MRT: Dems: Abbott Should Allow Mask Orders; Two Charged with Rioting at Capitol; Mail in Ballots Surge in Harris County; Hegar-West Debate Blows Up
Here's What You Need to Know in Texas Today.
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BY: @MattMackowiak
TUESDAY – 06/30/20
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Early voting in the Republican and Democratic primary runoffs is underway and runs through July 10. The runoff is Tuesday, July 14.
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TOP NEWS
"Democrats urge Gov. Abbott to let Texas cities, counties issue mandatory stay-at-home orders,"The Houston Chronicle's Benjamin Wermund -- "City and county leaders, including in Houston and San Antonio, want Gov. Greg Abbott to let them issue mandatory stay-at-home orders again as the coronavirus outbreak continues.
Officials in the state’s largest cities and counties, including Harris and Bexar, have urged the governor in recent days to give them the power to again mandate people quarantine as COVID-19 cases surge.
“Give us back our tools," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said on Monday. “I think people can see what we had and how we utilized them worked. Give them back to us. Because the situation is more critical now than then and we had more tools at our disposal then than now.”
Eight Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, issued a joint statement on Monday, warning that the Fourth of July weekend is approaching and there are no mandates that Texans wear face coverings in public, while many beaches remain open and gatherings up to 100 people are still permitted under the governor’s current orders.
“Municipalities and their local law enforcement agencies must be allowed to listen to their health care experts and institute whatever measures are needed to bring the coronavirus under control,” they said.“Governor Abbott took important steps to mitigate the virus’ impact, but it’s not enough. The status quo is unacceptable and counties must be allowed to decide for themselves what is best for their citizens. ”
Among those in Congress pushing Abbott to allow local leaders to issue the orders are U.S. Reps. Sylvia Garcia, Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green of Houston and Lloyd Doggett of San Antonio. U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen led the call and Reps. Filemon Vela of Brownsville, Marc Veasey of Fort Worth and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas joined, as well.
Bexar and Harris counties have warned people to stay home unless they must go out, which Abbott has also done, but the counties can’t enforce the stay-at-home orders as they did earlier this year.
“I will tell you it is frustrating, because when people are reporting locally and nationally, they are talking about the city of Houston, as well as other cities,” Turner said. “I would like to have the ability to do what is in the best interest to the city of Houston to get on top of this virus.”
While Abbott has moved in recent days to scale back the state’s reopening — including closing bars again — the governor’s reopening orders, beginning in May, overrode existing stay-at-home orders in places such as Harris County. He has since said counties and cities can force businesses to require face coverings for staff and customers." Houston Chronicle
"Group of Texas bar owners sues to reopen amid pandemic," via AP-- "A group of Texas bar owners filed lawsuits Monday seeking to overturn Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that closed their businesses to help contain the spread of the coronavirus in Texas.
Abbott has pinpointed the re-opening of bars last month as one of the sources behind a dramatic spike in new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and hospitalizations that has made Texas a national hotspot in a virus resurgence.
On Monday, Texas reported that it had a record high for the state of 5,913 COVID-19 hospital patients, including a one-day increase of 416 new patients.
The state also reported 4,288 additional confirmed cases, which was the first time the daily count dipped below 5,000 in a week. The true number is likely much higher because many people have not been tested and studies suggest that people can be infected and not feel sick.
The lawsuits filed in Austin, Houston and Galveston allege Abbott doesn’t have the authority under the state constitution to make such an order, and that it targets bars while allowing other establishments, such as hair and nail salons and tattoo studios to remain open.
Abbott’s order shuttered establishments that make at least 51 percent of their revenue from alcohol sales. It also trimmed restaurant dining capacity from 75 percent to 50 percent.”
The bar owners say Abbott should bring the Legislature into a special session to address the issue.
“Gov. Abbott continues to act like a king,” said Jared Woodfill, attorney for the bar owners. “Abbott is unilaterally destroying our economy and trampling on our constitutional rights.”
A spokesman for Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission said agents visited nearly 1,500 business across the state over the weekend to ensure compliance with Abbott’s order and found that 59 were still open. Of those, most agreed to immediately close and seven who didn’t had their licenses suspended for 30 days.
In Houston, Fire Chief Samuel Peña said the city responded to more than 300 complaints about bars and clubs that were open and restaurants that were exceeding capacity limits.
