These Texas republicans' days are numbered and they know it. They legislate like they're backed into a corner, fighting for their lives despite being the party in power. And they still lack a legislative fix to the Texas electrical grid where over a hundred Texans lost their lives in February's winter storm.

Their focus instead was on disenfranchising lower-income, people of color from the ballot box. In the long term, and the short term, as well, this is not sustainable. 

There is no grand, lofty vision here. It's all about survival and protecting their incumbencies, the lowest level of resonance for a polity. 

They're showing their every card and can no longer hide from their self-serving decisions and commitments, even despite their 6am vote when none of us were awake to observe this. 

My friends, it is abundantly clear to me that if political disenfranchisement is their only play, they do not deserve to govern. For the rest of us, let this be the very same ground for radical hope.

To members of Congress, do take notice and pass "For the People Act (HR 1) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. 

-Angela Valenzuela

In 6 a.m. vote, divided Texas Senate approves GOP elections bill after all-night debate

Chuck Lindell

Austin American-Statesman

May 30, 2021

The Texas Senate, voting along party lines, approved a sweeping Republican elections bill shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday after a lively overnight debate led mostly by Democrats that had begun 7½ hours earlier.

Senate Bill 7, known as the Election Integrity Protection Act, must be approved by the Texas House before midnight Sunday. The bill is eligible for a vote at 4:50 p.m. according to the House calendar.

Democrats criticized the bill's restrictions, particularly a ban on 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting that was popular with nonwhite voters last year in Harris County, for disproportionately affecting people of color.

"I represent a majority African American district, and we benefited from the drive-thru voting that you're trying to ban now. I feel like you're coming for my district," said Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, adding that leaders with the FBI, Department of Justice and Texas secretary of state's office acknowledged that the 2020 election was safe, secure and free of widespread fraud.

Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, said SB 7 was an overreaction.

"We've had next to no fraud, and this has been documented at the federal level and the state level. But instead you're rewriting the Election Code," she said.

A look at the bill:GOP unveils final version of Texas elections bill, which includes more restrictions

SB 7 is one of several GOP efforts in statehouses around the country to narrow voting opportunities, particularly in urban counties that tend to vote Democratic, after Republicans echoed former President Donald Trump's claims that last year's presidential election was stolen. No widespread fraud was ever uncovered.

But Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, defended his bill as Saturday became Sunday, and he was still at it as sunrise neared — rejecting claims that the bill targeted nonwhite voters or that it was a solution in search of a problem.

"The provisions apply equally across the state. They are not limited to a particular group or particular area," he said.

A rush to debate

The Senate and House had passed widely different versions of SB 7, leading to a conference committee to work out the differences.

That committee's final version of the bill was filed and distributed to senators at 3:36 p.m. Saturday. Less than three hours later, Hughes stood in the Senate and proposed waiving the rule that requires a 24-hour delay before the bill could be considered by the Senate.

Democrats, who had been huddling in private to discuss their options only a few minutes earlier, objected to the speed of events.

More:After House roadblock, GOP senators revive bill limiting school discussions of race, social issues

"I would ask that we take the time that's necessary to understand the changes, to understand the entirety of this before we are asked to vote on a bill that affects every single voter in Texas," said Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson.

Hughes replied that he planned to give senators a private briefing at 8 p.m., bringing them up to speed on a bill that grew from 23 pages to 67 pages in conference committee — adding that there would be plenty of time to discuss SB 7 in public during what he expected to be a long and vigorous floor debate that would not begin until after 10 p.m. to allow more time to study the legislation.

Sen. Jose Menéndez, D-San Antonio, said the late debate would occur when most Texans would not be watching in person or online.

"How did you decide that 10 p.m. tonight was the right time? Does that seem like the best time to be creating very important policy-making decisions after 10 p.m.?" he said. "Tomorrow we have the full day to debate any legislative measures, do we not?"

But Hughes noted the looming deadline — all conference committee reports must get a vote by midnight Sunday — and Republicans voted as a bloc to waive the 24-hour delay.

The Senate returned to SB 7 shortly after 10:30 p.m. by taking up a resolution giving the conference committee permission to include provisions that had not been part of the bills passed by the House and Senate.

Hughes, who was co-chairman of the conference committee, said many of the sections added to SB 7 were taken from other GOP election bills that had passed the Senate or were considered in committee, while other ideas cropped up during negotiations with his co-chairman, Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park.

Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, called the resolution an affront to the legislative process.

"This seems more like you’re trying to get in bills that you couldn’t pass, or you thought of some other way to do some things that many of the members of this chamber don’t want you to do," Johnson said.

After the Republican majority voted to approve Senate Resolution 547, senators began debating SB 7 at 12:30 a.m. Sunday.

A pattern of late nights

Partisan disagreements have pushed lawmakers into several late-night and early-morning sessions in the past several weeks as Republicans pressed an aggressively conservative agenda this session.

A rancorous debate over SB 7 pushed the Texas House beyond 3 a.m. on May 7, setting the stag for this weekend's showdown.

And a fight over House Bill 3979 found the Senate voting at 2 a.m. on May 22 over legislation to limit how public school teachers handle discussions of race and racism in the classroom.

The Senate made wholesale changes on the floor, putting the bill in danger when House Democrats successfully argued that several amendments violated House rules.

With no time to fix the bill by traditional means, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick allowed Hughes to make a motion to recede, a little-known parliamentary maneuver that stripped the bill of all Senate changes and passed HB 3979 in its original House form on a party-line vote.

Democratic objections that the Texas Constitution did not allow bills to be passed that late in the session were overruled. 

