HOUSTON (AP) — Thirteen people dead in two mass shootings. Eight immigrants killed when an SUV slams into a crowded bus stop. The likely approval of legislation that would let the Republican governor overturn elections in the most populous county, a Democratic stronghold. All in the past two weeks.
These issues and the forces behind them — anger and guns, immigration turmoil, deep political divisions about what democracy means — are playing out across American life in various ways. But in Texas, with its immense size and a population that grows by more than 1,000 people a day, the stage is far bigger — and often louder.
It’s enough to make even the proudest Texan wrestle with how he sees the state.
“This is out of control right now,” said Jay Leeson, an illustrator and cartoonist who lives in Lubbock, a city in the Texas High Plains. He describes himself as a “conservative West Texan” whose kids “know how to handle guns, know how to ride horses, know how to do all the Texas things.”
The “Texas things.” Texans have heard this all before. They’ve been hearing it for generations. That everyone is armed. That it’s a wildly conservative place full of oil roughnecks and cowboys and brash braggarts. That it’s nothing like the rest of the country, really.