TEXAS — The Lone Star State made nationwide headline information greater than as soon as in 2021, because of a protracted record of recent and controversial politics and legal guidelines enacted in Texas this 12 months.
Because the saying goes, as goes Texas, so goes the nation. At occasions, it appeared like all of America’s tradition wars have been being waged within the Lone Star State, from debates on how academics ought to instruct college students about historical past to masks sporting within the pandemic to a girl’s proper to have an abortion.
Right here’s a take a look at crucial Texas tales that caught the nation’s consideration.
The Huge Freeze
In February, Individuals watched in disbelief as they noticed photos of Texans huddled collectively below blankets round hearth pits inside their properties within the state, whereas temperatures outdoors dipped to single digits. An unusually chilly winter storm put Texas right into a deep freeze and stressed its impartial energy grid, inflicting not simply the lights to exit, however the warmth to chop off, too. Thousands and thousands of households have been with out energy, water and warmth for days, stretching into weeks on finish for a lot of. By the state’s personal estimate, greater than 210 individuals died throughout the winter storm. Different estimates put storm-related fatalities closer to 700.
The massive query on most Individuals’ minds was why the U.S.’s largest energy-producing state couldn’t handle to maintain the facility on when the temperatures dropped. The largest query on Texans’ minds stays: Will it occur once more?
Abortion
The U.S. ruling affirming a girl’s proper to abortion, Roe v. Wade, began in Texas. Now, many worry, a brand new Texas abortion ban might be the problem that contributes to a reversal of the pivotal 1973 U.S. Supreme Courtroom choice. The 87th Texas Legislature handed the nation’s most restrictive abortion legislation throughout its common session this spring, and the world took discover. The legislation, Senate Invoice 8, successfully bans abortions after six weeks. The legislation instantly confronted authorized challenges that proceed right this moment, with the U.S. Supreme Courtroom not too long ago rulling that Texas abortion suppliers had the best to problem the legislation in federal court docket. What caught the nation’s eye was the legislation’s distinctive enforcement mechanism, with which extraordinary residents can sue anybody who helps a girl get an abortion. Below the legislation, defendants who sue, for instance, the Uber driver who takes a girl to get an abortion might obtain a $10,000 award in the event that they win in court docket. The mechanism makes it extraordinarily troublesome to struggle the legislation, however California Gov. Gavin Newsom stated this month that he would copy the Texas legislation in proposed laws aimed toward limiting the sale of assault weapons and “ghost weapons” in his state.
Voting rights
The Texas Legislature went into its common session in January with the governor’s precedence record of laws, together with an election reform invoice. The invoice included what lawmakers stated would tackle election integrity. The legislation appears to be a response to former President Donald Trump, who misplaced the 2020 election, however received Texas by 5.6% factors, and his marketing campaign’s unsupported claims of voter fraud. Though Gov. Greg Abbott declared the Nov. 2 election in Texas successful, he joined his fellow Republican leaders throughout the nation with a promise to move a invoice that would depart little doubt in future elections.
The Texas Legislature took up a invoice that was extensively criticized by Democrats as nothing wanting voter suppression in a state that already has a few of the most restrictive voting legal guidelines within the nation.
When the invoice got here up for a vote within the Texas State Home throughout the common session, Democrats walked out, breaking quorum and basically killing the invoice.
Abbott instantly referred to as a particular session, asking lawmakers to take up the invoice once more. This time, Democrats, in an eleventh-hour transfer, left the state and headed to Washington, D.C., once more breaking quorum and stopping a vote on the invoice. Their middle-of-the-night journey to the nation’s capital made nationwide headlines as they held press conferences to decry the Texas invoice. Pissed off Texas Republicans remained in Austin whereas their colleagues from throughout the aisle labored the halls of Congress to attempt to shore up help for federal laws that would override something the Texas lawmakers handed.
The Democrats’ efforts finally failed when Abbott referred to as yet one more particular session, the place the controversial invoice lastly handed.
Since then, the NAACP and different organizations have filed lawsuits in opposition to the state in early Sept., alleging the legislation “features a collection of suppressive voting-related provisions that can make it a lot more durable for Texas residents to vote and disenfranchise some altogether, notably Black and Latino voters and voters with disabilities.”
Capitol riots
The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol constructing in Washington, D.C., shocked the nation already reeling from former Trump’s claims that the 2020 Presidential Election had been “stolen.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, an ardent Trump supporter, was a number one determine within the requires Congress to object to certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s win in opposition to Trump in what ought to have been a largely procedural vote. However whereas Cruz was rallying help for his plot to object to the election outcomes until Congress agreed to an “emergency audit” of the election, Trump supporters and protestors have been massing outdoors the Capitol, finally breaching the constructing in a violent assault.
Since then, 59 Texans have been arrested and charged with taking part within the Jan. 6 assault, numerous them from North Texas. Whereas Texans don’t make up the largest variety of rioters arrested from the full rely of 727 to date (Florida holds that report at 62), a few of them made nationwide information. Jenna Ryan, a 50-year-old actual property agent from Frisco, flew on a personal jet with a number of different North Texans to attend Trump’s rally scheduled for the morning of Jan. 6. Ryan claimed she was harmless, however her documentation of your entire occasion on social media was her downfall. Her face grew to become the picture of the Jan. 6 rioters in nationwide tales.
Ryan continued to attract consideration to her case along with her posts on Twitter and TikTok. Earlier than her court docket date, she bragged in a tweet that she wouldn’t go to jail as a result of she had “blonde hair,” “white pores and skin” and “did nothing improper.”
The decide sentenced her to 60 days plus about $1,500 in fines and restitution after she pled responsible to a misdemeanor cost. She has since used her TikTok account to disclose her incarceration weight-loss plan, throughout which era she might be doing “numerous yoga” and never consuming the “terrible” meals. “Hopefully they’ve some protein shakes,” she stated.
“If I can lose 30 kilos, it might be so value it,” she advised her followers. “Want me luck!”
In the meantime, most of Texas’ Republican members within the U.S. Home voted in opposition to forming a fee to look at the occasions on Jan. 6. That fee’s examination continues right this moment.
Redistricting
Texas lawmakers this 12 months have been tasked with redrawing the state and congressional districts maps as a part of an everyday 10-year train that follows the discharge of the U.S. Census outcomes. These outcomes revealed an enormous inflow of recent Texans — 4 million in a decade — practically 95% of who have been Black or Hispanic. However when the Republican-led Legislature redrew the maps in preparation for the 2022 mid-term elections, critics of the newly shaped districts cried foul, saying the lawmakers had created a map that deliberately weakens the voting energy of individuals of coloration. A day after Abbott signed the brand new maps into legislation on Oct. 25, a gaggle representing Hispanic voters joined a number of Black Texans to file a lawsuit in federal court docket difficult Texas’s new congressional maps, saying they have been a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Six weeks later, the U.S. Justice Division filed an analogous lawsuit, placing Texas as soon as once more at odds with the Biden administration.
