Cook Political Report shifts Texas Senate race toward Democrats by Julia Manchester - 10/01/24

Good signs here in Texas that things are a-changing, but too early to suggest an outright shift when what's suggested in this Cook political report is a poll where voters are "leaning" Republican. I'll take it regardless and take this as a sign of hope that people want better leadership. It was shameful to see Cruz bank to Cancún while so many millions of others were left freezing in their homes in the memorable freeze in February 2021. Let alone his consistently ultra-conservative politics that don't represent how most Texans feel or what they think. In fact, he's part of the problem in turning Texas more extremist that it is.

His father, Rafael Cruz, further has an undue influence on Ted Cruz and by extension, Texas politics. No exaggeration. You can read all about it in this Aug. 27, 2022 post to my blog titled, "NBC NEWS: HOW A FAR-RIGHT, CHRISTIAN CELLPHONE COMPANY ‘TOOK OVER’ FOUR TEXAS SCHOOL BOARDS. Rafael Cruz is a leading proponent of a religious view called the "Seven Mountains" mandate that you can learn about here. You can't make this stuff up. 

We must get people who really want to serve the public into office rather than those who want to use elective office for their own pernicious and narrow ends. Me thinks that if we can vote Cruz out of office, that the entire edifice of extremist politics in our state will begin to crumble. Not immediately, but decisively nevertheless. In other words, being extremist will make it harder to win elections. 

However, we're a very big state—almost a "country" unto ourselves—so we must take nothing for granted and work hard like Kamala Harris is urging us to do. Most importantly, we must all vote.

This is exciting!

-Angela Valenzuela

Cook Political Report shifts Texas Senate race toward Democrats

by Julia Manchester - 10/01/24 5:24 PM ET

The Cook Political Report on Tuesday shifted Texas’s Senate race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” signaling momentum for Rep. Colin Allred’s (D) challenge against incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R) in the red state. 

Jessica Taylor, the forecaster’s Senate and gubernatorial editor, said Allred’s fundraising and ad spending, coupled with Cruz being on defense on abortion and a trip the senator took to Cancun during a severe winter storm in 2021, have helped Democrats in the state.

But Taylor also said the state will still be tough for Democrats to flip in November. 

Democrats have increasingly set their sights on Texas, as well as Florida, this cycle. Last week the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) announced a multimillion dollar investment in television advertising in the two red-leaning states.

“Senate Democrats are expanding the map and going on offense,” DSCC Chair Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said. “All cycle long the DSCC has been preparing to take advantage of Sens. Cruz and Scott’s damaged standings in their states — and now our efforts in Texas and Florida are accelerating. Democrats have strong candidates running effective campaigns in both states, and as we escalate our communications against Sens. Cruz and Scott we will crystallize the case against them.”

Overall, the Senate map is tilted in Republicans’ favor, with the GOP likely only needing to take down incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in deep-red Montana to capture the chamber. The Hill/Decision Desk HQ forecaster predicts Republicans have a 70 percent chance of winning the Senate. 

While Tuesday’s ratings change is certainly welcome news for the Allred campaign, he will still face an uphill challenge against Cruz. The latest The Hill/Decision Desk HQ average shows Cruz leading Allred by just less than 3 points. Cruz won his last reelection bid against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) by 2.6 points. 

The G.O.P. War on Civil Virtue by Paul Krugman | New York Times | May 26, 2022

Texans deserve better than our current Texas Republican leadership, beginning with Gov. Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Senator Ted Cruz, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. How the heck do they still get voted into office? Beats me.

This incredulity is the thrust of a May 29th opinion by the Editorial Board of the Austin American-Statesman titled, "After Uvalde, we must demand change," as well as this New York Times piece by Paul Krugman that calls out the GOP attack on civil virtue. To date, this gallery of reckless leadership has unilaterally decided that having fun with guns is more important than children's and teacher's lives. Worse yet, as Krugman states,

"if you take the proposals by Cruz, Patrick and others literally, they amount to a call for turning the land of the free into a giant armed camp." 

And arming teachers with guns is NOT a serious proposal as summed up well by this meme posted by Facebook group, Living Blue in Texas.

Short of Congress passing comprehensive gun legislation, our states can learn from Florida, as mentioned by the Statesman's Editorial Board:

"A Florida law enacted in 2018 after the Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting imposed a three-day wait for gun purchases, raised the minimum legal age for buying guns from 18 to 21, and enacted stricter gun ownership measures for those with mental health problems."

Now is the time for "we the people" to "do something." And that something for right now can be reaching out to whoever represents you in office. 

You can visit this Texas Tribune who-represents-me website if you don't know. Also, Texas is holding an election on November 8, 2022 where you can vote for our state's next governor, attorney general, and so on. If you're a new voter, link here to start a new voter registration application.

