Moore County Journal

A bill filed in the Texas Senate Thursday would direct the state’s massive investment funds to divest from any companies that “boycott” fossil fuels.

Pressure is increasing on Wall Street for companies and investment funds to reduce their financial support for oil and gas companies. Environmental activists have long called for Wall Street and university endowments to stop investing in fossil fuels, and several universities have complied.

Last year, Larry Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest investment companies, wrote to shareholders that the firm would make climate change “a defining factor” in its investment strategy, and in January, he further said it would exit investments that present a “sustainability-related” risk.

The Texas bill bites back: If passed, the legislation filed by state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, along with four other Republican state senators, would require state entities — including state pension funds and Texas’ massive K-12 school endowment — to divest from companies that refuse to invest in or do business with fossil fuel-based energy.

Texas state funds identified in the bill include the $46 billion Texas Permanent School Fund, the largest such K-12 fund in the U.S; the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which manages nearly $165 billion in investments; and the Employees Retirement System of Texas and Texas Municipal Retirement System of Texas, which each manage $31 billion.

Senate Bill 13 — low numbered bills signal a high priority for lawmakers — would also prevent companies, retired beneficiaries and others from suing the state over the divestments. In February, before the winter storm that left millions of people across Texas without power and killed dozens, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said legislation to prohibit the state from doing business with firms that “boycott” oil and gas companies was a priority and will “pass easily,” according to the Austin American-Statesman.

The early version of the bill directs the state comptroller to create a list of companies and funds that “boycott” fossil fuel companies and allows the attorney general to take enforcement action against state funds that do not divest from the companies on the list.

If the state fund determines that divesting would cause it to lose value or deviate from its benchmark, it could provide that information in a written report to the comptroller, the Legislature, and the Texas attorney general to request an exemption.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Travis County and Austin officials in an effort to force them to rescind their local mask orders, he announced Thursday.

“I told Travis County & The City of Austin to comply with state mask law,” Paxton tweeted. “They blew me off. So, once again, I’m dragging them to court.”

Texas on Wednesday lifted nearly all coronavirus restrictions, including Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide mask mandate and occupancy restrictions. Abbott’s order said that “no jurisdiction” can require a person to wear a mask in public if the area doesn’t meet a certain number hospitalizations for the coronavirus. But Austin and Travis County health officials have said they will continue to enforce the safety protocols, setting the stage for yet another fight over pandemic response between state and local officials.

Paxton on Wednesday gave the city and county leaders an ultimatum: Rescind the local orders by 6 p.m. “Otherwise, on behalf of the State of Texas, I will sue you,” Paxton wrote in a letter.

.@MayorAdler & @AndyBrownATX, you and local health authorities have until 6:00pm today to rescind any mask mandates or business-operating restrictions and come into full compliance with GA-34 ➡️ https://t.co/Bz5DQsw8IV

Otherwise, on behalf of the State of Texas, I will sue you. pic.twitter.com/IP9UpZPplh

— Texas Attorney General (@TXAG) March 10, 2021

Local officials refused to back down.

“We will fight Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Paxton’s assault against doctors and data for as long as we possibly can,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler said in a Wednesday statement.

Abbott’s order defines areas with high hospitalizations as places where the proportion of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 exceeds 15%. In those places, local officials may issue certain restrictions, but can’t impose a penalty “of any kind” for violating a mask mandate, the order says.

Less than 6% of hospital beds in Austin’s trauma service area are currently occupied by COVID-19 patients. There have been more than 2,200 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Travis County in the past two weeks. More than 890 people have died since the pandemic began. Illnesses and deaths in the pandemic have disproportionally affected people of color statewide.

Travis County Judge Andy Brown, who presides over the county government, said the authority to impose the local mask mandate comes from the county health authority, not from Brown’s emergency powers. Brown told The Texas Tribune on Wednesday that means the order should hold up in court.

“I listen to doctors, not to politicians like our attorney general,” Brown said.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal fights over the governor’s power during a public health crisis. Paxton’s office successfully defeated an effort by Travis and Austin officials to restrict in-person dining at restaurants around New Year’s. And in El Paso, Paxton won a battle last November against County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, who had tried to order a temporary shutdown of nonessential businesses.

