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Rochelle Garza locked fingers along with her mom and marched by Dallas at a reproductive rights rally this month to let voters know she may lead the combat for abortion care.
“Our moms fought earlier than and received. Now, it’s our flip to proceed the combat and win for OUR daughters and everybody’s entry to abortion care,” Garza wrote to her base on Twitter after the rally.
Reproductive care has at all times been central to Garza’s marketing campaign as she vies to be the Democratic nominee for the Texas lawyer normal race in November. However with the latest leak of a U.S. Supreme Courtroom draft opinion suggesting that the constitutional safety on abortion established in Roe v. Wade may quickly come to an finish, each Garza and Joe Jaworski, her opponent for the Democratic nomination in a Could 24 major runoff, are pitching themselves because the final line of protection for entry to reproductive care in Texas.
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“Actually the final stand for reproductive rights are the lawyer normal of every state,” Garza instructed The Texas Tribune in an interview. “So now greater than ever, having an lawyer normal within the state of Texas goes to be crucial to defending reproductive rights.”
Garza is a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer from Brownsville. Jaworski is the previous mayor of Galveston. Early voting started Monday and ends Friday.
The winner will face the victor of the Republican major runoff within the normal election — both Ken Paxton, the incumbent lawyer normal, or Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. Paxton is the frontrunner in that race, clinching twice as many votes as Bush within the primaries and the assist of former President Donald Trump.
Abortion rights combat offers Garza a leg up
Garza emerged from the crowded March major with 43% of the vote amongst Democratic voters. Jaworski got here in second place with 20%. Garza has since earned the assist of the candidates she beat out, civil rights lawyer Lee Merritt and Michael R. Fields, a former choose in Harris County.
Main runoff elections have traditionally had low voter turnout charges, and amongst those that normally present as much as vote are progressive Democrats who will probably forged ballots for Garza, mentioned Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist College.
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As abortion takes middle stage within the lawyer normal race, political analysts like Jillson say it is a probability for Garza to construct off her current momentum.
“She is the frontrunner and has a number of benefits, a few of which she had earlier than the Roe v. Wade doc leak and a few that she now has on account of it,” Jillson mentioned.
Though they’ve by no means confronted off within the poll, Garza and Paxton have been on reverse sides of an abortion case. Garza made a reputation for herself in 2017 when she sued the Trump administration, searching for entry to an abortion for an undocumented teenager held in detention. After a federal appeals courtroom dominated in Garza’s favor, Paxton filed a short in response, arguing that immigrants haven’t any constitutional proper to abortion. Garza additionally testified in 2018 towards the Supreme Courtroom nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, who dominated towards the case as an appellate courtroom choose.
The teenager was capable of get hold of an abortion whereas the case was being litigated. The case was later dismissed after the federal authorities adopted a brand new coverage below which it could not intrude with immigrant minors’ entry to abortion.
“Having this nuanced understanding of what it takes to construct a case like that and to combat for somebody who the federal government believes will not be highly effective — that’s what I deliver to this race and produce to this place,” Garza mentioned.
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Garza was 9 weeks pregnant when the state’s controversial ban on abortions after about six weeks right into a being pregnant went into impact in September. She was apprehensive on the time about her restricted reproductive well being care choices.
Garza, who balanced her new child daughter in her arms as she spoke to the Tribune, is now arguing she’s the fitting option to defend reproductive rights within the state.
She additionally stands a transparent favourite amongst nationwide and state abortion rights advocacy teams, garnering endorsements from EMILY’s Listing, NARAL Professional-Selection America, Deliberate Parenthood Texas Votes and Avow.
Each Jaworski and Garza have acknowledged they might defend reproductive rights as Texas’ subsequent lawyer normal, who can play a serious position within the combat over abortion legislation in courts. The state’s prime lawyer additionally determines how an abortion ban may be regulated and enforced.
