Editorial Roundup: Texas

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : He also signed a bill limiting the ways that race and current events can be discussed in public schools, tapping into the ginned-up debate over critical race theory -- a topic he's urged lawmakers to revisit in the special session, alongside the supposed censorship of conservatives on social media.
51% : To get the job "done," Abbott has pledged $250 million from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and he is also seeking private donations.
50% : Remember the First AmendmentSilencing journalists and scholars, chasing dissent from the public square, distorting history to serve an ideological narrative -- it's the stuff of autocrats, and now, the reprehensible behavior of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
49% : Rather than a traditional wall, for example, they suggest a virtual wall that bolsters law enforcement and preserves natural habitat for a fraction of the cost.
48% : Remember, instead, the First Amendment.
48% : This, on top of a barrage of bills last session in which the Legislature tried to dictate a range of decisions, from personal medical care to police funding levels, that Texans and local communities should be free to make for themselves.
48% : Political visits to the border have their place and can be helpful, but too often they are mere photo ops for talking points that inflame fears around immigration and border security without much nuance or thought given to the realities of immigration, the complexities of border communities or the need for comprehensive reform.
47% : While we are confident Abbott won't build much of a border wall, or "secure" anything more than his re-election in 2022 and
43% : , a border wall is a monumental expense Texas can't afford, and most of the land along the Texas-Mexico border is privately owned.
43% : Moreover, school districts violating such laws risk losing state funding, and as judicial politics expert Jeffrey Sachs argues, "The people who will actually be parsing these (restricted race) terms ... will be the paranoid principal of a cash-strapped high school, yelled at by the town attorney about how it's better to be safe than sorry."

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.