Last week, Abbott announced that Texas was “100% open.” He was lifting the mask mandate, first imposed during a wave of COVID-19 cases last summer, and allowing every business — including bars, restaurants, retail stores and sports stadiums — to operate at full capacity.

The decision drew sharp criticism from a number of local leaders, including Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

Round Rock joined Austin in requiring masks until April 29. Other cities, including Houston and San Antonio, have continued to require people to wear masks in city buildings.

Disclosure: Steve Adler, a former Tribune board chair, has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

​The state’s energy grid operator overcharged power companies by roughly $3 billion after the winter storm, the chairman of Texas’ utility regulator said Thursday, pushing back on a previous report from an agency watchdog that said the companies were overcharged by $16 billion.

Last week, an independent monitor for the Public Utility Commission reported the Electric Reliability Council of Texas overcharged power companies by about $16 billion in the days immediately following the February winter storm which knocked out power for multiple days across the state, leaving people in subfreezing temperatures. The eye-popping number prompted calls for action from elected officials including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick demanding the charges be reversed.

But on Thursday, Arthur D’Andrea, PUC chairperson, called the figure a “mistake” and said the firm, Potomac Economics, would be officially revising its estimate. Later in the day, former ERCOT CEO Bill Magness submitted a report pushing back on the claims it overcharged to such extremes.

“This was an intentional and carefully considered decision to protect human health and safety while stabilizing the electric grid. It was not an error,” Magness’ report said.

But a letter submitted Thursday by Potomac Economics repeated that ERCOT overcharged companies by $16 billion. However, Potomac clarified its recommendation for how much should be fixed, calling for a $4.2 billion price correction.

Last week, the PUC said it would not retroactively reduce the market price for power to account for overcharge payments, citing unforeseen consequences. On Thursday, D’Andrea stood by that decision and said he would not reverse charges to account for even the revised figures, citing unforeseen consequences. D’Andrea is the last remaining member of the three-person board which oversees ERCOT, after the other members recently resigned amid criticism for the power outages.

It is still unclear whether and how this overcharge directly affects Texas electricity customers, however many power companies have taken a significant financial hit.

In Texas, wholesale power prices are determined by supply and demand: When demand is high, ERCOT allows prices to go up. During the storm, the PUC directed the grid operator to set wholesale power prices at $9,000 per megawatt-hour — the maximum price. Raising prices is intended to incentivize power generators in the state to add more power to the grid. Companies then buy power from the wholesale market to deliver to consumers, which they are contractually obligated to do.

But extended freezing weather made that impossible because it knocked a large portion of the state’s electricity generation offline.

ERCOT maintained its highest level of emergency alert until the morning of Feb. 19 — five days after the storm initially struck the state — a signal to the market that the power grid was still unstable, which kept prices high.

“What we’re discussing here is whether or not we want to go back and change the rules of the game after the game’s been played,” said state Rep. Chris Paddie, R-Marshall, chairman of the House Affairs committee.

Speaking to the committee Thursday, D’Andrea pushed back against officials who earlier this week wrote in a letter calling for D’Andrea to change his mind about retroactively reducing the market price for power.

“I think they’re relying on wrong information given by the independent market monitor,” D’Andrea said of Patrick and state senators who urged a reversal.

D’Andrea said the electricity market from the week of the storm has been settled and the participants in that market operated under the rules set by ERCOT and the state. Already, some Texas consumers and companies such as Brazos Electric Power Cooperative have already been hit financially. D’Andrea said retroactively adjusting the market would lead to unforeseen problems.

“We know who’s hurt, let’s address that,” D’Andrea. “Instead of making a huge mess that we can’t foresee, and losing twice, let’s just stick with the status quo.”

​

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Six years after Texas passed a controversial measure allowing licensed gun owners to carry concealed handguns on college campuses, one Republican state lawmaker is pushing to expand the law by allowing licensed adults to carry weapons in public and charter schools.

