Posts Tagged ‘2022 Texas Governor’s Race’

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Texas Special Session Begins

Thursday, July 8th, 2021

Today the Texas Special Legislative Session begins:

Governor Greg Abbott unveiled an agenda of 11 items for the legislature to tackle in its first special session of 2021 when it convenes later this week.

The whole agenda includes:

  • Bail reform
  • Election reform
  • Border security
  • Social media censorship
  • Article X funding
  • Family violence protection
  • Requirement for student athletes to compete within their own sex
  • Restriction on abortion-inducing drugs
  • Supplemental payment to the Teachers Retirement System
  • More comprehensive critical race theory ban
  • Property tax relief
  • Foster care system appropriation
  • Cyber security appropriation

    • Items like election reform, social media censorship, and a more comprehensive ban on critical race theory were already identified by Abbott as part of the agenda.

    After House Democrats walked out of the chamber on the last night of the regular session — breaking quorum and killing various pieces of legislation, most notably the election bill — Abbott declared that he would call a special session to tackle some of those items in addition to the fall special dealing with redistricting and federal coronavirus funds.

    Another bill that died that night was bail reform, which was among Abbott’s emergency item list. It is included on the special session call.

    Abbott then vetoed Article X of the state budget which governs funding for the legislature due to, in his words, the legislature not “showing up and doing their job.”

    House Democrats petitioned the Texas Supreme Court to block Abbott’s veto of legislative funding and also appealed to Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) earlier this week to commit to stalling any special session agenda item until Article X funding is restored.

    Here’s Abbott on the special session:

    Notably missing from the agenda: A ban on the genital mutilation of minors.

    Michael Quinn Sullivan noted via email:

  • The items placed on the call by Gov. Abbott can be thought of as the “primary effect” – which is to say, how the coming contested primary is impacting the governor’s actions.
  • The items on the call read like a laundry list of what the Texas Senate under Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has actually done… and what the Texas House under Speaker Dade Phelan failed to do.

    • Whether Speaker Phelan intends to help enact the governor’s agenda remains to be seen but he did announce a brand new committee to deal with them:

    The day before Abbott released the agenda, Phelan announced the creation of a new committee: the House Select Committee on Constitutional Rights and Remedies. “The issues that will be submitted by the Governor for our consideration in the upcoming special session impact some of the most fundamental rights of Texans under the U.S. and Texas Constitutions,” Phelan said.

    “These issues, by their very nature, are complex. A select committee with expanded membership and expertise is the ideal forum for ensuring the thoughtful consideration of diverse viewpoints as these constitutional issues are expressed, debated, and decided by the House.”

    The committee will be chaired by Rep. Trent Ashby (R-Lufkin) and vice-chaired by Rep. Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston).

    The other members on the body include:

  • John Bucy (D-Austin)
  • Travis Clardy (R-Nacogdoches)
  • Charlie Geren (R-Fort Worth)
  • Jacey Jetton (R-Richmond)
  • Ann Johnson (D-Houston)
  • Stephanie Klick (R-Fort Worth)
  • Brooks Landgraf (R-Odessa)
  • J.M. Lozano (R-Kingsville)
  • Oscar Longoria (D-Mission)
  • Joe Moody (D-El Paso)
  • Victoria Neave (D-Dallas)
  • Matt Shaheen (R-Plano)
  • James White (R-Hillister)

    • That committee doesn’t fill one with confidence. Geran was Joe Straus’ righthand man for many years, and an aide once filed a false child protection report against a primary opponent. Klick was one of only 16 Republicans to vote for creation of a Critical Race Theory-friendly Office of Health Equity in the regular session.

    Then there’s a the question of whether Democrats will walk out again to avoid the election integrity bill from passing, just as they did during the regular session.

    Stay tuned…

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »

    Allen West Joins Texas Governor’s Race

    Monday, July 5th, 2021

    Greg Abbott draws another challenger:

    On Independence Day at Sojourn Church in Carrollton, Texas, former Congressman and outgoing Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas Allen West announced his campaign for governor.

