Filed under: this isn’t your father’s Republican Party.
Texans take pride in their land.
That’s presumably why U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said on February 12,“Private property owners should not have to worry about the federal government coming in and taking away their land.”
The Senator was talking not about the now infamous border wall but about an unrelated piece of legislation that protects Texas landowners along a stretch of the Red River. He was explicitly on the side of property owners.
But two weeks later Cornyn supported President Trump’s use of emergency powers to build a border wall, which would take away land from hundreds of Texans along the border.
At best, the senator is squishy in his dancing around a clear “yes’ or “no” on the wall itself. At worst, he’s a hypocrite when it comes to land rights.
In recent months, landowners along the border have received surprise letters from the Trump Administration, telling them “the Government has an immediate need to enter your property” to begin building the wall. Some of that land in is Mission, Tex. owned by the Cavazos family made up of Vietnam War veteran and someone who uses a wheelchair.
“They and the rest of their family are concerned about access to their land, which has been in their family for generations, and now the government wants to take it from them to build a border wall,” says the Texas Civil Rights Project. TCRP is providing legal representation to the family.
In 2017, Gov. Greg Abbott wrote in the Austin American-Statesman that “…we rightly rail against overreach by the federal government — like the previous administration’s attempt to take away rights from Texas landowners by regulating ponds and ditches on private land…”
Democrats agree the border must be secured, as do a large majority of Texans. That’s why the Democratic House voted to give billions to Trump for border security. But progressives won’t take away land from the very people they represent.
A Democratic Senator from Colorado made the case for farmers and ranchers better than anyone.
If there’s one thing all Texans probably agree on, it’s the freedom to own land as a home or to do business. It makes Texas Texas.
Or it used to.
