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May 2, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
19:58
Texas Tyranny: Governor Declares War On Town Over Gaza Resolution

Texas Governor Gregg "Lockdown" Abbott is furious that the town of San Marcos will be voting on a resolution that calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and seeks to have its $4 million portion of tax dollars sent to Israel redirected back to domestic needs in town. Abbott has called such a move "antisemitic" and is vowing to cancel all state contracts with the city.

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Texas's Dark Side 00:02:12
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is out today, so I'm going to take you through a little Texas story.
Tell you a little tale about Texas.
Texas is my adopted state.
I moved here a little over 10 years ago, and I love the state of Texas.
I love the people that I've met in Texas, the nicest people you'd ever want to know.
I love Brazoria County, where I live.
It's a lot of great people.
It's always been Ron Paul country.
But there is a darker side to Texas, and a lot of that comes from the top.
Now, if you've watched the show for a number of years, you would know that back in the dark years between 20 and 21, in the midst of COVID tyranny, we had a governor by the name of Greg Abbott who decided to shut down the state.
Yeah, he flipped out and he freaked out, and he told everyone to shut their businesses and go home.
Now, millions of people lost their income, thousands of businesses closed, they've never recovered.
And then he told people they've got to put a mask on their face, wherever they are.
And that resulted in all the little Hitlers of the state, all the little Karens of the state, getting weaponized and being able to harass and yell at people, kick them out of stores, kick them out of restaurants, shut things down.
Well, it didn't do a thing to stop this virus, if that's what it was.
But it sure concentrated a lot of power in the hands of a guy called Greg Abbott, the Texas governor.
By the way, he also tried to shut down churches.
Most churches complied.
Mine didn't, thankfully.
Nevertheless, this is the mentality of the person who sits in the governor's office, a very totalitarian mentality.
Now, of course, when the coast was clear politically, Greg Abbott flung off his stay-at-home orders and flung off his you must-wear mask orders and flung off his get-shot orders and then coast played as a great defender of liberty.
I ended the lockdowns in Texas.
Yeah, but you started them and they shouldn't have been started, you dummy.
Resolution Debate 00:15:11
So anyway, that's Greg Abbott.
Now there's an interesting little chapter that happened recently that Greg Abbott also was very, very strongly tied to foreign government.
And there's no question about that.
A little brouha ha developed over the last few days, which is a little town called San Marcos near Austin.
Used to be in Dr. Paul's district, by the way, back in the old days when we had almost reaching out to Austin.
San Marcos, my guess is, I don't know the town extremely well, maybe a little bit liberal of being closer to Austin.
Nevertheless, they were looking at passing a city council resolution calling for, probably as sense of Congress, like we used to do in the House, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
They're probably concerned about the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps as most human beings should, especially Christians, in my opinion.
Nevertheless, when Greg Abbott got wind of this little resolution, he declared war on San Marcos, Texas.
He flipped out yet again, and he's ready to go to war.
Put up that first clip.
Now, Blue Apples writes often on Zero Hedge.
Always excellent insights.
I suspect this pseudonymous writer is in Texas due to the detail in this article, and I recommend it to anyone who would like to look into the article.
Very, very detailed.
So here's what happened.
Reg Abba got wind of San Marcos deviating from his desired norm, and he decided to vow to withhold state funding for its opposition to Israel.
Blue Apples begins, since Israel began its war in the Gaza Strip following the attacks of October 7th, 2023, the political consequences have continued to reverberate throughout the world.
Now, let's go on to the exact play-by-play of what happened.
Go to that next clip, and this will give you a little bit of detail as to what happened.
During the April 15th, San Marcos City Council meeting, so a couple of weeks ago, an agenda item dedicated to, quote, a possible resolution calling for the immediate and permanent ceasefire in occupied Palestine, end quote, took center stage during public comments.
A proposed resolution elicited an immersive discussion between proponents and opponents of the measure, calling for the city of San Marcos to take an official position against the war in Gaza in a manner that embodied the American ethos rooted in the principles of freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.
Now, to that point, I would say that is probably how it should be.
Proponents and opponents of this measure in the city of San Marcos, duking it out, rhetorically speaking, should we get involved in this?
And I think there could be a very good argument made both ways.
None of our business could be one, or B, we may have an obligation as human beings to speak out.
So, so far so good.
This is what the First Amendment is all about.
And then Blue Apples goes on to say, keep that up, please.
However, the response from the state of Texas proved to be antithetical to that embodiment of America, as Governor Greg Abbott's office quickly condemned the proposed resolution.
In response to the City Council of San Marcos decision to schedule an official vote on the resolution at its next meeting on May 6th, by the way, that's coming up in a few days, Governor Abbott indicated that the adoption of such a measure would be a violation of Texas law, which would lead to the termination of all active state grants in the city and the withholding of any future state funding, i.e., taxation without representation.
You still got to pay those property taxes, San Marcos.
You still got to pay all that money to Austin, but they're not going to give you a penny back.
