Texas Tribune
Texas students push for schools to divest from Israel
by By María Méndez and Annie Xia, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-08 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Students, faculty, and staff at University of Texas System campuses and Texas A&M have protested, seeking divestment from companies tied to Israel and weapons manufacturing, citing global impact concerns. A change would require action from UTIMCO, which manages the schools' endowments. While UTIMCO could divest, Gov. Greg Abbott's pro-Israel stance and political connections make it unlikely. Texas has had an anti-Israel boycott law since 2017, and universities receive significant funding from related investments and gifts. The recent response to campus protests and historical statewide political support suggest pushing for divestment faces significant challenges despite calls to shift investment strategies.
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Across Texas University of Texas System campuses and Texas A&M, groups of students, faculty and staff have staged protests in solidarity with Palestinians and demanded that their schools divest from companies tied to Israel or weapons manufacturing.
As some have pointed out, this would require action from the investment management company that oversees the endowment funds for the UT and Texas A&M Systems.
“It's clear that UT and other universities really have the opportunity to make a massive global impact with the decisions they make about their investments,” said Annette Rodriguez, an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin who is part of a coalition of UT-Austin groups calling for divestment from companies supplying the Israeli Defense Forces.
The governance structure of the university systems under Gov. Greg Abbott, a staunch Israel supporter, makes that a long shot. Here's why university groups say they continue to protest and call for divestment.
What are UT and A&M's ties to Israel?
The University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company, a nonprofit commonly known as UTIMCO, manages endowments — funds often created with donations and invested to continue generating revenue — that support the two university systems.
These include the Permanent University Fund, established by the state in 1876 to support the development of the UT and A&M university systems, and three separate UT System endowments.
Protesting students and groups have called out the university systems and UTIMCO for having Permanent University Fund investments in companies that supply “military equipment and defense contracts with Israel,” including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.
Protesters have also set their eyes on other companies listed by the Who Profits Research Center, which says on its website that it's “dedicated to exposing the commercial involvement of Israeli and international corporations in the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land and population.”
According to a 2023 audit report of the PUF and The Dallas Morning News, the endowment includes the following:
- Shares in Lockheed Martin valued at about $979,836
- Shares in Raytheon valued at about $584,622
- Shares in Boeing valued at about $8,452
- Shares in Northrop Grumman Corporation valued at about $1,388,595
- About $9.2 million in stock for Israeli software company Check Point
- About $100,000 in holdings for Tel Aviv-based Teva Pharmaceuticals
- Israeli government bonds and currency holdings in the Israeli shekel
Some protesting groups have pointed out that universities like UT-Austin have also received funding from Israel. According to a federal database that covers foreign funding, four public universities in Texas have reported more than $9 million in contracts, gifts and restricted gifts from Israel from June 2020 to February 2024. This includes the following:
- $1,501,306 to UT-Austin
- $4,338,028 to the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center
- $936,019 to UT Southwestern Medical Center
- $2,375,365 to Rice University, formerly known as William Marsh Rice University
Could UT and A&M divest from Israeli companies and weapons manufacturers?
Texas has had a law since 2017 that bans major companies contracting with government entities from boycotting Israel. UTIMCO could technically move to divest despite this law. But it probably won't because of its political ties.
UTIMCO is governed by a nine-member board made up of at least three UT System Board of Regents, four members appointed by the UT System and two appointed by the Texas A&M Board of Regents. Four of the appointed members must have expertise in investments.
The regents for the UT and A&M systems — like in all Texas public university systems — are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who has called on Texas universities to punish pro-Palestinian speech and cheered the arrests of protesters at UT-Austin, has appointed all current regents serving on university system boards during his almost decade-long tenure. And about two thirds of them have donated to his gubernatorial campaign, according to a 2022 Texas Tribune analysis.
On Sunday, Abbott commented on a story about students' demands for UT-Austin to divest from weapons manufacturing companies selling arms to the Israel Defense Forces and that university President Jay Hartzell resign following his response to campus protests.
“This will NEVER happen,” Abbott posted on X. “The only thing that will happen is that the University and the State will use all law-enforcement tools to quickly terminate illegal protests taking place on campus that clearly violate the laws of the state of Texas and policies of the university.”
Free speech advocates have criticized Abbott and UT's response.
