Unfair Park from p6 In a thread last week, the mayor de- scribed his trip home from Washington, D.C., in the way that a woman named Karen might ask to speak to your manager. “Traveling back to Dallas from DC Rea- gan and the @SouthwestAir ticket counter folks are not allowing anyone to even check a bag or receive a boarding pass who isn’t wearing a mask,” Johnson said in a tweet at 6:47 p.m. last Monday. “Never seen power tripping quite like it. Shameful.” Not everyone on the internet agreed with Johnson’s take, and many made sure to let him know. Some argued the mayor wasn’t setting a good example for constituents, and others reminded him that we’re all still in the middle of a pandemic, so mask-dissing might not be the best move. Still, Johnson doubled down on his stance and pointed to the fact that the mask mandate was no longer being enforced by the Transportation Security Administration. “YOU CAN STILL WEAR A MASK IF YOU WANT. But no AIRLINE TICKET AGENT can tell you you can’t even be IN THE AIRPORT without a mask,” he said at 8:38 p.m. “This is still a nation of laws.” Well, that escalated quickly. Regardless of the update in airport coro- navirus guidance, Twitter users defended the airline workers who had become the tar- gets of Johnson’s fiery tweets. Some argued that the employees might not have heard the news yet. Others hypothesized that they may have been waiting to receive notice of a change in company policy. At 9:44 p.m., Johnson tripled down. “Had a meeting in the West Wing today. A very productive one, I might add,” he wrote. “The White House itself, like the 30,000 invitee Easter Egg Roll, was also mask optional. I so hate to be the bearer of news that, for reasons that completely es- cape me, make certain folks apoplectic.” Projection? Perhaps. One Twitter user said it best in a reply: “Dude, log off.” ▼ ELECTIONS ELECTORAL EXTREMISM E TEXAS IS ONE OF THE STATES WITH THE MOST ‘EXTREMIST-TIED’ POLITICAL CANDIDATES CURRENTLY VYING FOR OFFICE. BY PATRICK STRICKLAND verything is extremer in Texas, and that’s also true when it comes to those running for office this year, according to a new report. Released last week by the Southern Pov- erty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based hate monitor, the report says Texas has five extremist-linked candidates running in up- coming elections, leaving the state tied with Arizona for the third most such candidates. (Florida leads the pack with seven, while California and North Carolina are tied with six each.) Around the country, the SPLC tallied “66 extremist-tied candidates on ballots,” although the watchdog said the list was not “exhaustive” and would be updated throughout the rest of the electoral season. “Nothing appears to be off limits with 8 these hard-right extremist candidates. We’ve documented everything from Klan affiliations, to antisemitic and QAnon con- spiracies propagandists, to militia leaders,” Susan Corke, director of the SPLC’s Intelli- gence Report, said in a press release. “This snapshot into the problem indi- cates a threat at all levels of our democracy, from local sheriff races to candidates for federal office,” Corke added. The Texans are incumbent U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, incumbent Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and incumbent U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, as well as U.S. Congressional candi- dates Mayra Flores and Johnny Teague. Flores, who’s TEXAS HAS FIVE EXTREMIST- LINKED CANDIDATES RUNNING IN UPCOMING ELECTIONS. running for District 34 in South Texas, earned a spot on the list for railing against COVID-19 vaccines and sharing QAnon-related posts on social media out- lets, the SPLC notes in a dataset. She’s denied backing the conspiracy theory, which pur- ports that a supposed satanic cabal of promi- nent Democrats and famous liberals sit atop a child sex-trafficking empire. (“I’ve always been against any of that,” she told the San Antonio Express-News earlier this month. “I’ve never been supportive of it.”) Teague, a pastor vying for District 7 slot in the Houston area, landed on the list after similarly retweeting QAnon-related posts. Teague will compete in a runoff on May 24 against Tim Stroud. (On his website, Teague cites Biblical verses as the basis for stricter border controls.) Dan Patrick, of course, is no shocker, and the SPLC flagged several comments he’s made in the past as evidence of his links to extremist groups and fringe conspiracy theories. Among those were remarks Patrick made about Haitian immigrants last September, including his claim that migration was part of a supposed “silent revolution” to “take over our country without firing a shot.” (The comments ring eerily similar to “The Great Replacement,” a racist conspiracy theory that has inspired anti-migrant mass shoot- ings such as the one at an El Paso Walmart in Alex Jones is at