Attacks on LGBTQ rights, abortion access, and movements for racial justice aren’t exclusive to any one state in the union. But Texas is certainly a place where state officials and vigilantes are working hand-in-hand to bring about a dangerous new future. Texas-based journalistsAndrea GrimesandSteven MonacellijoinThe Marc Steiner Showto explain where Texas is headed and how the left is fighting back.Andrea Grimes is a writer, editor, and activist living in Austin, Texas. She frequently writes about Texas, politics, and reproductive justice. Her work has previously appeared in theNew York Times,The Nation,DAME Magazine,Rewire News, The Texas Observer,and other publications.
Steven Monacelli is the Texas Observer’s Special Investigative Correspondent, based in Dallas. His reporting has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The Real News, Dallas Observer, Dallas Weekly, and more. He is also the publisher of Protean Magazine, a nonprofit literary publication. Follow him on Twitter @stevanzetti.
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us and welcome to another episode of Rise of the Right. Today, we take a look at Texas. It’s a state that’s emblematic of what we face of a government that talks about liberty and freedom, the focus on authoritarian and racist push with draconian measures that actually chip away at our freedoms. The governor, Greg Abbott, pardoned US Army Sergeant Daniel Perry, who’s convicted for killing Garrett Foster at a Black Lives Matter demonstration. Even after a jury hearing all the evidence, convicted him, and Abbott knew nothing about what was going on in it. Abbott said, in one article that I read, that Texas has one of the strongest stand your ground laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive districts attorney. It’s like the myth of the old west coming to haunts from the silver screen.
And then, far right wing Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of US District Court Northern Texas was appointed by Trump ruled in favor of anti-abortion groups saying abortion medications are unsafe despite medical evidence to the contrary. In addition to that, voting rights are under assault. A push is being made to take political rights away from the cities. So watch Texas, watch America. This is what we’re up against. This is what we have to fight. This is what we have to be aware of.
We are joined today by Steven Monacelli, who is a Texas Observer’s special investigative correspondent based in Dallas. His reporting is featured in Rolling Stone, Daily Beast, here at The Real News, Dallas Observer, Dallas Weekly and more. He’s also the publisher of Protean Magazine, which is a very cool piece I’ve discovered, and thank you for doing that. You can follow on Twitter at Steven Vanzetti. That’s S-T-E-V-A-N-Z-E-T-T-I. Good to have you with us.
Steven Monacelli:
Thanks for having me.
Marc Steiner:
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And we are also joined by Andrea Grimes. She’s a writer, editor, and activist living in Austin, Texas. And as she writes on her site with her husband, two cats, and a badly behaved hound dog. Sounds pretty Texas to me. Good to have you with us. She writes about Texas politics and reproductive justice. Her work appears in the Texas Observer and other publications, and her Twitter handler is @AndreaGrimes. You can also read her work at andreagrimes.com. So it’s good to have you both with us.
Andrea Grimes:
Thanks very much.
Marc Steiner:
So Texas. Let’s just start with this pardon. And Steve, let’s just start with you. And Andrea, jump in. It was kind of not shocking, though outrageous. Give us a little backstory here.
Steven Monacelli:
Sure. So for those of you who are not aware of this backstory, Daniel Perry is a veteran who is currently being made into what I would call a political figure by the governor of Texas, Governor Abbott, after he was convicted of murder for shooting a protestor in 2022, Garrett Foster, in Austin, Texas during a protest for racial justice. Perry was found to have ran a red light, drove towards the crowd of protestors and sort of into and amongst them, and was then surrounded by a group of protestors, including Garrett Foster, who, at the time was openly carrying an AK 47, which is legal in the state of Texas to do. And was then shot by Daniel Perry, who claimed self-defense. There are a number of really interesting details regarding Daniel Perry’s state of mind and some of the things that he had texted and sent via social media messages to friends suggesting that he wanted to “kill” or shoot what he viewed as rioters, which played a central piece in terms of his conviction.
He is now, through his lawyers, they are arguing that the trial was conducted improperly. They’re claiming that the jury acted inappropriately and they’re also claiming that certain evidence was withheld from the trial. All of that is still up in the air. But what is certainly unusual about all of this is that before he was even sentenced, Governor Abbott started calling for his pardon after Tucker Carlson and other major right wing media people also started calling for this. It’s a very unusual timeline when it comes to how calls for pardons and the parole board works in Texas.
Marc Steiner:
Andrea?
