July 2025 campaign finance reports – Harris County offices

It’s mid-to-late July, and you know what that means: It’s campaign finance report season! We’ve got a lot to cover, as there’s more angles and intrigue than usual, certainly a lot more than there was three months ago. I’ll start with Harris County and then hit the Congressional reports, and then to the city of Houston and maybe some state stuff. The January reports for Harris County candidates and officeholders are here.

Lina Hidalgo
Annise Parker
Warren Howell
Oscar Gonzales
Aliza Dutt

Rodney Ellis
Adrian Garcia
Richard Vega
Raquel Boujourne
Tom Ramsey

Teneshia Hudspeth
Carla Wyatt
Marilyn Burgess

Sean Teare
Ed Gonzalez
Christian Menefee
Annette Ramirez

Kim Ogg
Kathy Blueford-Daniels


Candidate     Raised       Spent       Loan     On Hand
=======================================================
Hidalgo       26,049     141,460     51,400     600,492
Parker        96,105       9,793          0      92,755
Howell         2,800      71,157     67,000       1,357
Gonzales       3,625       3,148          0         476
Dutt         132,500       2,337    118,200     246,662

Ellis        808,522     289,467          0   7,351,102
Garcia     1,426,368     411,292          0   2,559,209
Vega          19,749       5,549          0       9,749
Boujourne     33,795       2,764    100,000     131,030
Ramsey        73,900      80,188          0   1,563,132
Briones      868,866     278,181          0   3,007,305

Hudspeth       8,420       5,445          0         752
Wyatt            910          80          0       2,128
Burgess       29,800      12,400      5,207      34,513

Teare         60,405      50,987          0      39,031
Gonzalez      51,756      23,416          0      96,179
Menefee          465      20,598          0     226,825
Ramirez        5,625      10,248          0       7,625

B-Daniels      2,000       1,026      2,700       3,462

You may be looking at this and saying “wait, I thought you said that Lina Hidalgo had no money in her account, where did that $600K come from?” I wondered that myself. According to her report, it came from Schedule K, which is for “Interest, credits, gains, refunds, and contributions returned to filer”. A total of $653,945 in refunds for legal services, plus $1,500 for “security deposit for office rent”, were added to her account. I have to assume the former is for the charges that were eventually dropped against her staffers. She still spent over $100K more than she raised, and she had less than $100K on hand in January, so she needed that money to stay afloat.

Campos noted this as well, and he speculated that not only might this mean that she is running, she’d be the favorite to win the primary. I think all things being equal and Judge Hidalgo being a motivated candidate, I’d bet on her to win as well. But this is now three cycles in which she’s done little to no fundraising, she still hasn’t unequivocally said she’s running, this kind of windfall isn’t going to happen again, and I just don’t see her as being motivated to run. I presume she will let us know soon enough.

I might have expected a bigger total from Annise Parker, who has long been a strong fundraiser, but she only filed her appointment of Treasurer on June 11, so all her contributions are from between then and June 30. I expect a much bigger number for her in January.

Republican Aliza Dutt has a pretty good cash on hand total, largely from a loan to herself. Which she weirdly claimed was fundraising, for whatever the reason. Much of the funds she actually did raise came from a small number of big donors.

That said, she did do better than the other Republicans who had filings. Warren Howell’s expenditures were filed as “unitemized”, so there’s no listing of them on the form. My best guess is they’re from personal funds, though there’s a form you’re supposed to fill out for that, which he did not do. Oscar Gonzales has had a campaign sign up at the C&D Hardware on 11th for some time. Doesn’t seem to have helped much.

Letitia Plummer filed her appointment of Treasurer on July 8, the day of her announcement. We won’t see a finance report from her until January. As noted before, she has been lax in filing her city finance reports. I haven’t checked the current batch of city reports as I write this, so the state of her campaign finances could remain a mystery until then.

Commissioners Garcia and Briones are doing what you’d expect them to do. I’m sure they will run good campaigns. I hope they play well with others and help lift the tide in the county overall. Commissioner Ramsey is just breaking even, as he did in the previous report. He’s not up until 2028, he’s got plenty on hand, and he’s in a pretty solid precinct. I’d do the same.

