Tag Greg Abbott

I’d like to say just a few words about the happenings of this week

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Oh, Auntie Em, I had the most amazing, wonderful dream…

Things didn’t exactly turn from black and white to Technicolor while I sat up until 2:00 a.m. watching election returns, but at one point just after midnight I remember saying to my wife, “You know, this is fun!”  I hadn’t had this much fun during election returns since the last time I anchored the broadcast, almost forty years ago.

Watching the defeat of an evil empire of Christian nationalist, law-and-norm-ignoring fascists, even if it turns out to be only temporarily, the strongest emotion I’ve felt – am still feeling, almost three days later – is schadenfreude.  I know my mom (maybe yours too) would have gently scolded that’s it’s not nice to take pleasure in the suffering of others; I like to think that Elsie Joan would have allowed some grace in this case, where the “others” in question are people who have been so aggressively contemptuous of so many of our laws and of their fellow men that they deserve little sympathy.  I think they got what they deserved.

For your reading pleasure and historical backgrounding, here is a free link to the New York Times article with the inside story of how the Trump Administration went out of its way to shoot itself in the foot and make it possible for the lost-in-the-desert Democrats to complete a thorough and humiliating ass-whipping of a president and a party that felt they were bulletproof, all can’t-touch-this I dare  you to come against us.

It seems obvious to me that this election was a referendum on TFG in the sense that people have been so angry, and so offended, at what he and his black-hatted henchmen have actually done since January 2025.  At how they have failed to do things they promised that won them new political support in the last election.  At how they have actually gone about doing some of the things they did do in ways that appalled most everyday Americans (remember DOGE?).  At how they have made clear their disdain for the rule of law and even for the participation of the representatives of the American people in the House and Senate.  It turns out the post-election Associated Press polling backs that up.

People couldn’t get beyond the realities of life in Trump’s America: the Iran war and the senseless tariffs that combined to raise prices for us all while alienating our allies around the world; the barely-trained vigilantes ICE dispatched not to round up “the worst of the worst” but to terrorize immigrant society and kill a few American citizen protesters in the process; the unprecedented corruption and self-dealing; the self-aggrandizing efforts of a tawdry real estate developer to memorialize himself in our nation’s capitol – including the interminable gilding of everything that didn’t move out of his way – and the most godawful sycophants who were tiny-hands-picked by Trump himself as candidates (so bad that even staunch conservatives just couldn’t stomach them – yeah, I’m looking at you Ken Paxton).

Yesterday I read another interesting explanation behind the enormous vote “against Trump” not only all across the country, but especially from Black and Hispanic voters: they were responding to the Republicans assault on voting rights.  That is, Trump’s pressure on states to redraw their Congressional district lines ahead of schedule – because, he said, Republicans were “entitled” to more seats due to their winning margin in 2024 (that’s not ever a reason why lines are drawn the way they are) – led to the elimination of many majority-minority districts across the country.  And the litigation over that effort led to a Supreme Court decision that further gutted the Voting Rights Act, ruling that political  gerrymandering is perfectly legal so long as it isn’t intentionally racist.  Justice Samuel Alito further ruled that drawing districts designed to elect  racial minorities constituted “intentional race-based conduct” and that’s a no-no.

Many advocates feared the worst: Between the 2024 and 2026 elections, Republican-led states reassigned over 25 million people, or roughly 7.5 percent of all Americans, into different congressional districts. One report concluded that “the only realistic path” for Democrats to avoid decades of Republican rule—and for Black voters to have any shot at electing candidates who represent their interests—would be “a rare ‘blue wave’ election scenario” where “voters turn out at overwhelming rates.”

Tuesday was not just a wave. It was a tsunami. Preliminary data from the University of Florida Election Lab indicates that approximately 48.8 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2026 midterm election, making it the second-highest midterm turnout in over a century. Other early reports indicate that Black voter turnout in particular soared, rivaling the numbers of Barack Obama’s first presidential run.

And Black folks are mad as hell: In a poll of 700 Black women shortly before the election, for example, 87 percent said that the nullification of the Voting Rights Act and the surge of racially discriminatory attacks on the franchise made them more motivated to vote. A New York Times analysis of 2026 midterm trends shows that 91 percent of Black voters supported Democrats—a considerably higher amount than that of any other racial group.