However Jaworski has offered himself as essentially the most skilled candidate. Whereas Garza’s run for lawyer normal will likely be her first political race, Jaworski is a longtime native politician. He served three phrases on the Galveston Metropolis Council and one time period as mayor.
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And whereas Garza’s reproductive rights bona fides stand on her well-known 2017 case, Jaworski factors to his expertise as a trial lawyer for over 31 years. Jaworski has mentioned he would use federal and state courtroom channels to provoke litigation to protect reproductive rights below each the U.S. and the Texas constitutions.
“I’ve really been to courtroom and been first chair on over 250 civil lawsuits, a few of which had large political implications,” Jaworski mentioned. “I actually recognize Ms. Garza, a younger lawyer, to make certain … however that kind of sensible expertise and management will are available in very helpful.”
Going after Paxton
Whoever wins within the runoff, the Democratic nominee will face an uphill battle to beat their Republican opponent. A Democrat has not crammed the seat since 1994.
However Paxton’s critics from each events assume a slew of controversies through the years have made him a susceptible candidate — and that the time is true to problem him. He has been indicted since 2015 on felony securities fraud fees and is below FBI investigation over claims he abused his workplace to assist a rich donor. Paxton has denied all wrongdoing.
An evaluation from the College of Virginia Heart for Politics additionally characterised the lawyer normal race in Texas as probably aggressive if Paxton is the GOP occasion’s nominee.
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Democrats are hopeful that the latest assaults on abortion entry will drive Texans throughout occasion strains to vote blue in November. Most Texas voters assume entry to abortion must be allowed in some type, in keeping with a College of Texas at Austin ballot carried out in April. Amongst Republicans, 24% mentioned abortions ought to by no means be permitted, and 42% mentioned abortions must be allowed solely in instances of rape or incest, or when an individual’s life is at risk. Nearly all of Democratic respondents — 67% — mentioned Texans must be allowed to hunt an abortion as a private selection.
In his two phrases as lawyer normal, Paxton has aggressively fought to limit abortion entry within the state. Paxton fended off challenges to Texas’ abortion ban, which prohibits the medical process after about six weeks right into a being pregnant. He has additionally advocated towards utilizing state funds to cowl abortions and labored to defund Deliberate Parenthood.
“This difficulty will likely be a serious headache for AG Paxton,” Emily Trifone, a spokesperson for nationwide group Democratic Attorneys Basic Affiliation, wrote in a press release. “We’re assured that volunteers and voters are going to work extraordinarily exhausting this yr to beat AG Paxton and his anti-abortion regime.”
Disclosure: Deliberate Parenthood, Southern Methodist College and the 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 record of them right here.
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Texas Rangers rookie outfielder Wyatt Langford appeared on the GBag Nation show on 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) to discuss his recent offensive surge, how he’s adjusting to the big leagues, and what kind of weight he can throw around in the weight room.
Here are some of the highlights, edited lightly for clarity.
What has been the biggest difference since you came off the IL? How eye-opening is it to get accustomed to major league pitching?
Wyatt Langford: I think a lot of it was just comfort, getting comfortable playing up here and getting accustomed to the pitching. Everyone throws hard nowadays, and they all know where to put it too.
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You’ve been very unlucky dealing with bad calls in the strike zone, how do you deal with that frustration?
Langford: It has been a little frustrating because of how frequently it has happened, but I mean it’s part of the game. I feel like I’ve handled it pretty well.
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What are the biggest differences between playing college baseball and playing in the major leagues?
Langford: I’d say the biggest difference is just playing every single day. College, you’re playing three to five days a week at the most. You’re just going about it every single day and getting your body ready to play every day.
Watch: Texas Rangers rookie Wyatt Langford blasts off with first career grand slam
How nice is it having veterans like Marcus Semien and Corey Seager and being able to see their example of dedication?
Langford: It’s been great. There’s so many guys on this team that have a lot of experience, a lot of success playing this game. Being able to talk to them and be around them helps a lot.
What’s the best advice you’ve gotten since getting to the big leagues?
