Samuel Case, FISM News
Over the weekend, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Operation Lone Star, a law enforcement effort intended to “combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas.” The effort combines the forces of the Texas Department of Public Safety with the National Guard and will make use of air, ground, marine, and border security resources.
Today Texas launched Operation Lone Star to respond to the border crisis.
It deploys Nat'l Guard + DPS Officers + air, ground, marine, & tactical border security assets to deny Mexican Cartels & smugglers the ability to move drugs & people into Texas.https://t.co/r68J2laDpH
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 7, 2021
The Governor said the United States faces a “crisis at our southern border” made worse by the Biden Administration’s lax border security polices.
Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.
Meanwhile, the Governor is also taking aim at censorship at the hands of big tech companies like Twitter and Facebook. In a press conference Abbott pushed Texas Senator Bryan Hughes’ legislation, Senate Bill 12 (2B 12), which allows for state residents to sue social media companies who have been de-platformed for their political views.
I joined @SenBryanHughes to announce a bill that would prevent social media companies like Twitter & Facebook from censoring conservative speech & beliefs.
Silencing conservative views is un-American, it's un-Texan and it's about to be illegal in Texas.https://t.co/JsPam2XyqD
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 6, 2021
Abbott chastened social media companies who are “acting as judge and jury on determining what viewpoints are valid” and said censorship is antithetical to the founding ideals of free speech.
America was built on freedom of speech and healthy public debate, and efforts to silence conservative viewpoints on social media are wrong and weaken public discourse. I thank Senator Hughes for offering SB 12 to help protect Texans from being wrongfully censored on social media for voicing their political or religious viewpoints.
In his CPAC speech, Donald Trump called on states to fight back against online censorship. Trump urged Republican-run states to punish Twitter, Google, and Facebook “with major sanctions whenever they silence conservative voices.” Aptly YouTube, owned by Google, has scrubbed the speech from the site. Florida is pursuing similar legislation to combat social media censorship.