Texas Governor Gregg Abbott: Creating Crises as a Political Strategy

Texas has received considerable attention lately for experiencing back-to-back crises – the energy crisis that resulted over 50 deaths and significant damage to the state’s infrastructure;  a second crisis that is creating mass confusion among Texans by lifting the mask mandate; and a third crisis by falsely claiming that the recent surge of migrants at the Texas border will accelerate the spread of COVID-19 into in the future.  Interestingly, what these “crises” have in common is that they have been generated as a direct consequence of Gov. Abbott’s poor leadership.  Let’s review the facts.

The Energy Crisis: In the case of the recent energy crisis, it is the general consensus of energy experts that the breakdown of the state’s energy providers resulted directly from the state’s inaction to require energy system providers to winterize their equipment in preparation for extreme weather conditions. Pat Wood, a former chair of Texas’ Public Utility Commission testified Thursday at a Senate hearing that the misery suffered last month as blackouts left millions of Texans freezing in the dark for days could have been averted — if the state and its utilities had heeded a decade of advice to prepare for extreme weather.[1]. Federal regulators warned state lawmakers a decade ago that Texas needed to weatherize its power plants and grid.  In fact, in its 2020/2021 Winter Reliability Assessment, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) warned of:  

“…the potential for extreme generation resource outages in ERCOT due to severe weather in winter and summer, and the potential need for grid operators to employ operating mitigations or energy emergency alerts to meet peak demand.”

While most of the members of the Public Utilities Commission have resigned, they were appointed by Gov. Abbott. Rather than accept some responsibility for the crisis, However, Gov. Abbott opted to shift blame to the renewable energy sector, which was widely disputed by energy experts.

The COVID-19 Mask Mandate Crisis:  On March 2, 2021 Gov. Abbott announced that the state mandate requiring masks was lifted, thus increasing the capacity of all businesses and facilities in the state to 100 percent. The announcement was met with considerable rejection by the medical community and created considerable confusion among Texas residents and business establishments. 

In Gov. Abbott’s judgment, Texans had made sufficient progress in terms of recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations, and safe practices related to COVID-19 that justified relaxing the mask requirement.  However, recent statistics by Johns Hopkins University  [2] show that Texas has one of the lowest vaccination rates at 9 percent and a high vaccine positivity rate of 13.4 percent.  In addition, the Texas Department of Health reported that Hispanic mortalities from COVID-19 were four times higher than the rate for whites, while Black mortality rates were twice as high as the rate of whites. [3]    In a surprise action, Gov. Abbott also threatened to block the distribution of vaccines allocated to Dallas County because local public officials were planning to target vaccines to the more vulnerable Black and Latino zip codes. [4]  Gov. Abbott’s indifference to these mounting mortalities has created a second crisis for Texas Latinos and Blacks who already experienced greater exposure to COVID-19 due to their jobs, housing arrangements, and limited access to vaccination sites.  

In anticipation of criticism that the lifting of the mask mandate would lead to increases in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and mortalities, Gov. Abbott addressed this dilemma by creating a third crisis by falsely claiming that the surge of migrants at the Texas border would lead to a rise in the spread of COVID-19. 

Migrant Surge Crisis: Gov. Abbott recently accused the Biden administration of callously releasing sick migrants into Texas and increasing the spread of the virus.  As Gov. Abbott commented on a conservative talk radio program recently: “We’ve got our own challenge with COVID-19….only to be challenged with the influx of people coming in from the border who could be increasing the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration must stop this illegal immigration program they’ve opened.”  [5]

In response to Gov. Abbott’s new “crisis,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki countered that Gov. Abbott was trying to deflect attention from the catastrophic power outages that left many Texans freezing for several days and resulted in many deaths.  Psaki also pointed out that Abbott has refused federal funds that Texas, local governments and nonprofits could use to test all migrants for the virus. Several public officials in South Texas confirmed that migrants entering the U.S. through their border were routinely quarantined and tested for COVID-19 prior to entry and release. 

Historically, the flow of migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. has been a challenge to several past administrations and is not a new phenomenon. During the Trump administration, many asylum seekers were denied entry into the U.S. and forced to wait in Mexico during the application process for asylum. Also, the Trump administration closed many of the organizations that had the responsibility of matching migrant children with families in the U.S. Consequently, what appears as a recent “surge” includes thousands of families that were denied entry into the U.S. by the policies of the Trump administration.   

