Greg Abbott

I’ve never been blessed enough to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, but if you’re an illegal alien who’s always dreamed of biking with the Obamas, you might be in luck. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has just sent two planeloads of migrants to the New England paradise. You’d think the residents of Martha’s Vineyard would be thrilled at the opportunity to increase the diversity of the approximately 80 percent white island. Oddly, there have been reports of elderly women in straw hats and kaftans packing up their “no human is illegal” signs and marking their doors with the blood of slaughtered lambs.

To hear New York mayor Eric Adams tell it, you would think that a crisis has gripped the streets of our nation’s largest city as busloads of illegal immigrants arrive from Texas. Some of the new arrivals, courtesy of Texas Governor Greg Abbott — who wants to send a message about the very real crisis in his state — have been met in person by the mayor. He claims the city is now scrambling to take care of them. It’s a lie. Thus far, Abbott has sent 75, maybe 100 illegal immigrants to New York, a city of 9 million people, a city which, in fact, already has a population of 500,000 illegal migrants. Are we really to believe that a few dozen more from Texas has our system at the breaking point?

The debate over President Joe Biden's immigration policies exploded again on Monday after news broke that more than forty migrants had been found dead in the back of a truck in Texas. Texas governor Greg Abbott blamed the deaths on Biden, tweeting, "These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequence of his refusal to enforce the law." https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1541596214705135617 Thousands of Twitter users piled on Governor Abbott's tweet, arguing that if the border is really "open," then why did these migrants need to be smuggled across the border in the back of a truck?

Political brains detonated last week after Texas governor Greg Abbott signed a new executive order that effectively banned vaccine mandates by any institution. The timing of the order seemed extraordinarily odd. Abbott, a Republican, has long advocated for private business rights and inoculation efficacy, especially after President Joe Biden announced a federal vaccine mandate. Abbott also didn't comment when Texas hospitals enacted COVID shot requirements over the summer. Why the change? Texas Democrats and Houston Chronicle columnist Erica Grieder blame Abbott’s 2022 GOP primary fight against Allen West and Don Huffines.

Almost no topic shows our media's complete disconnect from reality than the national coverage of governors over the past year with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. While flooding their viewers with stories of coronavirus failures about Ron #DeathSantis in Florida and Kristi Noem in South Dakota and Greg Abbott in Texas, the press consistently praised the work of Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom in California. The reality on the ground could not be more different. The two most prominent faces of the Democratic response to COVID (with Gretchen Whitmer being the third) have found themselves humiliated and disgraced. Both may end up out of power thanks to their personal and professional behavior of the past year.

Even in the quick-as-a-wink world of democratic politics, where calculations change at slot-machine speed, you can feel major moments growling and growing. You don’t know precisely where things and events are going. You just know they are going. We're in one of those moments now, with Texas and its 29 million people poised to move out of the heavy shadow of government control over their lives and movements as we head towards what we must hope is the late stages of this so-called 'war' against COVID-19. On Tuesday March 2 — otherwise known as Texas Independence Day, when Lone Star flags decorate staves everywhere, honoring Texas’ successful struggle in 1836 for freedom from Mexico — Gov. Greg Abbott announced he was letting life return to normal.