Of course he wouldn’t:
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he won’t consider pardons for low-level marijuana offenders after President Joe Biden called on governors across the country to consider pardons.
“Texas is not in the habit of taking criminal justice advice from the leader of the defund police party and someone who has overseen a criminal justice system run amuck with cashless bail and a revolving door for violent criminals,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement Thursday.
“Just as no one should be in a federal prison solely for possessing marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either,” Biden tweeted.
Abbott spokesperson Eze explained the process of issuing pardons in Texas in her statement, saying Abbot would not consider pardons.
“The governor of Texas can only pardon individuals who have been through the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles system with a recommendation for pardon,” she said.
Abbott has previously expressed interest in reducing the criminal penalty for marijuana possession to a Class C misdemeanor, but not legalizing the drug. While Biden stopped short of calling for the complete decriminalization of marijuana, he later tweeted that the federal government still needs "important limitations on trafficking, marketing and underage sales of marijuana." However, Abbott's Democratic gubernatorial opponent Beto O'Rourke seized the moment to announce that if elected, he plans to take things a step further.
"When I'm governor, we will finally legalize marijuana in Texas and expunge the records of those arrested for marijuana possession," O'Rourke tweeted Thursday following Biden's announcement. In a follow-up tweet, O'Rourke reiterated his position on the matter, sharing a clip from his recent "Vote 'Em Out" rally where Texas music icon Willie Nelson performed his song "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die."
A long proponent of legalization, O'Rourke has argued that legal marijuana would provide revenue to the state, reduce property taxes and fund important services. "Right now we spend half a billion dollars a year locking people up for a substance that is legal in most of the country, most of the rest of the developed world," O'Rourke said while in Dallas in April. "We also lose out on, conservatively speaking, half a billion dollars in tax revenue."
Can’t say that I’m surprised Abbott’s priorities. Like this:
Texas’s Governor Greg Abbott is a magician—or at least a skilled practitioner of three-card monte. In spring 2021, he declared southern Texas “a disaster area” overrun by marauding migrants, thanks to what he labels President Joe Biden’s “open border policies.” To stem the flow, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star (OLS), marshaling the Texas National Guard and state troopers to beef up security at the border with Mexico. He also tapped the OLS budget for his recent headline-grabbing scheme to bus 12,000 migrants to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago since last spring.
But this was tricky business, since OLS was going to be colossally costly. To come up with the funds he needed, Abbott practiced some accounting so creative some might call it magic. Others might label it fraud.
First, during Texas’ regular 2021 legislative session, Abbott got the Republican-controlled legislature to approve $1.1 billion to pay for 700 border guards and their supplies. He soon, however, decided this amount was too small and summoned the lawmakers back for a special session at the end of August. This time he asked for another almost $1.9 billion to pay another 1,800 guards/troopers and build a border wall (called Operation Steel Curtain, under the OLS program). Happy to accommodate the honcho in chief, the legislators approved his request.
But Abbott had even bigger plans. On December 20, 2021, the governor tweeted, “We are building our own border wall. Unlike the Biden Admin, we arrest illegal immigrants coming across the border & send them to jail.” Although OLS now had 2,500 lawmen (whose price tag had swollen to about $3 billion), the governor wanted 7,500 more. And he would get them—eventually building a 10,000-strong posse.
To pay the bill, the cowboy king pulled $1 billion out of a federal hat. Since $1 billion isn’t small change—even in Texas—how did he manage it?
In 2020, the US Congress passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act to respond to the pandemic and offer aid to people, health facilities, small businesses, and state and local governments. The next year, it passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP). The Treasury Department told local governments that the funds were to help them care for their “most vulnerable” citizens. Of the $4.1 trillion in national Covid funds, Texas got $65 billion—$25 billion from the CARES Act, plus $40 billion from the ARP.
The goals were straightforward: reduce economic hardships by providing families with emergency rental assistance, covering delinquent mortgage payments, increasing child tax credits, and waiving federal income taxes on the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits for middle- and lower-income families. The funds were also meant to pay for protective equipment and Covid tests and help small businesses, hospitals, nursing homes, nonprofits, and frontline workers. Finally, they would help states build the infrastructure needed to deliver water, sewer, and broadband services (to, for example, allow students to study virtually).
