Want to know more about Abbot’s race politics?

On the same day that he received a recommendation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Governor Greg Abbott issued a proclamation Thursday granting a full pardon for Daniel Perry, a former United States Army Sergeant who was unanimously convicted of murder in April 2023 for the July 2020 fatal shooting of Garrett Foster, an Air Force veteran who was participating in a Black Lives Matter protest and carrying a rifle in downtown Austin at the time of his death. According to court documents, Perry had previously made racist comments, discussed how he wanted to “hunt” Muslims, and messaged just months before killing Foster: “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.” The same unsealed documents from his murder case also revealed a less widely reported aspect of his character: Weeks before shooting Foster, he’d sent online messages to an apparent minor in what seemed to be an act of “grooming.”