How Texas erodes human rights, free expression and civil freedoms - a report by San Antonio

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While concerns about the future of American democracy are dominated by titles worldwide, millions of Texas are already watching a rapid decline in democratic standards.

In December 2024, the Prosecutor General of Texas Ken Paxon filed a lawsuit against a doctor in New York to prescribe medicines that cause abortions of a woman in Colin County, Texas, claiming that the shipment violated the almost total ban on Texas for abortion.

Two months earlier, Paxon’s cabinet brought a federal rule to protect the medical records for women outside the state from a criminal investigation. And in 2022, she sued the Biden administration regarding federal guidance requiring doctors to have abortions in emergencies.

Paxton lawsuits – along with the state’s abortion restrictive policies – raise anxious issues about the individual confidentiality and bodily autonomy of women in Texas, where I live and teach. And they are indicative of a wider problem. As my research on democracy and human rights shows, the state government is becoming more and more antidemocratic.

Scientists have been investigating a number of factors to determine the health of democracy. The elections must be free and fair. There must be freedom of expression and faith, many competitive political parties and minimal corruption. The Democratic Government must also respect individual freedom.

I believe many of these indicators that Texas is not enough.

Are Texas elections free and fair?

Texas has some of the most restrictive laws for voting in the United States, including strict voter identification laws, strict mail restrictions and lack of newsletters, and there is no online registration of voters.

Republicans who have accepted each of these policies claim that their concern is democratic – election integrity. However, when lieutenant Dan Patrick offered a $ 25,000 award to anyone who can prove fraud with election voters in 2020, this led to only one arrest.

However, the Texas legislation promised to adopt an even more restrictive vote bill in 2021, citing the “cleanliness of the urn”, an old phrase of Jim Crowe. Democratic MPs eventually escape from the state to paralyze the State Assembly and to maintain the most relevant parts of the bill to cross.

Healthy democracies also have a stable competition between multiple parties so that voters have a real choice of ballot box.

But since its current constitution was written in 1876, Texas is effectively a one -party state governed by conservatives. No Democrat has won a state office since 1994 – the longest Democrats are locked outside the country in any country.

Money in politics

Texas does not place restrictions on the individual contribution of the governor’s campaign, one of only 12 US countries that lack this general measure to combat corruption.

This was allowed to have the current manager of Texas Greg Abbot, who has been in his post since 2015, to raise huge sums of money. In the race for governor in 2022 – the most expensive in the history of the country of $ 212 million – Abbot is ahead of his democratic opponent with nearly $ 50 million. In 2018, he had 90 times more money on his hand than his democratic opponent.

The lack of effective rules for financing Campaign in Texas gave access to large donors to power in the form of governor appointments.

The in-depth investigation from the Texas Tribune in 2022 revealed that 27 of the 41 members of the governor of the governor Covid-19 were donors to campaigns that collectively paid $ 6 million to re-elevate the governor. Many of them were business owners who were interested in reopening the state.

Expression

Texas is also at the center of the national struggle for academic freedom, a key component of free expression.

Texas passed a law in 2023, requiring public universities to close their diversity, justice and inclusion, or DEI, offices, depriving the most vulnerable students of resources such as scholarships, mental health programs and career workshops.

The Texas Senate is considering expanding this legislation in order to ban the “DEI curriculum and the content of the course”.

It seems that the threat seems to be a pressing freedom of thought and intellectual research at Texas universities. The University of North Texas in November began editing the course titles and curricula for removing identity -based topics.

On January 14, Abbot has threatened to fire the President of Texas University A&M – part of my university system – if the faculty is present at an academic conference showing the work of black, Latin American and local scientists.

Human rights on the border

ABBOTT’s campaign to control the US -Mexico border has sparked concerns among human rights groups regarding civil rights in the country.

In March 2021, Abbot declared a state of emergency in the border of the Texas, which allows him to deploy the National Guard of Texas there. The initiative, the Operation Lone Star, had to stop migrants from crossing the border outside the official government checkpoints.

However, since the implementation of borders is federal power, however, troops mainly impose state laws on drug disturbance and possession of drugs and weapons. The Guards also participated in the movement of migrants in cities ruled by Democrats, such as New York and Chicago, and built razor barriers in Rio Grande.

The result is a $ 11 billion police station program, which is largely aimed at Latin American citizens – not immigrants. Completely 96% of those arrested on charges in violation are Latin American, and 75% of those faced with court proceedings and other crimes as a result of a single star operation are US citizens.

Freedoms of women

Finally, the right of women to bodily autonomy is threatened in Texas, who has one of the most resistant abortion laws in the country.

At least three women have died as a result of the fact that doctors are afraid to treat their abortions. In general, the mother’s mortality rate has increased by 56%since the ban was imposed in 2021. The terrible statistics have not stopped the state’s plans from tightening its ban.

The Legislative Session of Texas in 2025 began with Republican legislators who have suggested several bills aimed at terminating abortions through postal services, including one that would reclassify common abortion pills such as controlled substances such as Valium or Ambien. Doctors warn that this pre -classification can also make it difficult to quickly spread these drugs in life -threatening emergencies.

And a handful of rural Texas counties has made illegal transportation of women looking for abortions outside the country on their roads.

Just as the Texas goes and the nation?

The question of whether the government is democratically often is not black or white. It should be viewed in a sliding scale.

Freedom House, a non-partisan international guardian of democracy, ranks countries by 100 points based on the factors I mentioned earlier, among others, and label the countries as “free”, “partially free” and “not free”.

The largest country in 2024, Finland, had a result of 100. The United States slid on the ranking, getting a score of 83 in 2024 – down from 94 in 2010. It is still solid in the “free” category, but the American Democracy looks less like Germany and more to Romania. Changes in anti -democratic policy made in Texas and a handful of other countries contribute to this slide.

Freedom House does not rank the countries, but if that happens, Texas will probably still appreciate as a “free” democracy. There is room for disagreement, opposition and freedom of expression. Democratic politicians have random political victories.

But Texas is definitely less democratic than the United States as a whole. Democracy is not lost here, but I am afraid that Texas is in danger of becoming only “partly free”.

This article was reissued by the Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How Texas erodes human rights, free expression and civil freedoms – a report by San Antonio

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By james art

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