Fellow Texans, it’s our sad duty to report that our governor appears to be taking his marching orders from a right-wing social media account (and, yes, we’re talking about … sigh … Libs of TikTok).
While it’s a well-known fact that Gov. Greg Abbott lives in fear of being flanked on the right, in these hyper partisan times, he seems even more worried about getting crossways with the deepest red elements of his party.
Which brings us to Chaya Raichik, the notorious online hatemonger better known as Libs of TikTok, who was described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as spreading “the anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theory that ‘groomers’ have infiltrated every social institution with the intent of ‘sexualizing’ children.”
Every day, Raichik targets LGBTQ people, anyone who didn’t mourn Charlie Kirk’s death quite hard enough, and whoever else happens to cross her radar — then rallies her millions of followers to go after them.
The Barbed Wire previously reported that from June 2022 to 2024, GLAAD’s ALERT Desk (Anti-LGBTQ Extremism Reporting Tracker) showed that ten hate incidents over those two years in Texas were tied to Raichik, including bomb threats that were lobbed at four Planet Fitness locations after she highlighted their trans-inclusive locker room policies.
As Human Rights Campaign put it: “Raichik’s posts have repeatedly been linked to harassment and bomb threats against children’s hospitals, medical providers, schools, teachers, drag performances, and more.”
Anyway, on Sunday, Raichik was dutifully bemoaning the fact that the city of Houston repainted a Montrose neighborhood crosswalk decked on in LGBTQ+ rainbow colors.
Tagging Abbott, Raichik wrote that the crosswalk “must be removed immediately.”
And our governor dutifully complied. Just days later, he directed the Texas Department of Transportation “to ensure Texas counties and cities remove any and all political ideologies from our streets.”
“To keep Texans moving safely and free from distraction, we must maintain a safe and consistent transportation network across Texas,” he said, per Texas Public Radio. “Any city that refuses to comply with the federal road standards will face consequences including the withholding or denial of state and federal road funding and suspension of agreements with TxDOT.”
Yes, our fiercely independent Texas governor couldn’t move fast enough when ordered to by his new apparent boss, a former real estate agent from Brooklyn.
Texas has similar pride-themed crosswalks in San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin, so we guess that masked ICE agents will soon be spray-painting Punisher logos over them.
Oh, and we also paint streets with lots of stuff: It remains to be seen if the orange “TEXAS” on Guadalupe Street in Austin will get removed, too.
This nonsense fits right in with the anti-rainbow crosswalk crusade happening at the federal level. Back in July, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy urged governors to keep crosswalks “free of distractions.”
“Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork,” Duffy harrumphed.
A few months earlier, in March, the federal government also intimidated Washington, D.C.’s mayor into removing its “Black Lives Matter” mural — again, using the threat of funding cuts.
Down in Harris County, it already looks like Texas’ local leaders are capitulating to Abbott’s — er, Libs of TikTok’s — orders.
Anyway, it’s all very stupid. And perfectly in character for a governor who does whatever the MAGA crowd tells him to, including sending Texas National Guard troops to other states to handle whatever phantom crisis the president’s cooked up that day.
