There's a new cartel in town stirring up trouble and threatening lawmakers and ordinary citizens alike.
This cartel's not from Sinaloa; it's on our side of the border. This cartel doesn't have control of Tamaulipas; it's trying to control states like Georgia, Texas and others. This cartel is made up of left-wing activists, and instead of threatening businesses and citizens with violence, it's threatening them with boycotts and economic losses if they dare to support election integrity reform measures. And this new woke cartel is growing, too—most recently, it's recruiting powerful CEOs to carry out hits against the Texas economy.
These sicarios of the C-suite first flexed their muscles in Georgia last month. After Georgia passed a common-sense election reform measure, the Left started up its misinformation machine to spread Stacey Abrams' divisive agenda, first tagging the law as "Jim Crow." President Biden upped the ante, warning about "Jim Crow on steroids" and "Jim Eagle." Unfortunately, the president was misinformed and even The Washington Post called out his lie, giving him "Four Pinocchios." Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) soon joined the charade, and even left-leaning Politifact called him out for it.
Based on these calumnies, the Left quickly threatened any business that dared to do business in Georgia—and many corporations quickly got in line. If this new cartel has an initiation process, it will look something like Major League Baseball pulling its All-Star Game out of Atlanta to head to Denver—that is, from a city that that is 50 percent black to a city that is 10 percent black—while leaving Georgia's minority workers and small business owners out in the cold.
Now, the cartel is expanding operations to Texas: American Airlines and Dell, two of Texas's powerful corporations, have weighed in to slam two of the Lone Star State's most promising new voting bills, HB 6 and SB 7. Those measures would increase transparency in Texas's election system and protect voters from political operatives who traffick ballots and send millions of dollars to state election boards. And American Airlines and Dell are not alone: Last week, a long list of other companies joined the woke corporate fight against secure elections in Texas.
The tactics now being used against Texas are exactly the same as they were in Georgia—ignore, abuse and suppress the facts about the legislation and shake down state officials by threatening workers. This time around, some have even contracted a study to claim that voting reforms would cost Texas billions of dollars. But the threat to Texan jobs doesn't come from more secure elections—it comes from the woke cartel and its corporate hitmen pushing an agenda to drive business out and then using the fallout as fodder for its next campaign.
Of course, none of these businesses can cite any actual legal provisions they disagree with. The measures are simply designed to protect poll watchers, promote transparent elections by protecting poll watchers, secure drop boxes and lengthen early voting hours, allowing greater access to the polls. But, just like in Georgia, the facts don't matter—it's the narrative that does.
These businesses don't care that Americans across this country have lost confidence in our elections: Only one quarter of Americans believe the last two presidential elections both declared the right winner. They don't care that 58 percent of Texans are either concerned or very concerned about election fraud—including 59 percent of independents. They don't care about the well-being of the very workers they're holding hostage to their political agenda. All they care about is flaunting their lefty street cred.
It's time for Texas and other states throughout the Union to stand up, take these woke corporations to task and make it clear that their radical leftist agendas aren't welcome—and that no amount of intimidation is going to change that.
If American Airlines, Dell and the rest of the woke crowd really want to alienate the world's ninth-largest economy, take its workers hostage and inflict pain on its hard-working citizens, they can go back to San Francisco, pay billions more in taxes and miss out on everything that makes Texas such a great place to live and work. Two thousand people are moving to the Lone Star State every day. Texas doesn't need them; they need Texas.
Texas lawmakers should stare down these corporations and pass election reforms into law, confident in their knowledge that they are fully supported by Texans and patriotic Americans throughout the Union, even if elites threaten and complain. SB 7 has passed the House and now moves to conference, and legislators should act boldly and include strong provisions like voter ID for mail-in ballots, prohibitions on private money in our election system and improved maintenance of both voter rolls and poll watcher access. At the same time, congressional representatives of threatened states should be working overtime to eradicate every single sweetheart deal and crony carveout that these corporations currently enjoy.
Chip Roy is the U.S. representative for Texas's 21st congressional district. Jessica Anderson is executive director of Heritage Action for America.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