Also Monday, the University of Texas released new plans for its fall semester return-to-school for the 50,000-student campus. They include a mandatory mask policy inside campus buildings, the same tuition rate for online or in-person classes, and plans for double-occupancy in most dorm rooms.
The virus causes mild or moderate symptoms that clear up in two to three weeks in most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia." AP
"Two men charged with rioting at Texas Capitol amid protest," via AP-- "Two men have been arrested and charged with rioting and committing other crimes at the Texas Capitol amid demonstrations against police violence and racial injustice, authorities said Monday.
State police arrested 18-year-old Gerald Govan Brown Saturday and found 22-year-old Darius Deshawn Berkley already being held in an Austin jail on unrelated charges, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement.
The agency said Brown was charged with several crimes including participating in a riot, criminal mischief-destruction of a public monument and attempt to take a weapon from a peace officer for actions during a May 30 demonstration.
Brown was not listed in Travis County jail records Monday, and an attorney for him could not be immediately identified.
Berkley was charged with rioting for a June 22 “incident” that the department did not describe. Jail records state he is being held on a combined $11,000 bond for that charge and two others of obstruction or retaliation. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Following the May 30 protest, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called in the National Guard to help guard the Capitol and reinforce state and local law enforcement officers." AP
STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
"Officials in Texas' big cities say their public testing sites are being strained. Austin has begun to limit who can be tested,"The Texas Tribune's Juan Pablo Garnham -- "As the new coronavirus continues to spread in Texas, leaders of some of the state's biggest cities said Monday that their testing sites were being strained, forcing them to turn away people in the middle of the day or limit who is eligible to take a test.
In Travis County, interim County Judge Sam Biscoe said the county’s public testing is being rationed to only people with symptoms. Previously, local leaders had encouraged anyone to get tested, including asymptomatic people and people that had come into contact with COVID-19 patients.
“The rapid increase in cases has outstripped our ability to track, measure, and mitigate the spread of the disease,” Biscoe wrote in a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott asking to allow metropolitan areas to issue their own stay-at-home orders.
The largest laboratory analyzing tests is also strained, Biscoe said, to the point that the county has decided to prioritize cases from severely ill patients in hospitals. Residents in Travis County who don't show symptoms still have other options, like private facilities, to get tested." Texas Tribune
"Texas police to be asked again for race data on traffic stops. The time it will be useful,"The Houston Chronicle's Eric Dexheimer -- "The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement will ask nearly 2,000 Texas law enforcement agencies to resubmit information used to analyze how police were treating minority motorists — but was worthless because the commission did not ask departments to include the race of the drivers in some of the data.
The change comes days after Hearst Newspapers published a story detailing how the information, required by the 2017 Sandra Bland Act, was impossible to use.
“I’m trying to jump on it pretty fast,” said state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, a sponsor of the bill, who said he spoke Monday morning with TCOLE and they had agreed to correct the problem.
Coleman said he also has asked the agency to work with academic experts to ensure the information it is asking of Texas law enforcement agencies can be used to actually conduct racial bias analyses. Alex del Carmen, a criminal justice professor at Tarleton State University who helps train police executives, said he worked Sunday to create a survey that would produce the necessary information.
Coleman said the new list of questions will be used to gather the information for 2020. But he added the agency said it would also contact police departments to ask them to redo their 2019 surveys, originally submitted in March.
A TCOLE spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Texas policing reformers have been trying for nearly 20 years to get the state’s police departments to submit information sufficiently detailed to permit researchers, advocates and the public to identify which police departments treat motorists in a way that could indicate racial bias. But demonstrating a pattern of racial bias in police departments is deceptively complicated, researchers say.
Many agencies may stop black drivers at a greater rate than their local population numbers, for example. Yet typically half of all traffic stops made by police are of out-of-town motorists, meaning a simple comparison against local demographics is meaningless. Police also say they seldom know the race of a driver before approaching the stopped car on the shoulder of the road, though some studies suggest this isn’t entirely true.
