MRT: 200 Houston Protesters Arrested; Abbott Reveals Phase 3 Reopening; Protest Arrests in Dallas are DFW Residents; Q Poll of TX: Trump 44, Biden 43
Here's what you need to know in Texas today.
MustReadTexas.com – @MustReadTexas
BY: @MattMackowiak
THURSDAY – 06/04/20
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TOP NEWS
"Police arrest 200 after Tuesday's George Floyd march as some protesters allege unfair treatment,"The Houston Chronicle's Samantha Ketterer -- "Houston police arrested more than 200 people at Tuesday’s protests honoring George Floyd, a number they called “extremely small” considering the 60,000-plus people who marched against police brutality.
Authorities reported no significant damage or injuries in the demonstration, by far the largest here since the former Houston resident died last week after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck. Between eight and 12 police cars were damaged at the rally, which began at Discovery Green and drew throngs of protesters downtown throughout the afternoon.
City and police officials added that most participants were peaceful, although Houston police said on Twitter Wednesday morning that some protesters “engaged in criminal conduct, including throwing rocks and bottles at officers.” Others, they said, refused orders to clear the streets were taken into custody.
Police have not released information on what charges those protesters face and how many people were arrested on each charge.
While city officials assured that police used great restraint in their arrests, some protesters countered on social media that they were unfairly treated.
The Houston Protestors’ Defense Team, a group of defense attorneys representing arrested protesters, alleged that the most violence seen at the event stemmed from police officers. They used batons, pepper spray and rubber bullets, and “strategically surrounded protesters and ultimately enclosed them within a fenced-in area for hours,” the team said in a news release.
Police spokesman Kese Smith disputed the defense team’s accusations and said that authorities only moved to detain protesters if they failed to follow repeated instructions, or if they were displaying violence.
“We give multiple warnings about obstructing roadways and what they need to do,” Smith said. “If they continue to be in the group or continue not to listen to instructions, they are warned they are subject to arrest.”
In instances of blocking a roadway, officers give protesters multiple commands to move, and protesters always have some means of egress, Smith said. If warnings are not followed or groups become disruptive, he said, then officers would announce their intention for arrests." Houston Chronicle
"Texans still face obstacles to collecting unemployment benefits months into the coronavirus pandemic's economic crisis,"The Texas Tribune's Clare Proctor -- "Inundated by millions of Texans trying to file claims for unemployment benefits, the Texas Workforce Commission has added four external call centers and hired staff to have more than 1,000 workers answering phone calls. The agency has also increased its server capacity from five servers to 20.
But months into the coronavirus pandemic, an unknown number of Texans are still living in the dark about when — or if — payments are coming as they face busy signals, confusing communication or no word at all. Meanwhile, they are staring down mounting bills coming due.
More than 2.2 million Texans have filed unemployment claims as the economy is being battered by limited statewide commerce during the pandemic and a downturn in the state’s massive energy industry. On Thursday morning, the TWC is expected to release the number of people who filed unemployment claims last week. Already, the agency has processed more than four typical years' worth of unemployment claims since mid-March.
Esther Griffin’s unemployment claim was approved shortly after she filed in early April. Griffin was working in customer service at Solis Mammography in Fort Worth before she was temporarily laid off in early April. But every time she requests payment, no money is deposited into her account, Griffin said." Texas Tribune
"Tropical storm Cristobal drenching Mexico's Gulf coast," via AP-- "Tropical Storm Cristobal is creeping along just inland over Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Campeche, threatening to cause flooding the next few days before a predicted turn northward toward the U.S.
The storm’s sustained winds weakened to 45 mph after it moved inland Wednesday near the oil town of Ciudad del Carmen. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it was expected to weaken into a tropical depression by Thursday, but then begin strengthening once it moved back over the Gulf of Mexico on Friday.
Cristobal was forecast to be out in the central Gulf on Saturday and could be nearing the U.S. Gulf Coast by Sunday, the hurricane center said. It added that current conditions “will not be very conducive” for further strengthening as the storm moves away from Mexico.
The Mexican army evacuated 138 people in Campeche after floodwaters threatened homes, and police in Campeche reported water washing across highways.