The bill’s staunchly pro-gun author, state Sen. Bob Hall, sees the move as a logical extension of Texas’ campus carry law, which passed in 2015 over the passionate pleas of Democrats, gun control advocates and some university officials who feared increased violence.

Hall’s bill is one of several addressing school safety this session, with other lawmakers seeking to expand the state’s school marshal program, which lets trained school teachers and support staff carry guns on campuses. Gov. Greg Abbott has endorsed that program, and the Legislature has expanded it in previous years.

Guns took center stage in 2015, when the Legislature allowed licensed Texans to openly carry handguns in public and moved to ‘harden’ schools in the wake of mass shootings elsewhere, like the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.

After stalling in a House committee, proponents scrambled to pass a watered down version of the campus carry bill — deemed a priority by the upper chamber — in the session’s final hours. Critics who defeated the bill in previous years were stunned.

“We thought we had campus carry defeated,” said Ed Scruggs, a board member and spokesperson for Texas Gun Sense, who watched the final debate from the House gallery. “It went through. … And I thought, ‘OK, they’ve got that now, so maybe they’ll be happy. But they’ve since pushed for more.”

Texas lawmakers spent the 2019 legislative session debating how best to prevent another school shooting like the one at Santa Fe High in 2018, when a gunman killed 10 people and wounded 13 others. They ultimately passed a series of bills that, among other things, strengthened mental health initiatives for children and abolished the cap on how many school marshals can carry guns on public school campuses.

Hall, who co-authored campus carry, now wants to broaden the law to K-12 classrooms. His bill — which, as of March 10, had yet to be heard in committee — would allow licensed Texans, such as parents and teachers, to carry concealed handguns throughout public schools and open enrollment charter schools.

“Schools, known as a gun-free zone, might as well hang a neon sign saying, ‘If you want to harm kids, come in here,’” Hall, R-Edgewood, said in an interview. “The more people there are who can protect, the safer our society is.”

At least two major state teachers groups are already sounding the alarm.

“Schools are no places for guns,” said Clay Robison, a spokesperson for the Texas State Teachers Association. “The only person at a school that should have a gun is a trained, professional police officer. … Very few school employees really believe they can … be any match for a suicidal, heavily-armed assailant who poses a surprise attack on a school building.”

Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that the union has “opposed past bills on campus carry for higher education institutions, and we’ll continue our opposition for any expansion of guns on our K-12 campuses.”

When it was passed, backlash to campus carry was swift and intense. In July 2016, three University of Texas at Austin professors sued the state and the university, claiming campus carry would have a “chilling effect” on free speech in their classrooms. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 upheld the law, siding with the state in the long-running lawsuit. When campus carry went into effect at four-year universities in August 2016, UT-Austin students organized a sex toy-themed protest that garnered national attention.

But the outrage has largely quieted down, and it is difficult to identify tangible impacts on campus life. A 2017 review of gun-related incidents at the state’s large research schools by the Tribune showed no sharp increase in violence or intimidation. Hall said the media and opponents of campus carry have exaggerated its consequences.

“The discussion [in 2015] was … all the kids will be playing cops and robbers and shooting each other, and that never happened,” Hall said. “Allowing people to defend themselves in [gun-free] areas has not resulted in what the opposition predicted would happen. We haven’t had shootouts on campuses.”

Texas A&M University has had one incident since the law went into effect involving a gun being fired by someone with a license to carry, said Kelly Brown, associate vice president of marketing and communications at the school. The 2018 incident was an accidental discharge involving an employee, and no one was injured, Brown said. At UT-Austin, there were two instances in February 2018 in which a gun was left unattended on campus, according to The Daily Texan.

Lisa Moore, one of the UT-Austin professors who filed the 2016 lawsuit, said the impact of campus carry has been most visible on the mental health of university students, faculty and staff. Moore called the possibility of expanding the law to K-12 classrooms “heartbreaking and frightening.”

“The day that campus carry went into effect, my students were noticeably more anxious,” Moore, a professor of English and women’s and gender studies, said in an interview. “With everything teachers have been through, it’s actually cruel to create a situation where there could be loaded weapons in school classrooms.”

A spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency declined to comment, saying the state agency “does not comment on proposed legislation.”

There are already hundreds of guns in Texas schools, many carried by law enforcement or school resource officers who patrol campuses. In 2019, lawmakers expanded the school marshal program, and there are now 252 marshals across the state, according to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

Hall said his bill complements the school marshal program. Jason Villalba, the former state lawmaker who created the program in Texas, said he disagrees.

Villalba said he “can’t imagine” either chamber taking Hall’s bill up this session and said it is “not a serious piece of legislation.” The legislator who authored campus carry, Republican state Sen. Brian Birdwell, did not respond to questions asking whether he supported Hall’s proposed expansion. Spokespeople for Abbott, who signed campus carry into law, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who championed the measure, did not reply to requests for comment.

“Senator Hall’s bill … subverts the marshal plan, because it eliminates the safety provisions and protocols that are in place to ensure the safety of our children,” Villalba said.

Several lawmakers this year are proposing expansions to the marshal program, including state Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, whose bill would allow local school boards to let their marshals carry concealed guns on their person instead of being required to keep them locked up. State Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, filed a bill that would give marshals immunity from lawsuits for any “reasonable action” taken to maintain safety.

Those measures — including one by Birdwell, the campus carry author — were approved by the Texas Senate in 2019 but failed to gain traction in the House.

Hall said his legislation has had “a fairly good reception” so far. Meanwhile, at least two lawmakers are taking aim at campus carry this year: Democratic state Reps. Rafael Anchía and Thresa “Terry” Meza filed measures that would grant public universities the ability to limit where guns are allowed on campus.

Scruggs worries gun rights advocates will continue chipping away at state laws that restrict firearms in schools.

“Last session we had a debate about unlimited school marshals, and they got that,” Scruggs said. “They said that’s what they needed to make schools secure, but that’s not enough, and now they want more guns on campus.”

Disclosure: The Texas State Teachers Association and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

A murder warrant was issued Wednesday for the arrest of the Austin police officer who shot and killed Michael Ramos last year, according to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

Christopher Taylor has a bond set for $100,000, TCSO spokesperson Kristen Dark confirmed to the Texas Tribune. The Travis County District Attorney’s Office has previously said that Taylor’s criminal case in Ramos’ killing would be presented to a grand jury this month. The arrest warrant was first reported by the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE.

Ramos, a 42-year-old Black and Hispanic man, was killed during a shooting on April 24 at a southeast Austin apartment complex as he was driving out of a parking space. Austin Police Department released footage of the incident.

The videos show officers ordering Ramos to exit his vehicle, hold his hands up and lift his shirt. He complied before inching back toward his car door, visibly distressed. He repeatedly yelled, asking what was going on, telling officers he did not have a gun and asking them not to shoot.

Seconds later, Officer Mitchell Pieper fired a lead pellet-filled bag, known as an impact munition, considered “less lethal” by police. Ramos then reentered his car and proceeded to drive. Taylor fired three rounds at the moving vehicle, killing Ramos.

The death became a rallying cry for protesters against police brutality in Texas. And weeks later, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis spurred months of ongoing protests against racial injustice across the country.

Travis County District Attorney José Garza did not comment Wednesday evening. Taylor’s attorneys said a statement in response would be released Thursday.

Former District Attorney Margaret Moore originally planned to present Ramos’ case to a special grand jury in August, along with Javier Ambler’s — a man who died after being tased by law enforcement officers.

But she decided to allow newly Garza, who ran on a platform of police accountability, to present the cases after he defeated her in last year’s Democratic primary.

Gov. Greg Abbott set police funding as a legislative priority this year in response to Austin cutting its police department’s budget by nearly a third. Most of that decrease came from an accounting shift, moving money within the city’s overall public safety budget.

The city cut the budget following calls for defunding following the deaths of Ramos, Ambler and Floyd. Abbott has proposed several legislative measures to force the city to reverse the cuts, including through a property tax freeze and a state takeover of local police.

Jolie McCullough contributed to this article.

