God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State (29 page)

Gene Wu, a House member from Houston who was born in China, spoke against the bill, tearfully comparing it to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, America’s first major anti-immigration law. “This topic is painful for me, because I’m an immigrant,” he said. “My parents are immigrants. I represent a district filled with immigrants.” As he spoke, supportive Democrats surrounded him. “Some are here as refugees,” he continued. “Some are here as citizens. Some are here without papers. But they are
all
my people.”

For Wu, the sanctuary cities bill was the natural culmination of the “bigoted, racist mentality” that has emerged in Texas, which he calls the epicenter of the Tea Party. “Trump is simply the most visible manifestation of that mentality,” he told me. “It’s been percolating up in the Republican Party for the past decade.”

Another Democratic lawmaker, Ana Hernandez, of Houston, recalled coming to this country as a child: “I remember the constant fear my family lived with each day, the fear my parents experienced each day, as their two little girls went to school, not knowing if there would be an immigration raid that day.”

Behind the scenes, the Republican and Democratic caucuses met for hours, trying to find a way to dodge Schaefer’s amendment. “The Republicans came to us and said, ‘Some of us are going to have a hard time voting against it,’ ” Wu told me. Knowing that the law would be challenged in court, the Republicans offered to shelve the amendment if the Democrats made some minor concessions. But the Democrats took too long to agree on terms, and the Republicans withdrew the offer.

After sixteen hours of emotional debate, ending at three in the morning, the House passed S.B. 4, with the “show me your papers” amendment. A week later, Governor Abbott signed it into law, on Facebook Live. “Citizens expect law-enforcement officers to enforce the law,” he said. “Citizens deserve lawbreakers to face legal consequences.”

As usual, the legislature passed a sweeping anti-abortion bill, one that bans the safest and most common procedure for second-trimester abortions—dilation and evacuation. The law also requires health-care facilities to bury or cremate aborted fetuses.

In addition, the legislature passed several bills to reform the agencies that oversee abused and endangered children—one of the governor’s priorities. In the first seven months of the state’s 2017 fiscal year, 314 foster children spent two or more nights in hotels or government offices. The new legislation gave raises to the underpaid caseworkers, but also stripped the state of some responsibility for its wards, handing that off to private contractors. Abbott said that Janis Graham Jack, the federal judge who ruled that Texas’s foster-care system violated children’s rights, should dismiss the case, because the new legislation “completely transforms the system in ways that will make it better.” Abbott said that he expected that the state foster-care agencies would achieve “No. 1 ranking status in the United States of America.” Child-welfare advocates worried that private groups might not have the expertise to take over case-management duties, particularly when dealing with troubled children.

The feral hog abatement program passed, despite Jonathan Stickland’s opposition. And a new law allows hunting wild pigs from hot-air balloons. Texans could already shoot the pigs from helicopters, using actual machine guns, but balloons are more sporting. And who knew it was ever against the law to shoot pigs from balloons?

Speaker Straus continued to sideline the bathroom bill in the House. He remained certain that most of his members didn’t really favor the measure, though they also didn’t want to be seen as opposing it. He repeatedly called on the governor to stand with him. Until this session, Abbott had been known more as a business conservative, like Straus, than a cultural conservative, like Patrick, but he showed little interest in choosing sides. He was bound to lose favor in either case. Finally, Abbott blandly stated that he favored a bill “to protect privacy in bathrooms.” He signaled that a bill then headed for a committee hearing in the House, H.B. 2899, was a “thoughtful proposal.” It would not mandate bathroom use based on one’s biological sex at birth, but it would overturn local antidiscrimination ordinances.

On May 21, the House began to debate the measure. Once again, hours of anguished testimony ensued. Half a dozen female members wandered into the men’s bathroom just off the House floor. “We’re feeling like making trouble today,” one of the women, Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat from Austin, told reporters. “It’s that kind of mood.”

I wondered whether minds are ever actually changed in these kinds of hearings. This legislative session had already endured many late nights, even on this subject. The people had the opportunity to make themselves heard; that’s their fundamental democratic right. By an outsized margin, they spoke against the bathroom bill. Among the many affecting facts that lawmakers had to consider was the vulnerability of the transgender population, which is already bullied and stigmatized. A study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law in 2014 found that more than 40 percent of transgender individuals attempt suicide, more than twice the rate among gay and bisexual adults, and nearly ten times higher than the U.S. average.

Shortly before dawn, the House committee members retired without a vote, effectively killing the measure. At the last minute, several members scrambled to sign on as cosponsors for a dead bill, the most desirable outcome imaginable.

There were still eight days left in the session.

Hotze has hosted a show on the talk-radio station that Patrick now owns in Houston. He has even released a couple of songs—or perhaps they should be called lamentations—such as “God Fearing Texans Stop Obamacare”:

“He is the LeBron James of hating on gays,” Evan Smith, the CEO of the
Texas Tribune,
told me. “He’s the MVP every year. There is no close second.”

In 2014, when Dan Patrick first ran for lieutenant governor, Hotze became one of his chief fundraisers. In a video endorsement, he stands next to Patrick and says, “Dan Patrick’s leadership will keep Texas the most conservative state in the country.”

In the video, Patrick makes it clear what the stakes are in his election. “The Democrats understand that if they can take Texas, they’ll never have a Republican in the White House again,” he says. “They will control the country. There’s not another Texas to move to, folks. This is it.”

In 2015, Hotze became involved in defeating an antidiscrimination ordinance in Houston that was championed by the city’s lesbian mayor, Annise Parker. Hotze passed out bumper stickers saying “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms,” the same formulation that Patrick and his colleagues would apply to S.B. 6, which they styled “The Women’s Privacy Act.”

Hotze runs a political action committee called Conservative Republicans of Texas, and he maintains that group’s website. “There are Texas legislators,” Hotze wrote on the site in May 2017, “who would allow perverted men and boys, who sexually fantasize that they are women, to enter women’s and girls’ bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms.” He implored his readers to pray with him:

Meanwhile, Hotze was campaigning to have Straus removed as Speaker.