Republican elites underestimated Black voter turnout and overestimated their own level of support. Now, instead of collapsing, Black representation is expected to remain relatively steady in Congress. Black candidates made historic inroads in statewide elections for offices like the Senate, which are not affected by redrawing individual district maps; and in the House, Black candidates won many contested seats, gerrymandering be damned.

Hey, would you look at that: actually voting makes a difference.

The results we saw in this week’s election were not just thanks to an overwhelming response from voters fed up with TFG and his sycophants in the Administration and in Congress.  Writing in Slate, Richard Hasen reminds us that thousands of people have been working, for years, to be ready to fight if Trump carried through on his threats to steal the election.

There were legitimate concerns Trump would go further [than he ultimately did], such as by seizing ballots or voting machines while states were tabulating ballots and certifying results. People also worried he would invoke the Insurrection Act or declare a national emergency as a pretext for a federal election takeover. He publicly said he wanted a federal takeover of elections in Democratic states. His administration refused to categorically rule out sending ICE officers or other agents to the polls, or to abstain from messing with state election certifications.

That none of this happened is a testament to the very hard work that has been underway for years. It was not just one individual or group that saved American democracy. Civil rights lawyers, who have been in the trenches for years fighting for voting rights, pivoted to fighting against attempts to steal elections. Nonprofit election protection organizations mobilized civic, business, and religious leaders to bolster support for threatened election officials. Foundations and voters stepped up to fund this intense work. Democratic and Republican election officials conducted war games, considering what to do if the DOJ showed up with warrants for ballots or to arrest election administrators. Citizen groups mobilized in case ICE agents showed up at the polls. Courts decided emergency election cases, often on absurdly compressed timetables, and judges across the legal and political spectrum held the line. Journalists relentlessly explored the weak spots in how elections are run, pressed the Trump administration for answers, and reported fairly about the risks. Voters turned out in droves and named democracy as one of their primary concerns, along with corruption, for their votes. They rejected election deniers who wanted to run elections in 2028.

Are you like me, have you noticed since the votes have been counted we’re seeing a few leaders of MAGA World seem to be maybe trying to find their way back out of the wilderness and into the good old Grand Old Party, the one that up until 2016 thought Trump the candidate was thoroughly unqualified to be president and an embarrassment on top of that, but who changed their tune by the time he finished his hostile takeover at the 2016 Republican Convention?  People like Ted Cruz.  Back then Cruz was strongly anti-Trump (and acted pretty provoked when Trump insulted Cruz’ wife) until after the convention; since then he has been a strong and verbal backer of the Republican in the White House.  That, in and of itself, is not unusual: for a politician, there isn’t much future in being a vocal opponent of your party’s leader.  Cruz is ambitious, and not stupid.

But if you go so far as to defend Trump’s claim to have won the 2020 election (in the face of absolutely zero pieces of evidence to prove it), if you defend his decision to start an unprovoked war, if you generally want it known that you and he are asshole buddies, and then within hours of your boy suffering a generational “ass-kicking” (his words, not mine) you can’t piously blame the war for your party’s loss like you had nothing to do with it.  If Cruz disagrees with Trump on important stuff, and I believe he does, it would have been nice to see some of that political courage when it meant something.  Same thing for other Republicans.

Here in Texas, every Republican running statewide on the ballot Tuesday (Cruz wasn’t on this ballot) was beaten badly, including our three-term governor and lieutenant governor; Democrats will also take control of the state House of Representatives (but not the State Senate).  I find it telling that as Republican legislators consider how they will approach governing our state without their party having a stranglehold on all the offices, some are panicking.  Like Brian Harrison, who is so fearful of the scary Democrats having some power that he’s calling on Republicans to change the rules of the game: to use the time between now and the next governor’s swearing-in in January “to restore separation of powers and limit the emergency powers that Governor-Elect Hinojosa is set to inherit, which would allow her to destroy liberty in Texas by executive fiat.”