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EL PASO — More than 100,000 people were either apprehended by or surrendered to federal immigration officials on the U.S.-Mexico border in February, continuing an increasing trend that began last year and persists under a Biden administration that has rolled back several of former President Donald Trump’s hardline policies.

The statistics released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security include about 9,460 unaccompanied minors and more than 19,240 family units, increases of about 62% and 38% respectively when compared with January’s figures.

In Texas, the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso sectors of the U.S. Border Patrol remain among the busiest crossing points, with nearly 28,000 and 13,200 migrants apprehended last month in those areas, respectively. The El Paso sector also includes New Mexico.

The numbers represent a continuing challenge for the Biden administration as shelters for unaccompanied minors near capacity and the continuing COVID-19 pandemic has stoked criticism from Republicans who, despite downplaying the effects of the virus last year, say the president is allowing sick migrants to enter Texas.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has undone several of Trump’s immigration policies, which his administration says is meant to reflect a more humane approach toward migrants and asylum seekers. But his critics said that approach has fueled the current increase.

The Biden administration has also refused to call the situation a “crisis,” but acknowledged on Wednesday that striking a balance between messaging and compassion is an uphill climb.

“When you look at the issue of mixed messages, it is difficult at times to convey both hope in the future and the danger that is now,” said Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and current Biden administration coordinator for the southern border.

“And I will certainly agree that we are trying to walk and chew gum at the same time. We are trying to convey to everybody in the region that we well have legal processes for people in the future. But at the same time you cannot come through irregular means.”

That same messaging hasn’t deterred migrants from traveling to the border in years past, however. And Republicans are seizing on the rising numbers to declare Biden an irresponsible advocate for open borders.

“The first step to solving a crisis is to first admit you have one. Let’s be clear, even if you don’t admit it, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a crisis,” U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, said Wednesday at a news conference. “We are representatives, members of Congress, who represent border states and our communities are at ground zero and our constituents are on the front lines, bearing the brunt of the lawlessness and self-inflicted crisis at the border created by the Biden administration.”

On Tuesday Gov. Greg Abbott visited the Rio Grande Valley after announcing Operation Lone Star last weekend. The operation will increase Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas National Guard patrols on the border to “deny Mexican cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas,” according to a statement.

Abbott lambasted the Biden administration’s immigration policies and said they indicate he cares less about Americans than he does foreigners.

Despite the criticism, the Biden administration continues to move forward with its immigration strategy. His office announced on Wednesday that it’s restarting a program that seeks to reunite minors in Central American countries with their parents who are lawfully present in the United States. Jacobson said about 3,000 minors had previously qualified but were left out of the program after Trump ended it in 2017.

Also on Wednesday, Troy A. Miller, a senior official performing the duties of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said during a conference call with reporters that CBP has cleared the entry of about 1,500 migrants who were part of the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, which forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their court hearings in American courtrooms in Mexico. As of late last month, more than 25,000 migrants were in the program.

Bryan Mena contributed to this report.

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Low-income patients will no longer be able to use Medicaid to get nonabortion health services at Planned Parenthood, after a Wednesday court decision said Texas can move forward with kicking the health provider out of its Medicaid program.

The decision takes effect Thursday, and leaves thousands of patients with “few places to turn,” Planned Parenthood said.

The decision is the latest in Texas officials’ yearslong effort to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state last year and health officials told Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid patients they had until early February to find new doctors. But the health provider filed an emergency lawsuit saying the state had not followed the proper procedures.

A state district judge granted a temporary restraining order on Feb. 3, delaying the state from kicking Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid. That was extended in late-February, after a winter storm and crippling power outages slowed court proceedings. Medicaid is the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor. Planned Parenthood provided health services like contraceptives, cancer screenings and treatments for sexually transmitted infections to more than 8,000 patients in the program in 2019.

At a Feb. 24 hearing, the central question was whether Texas officials gave Planned Parenthood a notice of termination after the 5th Circuit’s ruling — which would open the door for Planned Parenthood to protest and appeal the decision. Lawyers for the health provider said they got another notice and want to avail themselves of their right to contest the termination in an administrative hearing.

