Tag Archives: Greg Abbott

The Texas Tribune reports: A new lawsuit filed Wednesday is challenging Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal on behalf of three families, including the Briggle family, who have long been advocates for trans rights, including hosting Republican Attorney …

The Texas Tribune reports: Major Republican donors, including some that have contributed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaigns, joined other conservative Texans in signing an open letter supporting congressional action to increase gun restrictions in response to the mass shooting in Uvalde that left 19 children and two teachers dead last week. The letter, which ran as a full-page ad in …

The Texas Tribune reports: Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday instructed state school security and education officials to start conducting “in-person, unannounced, random intruder detection audits on school districts” to find weak access points and see how quickly staff can enter a school building without being stopped. Education advocates and lawmakers swiftly condemned the idea of unannounced, fake intruders. Clay Robison, …

San Antonio’s ABC News affiliate reports: “We as a state – we as a society – need to do a better job with mental health. Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and do something about it.” Those are the words …

Yahoo News reports: President Joe Biden was warmly greeted when he visited Uvalde Sunday, but Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott was loudly booed as he approached the makeshift memorial at the elementary school where 19 children and two teachers were killed last week in a mass shooting. “Shame on you, Abbott!” a voice could be heard amid the boos and …

The Hill reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Friday said he expects new laws to be enacted in response the shooting this week that killed 21 people at an elementary school. “Do we expect any laws to come out of this devastating crime? The answer is yes. Absolutely yes,” Abbott said. When asked about calling a special session for …

Axios reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a press conference Friday that he was “misled” on the timeline of the events of the Uvalde school shooting. Driving the news: “The information that I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I’m absolutely livid about that,” he said. The Texas governor said that he took down notes …

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is backing out of a scheduled in-person appearance at the NRA’s convention in Houston on Friday and will travel to Uvalde. He will instead give prerecorded remarks to be played at the convention. Abbott’s decision comes after the massacre reignited a national debate about firearm access — and renewed criticism of Republican …

The Hill reports: Facebook is denying Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) allegation that the gunman who killed 21 people, including 19 children, at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday posted publicly about the attack on its platform. Abbott said during a press conference Wednesday that the gunman, Salvador Ramos, posted three times before the shooting at Robb Elementary School in …

Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke just crashed Gov. Greg Abbott’s press conference on the Ulvalde school massacre, where he and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was issuing the usual thoughts and prayers blather and even saying that the massacre could have been worse. Moments after O’Rourke approached the dais, multiple Abbott flacks began shouting at him, with one calling him a …

The Texas Tribune reports: After six power plants went down unexpectedly Friday — and with hot weather expected across Texas this weekend — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas on Friday evening is asking consumers to conserve electricity through Sunday. Texans are asked to set their thermostats to 78 degrees or above between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. this weekend …

CNN reports: After a pause on investigations of families seeking gender-affirming care for their transgender children, the Texas Supreme Court said the state’s child protective services investigations can continue while an appeals process plays out on the merits of the case. The opinion released Friday still restricts the state from investigating the so-called “Doe” family, which brought forward a lawsuit …

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and top state lawmakers shifted around roughly $1 billion in federal coronavirus aid to help pay for their campaign to arrest migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, exposing gaps in a law meant to bolster the country’s response to the ongoing pandemic. Critics say the money would have been put to better use …

The Austin Statesman reports: Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that Texas would consider challenging a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to offer free public education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants. “Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler versus Doe,” …

The New York Times reports: His efforts to tighten border security and harden Texas’ 1,254-mile frontier have helped Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, hold off challenges from his right and made the lawyerly governor into a regular on Fox News. Now Mr. Abbott is weighing whether to invoke actual war powers to seize much broader state authority on the border. …

The Texas Tribune reports: The decision to crowdfund the free bus trips for migrants is a new development from when he initially announced on April 6 that it would be paid for by Texas taxpayers. At the time, Abbott proudly presented the trips as a tough-on-immigration act of defiance against the Biden administration. But the shift to ask private donors …

The Laredo Times reports: Gov. Greg Abbott increasing inspections of commercial trucks entering from Mexico in the hopes of staunching illegal smuggling activity resulted in zero migrants detentions or illegal drug seizures, despite allegedly costing the Lone Star State billions of dollars. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller stated in an email to supporters this week that the enhanced truck inspections cost …

Axios reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s rule doubling the inspections for commercial trucks coming in from Mexico caused delays that cost the U.S. nearly $9 billion in gross domestic product, according to one analysis. The rule, which Abbott has since rescinded, prompted fierce backlash and snarled cross-border traffic for days. Between April 6 and 15 — when the rule was …

Mediaite reports: Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) appeared on Monday’s Hannity to discuss his decision to bus undocumented migrants to Washington, D.C. He even threatened to send migrants to President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware. So far, six buses have arrived in the nation’s capital. “Will you send every illegal immigrant that you find in the state of Texas to …

The Associated Press reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday repealed his traffic-clogging immigration order that backed up commercial trucks at the U.S.-Mexico border, after a week of intensifying backlash and fears of deepening economic losses. The Republican governor dropped his new rules that had required all commercial trucks from Mexico to undergo extra inspections to curb the flow of …