    “I can no longer sit on the sidelines and see what has happened in these United States of America… and the place that I call home,” West said in a campaign video.

    West joins a Republican primary field that includes former State Sen. Don Huffines, media personality and humorist Chad Prather, as well as incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott, who will be seeking his third term.

    Previously serving a term in Congress from Florida, West was elected to lead the Texas GOP in July of last year. Last month, West announced he would be stepping down from the position effective July 11. The State Republican Executive Committee will elect his replacement on that date.

    West moved to Texas to become CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis. In 2017, NCPA closed its doors, resulting in a lawsuit:

    West is being sued by Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), which claims that his brief tenure as CEO was marked by bad decisions and mismanagement that alienated donors and financially crippled the once-thriving organization. Codefendants have recently sought to settle their related claims.

    Under Mr. West’s leadership, the NCPA hired a chief financial officer who was already on probation for embezzlement and who then dismantled the organization’s fiscal controls. The CFO (who is now in prison) embezzled more than $600,000 from the NCPA.

    The lawsuit charges that Mr. West and other board members misspent more than $1 million in restricted grant money on operations – including salaries, expenses and bonuses – and hid that information from the rest of the board and donors.

    The NCPA was a once-thriving think tank credited with developing some of the Republican Party’s most cherished public policy ideas, including Health Savings Accounts and Roth IRAs. At the start of Mr. West’s tenure as CEO in 2015, the NCPA had annual revenue of $5.3 million, $737,000 in savings and an endowment of approximately $6 million, according to a ProPublica analysis of IRS records. By the time the NCPA closed in 2017, there was no money in the bank, no endowment and more than $1 million in debt.

    Caveat: Though on finance.yahoo.com, that text appears to be a verbatim text release from Androvett, a “Law Firm Marketing Agency,” which seems to be working for the plaintiff, and so should be taken with several grains of salt. (The text of the lawsuit can be found here, and it has reportedly been settled.) Former CFO Joshua Galloway pled guilty to three felony counts in 2017 and was sentenced to nine years in prison in addition to repayment of the funds embezzled.

    Problems at NCPA predate West’s tenure there, including a nasty lawsuit over an alleged sex payoff scandal involving founder John C. Goodman. But clearly West wasn’t able to fix those problems, which is hardly a recommendation for sending him to the governor’s mansion.

    I don’t have much insight into how well West’s short tenure as head of the Texas GOP went. (And part of that time was spent recovering from a motorcycle accident.) Republicans held serve and defied widespread predictions of Democratic gains, but that was true across most of the country. West raised eyebrows when he strongly criticized Abbott’s lifting of his constitutionally questionable lockdown restrictions. West’s points were valid (Abbott was way too timid in lifting restrictions compared to Ron DeSantis in Florida), but having the siting chair of a state political party slam the sitting governor of the same political party is, to say the least, highly unusual.

    I like Allen West personally. I think he’s a strong, sincere conservative, and he didn’t move to Texas to run for office (unlike other recent candidates). But apart from strong military service and serving one term as a U.S. congressman elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, one searches in vain for West’s signature accomplishments. If I wanted to vote for a long-shot attacking Abbott from the right for being overly cautious and insufficiently conservative, I’d probably vote for Don Huffines. West has a higher national profile (and presumably a better national fundraising base), but I don’t see him as a serious challenger to Abbott.

    Someone can have all the right positions, and be hated by all the right people, and still not be the right man for the job.

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    Posted in Republicans, Texas | 6 Comments »

    Huffines Challenges Abbott

    Tuesday, May 11th, 2021

    Former state senator Don Huffines is running against incumbent Greg Abbott for the Republican nomination for Texas governor:

    Gov. Greg Abbott has gained another challenge from the right, with the addition of former State Sen. Don Huffines into the gubernatorial race on Monday.

