The Cruelty Is The Point

I’m so done pretending these people aren’t just evil. https://t.co/CXSkrGXP9c

— HatInProSe (@Popehat) August 4, 2021

I will accept this would probably make it through the Texas House (although it might not); but it can't right now, and it won't in this session (which ends Friday, August 6, sine die; meaning all bills not passed end with it).

Abbott has promised to call a second special session to pass the GOP’s priority voting bill, but the exact timing is uncertain. Abbott also has yet to detail what other items, if any, he intends to include on the agenda for the next special session. And House Democrats have not yet revealed what they have planned after the session ends this week.

Abbott has to call a session soon to handle redistricting.  The Lege may refuse to work in September without paid staff and access to agencies connected to the Legislature's budget (Abbott vetoed the whole enchilada).  The House Speaker never moved to issue arrest warrants for all the "escaped" House members.  A majority of them could just go on vacation for the rest of August.  Anyway, this has to start over in a new session, which gives them a few days to come home, even if Abbott decides to announce the new session Friday, to start Saturday.

But he'll put bail reform back on the agenda.  The cruelty, as ever, is the point.

It remains to be seen if Abbott will add to this agenda in the second special session, though one thing is clear — he does not plan to curtail it. He has said he “will keep calling Special Sessions until we address every emergency item,” referring to the 11 issues he laid out at the start of the first special session, such as pushing back against social media “censorship” of Texans and the teaching of critical race theory in schools.

That's not going to play out as well as he thinks it will, especially with parents worrying about their children getting covid in school, and cities telling the governor to show up and make 'em repeal mask mandates:

Local mask mandates are popping back up across Texas — even as Gov. Greg Abbott has stressed that local officials who try to enforce restrictions aimed at reducing spread of COVID-19 will be penalized.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is the most recent to defy the governor’s order. He announced Monday that the city’s nearly 22,000 city employees will be required to mask up inside city buildings where social distancing is not doable, such as bathrooms, elevators and conference rooms.

“The mayor has a right and responsibility to ask city employees to wear face coverings indoors to help stop the virus from spreading,” Mary Benton, a Turner spokesperson, said to the Houston Chronicle. “With the rise in the delta variant cases and high numbers of unvaccinated individuals, Mayor Turner is doing what is necessary to keep [city] employees healthy.”

The seven-day average of new daily cases in Harris County is 1,761 as of Tuesday, compared with 59 cases in the first week of July.

Abbott's authority is not really what he pretends it to be:

A handful of courthouses have also implemented mask mandates, arguing that Abbott’s executive order doesn’t affect the judicial branch of government.

A Dallas administrative court judge ordered that everyone inside Dallas County’s courthouses — the George Allen courthouse, the Frank Crowley courthouse and the Henry Wade building — must be masked. This came as Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins announced Tuesday that the county has increased its coronavirus threat level to red, the highest level of threat in its assessment system.

Again, a reminder:  the County Judge in this context is a county executive, not a court at law judge.

“We have to always remember that the enemy in COVID is not one another, it’s the virus,” Jenkins said. “And if people are going to be required to come to court, it’s my job to keep them safe.”

A judge in Williamson County also is requiring visitors and employees entering the Williamson County Justice Center to wear masks as the county recently entered its red COVID-19 risk level.

...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Travis County and Austin officials in March for imposing a local mask mandate despite Abbott's order which prohibited such requirements at the time. A district judge denied Paxton’s request to immediately block the local mandates, and the lawsuit fizzled out after both parties agreed to dismiss the case after the local order expired and Abbott issued a new executive order.

School districts could make the same argument as the judiciary, as they are independent state agencies not subject to the authority of the governor.  But the cost of lawyers is steep, and not everyone in the district is going to be best pleased with challenging the order (although many more would prefer it, in general).  Odds are challenges to it would push it over like a match-stick house. Indeed, if Paxton doesn't crack down soon, the order could fall simply for lack of enforcement.  Abbott doesn't care.  As long as his insane clown posse GOP primary voters are appeased with his "tough guy" stance, he's golden.

Or so he thinks.