Andrea Grimes:
Yeah, the whole thing is tremendously screwed up. I think the thing that stands out to me most about this is that Greg Abbott has historically been somewhat reticent to go really hard on these sort of far right white supremacist, explicitly fascist talking points. When he was rising up in state politics, he was lauded as kind of like a right-ish middle of the road, common sense, just appreciates the law. No firebrand, just sort of a regular Jude. And with the rise of Trump, that has really changed with him significantly, but he still sort of distanced himself from explicitly being like a DeSantis type. And I think that this call for Daniel Perry’s pardon is a significant step into explicit white supremacy and explicit fascism for Abbott, who has historically been just a little more reluctant than other right wing red state leaders to really say the quiet part out loud. But I think that that’s what he’s doing here.
I’ve seen some folks say that it’s hypocritical for a law and order governor to contradict the legal system and to call into question the legitimacy of the legal system. But I don’t think it’s hypocritical for Governor Abbott to call for the pardon of a man who he thinks is doing a public service by killing a Black Lives Matter protestor. And I think that’s a really meaningful distinction and I don’t think that there’s any hypocrisy there at all, I think it’s entirely ideologically consistent.
Marc Steiner:
So just stay here on this for just a minute before we jump into another issue around abortion rights in Texas. So two things. One, for people listening across the country and across the globe, when we described the demonstration that took place in Texas where Perry shot and killed Garrett, Texas was open carry state, right?
Steven Monacelli:
Yes.
Andrea Grimes:
Yep.
Marc Steiner:
You don’t even have a license. Am I right about that?
Steven Monacelli:
No requirements, especially for carrying a long arm. You do not need to have any sort of documentation, paperwork, training, anything at all.
Marc Steiner:
Nothing, just have it. Let’s just explore this for a minute and just both of your thoughts on this. I used to shoot guns and I’m not opposed to people owning the guns and stuff, but something is happening here. This is emblematic of what we could be facing when we’re moving towards, when Black Lives Matter demonstrators, demonstrators on the progressive side are carrying weapons, the right wing is carrying weapons in the street. You have instances like this that take place, maybe more will take place. I’m just curious, living where you live, given the reality of what you see, give us some your thoughts and analysis of what are all this might mean, what that does mean?
Steven Monacelli:
That’s a great question. I’ve spoken to some protestors who were out that night in Austin when Garrett was shot and they feel that Governor Abbott’s push to pardon Daniel Perry sends a pretty clear message around what it means in terms of how open carry and stand your ground laws interact. What they suggest is that the message that’s being sent is, as long as you’re on the right side of the ideological spectrum, you will be pardoned for this sort of action or violence. And we can see a through line historically in terms of how people like Governor Abbott on the one hand promote gun rights to maybe even the extreme. And then on the other hand, whenever they end up being carried by maybe what they view as the wrong people, suddenly other laws come into play in terms of how these people can be dealt with. I’m thinking about the Black Panthers in the history of gun laws starting in California.
So I think it sends a couple clear messages and it does increase the concern among protestors who, the ones I’ve spoken to said people started carrying long arms because of threats of violence and because of incidents in which drivers and other people had threatened people for taking to the streets for racial justice protests.
Marc Steiner:
Andrea, one of the things I was thinking about as Steve was talking and as I was reading what was going on in Texas is, I could see a moment where there could be a battle taking place in the street. Right, left, guns, black, white, Chicano, Americans. It portends something a lot deeper and maybe more dangerous than we’re considering.
Andrea Grimes:
I certainly think that the fantasy of armed conflict is real among the right wing, in particular. It is the reason we saw those folks storm the Capitol on January 6th. They are spoiling for a fight and they have every reason to rightfully believe that a fundamentally fascist white supremacist system will protect them. And people like Governor Abbott are coming out and saying explicitly, yeah, we intend to do that. I think the considerations, as they almost always are for folks on the left, are much, much more complicated. We see with the John Brown Gun Club, the Huey Newton Gun Club, other forms of leftist resistance that even sort of approach the line of yelling loudly can be much more dangerous than on the right wing parading around the grounds of the Capitol in Texas or otherwise with their long arms. So I think that the threat of violence, of fear of suppression is effective because it is real.
I think we see this sort of thing with violence against abortion providers and abortion supporters. Violence at abortion clinics is up significantly since the Dobbs ruling. We’re seeing all over the country, fire bombing, et cetera. And the folks who commit those sorts of crimes are charged, depending where they are located. But we just saw in Florida, for example, democratic lawmakers who were protesting a proposed six-week ban there were arrested for sitting on a sidewalk outside. So there’s just a real significant disparity in the way American protest is treated in this country. And I think that makes sort of the fight in the street calculation much more complicated for folks on the left than it does for folks on the right.
