twitter @srl
      TopicsTexasFight to voteUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Jen Psaki mocks Texas governor's pledge to 'eliminate' rape amid criticism of abortion ban – video

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      White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked for her response to Texas governor Greg Abbott’s latest defense of the six-week abortion ban in his state. Abbott pledged to ‘eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas’ when he was asked why rape and incest victims should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. Psaki said in response: ‘If governor Abbott has a means of eliminating all rapists or all rape from the US then there’d be bipartisan support for that’. She went on to say that no leader in the history of the world has been able to eliminate rape and that is one of the many reasons that women in Texas should have access to safe abortions through their healthcare. 

      White House derides Abbott’s vow to ‘eliminate’ rape amid criticism of Texas abortion ban – live
      AOC on Texas governor’s ‘disgusting’ abortion remarks: ‘He is not familiar with a female body’ More