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Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan promised to current” a very impressive answer” to the rising number of immigrants entering Texas from Mexico at the start of the 2023 legislative session, which would put the limits on the state ‘ responsibilities in immigration police.
The House Bill 20 proposal, which Phelan teased, aimed to form a team of police and appointed citizens to police 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 made it to 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a boundary-testing immigration regulation that has been postponed in response to legal challenges, which has since been replaced by HB 20.
However, the original proposal has since surfaced in the speaker’s individual GOP primary, where his critics point out that he was in charge of the Beaumont Republican’s decline in their wider campaign effort, which portrays him as too soft on the border 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 praising SB 4 as” the strongest border security law in the country,” the speaker argued at least twice. 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.
Given that “poll after poll shows that Republicans are a czar of immigrants and border issues,” Matthew Wilson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, said it is not surprising that Covey is trying to persuade voters that he is more interested in border issues than Phelan.
Many of Phelan’s Republican allies have experienced similar repercussions after supporting the entire border bill 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.
State Representative Jacey Jetton, a Republican from Richmond who carried a bill last fall that authorized$ 1.5 billion for the border wall, called the immigration-focused attacks on Phelan and other Republicans “absurd.”
” We would be in a special session getting it done right now” said Jetton, who was defeated in his primary by insurance adjuster Matt Morgan, a fervent Phelan critic.
The passing of HB 20 also aligns with one of Covey’s main points, which is that the speaker has given Democrats too much power by appointing them to chair nearly a quarter of the chamber’s standing committees and refusing 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 compromising 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, Wilson said,” Deceptive and misguided attacks are the norm today.” There are many allegations that are unfair and deceptive being thrown back and forth between politicians, and it’s difficult to educate the electorate, especially when dealing with procedural inside-balls.
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 “knows his seat is in jeopardy, so he is trying to take credit for it”
Covey argued that Phelan’s defense rings hollow because he voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton last year, despite the fact that speakers hardly ever 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, according to Covey.
According to Covey, Phelan and Patrick, the Senate leader, argued over a crucial aspect of the bill, namely what to do with migrants who are detained for “illegal entry.” This is where Covey’s claim is rooted. The Senate proposed jailing every immigrant arrested until the “extent possible,” which Phelan claimed would be too expensive and result in a” state-funded hospitality program for illegal immigrants.” While the two chambers agreed on the majority of the bill, the Senate proposed doing so. Shortly thereafter, the two chambers came to a compromise.
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 ports of entry. 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 in migrant crossings, which allowed deputized everyday citizens to serve alongside licensed peace officers on the unit. Democrats and advocates for immigration said it would encourage racial profiling and put a risk on both immigrants and legal residents.
House Democrats defeated HB 20 by passing a point of order, a tactic frequently employed to thwart legislation that passes on technical issues near the end of a session. Although some claimed the House parliamentarian’s recommendation was flawed and that Phelan should have taken the unusual step of overruling the parliamentarian, who serves as a sort of referee for legislative disputes, Phelan upheld the request for order.
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 his employer 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 on various border security initiatives over the course of Operation Lone Star, which includes constructing a wall along Texas-Mexico’s border, and spending it on various projects.
” 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 beware of such obscene 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. Here is a complete list of them.
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