Vice President Kamala Harris calls on Texans to protect reproductive and voting rights during Austin visit

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Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday known as Texas’ abortion ban “immoral” and urged Texans to guard reproductive rights when contemplating their decisions within the upcoming November elections.

“A democracy can be as sturdy as our willingness to struggle for it,” she mentioned throughout a dialogue on reproductive rights on the LBJ Presidential Library on the College of Texas at Austin campus, a part of a daylong journey that ended with an look at a downtown fundraiser for Texas Democrats.

Whereas Harris careworn the significance of voting not just for a governor and legal professional common who help reproductive rights, she additionally famous native elections had been additionally essential, particularly in relation to selecting a prosecutor. District attorneys will now need to resolve whether or not to prosecute Texas docs and well being care employees in the event that they carry out an abortion not meant to avoid wasting the lifetime of the pregnant affected person.

Performing an abortion in Texas is now a felony punishable by as much as life in jail. The brand new state legislation, which has solely slim exceptions to avoid wasting the lifetime of a pregnant affected person, went into impact in August, two months after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade. The legislation has compelled Texans to hunt abortions in different states.

“It’s going to matter who your county prosecutor is when you reside in a spot the place there’s a state legislation that has criminalized docs and nurses and well being care suppliers,” Harris mentioned.

Harris mentioned that the U.S. Division of Justice is working with state attorneys common to make sure Individuals have a proper to journey however “not the one in Texas,” she mentioned, referring to Texas Legal professional Common Ken Paxton.

On the fundraiser, Harris endorsed Beto O’Rourke for governor and highlighted for the viewers among the Biden administration’s achievements: distributing pandemic reduction, passing the Inflation Discount Act, which caps drug costs for Medicare recipients, together with passing a hefty infrastructure invoice alongside and making historic strides to handle the local weather change disaster.

However she additionally spent loads of her handle discussing the U.S. Supreme Courtroom choice this summer time within the Dobbs v. Jackson case, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

“America Supreme Courtroom simply took a constitutional proper that had been acknowledged from the folks of America, from the ladies of America,” Harris mentioned. “Whereas extremists — so-called leaders — trumpet the rhetoric of freedom, they assault the very foundations of freedom.”

She blamed Texas’ elected GOP leaders for eradicating girls’s freedoms, calling them “those passing legal guidelines making it tough for folks within the states to vote.”

Harris added: “A kind of folks is the governor of this very state.” Even earlier than the Dobbs choice, she mentioned, Gov. Greg Abbott and different leaders handed among the “most radical, most anti-women legal guidelines within the nation.”

Harris warned that overturning Roe was only a first step for Republicans.

“The place do we predict that is heading?” Harris requested the gang. “Justice Clarence Thomas mentioned the quiet half out loud. Contraception is on the road. Marriage equality is on the road. With Republican get together leaders in cost, well being care is on the road.”

One matter noticeably absent from her go to was any point out of immigration.

Shortly after Biden took workplace, he assigned Harris the accountability of immigration. In June 2021 Harris she traveled to Guatemala and Mexico, a visit she mentioned was an effort to deal with the basis causes of unlawful immigration. Just a few weeks after that journey, she visited Border Patrol services in El Paso and met with migrant assist teams, however the vp has not but visited the Rio Grande Valley, the place numerous border apprehensions are taking place.

Predictably, Harris’ go to drew barbs from Texas Republicans, together with Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who’ve criticized the federal authorities’s stance concerning the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Texans have been compelled to bear the results of this Administration’s failure to handle the border disaster, together with the historic variety of unlawful crossings in addition to the tragic rise in migrant deaths, drug smuggling, fentanyl overdoses, and cartel violence,” Cornyn mentioned in a press release on Friday. “Sadly, the Administration’s Border Czar hasn’t seen the epicenter of their self-inflicted disaster firsthand, which has overwhelmed our border communities and legislation enforcement.”

Cornyn’s jab at Harris got here after Cruz, put stress on the Biden administration on immigration, threatening Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas with impeachment for “dereliction of responsibility” on the southern border in a letter to the division Thursday.

Federal immigration brokers have recorded 2.1 million encounters on the Southwest border — a document quantity — within the first 11 months of the fiscal 12 months 2022, which ended on Sept. 30 That’s a 24% enhance from your entire earlier fiscal 12 months 2021. Of these, greater than half occurred on the Texas-Mexico border, the place brokers recorded 1.2 million encounters in the course of the first 11 months of the fiscal 12 months 2022.

One caveat. These numbers embody repeat border crossings by people who made a couple of try. And people repeat crossings have helped drive the variety of encounters larger.

In March 2020, the Trump administration invoked an emergency well being order generally known as Title 42 which immigration brokers have used to immediately flip away many individuals making an attempt to cross the border, again to Mexico, together with asylum seekers, with out having to file expenses and wait on the formal deportation course of.

Immigration brokers document an individual making an attempt to cross greater than as soon as throughout the identical fiscal 12 months as a brand new encounter. The most recent recidivism price accessible exhibits that it’s at 27%, the best it’s been because the fiscal 12 months 2015.

Reporter Uriel Garcia contributed to this story.

Disclosure: LBJ Presidential Library and College of Texas at Austin have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full listing of them right here.