Marc Steiner:
I’m going to circle back this in terms of what comes next, but let me just leap in a minute for everybody listening to Judge Kacsmaryk and the abortion ruling that took place in Texas. And every time I talk about this, I almost start losing my mind a little bit just because I was thinking as I wrote to you all before we had the conversation that many decades back I was in the abortion underground until 1973 and working with doctors to make sure women were safe and now we’re back in this place and Texas is at the heart of what the future could be bringing to us. And that’s something you’ve been writing a lot about, Andrea. So let me start with you on this one. Talk about what that ruling was and how significant it is and what it does around the battle around women’s right to choose.
Andrea Grimes:
So Justice Matt Kacsmaryk was put in his job. He was appointed to his position to do one thing and one thing only, which is carve a path for fetal personhood in the federal judiciary. His background coming from right wing legal thought, groomed in the Federalist Society. Really, Trump did this with intention. Kacsmaryk is in the US Northern District Court of Texas to pave this path. And the anti-abortion forces who filed this case initially also exist solely to do this thing. So they called themselves the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and they were founded in August, 2022 and they filed this suit in November, 2022. And what they want is to take one part of the medication abortion regimen, mifepristone, off the market, to rescind its FDA approval.
Now, mifepristone isn’t the only drug used in medication abortion, there’s another medicine called Misoprostol. And you can use Misoprostol on its own to safely end an abortion, but [mife 00:14:53] makes the process a lot more tolerable, more effective. So these folks ostensibly say they deeply concerned about the health and safety of people who take mifepristone and they would like for the FDA to seriously reconsider its approval, which was rushed. Of course, it wasn’t rushed. Mifepristone was used safely in other countries before it was approved in the United States. And over the past 23 years since the FDA first approved mifepristone, we have learned a lot more about how the medication works. Again, very safe, very effective.
Unfortunately, because it’s safe and effective, because it does what it is meant to do, which is end pregnancy, of course, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine considers it to be a drug that is 100% fatal to what Judge Matt Kacsmaryk would call unborn children. But which, of course, are zygotes, fertilized eggs, [inaudible 00:15:57]. Certainly, it is very safe for pregnant people to take and much safer than a number of other options that people might pursue in the absence of access to clinical or safe medical care.
Kacsmaryk ruled last week, basically saying, yeah, he thinks the FDA approval should be rescinded. He’s going to give them a week to make a few more arguments in court. And then, of course, we got a ruling last night, which would’ve been Wednesday night from the Fifth Circuit, which threw a number of wrenches, really, an entire toolbox, perhaps an entire tool shed into the questions of the case. And so legal scholars are parsing all of that out this morning. The upshot is, at least until this Saturday, providers will be able to prescribe mifepristone according to the 2000 regulations, but not with the updates made to the prescription regulations in 2016 and 2023. Sorry, that was a lot.
Marc Steiner:
That’s okay. Go ahead, Steve.
Steven Monacelli:
I was going to say, yeah, from what I gather, basically, the initial ruling created an extreme sort of decree to try to remove all access. And what the Fifth court has effectively done is said, okay, well let’s just remove some avenues for access. You can no longer get this mailed to you under their ruling. So there’s a number of things still to be worked out, as Andrea said, but I think it also needs to be considered in the broader scope of attempts to subvert democratic rule in the state of Texas. It’s just one of many attempts to preempt various forms of democratic rulings and to try to rule effectively from the top down, wherever the top is controlled by the right people. We’re seeing attempts to remove DAs in counties where the state government does not approve of the district attorney. And so in this instance, I view this as just another way to crack down on rights that have been gained through legitimate democratic processes.
Marc Steiner:
As you both were just talking, one of the things that popped in my head that I’d like to explore with you both about Texas is, there was an article I think in the Observer that I read, and one of who may have written, I forget and I apologize, that America did not become even close to being a full democracy until 1965 with the Voting Rights Act and the civil rights movement and how that changed the course of this country where everybody was enfranchised for the first time. And now, we’re seeing this major pushback. You were just saying, whether it’s Mississippi or whether it’s Texas and other areas, where they’re trying to take rights away from cities to govern themselves, challenging voting rights, making it more difficult for people to vote, especially people of color to vote in Texas.
So I’d like to, both think about for a moment, talk about where you think this takes, a, Texas in the coming months and years, what that struggle will look like inside your state and what that says about the entire country. Well, let’s just start with Texas. And again Steven, I was thinking about the stuff, you’ve been writing about that. So where do you all think this takes you?
Steven Monacelli:
Well, I think it takes us in many ways right back to the past where some of these folks would like us to be, where white men control everything in the state of Texas. Dallas, where I live, was effectively controlled by the Ku Klux Klan a hundred years ago.
