Republicans love to say that they are the party of small government. But we’re seeing more and more examples of Republican state governments flexing their authoritarian muscle and blocking Democrat-led cities from governing themselves.
And nowhere is this more clear than in Texas.
On Friday, nearly 800 new laws went into effect in the Lone Star State, including Texas House Bill 2127, known as the “Death Star” bill, which allows state legislators to override local ordinances. It’s facing a legal challenge, but in the meantime it’s still in effect.
Officially, a state overriding a local government is called “preemption.” But I prefer to call it what it is: “state takeover.”
And the stakes of this “state takeover” are literally a matter of life or death.
Republican state legislatures in Tennessee, Missouri, Mississippi and most recently North Carolina are all trafficking in overreach.
According to the Texas Tribune, “the law will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin in 2010 and Dallas in 2015 that established 10 minute breaks every four hours so that construction workers can drink water and protect themselves from the sun.” That matters because, as the Tribune also reports, “Texas is the state where the most workers die from high temperatures, government data shows.”
But this goes far beyond the “Death Star” bill, construction workers, and water breaks. Almost 200,000 Houston students are also being caught up in this Texas state power-grab.
In March, the Texas Education Agency took over the Houston Independent School District, citing poor student performance. They have since replaced 28 school libraries with so-called “centers for work and discipline” and replaced the superintendent with Mike Miles, the former leader of Dallas schools and a charter school owner.
In an interview with NBC’s Antonia Hylton, Miles was asked why the state was disrupting libraries in a district where so many students struggle to read.
“Reading is key,” Miles said. “You see that we still have libraries. We may not have librarians, but even in this room, books are on the shelves.”
“We can’t be all things to all people and we can’t have everything we want.”
It’s not just Texas. Republican state legislatures in Tennessee, Missouri, Mississippi and most recently North Carolina are all trafficking in overreach.
In North Carolina state Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls is fighting back.
In August, the New York Times reported that Justice Earls “filed a federal lawsuit alleging ‘an ongoing campaign’ by the state to suppress her first amendment rights through ‘intrusive investigations’ initiated by anonymous informers.”
All this because she was asked “about a state report showing that most lawyers appearing before the court were white men, and she said the court should examine the reasons for that disparity,” according to the Times.
This is a national crisis of authoritarian Republicans infringing on the rights of Democrat-led cities or leaders that they just don’t like.
It’s no less than a hostile takeover.
Until Republican-led state legislatures allow lawfully elected Democrats to do their jobs without infringing upon them — or the voters who chose them — we won’t live in a true democracy.
This is an adapted excerpt from the September 2 episode of “Symone.” It has been edited for length and clarity.
Symone D. Sanders Townsend is an author and a co-host of "The Weeknight."
Brian Kosciesza
Brian Kosciesza is a producer on "Symone."