The Cruelty Is The Point

It was a ringing endorsement of masking, and of vaccine mandates, and a well-deserved thrashing for the pro-pandemic propaganda of the conservative media ecosystem. https://t.co/hW3UeenZ80 via @CharlesPPierce

— Esquire (@esquire) September 15, 2021

In Texas, we're not hearing that ringing at all:

Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing nine more school districts over their masking rules.

But one of the districts doesn’t mandate masks, and another isn’t enforcing mask-wearing at Paxton’s request.https://t.co/myWlvHVLFi

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) September 14, 2021

Midway Independent School District is a Waco-area district that sits on a list compiled by the attorney general’s office of school districts and counties that have flouted Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban and put in place their own mask-wearing orders.

The hitch? Midway ISD doesn’t mandate that students, teachers, school staff or visitors don masks while on school premises, a district spokesperson said Wednesday. Midway officials have tried to convince the attorney general’s office the district doesn’t have a mandate — but to no avail.

“We have not received information of why or how we are considered out of compliance or considered for a lawsuit,” district spokesperson Traci Marlin said in an email.

I'm guessing it's because 9 is such a nice, round number for the headlines.  And because smaller districts are less likely to put up much of a defense, allowing the AG to claim victory without much effort or worry about actually being able to make a case.

Under Midway’s virus protocol, campuses can issue 10-day “mask directives'' that encourage mask-wearing on the premises if virus transmission reaches a certain level — but doesn’t require it. The attorney general’s office pointed to that protocol as the basis of its lawsuit against the district but declined to answer other questions from The Texas Tribune.

Those directives are not the same as mandates, Marlin said — and in one case, such a directive successfully cut down the number of active cases on a campus.

Well, clearly, we can't have that!  And if you think I'm exaggerating about who the AG chose to sue:

McGregor Independent School District, another district near Waco, did require mask-wearing if virus transmission became too severe but, at Paxton’s request, did not enforce the mandate, Superintendent James Lenamon said in a statement.

Nonetheless, Paxton sued the district.

“The district is disappointed that the AG has decided to sue anyway,” Lenamon said.

In an attempt to slow the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19 among schoolchildren too young to get vaccinated, dozens of school districts across the state and several large counties have required mask-wearing in some form despite Abbott’s order.

The Texas Education Agency isn’t enforcing Abbott’s ban — and Paxton and Abbott have argued in court they have no power to punish those who disobey the governor.

Might as well list of the rest of the ISD's:

In addition to McGregor and Midway, Paxton announced lawsuits against seven other districts Tuesday: Diboll, Honey Grove, La Vega, Longview, Lufkin, Paris and Waco school districts.

I can, off the top of my head, identify 5 of those districts; 4 of them are in deep red East Texas (where I still saw Trump signs in the countryside in the spring). None of them are in, for example, deep blue Harris County (just for reference, there are 21 ISD's in Harris County). The politics of this completely baffles me.  It baffles other people, too:

Already, Paxton has notched at least one temporary victory against a school district — winning an order in Lamar County court blocking Paris Independent School District’s mask mandate for the time being.

Paris ISD officials had taken the novel approach of requiring students to wear masks as part of the dress code — which the district’s general counsel Dennis Eichelbaum credited with keeping absences related to COVID-19 low.

“Thank goodness we have the attorney general to come to our rescue,” Eichelbaum said.

In not unrelated news, anybody remember Abbott’s big noise about arresting immigrants for trespassing to prove Biden wasn’t doing enough to “protect us”? Yeah, that wasn’t the distraction Abbott hoped it would be.

After a Texas prosecutor dismissed dozens of migrant trespassing cases, some men were dropped at a border bus station https://t.co/rNXUTRuMEI

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) September 15, 2021

Even the people arrested and convicted can only be held for 30 days. The Border Patrol is releasing them into the country pending hearings, or sending them back home if no asylum case can be made at all. Abbott's actions are just keeping a bunch of law enforcement officers busy doing busy work.