Marc Steiner:
Yes.
Steven Monacelli:
That just doesn’t go away within a couple generations. We’ve got a deeply embedded set of ideologies in Texas that are white supremacists in nature and they’re revealing themselves increasingly through what may be viewed through a certain lens as contradictions or hypocritical actions. But as Andrea has so adeptly said, if viewed through the proper ideological lens, it’s quite consistent in terms of just a will to power for people who want to control the lives of others and get back to the days of the good old boys club. I really don’t see any other way of making sense of the efforts to crack down on LGBTQ people, to remove district attorneys in urban areas where they don’t like even proposing laws to be able to overturn elections in major counties like Houston and Dallas, where the Republican right wing certainly does not have a strong hold. So I think we’re going to increasingly see conflicts between the state level and local levels in this direction.
Marc Steiner:
It’s very critical what you’re talking about here. And Andrea, please jump in here. I think one of the things, as I look at places like Texas, and I know Texas, I’ve been, now, there are a lot over the years, a lot of friends there, is that we all need to pay attention to what’s happening in Texas because, as I said earlier in the opening, it’s emblematic of what could be happening in the entire country, what we can be facing.
Andrea Grimes:
Yeah, the unfunny joke we often make here is that the motto of the University of Texas is, what starts here changes the world. And unfortunately, that is true about right wing politics in Texas and the influence, the outsized influence the Texas politics has on the rest of the country. And it is why, whenever possible, and whenever I hear it, I speak out against folks who think they live in safer geographies who say, why doesn’t Texas just secede? Why don’t people just leave Texas? Why don’t you all just move? Of course, we can’t for a number of reasons. Our people are here, our families are here, our jobs are here. It’s very expensive to move. Maybe we don’t want to, maybe we shouldn’t have to.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Andrea Grimes:
And the truth is that a lot of these bad ideas that are work-shopped and executed here in Texas end up elsewhere, and it doesn’t take long. There are not many places in the United States where clinical abortion care is truly, genuinely accessible. Abortion is heavily, heavily regulated across the US even in states that would consider themselves abortion havens. We’re really talking about Oregon and Washington state are the two places you can genuinely walk into a clinic and get an abortion on demand.
So I think when people sort of dismiss Texas or the South or the Midwest as being these essentially hostile or uniquely difficult geographies, you have to realize, we are voter suppressed here. We’re voter suppressed in most of the country. We are disenfranchised on a number of other levels. Women and folks of color here understand that our government hates us. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t fight, that we don’t resist, but it does mean that doing the work is pretty difficult. And I think what folks in Texas need and the South and Midwest need is support. I think we need money coming into our grassroots organizations, especially, especially money coming into our small presses, into our independent presses and alternative media so that these stories that don’t get told in the mainstream and legacy publications do get told somewhere.
So when I think about what is the future for Texas, or for the nation, I would love to imagine that abortion bans, for example, are going to suddenly cause a whole load of privileged white women to rise up and start voting in a way they have never voted. I am not super optimistic about that. I am even less optimistic about white men doing so, even if they claim to love women and their wives and their daughters and their mothers. So it’s a real, real battle. I hate to say it, I don’t know how much worse it will have to be here for the tide to swing in the other direction. I don’t think that that is impossible, however. I remain cautiously optimistic that future change is possible, but it’s going to take a lot of work and it’s going to take an awful lot of support from people outside of Texas with resources funneling them here instead of writing us off and considering themselves safe and immune to what we’re seeing going on here.
Marc Steiner:
So I’d like you both to kind of explore for a moment what you think the resistance in the political movements are in Texas that kind of battle this. And I know life is more complex than Republicans, than Democrats. Fine, but in the last election, let’s just say, when you look at the last election in Texas, it was what, a 54-46 split, something like that in the presidential election. Which, to me, kind of paints a picture of how divided the state is. But if you look at what Texas is doing just in terms of trying to destroy minority majority districts and playing this election integrity game and all the Orwellian double speak that they do, but they’re really building a power. So the question is, I’m curious, your reflections on what you see around you in terms of organizations and resistance to that and what form you think that’ll take. How do you see that future battle looming inside of Texas?
Steven Monacelli:
There’s a number of groups, it would be difficult to do justice to them all in short time.
Marc Steiner:
No, I wouldn’t. Yeah, I didn’t say that. Yeah.