By late Wednesday, the storm was nearly stationary about 20 miles south of Ciudad del Carmen.
Cristobal formed Tuesday from the remnants of the Pacific Tropical Storm Amanda that had caused deadly flooding and landslides in Central America. At least 22 deaths in El Salvador and Guatemala were blamed on the storm.
Cristobal was the earliest third named storm of an Atlantic hurricane season on record. In 2016, Tropical Storm Colin formed in the Gulf on June 5." AP
STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
"Businesses upped to 50% capacity under new Abbott order,"The Austin American-Statesman's Nicole Cobler -- "Opening Phase 3 of his effort to restart the Texas economy, Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday gave permission for most businesses to immediately expand operating capacity from 25% to 50%.
In addition to letting restaurants operate at half their capacity, Abbott’s latest executive order allowed bars to operate at 50% capacity as long patrons are seated.
Restaurants also can immediately expand their maximum table size from six to 10 people, and starting June 12, can raise their occupancy numbers to 75%.
Amusement parks and carnivals in counties with less than 1,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases can now open at 50% capacity, while such businesses in counties exceeding 1,000 cases can operate at half-capacity beginning June 19.
“The people of Texas continue to prove that we can safely and responsibly open our state for business while containing COVID-19 and keeping our state safe,” Abbott said in a statement.
According to Abbott’s order, there are no capacity limits for houses of worship, child care services, local government operations, youth camps and recreational sports for adults and youths." Austin American-Statesman
"Dallas police: Molotov cocktails found in nightlife district,"AP's Jake Bleiberg -- "Police in Dallas found a box of Molotov cocktails in a nightlife district this weekend, the department said Wednesday, as cities across the country have seen some protests against police violence turn destructive.
An officer found the box of liquor bottles with rags stuffed in the mouths around 12:30 p.m. Sunday in the Deep Ellum neighborhood. The fire department’s hazmat team “took possession of the items at the scene for disposal,” said police spokesman Carlos Almeida.
Police have not confirmed anyone using the crude explosive devices during Dallas demonstrations, Almeida said. He said no other details were available on those found and that no one has been arrested.
The discovery followed days of protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died last month after a white Minneapolis police officer used his knee to pin Floyd’s neck for several minutes as Floyd pleaded for air, then stopped moving.
Much of Dallas demonstrations has been peaceful. On Saturday night and early Sunday, stores were broken into, and some items were stolen. Protesters badly beat a man after he confronted them with a machete. Dallas police have arrested hundreds of people, and parts of the city are under curfew." AP
"Dallas mayor blamed 'outsiders' for violence at protests. But almost everyone arrested was from North Texas,"The Texas Tribune's Clare Proctor -- "Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson blamed “outsiders” Tuesday for sparking violence among peaceful protests in Dallas over the past five days in response to the death of George Floyd. But arrest data provided by the city of Dallas shows nearly all the people who were arrested in protests this past weekend are from Dallas or the surrounding areas.
“The violence, vandalism and theft that we saw committed by some groups of people over the weekend is not reflective of the city that I know,” Johnson said at the Tuesday press conference, sitting alongside Gov. Greg Abbott and other state and North Texas officials. “And much of it was perpetrated by people who are not residents of the city of Dallas. They don't pay taxes here. It's not their property they're destroying.”
Johnson also said the city “will not tolerate those who want to come into our city and exploit these peaceful protests.”
The Dallas Police Department arrested 185 people between Friday and Monday morning, according to the data provided by the mayor’s office. Only seven people arrested were from outside of Texas, and 172 of the 185 arrests were of people residing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Seventy-five of those arrested over the weekend were residents of the city of Dallas. Defending the mayor’s comments, Tristan Hallman, a spokesman for Johnson, said the data shows that more than half of the people arrested are “not actually in the city of Dallas.”
Johnson is “mayor of the city of Dallas, not of the Dallas-Fort Worth area,” Hallman said to The Texas Tribune.
Another 23 of the arrests made over the weekend in Dallas were residents of neighboring Tarrant County. Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, who spoke at Tuesday’s press conference, was not immediately available to comment. Neither was Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley.
