Austin, Texas 78762 Official website of the senior U.S. See, for example, the semantic chasm between the text and photo in this tweet: Had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Birx on my flight back from Texas on Air Force 2. John Cornyn III (born February 2, 1952) is an American politician and attorney serving as the senior United States Senator for Texas since 2002. 517 Hart Senate Office Bldg. One of Texas’ Biggest Nursing Home Operators Beset By COVID-19 Cases and Deaths, How Katharine Hayhoe Stays Hopeful as the Planet Warms, Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma, Why a Texas Gun Control Activist is Optimistic About the Chances for Reform. Less than two weeks later, a 21-year-old North Texas man now facing dozens of charges for hate crimes and murder allegedly opened fire in an El Paso Walmart, killing 23.
Gus Bova writes about the Texas-Mexico border, immigration, labor, politics, and occasionally other topics. He condemned the shooter’s “twisted vision” and went to the city to donate blood.
Find Office Locations. Cornyn also previously served as Chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee from 2007 to 2011. Also, why would any non-fascist politician share a Benito Mussolini quote entirely devoid of context? What good are intentions in a world of alienated mass communications—which is to say, might not the road to hell be paved with retweets that “=/=” endorsements? Cornyn has struck a decidedly mixed tone on the coronavirus crisis, alternating between erroneous soothsaying and responsible admonitions. Months later, unemployed Texans are still struggling to get—and keep—their benefits. Drop us a Line! Here’s What Is at Stake in Texas. Box #6421 Pursuant to Senate Policy, petitions, opinion polls and unsolicited mass electronic communications cannot be initiated by this office for the 60-day period immediately before the date of a primary or general election.Subscribers currently receiving electronic communications from this office who wish to unsubscribe may do so here. Gaze upon his snow-white hair and long, sober visage and you’ll know it to be true. At the time, the White House had just declared COVID-19 a national emergency and the country was rocketing past 2,000 confirmed cases of the disease. But this time, he struck a nerve, leading thousands to accuse him of racist fearmongering. (512) 477-0746. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @gusbova, Remembering a Jewish Upbringing in Meyerland, Texas, Erika Andiola Says Dreamers Know How to Push Biden, The Racist History Behind El Paso’s XII Travelers Memorial, The Texas Observer 5300 Memorial Drive Suite 980 Houston, TX 77007 Whether it’s fighting for Hurricane Harvey relief, working to strengthen the criminal background check system to ensure convicted felons and domestic abusers cannot illegally purchase a firearm, or his dedication to providing much-needed resources to reduce the backlog of untested rape kits — Senator Cornyn has delivered for all … Senator John Cornyn sat down at a black laminate table, laced his fingers around the neck of a cold bottle of Corona Extra, poured half the beer into a lowball glass and thought: Now this will make for a good tweet.
The joke didn’t land. Cornyn’s staff did not respond to an Observer request for comment, nor did the Senator answer questions posed on Twitter. In August 2019, Cornyn appeared to deny the existence of climate change, then cryptically condemned the left for lacking a “sense on [sic] humor.”, The reaction to this tweet proves the left/so-called progressives have zero sense on humor https://t.co/61Pqd5K4CK, — Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) August 17, 2019. Soon after, Twitter users swarmed back to Cornyn’s tweet about Hispanic population growth with renewed fury. He rose from a state district judgeship in San Antonio to the post of Texas Attorney General in 1999, then ascended to the Senate three years later. Later that day, he ventured a muddled clarification calling Hispanics “hard working” and referencing his upbringing in San Antonio, but left the original tweet intact. Senator Cornyn is a strong leader with a proven record of accomplishments. How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment, A New Short-Story Collection Imagines a Texas Town’s Secession, Announcing the 2020 Insider Prize Winners, ‘A Saint From Texas’ Gets the Lone Star State Right, Young Texans Keep Spelling Bees Going From Home, What the Black Lives Matter Protests Mean for East Texas, Lessons on the Long Game from Goose Island’s Whooping Cranes, In a Pandemic, Poor Defendants Could Pay With Their Lives, Eye on Texas: The Broken Wheel Ranch Project, Author Saeed Jones on Empathy, the Power of Memoir, and Growing up Gay in North Texas, Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes.