    “I’m a proud fifth-generation Texan,” said Huffines. “For too long, Texas has been let down by politicians who offer nothing but excuses and lies. Our border is still wide open. Property taxes keep going up. And our election laws continue to be ignored. Plain and simple, our politicians aren’t getting things done, and Texans have rightfully run out of patience.”

    “I will fight and win on behalf of Texans. We will protect our great state and secure our freedoms. I am ready to take on the federal government and the entrenched elites of the Austin swamp. We will finally finish the wall and secure our border, and we’re not going to ask for permission to do it. We will put Texas on a path to eliminating property taxes. And we will enforce our sacred voting laws so that the voices of lawful voters are preserved and not diluted through corrupt election procedures,” he added.

    Don Huffines was first elected to the Texas Senate in 2014, after defeating liberal Republican incumbent John Carona in the GOP primary.

    Immediately, Huffines made his mark as one of the most conservative members of the chamber, on more than one occasion grinding the normally scripted Senate to a halt by offering amendments that attempted to improve Texas’ open carry law and completely phase-out the state’s margins tax.

    Huffines also led the charge to take down “Dallas County Schools,” a corruption scheme that stole millions of dollars from Texas taxpayers and led to the imprisonment of six individuals.

    Huffines was defeated in the Senate by Democrat Nathan Johnson in the 2018 Democrat sweep of Dallas County.

    Since then, Huffines has continued to be a figure in the conservative movement, traveling the state to pull back the curtain on the true nature of the Texas Legislature, as well as being a sharp critic of the governor.

    Is Huffines a serious threat to Abbott? Let’s just say he’s a more serious 2022 Texas Gubernatorial candidate than Chad Prather or Kurt Schwab. Or, for that matter, Barbara Krueger or Larry SECEDE Kilgore, the two nobodies Abbott wiped the floor with in the 2018 Republican primary. State senator is a pretty decent launching pad for statewide office, as Dan Patrick can attest. But no one has jumped straight from the state legislature to the Governor’s mansion since Dolph Briscoe did it in 1972, and that was after a previous gubernatorial run, plus the Sharpstown scandal. Mostly the the path to the governor’s mansion runs through a lower state-wide office (Attorney General and the Texas Supreme Court for Abbott, Lieutenant Governor and Agricultural Commissioner for Rick Perry, Treasurer for Ann Richards).

    Up until last year, Abbott was considered a popular governor and a shoe-in for reelection. Then the 2020 lockdowns happened, then the disaster of the ice-storm. No one blames Mao Tse Lung on Abbott, and he clearly weathered the coronavirus crisis better than Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom or Grethen Whitmer (to damn him with very faint praise indeed), but he waited far too long to lift the lockdown and mask mandate orders when it was obvious they had no effect on viral spread, especially compared to Ron DeSantis. Likewise, the ice storm was obviously not of Abbott’s making, but the years of lax oversight of ERCOT and a failure to push reliable fossil fuel over acquiescence to subsidies for trendy (and unreliable) renewables made the crisis far more severe than it had to be.

    So Abbott probably is vulnerable, but I’m not sure Huffines is the candidate to take advantage of it. Abbott has at least $47 million in the bank, an extremely formidable warchest going into the primary season. (If Matthew McConaughey does jump into the race, he may need all of it.) Huffines has conservative bonafides, but losing your last race is seldom an indicator that you’re ready to step up a weight class (Richard Nixon not withstanding). Huffines, like Abbott, seems more like an artifact of the bygone pre-Trump political era, and thus very unlikely to defeat Abbott in the Republican primary.

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 3 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for April 2, 2021

    Friday, April 2nd, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to a Good Friday LinkSwarm! I had the day off, so I slept ridiculously late, which is why you’re getting this in the late afternoon evening.

  • “9 Crazy Examples of Unrelated Waste and Partisan Spending in Biden’s $2 Trillion ‘Infrastructure’ Proposal.”

    1. $10 Billion to Create a ‘Civilian Climate Corp’

    The Biden administration proposes spending $10 billion to create a “Civilian Climate Corp.” The White House claims that “This $10 billion investment will put a new, diverse generation of Americans to work conserving our public lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, and advancing environmental justice through a new Civilian Climate Corps.”

