CNN reports:
Gun owners allowed to carry handguns without permits or training. Parents of transgender children facing investigation by state officials. Women forced to drive hours out-of-state to access abortion.
This is Texas now: While the Lone Star State has long been a bastion of Republican politics, new laws and policies have taken Texas further to the right in recent years than it has been in decades.
Elected officials and political observers in the state say a major factor in the transformation can be traced back to West Texas. Two billionaire oil and fracking magnates from the region, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, have quietly bankrolled some of Texas’ most far-right political candidates — helping reshape the state’s Republican Party in their worldview.
Read the full article. It’s really something and yes, the word “oligarchs” is used.
“In their sermons they paint a picture of a nation under siege from liberal ideas
” ‘The cornerstones of our government are crumbling and starting to come apart,” Wilks declared in a 2014 sermon. ‘It’s because of the lack of morality, lack of belief in our heavenly Father’ ”
2/2— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) July 25, 2022