As the Russians issued a threat of nuclear war to the United States, Governor Greg Abbott ordered executive state agencies and public universities on Tuesday to quit doing business with companies that have connections to countries he views as threats to national security including the land that Russian Vladimir Putin leads.
Abbott's second executive order in a 22-hour span focuses on the Chinese communists who he targeted on Monday in a decree that forces the Department of Public Safety to crack down on harassment and coercion of people who are in Texas after fleeing China to escape political persecution.
The four-page edict that the governor served up today rehashes the grievances and fears that he articulated in the first decree this week. But the Republican governor's office updated the claims in the follow-up order with information that Capitol Inside reported on Monday including the September arrest of a former gubernatorial aide in New York on espionage-related charges.
Abbott added Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba to the list of countries with which he expects Texas public universities and state agencies that he controls to sever ties. The executive ban on new contracts, extensions or renewals applies to holding companies and subsidiaries and business that a targeted country may control.
The governor used the Tuesday order to end a long silence on a TikTok prohibition that he imposed on agencies and higher education institutions two years ago. Abbott declined to point out in the executive order today that a Pennsylvania billionaire who's the leading TikTok investor emerged as the governor's leading contributor with record largess in the past year.
But Abbott appeared to be biting the hand that feeds when he repeated his assertion that TikTok was run by the People's Republic of China and has been identified by the FBI as a national security concern. Abbott, who supported Donald Trump vigorously in the White House race this year, chose not to mention in today's decree that Trump has vowed to reverse adverse action that Congress took against TikTok after his return to the presidency. The Texas governor has refused to challenge Trump on TikTok or any other issue up to now.
But Abbott's back-to-back orders were dramatically overshadowed on Tuesday amid the most serious threat of nuclear war that the USA has faced since the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s. Elementary school students who were around then remember being herded into cafeterias during bomb drills in places like San Antonio as a result of its large military presence.
Abbott must hope now that Putin doesn't decide to retaliate for the Texas decree that punishes businesses and the communist government in Russia. Texas Republicans haven't been as outspoken against Russia as they were in the recent past due apparently to Trump's close ties to the Russian president.
more to come ...