But the cash came with terms and conditions. The Treasury said counties couldn’t add it to their pension programs, use it to pay for debt service or legal fees, or to build “rainy day funds or financial reserves.” And states couldn’t use it to offset tax cuts, build prisons and jails, or pay police and trooper salaries—unless they were “substantially dedicated to mitigating and responding to Covid-19.”
Although the Treasury repeatedly warned that the funds could only be used for pandemic-related costs, that still left lots of wiggle room. Worse, federal oversight was largely absent, and big corporations, law firms, and bogus businesses cashed in on the CARES Act dollars—although they were designed specifically to keep small businesses afloat and employees employed.
To skirt the rules, Abbott and his deputies launched some mind-boggling maneuvers that one congressional aide, who asked to remain anonymous, called a shell game: As of now, the governor has steered roughly $1 billion of the federal pandemic dollars to Operation Lone Star—although activities such as migrant removal or border wall construction were never on the Treasury’s approved list.
Also, it’s great to see Team Blue own this dumb fucker:
New York City deployed a new tactic Friday morning in an effort to counter Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s increasing flow of migrant buses: drowning the bus companies and their drivers in traffic violations.
Two more buses arrived at the city’s Port Authority Bus Terminal just after 6 a.m. Friday, adding to the more than 17,000 migrants Abbott has bused to New York in a sick political stunt.
This time, however, a half-dozen uniformed members of the NYPD Highway Patrol’s Motor Carrier Safety Unit were waiting.
The first bus to arrive was a blue Volvo bearing Mexican “Autotransporte Federal Turismo” license plates, owned and operated by a company out of Cedar Hill, Texas, called Autobuses La Sultana LC. A white document taped to the windshield read “TEXAS 144- HOUR PERMIT” and “VALID IN TEXAS ONLY” and was dated Oct. 6. The second bus had Texas plates and was marked “EJECTIVO TRAVEL.”
The driver of the first bus, 38-year-old Robert Reas, told The Daily Beast he lives in Monterrey, Mexico, where the bus is based. He said he began his journey by crossing the border at Laredo, Texas, then driving to El Paso, where he and his co-driver picked up three dozen migrants at “an institution,” including a half-dozen children. The migrants were from Venezuela and Ecuador, he said.
Reas said the bus stopped in Dallas and Nashville, letting out three or four people at each city, then continuing the 40-hour drive to New York. He said it was his second trip to New York with migrants.
Cops set out inspecting both buses with a fine-tooth comb, examining the tires and checking the air brakes, lights, and windshield wipers. They paid particular attention to a device that regulates tire air pressure.
They also inspected Reas’ license and his log book, in which he has to record information like when he rests and how long he drives at a time.
After the inspection, officers left both drivers with a handful of summonses; Reas counted a half-dozen. The Daily Beast has asked the NYPD for a run-down of the violations cited.
The new strategy is a variation on a crackdown on private sanitation trucks in 2018, which involved intensive inspections and summonsing.
Plus, Abbott hasn’t won over any supporters on this:
Hours ahead of the only planned gubernatorial debate of the election cycle, the families of Uvalde school shooting victims threw their support behind Democrat Beto O’Rourke, saying in a news conference that incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, had not taken meaningful enough action on gun control measures following the deaths of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers.
“I’m speaking directly to moms when I say our babies’ lives are on the ballot,” said Kimberly Rubio, the mother of 10-year-old Alexandria “Lexi” Rubio who was killed during the school shooting. “It happened to me, it can happen to you. And this pain, it’ll bring you to your knees.”
She faulted Abbott for not taking action to restrict access to guns after meeting with family members who asked him to call a special session to raise the age for buying an assault rifle from 18 to 21. Abbott has said since that he believes such a change in the law would be unconstitutional following recent court rulings. However other states, like Florida, have such laws. Rubio blasted Abbott for expanding gun rights in the state even as mass shootings have rocked the state in recent years.
“Had Abbott prioritized the lives of his most vulnerable constituents over guns, then I wouldn’t be here today. I would be at home with Lexi,” she said. “Vote for Beto because a vote for Abbott is a grave mistake.”
About 35 family members boarded a bus from Uvalde on Friday morning to travel 280 miles and nearly five hours to the news conference in Edinburg, where the gubernatorial debate will be held. The debate will have no audience, so the family members will instead watch the event at an O’Rourke watch party before heading back home. The families of the Uvalde school shooting victims have been vocal in their advocacy for gun control measures, meeting with lawmakers in Austin and Washington and keeping the issue in news, even four months after the shooting.
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