Dem
49
GOP
51
Maybe we should call them the Democratic People's Republic of West Korea, given the apparent inspiration that AG Ken Paxton (R), in particular, seems to draw from Kim Jong-Un. Anyhow, the AG has been as busy as a bee for the last several weeks, trying to subvert the rights of his fellow West Koreans... er, Texans. Is he trying to get his shenanigans in before the election? Or maybe before winter strikes, and the third-world Texas electrical grid crashes again? Your guess is as good as ours.
A couple of weeks ago, we had an item about all the things that Paxton is doing to try to reduce Democratic turnout in November, either by removing a disproportionate number of Democrats from the voting rolls, or by good-old-fashioned, Bull-Connor-style intimidation of minority voters. What Paxton is up to this week is a lawsuit seeking to overturn a federal law that bans authorities in one state from subpoenaing medical records from another state.
Truth be told, we thought that HIPAA already made it impossible for government officials to get a non-approved look at people's medical records. Apparently we were wrong, however, as the Biden administration put in place a directive giving special protections to people who cross state lines for medical procedures. It is this directive that Paxton (and several of his fellow Texas officials) will be fighting in court.
The purpose here is plain; Paxton wants to be able to enforce Texas' draconian anti-abortion laws. Texas law still does not punish a woman who seeks an abortion, but it does allow for people who aid a woman (say, by giving her a car ride) to be civilly sued. State law also allows for criminal charges to be filed against medical professionals who perform abortions. So, what Paxton is clearly trying to do is to further intimidate both facilitators and performers of abortion procedures. The message is "if you help someone get an abortion, you might well be punished once you get back to Texas" and/or "we might well try to indict you across state lines if you perform an abortion." None of this is constitutional, but with the current Supreme Court, that may not be a concern.
Incidentally, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) isn't going to be president this year (or, presumably, ever), but he doesn't want to fall too far behind on the police-state sweepstakes, either. So, in the past few weeks, he's been dispatching his "election police" to grill Floridians who signed petitions in favor of the pro-choice ballot proposition that will appear in November. The message here is just as clear as in Texas: "If you sign an abortion petition, maybe the police come looking for you, and maybe you end up in prison." Nice work, Kim Jong-Ron. (Z)