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Langford: I wouldn’t say there’s really any best advice I’ve gotten. I’d say just in general, just make sure you be yourself and do what you need to do to get ready. You don’t don’t need to copy what other guys do to get ready. [Corey Seager] does his thing, [Marcus Semien] does his thing. You just got to figure out what works for you.
You’re very impressive physically, what’s the most impressive thing you could do in a weight room? Back squat?
Langford: I haven’t back squatted since my freshman year of college, so probably deadlift. The most I’ve ever done is 715 pounds over winter break at Florida. I was back home during my sophomore year.
Texas Rangers’ late-inning offensive woes persist, bats go quietly again vs. Brewers
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Bridget Townsend was just getting her start in life as a young woman in the small Texas town of Bandera when Ramiro Gonzales raped and killed her. Her mom says she was ‘a beautiful person.’
Bridget Townsend was planning for the future. The Texas 18-year-old was working full-time at a resort and eagerly waiting to hear back about an application to get into nursing school.
But on Jan. 14, 2001, a man named Ramiro Gonzales stole all that away and all the other moments and milestones that make up a life when he kidnapped, raped and murdered Bridget.
“She was a beautiful person who loved life and loved people,” her mother, Patricia Townsend, told USA TODAY on Saturday. “Every time she was with somebody she hadn’t seen in a while, she had to hug ’em … She didn’t deserve what she got.”
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Now more than 23 years later, Gonzales is set to be executed for the crime in Texas on Wednesday, which would have been Bridget’s 41st birthday. Patricia Townsend said the execution will be a “joyful occasion” for her and her family, who have been waiting so long for justice.
As Gonzales’ execution approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at the tragic crime, who Bridget was what her family lost.
A terrible night
Bridget was at her boyfriend Joe Leal’s house that terrible night.
Leal dealt drugs and Gonzales went to his house to steal cocaine, finding Bridget there alone.
After Gonzales came in and stole some cash, Bridget started to call Leal. That’s when Gonzales overpowered her, tied her up and drove her to his grandfather’s ranch, where he raped and shot her before dumping her body in a field, according to court records.
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When Leal arrived home later that night, Bridget’s truck, purse and keys were their usual spots but he couldn’t find her anywhere and called police.
For nearly two years, no one but Gonzales knew what happened to Bridget. One day while he was serving a life sentence for the rape and kidnapping of another woman, Gonzales decided to confess to killing Bridget, leading authorities to her remains in a field in Bandera, a small town 40 miles northwest of San Antonio.
Gonzales was convicted of Bridget’s murder in September 2006.
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‘Thank God I got to see her’
Patricia Townsend last saw her daughter the same day she was killed. Townsend was working at a video store and had asked Bridget to drop by and return a video.
“Thank God I got to see her. And I told her I loved her. And I hugged her,” Townsend said.
Bridget left soon after, saying she was going to bed because she had to drive to work in the morning. Townsend told her daughter goodbye, reminding her that she loved her.
After Townsend closed the video store and went home for the night, she said she couldn’t shake the feeling that she heard Bridget call out to her: “Mom.” She tried to call Bridget but there was no answer.
“And I said, ‘Well don’t fret, Pat.’ She said she had to get up early and go to work so she’s probably sleeping,” Townsend said. “But I should have known better because always slept with her phone right next to her in case somebody called her.”
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She thought about going to check on Bridget but talked herself out of it.
“And to this day I regret not going out there,” she said. “Maybe I would have been there in time to stop him.”
Patricia Townsend gets worst news of her life
For nearly two years, Townsend spent most of her time putting up flyers about her daughter and chasing leads.
Until one night a Bandera County sheriff asked her to come to the station. Although she had been holding out hope that her daughter was alive despite the odds, she instead got the worst news of her life.
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The sheriff told Townsend that Gonzales had confessed to Bridget’s murder, had led police to her body and that he had some things he was hoping she might be able to identify.
