From God Save Texas (Lawrence Wright, 2018) pp271-4
DURING THE REGULAR SESSION of the Eighty-fifth Texas Legislature, more than 6,600 bills were filed, and more than 1,200 were passed and sent to the governor to sign. The session was widely viewed as being dictated by Dan Patrick, but many of the signature items he sought – school vouchers, property-tax rollbacks, and the bathroom bill – failed to pass.
The major cities in Texas quickly joined in a lawsuit against S.B. 4 – the sanctuary cities bill – saying that its provisions would lead to racial profiling, and that regulating immigration is a power reserved for the federal government. However, the U.S. attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced that the Justice Department was on the side of S.B. 4. “President Trump has made a commitment to keep America safe,” he said. “Texas has admirably followed his lead by mandating statewide cooperation with federal immigration laws that require the removal of illegal aliens who have committed crimes.” Faced with the possibility of being incarcerated in her own jail if she disobeyed federal immigration detention requests, Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez said that her office would comply with the new law.
The last day of the session, Memorial Day, is usually spent in presentations of proclamations, commendations to the staff, and good-byes among colleagues who have endured 140 of the most intense days of their lives together. Some of the members will retire; others may be defeated in the next election; those who endure will be back in eighteen months for another round.
Meanwhile, buses began arriving at the capitol. Hundreds of protestors, some from distant states, burst through the doors, filling all four levels of the rotunda and spilling into the House gallery. They blew whistles and unfurled banners (“See You in Court!”) and chanted “S.B. 4 has got to go!” One of the leaders of the protest, Stephanie Gharakhanian, explained to reporters, “We wanted to make sure we gave them the send-off they deserve.”
The House came to a halt amid the pandemonium. A few of the Democrats on the floor looked up at the chanting protestors and began to applaud. State troopers cleared the gallery and broke up the demonstration, but by that time the attempted bonhomie that usually characterizes the final day had blown up. Matt Rinaldi, a member of the Freedom Caucus from Dallas County, who is sometimes rated the most conservative member of the House, later told Fox Business Network that he noticed several banners bearing the message “I Am Undocumented and Here to Stay.” He says he decided to summon Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and then bragged about it to his Hispanic colleagues. A shoving match broke out on the House floor. Curses flew, along with spittle. Afterward, Rinaldi posted on Facebook that Alfonso “Poncho” Nevarez, a Democrat from the border town of Eagle Pass, had threatened his life. “Poncho told me he would ‘get me on the way to my car,” Rinaldi wrote. He said he made jt clear that “I would shoot him in self-defense.”
THE CAPITOL WAS SUBDUED the day after the session ended. In the House chamber, docents were leading school tours and explaining, in English and Spanish, the identities of the famous Texans in the portraits along the walls. I like the one of Stephen F. Austin with his musket, a spotted hound at his feet. In the rotunda, a high school orchestra was playing a piece for woodwinds. I went up on the second-floor tier, where the acoustics were better. The students were from Kountze, a little East Texas town that had the distinction, in 1991, of electing America’s first Muslim mayor. The musicians were arrayed in the center of the rotunda atop the seals of the Republic and the five other nations that ‘Texas had once been part of. I was moved by the thought that the long and bloody march of Texas history had paused at this moment, with small-town kids bringing all the diverse voices of our state into harmony.
Speaker Straus was waiting in his chambers, seated on his couch in his shirtsleeves, under a painting of Hereford cattle. He looked more relaxed than I thought was warranted, given that the governor was poised to call a special session that would likely focus on Patrick’s two must-pass bills. But Straus seemed satis274fied. He boasted that the priorities of the House-bis priorities had been mostly accomplished. “We did the Child Protective Services reforms, adding fourteen hundred new caseworkers,” he said. “We made tremendous progress on mental health reforms.” Texas’s decrepit hospitals were going to be upgraded. A healthcare plan for retired teachers was saved. Massive cuts to higher education were averted. “These were issues a little bit under the radar because they’re not sensational, but they’re issues that are going to make a big difference in Texas lives,” Straus said. “What we didn’t achieve was to begin fixing the school finance system, which everybody knows is a disaster.” Straus said that schools in districts that have been affected by the downturn in the oil and gas economy might have to be shuttered. “We had a plan to bridge that. Unfortunately the Senate had other priorities.” He attributed the failure to Patrick’s “fixation on vouchers.”
I asked Straus about the clash between business and cultural conservatives, which was tearing the Republican Party apart, both in Texas and nationally. He quoted William H. Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, who described the forthcoming Civil War as “an irrepressible conflict.” The prejudices unleashed by the election of Donald Trump were mixing with the already volatile elements of Texas politics. Given that Dan Patrick had been Trump’s campaign manager in the state, there was bound to be a confluence of interests.
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