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Indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking Texans to snitch on local officials who institute mask mandates to slow the spread of COVID-19. In a tweet last Thursday, Paxton’s office encouraged people to email a dedicated account to report such cases. So far, more than 70 local entities, urban and rural, have imposed mask mandates of some kind in defiance of Gov. Greg Abbott’s order barring them from doing so.
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With COVID-19 cases surging in Texas, Austin’s marquee ACL Festival will require proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test from within the last three days for entry. The festival, which draws an average of 75,000 attendees per day, will take place over the first two weekends in October at Zilker Park after being cancelled last year. George Strait, Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers, and Tyler, The Creator are among those set to perform.
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An appeals court last week ruled that Texas can ban the use of a common abortion procedure in the second trimester, a major setback for reproductive rights advocates in a case that’s now likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. “This ban is about cutting off abortion access, and nothing else,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health. “It should never be a crime for doctors to… follow the most current science.” Gov. Abbott suffered another COVID-related setback last Monday when a Bexar County judge ruled that the county and the city of San Antonio can, for the moment, implement a mask mandate despite Abbott’s order preventing Texas municipalities from doing so. Judge Antonia Arteaga wrote that local officials met their burden of proof and that her thoughts are with children who are being forced to attend school in person but are unable to access vaccines. — Abe Asher
YOU SAID IT!
“Quickly getting access to monoclonal antibody therapy when you’re the fully vaccinated, asymptomatic Governor of Texas shows just how anxious and scared [Gov. Greg Abbott] actually is of a virus that he constantly downplays. Hope Texans take note.”
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That Rocks/That Sucks
Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons
ASSCLOWN ALERT
Sen. John Cornyn’s Reefer Madness Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark. Don’t expect U.S. Sen. John Cornyn to be swayed as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer works to build support for marijuana legalization in the upper chamber. NORML recently shared a letter Cornyn sent a constituent who asked him about marijuana policy, and in that reply, the Texas Republican said he won’t vote to legalize cannabis because he’s worried about … get this … overdose deaths. Cornyn, who chairs the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, points out that between 1999 and 2020, nearly a million U.S. residents died of drug overdoses. He added: “Reasonable minds can disagree, but I am
Gov. Greg Abbott, he of the orders banning mask mandates and vaccination checks, tested positive for COVID-19 last week and received Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment despite reportedly not experiencing any symptoms. The governor had not only been vaccinated, but had also received a third, booster shot of the vaccine, according to reports.
— Dr. Vin Gupta,
Lung doctor and emergency room physician via Twitter Facebook / Paris ISD
concerned that marijuana legalization could make this epidemic worse. I am committed to working with my colleagues to end the opioid epidemic and save lives.” If you know much of anything about the devil’s lettuce, you have likely picked up on a couple problems with Cornyn’s argument. First, while it’s possible to consume too much THC and feel kinda weird from it, people don’t die from huffing down too many bong hits. Experts are split whether it’s completely impossible for an adult to consume enough marijuana to have fatal marijuana overdose or just damned near impossible. Second, marijuana isn’t an opioid. Which is kind of something we expect the guy who chairs the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control to know. Even if Cornyn didn’t intend to label pot an opioid in that quote, it certainly looks like he was willing to rhetorically blur the lines to uphold the status quo. Looks like Schumer will have to press on with cannabis reform without the help of a certain assclown who once billed himself as “Big Bad John.” — Sanford Nowlin
A Northeast Texas school district last week found a loophole to get around Gov. Abbott’s order banning schools from issuing mask mandates: including the requirement as part of its dress code. “Nothing in the Governor’s Executive Order 38 states he has suspended Chapter 11 of the Texas Education Code, and therefore the Board has elected to amend its dress code consistent with its statutory authority,” the Paris Independent School District wrote in a statement. A Texas appeals court last week ruled that smokable hemp products can be sold legally in the state — so long as they aren’t produced here. The ruling is the latest in an ongoing fight between four Texas hemp makers and the Texas Department of State Health Services, which banned the sale of smokeable hemp last summer. — Abe Asher
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