“And I walked on down the street. I couldn’t hear it anymore,” she said.
Towsend says she didn’t even have a body to bury on Oct. 16, 2002 because Gonzales “wanted to see her body decay.”
Townsend rejected arguments from Gonzales that a childhood filled with trauma and neglect helped lead him down a path that ended in her daughter’s murder.
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“He doesn’t deserve mercy,” she said. “And his childhood should not have anything to do with it. I know a lot of people that had a hard childhood … He made his choice.”
It’s Gonzales’ own fault that he no longer has a life.
“He could be going to school or have a wife and kids,” she said. “I don’t feel sorry for him at all and I don’t want other people to feel sorry for him. Some people I feel sorry for are his grandma and grandpa that raised him.”
What has also brought comfort to Townsend amid the grief is that Gonzales is set to leave the world the same day Bridget came into it.
“When they told me June 26, I started crying, crying and crying,” she said. “That’s her birthday.”
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Instead of celebrating her daughter’s 41st birthday, she’ll drive four hours from her home in San Antonio to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville and watch Gonzales die.
Silvia Hernandez, with her hair pulled back into a long ponytail, is visible from the kitchen only when she comes to the metal-framed pass, where the server grabs plated dishes to run to customers. Her glasses are precariously balanced on the lower bridge of her nose, but she snaps them back into place as she turns to attend to the cooking at her restaurant, Taqueria Gael, in Andrews.
Crossing north five years ago was the easy part of her life’s journey, Hernandez says. Growing up in El Salto, a small, quiet town in the northern Mexican state of Durango, she worked long hours hawking street food and cooking in her parents’ restaurant. She opened her own business, a hot dog cart, as a teenager, and got married at sixteen to a husband who eventually became abusive, she says. Moving to Texas was, Hernandez believed, her way out. Once she arrived in the Permian Basin town of Andrews, she began to work at local food trucks and would feed fellow food truck employees home-cooked meals of sopa de fideo, chicken, and caldo.
One Christmas, she brought the workers a holiday meal of lengua, fries, and soup. It wasn’t much, but the six young men who had no family to spend Christmas with were delighted and thankful. “It’s one of my favorite memories,” Hernandez says. So it’s no surprise that when Hernandez visited Mexico for fifteen days, the workers in Andrews messaged and called her, pleading with her to return. To their relief, she did. Then, a year ago, she opened Taqueria Gael.
Until my recent trip, my experience with tacos in West Texas had been disappointing at best. Tex-Mex in general, and the burrito in particular, was where restaurants in the area shone—that is, until my visit to Taqueria Gael, a bastion of Mexican home cooking that stands alongside the best of Texas’s Mexican restaurants.
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The same goes for the previous business that was located inside the yellow building that houses now Taqueria Gael, near the Andrews Highway. It was called La Morena and was owned by famed curmudgeon Greg Revelez. Back in 2020, the Tex-Mex joint was more of a community hub than a good restaurant. Not that it was bad—the Kitchen Sink Burrito, a smothered package of carnitas, refried beans, fries, and pearls of yellow rice topped with melted cheese and smothered in spicy brown gravy,was one of my favorite dishes of that year. Otherwise, the food was, with all due respect, forgettable. In other words, I didn’t expect such exciting and soothing comida casera (home cooking) in the oil patch town about 45 minutes north of Odessa, much less the matron behind the taqueria.
Taqueria Gael is a symbol of Hernandez’s resilience. Through her food, Hernandez shares with customers the traditions and craft passed down through the generations of women before her as well as through a life of extreme hardships.
Hernandez’s grandmother, Teresa, was a single mother of twelve children. To support her family, the matriarch, who could neither read nor write, sold menudo and other dishes she learned from her elders and passed on to her children and grandchildren. At twelve years old, Hernandez’s mother, Modesta, moved from Durango to Mexico City to work in a hospital. About a decade later, she returned to El Salto to work in Restaurante Anita. It was at the restaurant that she met her future husband. The two were immediately inseparable and married in eight days. To help provide for the growing household, Modesta opened a small restaurant, Comedor Valeria, in the family’s living room. She sold carnitas, chicharrones, gorditas, and, of course, the clan’s specialty, menudo.
