Time Flies

Biden's vaccine mandate is unconstitutional. Period.

Texans shouldn't be forced to choose between their livelihood & a vaccine.

I'm confident the Lone Star State will win any legal showdown my Executive Order may bring. pic.twitter.com/mPcSwVZfxl

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) October 20, 2021

That was posted yesterday. 9 days earlier:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Monday to prohibit any entity, including private business, from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on workers and called on state lawmakers to pass a similar ban into law.

The Lege declined to pass that into law. *

Even though the issue had been added to the session agenda as a late priority by Gov. Greg Abbott, the House's version of the bill was unable to muster enough support to be voted out of committee. The Senate's proposal pushed by Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, was quickly pushed out of committee but did not have the votes for approval by the whole chamber.

So what's going on in Texas?

Stuck between following federal guidance and the state executive order, representatives for high-profile businesses based in Texas told TIME that they feel that federal law as well as employees and customers’ safety supersedes Abbott’s rule. And those that already required employees to be vaccinated have no intention of changing course.

IBM, Southwest, and United Airlines also declined to follow Abbott's order.  The TIME article also mentions Dell, Chevron, Texas Children's Hospital, and Houston Methodist Hospital:  all are requiring their employees be vaccinated.

9 days later, Biden promises to stand tough.  But he has yet to send his attack dog Paxton out to sue any of these high-profile defendants, and I can't find mention of one small Texas business being sued by the state, or even fined, to enforce the Governor's order.

Notably, the Governor doesn't promise to Breitbart that he will enforce his order.  He just says he'll defend it.  Against whom?  The Feds don't care (it doesn't involve a civil rights issue), and large companies are ignoring it, which means smaller ones probably are, too.  If he's not going to enforce it, who is going to make him defend it?

And, of course, he told this to Breitbart, not to a major city newspaper or a CBS/NBC/ABC affiliate local news crew.

Brave, brave Sir Robin.

*Dan Patrick on Twitter is urging a fourth special session just to pass that ban into law.  Patrick, it should be noted, is independently wealthy.  Most of the Lege are working stiffs; they want to get back to work now, this is only a part-time job every two years anyway.  Besides, Patrick may get it through the Senate next time, but the House?  The Speaker killed it in the third session. It never even got out of committee. I suspect most of the Lege would want to screw over Abbott for wasting their time on a fourth session. Patrick, as ever, is a political genius.