Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed lawsuits against five cities – Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, Denton and Elgin – ordinances that aim to eliminate enforcement of low-level marijuana possession offenses.
Paxton alleges the cities’ actions violate state law and the Texas constitution. The lawsuits ask the courts to declare the ordinances void and order the cities to fully enforce state drug laws.
The ordinances were passed after being approved by voters in local ballot propositions. They prohibit police from making arrests or issuing citations for misdemeanor marijuana possession in most cases.
However, Paxton argues the Texas Local Government Code forbids cities from adopting policies not to fully enforce drug laws. He also says the ordinances violate a section of the Texas Constitution stating that city ordinances cannot conflict with state law.
Texas thinks it gets to ignore the federal government, so why should the cities listen to the state government?
Exactly, someone should make shirts with a bud that says come and take it.
I mean if a atf agent walked into any legal state they can make all the arrests they want to my knowledge at least if I’m wrong please correct me
You may not have seen the recent drama with Texas refusing to allow the feds to patrol the border.
Despite Abbott’s treasonous mewling, they aren’t preventing the Feds from cutting down razor wire & that was all the SCotUS judgement declared.
Yes they are
I haven’t seen that reporting, and that is counter to Beau of the 5th Column’s reporting. Please provide a link.
Ah yes, the very credible random YouTube video: Excellent choice of source!
Just gonna point out that at least he provided sum sort of substantiation for his claims, which is more than most do. Even if you don’t agree with the viability of the reporting of the source, and I admit you might have a point as I did not watch the video, but he did provide something. You want to counter him, counter him. Tearing down someone’s source is an invalid argument, it doesn’t illustrate that you are correct, only that, in your opinion, they are wrong. Those two things are not the same.
what a huge waste of taxpayer money
Yep, and the lawsuits are as well.
This is so fucking weird. Weed is a no-brainer win, even among conservatives. Why double/triple/quadruple down on this stupid policy
What’s more important than appealing to voters for conservatives? Control.
So … it’s okay for Texas to ignore SCOTUS about federal border patrol and razor wire, but it’s not okay for subsections of Texas to ignore Texas law, got it.
Yes, exactly. Republicans see no problem with this.
Thank god we fixed the energy infrastructure and solved the border crisis in a humane way so now we can move on to what’s really important. /s
Gotta keep that jazz cabbage off the streets or baby Jesus will cry.
Shouldn’t Paxton be in jail right now…🤔🤔
He should. And then corruption happened, and he got away with it.
Reminding everyone that a record number of democrats crossed the aisle to acquit him on the biggest smoking gun issue they could have impeached him with. Every progressive in Texas should know their names and remember them when it’s time to vote.
You can read all about it here, and article 4 is the smoking gun: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/16/ken-paxton-impeachment-vote/
What a cool party of freedom and personal responsibility
Ah yes. The criminal Ken Paxton always fighting the good fight! Thanks Ken for again showing how out of touch you are with the modern world.
Something that’s really important to understand about Republicans in Texas is they believe in small government so long as it’s their government. In theory, city and county governments should supersede state policy in the same way state policy should supersede federal policy per their defenses. However, that only works so long as city and county policy are in lockstep with state policy. Travis County and Austin almost always have some suit coming from Paxton. All of their was made super evident during 2020 COVID when the state wanted cities to decide things unless you were in Bexar (San Antonio), Travis (Austin), and a few others because those counties took COVID seriously based on their data. Here’s an early escalation where Paxton makes it very clear that the only authority cities have comes from the state executive.
Can’t let the disproportionately-PoC, vote-stripped, prison slave population drop after all.
OK, but here’s what I don’t get. I understand the whole prison-industrial complex thing, but Texas is run by straight up fascists. They’d always be able to come up with something else to put people in prison for. Why weed particularly?
The cynical-but-statistically-true answer is that this law targets the people that they want to put in jail / don’t want to vote. It’s a historical, systemically racist piece of law that benefits the incumbents and status quo.
Otherwise they’d have to consider putting people like themselves in prison, or prosecute white collar crime, and that just won’t stand for the GOP.
Also the historically accurate answer according to the men in the room!
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
But joe rogan said Texas was a paradise!
Texas is the shithole country Donald Trump was talking about back in the day, he just didn’t know it.
The real crime is this bullshit when trying to opt out of the fucking cookies…
Seriously someone save some of that razor wire for this idiot. He’s finally going to have his day in court come April 🙏
