Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday in a pair of radio interviews that no one will be arrested under Senate Bill 4 simply for being in the country illegally.

He also said that he will do his first public accounting of who’s with him and against him in the special session at the end of the week, that President Barack Obama is to blame for the need for a "bathroom bill," and that unlike Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, he sees no evidence that House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, wants a state income tax.

"I’m not ready to go there," Abbott said in an interview with Scott DeLucia on WTAW-AM in College Station of Patrick’s repeated assertion that Straus’ support for more spending on public education means he wants a state income tax to pay for it. "I think if we all work together to get things done, we won’t go there."

And, Abbott said, "as long as I’m governor, we are never going to have a state income tax, so we can put a nail in that coffin real quick."

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On teacher pay raises, which both he and Patrick have called for without calling for increased spending on education, Abbott said that his inclusion of increased teacher pay on his special session agenda, "kicked off the discussion," and the positive reaction to that idea meant "the hardest obstacle has been overcome," and now it remains to find the best way to pay for it.

In an earlier interview with Bob Cole on KOKE-FM in Austin, Abbott said the recent arrest by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of a "Sureños 13" gang member, who had been previously deported four times, a few weeks after he was released from the Travis County Jail without alerting ICE, was proof of the need for SB 4, the bill he signed into law banning sanctuary cities and requiring officials, like Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez. to fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

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Cole, following up about how the new law will be applied when it goes into effect Sept. 1, noted that being in the country illegally is a civil not a criminal violation, and put it to the governor, "You’re not going to round up people who are simply here without a visa or a permit."

"This is not a roundup by the state of Texas," Abbott said. He said the law does not give police the power to arrest anyone for simply not being a legal resident, or to stop people solely to ask them "to show their papers."

Assertions to the contrary, he said, are "absolutely false."

"If fear-mongering wasn’t taking place, there wouldn’t be a single person concerned about this," Abbott said of the law that Austin and other cities are challenging in court and that Democrats in the special session want to repeal, an effort more symbolic than realistic.

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On WTAW, Abbott was asked about transgender bathroom legislation, and his answer suggested that he is looking for a bill limited in its scope to schools that would bring uniformity to school policies across the state.

Abbott said that from the founding of the Republic of Texas in 1836 until 2016, Texas had never had any problems with bathroom policies, but that in the aftermath of instructions issued by the Obama administration in 2016 requiring schools to respect the chosen gender identities of transgender students, schools had begun implementing a variety of different policies, and that even the Trump administration’s rescinding those instructions had left things confused and inconsistent.

A new law, he said, was needed to restore clarity and consistency.

Asked by Cole for his assessment of the Trump administration so far, Abbott said that the stock market is up and he made a good appointment in Neil Gorusch to the Supreme Court.

But, as for Trump’s stalled legislative agenda, "It’s like going through the first half of a football game without scoring a touchdown — you have to start putting some points on the board."

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The radio interviews signal the start of a blitz of such appearances by the governor coming off his announcement for re-election Friday and the start of the special session he called on Tuesday.

Cole quoted Jim Henson, head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, as describing Abbott as the most popular statewide official — which Cole compared to being the "tallest guy at the midget convention" — and politically "nearly bullet proof."

"`Nearly’ is the key word," said Abbott. "There are only two ways you run — run scared or you don’t run at all."

Asked by Cole about rumors that Patrick might challenge him — rumors that Patrick has debunked at every opportunity — Abbott said that is only "wildly rumored among the media. Among Dan Patrick and me it’s not widely rumored."

Asked by DeLucia about whether he was ready, as promised in an appearance at the Texas Public Policy Foundation Monday, with his first "daily naughty or nice list," of who is with his program and who is against it at the special session, Abbott said not enough has happened yet to issue any such list, but, "we are hopeful to publish something by the end of this week."