https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-ag-threatens-seattle-hospital
Attorney General Ken Paxton has sent a civil investigative demand to Seattle Children's Hospital, demanding data on all Texas patients traveling for care, despite having no jurisdiction there.
"We're gonna need a bigger jail" 🤦
Washington should turn around and issue an arrest warrant for this idiot if he keeps on with trying to violate HIPAA.
And, you know, constitutional law. Texas doesn’t have the right to enforce laws outside it’s borders.
Yeah, what does he think he is, some kind of big guvmint vaccine mandate coming to take our guns??
He wants to out trans Texans so they can be harassed and assaulted by the God-loving Republicans living in Texas without getting his own hands dirty. Never mind that "Thou shalt not commit adultery" thing in the bible... you're just taking it out of context.
send in the state militia to arrest him and execute him. the civil war's inevitable so may as well surprise decapitate them before they start
Just wait, this will happen with abortions too. They are testing the ground now. If a Republican ever get the white house again, they will use the feds to extradite doctors to Texas.
People need to be yelling about this until they can't yell anymore. I don't give a fuck if it ruins Christmas.
Yeah, this 100% feels like a trial balloon. It's obviously ridiculous but it's going to test some legal statute that will crack the door for whatever Gilead shit they actually intend. Probably abortion rights. First they came for the trans people, etc etc.
My heart goes out to anyone trapped in Texas or any other Gilead state.
Who gets jailed? If huge corporations can't go to jail for the evil shit they do "even though they are people" then a hospital protecting actual people won't go to jail either.
Nah, they are going after the people in the hospital that deny the order, not the hospital itself. The people in Seattle will be fine as long as they stay in Washington and their state and the feds refuse to extradite, but anyone charged may have trouble when traveling to other states and will be unable to travel through Texas without legitimate fear of detention.
will be unable to travel through Texas without legitimate fear of detention
so… a standard risk for anyone living in Texas, or traveling through Texas
I get your point, but everyone living in or traveling through Texas do not have open criminal warrants, which is what these Seattle hospital workers will have if they don’t comply, and we shouldn’t downplay the litany of problems that come with arrest warrants.
I also get your point, but it’s a relatively minor distinction in Texas.
I know a few people that work a Renaissance Faire there who have gotten pulled over multiple times and almost went to jail because they were doing the speed limit in the slow lane, it was considered suspicious, and they looked like hippies.
As someone who has lived in Texas with warrants and without, I can confirm that it’s not a minor distinction. Luckily I haven’t had to return to Texas in years, but if I do, I will make sure I don’t have any open warrants before doing so. Texas cops will fuck your life up for unpaid traffic fines like you robbed a bank just because they can.
Yeah, no question they profile heavily in Texas. I’ve been pulled over for the same, but they get pretty trigger happy once they learn you have any sort of warrant, so your risk of death goes up exponentially when stopped with warrants. I had a cop come running at my drivers side door with his gun drawn as soon as he ran my plates and saw my warrant for unpaid speeding ticket.
And then they gave me a speeding ticket for doing the speed limit, because of the out of state plates. Good old Texas.
If you draw a straight line from Seattle to Texas, don’t you end up in the ocean? Can’t see many transits like that.
(Geography from memory, not gonna check)
The people in Seattle will be fine as long as they stay in Washington and their state and the feds refuse to extradite, but anyone charged may have trouble when traveling to other states and will be unable to travel through Texas without legitimate fear of detention.
If Texas does somehow arrest a Washington state resident that works at a hospital that denied this request when that worker was visiting Texas, and that was upheld but state and federal courts, this could backfire in a BIG way on Texas. Other states could put out warrants on Texans, like Paxton or any other Texan involved in executing this law, in every other state in the nation.
Instead of others haven't to worry about stepping foot in Texas, Texans would have to worry about ever stepping foot out of Texas.
This is exactly where we are headed and I've been calling this for at least 5 or 6 years now. The first shots of the next civil war will be a Republican president sending feds into California to arrest a doctor, and Californians standing their ground.
Pax-turd needs to realize that if he's going to play the "state's rights" angle, that means other states have rights, too, and Texas has no dominion over Washington state. I personally have mixed thoughts about elevating states over federal law... we're the UNITED States, not fifty sovereign countries.
Also, shouldn't this dingus be in jail? I thought he was charged with corruption so egregious even the nee-haw state couldn't ignore it.
Also, shouldn't this dingus be in jail? I thought he was charged with corruption so egregious even the nee-haw state couldn't ignore it.
The felony trial isnt until april. Eariler this year the state moved to hold an impeachment trial, but he paid off the almost equally corrupt, "Seniors should sacrifice their lives for the economy" Lt. Gov, and then...everyone changed their minds and he got acquitted.