A history of strong support for Israel
Abbott and Texas officials have been quick to express their support for Israel, which has launched airstrikes on Gaza and killed more than 30,000 Palestinian civilians in the last seven months. It follows an attack last October by Hamas militants that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians during a major Jewish holiday. Hamas also took more than 200 Israeli hostages during the surprise attack, and Israel has since detained thousands of Palestinians as prisoners.
Just a few days after the surprise Hamas attack, Texas Comptroller Glen Hegar reminded businesses of the state's ban on Israel boycotts. Abbott flew overnight to Israel the following month to reaffirm Texas' support for the Middle Eastern nation.
In 2017, Texas lawmakers joined many other states in passing laws against the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, which “works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law,” according to the BDS Movement website.
Texas' law used to require any businesses contracting with any state agency, higher education institution or local government to sign off on contract clauses in which they confirmed they had not boycotted Israel in the past and agreed that they would refrain from doing so for the duration of the contract.
The law faced legal challenges, including from a speech pathologist whose contract with a public school district was terminated after she refused to sign an agreement not to boycott Israel. It was rewritten in 2019 to only apply to businesses with 10 or more full-time employees and when a contract with a government agency is for $100,000 or more. The new law also requires the Permanent School Fund, the state's retirement systems for state and local public employees to divest from companies that engage in such boycotts. This provision, however, does not include UT/A&M Investment Management Company.
Texas has similar laws against boycotts of fossil fuel companies and firearm manufacturers, but they also don't require the state's public universities to divest.
Last year, Texas lawmakers passed another law that specifically bans academic boycotts of foreign countries at public Texas universities if that decision would prevent students, faculty and staff from visiting, researching and interacting with that country. This means universities can't prevent members of their communities from studying or engaging with a country, said Thomas Leatherbury, director of the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law.
Even though these anti-boycott laws don't directly address university divestments, they highlight the political forces opposing such a move.
“I think it's very clear that the governor and the state legislature are extremely pro-Israel,” Leatherbury said. “It would seem that even if a state entity could divest from Israel, it could be a really unwise political move to do so because of the expressed pro-Israel policies of the legislators and the executive branch of the state of Texas.”
A subcommittee of Texas senators is set to meet on May 14 for a public hearing on college policies related to free speech and to prevent antisemitism. In March, even before the latest round of protests, Abbott ordered colleges to revise their free speech policies to discipline antisemitic speech and singled out pro-Palestinian groups.
For Leatherbury, Abbott's recent order and Texas' laws targeting boycotts of Israel, fossil fuel companies and firearm manufacturers raise questions about First Amendment rights.
“They impose unconstitutional conditions on companies that do business with the government,” he said. “They're examples of viewpoint discrimination, and preferring the state's unconstitutional preference for a particular viewpoint.”
However, the legal landscape surrounding laws that ban boycotts on Israel is far from straightforward. While these laws have largely weathered claims of First Amendment violations, their reception in trial courts across the U.S. has been a mixed bag. Yet, they have generally survived against challenges that reach federal appellate courts. A notable example is an 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that an anti-boycott law in Arkansas, similar to Texas', was constitutional.
The crux of the matter, as articulated by the majority of the panel of judges in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022, is that the First Amendment safeguards the right to express criticisms and praise as a form of free speech. However, it does not typically shield refusals to engage in business, as explained by Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles who has submitted amicus briefs with similar arguments. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision in 2023.
This is reflected in anti-discrimination laws, which in most cases prevent businesses from discriminating in hiring decisions, Volokh said. However, there may be exceptions for businesses whose services directly involve speech, he said. (The U.S. Supreme Court also indicated this in 2023 in a case over a web designer's refusal to create websites for same-sex marriages, noting its decision would provide similar protections for business owners such as artists, speechwriters and movie directors.)
Similar challenges to anti-boycott laws, like a lawsuit over Texas' law brought forward by an engineering firm asked to sign a clause refusing to boycott Israel as part of a contract with Houston City Hall, have been dismissed on procedural grounds, Volokh said.
So why are university groups calling for divestment?
Rodriguez, the assistant professor who is part of the coalition of UT-Austin groups calling for divestment, said the group is aware of the political challenges of having their demands met, but it will continue to raise awareness of university investments related to weapons manufacturing and Israel to “shift the horizon of what is possible.”