So, the Republican legislature was just fine with destroying the separation of powers so Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick do whatever they wanted without oversight, but we can’t trust a Democrat not to “destroy liberty” in Texas?  Who believes this crap?  What a pathetic bunch.

I am mindful that this enormous win at the polls for Democrats does not end the fight.  We still have as president the man who’s been stuffing bribe money into his own pockets while promising to end a war he started (and then not doing it), who thinks imposing tariffs on imports does not mean Americans pay higher prices for goods (it does), who doesn’t think he himself has any responsibility for his party getting its head handed to it at the polls (he does), who thinks his eye for design is high class (it is not), and who just today selected as his new White House chief of staff the one adviser who is most responsible for all the crap ICE has pulled since January of last year.  (Of all the terrible aides in this White House, why pick the one who sleeps hanging upside down to be in charge?)  Even if this Administration doesn’t try to stop Democrats from taking control of Congress in January, and I say that is not a given no matter what they’re saying now, we’ll still have two more years of this guy in charge.  Maybe we can take some pleasure in watching his minions defending their past actions when they get to testify before Congressional committees.  Now that’s entertainment!

A brutal forecast in effect well past winter

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

The view from the front window today is beautiful: only very high, wispy clouds hanging in an almost windless afternoon that is colder than it looks, but so much better than the three days of real winter we just had, and which I expect will complete our annual allotment here in southeast Texas.  Then, it was the very definition of dreary when I looked through the glass, as it was again last evening when I did a double-take looking into my true window on the world, the television.

Since the party primaries for this coming November’s statewide elections in Texas are held in March, we’ve been blistered by white-hot MAGA-flavored political ads on TV for months already.  I don’t rush to mute these ads (like I do the ones when a particular furniture salesman shouts at me) since I’ve mostly learned to ignore them.  Mostly.  But this line broke through the noise:

“Islam is not compatible with Western civilization.”

So said Aaron Reitz, a candidate in the Republican primary for Texas attorney general.  Never been elected before, but not a fringe guy: a Phi Beta Kappa from Texas A&M University, Marine Corps veteran deployed to Afghanistan some 15 years ago, then a deputy state attorney general (while also being a campaign adviser to his boss’ re-election campaign; that doesn’t seem quite kosher), then chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz, and then confirmed by the Senate last March for a job as an assistant U.S. attorney general.  A job he resigned less than three months later to run for AG back home.  Yep, just three months.

Now, anti-Muslim bigotry is cynically worn as a badge of honor among many Texas Republicans these days.  Last year the governor declared that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations are foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations, and this year the Republicans in the U.S. Senate race in Texas can’t stop finding new ways to make it clear they are anti-Muslim.  As GOP consultant Vinny Minchillo put it for Politico, “The Muslim community is the boogeyman for this cycle….One hundred percent this message works — there’s no question about it. This has been polled up one side and down the other, and with Texas Republican primary voters, it works. It is a thing they are legitimately scared of.”

But my instinctive reaction to the Reitz ad was that this is different: no cutesy dog whistle sending a clear message only to those who own the decoder ring.  He didn’t blast the individual Muslims who’ve committed acts of terror in Western nations, he didn’t accuse all Muslims of hating America, he didn’t even nonsensically claim – as Greg Abbott and others have – that Muslims in Texas are trying to build towns where only Muslims can buy property and their religious law will supersede Texas law, although he did do that later in the ad.  No, he relied on some unspecified religious and civilizational authority to proudly proclaim, as if there was ever any real doubt, that “Islam is not compatible with Western civilization.”  Without specifying why, of course.  Perhaps we can construe that he feels Muslims do not conform to the (unspecified) “Christian values” which he promises to defend from the Muslim “invasion” that has been supported by “politicians.”  (Do you wonder if the Christian value of recognizing that others may find their own path to God is one of the Christian values he’ll defend?)

That’s some pretty assertive, take-no-prisoners religious bigotry.  And just the dreary worldview that Christian nationalists – who by definition reject the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty for all  in the United States – are selling.  Please, don’t buy it.

Editor’s note: Reitz placed fourth in the Republican primary for AG, but in July he got a new government job.

