Texas Gov. Greg Abbott kicked his stance on sanctuary cities up a notch this morning.
In an appearance on the show “Fox & Friends,” Abbott took a not-so-friendly stance toward Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez.
“She really is trying to create a sanctuary city here in the state of Texas,” he told co-host Steve Doocy. “This is completely outrageous.”
Earlier this week, Abbott sent Hernandez a strongly-worded letter threatening to cut off $1.8 million worth of grant funding over a new policy.
Starting Feb. 1, Hernandez has said her department will not detain potentially undocumented immigrants for federal authorities if they’ve otherwise been cleared for release.
Abbott explained what will happen if Hernandez doesn’t back down from this position:
“If she doesn’t, we will remove her from office.”
The governor added that during the legislative session, lawmakers are working on bills that would ban so-called sanctuary cities and remove any office-holder who promotes these kinds of policies.
Which states are the best and worst for raising a family? That’s what the finance site WalletHub wanted to figure out.
To do that, WalletHub looked at a bunch of factors like opportunities for family fun, average commute times, air and water quality, and the cost of childcare. analyst Jill Gonzalez gives us the details.
“Texas ranked 29th overall, so we did look at all 50 states – 1 would have been the best – 51 (we did include D.C.) would have been the worst,” Gonzalez says.
She says the state could improve in two areas: health and safety and overall affordability.
“When we’re talking about health and safety, we’re really looking at things like crime rates, especially in the bigger Texas cities and the share of children lacking health insurance coverage,” Gonzalez says. “Texas is still pretty far behind when it comes to the uninsured rate – children, especially.
“Affordability – we’re not so much talking about housing affordability – we know that that is pretty good in Texas. We’re moreso looking at the savings that people don’t have, or the savings that’s kind of lacking there – as well as debt delinquency and high credit utilization. So people really falling behind on credit card bills.”
Areas where Texas did well? It ranked in the top 10 for family fun and also had reasonable childcare costs compared to other states.
North Dakota was the state that ultimately ranked the best for raising a family and the worst was New Mexico.
Don’t cry for me, Texarkana.
The city’s classic hits station HITS 105 announced Tuesday via Facebook that it’s taking all Madonna songs off the air indefinitely over comments she made during a speech at the Women’s March on Washington this past weekend.
The station’s general manager Terry Thomas said “banning all Madonna songs at HITS 105 is not a matter of politics, it’s a matter of patriotism.”
For the foreseeable future, it doesn’t appear that Thomas will be opening his heart to the outspoken pop icon.
