San Antonio Express-News Editorial Writer/Columnist. Editing anthology of black Texas writers which will be published through the Wittliff Collections.
I’m a native Texan who loves his state but must question its character if it’s now defined by the character reflected in the moral rot of Trump; the moral emptiness of Abbott; and the moral obtuseness of Paxton.
1. Texas, where you better not infringe on my freedom to not wear a mask and infect your kid with COVID but I can sue a woman I don't know if she tries to exercise her reproductive rights. If you have a problem with that I'm carrying guns for which I have no license or training.
@GregAbbott_TX
So a jury of ordinary, everyday Texans are wrong? When was the last time you spoke out so quickly to defend someone found guilty of a crime?
Are you also saying that things can go horribly wrong when it’s legal to walk around with an AK-47?
Gregg Popovich took the podium for the
@votolatino
#StandWithUvalde
community gathering. He started out by talking about how these deadly massacres happen in Texas, but nothing gets done. Popovich said they are out of line because they haven’t done anything.
There's a scenario where
@BetoORourke
can lose and still pull
@CollierForTexas
and
@RochelleMGarza
to victory. But I said, before Uvalde, that he'd win and I still believe it. The electoral impact of Uvalde and Dobbs can't be gauged by polls. The polls are missing a lot.
If May 24 is drifting from your attention, let this picture from Amerie’s mother refocus you. Look at Irma Garcia teaching, look at the children, their names on the whiteboard. Their faces, profiles, and names are so familiar to you. Remember what you can’t forget. Room 112.
@JarrettStepman
@hill_charlotte
First tweet: "My parents, who live in California, just received my voting ballot."
Second tweet: "The actual ballot is soon to come as it said inside."
@TonyGonzales4TX
@SecMayorkas
Congressman, this is an incredibly divisive response from someone claiming to be seeking unity. You represent Uvalde but you don't get to speak for Uvalde and decide who is or isn't welcome there. What audience is this tweet playing to and what does it do to comfort anyone?
No consideration for the people in that truck, no compassion given for the lives lost, no condolences to their families. You couldn't scrape up a meager serving of thoughts and prayers from your barren cupboard of a heart before feeding the glutton of your political ambition.
At Least 42 People Found Dead Inside Truck Carrying Migrants In Texas.
These deaths are on Biden.
They are a result of his deadly open border policies.
They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.
Four months ago, tonight, in Uvalde, the families of 19 children and two teachers were in the first hours of an unending pain and an irreparable heartbreak.
In that time, nothing has been or is planned on being done to save other families from the same pain and broken hearts.
We're going to, eventually, hear the 9-1-1 calls which means there are parents who are going to hear their children's frightened voices calling for help, begging for the police to come.
When 19 children have been shot to death beyond recognition it’s good to see a politician not follow the stale script of dispassionate platitudes and, instead, express heartfelt passion. At least Beto gives a damn!
@jomalleydillon
"Joe, how ya doing? This is Donald. I couldn't help notice you have $432 million in the bank. You may or may not know that I've got to pay back $421 million in loans within the next four years and was wondering...."
The First (Black, Latino, Woman, Asian-American, etc.) for any position or achievement wasn't the first members of their groups to be qualified or worthy.
They were just the first to be recognized and given a chance.
When you’re more outraged about what
@BetoORourke
said after 23 people were murdered in El Paso in 2019 or about what he did after 21 people, 19 of them children, were slaughtered yesterday, question your priorities.
Took me 19 years to pay off $24,000 of student loans. Paid every dime, myself, and still remember the joy of writing out the last check to the law firm which had my account because it had gone into default. I'd feel happy, not cheated, if all student loans are forgiven.
My paternal grandparents, in 1954 or 1955, at The Keyhole Club on Poplar Street. I never saw this before yesterday. Looking like Black Hollywood in San Antonio.
Thanks to the Texas Legislature, partisan poll watchers can carry guns, for which they need not have training or a license, to closely monitor elections for which they need not have training or knowledge of elections law. Ain’t nothin’ gonna go wrong, y’all.
I’m just a boy, standing at 4th and Broadway, looking at the City of San Antonio, and asking it to love me enough to give me a safe walking path so I won’t have to dodge traffic in the street.
For Halloween, I was going to go dressed as Critical Race Theory so I could scare the likes of
@GregAbbott_TX
and
@DanPatrick
but what’s the use? It’s clear they wouldn’t know what CRT is if it walked up to their front door.
That the families of the Uvalde shooting victims, nearly seven weeks later, must march and protest to demand answers about what happened is a searing indictment on
@GregAbbott_TX
, DPS, the DA, and every state and local official denying them what they deserve and need.
