Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asks appeals court to strike down Dallas County mask mandate

[TexasTowelie]

Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are asking Texas’ 5th Court of Appeals to block Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins’ newly issued mask mandate, they announced in a joint press release.

The release said Jenkins’ mandate violates the governor’s executive order banning local officials from requiring residents to wear masks. It cited the Texas Disaster Act, which grants the governor emergency powers during a disaster, and said the office has filed a petition in the appeals court to revoke Jenkins’ mandate.

“Attention-grabbing judges and mayors have defied executive orders before, when the pandemic first started, and the courts ruled on our side – the law,” Paxton said in the release. “I’m confident the outcomes to any suits will side with liberty and individual choice, not mandates and government overreach.”

Earlier in the day, Jenkins announced that as of 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, all public schools, child care centers and businesses in Dallas County must require face coverings. The day before, a state district judge temporarily granted him power to mandate masks in a rebuke of Abbott’s order.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/11/texas-mask-mandates-covid-19/

[IcyPeas]

1. He got his. He don't care about.others. This photo tells it all.

(This tweet was from March, but still fits.)

So TX Gov. Greg Abbott lifts all Covid restrictions after getting the vaccine himself, while only 7% of the rest of Texas has been fully vaccinated.

What a complete piece of shit. Are there any non-sociopaths in the GOP?

Link to tweet

?s=19

[SergeStorms]

2. "The Texas Disaster Act".

Abbott is using the Texas Disaster Act in order to kill more people.

Anyone who contracts COVID-19 from now on has only one person to blame: their piece of shit Governor, Gregg Abbott.

Rather than have some "attention grabbing judges and mayors" - who'd like to stem the spread of the Delta variant and save lives - usurp his power, he's going to make sure everyone knows who has the power to kill the people of Texas: Him, and Him only.

Republicans want to show everyone in Texas that they - and they only - decide who can vote in Texas, and who's going to die in Texas.

Texas is now a fascist state. Texans have no rights, except the rights republicans say they may have.

There is no amount of money someone could pay me to live in the state of Texas, or most probably die in the state of Texas.

[Old Crank]

3. Nice circular logic

I have the power to enforce emergency orders based on the emergency I created by my orders....

[Martin Eden]

4. One would think an Emergency Order

Actually helps alleviate the emergency, not make it worse.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. Central argument against his executive order

But surely a Texas court could rule power is power, even the power to make things worse is better than diluting the ability to exercise the power to make things worse.

This country needs a ruling against Orwellian rule, that the exercise of power must follow the common good, or common sense, or better outcomes in an unequivocal sense. The power to make things worse is against the tenets of civilization. Of course it devolves into a cost benefit analysis where assumptions can be tweaked to prove either side. But power used against what should be obvious public policy - to improve things - to prove political ideology is pointless and in this case deadly.

[Martin Eden]

7. "The power to make things worse is against the tenets of civilization"

And yet, that has run rampant throughout the history of civilization. Our great experiment in democracy, of course, is supposed to change that paradigm.

Abbot would no doubt argue his executive order is necessary to preserve essential freedoms, without which American civilization would perish.

Of course, it's a bogus slippery slope argument in the case of mask mandates. It's not only contrary to the intent of the law, it defies logic. The authority granted with emergency executive power would also allow him to impose mask mandates statewide. It gives the executive temporary authority to limit certain freedoms as necessary for public safety in exceptional circumstances, and the accelerating spread of a deadly virus certainly meets that criteria. In no way, shape, or form can the prohibition of mask mandates be construed as necessary in combating this contagion.

But that's where we are with "conservative" ideology in the era of Trumpism -- Orwellian doublethink embraced by a cult of programmed fools. The Republican Party had been creeping down that hole for a long time before Hair Twitler grabbed hold and dragged it to new depths. A dwindling faction on the right still grasps at straws of reality but the GOP has become the QCP -- beyond redemption.

We're in an existential battle for the future and the soul of America. We must use every means at our disposal (short of becoming just like them) to cast the current Republican Party onto the ash heap of history.

[Lonestarblue]

5. While Covid has disastrous results, the real disaster is the conniving political hack named Abbott.