At Tuesday’s regularly scheduled San Marcos City Council meeting, the council voted five to two against “a possible resolution calling for the immediate and permanent ceasefire in occupied Palestine.” At the previous meeting on April 15, the council discussed and decided to move forward with voting on the item at the next scheduled meeting. The decision prompted Governor Greg Abbott to send a letter to San Marcos Mayor Jane Hughson urging that the council vote against the resolution or “the Office of the Governor will not enter into any future grant agreements with the City and will act swiftly to terminate active grants.”
San Marcos Council Member Amanda Rodriguez amended the resolution by adding language that said the council “unequivocally condemns the killing of civilians.”
“With the attacks from state leadership, I wanted to make it clear, as you do with public policy, to explicitly define your intent,” Rodriguez said. “Whereas this resolution does not require, request or encourage the city of San Marcos to violate any applicable state statutes including — and I went ahead and did the governor a favor and copied and pasted the statutes he cited himself — and furthermore the resolution attempts to express the city council’s position on human rights [and] international affairs as an exercise of free speech, while fully respecting and complying with all legal obligations under Texas law.”