The session ends on Monday, with lawmakers still not having agreed upon priority legislation, including fixing the Texas electrical grid after millions of Texans were plunged into cold and darkness during the deadly February winter storms.

Friends,

Here is a super concerning bill. Members of the NAACS Tejas Foco, LULAC, TLEEC, and others plan to walk offices tomorrow. Just know that whatever you (think you might) learn from CRT here, the description below is incredibly oversimplified. 

For example, it alleges that "proponents of 'critical race theory' tend to critique equal treatment,"distorts CRT by excluding the principle that sameness in say, a resource or an outcome, relative to other groups, is not always optimal due to a history of unequal needs and circumstances due to segregation, poverty, health and income disparities, access to pre-K, quality teachers, ongoing discrimination, and the like—which is what "equity," not mentioned in this piece, actually addresses.

The deeper issue here is that certain privileged and powerful folks are doing what they can to legislate by fiat what Texas students should be learning in their classrooms, undermining administrator and teacher professionalism, student voice, and ultimately, the franchise.  This, along with current voter suppression bills in the Texas State Legislature (see Senate Bill 7) seek to disenfranchise Texas' growing demographic majority of minoritized youth. 

Do read the House Bill 3979.  It's a piece of work.

Stay tuned. More to come.

Angela Valenzuela

Bill to Ban Critical Race Theory from Texas Classrooms Passes House Committee

The legislation would also apply to fostering blame or guilt based on sex. It targets teacher training as well as the classroom.

ISAIAH MITCHELL APRIL 28, 2021 | The Texan

One Texas school district hired a diversity and inclusion consultant to potentially tweak teaching practices in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Two bills in the Texas legislature, one recently passed out of committee, would halt this plan.

State Reps. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) and James White (R-Hillister) are each carrying an identical duplicate of the bill, though the Public Education Committee of the Texas House only passed Toth’s. White’s twin never received a hearing.

The bill tackles a number of educational tactics feared by some Republicans to be nascent trends in the classroom, such as “action civics,” overly political curriculums, and a strain of sociological thought which organizes racism through structural rather than interpersonal terms, translated from academia to popular literacy by bestselling writers such as Ibram X. Kendi and commonly called “critical race theory.”

Specifically, the bill would adjust three key areas of education: the state curriculum, classroom education, and training for teachers and other employees.

It would require the State Board of Education to include an understanding of the country’s founding documents in the state curriculum standards, as well as an understanding of “the fundamental moral, political, and intellectual foundations of the American experiment in self-government.”

On top of barring teachers from asking students to engage in political activism, the bill would also forbid teachers from promoting racial preferences or concepts like inherent racism and racial guilt. It bans similar ways of teaching with regards to gender, such as fostering guilt on account of sex, teaching inherent or unconscious sexism, and encouraging worse treatment for one sex over another.

Lastly, it would forbid “training, orientation, or therapy that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex” for school employees.

“Action civics” is a name popularly given to teaching styles that encourage or require political activism. Proponents call it a hands-on approach that teaches children the political process more thoroughly than traditional books and blackboards. Critics say it skews to the left.

Massachusetts and Illinois have already implemented versions of this educational approach. Action civics proposals in the Texas legislature include SB 1740 by Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo), which would have students participate in simulations of government processes and identify proper media sources. Another is HB 57 by Rep. James Talarico (D-Round Rock), which would require students to identify “issues in the community” before creating a public policy or action plan.” One by a Republican, Rep. Keith Bell (R-Forney), would create “civics academies” for teachers and administrators to learn how to guide classroom discussions in current events and teach citizenship with simulations and models of government processes. All three have languished in committee.

“Critical race theory” is the frequently used term for a system of belief, born out of decades-old academic discourse but more recently distilled into widely-read material, that defines racism not only as race-based hatred or discrimination but also as a prevalent and systemic problem that influences seemingly impartial aspects of American life as evidenced by gaps in achievement — such as school grades, arrests, or income — between some racial groups and others. It shares a common ancestry with academic feminism as well as other less familiar Marxist offspring like queer theory, altogether known as critical theory, and in its popular version informs corporate diversity efforts like personnel quotas and racial sensitivity training. Proponents of “critical race theory” tend to critique equal treatment.

While Toth’s bill would firmly prohibit teachers from giving credit for political advocacy or fomenting racial distress, its yoke weighs lighter on classroom discussions.

The bill says “no teacher may be compelled” by school policy to discuss current or controversial issues in class, but teachers may choose to do so. Those who do must “strive to explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”

The bill’s companion in the Texas Senate, Senate Bill (SB) 2202, passed on the second of three readings yesterday and is expected to pass to the House today.

The Senate has moved on a number of similar bills already, considering in committee a bill to foster “informed patriotism.” Like Toth’s bill, it begins by ordering the State Board of Education to require an understanding of America’s founding documents in the state curriculum, though it includes letters between the Founding Fathers alongside the Federalist Papers and other writings while Toth’s does not. Overall, by banning action civics and critical race theory from the classroom, Toth’s bill is more expansive.

Diversity and inclusion plans are not uncommon among Texas school districts. The Eanes plan has driven an unusually controversial and well-funded school board race seen by some as a referendum on how the school will treat race issues. Carroll ISD has attempted to establish a diversity and inclusion plan, sparking controversy with the use of the word “microaggressions,” but was stalled by a lawsuit alleging that the school board members violated the Open Meetings Act in their discussions of the plan.

Disclosure: Unlike almost every other media outlet, The Texan is not beholden to any special interests, does not apply for any type of state or federal funding, and relies exclusively on its readers for financial support. If you’d like to become one of the people we’re financially accountable to, click here to subscribe.