Texas Republican Party Chairman Allen West would leave his position in some days to concentrate on his state gubernatorial campaign. Nevertheless, Texas Tribune journalist James Barragán reported that West set off a bit of drama in the state Republican Party recently.
A former Florida Congress member, West was chosen as the Texas party chairman last year. Barragán noted that, as the chairman, West staked out positions that were in conflict with Texas Governor Greg Abbot.
If one competes in the election to be in a statewide position, how could they be the political party’s chairman and nonpartisan at the same time? It is not conceivable, so Barragán noted that a few of the county-level parties are upset about the same.
As for Abbot, he put GOP priorities in the most prominent position leading up to the US election season. Abbot’s recent decision of staffing a prison in Texas as a new jail for US immigrants is in a broader political strategy to discourage unauthorized immigration. Nevertheless, Barragán said that no one presently occupies the Briscoe Unit, the prison where Governor Abbot plans on detaining immigrants on charges of criminal trespass.
There are 150 employees in the prison, but it does not have a usual prison/jail population. This means nobody has been arrested and sent to the facility yet.
Barragán said that the move initiates considerations about the resource allocation process for understaffed prisons and jails in Texas.
In other news, federal judge Xavier Rodriguez recently found the US federal government mostly accountable for the Sutherland Springs church shooting from four years ago. The USAF should have disclosed that it terminated the shooter Devin Patrick Kelley for bad conduct, and that Kelley had a domestic violence-related charge. As for Barragán, the above-mentioned would have made Kelley unable to get a firearm.
