Down to This
On “What’s Your Point Yesterday,” all the guest panelists were of the female persuasion and bipartisan. Their take on abortion was very interesting. Certainly not J.D. Vance like takes.
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This is an online headline from a current Texas Monthly article that I don’t totally agree with:
Abortion Is on the Ballot in Ten States. Here’s Why It Won’t Be in Texas.
Donald Trump and other Republican candidates have said that abortion policy is now up to voters in each state. Texas is one exception.
Here is a good chunk of the story
When former President Donald Trump told the national audience in his first, and likely only, debate against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris that abortion rights are “the vote of the people now,” he was partly right. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, in June 2022, voters in seven states (California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Vermont) have weighed in on abortion policy via ballot referenda. Abortion-rights proponents won in all seven—some by approving state constitutional amendments ensuring abortion rights and others by preventing more-stringent restrictions from going into effect. In November, voters in ten states—Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota—will vote on ballot measures that seek to include forms of abortion-rights protection in the state constitutions.
But Trump’s insistence that “each individual state is voting” doesn’t apply across the country, including in Texas. The second-largest state in the U.S., with a population of 30 million, is one of fourteen with total abortion bans (laws with rare, and confusing, exceptions). In a recent interview with Texas Monthly, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who is seeking a third term, shared a more nuanced view of Trump’s perspective, telling reporter Michael Hardy, “The particular restrictions that the state legislatures adopt reflect the values of the citizens of each state.”
But the values adopted by the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature—which, in 2021, before the overturning of Roe, passed Senate Bill 8, the so-called abortion “bounty” law—don’t align so neatly with what voters say they want. An August survey from the Texas Politics Project shows that nearly half of Texas’s voters want less-extreme abortion laws. And after the passage of SB 8, another Texas Politics Project survey found that 78 percent of Texas’s adults believed abortion should be allowed in some form, while only 15 percent said it should be never permitted. Respondents fell mostly along party lines, with a majority of Democrats (67 percent) saying a Texan should be allowed to seek an abortion as a personal choice. But even a plurality of Republicans (42 percent) said they were in favor of allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest or when the woman’s life is in danger.
Here is the entire read: Why Can’t Texans Vote on Abortion Laws? (texasmonthly.com).
Here is what State Sen. Carol Alvarado has been saying at events recently on the issue of reproductive rights:
Texas is ground zero in an unprecedented invasion of our privacy and our bodies. Anti-abortion zealots have steadily chipped away at our reproductive rights to create the current dangerous environment. The Heartbeat Act, and Dobbs have left millions of Texans of reproductive age without access to essential healthcare, even in the case of rape or incest. There are women who almost lost their lives because of Texas’s extreme laws.
The litany of setbacks in our reproductive rights in Texas have all come because of losses at the ballot box. It’s all going to come down to the power of voting. As we’ve seen in Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio and Wisconsin, we can win on abortion rights. Defeating Ted Cruz would send a powerful message across Texas and across the nation that when it comes to reproductive rights—Texans are mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore! We need to intensify our outreach to young voters who don’t want the government dictating their healthcare options. Our reproductive rights can be restored by winning at the ballot box.
If you are paying attention, you know that Cong. Colin Allred is smacking Cancun Cruz on reproductive rights with hard hitting TV ads. State Sen Alvarado is right. If Cancun loses, reproductive rights will be a big winner in Texas. Even though it is not on the ballot, it still kind of is. Got it?
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With one week remaining in the MLB regular season schedule, the A’s, Angels, Cardinals, Cubbies, Giants, Jays, Marlins, Nationals, Pirates, Rangers, Reds, Rockies, and White Sox will not be advancing to the playoffs.
On a related note, I saw this story online:
The 2024 Texas Rangers fell victim to the same calamity that has sunk its teeth into about half of the last 25 baseball champions: The World Series hangover.
Friday night’s loss to the Seattle Mariners officially eliminated the Rangers from playoff contention, making them the 12th team in the past 25 years to win a World Series, then fail to make the postseason the next year.
The Rangers (73-81) are just one loss away from joining a far more dubious club. They would be just the sixth team in the past 25 years to win a World Series and then finish below .500 the next season. That would put them alongside the 2004 Angels (77-85), 2007 Cardinals (78-84), 2013 Giants (76-86), 2014 Red Sox (71-91) and 2020 Nationals (26-34).
The Rangers are now 74-82, and the seventh team in the past 25 years to win a World Series then finish below .500 the next season. Oh, well.
The Brewers, Dodgers, Guardians, Phillies, and Yankees are advancing to the playoffs.
Yesterday, we blew a 4-0 lead, then Josh Hader blew a save opportunity, and we lost 9-8. Yep, that was two blows in the same sentence. Our magic number is two and we can clinch the AL West tonight at The Yard with a win over the Mariners. It is down to this. Yep, the Mariners are at The Yard for three. See the featured photo that I have used before. Our AL West lead is five games with six games remaining on the regular season schedule.
The Astros tweeted this last night:
The Last Mission.
Tomorrow we will have an opportunity to clinch the AL West while wearing our Space City uniform for the final time. We will retire these uniforms and launch a new City Connect in the 2025 season.
The front page of the hard copy Chron Sports Section today is all about the Texans losing yesterday. Online, the Chron Texans beat writers grade them Fs in every category on yesterday’s loss.
Meanwhile, the Astros are on the verge of reaching the playoffs for the eighth consecutive season. Even though the Chron has Astros coverage on page B5, don’t fall for the BS that H-Town is a football town. That is hype and you know it. H-Town is a baseball town.
Let’s be #Relentless and do it tonight!
Oh, I forgot. Yordan is dinged up and day-to-day.