So racial profiling experts say the best test to gauge if a local department is treating black, Hispanic and white drivers differently is to compare how they are treated after a stop, when the driver’s race is clear. The most common way is to compare how often drivers with different skin colors are searched." Houston Chronicle
"Prosecutor resigns after post seems to link protests, Nazis,"AP's Juan A. Lozano -- "A longtime top Houston area prosecutor resigned Monday after posting a meme on Facebook that appeared to equate Nazis with people who have been participating in protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Kaylynn Williford, who was head of the trial bureau at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, last week posted the meme that shows a black and white picture of a wooden box full of weddings bands that were removed from Holocaust victims.
A caption above the photo reads in part, “Each ring represents a destroyed family. Never forget, Nazis tore down statues. Banned free speech. Blamed economic hardships on one group of people. Instituted gun control. Sound familiar?”
Protesters demonstrating against racism, police violence, racial inequality and the May death of Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes, have targeted Confederate monuments and other statues in cities around the world.
Various area attorneys had questioned whether the post was derogatory of the Black Lives Matter movement and if it might be racist.
“It’s in very poor taste given the context of what’s happening socially around the country,” said Mauro Beltramini, a Houston criminal defense attorney. “Something like this could cast doubt on things that the district attorney’s office is doing.”
Williford said in a statement she never intended to offend the Black Lives Matter movement. Williford said what she had “interpreted as a post that promoted tolerance was taken in a completely different manner.”
“I have spent my career defending the rights not only of victims but those wrongfully accused,” she said. “If you truly knew me, you would know I never meant anything malicious in sharing a Facebook post ... I can only say I am sorry for hurt this had made in the African American or Jewish communities.”
The district attorney’s office was reviewing concerns over the Facebook post when Williford resigned. The resignation was first made public by a reporter with the Marshall Project.
In an email sent to employees Monday, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said her office “stands for equal justice” and it “has zero tolerance for racism in any shape or form. While implicit in our work, let us be together in the fight for tolerance and equality of all in everything we do, both in the workplace and in all aspects of our lives.”
Williford had been with the district attorney’s office since 1992 and had tried more than 100 jury trials. She was of the prosecutors who in October helped secure a death sentence for a man convicted of fatally shooting six members of his ex-wife’s family, including four children." AP
"265 sign up to testify on first Texas sex ed changes since 1997,"The Houston Chronicle's Taylor Goldenstein -- "Proposed changes to the statewide sexual education policy — the first in more than two decades — drew 265 Texans to a virtual State Board of Education hearing Monday where they debated topics including whether students should start learning about contraception in middle school.
The recommended changes, which comprehensive sex education advocates have applauded, would start lessons on birth control in seventh and eighth grade, rather than in high school, and add lessons about consent from fifth grade through high school.
The debate Monday revolved around which approach would keep students safest and healthiest and would reduce the state’s teen pregnancy rate — the fourth-highest in the nation.
Ariana Rodriguez, a community activist from South Texas, recalled being taught abstinence using a rose metaphor. Each incidence of pre-marital sex meant losing a petal.
“They ended the presentation stating that no one wants a rose without any petals and therefore no one wants a person who has had many partners,” Rodriguez said. “The students around me sobbed as they heard they were unworthy of love simply because of their sexual activity.”
The result, she said, was a lot of shame and embarrassment and lingering misunderstandings about safe sex.
Others, however, said more lessons about contraception and consent does not necessarily lead to safer choices. Monica Cline, who described herself as a former comprehensive sex educator, said she came to believe that the approach places pressure on students to become sexually active.
“I really believe that parents should be educated in sex and have these conversations at home,” Cline said. “I believe that our schools should not violate our Texas education code and not mandate sex education in our schools.”
The Republican-majority board’s hearing came after a monthslong effort by work groups of educators and experts who helped prepare proposed revisions. The last time the policy was changed was in 1997. The board will hold a second public hearing in September and will take a final vote on the standards by November.
State law requires sex education to stress abstinence as the best birth control method. Teachers must devote more attention to abstinence from sexual activity than to any other behavior and present it as the preferred choice for all unmarried students of school age. But the state ultimately leaves many decisions up to local school districts, which can customize their programs.
More than eight in 10 Texas school districts teach abstinence only or have no sex education at all, according to a 2017 report from the left-leaning Texas Freedom Network. That report found nearly 17 percent of schools teach more than abstinence, including eight of the state’s 10 largest school districts.