    2. $20 Billion to ‘Advance Racial Equity and Environmental Justice’

    The proposal sets aside a whopping $20 billion—more than the latest COVID package spent on vaccines—for “a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.”

    3. $175 Billion in Subsidies for Electric Vehicles

    Electric vehicles: A technological novelty so good it won’t catch on without hundreds of billions in subsidies. At least, that’s apparently what the Biden administration thinks, as its infrastructure proposal earmarks a “$174 billion investment to win the electric vehicle market.”

    The spending will take the form of manufacturing subsidies and consumer tax credits, which historically have benefitted wealthy families most. For comparison, the proposal carves out more for green energy goodies than it does on the total $115 billion to “modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair.”

    It’s pork all the way down.

  • Who’s in charge of the Biden Administration?

    After Joe Biden’s performance last Thursday, every American should be demanding to talk to the manager. That’s because while President Joe Biden’s pathetic display during his “matinee” presser showed clearly that he is not in charge of our country, it also begged the obvious follow-up question not being asked by the 25 reporters in the room: If Joe Biden isn’t in charge of running our government, who is?

    If you didn’t actually watch the press conference—and every American should-especially those who voted against Trump by voting for Biden because they’d thought he was an improvement—by now, you have doubtless read the accounts of the President’s cliff notes that included scripted talking points and photos of the journalists upon whom he was directed to call. His staff treated him in much the same way as does the family of someone in the early stages of dementia, where they put pictures on doors and cabinets as a reminder of what goes where.

    If Joe Biden were my next-door neighbor, his condition could be described as sad, and he would be afforded every consideration and allowance possible for someone entering the final stage of the aging process. He is not, however, my next-door neighbor. He is supposed to be the President of the United States. His performance was mortifying. This is one of the most powerful men in the world. He controls our budget. He controls our military. He controls our nuclear weapons. What he clearly does not control is himself.

    And if he isn’t in control of himself, then who is? Who is in charge?

  • You know that Slow Joe has told a particularly egregious lie when even the Washington Post has to call him on it.
  • Matt Taibbi: “Master List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus”:

    Update 3/21/21 “All 17 intelligence agencies,” October 19, 2016. Before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and others publicly stated that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies backed an assessment that cyberattacks in 2016 came from the “highest levels of the Kremlin.” That was later corrected in congressional testimony to four agencies. It was actually a hand-picked team from three agencies, and the chief conclusion from that group came mainly from CIA chief John Brennan, who in his own book, “Undaunted,” published in 2020, revealed that he had overlooked dissenting analysis from two members of the working group. Brennan said he believed “the quality of the sources justified the high confidence,” but the Times and other outlets reported that Brennan was basing much of his confidence on a single human source in Russia whose information was allowed to bypass the normal vetting process….

    So a story that began as an assessment on Russian interference agreed upon by “all seventeen agencies,” became four agencies, then it was a hand-picked group from three agencies dominated by the CIA director, who overrode dissenting analysts within the group, likely because of confidence in one human source.

    There are twenty five entries on the list, and Taibbi admits he could have gone “on and on.”

  • Democrats finally give up on stealing an Iowa congressional seat.
  • Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ mask mandate. Good.
  • How cancel culture is like the East German Stasi.

  • Russia is building up forces on the Ukraine border again.
  • Just in case all my previous posts on this subject were unclear: “Free States Faring Far Better Than Lockdown States in One Huge Way, New Data Show”

    The results are in—and they overwhelmingly vindicate the free states over the authoritarian experiments. First, we saw that states with the harshest restrictions didn’t necessarily achieve the best COVID-19 death outcomes. Florida has fared far better than New York and New Jersey, for example, and multiple studies have found no correlation between lockdown stringency and death rates.