But a lawyer for the state said Planned Parenthood was given a notice of termination back in 2016 and that there’s only been more informal communication — meant just to discuss next steps — this year. Planned Parenthood could have asked to appeal the termination in an administrative hearing back then but instead decided to fight it out in court.

“The law says you have 15 days to request an administrative hearing. Their 15 days came and went. They did not request [an] administrative hearing,” said Benjamin Walton, a lawyer representing the state. “So as a matter of law, their termination was effective. There is no law requiring a re-notice, a reissuance of notice at any point in time.”

Judge Lora Livingston sided with the state Wednesday, saying evidence did not support the notion that the state had withdrawn or abandoned its previous termination notice. Planned Parenthood turned to the federal courts to “contest the merits of their claims, and they are now not able to revive their administrative remedies as the deadline to seek that relief has long since passed,” Livingston wrote. “The merits of their claims must be determined by the federal courts.”

But she said the “facts underlying the termination in this case give me great pause” and that the “motives and merits of the termination of essential health services are hotly contested.”

The allegations “could not be more serious,” she wrote. “For example, it is alleged that the state sought the terminations for purely political motives and without regard for the health and safety of the patients served by these medical providers.”

The state’s Medicaid program has among the lowest income requirements nationwide, excluding nearly all Texas adults except those who are pregnant, have a disability or are parents living below the poverty line. A single woman with two kids would have to make $230 a month or less to qualify.

Planned Parenthood has said it plays a large role in serving Medicaid patients, many of whom are Black or Latino — groups that have been disproportionately killed by the virus. It and other health providers have said there is a shortage of doctors who take Medicaid, due in part to the low reimbursement rates.

Jeffrey Hons, the head of Planned Parenthood South Texas, said the network of Medicaid providers is “not robust.” Medicaid dollars has made up about 10% of the South Texas clinics’ revenue and patients, and the effect of losing that would be a blow to the organization’s operations and deprive patients of seeing doctors with whom they’d developed long standing relationships, he said.

Texas “doesn’t care about what happens to the low-income folks, the folks who cannot afford to go to other places, that don’t have insurance, that need to have this kind of care,” Thomas Watkins, a lawyer representing the Planned Parenthood clinics, said at the hearing.

The 2016 notice of termination never took effect, he said; Planned Parenthood has continued to treat Medicaid patients.

State officials have long sought to remove Planned Parenthood as a Medicaid provider in Texas, citing an undercover video that suggested abortion providers at Planned Parenthood illegally sold fetal tissue for profit. Investigations of the video were unable to verify its claims, but state Attorney General Ken Paxton has asserted the conduct amounted to “morally bankrupt and unlawful” behavior. Planned Parenthood has donated fetal tissue for research, which is legal.

A lower court blocked the state from cutting off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood in 2017. But the politically conservative 5th Circuit ruled that people enrolled in Medicaid don’t have the right to contest how states determine what providers are qualified to be in the program.

Livingston, in her Wednesday decision, said Texas’ justification for booting Planned Parenthood has been “attacked and there is some evidence that the justification is faulty as it is apparently based solely on a series of discredited and debunked videos.” That issue was not before her in state court, she wrote.

Abbott, in a tweet deemed “false” by Politifact, has said “innocent lives will be saved” by ending taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. Proponents of cutting off the Medicaid funds have suggested the money indirectly supports abortion.

Medical providers like Planned Parenthood cannot use federal dollars to pay for abortions, except in the limited cases of rape, incest or life endangerment. Of 40 Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas, nine are licensed to perform abortions and virtually all of those were paid for by patients or third parties last year, according to PolitiFact.

Planned Parenthood has said it uses Medicaid funds to pay for services like contraception, breast and cervical cancer screenings and sexually transmitted disease testing.

In a statement after the decision was released, Dyana Limon-Mercado, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said “Gov. Abbott is focused on taking away health care access for the most vulnerable Texans.”

“The 8,000 Planned Parenthood patients who rely on Medicaid should be able to access care at the provider they know and trust. Without access to the comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care Planned Parenthood provides, thousands of lives are now at even greater risk,” she said.

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.