“We are a public university and we are making choices about how we spend and invest our money, and the more the public is aware of this, the more again, the tide turns to divestment,” she said.
Movements for university divestments have seen some success today and in the past. Protesters calling for similar divestment demands at Ivy League schools, like Brown, and a few public universities — including Evergreen State College, University of Minnesota and the University of California, Riverside — have reached agreements to end their encampments as university leaders move to consider student arguments for divestments or commit to provide more transparency or other concessions.
Rodriguez said calls for universities to divest are important because they can “spill over” from college campuses to other groups like trade unions and religious groups, as occurred over 30 years ago during the movement to divest from South Africa and end apartheid.
During that time, UT-Austin students traveled to UT-Arlington to join students there for anti-apartheid demonstrations. The UT System Board of Regents assured students they would consider divesting, but Board Chairman Jess Hay also expressed opposing views to divestment, according to a 1985 Fort Worth Star-Telegram article. Rodriguez said that the regents never did divest, even though many universities across the country did.
“I think that UT has a unique opportunity here,” she said. “We could be a leader; we could be trying to rectify the mistakes of the past.”
Many financial analysts say divestments don't usually change corporate behavior, according to NPR, and some say these divestments may even allow for other investors less likely to speak up to sweep in. But Rodriguez said the divestments in the anti-apartheid movement, which helped create “an understanding that the apartheid state was morally repugnant,” are an example of the strategy's positive impact.
While UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell does not oversee UT System investments directly, Rodriguez said her group would like to see him chime in and make sure he “is being transparent, communicative and in conversation” with the university community.
More recently, groups at UT-Austin have also called on Hartzell to resign after he asked state troopers to help break up campus protests. They would also like to see the reinstatement of the UT-Austin student chapter of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee and “amnesty for those students who have been removed from the campus or been given disciplinary and trespassing actions,” Rodriguez said.
Spokespeople for UT-Austin, the UT System, Texas A&M System and UTIMCO did not return Texas Tribune requests for comment. In public statements made after protests, UT System leaders and Hartzell have defended their response to the protests.
“As I have previously stated, any attempt to shut down or disrupt UT operations will not be tolerated,” UT System Board of Regents Chairman Kevin P. Eltife said in an April 30 statement. “There is no rationale whatsoever that justifies the endangerment of our students and campus environments.”
At Texas A&M, the student group Aggies Against Apartheid organizes protests and community events to attract as much awareness as possible to the Middle East conflict. The organization demands that the university divest from companies profiting off of the conflict, denounce the police responses at other universities as violent and condemn the war as a genocide against Palestinians.
Akkad Ajam, one of the organizers, said he sees divestment as the most probable demand to be fulfilled out of the three. Whereas denouncement or condemnation would explicitly place A&M against the war, divesting could be framed as an effort from A&M to reinvest funds into other businesses that support the local community.
“That's an easier decision to make than to say that we condemn the genocide because then that kind of throws them out there as one side of the political spectrum,” Akkam said.
Aidan McPhail, another organizer, said that A&M's strong ties with engineering companies could be a significant roadblock in divesting from the intended firms. He pointed out that weapon manufacturers hire many students out of the school's respected engineering program.
McPhail and Ajam said they feel cautiously optimistic about A&M's response to Aggies Against Apartheid, but both recognized the process will be a long-term effort. Ajam acknowledged it took years before enough popular support swelled to help end apartheid in South Africa.
“The university has been working with us pretty closely, and has been respectful and friendly toward us, which is a significantly better response than many universities across the country have given their student demonstrators,” McPhail said. “I believe that we can achieve our goals, but it'll be a difficult and a long struggle.”
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Trump says Paxton would make good U.S. attorney general
by By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 08:47:03
SUMMARY: Former President Donald Trump is considering Ken Paxton, Texas' Attorney General, for the role of U.S. Attorney General if re-elected. Trump commended Paxton's abilities and loyalty, highlighting his legal challenge to the 2020 election results and his support during Trump's impeachment defense. Paxton was impeached for bribery allegations but acquitted, with Trump claiming credit for the outcome. Recent polls show Trump leading President Biden in key states. Paxton's legal issues have diminished following the dropping of securities fraud charges, although federal investigations continue. If nominated, Paxton's Senate confirmation faces partisan challenges and opposition from notable Republicans.