How a bad thing can lead to your being grateful

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

Over the past month there have been enough examples of my state’s leaders behaving disgracefully to make me think I could write a nice satire about how I am thankful we have leaders who are willing to protect us from things we didn’t know we needed protection from.  You know, things like, Muslims in America exercising their First Amendment rights to the freedom of religion, or Texas state employees using personal social media accounts to promote a non-MAGA political rally, or university professors who are serious about exposing students to ideas their parents may not agree with, or actually anything done by anyone intent on telling truths that don’t align with the preferences of how those in power prefer their “truths” nowadays.  But before I could get there I found something that I really am grateful for: the first serious signs of a potential loosening of TFG’s grip on the Republican Party.

During the 2016 primary campaigns there were plenty of Republicans willing to be quoted disagreeing with the outrageous things Donald Trump had to say, right up until he won the nomination.  After that, as is usual, members of the party supported the party’s candidate.  But as time went on we saw an eerie, almost mystical transformation that left virtually every Republican unable to speak any criticism at all: they learned that (1) Trump was so thin-skinned that he could stand no disagreement of any kind at all on any issue, no matter how petty, (2) he had demonstrated how he would gleefully make good on his threat to support a challenger to any critic when he or she ran for re-election, and (3) MAGA nation was eager to do whatever TFG asked.  Republican senators and members of Congress – never shy and retiring types, always eager to defend their institutional prerogatives as well as their high and mighty personages – forgot how to disagree, however politely, with the Chief Executive.  They might as well have stopped meeting at all.  For a period recently, they pretty much did stop meeting.

When the president began issuing executive orders to take actions that have always been the right and/or responsibility of Congress, the Republicans who control both the House and Senate never raised a public peep about it.  When his administration took it upon itself to begin unprovoked attacks on private boats in international waters – destroying the ships and killing the crewmembers – while claiming the boats and their crews were hauling illegal drugs and therefore constituted an attack on the safety of the United States but never sharing with the world any evidence to prove the claim, there was one constant in the response from GOP members: the sound of crickets.  Until this weekend.

Last Friday the Washington Post reported (free link) on the questionable orders that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave to the Navy SEALs executing the first of these attacks.

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The important thing to be emphasized here, beyond the claim that Whiskey Pete ordered the killing of “combatants” who might have been considered “non-combatants” after their boat was blown out from under them and were clinging to wreckage to keep from drowning, is that the talk of investigating potential “war crimes” is coming from Democrats AND Republicans!

The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week’s Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.

“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no longer able to fight, said Congress does not have information that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.

“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Turner said.

(snip)

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

That was followed Saturday with the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and the ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement saying the panel was committed to “providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”

“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Rogers and Smith said, referring to U.S. Southern Command.

This does not mean that ALL Republicans are challenging the White House, but today some of them are willing to say the quiet part out loud: that lawmakers have the responsibility to check this out for themselves…it might be that the president’s puppet, the demonstrably unsuitable nominee to lead the nation’s military that the Senate obediently approved even if holding their collective noses, might have given orders that violate the Geneva Convention.  And, they are saying, we won’t ignore this.

For that, I am grateful.

Dear 1A,

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

I appreciate your coverage of the current redistricting fight in the Texas Legislature, another example of the on-going threat to democracy in my state and the rest of the U.S.  (There are so many threats to choose from, as you’ve demonstrated with your “If You Can Keep It” series!)  But your recorded interview with Texas state Representative Brian Harrison during your Aug. 11 program honestly made me shout at my radio.

To Jenn White’s follow-up question about Harrison’s position on the arrest warrants issued for the Democrats who left the state to deny the Republican majority a quorum to do any business in the state House, he unexpectedly blasted the GOP establishment.  From your online transcript at 00:18:46:

…if elected Republican leadership in Texas had been bolder or actually wanted to stop it, they had all the tools available to stop it, before they left or to have arrested them before they left the state.  [emphasis added]

FOR WHAT!?

At first I was just surprised that this political remora was paying so little attention to the circumstance of his interview that, as we now say so often, he said the quiet part out loud — we should just have arrested them because we knew they were going to oppose what we wanted to do.  No assertion of any kind that they had committed a crime that should lead to their arrests; just “we should have locked them up because it suited our purposes.”