-Angela Valenzuela

#Uvalde #UvaldeStrong #vote2022

The G.O.P. War on Civil Virtue

by Paul Krugman | New York Times | May 26, 2022

It’s hard to say which of the Republican responses to the latest mass shooting was most reprehensible. The reliably awful Senator Ted Cruz attracted considerable attention by insisting that the answer is to put armed guards in schools, never mind that Uvalde’s school system has its own police force and officers seem to have been on the scene soon after the shooter arrived.

And the Buffalo supermarket that was the location of a mass shooting just 10 days earlier also had an armed security guard, who was killed because his gun was no match for the shooter’s body armor.

But if you ask me, the worst and also most chilling response came from Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas. What we need to do, declared Patrick, is “harden these targets so no one can get in, ever, except maybe through one entrance.”

That restriction would have interesting consequences in the event of a fire. But in any case, think about Patrick’s language: In a nation that’s supposedly at peace, we should treat schools as “targets” that need to be “hardened.” What would that do to public education, which has for many generations been one of the defining experiences of growing up in America? Don’t worry, says a writer for The Federalist: Families can keep their kids safe by resorting to home-schooling.

Actually, if you take the proposals by Cruz, Patrick and others literally, they amount to a call for turning the land of the free into a giant armed camp. There are around 130,000 K-12 schools in America; there are close to 40,000 supermarkets; there are many other venues that might offer prey for mass killers. So protecting all these public spaces Republican-style would require creating a heavily armed, effectively military domestic defense force — heavily armed because it would face attackers with body armor and semiautomatic weapons — that would be at least as big as the Marine Corps.

Why would such a thing be necessary? Mass shootings are very rare outside the United States. Why are they so common here? Not, according to the U.S. right, because we’re a nation where a disturbed 18-year-old can easily buy military-grade weapons and body armor. No, says Patrick, it’s because “We’re a coarse society.”

I know it’s a hopeless effort to say this, but imagine the reaction if a prominent liberal politician were to declare that the reason the United States has a severe social problem that doesn’t exist elsewhere is that Americans are bad people. We’d never hear the end of it. But when a Republican says it, it barely makes a ripple.

And I guess I should say for the record that I personally don’t believe that Americans, as individuals, are worse than anyone else. If anything, what has always struck me when returning from trips abroad is that Americans are (or were) on average exceptionally nice and pleasant to interact with.

What distinguishes us is that it’s so easy for people who aren’t nice to arm themselves to the teeth.

OK, I think everyone realizes that none of what Republicans are saying about how to respond to mass shootings will translate into actual policy proposals. They’re barely even trying to make sense. Instead, they’re just making noise to drown out rational discussion until the latest atrocity fades from the news cycle. The truth is that conservatives consider mass shootings, and for that matter America’s astonishingly high overall rate of gun deaths, as an acceptable price for pursuing their ideology.

But what is that ideology? I’d argue that while talk about America’s unique gun culture isn’t exactly wrong, it’s too narrow. What we’re really looking at here is a broad assault on the very idea of civic duty — on the idea that people should follow certain rules, accept some restrictions on their behavior, to protect the lives of their fellow citizens.

In other words, we should think of vehement opposition to gun regulations as a phenomenon closely linked to vehement (and highly partisan) opposition to mask mandates and vaccination in the face of a deadly pandemic, vehement opposition to environmental rules like the ban on phosphates in detergent, and more.

Where does this hatred of the idea of civic duty come from? No doubt some of it, like almost everything in U.S. politics, is related to race.

One thing it doesn’t reflect, however, is our national tradition. When you hear talk of home-schooling, remember that the United States basically invented universal public education. Environmental protection used to be a nonpartisan issue: The Clean Air Act of 1970 passed the Senate without a single nay. And Hollywood mythology aside, most towns in the Old West had stricter limits on the carrying of firearms than Gov. Greg Abbott’s Texas.

As I suggested, I don’t fully understand where this aversion to the basic rules of a civilized society is coming from. What’s clear, however, is that the very people who shout most about “freedom” are doing their best to turn America into a “Hunger Games”-type dystopian nightmare, with checkpoints everywhere, loomed over by men with guns.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Correction: 

May 27, 2022

An earlier version of this column misattributed the suggestion that families could keep their children safe by home-schooling them. It was made by a writer for the online publication The Federalist, not by the Federalist Society.

Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman

To Texas University and College Faculty: Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz need to hear from you

This e-mail went out yesterday at UT. I am so glad to see the Executive Committees of the Faculty Council and the Graduate Assembly of The University of Texas at Austin issue this statement this morning. At issue is the repeal of the student loan interest deduction and other sections of the IRS tax code (Sections 117(d) and 127).


Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz need to hear from all of us right away. Tax reform should not get done on the backs of our already indebted graduate students.  Talk about discouraging them and rendering a serious blow to higher education at the same time.

I teach masters and doctoral-level students and they all inspire the hope for a better world. 

Graduate students, by all means make calls, as well. You and your parents have a direct interest in the outcome of this so-called tax reform legislation.

Angela Valenzuela