Summary

  • Abbott has renewed or amended his May 2021 border security disaster proclamation at least 69 times — 21 of those renewals during President Donald Trump’s second term — and the documented noncompetitive-contract pattern from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department, totaling more than $5 million since January 2025, operates under the statutory authorities those renewals preserve.
  • The original order’s quantitative predicate — Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border — has fallen by more than 95 percent from the May 2021 peak of more than 180,000 in a single month, while the order’s other predicates (cartel violence, human trafficking, illegal drug crossings) are not independently quantified in the available material.
  • State lawmakers from both parties filed measures last year that would have required Abbott to obtain legislative approval to extend a disaster declaration, and none passed; the available reporting records no equivalent pushback from Republican legislative leadership on the duration question.
  • Two political scientists — Cal Jillson of Southern Methodist University and Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston — independently characterized the practice as without recent precedent in either length or in continuing after the precipitating metric has moved, and the substrate supports the institutional-entrenchment reading on more documented grounds than either the sustained-threat reading or the political-timing reading.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott renewed his border security disaster proclamation in September — the latest of at least 69 renewals or amendments since he first declared the emergency at the Texas-Mexico border in May 2021, with 21 of those renewals coming during President Donald Trump’s second term — and the renewal leaves in place the statutory authorities under which the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department have together awarded more than $5 million in noncompetitive contracts since January 2025. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border, the only quantitative predicate of the original order for which the reporting provides tracked data, have fallen to about 8,000 per month this year from more than 180,000 in a single month when Abbott first issued the declaration — a drop of more than 95 percent on substrate arithmetic — and against a four-year record in which state lawmakers from both parties filed measures to require legislative approval for extending a disaster declaration and none passed. Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said: “I think it’s unprecedented. I don’t think that there is a similar example, certainly not as to the length of the emergency, and certainly not after the emergency has seemed to pass.” The September renewal is one cycle in a continuing record, and the institutional design under which the renewals are made has been the subject of bipartisan legislative attempts to constrain the authority; none of those measures has passed.

The September renewal and the procurement pattern

The September renewal, the latest of at least 69 since the May 2021 declaration, places the declaration in the second Trump administration by a count of 21 renewals, according to ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Under the Texas Disaster Act, as described in the reporting, an active disaster proclamation enables the governor to shift funds between agencies, suspend regulations, and award no-bid contracts without going through the state Legislature. Each renewal preserves those authorities; each cycle of preservation is what the procurement pattern in 2025 sits on top of.

The two state agencies identified as the principal vehicles of the emergency’s spending — the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department — have together awarded more than $5 million in noncompetitive contracts since January 2025 citing the border emergency, state records cited in the reporting show. The reporting identifies at least six such contracts during the second Trump administration, with the most prominent being a contract of more than $2 million awarded to CTC Gunworks LLC, a Texas-based firm, for rifles and pistols for active-duty personnel. Other items documented in the reporting include a Ford F-150 and apartments. Abbott’s office did not respond to specific questions for the reporting, including about the noncompetitive contracts; the Texas Military Department referred questions about its procurement process to the governor’s office; CTC Gunworks officials could not be reached for comment.

A DPS spokesperson said in a written statement that the disaster declaration allows for expedited purchases and that the specific contracts at issue “were purchases tied to existing state contracts.” The spokesperson added that the department “still follows best practices and aims to select vendors offering the best value, determined by cost, quality, and ability to meet the specific disaster response requirements.” The statement confirms the selection mechanism — that the agency was operating within an existing state-contract vehicle — but does not address whether the choice of vendor within that vehicle was the product of competition or sole-source selection. The reporting does not record the internal procurement-justification documents from DPS or TMD that would show whether each noncompetitive contract was selected because no alternative vendors were available, because expedited procurement was operationally necessary, or because the disaster declaration permitted sole-source selection where competitive procurement would otherwise have applied.

The original order’s predicates and the documented metric

Abbott’s May 2021 order framed the emergency in multi-factor terms. The order stated: “The Biden Administration’s open-border policies have enabled escalating violence from the cartels, dramatically increased the risk of human trafficking, and created a severe crisis of illegal drugs crossing into the United States.” The reporting provides a tracked time series for one of those four named predicates — apprehensions — and not for the other three.

Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border were the operational metric at the center of the May 2021 declaration, with more than 180,000 in a single month at the time the order was issued. Apprehensions have since fallen to about 8,000 per month this year, a reduction of more than 95 percent on substrate arithmetic. The reporting does not provide comparable time-series figures for cartel activity, human trafficking case counts, or illegal-drug seizure totals during the same window. The asymmetry between the tracked metric and the unquantified predicates is a structural feature of the available record: the renewal can be assessed against the apprehensions data with a quantitative comparison, and against the other three predicates only with the absence of independent measurement.

