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Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan promised to existing” a pretty impressive answer” to the rising number of immigrants entering Texas from Mexico at the beginning of the 2023 legislative session, pushing the boundaries of the state ‘ responsibilities in immigration protection.
The House Bill 20 proposal, which Phelan teased, aimed to form a team of police and appointed citizens to guard the southern border. The policy, which critics said would enable “vigilantes” and endanger the lives of prison applicants and Spanish Texans, died when Democrats killed it with a legal strategy. And despite Republicans ‘ best attempts to resurrect a version of the measure, it never passed the governor. Greg Abbott’s office before the normal conference ended.
Senate Bill 4 allows any law enforcement officer to detain anyone suspected of fraudulently crossing the border, a boundary-testing emigration legislation that has been put on hold due to legal challenges, and has since been replaced by HB 20.
The author’s personal GOP primary has since refrained from reiterating the earlier suggestion, as his reviewers blame him for its fate in their wider campaign to portray the Beaumont Republican as too liberal and too polite to Democrats. Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, which includes building a position border walls, has been criticized for its “absurd” and “misleading” attempts to distract from his monitoring of various far-ranging border regulations and a history$ 6.5 billion spending spree.
David Covey, the GOP activist and energy consultant who pushed Phelan to a May runoff for his House seat, is still holding his position, but he should also condemn the speaker for failing to cast a vote on SB 4. Two of Covey’s most prominent backers, former President Donald Trump and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, have echoed the same attack.
House speakers rarely cast their ballots on legislation, and they determine whether a bill would have gotten the floor, so SB 4 could n’t have been passed without Phelan’s approval. In a post, the speaker claimed that SB 4 was” the nation’s strongest border security law.” It would allow judges to order people’s removal and allow authorities to arrest those they suspect of entering the state from a foreign country, giving deportation powers previously reserved for the federal government.
The way immigration is interfering with Phelan’s primary is a striking illustration of how Texas politics is currently divided: a Republican speaker’s record includes an eightfold increase in border security spending and the passage of laws that significantly expand state law enforcement’s immigration role.
According to Matthew Wilson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, it’s no surprise that Covey is trying to persuade voters that he is more interested in border issues than Phelan, given that “poll after poll shows that Republicans are primarily concerned about immigration and border issues.”
Many of Phelan’s Republican allies have experienced similar repercussions even after supporting the entire slate of border legislation that passed the Legislature last year. In the May runoffs, Phelan and several other incumbents are attempting to prevent the record number of House Republicans who were ousted in the previous month’s GOP primary.
Phelan is the first House speaker to be forced into a primary runoff in 52 years. The speaker’s election is held annually in Austin by the 150-member House, so who will win the speaker’s gavel in January will depend on the results of Phelan’s election.
The immigration-focused attacks on Phelan and other Republicans are “absurd,” according to state representative Jacey Jetton, a Republican from Richmond who carried a bill last fall that authorized$ 1.5 billion for the border wall.
Jetton, who was defeated in his primary by insurance adjuster Matt Morgan, a fervent Phelan critic, said,” If the governor felt we could be doing more, we would be in a special session right now.”
The death of HB 20 also aligns with one of Covey’s main points, namely that the speaker has given Democrats too much power by appointing them to chair nearly one-quarter of the chamber’s standing committees, a longstanding custom, and declining to shield GOP bills from parliamentary attacks.
A Phelan spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The speaker has argued that allowing Democrats to control some committees helps the Legislature avoid gridlock in the manner of Congress without putting up conservative priorities. In 2023, he also appointed fewer Democratic chairs than he did two years prior.
A difficult defense
Wilson said Phelan may find it challenging to parry the attacks on his border record because his defense involves parliamentary nuance issues.
In our contemporary politics, “deceptive and misleading attacks are the order of today,” Wilson said. There are many arguments that are made between politicians that are unfair and deceptive, and it’s frequently difficult, especially when it’s dealing with procedural inside-balls-style stuff, to educate the electorate.