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Former President Donald Trump said he would consider tapping Ken Paxton for U.S. attorney general if he wins a second term in the White House, calling his longtime ally “a very talented guy” and praising his tenure as Texas' chief legal officer.
“I would, actually,” Trump said Saturday when asked by a KDFW-TV reporter if he would consider Paxton for the national post. “He's very, very talented. I mean, we have a lot of people that want that one and will be very good at it. But he's a very talented guy.”
Paxton has long been a close ally of Trump, famously waging an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump's 2020 election loss in four battleground states. He also spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021.
Paxton's loyalty was rewarded with an endorsement from Trump in the 2022 primary, which helped the attorney general fend off three prominent GOP challengers.
Trump also came to Paxton's defense when he was impeached last year for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor. After Paxton was acquitted in the Texas Senate, Trump claimed credit, citing his “intervention” on his Truth Social platform, where he denounced the proceedings and threatened political retribution for Republicans who backed the impeachment.
“I fought for him when he had the difficulty and we won,” he told KDFW. “He had some people really after him, and I thought it was really unfair.”
Trump's latest comments, delivered at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Dallas, come after a series of recent polls have shown the presumptive Republican nominee leading President Joe Biden in a handful of key battleground states.
Paxton has also seen his political prospects rise in recent months, after prosecutors agreed in March to drop three felony counts of securities fraud that had loomed over Paxton for nearly his entire tenure as attorney general. The resolution of the nine-year-old case, along with Paxton's impeachment acquittal in the Senate last fall, has brought him closer than ever to a political career devoid of legal drama.
Still, Paxton's critics say he is far from vindicated. He remains under federal investigation for the same allegations that formed the basis of his impeachment, and he continues to face a whistleblower lawsuit from former deputies who said they were illegally fired for reporting Paxton to law enforcement. A separate lawsuit from the state bar seeks to penalize Paxton for his 2020 election challenge, which relied on discredited claims of election fraud.
If nominated, Paxton would need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The chamber is narrowly divided along party lines, with Democrats holding a 51-49 majority. One of the most prominent Republican members, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, has been an outspoken critic of Paxton, while Paxton has openly entertained the idea of challenging Cornyn in 2026.
Paxton is not the only Texan Trump has floated for a high-profile spot in his potential administration. In February, he said Gov. Greg Abbott is “absolutely” on his short list of potential vice presidential candidates. Abbott has since downplayed his interest in the job.
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Texas Tribune
These Texans aren’t taking buyouts despite repeated floods
by By Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Recent floods in Harris County, Texas, have devastated homes along the San Jacinto River. Tom Madigan, who owns multiple properties, quickly started repairs without knowing the Harris County Flood Control District aims to buy out such flood-prone properties. The region has a longstanding buyout program to remove homes from high-risk flood areas, with about 800 out of 2,400 targeted properties purchased. However, buyouts are voluntary and often insufficient for low-income residents. Despite the program, many choose to stay due to affordability and community ties, while others like Madigan remain skeptical of receiving a fair offer.
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HARRIS COUNTY — After the floodwaters earlier this month just about swallowed two of the six homes that 60-year-old Tom Madigan owns on the San Jacinto River, he didn't think twice about whether to fix them. He hired people to help, and they got to work stripping the walls, pulling up flooring and throwing out water-logged furniture.
What Madigan didn't know: The Harris County Flood Control District wants to buy his properties as part of an effort to get people out of dangerously flood-prone areas.
Back-to-back storms drenched southeast Texas in late April and early May, causing flash flooding and pushing rivers out of their banks and into low-lying neighborhoods. Officials across the region urged people in vulnerable areas to evacuate.
Like Madigan's, some places that were inundated along the San Jacinto in Harris County have flooded repeatedly. And for nearly 30 years, the flood control district has been trying to clear out homes around the river by paying property owners to move, then returning the lots to nature.
The recent floods show why buyout programs can be important. These spots typically flood first and worse. Gov. Greg Abbott reported that hundreds of rescues took place in the state while the floods destroyed homes. A man drowned and a child was swept away into the floods. One Harris County resident described climbing on top of his motor home as the water rose before first responders rescued him.