Three documented accounts of why the renewals continue

The substrate records three causal accounts of why the renewals continue past the point at which the precipitating apprehension metric has moved.

The first is the sustained-threat account, articulated in writing by Deputy Press Secretary Madeline Waschak on behalf of Abbott’s office. Waschak wrote: “The damage caused by four years of failed border policies under Democrat rule did not disappear overnight, and the progress we have made will not sustain itself without continued vigilance.” Waschak added that Abbott “will ensure the tools remain in place to safeguard our state as we work alongside the Trump Administration to deter, arrest, detain, and deport illegal immigrants.” Within this account, the declaration’s continuation is a function of the structural threat that persists regardless of apprehension totals.

The second is the executive-flexibility / institutional-entrenchment account, articulated independently by the two political scientists quoted in the reporting. Cal Jillson said: “I think it’s unprecedented. I don’t think that there is a similar example, certainly not as to the length of the emergency, and certainly not after the emergency has seemed to pass.” Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, said: “This is the quiet power of the governor. It’s not something often that they brag about because the more that it becomes a political issue, the more that there might be some contestation of it.” Rottinghaus added: “governors, once they get a power, are hesitant to give it back.” He also said: “Even someone who strongly supports the governor’s board of policies might ask whether they want a future governor of the opposite party using the same interpretation of emergency authority for years.” Within this account, the renewals continue because the powers they unlock — fund shifts, regulatory suspension, noncompetitive contracts — continue to be useful to the administering agencies and to the executive office.

The third is the politically-correlated account, supported by the documented record but not advanced by any named source in the reporting. Twenty-one of the 69 renewals have come during Trump’s second term, the declaration aligns Abbott’s posture with the Trump administration’s border framing, and Abbott is running for his fourth term next month. Abbott, at an early-October press conference discussing the federal government’s $7.5 billion reimbursement for state border expenses, said: “We must secure the border not just for the next two years of the Trump administration, but we gotta do it forever.” The September renewal falls in the period between Trump’s return to office and the next gubernatorial election.

The substrate’s differential support for the three accounts is itself a finding. The sustained-threat account has the governor’s office as its named source and the absence of independent quantification for three of its four named predicates. The political-correlated account has the documented timing of the renewal count and the verbatim quote of Abbott’s “not just for the next two years” framing, but no named source in the reporting advances it. The institutional-entrenchment account is supported by the bipartisan failure of legislative constraint, the $230 million in grants allotted last year to the governor’s office to distribute largely to local prosecutors and agencies assisting Operation Lone Star, the pattern of noncompetitive procurement under the emergency declaration, and the two political scientists’ independent characterization of the practice as without recent precedent. The substrate does not foreclose either of the other accounts, but supports the institutional-entrenchment reading on more documented grounds than either of the other two.

The bipartisan record of attempted constraint and its outcome

State lawmakers from both parties have filed measures that would have required Abbott to obtain legislative approval to extend a disaster declaration. The reporting identifies “at least a handful” of such measures filed last year, and states that none passed. The reporting does not identify the measures by number or by sponsor. It also does not record equivalent statements from Republican legislative leadership on the duration question, so the bipartisan pattern can be documented on the filing side and on the failure-to-pass side but not on the public-argument side, where only the Democratic vice chair of the Appropriations Committee is on the record.

Democratic state Rep. Mary González, vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, said at a Tribune-hosted event with state lawmakers from El Paso: “I think that the problem is that some of that border security money still lies in the governor’s office which has no checks and balances and because we are still under an emergency — which is not an emergency anymore — an emergency border security statement which he can just use that money, you have seen some questionable appropriations under the veil of border security.” González also said legislators have already started to scale back border funding and that there is interest from both sides of the aisle in continuing to do so in the upcoming legislative session. The reporting does not name a Republican legislative counterpart to González’s statement on the duration question.

Three paradigms and their cross-evaluation

The reporting engages the conduct at three levels of evaluation that the substrate can be read against.

The first is the federal-immigration-enforcement paradigm, in which the relevant question is which level of government bears responsibility for border security. Within this paradigm, Operation Lone Star — the initiative Abbott launched in March 2021 to stem smuggling through Texas — is a state-level response to a federal enforcement gap, and Abbott’s October framing articulates a permanent-state-role position. The first Trump administration and the Biden administration are the two federal-level baselines against which the state posture is measured.

The second is the state-sovereignty paradigm, in which the relevant question is the structural capacity of a state to act when the federal government does not. Within this paradigm, the disaster declaration is a tool of last-resort governance and the renewals are evidence that the structural condition persists.