Hernandez joined the family business as a teenager when she opened a hot dog cart, which she later expanded to sell carnitas. Soon after, her troubles with her husband started. Hernandez hadn’t known the kind of man he would become: a womanizing and abusive drug addict and alcoholic, as she describes him. She dealt with it as best she could, through work. “I promised myself that my children would never know cold or poverty,” Hernandez says.
Their first child, daughter Valeria, was diagnosed with epilepsy at three months old. To pay for Valeria’s treatment, Hernandez added tamales and buñelos to her street cart’s menu. Her daughter’s epilepsy disappeared at the age of four. Four years after that, Hernandez says her husband raped and impregnated her. She gave birth to a boy, Adrian. “My son is the product of abuse, but he is a blessing. He’s my baby,” Hernandez says with joy and pride in her voice. The young man is now studying information engineering, a field that blends computer science with math. “He is a man in every sense of the word. He is responsible. He is a man of his word. He isn’t lazy, nor does he drink or smoke,” Hernandez says.
In April 1998, Hernandez’s father passed away. At this time, violence was at a disastrously high level in Mexico. Her brother was kidnapped and eventually released. On another day, her husband said he was going to work and never returned. “I was left alone to raise my kids and work harder,” she says. Hernandez continued to add dishes to her cart’s menu. She did whatever she needed to do to provide for her family. She was also once more pregnant. To her anguish, the baby was stillborn.
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As soon as she could, Hernandez began the paperwork for a visa to come to the United States. She knew however hard she worked in Mexico, it wouldn’t be enough to give her children the educations and futures she dreamed they deserved. The only option was to find work north of the Rio Grande. Finally, five years ago, she was able to settle in Andrews, where she eventually opened Taqueria Gael, named after her supportive, caring partner, whom she met while working at various food trucks in Andrews. Love and the gratitude for a better life are evident in every dish.
The tacos she serves are all tacos de guisado wrapped in soft, nixtamalized-corn tortillas that are made in-house. The green picadillo, stewed with tiny potato cubes, translucent chopped onion, and invisible but fiery chiles, was a delight. The asado verde—rough-chopped chicken blanketed in a dark green salsa—was even better and hotter. The asado rojo, plump with pork obscured by an inky red sauce, left me silent. My eyes closed, and I smiled. The barbacoa was a dark bramble peeking out from below freshly grated queso blanco. For the quesadilla, queso blanco is enveloped in a corn tortilla and cooked on the flattop until the cheese melts into a milky, stretchy consistency. It only took one bite for me to feel at home.
The pozole—deep red, almost clay-colored—was a bowl of guajillo chile–punctuated stew bobbing with tender, juicy bits of pork chop. It was a hot day when I visited Taqueria Gael, but as I recalled the voices of many women in my life, I remembered hot days are made for hot food. The small, round, Nutella-filled doughnuts, glazed and shiny in the midday sun coming through one of the restaurant’s windows, were so good. I wanted to eat them all lest I offend Hernandez, who brought them to the table herself. Alas, the stop at Taqueria Gael was one of several I had planned en route to the Panhandle. Otherwise, I would’ve lingered, asked for coffee to wash down the dessert, and likely consumed the whole plate of doughnuts.
The worst of Hernandez’s life is behind her. She has made peace with the past and how it has formed her, thanks to her children and her partner. She welcomes every customer like she’s welcoming her own children to eat. As trite as that sounds, the proof is in the amazing pozole. Eating it, I felt like I belonged in Taqueria Gael, like Hernandez was happy to see me enjoy her food. Hernandez expresses it better: “I have been able to overcome obstacles with food. Everything I cook, everything I do, I do with all my heart and with love.”