In one boss move, Judge Wolff made the governor back off and got H-E-B to quickly agree to return to making masks mandatory in their stores.
Gov. Greg Abbott won't fight Bexar County move to require masks in San Antonio area businesses
School districts across Texas are, essentially, beginning a civil disobedience campaign against
@GregAbbott_TX
to protect children. The more he objects, the more foolish and irrelevant he becomes.
Last night,
@AustinISD
announced it will REQUIRE masks for all people when school begins next week. This directly defies the governor’s exec order that says schools can’t require masks. As of now, Dallas ISD and AISD have defied the order
He’s cute, photogenic and 4. No one-White or Black-is afraid or suspicious of him. But what about when he’s 17? Or 29? We can’t always be there to protect them so we must create a world so that 17-year-old Black boys don’t inspire suspicion only because they are Black.
Biden’s vaccine mandate is an assault on private businesses.
I issued an Executive Order protecting Texans’ right to choose whether they get the COVID vaccine & added it to the special session agenda.
Texas is already working to halt this power grab.
Welcome to Austin,
@Spurs
! They’ve brought five championships to Central Texas and have been integral to the fabric of our region— on and off the court.
Great that the
#I35Series
has brought Spurs basketball to their loyal fans here in Austin.
#GoSpursGo
These both ran on Sundays on the opEd page of the Express-News on Jan. 16 but 39 years apart. The one on top, advocating for an MLK Holiday, ran in 1983 when I was a student at St. Mary’s and was the first thing I ever had published.
The other was published today.
Pictures like this should never stop breaking our hearts until there are no more pieces left to break and we, like these beautiful children, are no longer here.
Today was Mikai’s first outing to the OP HEB where he was giving a brief tutorial on “I’m Your Boogie Man” by KC and the Sunshine Band” and why Al Green is one of the four or five greatest Americans of all time. Thanks to Mario, the store’s great manager, for taking the photo.
6 am volleyball practice for 8th grade girls is God’s way of saying that since you’re up and about you should go to the gym. I misunderstood and went to Jim’s.
The awful calendar coincidence that Thanksgiving falls six months after Uvalde. To all the families, most of us will never know what you're experiencing and the millions of words we offer you can never do what we want them to do. But we see you. We hear you. We're with you.
6 months since our world was shattered, and I’m supposed to “celebrate the holidays.” How do you celebrate when your devastated. How do you give thanks, when you have nothing left to give. How do you fake it and smile when you wake up crying.
I hate this.
The same Republican legislators in Texas who do nothing but offer thoughts and prayers after mass shootings don’t depend upon only thoughts and prayers for the nonexistent “problems” of critical race theory and drag shows. For those, they offer legislative action.
TrumpWorld Playbook on Police:
1. Black and Brown people criticize the police: "BACK THE BLUE!"
2. Mostly white Trump supporters assault the Capitol and the policemen: verbally attack the officers for a year.
3. FBI search Mar-a-Lago: Demonize law enforcement.
4. Lock up Hillary.
When you're criticizing Matthew McConaughey because he's a "Hollywood star" speaking out against weapons which killed 21 people, including 19 children, in his hometown, you know that your soul was so disgusted that it left you.
It's going to take the anguished chorus of the 21 families to shame into transparency every public official facilitating this coverup. That. Should. Not. Be. On. Them. They shouldn't be forced into demanding answers and accountability which should have already been given.
For more than an hour, police never tried to open a door to the rooms where a gunman massacred 21 people at Robb Elementary, a source tells me.
The gunman could not have locked it from the inside. The doors can only be locked or unlocked from outside.
Never in the history of mass shootings in this nation's history has the response from officials been so obtuse, arrogant, cruel, and infuriating. Mr. Cross will attend his nephew's funeral on Saturday and he's kicked out of an "investigation" meeting today?
Brett Cross, uncle of Uziyah Garcia, 1 of 19 students killed at Robb Elementary School on May 24, speaks after being told, along with the media, to leave Uvalde City Hall on the 3rd day of a Texas House committee’s investigation in Uvalde. Cross wants answers.
@ExpressNews
The people most offended by “Critical Race Theory” had never, before 2021, ever used the words “critical” “race” and “theory” together and can’t define it because for them, it’s anything that makes them feel uncomfortable about racism and the legacy of slavery.
Kevin McCarthy has been rejected for the speakership 11 times by his own party. At this point he should accept “no” for an answer so that the House of Representatives can elect a Speaker and get on with serving the American people.
So, do you accept individual responsibility for the rise in COVID-19 cases because you reopened the state too early and didn't make wearing masks mandatory?
1/2 Don’t put up today with pearl-clutching trolls who are enthralled with a profanity-spewing former President but have the vapors because Beto aimed an exquisitely indignant “MF” at an Abbott supporter laughing as he talked about the Uvalde shooting.