But the disaster and its aftermath also illustrate why buyouts are complicated to carry out even in Harris County, home to Houston, which has one of the most robust buyout programs in the country. The flood control district has identified roughly 2,400 properties as current buyout candidates around the San Jacinto; the district and county have bought about 800 of them.
Nearly all of the district's buyouts are voluntary. If an owner doesn't want to sell, the district can't force them out.
Buyouts make sense for some people who can't be protected from floods, said Alessandra Jerolleman, director of research for the Center on Environment, Land and Law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
But buyouts might not provide lower-income people enough money to get somewhere safer, she said, and they could lose important support like child care from nearby family or neighbors.
“It's not as though it's a guarantee of reducing risks to that family,” Jerolleman said.
People who live near the river and who have endured repeated floods explained that they've stayed because it's affordable and, most of the time, peaceful. Where else would they be able to buy anything like it? Some said they didn't think the government would offer them what they consider a fair price to sell their land. Some didn't know the buyout program existed.
Madigan started buying homes more than 15 years ago in the unincorporated River Terrace neighborhood because they were cheap. On Tuesday, the Houston firefighter drank a Heineken and grilled hamburgers for his work crew outside his most damaged house, which he rents to his brother. Sodden rugs baked in the sun on the driveway.
Madigan said he might have taken a buyout if it was a reasonable offer — but he doubted it would be. He said he needed to get the properties ready again for his renters. “I can't wait,” he said.
Two blocks away, water had swept through a yellow house Madigan rents to a family with a teenage son. One of the workers fixing the property, 21-year-old Omar Reyna, watched the family throw out pretty much everything they had. Piecing together new laminate flooring with his dad, Reyna kept thinking about a trash bag of Teddy bears and stuffed toys he tossed out for them.
He wondered if the parents had been saving the toys for another kid they might have in the future.
“The faster we get it done, the faster they can come back in here,” Reyna said.
Some people choose to live with the risk of flooding
The San Jacinto is the largest river in the state's most populous county. For years before Harris County's first floodplain maps were drawn up in the mid-1980s, people built homes near its banks. Even today, people can still build in the vast floodplain if the houses are high enough and have enough stormwater detention.
The flood control district tries to buy out homes in pockets of the floodplain that are deepest, said James Wade, manager for the district's property acquisition department. Those are places where engineers can't easily fix flooding problems.
Buyouts are meant to get people out of flood zones before their property floods again, not to help in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. The process is slow: In some cases, it can take 18 months or longer to approve a buyout application, Wade said. The district pays owners the market value or pre-flood value for their house, determined by a third-party appraiser, plus moving expenses and a supplement to help them get into a house out of the floodplain, Wade said.
“It's a very equitable, fair program,” Wade said — but still some people don't want to leave.
Those who stay learn to adapt. They build homes on stilts. They monitor the river level and watch for releases of water from the Lake Conroe dam upstream. Some know intimately the routine of rebuilding: gut the house, clean it, put it back together.
The floor of 49-year-old Sean Vincent's house in the Forest Cove neighborhood in northeast Houston is 15 feet above the ground. Three feet of water flooded it when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. This month, the floods reached five feet high on Vincent's property. He cleaned out his waterlogged ground-level shed with help from church members. On Tuesday, he was building new shelves for it.
But most of the time Vincent, who works in railroad traffic control, said he enjoys the space surrounded by tall trees with room for his three kids.
“It's just really not a major part of our life,” Vincent said of the flooding. “Yes, it's inconvenient. Yes, it's now happened to us twice in seven years … It's sort of a trade-off for us. And it is lovely out here.”
“Where are you going to go?”
Then there are those who stay because they don't see anywhere else to go.
Jack St. John, 67, a retired long-haul truck driver, moved to Northshore 43 years ago and has had to clean up after two floods. He worries any time flooding threatens, but the neighborhood's advantages keep him there: He has no water bill because he has a well. His taxes are reasonable. The neighborhood has a fish fry in the spring and a barbecue in the fall.
“You know, when you leave, where are you going to go?” he said. “What's it going to cost to buy into another place?”