Speaking of pennies, here's another part of the puzzle in San Marcos.
Fascinating.
Now, Mel on X, who I happen to know, actually, I was on a show that she was on, that she hosts, she has this interesting post on X.
She said, San Marcos, Texas, a city of just 70,000 people, identified that its residents were sending $4.4 million, million tax dollars to Israel each year.
So the city council drafted a resolution calling for the reallocation of those funds toward domestic priorities.
So now Greg Agnov is threatening to cut off the city from all future state contracts if it adopts this resolution.
Now, obviously, this isn't creative kind of math.
My guess is, I don't know the formula they were using, but my guess is they calculated the amount of federal tax money that goes to back up the state of Israel, buy its weapons, pay for its economy, pay for its free medical care and free college and university, what have you.
They identified that portion that the 70,000 residents of San Marcos would have spent.
I don't know the formula again.
And they said, well, hey, we kind of like that money back.
We don't like what it's going to overseas.
We'd probably rather spend it over here in San Marcos.
Well, the governor didn't take to that very kindly.
In fact, again, he was furious.
And here's what he posted on X in response to San Marcos saying, hey, can we please have our money back?
We don't want it going over there.
Put the next one up.
Here is what Greg Abbott said.
Anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies.
Now, that doesn't make sense.
I have no idea what that means.
Texas and Israel are two separate entities.
Now, he may personally feel that.
That's fine.
Maybe he's geographically confused.
Nevertheless, here he goes.
Anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies.
I sent a letter to the city of San Marcos today condemning its proposed anti-Semitic resolution, openly flouting Texas state law.
Texas will not tolerate anti-Semitism.
Now, if you look at the resolution and you look at the intent of what the San Marcos resolution was, there's absolutely no way that a sentient person would conclude that what San Marcos was doing with this, whether you agree with it or not, whether you think they should tiptoe into international politics or not, nobody would look at this resolution and say this is anti-Semitic Semitic.
There was no condemnation of Jewish people or the Jewish religion or faith or the Palestinian who are also considered Semites.
No, there was nothing anti-Semitic in it.
It just simply said, we don't want to do business with the state of Israel.
And that is where Greg Abbott wrote this long letter conflating criticism of the secular state of Israel with people who hate other people based on the content of the color of their skin or their religion or what have you.
So here's what he said.
Here's what Abbott said.
If you go to this, it's from the letter that he sent to San Marcos threatening them.
Now, this is the law, and I'm not going to get too much into detail about this, but this is a law that he has passed in Texas, by the way.
And I should point out that Texas is one of 38 U.S. states to enact laws that forbid any entity that does business with the state to be involved in any kind of boycott or divestment policy with regard to Israel.
Not any other country, just that country.
So nevertheless, there is that law here in Texas.
And so the governor said, in Texas, no governmental entity may enter into a contract worth $100,000 or more unless it includes a written verification that the contracting entity does not boycott Israel and will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract.
That seems odd, whether or not you think boycotting another country is a wise or foolish idea.
It could be a stupid economic idea.
There could be a lot of business opportunities available in Israel.
But nevertheless, you can actually just keep that up.
I know it's a long time, but I want to just move on this a little bit more.
So there are arguments either way, but nevertheless, this only one single country you cannot boycott into business with the state.
Now here is Abbott.
Here's his explanation of why he is so furious with San Marcos.
The proposed resolution, i.e. the San Marcos City Council resolution, seems calculated to violate this law by calling for San Marcos to limit its commercial relations with Israel.
Specifically, the resolution identifies $4.4 million that came from San Marcos residents taxes that was sent to Israel.
It then calls for the reallocation of such local funds away from Israel's military and toward essential domestic priorities.
Now, I think there's probably, I'm just going to do an aside here, I think there probably is a majority of Americans, probably a vast majority of Americans, who would prefer to see foreign aid returned to help our cities and our roads and our infrastructure.
So I don't think that's necessarily controversial.
So Abbott continues.
It is difficult to believe that a city so carefully accounting for every dollar, now that's sarcasm right there.
So carefully accounting for every dollar flowing to Israel and determined to reallocate those funds in a self-described embargo on our ally is at the same time requiring written verification from its contracting partners that they will not boycott Israel.
So essentially he's accusing San Marcos of flouting the law because he can't believe that if they're so meticulous in figuring out how much money is going to a foreign country, that they are taking care of not doing business with any company or entity that doesn't do business with Israel.
So now go to the next one.
This is back to blue apples here with a good explanation if we can.
This is goes back to the Texas government code 808.
Abbott's office predicated its position on existing Texas law prohibiting measures to boycott, divest, or sanction the anti-BDS legislation prohibits state agency.
We've gone over that now.
And this is, if you go to the next one, though, this is getting a little bit into the weeds.
But the Texas law is really about international trade partners.
What Abbott is doing here is he is making U.S. citizens views on BDS actionable.
He's threatening U.S. citizens with this.
And now here is APAC Tracker.