Phelan has tried to push back through his social media channels, arguing that Covey’s SB 4 criticism means he either” ]knows ] the truth and]is ] still making the choice to lie to HD 21 voters” or” ]lacks ] a basic high- school- civics- level understanding of our legislative process”.
Additionally, the speaker recently released an ad that features footage of him surveying the border in a helicopter while the narrator claims that he “has stepped up to help secure our border.”
Covey, asked about Phelan’s response, said the speaker” can attempt to explain away his previous comments and actions, but at the end of the day, the facts are clear”. He claimed that Phelan “was vocal about his opposition to SB 4 during the legislative process” and that he now “is trying to take credit for it” for the fact that he “knows his seat is in jeopardy.”
Covey argued that Phelan’s defense rings hollow because he voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton last year. In addition, speakers rarely cast ballots.
Although” Phelan felt strongly enough to support a hurried impeachment process, he was unable to find the will to support SB 4, which shields Texas families from the chaos at our southern border,” Covey said.
Covey’s claim that Phelan once opposed SB 4 stems from a disagreement between Phelan and Patrick, the leader of the Senate, regarding a crucial aspect of the bill: what to do with migrants after they were detained for “illegal entry.” While the two chambers were in agreement on the majority of the bill, the Senate suggested that every immigrant detained should be imprisoned until the “extent feasible,” which Phelan claimed would be too expensive and result in a” state-funded hospitality program for illegal immigrants.” The two chambers came to an agreement shortly after.
Covey has suggested that Phelan was opposed to SB 4 overall, pointing to the speaker’s criticism of the earlier Senate draft.
” The speaker’s purview”
GOP immigration advocates were already skeptical of Phelan after the defeat of HB 20, a sort of” Border Protection Unit” to “deter and repel” migrants between entry points. Additionally, it sought to make anyone who “knowingly enters” Texas from a “neighboring jurisdiction” subject to a harsher felony trespass charge.
Some immigration hawks viewed the bill as a bold and necessary response to the increase of migrant crossings. It allowed deputized everyday citizens to serve with licensed peace officers on the unit. Democrats and advocates for immigration said it would encourage racial profiling and put the rights of immigrants and legal residents at risk.
House Democrats successfully defeated HB 20 by raising a point of order, a tactic frequently employed to thwart legislation that is technicalized toward the end of a session. Although some claimed the House parliamentarian’s recommendation was flawed and that Phelan should have overruled the parliamentarian, who serves as a sort of referee for legislative disputes, Phelan upheld the request.
According to Andrew Cates, an Austin attorney and expert in parliamentary procedure at the Legislature, the speaker employs parliamentarians to draft decisions on points of order” so that they concord with precedent” and adhere to the House rules approved by members at the start of each session.
” Technically, any rulings on points of order come from the speaker himself”, Cates said. The parliamentarian is a member of his team and provides recommendations on House rules issues. The declaration of rulings is entirely in the speaker’s purview”.
With HB 20 and other points of order, Phelan theoretically could have overridden the parliamentarian’s decision and ordered a different ruling, Cates said. But that sort of move could be politically fraught, he added, citing former Speaker Tom Craddick’s refusal in 2007 to allow a vote on whether to remove him from power, which led to his parliamentarian’s resignation and, ultimately, the end of his speakership.
In any case, the Legislature ultimately passed SB 4 and a second bill that would impose stricter penalties for those found guilty of operating a stash house or smuggling immigrants. The last change was effective earlier this year.
Additionally, lawmakers agreed to spend more than$ 6 billion over the course of the next two years on various border security initiatives, the majority of which are used to detain and jail migrants through Operation Lone Star and build a wall along parts of the Texas-Mexico border.
” The Texas House has delivered under Speaker Phelan and the Republicans in the House made that happen”, Jetton, the ousted House Republican, said. Candidates who say otherwise are deceiving voters for their own gain, and they should steer clear of such shady schemes.
Disclosure: Southern Methodist University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a list of all of them right here.
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