Abbott Stays Mum on Texas-OU Deal
with Focus on Migrant Covid Surge

Capitol Inside
July 31, 2021

Governor Greg Abbott is portraying President Joe Biden as a human virus trafficker after being sued by the federal government on Friday over a brazen bid to undermine the enforcement of immigration law in an attempt to blame a COVID-19 resurgence in Texas on people coming here from Mexico.

With the Republican governor juggling of historic emergencies at the southern border, he hasn't had a chance up to now to tell Texans how he feels about his alma mater's defection from the Big 12 to the SEC in a move that his appointees who run the University of Texas capped off on Friday with a unanimous vote.

UT teamed up with Oklahoma University in a package deal to the SEC that was revealed a week ago and sealed over the course of the past several days with votes that were formalities after six months or more of underground negotiating between an elite group of rich and powerful Texas Republicans and their school's new host league.

Abbott has suggested in private conversations that he'd been out of the loop on the poaching conspiracy that bagged the Longhorns with the Sooners at OU as a valuable and necessary side piece. Abbott runs the risk of creating the appearance that he was in the middle of surreptitious dealing with his deafening silence on the role that the UT board that he controls has had in the most dramatic development in the history of college sports.

But Abbott hasn't been as bashful in his fight to protect Texas from drug cartels, terrorists and people who he says are contaminated with covid and flooding into the state illegally from Mexico with the Biden White House as a jet collaborator.

“The Biden Administration has created a constitutional crisis between the federal government and the State of Texas," Abbott said in an email on Friday night. "This stems from the Biden Administration's refusal to enforce immigration laws and allow illegal immigrants with COVID-19 to enter our country."

Abbott issued the stinging assessment after the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in a federal court in El Paso to invalidate an executive order that's a blatant violation of federal law by giving the state police an excuse and incentive for racial profiling based on expanded powers that he's wielded throughout the pandemic under the Texas disaster act.

Executive Order 37 directs the Department of Public Safety to pull over vehicles that are carrying people that could be in the country illegally. The Abbott is tantamount to a show-me-your-papers law that gives the state police the ability to stop cars and trucks randomly without a specific cause.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland warned Abbott on Thursday that he should repeal the edict immediately or face the consequences at the courthouse. The DOJ knew that it would be walking into a trap that Abbott had set as his latest score in a quest for national attention in advance of a president race in 2024. But Abbott continued to insist that the Biden administration has prompted him to take dramatic action by refusing to enforce immigration laws in ways that he approves.

"This already dangerous situation continues to deteriorate as the Biden Administration knowingly imports COVID-19 into Texas from across the border—willfully exposing Texans and Americans alike," Abbott asserted. "President Biden has a duty and a responsibility to protect and uphold our nation’s sovereignty, yet he has long-since abdicated his authority to do so."

more to come ...