Abbott Warns Protesters with F Word Phrase
Without Mention of Antifa after Austin Arrests
Capitol Inside
June 10, 2025
Governor Greg Abbott
appeared to invoke the F word in an acronym on Tuesday morning when he touted arrests in Austin the night before at a protest that erupted as a show of solidarity for anti-deportation demonstrators in Los Angeles.
But Abbott stopped short of blaming the eruption of civil unrest from the West Coast to the Texas Capitol City on anti-fascist radicals who he and the state police claimed to be the culprits behind rioting at protests against racial injustice in 2020 across the Lone Star State.
As President Donald Trump sent 700 U.S. Marines to southern California on Monday on the third day of protests in downtown LA, Abbott took to social media with a warning on the consequences of rowdiness at events of this kind in the Lone Star State.
"Peaceful protesting is legal," Abbott said on X. "But once you cross the line, you will be arrested.
FAFO."
The four-letter phrase at the end of the Republican governor's post commonly stands for Fuck Around and Find Out. It's pronounced Fah-Fo. Abbott could claim that the FAFO in the message that he sent on the wages of bad behavior referred to a sugarcoated version of the term - Fool Around and Find Out. But there's no way to know at this point if the leader of the nation's second largest state would pronounce FAFO as Foo-Fo or Fah-Fo if he was referring to the sanitized phrase.
Abbott's attempt to get cute on a subject as serious as the civil unrest that Trump is treating like a war has the potential to backfire by creating the impression that the governor isn't taking the situation seriously or fails to grasp its significance. Neither Trump or Abbott seem to realize that their actions could have the effect of throwing gasoline into a fire that's already raging.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who's a Democrat, branded the president's deployment of Marines to LA as a "blatant abuse of power" that he wields as the country's commander in chief.
Trump revealed on Tuesday that he's considering whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 - which gives the president the authority to federalize the National Guard and to deploy
active American military members to places in the U.S. like he's already done in LA.
Abbott sought to follow Trump's lead on Monday when he deployed Department of Public Safety troopers to the Capitol in Austin after learning that people planned to assemble there to demonstrate support for counterparts in Los Angeles.
The governor showed he meant business when DPS officers used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse crowds of protestors at or near the Capitol in downtown Austin. But Abbott stopped short of speculating whether the protestors in Los Angeles or Austin or both were members of the Antifa movement that he and Trump both cited as the cause for demonstrations
Abbott teamed up with former DPS director Steve McCraw at a press conference during the early stages of the covid pandemic five years ago when they pointed the finger at Antifa for looting and violence at protests in Austin and other Texas cities at the time. The governor and the state police chief contended at the time that outside agitators from Antifa were responsible for the problems that stemmed from the demonstrations around the state.
But the lion's share of people who were arrested at protests in the major Texas cities were local residents. That could explain the Texas governor's silence on the potential involvement of anti-fascists at the protests in Austin last night.
Some conservatives have revived the Antifa conspiracy theory in the blame game on LA. The right-wing publication the US Sun reported on Monday night that Antifa militants who were dressed in black were "harvesting" rocks to throw at police in LA.
more to come ...
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