A threat to Biden’s agenda is the lawsuits of states over their federal plans. Alexandra Villarreal in Austin tells us today about how Texas is trying to derail progressive policies:
Just two days after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Texas filed the first major lawsuit against the Biden administration, successfully blocking a 100-day deportation moratorium that Governor Greg Abbott rebuked as “try to grant a general amnesty“To immigrants.
Far from a one-time explosion of hostility, that incendiary case meant a return to the real gamebook of Texas politicians of arming the courts to derail progressive policies, a tactic that has proven surprisingly powerful in the midst of a ideological war with the feds.
“They have been successful in causing uncertainty,” said Katie Keith, an associate research professor at the Center on Reforms Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “And do a mess of things that I think people feel are resolved differently.”
State leadership relied heavily on justice under the Barack Obama administration, which they sued at least 48 times, the Texas Tribune reported, addressing such disparate and encompassing issues as immigration, regulations environmental and voting rights.
Then, after last year’s presidential election, Paxton went on to challenge 20 million votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in a blatant attempt to overthrow Donald Trump’s defeat. And right now, Texas faces another existential threat to the Supreme Court Accessible Assistance Act, though Biden urges judges to preserve the signing of Obama’s health care law.
Because of the high stakes, these cases often capture national attention, and the current ambitious and former Texas attorneys general have shown a willingness to change resources and time for newspaper appointments and television interviews. Court battles give key players like Paxton a platform “to prove they’re fighters and they’re looking for their voters,” said Keith E Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University.
“Such demands have become very prominent events” and allow those involved to “present tribune and send a political message to voters about all the work you do to oppose the administration that they don’t like,” he said. Whittington.
Texas judicial activism is part of a larger partisan gambit than it has been for years. Politicians undo or delay federal policies they deem unfavorable or excessive, while strategically framing the narrative in the press.
“These are good opportunities to try to really influence messaging about how certain particular policies or laws are understood and what the potential issues are,” Whittington said.
Read more of Alexandra Villarreal’s report here: Texas step up efforts to derail progressive policies