The local threat to American democracy

As Texas swoons underneath an unprecedented warmth wave, its governor has signed a “preemption” invoice to strip cities like Houston and Dallas from setting requirements for native workplaces — together with assured water breaks for outside staff.

The “Texas Regulatory Consistency Act” bars municipal governments from enacting insurance policies that transcend state legislation in eight broad areas and voids current metropolis and native legal guidelines that accomplish that. Cities will likely be topic to lawsuits and damages for discrepancies between their insurance policies and people of the state.

Which means the pursuits of voters within the state’s predominantly Democratic-leaning cities are being trampled by Republican state-level leaders and their enterprise supporters. Worse, the Texas invoice is merely the most recent in a sequence of measures by states to preempt the authority of native governments and overrule their voters.