it again and bankrupt. Wikimedia Commons August 2019 that left 23 people dead.) Gov. Greg Abbott and several other Texas Republicans have amplified the same anti-migrant rhetoric, much of which overlaps with the El Paso shooter’s manifesto, but Abbott didn’t make the SPLC’s list. Patrick also endorsed so-called anti- Sharia law legislation in the Texas Legisla- ture in 2014, backing a bill that was widely blasted as Islamophobic. Van Duyne, who served as the mayor of Irving from 2011 to 2017, became the Dis- trict 24 representative in January 2021. She previously served in former President Don- ald Trump’s administration. She’s cozied up to the anti-Muslim groups like ACT for America and the Center for Security Policy in the past, and since joining Congress, she’s promoted anti-migrant claims such as the assertion that the migrants are “invad- ing” the U.S. In a September 2021 tweet, she claimed that Del Rio was “in crisis Joe Biden has purposefully destroyed our border, allowed this invasion to occur, and is endangering our national security.” Babin, who represents Texas’ District 36 in Congress, has appeared at events featur- ing white nationalists and anti-immigrant advocates, has supported “English-only” legislation and has proposed a moratorium on refugee resettlement in the U.S, the SPLC added. In a tweet posted in September, Babin seemed to suggest the U.S. was at perilous risk by bringing Afghan refugees for reset- tlement: “Take a look at the raging #Biden- BorderCrisis – is it really a wonder why we don’t trust the vetting process for the thou- sands coming to the US from a Taliban-con- trolled nation?” In the past, Babin has gone to bat for QA- non enthusiast U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and in March 2021, he took to Twit- ter to sound the alarm over the U.S.-Mexico border, sharing a link to an article published by the SPLC-designated hate group the Center for Immigration Studies. “Even the cartels are overwhelmed by the border cri- sis,” he wrote. “Let that sink in.” ▼ CONSPIRACY THEORIES PENNILESS PATRIOTISM T ALEX JONES CAN’T STAY OUT OF TROUBLE, AND HE’S NOW FILED FOR BANKRUPTCY FOR THREE COMPANIES. BY PATRICK STRICKLAND exas conspiracy theorist and In- foWars founder Alex Jones just keeps landing in hot water. In De- cember, he got bad press after saying he re- fused to answer questions from the Congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Now, three of his companies, including the far-right InfoWars, have filed for bankruptcy, CNN and other outlets report. The news broke after Jones was found le- gally accountable for damages in three separate lawsuits over false claims and conspiracy theories he promoted follow- ing the Sandy Hook mass shooting in 2012. As CNN noted, among the claims Jones spread was the assertion that the deadly mass shooting — 26 people, 20 of them children, were murdered — was a hoax and that the parents were so-called crisis actors. Reuters reported that InfoWars claimed in court documents to have between zero and $50,000 in assets while facing estimated liabilities to the tune of between $1 million to $10 million. On top of InfoWars, Jones filed bank- ruptcy for Prison Planet, another far-right media outlet, and his online health store, from which he sells supposed nutritional supplements and other products. During his InfoWars broadcast last Monday, Jones appealed to his viewers by asking them to buy more of his products online. “We are barely operating,” he said. Jones, 48, was born in Dallas and spent much of his childhood in Rockwall. Since he launched InfoWars in Austin in 1999, Jones has found himself wading through contro- versy time and again. After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Jones faced increasing scrutiny over his alleged partici- pation in hyping up the so-called “Stop the Steal” rallies in their lead-up. Last August, Owen Shroyer, another In- foWars host, was charged over his alleged participation in the Capitol riot. Shroyer, who hosts “The War Room with Owen Shroyer,” stands accused of violent and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and entering a restricted area without authority, both of which are misdemeanors. In January, a federal judge tossed out Shroyer’s request to have the charges dis- missed on the grounds that it constituted “vindictive prosecution.” Jones also said on air that prosecutors and the courts have treated him unfairly. “They treat me like I’m Daddy Warbucks,” he said, adding that they’ve supposedly treated him like a “child molester” and “Lex Luthor.” “Hundreds of peaceful people that didn’t touch a cop on Jan. 6 are still in prison,” he claimed. (More than 800 people have been charged in relation with the pro-Trump in- surrection, including some for serious crimes like seditious conspiracy and violent offenses.) APRIL 28–MAY 4, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com