A moment later I was more surprised that the interviewer let him get away with it.  I understand that this was a recorded interview dropped into the broadcast, but when it was still an interview in progress this assertion screamed for a follow-up: arrested for what?  The audacity to not follow Trump’s and Abbott’s orders?  No doubt he would have mumble/blurted the nonsense du jour from the MAGA talking points, but at least he would have been made to scramble for a minute.  And maybe that would have been the opportunity for the light bulb to go off above the head of some of your listeners.

As luck would have it, today I was catching up on the July 2025 issue of Texas Monthly magazine and its coverage of the just-concluded regular session of our state legislature, and I found out more about Rep. Harrison than I knew, and I’ll bet more than you knew, too.  You may have assumed he was, well, “representative” of the Texas GOP in the legislature, but that isn’t the case:

[Harrison] passed no bills and made about as many friends. But he forged something rare and inspiring in the House: bipartisan consensus. Most everyone agreed that Brian Harrison is unbearable.

As such, he is the successor to former state Representatives Jonathan Stickland and Bryan Slaton, past winners of our honorary title of “cockroach,” an old Lege term for a figure who mucks up lawmaking the same way vermin sully a kitchen. Even compared with the antics of his bomb-throwing predecessors, Harrison’s behavior was uniquely tailored to the X feeds of the Texas GOP’s most conspiratorial far-right voters.

Please click the link above for several examples of Harrison at work (sadly).

Thanks for your program and its thoughtful coverage of important issues we face in this historic era.

I have hope. Is that misplaced?

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

Sometimes this blog receives comments which deserve space to breathe.  This one is from an old friend of mine: Pascal Piazza and I met on the first day of the 9th grade, at our alphabetically-assigned lockers in the hall of the 300 building of Houston’s George W. Strake Memorial Jesuit College Preparatory for Young Christian Gentlemen (which, of course, we were).  Since then he became a respected lawyer, and has been admitted to practice in all Texas courts including the state’s supreme court, the Supreme Court of the United States and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and enough federal district courts and bankruptcy courts in this part of the world to make your eyes bug out.  He’s been generally and repeatedly frustrated by some actions and inactions of the Supremes in recent cases (you’ll recognize which ones), and finally took it out on his keyboard.  PR

To the Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States:

As a citizen, a retired attorney of 40 years, and a native Texan, I adopt the personal privilege to comment, in a colloquial manner, on two potentially very divisive issues which, when resolved by the application of the plain text of the Joint Resolution Annexing the State of Texas and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, respectively, need not be divisive and will restore the rule of law.  Both issues are easy to decide.  The parties may try to complicate them, but y’all can follow the easy, established, and time-honored path.

It’s About the Joint Resolution Annexing the State of Texas.

You will be asked by attorneys acting for the Governor of Texas to allow Texas to implement certain means (e.g., installing razor wire or deploying roving private militias) to try to prevent undocumented persons from crossing into Texas through its southern border of the Rio Grande, and further to prevent the U.S. from entering land along that border or to interfere with or remove the mitigating means, solely on the grounds of Texas’s perceived “right of public defense.”  Curiously, y’all will be asked to rule on this issue by the same Texas officials who’ve already suggested they don’t have to comply with any of your rulings that they do not like, because they elevate their perception of the sovereignty of Texas over all else.  There is, however, no need for the issue of Texas’s perceived right of public defense to escalate into accelerating tensions, to revive the nullification doctrine, or to precipitate something worse.  Instead, y’all sit at the forefront to show that Texas, like all states and persons, has the right to redress in the courts under the rule of law, and to remind the state that Texans are known for living up to their word of honor regardless of party affiliation or political persuasion.  Y’all have an easy task before you; only you can make it difficult.  Here’s a path to the easy way instead of the hard way.

The U.S. and Texas, by mutual consent, defined the right of public defense back in 1845, at the time the U.S. annexed Texas by means of a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress which was accepted by the Republic of Texas.  That right of public defense was an integral part of the unambiguous text of annexation.  Y’all need only follow that text without gloss.