    Yet lockdowns have come at an enormous economic and human cost. We’ve seen mental health problems and child suicide spikes, an increase in domestic violence, an uptick in drug overdoses, and much, much more. And, of course, the economic toll of shutting down businesses and criminalizing “non-essential” livelihoods has been devastating.

    The national unemployment rate was a poor if not disastrous 6.2 percent in February. Yet the just-released state-level unemployment rates for last month show that the devastation hasn’t been equal across the board. New Labor Department data reveal that many free states have returned to nearly their pre-pandemic unemployment rates—while lockdown states dominate the wrong end of the list.

  • Why isn’t everyone in Texas dying? “The lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation.”
  • Speaking of which: A timeline on the one year anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread.
  • Louis Farrakhan supporter Noah Green killed one capitol police officer and injured another. Now that the media knows it wasn’t a white trump supporter, expect the story to disappear. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Delta hates Georgia’s policies. Communist China? Not so much.
  • The Democrats “increase election fraud so we can win” bill is unconstitutional. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “75% Of All U.S. Voters, 69% Of Black Voters Support Voter ID Laws.”
  • “Cuomo Ordered Aides To Conceal Nursing Home Death Numbers While He Negotiated $4M Book Deal.” Sounds like a corrupt, indictable offense to me…
  • The NCAA’s free athletics plantation is coming under increased scrutiny at the Supreme Court. Even famously taciturn Justice Clarence Thomas asked questions.
  • Try to contain your shock, but Cruz Noguez, the mano owned the SUV involved in the carash that killed 13 illegal aliens, was a coyote.
  • Related: “Austin Resident Faces Life in Prison for Alleged Smuggling That Killed 8 Illegal Aliens.”

    Prosecutors have also charged Austin resident Sebastian Tovar, age 24, with transporting illegal aliens resulting in death for an incident that killed eight people on March 15.

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release that a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer tried to stop Tovar, who led police on a 50-mile car chase.

    “Traveling north into the southbound lane on Highway 277, Tovar collided with another vehicle head-on, resulting in the death of eight illegal aliens that had been in Tovar’s pickup truck,” the DOJ said. “The driver and passenger of the vehicle into which Tovar collided are hospitalized and in stable condition.”

    The DOJ said that, after the incident, border patrol agents apprehended 12 illegal aliens, two of whom confessed to being connected to Tovar’s alleged smuggling activities.

    The defendants in the March 4 incident are 28-year-old Isidro Rodriguez Jr. and 18-year-old Bianca Michelle Trujillo-Lopez. They face the possibility of life in federal prison if convicted.

    The indictment charges Rodriguez and Trujillo-Lopez with illegal alien transportation resulting in death, illegal alien transportation resulting in serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy, and two counts of conspiracy.

    “Court records allege that on March 4, 2021, the defendants were traveling on FM 2523 near Del Rio when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper attempted to stop them for speeding,” the DOJ said in a press release.

    “The driver, Trujillo-Lopez, tried to outrun the trooper, at times reaching speeds over 120 miles per hour. She ultimately lost control of her vehicle and rolled it multiple times after missing a curve on the road.”

  • Alas, state trooper Chad Walker died of his wounds. (Previously.)
  • Homeschooling triples during the pandemic
  • “Conservative Humorist Chad Prather Launches Campaign for Texas Governor.” He’s running against incumbent Governor Greg Abbott in the Republican primary. I can’t say that I’ve actually heard of Prather before (which would tend to bode ill for his chances), but he starts out with 196,000, which is more than a goodly number of Democratic Presidential candidates started out with. Of course, all of them lost too…
  • Dwight covers stopping the bleed, with a side order of Julia Child’s liver and a nice Chianti.
  • Review of Kong: Skull Island in advance of seeing Godzilla vs. Kong this weekend.
  • “Controversial Georgia Law Requires Poll Workers To Check Voters For A Pulse.”
  • “Actors Vow To Boycott Georgia And Only Film In The Xinjiang Region Of China.”
  • OK, I chuckled:

    And the incidental music is from Plants vs. Zombies…

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    Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for March 12, 2021

    Friday, March 12th, 2021

    Welcome to the one year anniversary of the week the world went crazy.