Farther northeast, in the Idle Wild and Idle Glen neighborhoods, the floods forced some residents to sleep under tarps. On one largely forested street, boats were turned sideways or flipped upside down. A small building was lodged in the trees. A car was in the ditch.
For several years, Elvia Bethea, 68, has driven from her home in Humble to check on people and pets here, and pick up stray animals. On Tuesday, she and other volunteers gave John Gray, 50, bamboo yard torches to fight the many mosquitoes, plus two trays of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Gray said he couldn't afford to fix up his destroyed house. He earns a living printing labor law posters for businesses. His printers at home were destroyed.
Gray said he had never heard of the buyout program but would consider taking one.
“Who do I call?” Gray asked. “I don't have a clue.”
From the back of a white SUV, Bethea handed some hot dogs to Jose Tabores, 68, who lives on Gray's land in a trailer now filled with mud.
“I'm coming for dinner, remember!” Bethea teased him.
Nearby, 51-year-old Veronika Scheid had been sleeping in a wet tent. The flood washed the shipping crate she lived in down the road and into the trees — along with her and her neighbors' belongings.
At a low point, when Scheid was crying over all she lost, she found a pink-and-white beaded necklace with stitching in the shape of a “V,” like her name. At the end was a charm shaped like a house.
She was grateful the person who owned the land where she stayed hadn't taken a buyout. Otherwise she would have nowhere to go.
“At least we have this,” Scheid said.
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Texas Tribune
Trump, Abbott speak at Dallas NRA convention
by By Annie Xia, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-18 19:24:41
SUMMARY:
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DALLAS— At the National Rifle Association's annual convention on Saturday, Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott encouraged the thousands gathered to vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election as a way to ensure their Second Amendment rights.
“The NRA has stood with me from the very beginning, and with your vote, I will stand strong for your rights and liberties,” Trump said. “I heard it a few weeks ago that if gun owners voted, we would swamp them at levels that nobody's ever seen before. I think you're a rebellious bunch, but let's be rebellious and vote this time.”
Trump and Abbott spoke to a room packed with NRA members, some of which sported supportive attire from the standard-fare red caps to a dress covered with photos of the former president.
During the convention, the NRA released its endorsement for the 45th president, and the Trump political campaign announced the launch for the “Gun Owners for Trump” coalition.
Abbott touted his track record on gun rights by pointing to Texas laws passed last year, such as House Bill 3137 which prohibits local governments from requiring firearm owners to buy liability insurance. To energetic applause, he said the law ensured people would not be forced to pay to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Abbott also described the state's successful crackdown on the recent pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, in which protesters are demanding the schools divest from from companies tied to Israel or weapons manufacturing amid the Israel-Hamas War.
“When they tried to pull that stunt in Texas, our Department of Public Safety cleared the area, arrested the protesters and put them in jail,” Abbott said. “Unlike some of these radical leftist universities like Columbia, UCLA and far too many others, in Texas we don't tolerate paid protesters who tried to hijack our college campuses.”
Almost to the day, the NRA convention takes place two years after the Uvalde school shooting, where an 18-year-old gunned down an elementary school with a legally purchased assault rifle. The shooter killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers with an AR-15 style rifle.
During the 2023 legislative session, Uvalde families unsuccessfully pressed Texas policymakers to pass a raise-the-age law, which would have upped the minimum age for buying semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21.
“Donald Trump and Texas Republicans made the gun violence epidemic worse, especially in our state, where we have seen nine mass shootings just in the last 15 years,” said a statement by Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas Democratic Party Chair, on Friday. “Even after Uvalde parents pleaded with Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz for commonsense gun safety laws, they decided, like Trump “ that the NRA and gun lobby was more important.”
Instead the legislature approved a school safety bill that established preventative measures toward school shootings. The law included a mandate that every school must hire an armed security officer and the creation of a department within the Texas Education Agency that can compel districts to adhere to active-shooter protocols.
During his speech, Trump endorsed four Republican candidates who are fighting in late May runoffs to be their party's nominee: Alan Schoolcraft, David Covey, Helen Kerwin and Brett Hagenbuch. Each of them has already received endorsements by Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton or both. Schoolcraft, Covey and Kerwin are running against Republican incumbents in the Texas House who impeded Abbott's signature school voucher bill or voted for Paxton's impeachment based on accusations of corruption.
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