If you go to the next one, now they do track how much money Texas puts out, its share of the money that goes to Israel.
And it's significant.
Texas pays $1.405 billion in federal tax dollars for Israel's weapons, but could instead fund now the things that they wanted to fund, we may not necessarily disagree with free rent for people, student loans, what have you.
Nevertheless, that's a significant amount of money.
And I think it's obviously a legitimate reason for people to say, well, we don't want this to happen.
A, we're morally opposed to what's happening in Gaza.
I think it's very difficult to not be at this point morally imposed unless you have blinders on.
Or you're just fiscally like, I don't care, but I don't want to send that money over here.
I'd rather have it in my pocket.
I just got my property tax bill.
Let me tell you, it's among the highest in the nation.
I could be living large somewhere for what they say my house is worth.
Trust me, it's not worth what they say.
Anyway, so Abbott's gotten into trouble with his obsession with this small country in the Middle East before.
And that's when he was trying to crack down on universities.
He wanted them to prohibit speech that he didn't like.
And he got smacked down.
If you go to that next one, this is the Middle East memo that reported on this.
This was last year, I think it was.
Texas judge enforcing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism limits speech.
Now, the IHRA, many of you are familiar with it.
This is the International Holocaust.
I forget the last two letters, but you know what I'm talking about.
It is the definition that even the individual who drafted it said this should not be used as a legal definition.
It's sort of a draft definition, but essentially what it does is it conflates criticism of the state of Israel with hatred of a people.
And he says this is not accurate.
Nevertheless, that's what Abbott exactly tried to do.
So he's been smacked down by a judge already for trying to do this.
Now go to that next.
I'm not going to read the whole thing.
I know you're probably tired of me reading this, but this is what happened last few months ago.
And just leave that up for a second.
A federal court in Texas ruled this week that restrictions imposed by Texas public universities on anti-Israel speech violate the First Amendment.
The case, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston et al. versus Greg Abbott et al., involves student organizations who argue that Texas Governor Abbott's executive order, known as GA 44, stifles their ability to engage in constitutionally protected criticism of Israel on campus.
Now, of course it does.
It's obvious.
Now this goes into a little bit of the, here it is, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
The order issued by Abbott in March of 2024, so just over a year ago, was framed as a measure against rising anti-Semitism in Texas universities.
It mandates higher university education institutions in Texas to update their free speech policies.
Now, whenever you see update your free speech policies, that's like when they want you to upgrade your computer.
You know it's going to end up worse when you're done.
So update their policies to include a specific definition of anti-Semitism, incorporating the controversial, highly controversial IHRA definition.
Seven of the 11 examples cited in that definition conflate criticism with Israel with anti-Jewish racism.
It's widely criticized for having a chilling effect on free speech.
And here's what I was saying, including by its founder, Kenneth Stern.
So there you have it.
Even Kenneth Stern, who drafted this, thinks it's not appropriate.
So what's the bottom line?
Allowed Love, Forbidden Tyranny 00:02:26
The Texas governor has his own hobby horse that he's riding on this.
He loves the state of Israel.
That's fine.
You're allowed to love the state of Israel, but you're also allowed to not love the state of Israel.
And if we're going to have free speech, as Dr. Paul says, we don't have it to talk about the weather.
And the interesting thing about when Governor Abbott posted that on X, he was ratioed big time, including some people who you would recognize, some fairly prominent people, and some people who are saying, you know, as I would say, as ugly as anti-Semitism even is, actual anti-Semitism, not San Marcos saying, hey, can we have our money back?
No, actual anti-Semitism.
As ugly and disgusting as that may be, under the First Amendment, people have a right to be ugly and disgusting.
And the only way, this is maybe even becoming cliché, the only way if we're going to address ugly speech and ugly thoughts is to have debates.
Because when you suppress it, like Abbott is doing, you're basically subsidizing it.
You're going to get more of it.
And that's what we're seeing in the United States.
That's the backlash we're seeing in the United States, the attacks on TikTok and elsewhere.
They're attempting to subsume these thoughts to police speech, but only with regard to one entity.
And that's forcing, causing, leading people to say, well, what's going on with that?
That doesn't seem right because people have a natural sense that something is wrong.
Just like when Abbott shut down our churches.
Why is he doing that?
That doesn't make any sense.
There's something wrong with shutting these things down.
I would say if you actually hate anti-Semitism or any kind of racism of any type, you want more speech because you want people to not be hiding within the cracks, spreading the virus of hate, but you want people talking it out.
And preferably like we saw with the San Marcos City Hall, where they had a city council meeting.
Some were opposed, some were in favor, and they talked it out.
Now, if Abbott had his way, he would have his jackboots in marching in there and arrest all of the city council members, I'm sure, who were speaking in favor of this.
It's not the way it works, folks.
It's not the way freedom works.
It's not always neat and clean, but it's certainly preferable to the tyranny that people like Greg Abbott hold in their hearts.
So I want to thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report today.
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