The hard right turn in Texas’ state politics this year has put it at the front lines of the US culture wars.
For many of the Americans who have flocked to the state’s booming economy in recent years, helping to turn swaths of the state’s big cities such as Austin and Houston into liberal outposts in the traditionally conservative state, it has been an unwelcome turn.
The so-called “heartbeat bill” signed into law by the state’s conservative governor Greg Abbott last week, which severely curtailed access to abortions, was the capstone to a legislative session that pulled Texas far to the right on a host of sensitive social issues such as guns and voting rights.