The State of Texas: April 22, 2016

Quote of the Day

“It appears that there’s steaks and meats of some sort flying out the windows, and one of them bounced off my patrol car. That’s not something you think of people stealing, especially running from the police in the process. Today was a new one.”

—East Mountain Police Department patrol sergeant Marc Nichols to KLTV, after apprehending a suspect who fled from a traffic stop. The suspected “beef bandit” reportedly led police on a high-speed chase topping 100 mph, while hurling out the window meaty projectiles which police say he stole from a Longview Walmart.

Daily Roundup

Urban Jungle—“It looked at me, I looked at it, and it came running towards me and jumped on me and just started licking me in the face and playing with me,” Jonathan Gessner told the Conroe Courier. The “it” Gessner is referring to here was a real, live, actual tiger. Gessner apparently came upon the big cat on Thursday while driving through Conroe, a town of about 60,000 north of Houston. He spotted the fearsome feline peering through a bush. Instead of speeding off as most normal humans would do, Gessner, who must have nerves of steel, engaged the animal. “I felt kind of scared, because you never know what’s going to happen… Once it jumped on me and started licking me, it felt cool.” The apparent tiger whisperer alerted the authorities, who are holding the young female cat in custody until her owner comes forward (she was found with a collar and leash). Of course, the owner may never come forward, because Conroe doesn’t let its citizens keep tigers as pets.

Immigration Hub—According to a new Pew Research Center study, Texas now has the second-largest immigrant population in the nation. Texas’s immigrant population of 4.5 million puts it on par with New York, which held the top spot from 1850 to 1970 before California took over in 1980 after an immigration surge from Mexico. California has 10.5 million immigrants. According to the study, which counts both documented and undocumented immigrants, more than half—56 percent—of Texas’s immigrants hail from Mexico. If Governor Greg Abbott had it his way, however, that 4.5 million mark would be a lot lower. On Thursday, according to the Houston Chronicle, Abbott ripped the U.S. Supreme Court, which recently heard oral arguments for a Texas-centered case which may block a number of presidential executive orders aimed at protecting millions of immigrants from deportation. It looks like the high court is split on a decision, and though Abbott said that he still hopes Texas, which is one of the lead plaintiffs, wins the case, he had a few harsh words for the justices: “Now, more than ever the United States Supreme Court has shed its clothing as being guardians of the law,” Abbott said. “The United States Supreme Court is more of a political body than it has ever been in the United States of America.”

Exxxotica Update—Citing “skimpy outfits” and “lewd behavior,” a federal judge upheld the City of Dallas’s ban on a porn convention on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. In February, immediately after Dallas voted to disallow the Exxxotica porn expo from using its city-owned convention center, the porn org sued, claiming the city was unlawfully censuring the convention from using a public forum simply because it opposed the group’s content. But Exxxotica’s attorneys couldn’t convince the federal judge that the convention was actually a public space, or that the city banned them because they disagreed with the explicit exhibits. So for now, there will be no city-sanctioned porn gathering in downtown Dallas. But as the Dallas Observer noted, the legal battle is far from over—the ruling just means the expo won’t happen before the case is fully adjudicated. Writes the Observer: “J Handy, Exxxotica’s founder, said Monday that [the expo] needed to get on the convention center schedule this week if it was to pull off a May convention. That won’t be happening, but the legal fight goes on.”