  • After the passing of the Democratic Party’s giant $1.9 trillion porkulus, “Federal ‘COVID’ Spending Just Hit $41,870 Per Taxpayer.”
  • Two-thirds of Americans think corporate wokeness has gone too far.
  • “California Curriculum Leads Kids in Chant to Aztec God of Human Sacrifice.”
  • Lefties: Liberals are simply better people than those evil conservatives! Science: Not so much:

    According to recent studies, when it comes to how people are treated, conservatives are more likely to treat people equally.

    You read that correctly.

    According to a recent article on Psychology Today, “several recent studies over the past few years cast doubt on” the idea that liberals treat individuals and groups more equally than conservatives despite liberals’ “self-reported support for equality.”

    On Twitter, “liberals were more likely to amplify the successes of female and Black athletes than male and White athletes, whereas conservatives treated the successes of groups more similarly,” one study found.

    Other studies showed that “white liberals presented less self-competence to black than white interaction partners, whereas white conservatives treated black and white interaction partners more similarly. And in another set, liberals had stronger desires to censor passages that portrayed low-status groups unfavorably than identical passages that portrayed high-status groups unfavorably, whereas conservatives treated the passages more comparably.

  • The 2020 election is already harming the law-abiding:

    If you think really hard, perhaps you can imagine more disastrous policies than throwing open our country’s southern border and abandoning criminal-law enforcement in city after city. The consequences are already emerging, and they are grim. It is important to examine them without ideological blinders so we can change course before more damage is done.

    Snip.

    The most consequential effect of open immigration and lax criminal enforcement is to undermine the safe, stable environment law-abiding citizens need to go about their lives, free from predation. Providing that environment — and signaling clearly that you intend to provide it — is the first responsibility of government.

    That means punishing crimes. The goal is not vengeance. Nor is it solely to provide justice for the victims, important as that is. It is also to send a strong message to would-be criminals: Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. Right now, we are sending the wrong message and, by doing so, we are encouraging law breaking on a massive scale.

    That encouragement is the unifying theme behind these policy disasters, one on the border, the other in our cities. The other unifying theme is their justification under the fashionable rubric of “social justice” and “equity.” What those feel-good arguments ignore is that our criminal laws are democratic efforts to preserve personal safety and community integrity. Failing in those responsibilities harms all law-abiding citizens.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Why Texas was right to reopen:

    Six weeks before yesterday was Tuesday, January 26. On that day, Texas reported 22,796 new cases of COVID-19 and 332 new deaths from the pandemic.

    One month before yesterday was Tuesday, February 9. On that day, Texas reported 13,282 new cases of COVID-19 and 303 new deaths from the pandemic.

    Two weeks before yesterday was Tuesday, February 23, Texas reported 10,090 new cases of COVID-19 and 258 new deaths from the virus.

    Yesterday was Tuesday, March 9. The state of Texas reported 5,119 new cases of COVID-19, and 168 new deaths from the virus.

    It’s not quite a straight or smooth line, but you can see a steady decline in cases, followed by a similar decline in deaths. This doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. But it does suggest that the worst is over. Hospitals across the state now report a significant amount of unused capacity. “State health officials in Texas reported to the federal government that 75 percent of inpatient beds and 80 percent of ICU beds in hospitals across the state were still occupied as of March 6. Around 9 percent of beds statewide were filled by COVID-19 patients, they reported.” (Unused hospital beds are good for emergencies, but not good for the long-term financial health of the hospital.)

    Texas ranks second in the country in the number of vaccine shots administered, with nearly 7.3 million, but it also ranks second in the number of shots received from manufacturers, because doses are allocated to states by population size. As of this morning, the state has used 75 percent of its delivered supply, which is not an impressive percentage. (It is worth keeping in mind that as more doses get delivered, every state’s percentage-used figure is declining a bit; North Dakota and Minnesota lead the country at 87 percent.) Fifteen percent of Texans have received one shot, and 8.2 percent are fully vaccinated. (We used to use the term “received both shots,” but now the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine is rolling out.) Obviously, getting hit with a terrible winter storm and experiencing widespread power outages does not help a state accelerate its vaccination program.

