Thumbs: Texas cooperation works in D.C.

While you were studying Manhattan courtroom sketches of Stormy Daniels describing an alleged sexual encounter that Donald Trump says never happened, an even stranger spectacle was afoot at the U.S. Capitol. Democrats and Republicans who seldom agree on anything united to save the speakership of Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson. Only one Republican representative from the Texas delegation, Chip Roy, voted with the insurgents led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, the heckling Georgian endlessly sowing disarray in her own party. It appears Washington finally took Rice political scientist Mark Jones’ advice and adopted the Texas House Republicans’ model of building an “informal coalition with moderate Democrats” to ensure the people’s business gets done. The irony is likely not lost on Dade Phelan, the Texas House Speaker fighting for his political life in this month’s primary runoff against a challenger backed by Attorney General Ken Paxton who calls him a RINO “beholden to the Democrats who elected him speaker.” Nope, just beholden to that old-fashioned notion of occasional compromise.

Texans are also taking our petty yet brutal small-town squabbles to Washington as well, by way of the Supreme Court. This story begins in Castle Hills, a tiny town swallowed up by San Antonio’s growth, where the city manager apparently angered some residents by not personally answering some of their phone calls, according to the Texas Observer. Two women who decided to take on the establishment won city council positions but soon after found themselves in jail after being accused of trying to abscond with official documents in their efforts to oust the city manager. Now their suit against the city for violating their free speech rights has reached the nation’s highest court. It could also have implications for the case of Laredo citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal, better known as La Gordiloca, who was arrested after publishing a leaked government document. At least the Houston Chronicle and ProPublica managed to defeat a defamation suit last month stemming from a 2018 investigation of Houston heart surgeon Dr. O.H. “Bud” Frazier that a Texas appeals court found to be a “fair, true, and impartial account” of accusations against him. We’re not sure whether to be proud of all the Texas rebels testing the bounds of free speech or embarrassed of the Lone Star State for trying to quash them.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz managed to shepherd a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration through the upper chamber Thursday. He had to overcome the very sorts of obstruction he has spent more than a decade perfecting into a gridlock-inducing art. Ha, ha, “the foot’s on the other hand,” Republican senators joked as Cruz begged them to get on board with the bill, according to reporting by The Hill. We’re not surprised though that he located his bigboy pants to help out the FAA. All the better to get to Cancun in times of trouble.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a man without limits. There he was by Donald Trump’s side two weeks back in that Manhattan courtroom even though the AG is no criminal defense attorney. Maybe Paxton was there, as we wrote last week, to help Trump get right with God as part of his own recent campaign of righteousness. Some of his battles do indeed seem justified, like making sure websites such as Chaturbate and Pornhub follow age verification requirements. But this week, Paxton’s holy roll veered off any recognizable Christian course: he went after Annunciation House, a Catholic migrant shelter in El Paso. In February, the AG’s lawyers tried to force the nonprofit to share their guest logs.

The group refused, arguing it violated their constitutional rights, including freedom of religion. Nonsense, says our AG, who not only castigated the charity as a “stash house” but, in a new filing, calls into question their faith: Annunciation House “goes months without offering Catholic Mass, does not offer confessions, does not offer baptisms, does not offer communion, and makes ‘no’ efforts to evangelize or convert its guests to Catholicism.” What’s more, the director has admitted “probably only about half ” the volunteers subscribe to any religion and, according to the filing, they follow “a more Bohemian set of ‘seven commandments’ to ‘visit’ people when ‘incarcerated’ and ‘care’ (for them) when they’re sick.” For shame! Caring for the sick?! Paxton, apparently caught up in his fear of God’s wrath, didn’t ask any of his Catholic friends, like Gov. Greg Abbott, about the seven principles of Catholic social teaching. Then again, shouldn’t he, as a Southern Baptist, know the Gospel found in the New Testament, especially in those pesky bleeding-heart, red-lettered sections? Cristina Rivera Garza’s genrebending book — equal parts memoir, investigative journalism, biography and feminist call to arms — won a Pulitzer Prize this week. The writer earned her doctorate from the University of Houston and now teaches there as the director of the PhD program in creative writing in Spanish. Her book, “El Invencible Verano de Liliana,” available in translation as “Liliana’s Invincible Summer,” responds to the murder of the author’s sister in 1990 and rampant femicide in Mexico. In an interview with the Chronicle’s Andrew Dansby, Rivera Garza said, “We live in a world in which the system in general is betting on forgetfulness. Forcing silence and forced erasure is part of the violence. As a writer, we have the opportunity to counter these narratives. To not settle for forgetfulness.” Her book gives us all a chance to contribute to “changing how we participate in this collective memory.”

We’re happy to see Mayor John Whitmire hasn’t forgotten one of the city’s best resources: public pools. The Houston Landing reports that after abrupt service cuts following the pandemic and the struggle to hire enough lifeguards, the parks department says it’s hoping to open all but one of its 37 aquatic centers, each for three days a week. It’s a constrained goal and we’re still bummed that a city our size can’t manage to keep its pools open all week. And there’s a catch: The city still has to hire enough lifeguards to reach its goal. It hasn’t actually increased the base pay for lifeguards from last summer, which isn’t an encouraging sign. But it is offering a $500 incentive to employees who sign on from June 30 through Sept 1. Dallas is on a streak. The Rangers beat the Astros last year in the MLB playoffs. The Mavericks are still in the NBA playoffs while the Rockets still rebuild. Heck, Big D’s rail system even beats ours on length and speed. And, here’s a new one: their permitting office beats ours for utter dysfunction. Residents of both cities are driven nuts by how long it takes to get building permits whether for small home renovations or multimilliondollar buildings. The Dallas permitting department, however, didn’t even obtain proper permits from itself for its own new building before employees moved in. The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board calls the fiasco “embarrassingly ironic.” Indeed, the very folks whose job it is to make sure people don’t live or work in unsafe conditions were themselves in a building with fire and other safety code violations. On top of that, their city managers can’t get their story straight on who allowed the debacle to happen. That’s more Thumbs fodder than the law permits.

Also: Cruz saves FAA; Paxton disses Catholic principles