Joint ResolutionThe text of the Joint Resolution Annexing Texas to the United States provides that Texas cedes to the U.S. “…all public edifices, fortifications, barracks, ports and harbors, navy and navy-yards, docks, magazines, arms, armaments, and all other property and means pertaining to the public defence belonging to said Republic of Texas.” [Emphasis added]  It does not say that Texas cedes “all other property and means pertaining to the public defence” only when Texas agrees with federal policy.  It does not state that Texas can craft its own public defense.  Texas was not given a veto power.  Texas was not given a right to repudiate or breach the plain terms, which vest all property and means pertaining to public defense to the U.S., whether listed or not.  Texas consented to these terms.

Let’s then give these words their plain meaning.  When it comes to providing for the public defense, the U.S. solely may determine whether to install razor wire or take it down, whether to use mobile militias or not, whether to enter the lands along the border or not, where or how to intercept persons crossing the border, whether to administer medical care or not, and whether to implement or pursue particular actions that Texas wants pursued.  You resolve this issue by giving effect to the plain text and thereby ensuring the fully intentional, consented-to, and coordinated sovereignty of Texas and the U.S.

There is no need to look beyond that plain text defining the public defense.  But the plain text of the remainder of the sentence defining the public defense affirms that the exclusive grant to the U.S. was intentional and was an essential part of the unique compromise that secured the required votes for passage of the Joint Resolution for Annexation after the prior Treaty for Annexation never could be ratified by the Senate.  Texas exclusively granted the U.S. the means and property rights for public defense in exchange for Texas keeping its public lands (and what would be multiple millions of dollars in oil and gas royalties) to pay off its debts.  Texas is the only state that was allowed to keep its public lands.  The U.S. gave up ownership of the public lands in Texas.  Those lands would yield multi-millions of dollars in revenue from the oil and gas found there.  Those lands could be sold off generating significant revenues, as was the practice in 19th century America.  President Polk won election over Henry Clay in 1844 based upon his vision of westward expansion into the valuable lands of Texas, which he felt had been squandered by Spain and then Mexico.  The U.S. received the right of public defense in exchange.  That is what is at issue now.

The then-new state of Texas understood the plain meaning.  I understand that the parties to an agreement cannot define meaning by how they perceive the meaning, but the first post-annexation Texas Constitution instructs y’all that Texas understood that the plain terms mean what the plain terms mean.  That constitution confirmed that the sovereignty of Texas over its soil was secure, except for what it ceded in the Joint Resolution for Annexation or otherwise in the U.S. Constitution.  It knew that the property and means of public defense, by consent, vested in the U.S.

Therefore, under the text of the Joint Resolution for Annexation, Texas occupies a unique position.  It should now – as all true Texans do – stand on its word, even if it is a handshake deal.  Of course, there is much more here than just a handshake.

Y’all will hear that Texas has some natural or inherent right of public defense.  Regardless of whether such a right does or does not exist, Texas ceded it to the U.S. when the state was annexed in 1845.

Y’all may then ask whether Article I, Section 10, clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution grants Texas some right of public defense in case it is ever invaded, whether the U.S. consents at the time or not.  Well, under Texas’s unique position, the text of the Joint Resolution for Annexation still is the starting point.  In addition, the text of Article I, Section 10, clause 3 does not mention public defense, does not mention any of the means that Texas wants to implement or adopt, does not provide that Texas can exclude the U.S. from areas occupied by Texas, does not provide that Texas can interfere with the conduct of the U.S., and does not permit Texas to breach the compromise (which a true Texan would never do).  Texas appears before y’all bound by its agreement and by the consent of Texas and the U.S. as to how the public defense plays out.  Today, Texas assumes that this is a situation where there is no consent by the U.S., yet Texas and the U.S. consented in 1845 for the U.S. to have exclusive power over public defense, whether there is an invasion or not.  Texas cannot repudiate that consent to try to go back on its word.

Some have even suggested that Texas would never have entered the Union had it known, or could have foreseen, that it did not preserve a right of public defense or could not use all land and other means for public defense.  Well, that’s what Texas did – in writing.  In Texas, we stand on our word.