Protesters in El Paso have focused on toppling the Equestrian, a monument to a racist colonizer. Predictably, the tweet drew thousands of critical responses, including from a celebrity chef, a fellow senator, and political rivals. Tough Decisions Ahead for School Leaders in Rural Texas, ‘Almost Akin to a Political Coup’: Houston Teachers Fight Back Against State Takeover of HISD, The Creature of Martin Creek Lake Won’t Die. To which Cornyn replied: “Chad, much of the time I tweet to provoke thought and discussion, and occasionally to expose hypocrisy. In 2017, while praising Trump’s foreign policy approach, the senator noted: “Unfortunately the president has, I think, created problems for himself by his Twitter habit.” And in 2005, after Cornyn set off a hubbub by seeming to suggest that activist judges were courting violence from the public, he told the Houston Chronicle he’d learned a lesson: “If people can take what you say out of context and use it against you, they will.” It’s clear today, however, that the senator puts little stock in his own advice. Cornyn was cheerfully selling out Texas to his rich backers in the oil and gas industry all those years, pretending to have some (so-called) conservative principles in his role as senior Senator from the great state of Texas. Roderick Hart, a University of Texas at Austin professor specializing in politics and mass media, thinks Cornyn has fallen victim to a generation gap. A retweet does not necessarily mean I agree with it.”. But the story behind the monument goes deeper. A conservative talk radio host named Chad Hasty then answered, noting that Cornyn seemed to have simply clicked the article’s Twitter function, which auto-populates a tweet to share, and the message may not reflect the senator’s own opinion. Then COVID-19 Hit: Marsha Jackson Is Trying to Move Shingle Mountain: Five Months Later, the State’s Unemployment System is Still Broken for Many Texans. Against the background of an unidentified deserted bar or restaurant, foam lingers atop the freshly poured beer, a fat lime wedge perched on the rim, unsqueezed. Marsha Jackson Is Trying to Move Shingle Mountain: The illegal dump is southern Dallas’ most visible environmental justice crisis. He then spent the next couple days tweeting about how asylum-seekers come “with a cost” and saying they use “infants … as a ticket to enter the US.”. But in an era polarized by a vocally racist president, how could Cornyn not predict his tweet’s reception? Which begs the question: Did he agree with the article or not? — Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 29, 2020 In April, Cornyn downplayed the U.S. death toll from COVID-19; since then, total deaths in Texas have increased more than fortyfold. Her leadership on the #coronavirus task force is incredibly valuable and she continues to share the importance of washing your hands, wearing a mask, and social distancing whenever possible. John Cornyn was bad for Texas long before Donald Trump was elected. An original Observer analysis, performed just after lunch on August 10, found that Cornyn had been ratioed on eight of his last 10 tweets, and 68 of his last 100. Unlike many colleagues of his age and rank, Cornyn runs his own account, tweeting or retweeting roughly 30 times a day. In Twitter parlance, a “ratio” is when a tweet garners more replies than it does shares or likes. We will get us through this #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/SyvOAWXItK, — Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) March 14, 2020. Further, what good is it to provoke discussion if the discussion is about what the hell you meant in the first place? That prompted an article-length rebuttal from a science writer and educator. Possessing Boomer-ish habits or sensibilities is no cardinal sin either. Gostaríamos de exibir a descriçãoaqui, mas o site que você está não nos permite. Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S. For the senator, sharing headlines with no comment whatsoever is part of his daily routine (along with sharing sections from articles with no link). Southeast Texas. Washington, DC. “He’s a 68-year old guy trying to sound like a millennial and doing so on a digital platform that knows neither nuance nor subtlety.”. How Long Can You Hide a Dead Body in a Prison Cell? To aid interpretation, the 68-year-old Texan, arguably the country’s second-most powerful senator, captioned the image: “Be smart; don’t panic. Cornyn is also a bona fide Twitter fiend.
After all, who among us doesn’t like to chat about the weather? But perhaps the problem is less what Cornyn says, or the medium he uses, and more who he is. Rebuild: Defunding Law Enforcement in Texas. “I think that Senator Cornyn is caught in a time-warp,” Hart told the Observer. Yes, I would like to receive periodic updates on Senator Cornyn’s work for Texans. He sends these missives seven days a week, from early morning through evening, mostly from his iPhone. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo asked Cornyn simply, “Senator, what was the purpose of this tweet, & what is your reaction to this specific article?” Cornyn did not reply. But whether you view the beer-tweet backlash as warranted or excessive hinges on your interpretation of the primary text: The tweet itself, which like so much of Cornyn’s social media output, is provocatively ambiguous. Alas, the perils of not making oneself clear. With the economy headed off a cliff, Congress had yet to pass expanded paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, or stimulus checks. American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. That’s not normal. © 2020 The Texas Observer. Five Months Later, the State’s Unemployment System is Still Broken for Many Texans: The state’s unemployment insurance system was woefully unprepared when the COVID-fueled economic crisis hit in March. Or was it a dangerous downplaying of the pandemic designed to justify the Senate’s lethargy? Behold, the duality of John Cornyn. Like a Warhol painting, Cornyn’s Twitter account eventually provokes—with or without the author’s intent—an array of philosophical questions: Must not a powerful man, at some point, be culpable for the misunderstandings he provokes in others? Voting Begins in a Month.
Paid for by Texans for Senator John Cornyn, Inc. It was the deadliest anti-Latinx attack in U.S. history. And either way, why—oh why—was the beer in that glass? Will The Reckoning Over Racist Names Include These Prisons? Absolutely not. Texas Already Lacked Affordable Child Care. Cornyn had even done so with a similar Tribune article in the past. It’s far from the only one. Texas gained almost nine Hispanic residents for every additional white resident last year https://t.co/rbjpkzMGwf via @TexasTribune, — Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 22, 2019, On June 22, 2019, Cornyn shared the headline and link to a Texas Tribune article about Hispanic population growth in Texas outpacing white growth.