In creating the fictitious crisis of immigrants spreading COVID-19, Gov. Abbott is following the Trump playbook for the “immigration and crime crisis” that was effective in convincing nearly half of Americans that immigrants make crime worse. However, studies addressing this issue in Texas [6] and throughout the U.S. have confirmed that immigrants commit fewer crimes, on average, than native-born Americans [7,8]. Figure 1 below shows the results of a large-scale analysis relating violent crime rates and growth of the immigrant population in 200 U.S. metropolitan areas.

Figure 1: Immigrant Population and Violent Crime by U.S. Metro Areas 

Note: Study analyzed violent crime rates and immigration levels in 200 U.S. metropolitan areas

Following are the conclusions reached by the study investigators who represented four universities:

“In 136 metro areas, almost 70 percent of those studied, the immigrant population increased between 1980 and 2016 while crime stayed stable or fell. The number of areas where crime and immigration both increased was much lower — 54 areas, slightly more than a quarter of the total. The 10 places with the largest increases in immigrants

Clearly, fabricating a crisis to generate hysteria can be politically beneficial to public officials, especially during a time when many Americans readily embrace the various distortions of reality promoted routinely by public officials.  Ethically speaking, however, the voting public deserves to know the truth and reject the hysteria that often accompanies political campaigns.

Gov. Abbott, it is time for you to show some courage and accept responsibility for your poor judgment in these areas.   Your administration presided over the decisions regarding the energy crisis that led to the deaths of many Texans and caused significant damage to the state’s infrastructure. Your administration blocked the allocation of vaccines to vulnerable Black and Latino communities in Dallas County. And your administration lifted the mask mandate despite objections by medical experts, an action that is likely to increase the mortality rates of Texas Blacks and Latinos.   

In planning for the Texas gubernatorial race that begins in 2022, let’s hope that voters will remember the series of “crises” that Gov. Abbott has manufactured to shift attention away from his failure in leadership.  

Reference Notes

[1] Gillman, T.J. and Thompson, E. (2021, March 11). U.S. Senate hearing focuses on Texas’ overdue need for grid upgrades after Arctic blast triggered blackouts.  The Dallas Morning News, Accessed at: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/03/11/after-texas-blackouts-senate-probes-need-to-prepare-grid-for-extreme-weather/?outputType=amp 

[2] John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center,  Accessed at: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/texas

[3] Morris, A. (2021, February 2).  Report highlights disparities. The Dallas Morning News,   https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-dallas-morning-news/20210202/281522228766766

[4]  Krause, K. and Morris, A. (2021, February 21). Texas officials cut number of COVID-19 shots for Dallas residents, county says. The Dallas Morning News, Accessed at:  https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/02/20/texas-officials-cut-number-of-covid-19-shots-for-dallas-county-residents/

[5]  Gillman, T. J. (2021, March 3). Abbott-Biden tilt continues. The Dallas Morning News, Washington Bureau, Accessed at https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?artguid=80998d0b-9ca9-4aa4-b5d6-6bb7a9150f6b&appid=3565

[6] Nowraster, A. (2018, February 26). Criminal immigrants in Texas.  The CATO Institute, Accessed at: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/irpb-4-updated.pdf

[7] Kurbin, C., Ousey, G.C., Reid, L., and Adelman, R. (2017, February 11).   Does immigration lead to more crime?  Not according to data. Newsweek, Accessed at:  https://sports.yahoo.com/news/does-immigration-lead-more-crime-101002691.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGmvQhce8atAQZLKo9yOU-zQP_Hj8rmKABZIl8UeaEeGDftMTccfpJLMG1Qgv_nhl4B6beW7ihnkKrzJhS-EcxKS6wILtLXj7HUH1c1-iUz50sZvS8yASNWwOuL0siZgRcRN1gBtFNR1nIgPZPOg9p5XH_bedrESZSlfcsgIYAgU

[8]  Flagg, A. (2018, March 30). The myth of the criminal immigrant. The Marshall Project. Accessed at:  https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/03/30/the-myth-of-the-criminal-immigrant