At the same press conference Tuesday, Abbott similarly attributed acts of property damage and theft during protests across the state to people “coming into Texas from across state lines.”
“Some of the violence that we’re seeing — that’s not being done by people who reside in Dallas or even in Texas,” Abbott said. “It’s committed by criminals who are hijacking peaceful protests in order to plunder and in order to loot.”
The assertion comes on the heels of a Monday announcement that Abbott is working with four U.S. attorneys to federally prosecute anyone from outside of Texas who’s arrested for “looting, violence, or other destructive acts.” Anyone arrested and charged with these things will be taken into federal custody, Abbott’s office said.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw echoed Abbott’s comment.
“I can tell you, I don't mind advertising this, we do have special agents embedded trying to identify criminals that are leveraging these or using this as an opportunity,” McCraw said. “There are individuals that have been indicated that came from out of state.”
McCraw referred to the looting of a Target in Austin, which he claimed was organized by antifa, a loosely organized radical group fighting the far-right and fascism." Texas Tribune
"Texas council member quits under fire over protest response," via AP-- "A member of a Texas city council resigned under fire this week over a social media response he made to a protest of the death of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck even after he stopped moving and pleading for air.
Paris City Council member Benny Plata submitted his resignation Tuesday at a special meeting.
Mayor Steve Clifford called the meeting to censure Plata after the council member messaged a protester, “Why don’t you leave America if it’s so bad,” The Paris News reported. Clifford also said Plata should resign.
“Our nation is in turmoil over the death of Mr. George Floyd and also due to the pandemic,” the mayor said on Facebook. “Our leaders have a special responsibility to the citizens during this difficult time.”
Speaking at the emergency meeting, Plata said, “I really care about the city I serve, and I was responding to one person berating America.”" AP
2020
"Trump, Biden in virtual tie in Texas in new poll,"The Houston Chronicle's Jeremy Wallace -- "A new poll shows the race for the White House is far closer in Texas than past presidential contests and most Texans approve of the job Gov. Greg Abbott has been doing.
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are in a virtual dead heat according to the Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday.
While 44 percent of the 1,166 self-identified registered voters picked Trump, 43 percent picked Biden. Seven percent said they did not know or did not answer while 6 percent said they’d vote for someone else or would not vote.
"Too tight to tell in Texas,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said.
Those results fall in line with four other polls released since the start of April that all showed Trump and Biden within 6 percentage points of one another in Texas." Houston Chronicle
"Texas Democrats plan to create a voter registration army – via Zoom," The Guardian's Sam Levine -- "Texas Democrats plan to use Zoom to create an army of voter registration volunteers, a novel approach to work around the state’s severe restrictions on voter registration during the Covid-19 pandemic. The effort comes as voter registration efforts, both in Texas and around the US have effectively stalled just months before the presidential election.
Texas makes it extremely difficult to conduct voter registration drives, even outside of the pandemic. The state requires anyone who wants to do so to become a volunteer deputy registrar, a process that requires going to a county-run training. Only Texas residents who are eligible to vote in the state can get the certification. Texas has 254 counties, but someone can only legally register voters in the county in which they are deputized and their certification expires at the end of every even-numbered year.
Some states place no restrictions on voter registration drives at all, while others have more modest ones in place like requiring groups to register with the state before they begin their drive. Civil rights groups have long called the Texas requirement a form of voter suppression.
“Texas has some of the strictest voter registration laws in the country,” said Beth Stevens, voting rights legal director at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “In Texas, volunteer deputy registrars can be criminally prosecuted for what most of us would consider administrative errors while they’re registering people.”" The Guardian
"Bexar County GOP chair spread conspiracy theory that George Floyd killing may have been staged to hurt Trump,"The Austin American-Statesman's Jonathan Tilove -- "Bexar County Republican Party Chair Cynthia Brehm, who last week suggested that the coronavirus was a Democratic hoax, raised the possibility in a now-deleted Facebook post Wednesday that the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody was staged to damage President Donald Trump with black voters.
The content of the post was not original to Brehm and was the subject of a PolitiFact published last Friday, which reported the post had been “flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed,” and that it had been “shared thousands of times and copy-pasted by other users.”
