Call it the week of the throwdowns.
First came Gov. Greg Abbott, blasting away at Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez and the "liberal Austin city" that he blames for allowing a wrong-headed "sanctuary city" policy to take hold, a policy he wants to ban under a new law wending its way through the Legislature. He also wants to punish violators.
Then, there was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who went off on opponents of his so-called "bathroom bill" that would allow Texans only to use the loo for the sex listed on their birth certificate. Polls and economic estimates that claim the new law would be a disaster for the Lone Star State are flat wrong, and Patrick insists he will have enough votes to pass it through the Senate this year -- even though by most accounts he has only 15 of the 19 needed.
Next up: President Trump, who suggested (perhaps jokingly) that he might ruin the career of an unnamed Texas senator, after an East Texas sheriff suggested the lawmaker was wanting to make it more difficult for lawmen in Texas to seize assets from criminal defendants until a conviction occurred in a criminal case. The senators who have bills on the subject all pointed fingers at each other as the one Trump was referring to.
And then there was U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, claiming during a Senate speech in Washington that Democrats were the party of the Ku Klux Klan, during the fight over confirming U.S. Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Democrats tried unsuccessfully to block the nomination, and at one point the Republican majority invoked a rule to cut off Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren from an old anti-Sessions letter from Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights icon Martin Luther King.
Hear all about the liberal cities, the bathroom votes, the Klan and all the other throwdowns on this week's Texas Take: The Podcast -- the leading political podcast in the Lone Star State -- where you get the inside scoop about what the Legislature is up to, in simple language every Texan can understand.
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