Advocates of comprehensive sex education, who made up the majority of speakers Monday, argued that abstinence-only education fails to prepare students for real-world realities of pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and sexual violence." Houston Chronicle
2020
"Mail-in ballots drive surge in early voting turnout for Harris County runoffs,"The Houston Chronicle's Jasper Scherer -- "Harris County voters cast more than 51,000 ballots Monday in the primary runoffs, an eye-popping total that exceeded turnout for entire runoff elections in some recent years.
Combined with a robust in-person turnout, voters had returned more than 43,000 mail ballots by Monday, the first day of early voting. The turnout nearly doubled the number of votes recorded on the first day of early voting in 2016, the most recent presidential election year. It also eclipsed turnout from the 2018 runoffs, when more than 34,000 voters cast ballots on the first day of early voting.
The surge in voting was largely driven by voters in the Democratic primary, who accounted for 63 percent of the early runoff ballots Monday. And it came weeks after interim County Clerk Chris Hollins sent mail ballot applications to every voter who is 65 and older, which he said was aimed at keeping older voters “safe amid the current health crisis by giving them the opportunity to vote from home.”
Even with concerns about a recent local spike in COVID-19 cases, however, in-person turnout outpaced that of recent election cycles as well. A total of 5,334 Democrats and 1,762 Republicans cast ballots at the county’s 57 polling sites Monday. That is up from the 2,963 recorded the first day of early voting in the 2016 primary runoffs and 4,564 during the midterms." Houston Chronicle
"The Texas GOP convention will gather thousands of people indoors without a mask requirement. One of its sponsors is the Texas Medical Association,"The Texas Tribune's Meena Venkatarmanan -- "The Texas Medical Association is encouraging Texans to practice social distancing, stay home when possible and wear masks to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. But despite the potential mixed message it may send, the state’s largest medical organization said Monday it is not reconsidering its sponsorship of the Texas Republican convention next month. Some 6,000 people from across the state are expected to gather indoors without a mask mandate at the convention in Houston, one of the nation’s fastest-growing COVID-19 hot spots.
A spokesperson for TMA, which represents more than 53,000 Texas physicians and medical students, told The Texas Tribune that it will honor its commitment to the event.
“The agreement will not be revisited,” Brent Annear said in an email Monday.
He added that despite the fact that the GOP organizers won’t require attendees to wear masks, TMA “encourages everyone who goes anywhere to wear masks.”
“To our Republican friends — and our Democrat friends (and independents and those of other parties) — we say wear a mask, wash your hands, stay socially distant if you must be in groups, and stay home if you can,” Annear said.
TMA is one of more than 30 sponsors of the Republican Party convention, according to a list on the party’s website that was taken down Monday afternoon. Other sponsors of the convention include Comcast, Verizon, Union Pacific and various Republican officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Comptroller Glenn Hegar. At the Republican Party convention, delegates will decide on the party’s leadership, platform and priorities for the upcoming legislative session.
As the coronavirus surges across the country, Harris County — where Houston is the county seat — has the highest number of cases and deaths in Texas. The timing of the in-person convention and resistance to imposing a mask requirement have raised concerns among public health experts.
“I think it's not the right time to be hosting large events indoors, especially when there's no plan for masking and adequate space for social distancing,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas McGovern Medical School.
Dr. David Lakey, the former commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said it’s “important for the Texas Medical Association to be involved in both political parties in order to have the voice of health and the many public health issues, such as vaccines and Medicaid and maternal morbidity, to make sure that both parties understand that these issues are important.”
“If [TMA] totally dropped sponsorship, they lose the ability to address the multitude of health issues that we have here,” Lakey said.
But Lakey, who is a member of TMA and past chair of its public health committee, also said he hopes TMA will encourage the convention to “consider the use of masks and other public health interventions if they are going to move forward.”
Annear said TMA’s agreement with the Republican Party of Texas was set in stone “before the pandemic was a major issue here — before we hit any stay-home suggestions or mandates, mask policies or anything like that.”
And because the group signed on to the sponsorship before the pandemic began and “no conditions like that were discussed,” it will not back out of the agreement, he said.
“This low-rung sponsorship entitles TMA to have a brief video play for the conventiongoers that reminds them that Texas physicians are here to care for Texas patients,” Annear said. “We paid the same low-level sponsor amount to the Democrats for their convention, and we had a video play during their virtual convention with essentially the same message.”
