One threat to Biden’s agenda is legal action by states over its federal plans. Alexandra Villarreal in Austin reports to us today on how Texas is trying to derail progressive policies:
Just two days after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Texas filed the first major lawsuit against Biden’s administration, successfully blocking the 100-day deportation moratorium imposed by Gov. Greg Abbott as aseeks to grant amnesty for blanketsTo immigrants.
The infectious case, far from a one-time outburst of hostility, was a return to Texas’ tried and true playbook to arm the courts to derail progressive policies, a tactic surprisingly powerful amid ideological warfare with the federal .
“They have achieved success, such as causing uncertainty,” said Katie Keith, associate professor at the Center for Health Insurance Reform at Georgetown University. “And to make a mess of things I think other people think differently.”
The state leadership has relied heavily on the judiciary under the administration of Barack Obama, which has sued them at least 48 times, the Texas Tribune reported, tackling issues as diverse and comprehensive as immigration, environmental regulations and voting rights.
In the aftermath of last year’s presidential election, Paxton has gone so far as to challenge 20 million votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in a far-reaching attempt to overthrow Donald Trump’s defeat. And right now, Texas is at the forefront of another existential threat to the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court, even as Biden urges the judges to preserve Obama’s signature health care law.
Because of the high stakes, these cases often attract national attention, and Texas’ ambitious current and former attorney general has shown willingness to swap resources and time for newspaper quotes and TV interviews. The court battles give key players like Paxton ‘a platform’ to show they are fighters and looking for their constituents’, says Keith E Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University.
“These kinds of lawsuits have become very well-known events” and allow those involved to ‘send tribunes and send a political message to voters about all the hard work you are doing to resist the government they do not like’ , Whittington said. .
Texas’ judicial activism is part of a larger biased gambit that has been going on for years. Politicians undo or delay federal policies that they find unfavorable or excessive, while strategically defining the story in the press.
“These are great opportunities to really influence the messages about how specific policies or specific laws are understood, and what the potential problems are with them,” Whittington said.
Read more from Alexandra Villarreal’s report here: Texas increases efforts to derail progressive policies