Texas governor pardons man who shot and killed BLM protester
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed new legislation Wednesday that will ban offshore wind power while deregulating the use of gas pipelines.
“We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots,” DeSantis said in a social media post. “Furthermore, we’re going to ensure foreign adversaries like China have no foothold in our state.”
The bill will also strike the phrase “climate change” from other state legislation and prevent cities in Florida from banning gas stoves.
Additionally, DeSantis’ new bill “removes a requirement that government agencies purchase fuel-efficient vehicles and strips away a clause that gave state officials the authority to set renewable energy targets for Florida,” according to the climate news outlet Grist.
And on Thursday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) pardoned Daniel Perry, who shot and killed another Texas man during the 2020 George Floyd protests. Both were white men and wielded firearms during the confrontation.
Perry had claimed self-defense, despite having posted on social media that he was eager to attack protestors. “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work,” Perry says in one post shortly before the shooting. “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters,” he says in another. Perry also referred to Black Lives Matter organizers as “monkeys” in a “zoo” and openly identified as a racist.
Following a highly publicized trial in April 2023 — that some compared to the Kyle Rittenhouse trial — a jury found Perry guilty of murder and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
Almost immediately, conservatives across the country called on Abbott to pardon Perry, but the governor was obligated under law to wait until the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles could recommend a pardon. Just a year into Perry’s sentence, Abbott granted him his release.
“Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney. I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation,” Abbott said in a statement.
Following Perry’s release, his full rights as a citizen will be restored, including the ability to purchase and own firearms.
Local Lens
At a candidate forum hosted Wednesday for Missouri’s attorney general race, the two Republican candidates came to an agreement on one issue: The 2020 presidential election was without a doubt stolen by the Democratic Party.
“The left stole that election by changing the rules of the game at the 11th hour,” Andrew Bailey, the incumbent attorney general, said at the debate in Springfield. “They’re going to try to steal this one by silencing our voices on big tech social media platforms, by stifling us in the mainstream media and by packing the polling places with criminal illegal aliens that shouldn’t be here in the first place.”
Will Scharf, a former assistant U.S. attorney and one-time staffer to disgraced former Gov. Eric Greitens (R), concurred with Bailey’s Trumpian rhetoric.
“In the 2020 election, out of 159 million ballots cast, over 100 (million) were early or absentee,” Scharf explained. “It’s absolutely unprecedented in American history. Many of those ballots were cast totally extra-legally, whether it was a lack of signature verification, whether it was the late submission in Pennsylvania, you can go on and on and on.”
Meanwhile, Elad Gross, the only Democrat in the race, answered the question definitively. “No,” Gross, a civil rights attorney, said when asked if he believed that the 2020 election was corrupted by illegal votes.