Steven Monacelli:
But there are fantastic groups doing really important work on the ground. There’s a number of abortion funds, for example, Lilith Abortion Fund that are still collecting resources for women and helping them get directed to the access that they need. There’s been attempts to try and shut those down or scuttle their operations. But as of today, it’s one of the most an analogous things to the underground that you used to be a participant in. There’s also groups like the Texas Organizing Project and others that are doing a variety of types of work. I think we’re going to really need to lean into supporting labor groups in the state, even though we are not so friendly to unions in terms of our state policy.
There are significant gains in terms of, they may be small, but to have a Starbucks that’s unionized not too far from my house, that wouldn’t have been something that I would’ve imagined not long ago. So I think it’s going to be a coalescence of a lot of groups on the ground, groups like the Afiya Center in Dallas, which is one of the only black women-led reproductive health organizations.
Marc Steiner:
Did you say Afiya?
Steven Monacelli:
Afiya. A-F-I-Y-A.
Marc Steiner:
Afiya, gotcha. I’m sorry.
Steven Monacelli:
I believe. Yeah. And they’re really fantastic. I think, as Andrea said, supporting these groups that are already on the ground, that are doing this work, that are deeply embedded in communities is essential to the organization of a countervailing force against this sort of oppressive right wing movement that we’re seeing. And we’re also going to see other groups, as Andrea also mentioned, groups like the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, which have emerged as a response to fascistic threats of violence and harassment to the LGBTQ community in Texas. I think people need to really understand that this state is far more, as you mentioned, maybe divided or diverse than people give it credit for. It’s one of the most diverse states, just demographically.
And so I think making sure that we don’t forget that and write it off just because the loudest donkeys that bray and get all this attention seem like really bad people, they can be overcome. But it also does require a very nuanced understanding of how we got here, what does gerrymandering look like, and what sort of resources will we need to bring to bear to actually make change happen, because it’s possible. And if it happens, another saying that’s popular, as goes Texas, so goes the nation. And if Texas were to change politically, if one major county, like Tarrant County, were to have a shift, suddenly dominoes start falling in a big way.
Marc Steiner:
And I think it’s important to end our conversation on these notes because people have a tendency to always go, oh, woe is me. The sky is falling, we’re done. But we’re not done. And what you’re describing is how Texas is still at play and there’s a lot going on there beyond watching what Abbott does and what these right wing judges do. I think that’s really important for us conclude on. And Andrea, do you want to give us a closing thought on that?
Andrea Grimes:
Yeah, sure. A thing that strikes me about all of this is that the folks that I see doing the strongest, most consistent leadership and resistance against right wing forces in Texas are people who are most under threat by those forces. A great example is the Buckle Bunnies Fund, which is an abortion fund out of San Antonio led by women of color and disabled women. And they never stopped funding abortion when all of the other Texas state abortion funds did because they said, we don’t care if the court says, boo, we’re going to keep doing this work. So I think the sort of the big names that we all hear, the Planned Parenthoods, the Texas Democratic Party, those organizations are fine, they do good work, nothing wrong with them. But the folks who on the ground, not working for communities or at communities, but within and of their communities are the organizations that I think are really going to be spurring in this change. Mama Sana Vibrant Woman here in Austin, [inaudible 00:31:49] in San Antonio, the Frontera Fund in South Texas. If we’re going to make change here, it will come from people who are doing it because they must for their own survival. And I think that finding those groups and those organizations and those leaders is the key to getting us all free.
Marc Steiner:
So this has really been interesting, and one of the things I’m going to call on both of you via email and more to start bringing other folks on, the groups you talked about, to start hearing those voices here at The Real News, because they have to be heard, the ones who are on the ground doing that work is really important for us to know what their struggles are like, what they’re doing, and where they see the future, because it’s not done. And as I said earlier, the oh, woe is me thing really gets on my nerves. We don’t have time for woe is me. But I want to thank you both, but for being with us today, Steve Monacelli and Andrea Grimes, the work you do. I appreciate the writing and the work you all do and look forward to talking to you many more times and I’ll be in touch and do more stories about Texas. Thank you both so much.
Andrea Grimes:
Thanks very much.
Marc Steiner:
Good to have you both here.
Steven Monacelli:
Thank you, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
Well, I hope you all enjoyed that conversation today with Steven Monacelli and Andrea Grimes. We’ll link to their work on our website here so you can follow up on what they’re doing. And we will follow up with them and bring you more stories about Texas with people on the ground, what they’re doing because it’s really important to hear the voices of the people actually in the midst of all of that. And I want to thank you all for joining us today. And please let me know what you’ve thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover, what you’d like me to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll write you right back. And while you’re there, go to www.therealnews.com/support. Become a monthly donor and become part of the future with us. So for David Hebden and Kayla Rivara and the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening and take care.