One of the candidates is calm, measured, and assured in his answers while the other is nervous, talking fast, and deflecting. Beto's connecting with jabs and combinations while Abbott's flailing. Also hitting Abbott with punches are Abbott's soundbites.
One of the many things I’m proud about my cousin is that he used his retirement speech from the Navy, last Friday, to say that “the greatest threat to our nation is misinformation, racism, antisemitism, and anti-science thinking.”
I deleted an earlier tweet because It was in response to what I thought was another “Austin has better tacos” take. But the wise man was saying just the opposite. My error. I shouldn’t tweet before morning’s 1st taco- of which the best are in San Antonio.
@pamelacolloff
@tina_nguyen
From the first time I saw it, I could see that he wasn't running in panic. He seemed to have a plan and would turn around every now and then to make sure they backed off and they didn't seem eager to mess with him.Truly a heroic and brilliant move.
I went in, planning to write the last story that will be filed from the Express-News building. Just as a lark. But then I saw my friend, the great Tom Orsborn, who’s been at the paper since 1983, writing to a 5 pm deadline.
Fascinating that, this year, San Antonio has two Rhodes Scholars and both are young Black women. One is Black and Korean and the other is a Black Latina.
Two San Antonians among 32 Americans named this year as Rhodes Scholars via
@expressnews
How the hell does
@GregAbbott_TX
write a piece like this, a line like this, and not acknowledge Texas' biggest, most tragic story of 2022?
"Texans deserve to feel safe in their communities."
Abbott: Texas is building the future for all via
@expressnews
Willie Nelson is 88, a music legend and ubiquitous Texas treasure for decades. He supported Jesse Jackson's and Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. Folk just now figuring out his politics?
On this day in 1994... David Robinson scored a career-high and Spurs franchise-record 71 points to clinch the scoring title in the last game of the season!
#NBA75
#NBA
This bill which
@JohnCornyn
and
@tedcruz
voted for today is the same one they voted against last week.
Senate passes PACT Act, latest effort in yearslong fight to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits via
@usatoday
108 of 115 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, chosen over 45 presidencies, have been White men. ONE President-not even the BLACK one-vows to nominate ONE Black woman for the first time and some of you lose your mofo-ing minds. You telling on yourselves.
1/2 There may not be another American politician so lacking in self-awareness; a Harvard-educated United States Senator whose wife is an investment manager for Goldman Sachs and who lives in River Oaks, calling people with who he disagrees elites.
The most unifying, uplifting, and unanimously approved televised event we've had in this country in years was marveling and loving Tracy Chapman at the Grammys.
And with much respect to Luke Combs for his talent as well as his understanding and respect for what was happening.
You cannot look at this photo in the incredibly moving
@ExpressNews
story by
@nancypjohnson
and
@SamOwensphoto
with the two teachers and the children they tried to protect and not cry...again.
Tomorrow, at the
@ExpressNews
, will be our first day back in a newsroom since March 2020 and I have no memory of how one goes about getting prepared the night before or what I'm supposed to do when I get out of bed in the morning.
2. Oh yeah, and during elections, I'll be poll watching and keeping an eye on you to make sure y'all don't steal another election from us freedom-loving patriots.
Until there is accountability for the failures of May 24, how can any state-wide elected official in Texas and member of the Congressional delegation, knowing what the families are enduring, not acknowledge Uvalde, daily, in any of their, otherwise, self-promoting tweets?
I live five blocks from the Alamodome and there has never been an event generating this much traffic and parking along these streets like tonight’s Elton John concert.
There's really no way anyone could have foreseen this as a possibility.
2 passengers test positive for COVID on first North American cruise since pandemic started
David Robinson and the Voting Rights Act were born on Aug. 6, 1965. Happy 57th Birthday to both. Fortunately, David remans in great health. The same cannot be said for the VRA which has been gutted by lesser men and women then Presidents, Kings, and Admirals.
Not long after my father died, in Nov. 2016, I arrived home to find a package at my door. It was a flag which had flown over the state Capitol and came from the office of
@RepLyleLarson
. I’d only met Lyle twice and no member of my family ever lived in his district. He's class.
Hold the Uvalde families a little closer in ur hearts tonight.
“I’m so scared”: 911 recordings reveal fear and urgency of those trapped in Uvalde elementary school
utm_campaign=trib-social-buttons&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social via
@TexasTribune
From the police interview of Daniel Perry, the man convicted of murder whom Gov. Greg Abbott now wants to pardon.
"I didn't want to give him a chance to aim at me, ya know?"
In an increasingly armed society, when do you get to shoot gun-carrying people and call it self-defense?