Little-known fact: A leading cause of death in Texas is Gov. Greg Abbott.

Yes, by intentional actions and deliberate inactions, Abbott has used his gubernatorial policies to kill thousands of Texans, including: his calculated refusal to extend Medicaid to millions of poor Texans (including nearly a million children)… his intentional denial of water breaks for outdoor workers broiling under this year’s 100-plus-degree heat dome… his lethal deregulation of utilities causing the state power grid to collapse for days in the deep freeze of 2021 with hundreds dying for lack of heat and water… his shameful prioritizing of gun extremism over the lives of school children... and his despicable grandstanding stunts at the Mexican border, killing untold hundreds of migrant families by design.

These people are not dying accidentally, but are victims of Abbot’s premeditated policies and political ambition. Consider his silly scheme of throwing $9.5 BILLION of Texas taxpayers’ money into the ditch of his highly-ballyhooed border-security PR show. Grandiosely branded “Operation Lone Star,” it has posed Generalissimo Abbott as a right-wing border hero.

Some hero. He has stretched miles of razor wire underwater in the Rio Grande, slashing the flesh of migrant families and trapping babies and pregnant women in the coils. And Abbott’s state troopers have been commanded to shove exhausted and injured refugees back into the river toward Mexico. As one appalled trooper says: “We have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”

This willful cruelty is immoral, but it’s made ridiculous by the fact that Abbott’s militaristic power play has totally failed to deter migration. After all, these families are fleeing for their lives and future, so he can wrap all of Texas in razor wire, and they will still come… and find a way in.

Abbott can kill lots of them, but he can’t kill the human spirit.

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