It’s About the Eligibility Requirements in the U.S. Constitution

Let’s start by applying the text of the 14th Amendment as written.  Do not apply some theory of construction.  Do not apply fears of political reprisals.  Do not adopt a result and then read the words to yield your desired result.  It does not make a difference who may be ruled eligible or ineligible.  If the issue were the age of the candidate in question, you would consider only the text; y’all would not consider who the candidate is or whether your ruling would upset or even enrage the masses.

This led me to read opinions offered by distinguished retired federal judges covering the entire political spectrum based upon the text of the 14th Amendment.  How is it that these numerous distinguished federal district court judges have followed the text and find that the 14th Amendment does apply to determine eligibility?  The answer is that they followed the plain text.  Your questions to the parties during oral arguments last week indicate y’all may not agree with those opinions; I hope that your questions were meant to test the attorneys, and do not reflect your belief of what the plain text actually means.

Some advocates will claim that the president, whose position is defined in the U.S. Constitution, is not an “officer.”  However, the U.S. Constitution, at Article II, Section 1, states that the executive powers shall be vested in the president who holds his office over a four-year term.  The dictionary defines an officer as one who holds an office.  Therefore, the president is an officer as he holds the office of the president.  Yet, some of your questions indicated that you may have a problem accepting this syllogism.  Hopefully, you exercised your right during questioning during oral argument to test ideas rather than reveal your own conclusions.  The text of the 14th Amendment covers a person seeking to be “… a Senator or Representative in Congress, or an elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.”  [Emphasis added]  The text, therefore, covers one who seeks to hold a federal office which, constitutionally, includes someone wanting to be the president.  This wording in the 14th Amendment does not amend the other Constitutional text that defines the president as the holder of an office (i.e., an officer).

Y’all selectively like to cite portions of the Federalist Papers or other outside writings of the Framers to try to change the otherwise unambiguous meaning of the text of the Constitution.  Please stick to the text when it is unambiguous, as in the case of the 14th Amendment, so that the inquiry ends there.  The other words of the Framers are interesting historically and allow us now to assess how brilliant they were, but those words do not comprise the text of the U.S. Constitution.  It is the text of the Constitution that matters, not what any Framer may have wanted to include in the text but failed to win approval for.  Y’all cannot import into the text of the Constitution any words which the Framers failed to include.

Public policy cannot be the tail that wags the jurisprudential dog.  If you want to make policy, then run for office.  Otherwise, honor your oath.  Your failure to honor your oath will cause more dissension and disruption to this country than following the text.  I was taught on the first day of my Constitutional Law class that y’all like to make public policy.  Just because y’all have done it before does not justify doing it anymore.

Some advocates have asked questions about states trying to impose requirements on the federal election.  Colorado and Maine are simply applying the eligibility requirements as they already exist in the U.S. Constitution.  They could do it, and have done it, regarding the minimum age to be the president.  I again hope you were just asking questions during oral argument and not revealing your conclusions when there was a perceived concern for the states trying to impose state requirements on a federal election.

A majority of the Justices currently claim that unstated rights and conditions may not be imported into the text.  So, where is the textual basis to claim that the 14th Amendment’s eligibility threshold requires Congressional action?  One opinion by one U.S. Supreme Court justice sitting as a circuit judge does not make a consensus or anything but one opinion.

The same majority of Justices also currently claim that the text of the U.S. Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, must be construed based upon the meaning of words in 1787 and 1868, respectively.  If so, the consensus of distinguished historians is that the 14th Amendment does apply as Colorado and Maine have held.  Y’all can’t ask to consult history but then reject the consensus of historians.  Y’all still should just stick to the unambiguous text.

Some advocates feign the downfall of judicial process through a fear of a multiplicity of state-based lawsuits if states seek to apply the text of the 14th Amendment.  So, does this mean that states should not seek to enforce the text of the U.S. Constitution when it applies to the duties of the states?  Could not the states seek to enforce the minimum age eligibility requirement?  When did filing suits seeking to apply the 14th Amendment become a bad thing?  Under this argument, should former Vice President Pence not have certified the last presidential election results because it led to 60 some-odd lawsuits?

Thank you.

–Pascal Paul Piazza