Copyright The Austin Chronicle
Congratulations to the 89th Texas Legislature: You passed a whole passel of ultra-right-wing laws inside these hallowed halls that will haunt the citizens of Texas for years to come. These laws divide communities, demonize our neighbors, and trample on our rights, our bodily autonomy, and diversity of opinion. Well done, you! As a way to commemorate your many accomplishments, we’ve constructed a Halloween mask. (We know how much you like masks! Especially when they’re worn by secret police who like to round up people based on their skin color. Oops, did U.S. citizens get picked up in the dragnet by accident? Ain’t that just the price of freedom!) You’ll need to make a few modifications for your mask to be wearable this holiday. But that’s OK, we know you’re willing to put the work in. After all, if at first you don’t succeed, reconvene for a couple more special sessions to really screw your constituents. 1) First things first, grab some scissors and cut out some eyeholes. After all, you needed your peepers to see where the communities of color were so you could carve ’em up and make sure they weren’t going to be represented by anybody, you know, actually representative of them. Gotta get Donnie those five extra Republican seats he demanded for the midterms. Because if you can’t win fair, who here in Texas is gonna stop you from cheating? (Speaking of cheaters: You’re going to want to shut those eyes tight now to the irony of insisting that the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms across the state when your own party leaders have trouble keeping it zipped. Grade schoolers may not know what adultery is, but our AG and the prez sure do.) 2) Time to cut out a mouth hole now. That’s so you can better sneer at your colleagues across the aisle for that quorum-breaking stunt – you remember, when the Dems had the audacity to argue that pushing forward a racist redistricting map while search-and-rescue missions for flood victims were still ongoing wasn’t what the Lege should be prioritizing. Well, you sure showed them – tying financial penalties to any future quorum shenanigans is a terrific way to silence dissent and definitely won’t come back to bite ya in the buttinski should Republicans ever lose the majority. 3) You may notice that this mask is a skull, and skeletons famously have no working larynxes. That’s by design: You did such an excellent job suppressing free speech this session, we wanted to pay homage to it. In particular, we’re so pleased with the work you’ve done at the University of Texas, stripping away the voices of its students and faculty, driving away talent, discouraging intellectual curiosity and diverse perspectives, and handing more power to the Board of Regents, many of whom, in an incredible coinkidink, just happen to be Abbott donors. If the goal was to chisel away at UT’s reputation as a first-rate institution of learning, you couldn’t have done a better job, and we bet U.S. News & World Report’s next college rankings will reflect that hard work! 4) One of the great things about this mask is that it leaves your hands free to do other things, like ripping books off of library shelves. Or use them to plug your fingers in your ears. That way you can shut out medical professionals and whatever remains of your shriveled humanity to deny trans and intersex people the right to exist. (But since they’re too convenient to use as a punching bag and catchall boogeyman, be sure to use your mouth hole to keep talking about them all the damn time.) Also to be tuned out: queer kids and their allies who want to support each other in afterschool clubs, especially considering how Texas is a leader in hate crimes against the LGBTQIA community. (Good news – you banned exactly that kind of club!) And small-business owners who want commonsense regulation of the cannabis industry. (Your strategy here – spend months refining regulation, only to ban THC altogether, get it vetoed, call a second session do-over, then whiff at the finish line – incredible stuff.) 5) Poke holes in the ears, and tie a string through the holes. We know you love tying strings to things, like that $8.5 billion you’re sending to public schools (which we all know isn’t even enough to keep up with inflation), while tasty new school vouchers are gonna pull money back away from public education – $1 billion (for now) to bankroll sending kids (even the wealthy ones!) to private schools. 6) One final feature of your new mask we want to draw your attention to. At any time, you can swivel it around your head so the front is now the back. We think you’ll appreciate the two-facedness – it’s very much your brand! Like that time back in 2019 when Abbott signed free speech protections into law, but turns out the wrong kind of free speech was getting protected, so y’all cleaned that up. And how you talk a big game about local rule and backing blue, but force local cops to partner with ICE, eroding trust in local police and guaranteeing racial profiling. Or how all y’all swore an oath to the U.S. and Texas constitutions, both of which prohibit favoring one religion over another, then advanced one Christian nationalist bill after another. Or how you claim to believe in free and fair elections, then voted to give the power to unilaterally prosecute supposed election-related crimes to the AG – a guy who famously swore up and down that the 2020 election was stolen from his buddy Trump. And, sure, you made a bare-minimum exception to the state’s near-total abortion ban to allow doctors more leeway to provide life-saving abortions, but then you incentivized private citizens to sue anybody who provides abortion pills – a doctor, a mail-order company, a pregnant person’s friends or family – and sweetened the pot if they’re related to the fetus. That means Uncle Ned can get $100,000 for ratting out his sister who ordered abortion pills for her teen daughter. Building back the patriarchy one bill at a time! 7) Now take a bow. It’s been an honor to use this space to celebrate so many wins, and on newsprint that by next week will be lining gerbil cages. Given how much the Texas GOP shit on its constituents this past legislative session, a fitting end, indeed. Editor’s note: To all the legislators, on both sides of the aisle, who have bravely entered The House of Haunted Bills in a genuine attempt to improve the lives of Texans… Keep up the good fight. This article appears in October 31 • 2025.
