As Texas intensive care units fill with COVID-19 patients and (Republican) Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and (Republican) indicted state Attorney General Ken Paxton continue to build personal brands centered around not doing a damn thing about it Because Freedom, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court weighed in on Sunday to temporarily block county-issued pandemic mask mandates in Bexar and Dallas counties.
Abbott had issued an executive order forbidding the state from issuing any such requirements, and the state Supreme Court order forbids the counties from enforcing the public mandates until such time as the (Republican) court can issue a full decision on why government can enforce rules on shirts, pants, shoes, hairnets for food workers, strict dress codes for school children, and take private land outright if somebody else wants to build a wall but "cover your snot holes during a deadly state pandemic" is an injury to personal freedom that must not stand. It's likely to be a real barnburner when they make the eventual decision, so we have that to look forward to.
That is, we outside of Texas have that to look forward to. Inside Texas, you might hold off from making any long-term plans. Also, don't do anything that might land you in an emergency room, because there ain't no emergency beds available. They're overflowing with state "freedom fighters" and their pandemic victims.
While the (Republican) Texas governor has been aggressive in making sure the pandemic virus is allowed to spread wherever and whenever it wants to via the aforementioned Texas freedom holes, it isn't as if he's ignoring the pandemic entirely. His most consequential recent act has been to beg for out-of-state health care workers to come bail Texas out of the pandemic crisis that state Republicans are still bent on making worse.
The counties in question aren't taking this lying down, either. CNN reports that Dallas and San Antonio officials will, at least for now, continue to enforce mask mandates in public schools despite the court order.
The battle over wearing masks in public places during a pandemic is not something that had to exist. It was purely invented, a twitching Republican reaction borne of twitching conservative conspiracy theories about The Gubbermint always trying to stick it to good, upstanding selfish assholes with intricate new plots to keep them from dying or catching fire or being sold asbestos-based lunch meats. It's transparently obvious that wearing a mask during a nationwide pandemic that has killed over half a million Americans and counting is matter of urgent public health. It can even be framed as a national security measure.
Instead, Republicans decided they were against it because science-knowers were all warning them to do it and the Republican base decided that anything science-knowers were telling them to do had to be a trick. So now we've got exactly what had been predicted earlier in the year: a new pandemic surge spreading outwards from heavily Republican counties in states with Republican governors.
And even though the pandemic in their states is now thoroughly out of control, few of the ambitious Republican officials who caused it are changing course.
Abbott had issued an executive order forbidding the state from issuing any such requirements, and the state Supreme Court order forbids the counties from enforcing the public mandates until such time as the (Republican) court can issue a full decision on why government can enforce rules on shirts, pants, shoes, hairnets for food workers, strict dress codes for school children, and take private land outright if somebody else wants to build a wall but "cover your snot holes during a deadly state pandemic" is an injury to personal freedom that must not stand. It's likely to be a real barnburner when they make the eventual decision, so we have that to look forward to.
That is, we outside of Texas have that to look forward to. Inside Texas, you might hold off from making any long-term plans. Also, don't do anything that might land you in an emergency room, because there ain't no emergency beds available. They're overflowing with state "freedom fighters" and their pandemic victims.
While the (Republican) Texas governor has been aggressive in making sure the pandemic virus is allowed to spread wherever and whenever it wants to via the aforementioned Texas freedom holes, it isn't as if he's ignoring the pandemic entirely. His most consequential recent act has been to beg for out-of-state health care workers to come bail Texas out of the pandemic crisis that state Republicans are still bent on making worse.
The counties in question aren't taking this lying down, either. CNN reports that Dallas and San Antonio officials will, at least for now, continue to enforce mask mandates in public schools despite the court order.
The battle over wearing masks in public places during a pandemic is not something that had to exist. It was purely invented, a twitching Republican reaction borne of twitching conservative conspiracy theories about The Gubbermint always trying to stick it to good, upstanding selfish assholes with intricate new plots to keep them from dying or catching fire or being sold asbestos-based lunch meats. It's transparently obvious that wearing a mask during a nationwide pandemic that has killed over half a million Americans and counting is matter of urgent public health. It can even be framed as a national security measure.
Instead, Republicans decided they were against it because science-knowers were all warning them to do it and the Republican base decided that anything science-knowers were telling them to do had to be a trick. So now we've got exactly what had been predicted earlier in the year: a new pandemic surge spreading outwards from heavily Republican counties in states with Republican governors.
And even though the pandemic in their states is now thoroughly out of control, few of the ambitious Republican officials who caused it are changing course.