An obvious issue here is that they could try to get someone picked up and extradited. Even if progressive states like Washington don't have any of that you have to worry about other states when you drive through or have a layover.
Consider the midline of the country you have North Dakota, South Dakota Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma or Texas
Dumb about important stuff, yeah, but this is just playing to his hate filled base since when he inevitably fails he can blame wokeness or some other conservative talking point. If you think of it as free campaigning to angry bigots it makes a lot of sense.
I’ve been concerned Texas and other states would be looking for this kind of thing for abortions as well. Everyone has been telling me that this kind of thing is impossible and no one would ever try to go after a patient based on medical procedures done out of state.
I’m also concerned that Texas could issue an arrest warrant for medical personnel or people facilitating abortion travel who reside in California (for example) such that it becomes inadvisable to drive through Texas, or even have a layover.
It’s not paranoia if they’re actually after you.
IIRC the way the law works now is that any private citizen, regardless of whether or not they have any sort of relationship with the pregnant person, can sue anyone who “facilitates” abortion for Texas citizens. That includes taxi drivers, family members, maybe even gas station workers, etc. There is also a county that is (or has been) attempting to ban the usage of fucking roads to get to abortion facilities in other states, effectively barring you from travelling anywhere if there is a possibility you may be pregnant. Freedom!
effectively barring you from travelling anywhere if there is a possibility you may be pregnant. Freedom!
Holy Handmaid's Tale, Batman! 🤬
It's inadvisable to drive through Southern states already due to cops. They hold that the normal constitutional protections don't apply due to the border, they have deported American citizens, they have been caught planting drugs, the vast majority of civil asset forfeitures are people who had under $1000 seized without evidence literal highway robbery.
Then there were the ladies who were legally kidnapped and taken to a hospital to have their buttholes search on a vague suspicion of drugs
Texas state troopers caught on camera probing women’s privates aren’t isolated incidents: lawyers
But wait years later they actually passed a law making it illegal to probe your asshole without a warrant because that's something you need a law for
https://reason.com/2015/05/11/why-is-that-cops-finger-in-your-butt/
Which is why they then got sued for getting a warrant on a flimsy pretext and having a doctor do it...then continued to do it themselves as well
Basically you may or may not get raped or robbed by the police even before this unpleasantness.
But wait there's more if you are pregnant and they believe you represent a danger to your fetus they reserve the right to hold you until you give birth in a prison shower like they did to that druggy chick!
I thought all patient data was confidential stop trying to frame a privacy issue as a trans issue its only going to polarise and divide an audiance.
You see, Paxton and the GOP are the IN group and their trans victims are the OUT group!
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition ... There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” --Frank Wilhoit
too scared and useless to take on the gangs and criminals, so the Texas AG goes after hospitals and patients.. wonder if the Texas Rangers are gonna ride out and grab a fugitive doctor and patient..
how do jurisdictions work again? can't Seattle just say go fuck yourself Texas and be done with it?
They could, but it's a pretty progressive city, so there's nothing to lose and everything to gain for anyone public-facing in Seattle to be seen telling Paxton to fuck off.
Also, on a much less cynical note, making a bigot with grotesque demands look thoroughly foolish this time could create a precedent that could save lives in less clear-cut cases.
Tl;Dr: Telling Paxton off as loudly as possible (figuratively speaking) is both the opportune thing to do AND the right thing to do.
If it got to the Texas supreme Court could it get appealed to the US Supreme Court? I dunno if I trust a non brain dead response from those clowns.
There's no way it would get that far, even in Texas.
Apart from the obvious fact of Texas law having no legal bearing on what people do outside of Texas, you can't rule in favor of Paxton without opening up Texas to a shitload of trouble from states who would like to for example close a couple gun law loopholes..
I got it - a jackhammer!
I was trying to think of something this guy could go fuck himself with that was both fast AND hard enough.
Cover It with coarse sandpaper, broken glass and Komodo dragon saliva first. Don't want the experience to be too comfortable for him.
Reverse uno his ass and have a warrant sworn out on him for attempted unauthorized access to medical records.
I'd like the news outlets to follow up on this. Next week. In two weeks. In three weeks. And how many times it takes to make it irrelevant and still prove that the original talking point is completely worthless.
They won't. Because it's a waste of space in the first place. I wish they'd treat it like that to begin with.
My suggestion is for anyone working in the medical field who disagrees with these policies to leave Texas post haste.
The faster this happens the more quickly the people will revolt once every single individual in the state knows someone personally who was harmed by these policies. The anecdotal suffering of individuals is the only thing that ever causes widescale political action as far as I can tell.
Until that suffering is undeniable for a large enough percentage of the population to overcome their cognitive dissonance, nothing will change.