    This week, another million doses have arrived or are scheduled to arrive in Texas. A week ago, Texas made all school and child-care workers eligible for the vaccine.

  • The Biden Administration wants to destroy 57 million jobs:

    With the rise of gig economy jobs such as driving for Uber and other forms of independent work enabled by the digital era, more than 57 million Americans now work as freelancers in some capacity. But President Biden just endorsed a radical labor law that endangers their livelihood.

    House Democrats recently reintroduced the PRO Act, which, among many sweeping reforms, would make many commonplace forms of independent contractor (freelance) arrangements illegal. It’s based on a California law that was so dysfunctional even voters in the very blue state voted to change it.

  • Biden is getting worse:

    “He literally forgets the name of his Secretary of Defense, forgets the position, as well as the name of the Pentagon, calling him ‘the guy that runs that outfit over there.'”

  • Slow Joe is not big on news conferences. “Biden has gone longer without facing extended questions from reporters than any of his 15 predecessors over the past 100 years.”
  • By contrast, after succeeding Warren G. Harding on August 2, 1923, “Silent” Calvin Coolidge held three press conferences in August and seven in September.
  • Entire Nevada Democratic Party staff quits after Bernie Bros sweep every seat.

    Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.

    She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.

    On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair. The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Democrats: We must destroy coal! Coal workers: Hey, we’re starting to take this personally. “Within two decades, your profession goes from being championed by the Democratic Party and labor officials to one that they want to destroy.”
  • Here’s a Twitter thread documenting how the media repeatedly fluffed the National Man Boy Lincoln Association.
  • Bad cop: “Dallas police officer allegedly hired hitmen to kill two people.” “Officer Bryan Riser, 36, was arrested Thursday in the unrelated slayings of Liza Saenz, 31, and Albert Douglas, 60, after one of the men charged in Saenz’s death told investigators he kidnapped and killed them at the officer’s direction.”
    

  • NYT‘s Maggie Halberstam just admits that Trump drove her crazy. Why does anyone think ordinary Americans will ever trust MSM outlets like New York Times ever again?
  • Judge allows Texas to remove Planned Parenthood from Medicaid.
  • “Illegal Alien Family Unit Apprehensions in Texas Nearly Triple in February.”
  • Matthew McConaughey teases a run for Texas Governor again. I don’t know enough about his politics to consider him a viable candidate (though he’s probably more viable than Beto O’Rourke on day 1), but the idea of him beating Greg Abbott isn’t nearly as far-fetched as it was a year ago, before Abbott maintained the coronavirus lockdown long after data said it was ineffective.
  • Speaking of Abbott, he really stepped in it this week when he said that Gab was an antisemitic platform:

    In a Wednesday evening Twitter video, with State Reps. Craig Goldman (R–Fort Worth) and Phil King (R–Weatherford) on either side of him, Abbott claimed Big Tech competitor Gab was “antisemitic” and that such companies “have no place in Texas and certainly do not represent Texas values.”

    He offered no evidence to back up his claim against Gab. He also praised legislation from Goldman and King “that fights antisemitism in Texas.”

    “I’m not on Gab a lot but I wouldn’t consider the platform as ‘anti Semitic’ …and I’m a Jew,” a citizen named Lisa replied to Abbott’s tweet. “Stop this nonsense.”

    Gab recently skyrocketed in popularity, claiming more than 2 million new users in January after Twitter permanently banned then-President Trump and Amazon, Apple, and Google teamed up to shut down conservative social media app Parler.

    Abbott’s attack on the free speech platform contradicts his words from last week when he defended free speech and berated Facebook and Twitter for their censorship.

    “They are choosing which viewpoints are going to be allowed to be presented,” Abbott said at the time. “Texas is taking a stand against Big Tech political censorship: We’re not going to allow it in the Lone Star State.”