The third is the democratic-governance paradigm, in which the relevant question is the constitutional design of Texas as a “weak governor” state that “by design” requires legislative approval for extraordinary action. The reporting frames Abbott’s consolidation as “build[ing] on predecessors’ efforts” — a historical-genealogical reading in which the cumulative product of gubernatorial practice has strengthened executive authority within a weak-governor constitutional design. Within the democratic-governance frame, the 69 renewals across both Republican and Democratic legislative attempts at constraint have converted a temporary authority into a permanent one; the no-bid contracts and the $230 million in grants to the governor’s office represent the same conversion on the spending side.

The state-sovereignty paradigm and the democratic-governance paradigm evaluate the same conduct from opposite normative frames. The first asks whether the state is acting effectively; the second asks whether the temporary has become permanent. The paradigms do not resolve against each other because they treat the same conduct as either justified response or constitutional pathology. The reporting does not engage cross-jurisdictional frameworks — how emergency powers are structured or constrained in other federal or parliamentary systems, or what duration constraints are common elsewhere — and does not develop a reflexive framing in which paradigm-comparison itself is the analytical subject. The most informative extension not engaged would be a cross-state comparison of gubernatorial emergency-authority limits, including analogous duration-triggering mechanisms such as the periodic gubernatorial recertification embedded in the federal Stafford Act, the closest federal analogue not engaged in the source reporting, which would test whether the Texas pattern’s combination of indefinite duration and broad procurement authority has documented analogues elsewhere or is itself the outlier the political scientists describe.

What happens next

The September renewal leaves in place the statutory authorities that produce both the procurement pattern and the spending pattern the reporting documents. The Texas budget for Operation Lone Star exceeds $11 billion across the Biden administration, with an additional $3 billion allotted last year after Trump took office; the federal government has reimbursed Texas $7.5 billion for state border expenses, a figure discussed at Abbott’s early-October press conference. The September renewal is one cycle in an ongoing record; the upcoming legislative session is the documented venue for the constraint-attempt activity González described.

Rottinghaus’s “future governor of the opposite party” observation is the canonical statement of the institutional-cost frame the substrate supports. Whether the upcoming legislative session produces a sunset mechanism, a reporting requirement, or a recertification step is a question the substrate identifies but does not answer; the substrate’s record on prior attempts is that the measures have not passed.

Operation Lone Star, the initiative through which the declaration’s authorities have been deployed, has been the subject of documented problems. A 2022 investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and The Marshall Project found that “the state’s reported success included arrests unrelated to the border or immigration, and counted drug seizures made by troopers from across the state who were not directly assigned to the operation.” The Tribune and Army Times have also “exposed poor working conditions, pay delays and suicides among National Guard members deployed as part of Operation Lone Star.” The reporting does not document any structural change to the initiative since the 2022 investigation.

Emergency declarations as a category

The border security declaration is Abbott’s longest continuously running emergency proclamation. Abbott renewed his 2020 COVID-19 disaster declaration for three years, “even as he downplayed the severity of the pandemic.” The governor’s second-longest-running emergency declaration, after border security, relates to drought: he declared a state disaster in July 2022 and within days amended it to bring the total of affected counties to 189, and has continued to renew it, though the declaration now applies to about a third of the counties originally identified. The substrate does not document a statutory definition of when a disaster ends, and the available reporting identifies the absence of an external termination trigger by inference — no legislative measure constraining renewals has passed.

Additional considerations

The substrate leaves several diagnostic items outside the public record as reported. The internal procurement justifications from DPS and TMD showing whether each noncompetitive contract was selected because no alternative vendors were available, because expedited procurement was operationally necessary, or because the disaster declaration permitted sole-source selection where competitive procurement would otherwise have applied are not in the record. The Texas Disaster Act’s specific termination provisions are not quoted in the reporting; the substrate identifies the absence of a statutory termination trigger by inference, not by text. Contemporaneous CBP or DEA statistics on fentanyl seizures, cartel activity indices, or trafficking-case counts during the relevant window — which would test the sustained-threat predicates beyond apprehensions — are also not in the record.

The reporting reproduces Rottinghaus’s “governor’s board of policies” remark as printed; the phrase reads as a possible transcription artifact against the quotation’s natural English referent, and the substrate carries it as printed without annotation. The Texas Military Department’s referral of procurement questions to the governor’s office, and Abbott’s office’s non-response to specific questions for the reporting, are the documented points at which the public record ends. The next cycle of the declaration — the 70th or later — is the next datum.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Dialectical Analysis
Holds thesis against antithesis and works toward a higher synthesis.
Process Tracing
Reconstructs the step-by-step causal pathway of a specific historical event.
Worldview Cartography
Maps the clashing worldviews underlying a dispute.