Dr. Diana Fite, the president of the Texas Medical Association, wrote in an online letter to Texas physicians that they should encourage patients, friends and family members to “for your sake, for your neighbors’ sake, for my sake, and for your grandma’s sake, wear a mask, Texas.”
Earlier this spring, TMA canceled its own annual conference, TexMed 2020, which was scheduled to take place from May 1-2 in Fort Worth, and suspended the 2020 TMA House of Delegates meeting both in-person and online “until the crisis has subsided.”
“The health and safety of our members is paramount as you are on the front lines of the fight to control the spread of the virus and treat infected patients,” TMA’s website says of its decision to cancel TexMed 2020." Texas Tribune
"Trump-Biden race has big divide between Texas men and women, polling shows,"The Houston Chronicle's Jeremy Wallace -- "The gender divide among Texans is becoming clear in public polling of the presidential race.
A new Fox News Poll of 1,001 registered voters in Texas, shows the race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden is essentially a dead heat with Biden getting 45 percent of the vote to 44 percent for Trump.
But among men and women, the results are vastly different.
Among men, Trump is beating Biden with 51 percent of the vote to 39 percent. But with women, it’s exactly flipped with 51 percent supporting Biden and 39 percent supporting Trump." Houston Chronicle
"Quiet Democratic Senate runoff blows up at Hegar-West debate,"The Austin American-Statesman's Jonathan Tilove -- The first 15 minutes of the half hour Democratic Senate debate on KVUE Monday night between MJ Hegar of Round Rock and state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, was a standard-issue tag team attack on the deficiencies of President Donald Trump and the man they hope to beat in November, three-term Republican Sen. John Cornyn.
The last 15 minutes was a no-holds-barred pummeling of one another that, in a hot flash of mutual passion, revealed simmering antagonisms, crossing lines of race and gender, between the 67-year-old African American lawmaker first elected to in the Texas Senate in 1992, and the 44-year-old former Air Force helicopter pilot who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism, but has never held elective office.
It was great theater with uncertain consequences, though Hegar was probably right when she said in her closing statement, “John Cornyn is the person that won tonight.”
“I finally agree with her on something,” tweeted Cornyn campaign spokesman Travis Considine. “What a train wreck that debate was.”" Austin American-Statesman
"Senate hopeful MJ Hegar banking on suburban women to carry her to victory against Royce West, John Cornyn,"The Dallas Morning News' Gromer Jeffers Jr. -- "Cathy Murphree of Richardson sets aside an hour each day for her political activism, sending out text messages and making telephones calls on behalf of her favored candidates and causes.
The retired teacher is backing Round Rock’s MJ Hegar for Senate against Republican incumbent John Cornyn. That’s remarkable, since not too long ago Murphree was a Republican.
“I still consider myself a moderate,” she said, explaining that GOP policies related to health care, education, science and other issues don’t appeal to her. “The party itself has changed so much, even without [President Donald] Trump.”
Suburban women like Murphree could determine whether Democrats can turn the state blue, or Republicans can maintain their statewide dominance.
Once firmly controlled by Republicans, more suburban women are voting for Democrats, as evidenced in 2018, when former El Paso Democrat Beto O’Rourke came within 2.6 percentage points of beating Republican incumbent Ted Cruz for Senate. His crossover appeal won him Tarrant County and 46% of the vote in once reliably red Collin County.
Now Hegar, the former Air Force helicopter rescue pilot, is in a July 14 runoff for the Democratic Senate nomination against state Sen. Royce West of Dallas." Dallas Morning News
REMAINDERS
TEXAS TECH FOOTBALL: "Texas Tech again taps SEC for grad transfer in LSU's Monroe" AP
'MACK ON POLITICS' PODCAST
LATEST "MACK ON POLITICS" PODCAST: Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) is our guest for the 193rd episode, and he joins us from Tulsa, OK, the scene of the Trump re-election campaign’s first rally in several months.
In this conversation we discuss the protests, the current moment in our country, how rural America is surviving, what he expects from Congress for the rest of the year, what he hopes to see from the forthcoming Durham report on FISA abuse, how he sizes up Trump vs. Biden and what he sees as the stakes for the 2020 election.
Available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and on the web at http://www.MackOnPoliticsPodcast.com.
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