    Mainstream media coverage of Gab has attacked its free-speech approach to moderation, labeling it a haven of “QAnon conspiracy theories, misinformation and anti-Semitic commentary […] .”

    “Gab is not an ‘anti-semitic’ platform,” the company replied to Abbott’s tweet. “We protect the political speech of all Americans, regardless of viewpoint, because in this age of cancel culture nobody else will.”

    “The enemies of freedom smear us with every name in the book because they hate America and they hate free speech,” Gab continued. “It’s a shame to see a GOP politician fall for this trap when conservative values are under sustained attack all over the country.”

  • The woke brigade wants to kill off the SAT:

    Behind the Covid19 news, outside the 1619 wars, far more important than Dr Seuss, and much more far-reaching than dismantling the classics, a real line is being crossed in American education, and therefore American society as a whole. It’s the accelerating abandonment of standardized tests, the one objective measurement of students’ ability and potential in our society and culture: 77 percent of high school seniors sent in SAT scores in 2019-20; only 44 percent this year; and many schools want to keep it that way. What was initially a temporary suspension of tests because of Covid has become an opportunity to tear down the entire system.

    The rationale for the SAT abolition movement is — surprise! — critical theory, which insists that any measurement that results in different outcomes among ethnic or racial groups is a priori racist. (Except for all cases when non-whites and non-Asians do better than whites or Asians, in which case, never mind.) In the words this week of Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York: “Standardized testing is a pillar of systemic racism.”

    His argument is pure Kendi: the results are solely and exclusively what determines if a test is racist. Not the test itself; not evidence about its fairness or otherwise; not data about how it is constructed; not studies that examine its effects alongside every other way of measuring academic potential. Just the results.

    There is no countering this argument because it is not an argument. It is a threat. All it tells us is that the power of the term “white supremacist” will be ruthlessly deployed to shut down anyone who dares to argue that the SAT is, in fact, the least culturally biased of all measurements, the one thing wealthy kids cannot buy, and the most helpful tool in discovering the potential of poor, first-generation immigrant, black and Hispanic children, and rescuing them from the restrictions of class as well as race.

  • “Whitmer’s Michigan State Health Department Refuses To Release Nursing Home COVID Death Data. Gee, I wonder why? (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)
  • Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in Canada despite everyone in the nursing home being vaccinated?
  • In Hollywood, vaccine lines are for the little people.
  • Portland Antifa is at it again, trying to storm banks and break into the federal courthouse again. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Milo Yiannopoulos now says he’s ex-gay. “I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle — Who is? Who could be? — and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles.” Whatever. His agent provocateur pose has worn pretty thin over the years. But I suspect this is one “lifestyle choice” liberals won’t be celebrating.
  • “10,000th Victim Comes Forward To Accuse Cuomo Of Inappropriately Killing Her Grandma.”
  • “Biden Finally Visits ‘On The Border’ To See Crisis Everyone’s Talking About.”

  • “Man Glad He’s American So He Doesn’t Have To Pretend To Care About Royal Family.”

    Local man Craig Trudeau gave thanks to the good Lord above today that he’s an American so he doesn’t have to pretend to care about the royal family at all.

    Trudeau said he is extremely humbled and grateful to have been born in the best country ever created by God, especially because it means he doesn’t have to care about Meghan Markle or Prince Harry.

    “Lord, thank you that I was born in your chosen country of America, so that I don’t have to give a wooden nickel about whoever this prince and princess or king or duke or whoever they are,” he said Monday as he cleaned his AR-15 and shot off fireworks in front of his house, because he lives in America and so can do whatever he wants.

  • Russian scientist has a simple plan for resurrecting the dead that involves constructing Dyson Spheres and super-powerful AIs trading information with other universes in the multiverse. Why it’s all so simple! I’m sure the illustrious government functionaries fighting to fire people over pronouns will get right on that.
  • Heh:

  • Heh 2:

  • I think he was hungry:

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