“There is no evidence to back it up,” PolitiFact reported. “We reached out to the original poster for a comment, but we haven’t heard back.”
Late Wednesday afternoon, Gilbert Garcia, a columnist with the San Antonio Express-News, tweeted a screenshot he took of Brehm’s post earlier in the day." Austin American-Statesman
TEXANS IN DC
"Texas is among the most politically polarized states in U.S., study shows’,"The Houston Chronicle's Benjamin Wermund -- "Texas is among the most politically polarized states in the U.S., and its congressional leaders are more partisan than those of any other populous state in the nation, according to a recent ranking.
Several Texas lawmakers were rated among the most partisan in the nation, including U.S. Reps. Chip Roy, a Central Texas Republican who rated as the third-most partisan member of Congress, and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, whose record in the Senate is less partisan than those of just five other senators since 1993.
Researchers who participated in the study and Texas political experts agree that the skewed ratings reflect a generation of noncompetitive elections in the state — both for Democrats and Republicans. With most legislative districts drawn to be overwhelmingly Democratic or Republican, modern Texas politicians have had to worry only about appeasing voters in primary elections.
“Candidates have been electorally rewarded for going off the deep end, and ignoring the policy priorities of moderate general election voters — most voters — for almost 20 years,” said Harold Cook, a Texas political analyst who worked for years as a Democratic consultant.
The ratings also speak to how divided the nation is in the era of President Donald Trump, said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. While he said the Texas delegation has “generally pulled together with a Team Texas approach on major issues” such as hurricane relief, there’s generally “just very, very little incentive to work together.”
“The direction (House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi is leading the House is very different than the direction the White House wants to go, and there just are not a lot of incentives for crossing party lines to get things done,” he said.
Nonetheless, the margins of victory have become tighter up and down the ballot since 2016, with as many as nine competitive congressional races expected this year, more than the state has seen in some time.
The rankings are based on support for bipartisan legislation in Congress, and the Texas delegation ranks 47th in the nation, ahead of only Rhode Island, Oklahoma and Alaska, according to researchers at Georgetown University and the nonprofit Lugar Center founded by former Republican U.S. Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana.
The ratings reflect how frequently members co-sponsor bills introduced by those in the opposite party and how frequently members of the other party back their bills.
Bill sponsorship, the groups argue, is a “very carefully considered declarations of where a legislator stands on an issue,” whereas votes are often “contextual” and can influenced by circumstances.
Members are given a rating, with negative scores a sign of partisanship.
The Texas delegation was mostly in the negative, with only 11 of the 36 members of the House scoring above zero, as did U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
At the top of the list for bipartisanship in Texas is U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican whose district stretches from Houston to Austin, one that Democrats hope to flip in November.
“Whatever they’re going to say about me, the record is clear: I do work across the other side of the aisle,” McCaul said.
McCaul counted among his bipartisan victories legislation creating a federal cybersecurity agency, as well as bills targeting childhood cancer and human trafficking.
“The thing about Congress is so much of this is relationship-driven, and if you’re just up here to scorch the earth and throw your bombs out, you’re not really going to be effective,” McCaul said. “You might get on TV late at night, but that’s not really my goal up here.”
Others in districts expected to be battlegrounds also landed bipartisan scores, including U.S. Reps. Lizzie Fletcher, a freshman Houston Democrat who flipped a longtime Republican seat in 2018 that the GOP is hoping to take back this year, and Dan Crenshaw, a Houston Republican in a district targeted by Democrats." Houston Chronicle
REMAINDERS
RHULE: "Rhule's transition from Baylor to NFL anything but normal"AP
'MACK ON POLITICS' PODCAST
LATEST "MACK ON POLITICS" PODCAST: The George Floyd killing and resulting protests are the subject of the 191st episode.
Our guest is social commentator and activist Toure, who hosts two podcasts, “The Toure Show” and “Democracyish”.
In this conversation we take stock of this national moment, examine real solutions to police brutality, consider whether police union contracts are part of the problem, and probe the concepts of systemic racism and white privilege. Finally, we discuss how the protests will end.
Available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and on the web at http://www.MackOnPoliticsPodcast.com.
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