Well, pull up a lawn chair and grab a Dr Pepper, because Austin has decided that the best way to handle a workforce shortage and rising insurance premiums is to make it legally impossible for a massive chunk of the population to work or drive. In a stunning display of “if we close our eyes, they’ll disappear,” state officials have bypassed that pesky, slow legislative process to start stripping away everything from commercial driver’s licenses to the right to fix an air conditioner. Because nothing says “Texas is Open for Business” like telling 1.7 million people they can’t legally buy a car or get a job as a dog breeder.
Governor Abbott and Ken Paxton, apparently bored with the usual lawsuits, are now playing a high-stakes game of “Administrative Whack-a-Mole.” When bills to hike tuition or kill work permits failed to pass the actual Legislature, they just whispered in the ears of their hand-picked agency boards. Now, if you’re a DACA recipient who’s lived here since you were in diapers, the state has decided you’re suddenly a threat to “Western Civilization” and shouldn’t be allowed to have a cosmetology license. Better hope your hair doesn’t need cutting anytime soon, because the list of people allowed to touch it is getting shorter than the lines at a Lubbock DMV.
The logic here is truly top-tier: Representative Brian Harrison claims undocumented drivers are making roads dangerous and driving up insurance, so the solution is to… prevent them from registering cars or getting insurance. Genius. Now, instead of people driving registered vehicles with paper trails, we’ll have more people driving unregistered, uninsured “ghost cars” just to get to their now-illegal jobs. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton—let’s see if it makes our premiums go down or just makes every fender bender on 19th Street a legal nightmare.
Not content with just ruining the commute, they’re also coming for the classroom. Having already thrown a wrench into in-state tuition for thousands of students, the GOP is now eyeing a 40-year-old Supreme Court ruling that says kids actually have to be allowed to go to school. Apparently, the “pro-life” and “family values” platform now includes ensuring that if you weren’t born on the right side of an imaginary line, you should probably just sit in a dark room until you’re old enough to be deported.
Is there anything more “Lubbock” than a policy that manages to screw over small businesses, increase the number of uninsured drivers on the Loop, and create a massive labor shortage all in the name of “protecting” us?