Richard Vega and Raquel Boujourne are both Republicans, both in Precinct 2. No one with a report is listed as an opponent for Briones yet. $10K of Vega’s funds raised was an in-kind donation for food and a venue, so I presume for a fundraiser. I suspect his cash on hand total is not correct as a result. Boujourne loaned herself the $100K. They’ve got a ways to go. In a good year for them it might not matter so much. This cycle, they’ll probably need all the help they can get.

Most of the rest of the reports aren’t that interesting. The bigger-money offices, specifically DA and Sheriff, are on their off cycle, so they’re not doing too much. Christian Menefee is still County Attorney and so still has a report to file here, though he obviously didn’t do much with it. All of the fundraising and most of the expenses came from before his campaign announcement for CD18; the expenses that continued were for recurring items like software. I looked to see if he had transferred any funds to his Congressional account – assuming it’s legal to do that – and the answer is no. The non-County Judge incumbents don’t usually do much fundraising, and as far as I can tell don’t yet have any opponents. Chris Daniel, both his personal account and his PAC, filed reports but neither showed any funds raised, so I’m not counting him as a candidate.

Kim Ogg spent $3,077 and has $446 on hand. I just thought you’d want to know that.

I forgot that we will have HCAD elections next November – I believe one will be up then, and the other two in 2028. Either Kathy Blueford-Daniels is the trustee who has to run next year, or she’s just more active than the others.

OK, that’s what I’ve got for now. Next up is Congress. As always, let me know what you think.

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Dispatches from Dallas, July 18 edition

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: one of our state senators is going for AG; more about the sale of the DMN to Hearst; Dallas police and court news; Robert Roberson gets another date with the death chamber; Eddie Garcia may be headed to Fort Worth; the latest on the Prairieland ICE detention center attack; Metroplex media on the special session redistricting effort; defunding DART may be back on the menu; the latest on EPIC; Black rodeo; King of the Hill; Dallas’ lack of culture; and more!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Lorde.

A short list this week:

  • As our host mentioned, local State Senator (from my district) Nathan Johnson is running for Attorney General on the Democratic ticket. I’ve been pretty happy with Johnson. He hasn’t always been as far to the left as I’d like, but he doesn’t seem to be opposed to working with the left, which you can’t say about a lot of centrists. You’ve probably already read the announcement, or as much news about it as you need to, so I’ll point you at Johnson’s conversation with Dallas Morning News political reporter Gromer Jeffers, Jr. and if you need the overview, at KERA, the Dallas Observer, and the Texas Tribune.
  • D Magazine drops an important detail about the DMN’s sale to Hearst: DallasNews Corp. was trading at $4.39 before the sale, had been as low as $2.98, and Hearst bought it at $14. Hard to argue with that. The Dallas Observer also has some opinions about the sale in an article titled What The Dallas Morning News Sale Means to a Dallas Times Herald Staffer. The subhead is “Revenge served cold still tastes pretty damned good.” It’s worth reading for an analysis of power in Dallas and the DMN’s editorial agenda.
  • A number of items from the Dallas area police and courts:
  • In other court news, and not good news, we have a new execution date of October 16 for Robert Roberson, the East Texas man convicted in 2003 for killing his child based on now-discredited shaken-baby science. I don’t know why AG Ken Paxton is bound and determined to kill Roberson, but he is. More from KERA, the Texas Tribune, the Dallas Observer, and the Texas Observer.
  • You remember when we talked about how Bo French had finally gone too far and had Dan Patrick bop him in the nose with a rolled up Xitter printout on the nose? Local GOP leaders are unsurprisingly standing by their man and the whole thing has basically blown over.
  • A federal judge has dismissed another lawsuit over the death of a Tarrant County jail inmate. This time it’s the death of Trelynn Wormley, who died in 2022 of a fentanyl overdose. The Star-Telegram’s coverage of the dismissal is headlined “Federal judge dismisses lawsuit alleging ‘drugs run rampant’ in Tarrant jail”, which is an interesting choice.
  • The bizarre case surrounding the shooting at ICE’s Prarieland Detention Center continues, with a twelfth suspect, Benjamin Hanil Song, arrested in Dallas. Fourteen people have been arrested in total; the last two were charged with helping the twelfth suspect, a former Marine reservist, escape arrest. Song has been charged with three federal counts of attempted murder; three federal counts of discharging a firearm during a violent act; and state charges of engaging in organized criminal activity, aggravated assault on a public servant, and aiding in commission of terrorism. More from the DMN.
  • The Star-Telegram ran an op-ed on Paxton divorce won’t matter in his Senate primary and why it should. I agree that Paxton’s “private” conduct (to the extent that it’s still private after the impeachment and trial two years ago) reflects a pattern that should disturb voters. But I also think there’s plenty of evidence in his public life that should be disqualifying. Republican voters in this state clearly disagree. I’m not keen on sealing the Paxton divorce records more for reasons of privilege than because of any prurient interest in what’s in there. That said, I’m pretty sure that whatever recent discovery prompted Angela Paxton to finally kick Ken’s sorry ass to the curb is also relevant to this pattern. It doesn’t mean the voters would listen this time around even if they could hear what he’s (alleged to have) done.
  • I have three items on the upcoming redistricting effort in the special session from the Metroplex’s papers for your review. First, the DMN would like you to know that experts say that redistricting might backfire on the GOP. This story has some good maps of the Houston and Fort Worth maps that are due for reconfiguration and explains that the effort is also aimed at changing boundaries in South Texas, where Republicans have been trying to grab seats for a while. Second, the Dallas Observer says “duh” to the observation that Texas has a gerrymandering problem and how the state’s agreement to the Trump DOJ’s complaints about minority coalition districts contradicts its stance in the recent lawsuit by LULAC and the NAACP. And the Star-Telegram, whose headline on its article is the much blander “Texas redrawing congressional district after feds say maps unconstitutional”, focuses on CD 33, which includes parts of Fort Worth and is currently held by Democrat Marc Veasey. Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, the Arlington Democrat who was the chief target of the recent Tarrant County redistricting, says Tarrant County was the test run for the state’s plan.
  • Speaking of the special session, five cities in the DART service area, led by Plano, want to revive the bills from the regular session to cut DART’s funding and reconstitute its board with less influence from Dallas.
  • Just when we thought we’d gotten rid of Dr. Phil with the bankruptcy of Merit Street Media, he’s back with a new company, Envoy Media. Envoy will be headquartered somewhere in the Dallas area, and combine news, entertainment, and “citizen journalism”. More from the Hollywood Reporter.
  • Longtime readers of Dallas-area news may remember the scandal in the University of North Texas music department over the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and racism some years ago. The professor whose statements set the incident off back in 2020 sued the school and has just been awarded $725K in a settlement over the whole thing. Of interest to readers here: one of Professor Timothy Jackson’s attorneys was former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell.
  • In the latest on EPIC City, the Texas Funeral Service Commission is permitting the East Plano Islamic Center to perform burial rites again, two weeks after EPIC sued the commission.
  • This week I learned that the 36th annual Texas Black Invitational Rodeo will be held in Fair Park on July 26. It celebrates the historical legacy of Black cowboys, which most people don’t know much about. The DMN has the story.
  • King of the Hill is coming back: a new trailer dropped this week for the revival, which will be season 14 of the show. I learned from the DMN article that the fictional town of Arlen is based on Richardson, which makes it even more interesting to me. Also fascinating to me as an oil brat who lived abroad as a teen: Hank and Peggy have been living in “the compound” in Saudi Arabia.
  • Last, but not least, the DMN isn’t immune to the lure of hanging a Reddit link out there as a story source. This time it’s about Dallas’ lack of culture. I read the Reddit post and the overwhelming votes for Dallas as the city with no culture in the comments. I think what they’re getting at is that Dallas has no unifying points in its culture other than money and status. Its arts and music scenes aren’t united around anything and the city is pretty blandly white where there are east and south Asian cultural hubs in the suburbs. Houston has some of the same problems but the people are friendlier, which makes up for a lot.
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Hands Off Our Districts protest tomorrow

From the inbox:

Dear Democrats, friends and neighbors,

We’re asking everyone who believes in fair representation to join us this Saturday at 10:00 AM for the Day of Protest, “Hands Off Our Districts.” In solidarity with community leaders, elected officials, and precinct chairs across Harris County, we’ll stand together against the partisan gerrymander called by Governor Abbott at President Trump’s request—just prior to the 2026 mid‐term elections.

What: Day of Protest – “Hands Off Our Districts
When: Saturday, July 19, 2025 • 10:00 AM–11:30 AM
Why: This mid-decade redistricting threatens to dilute the votes of our Black, Brown, working-class, and urban communities in CD-9, CD-18, CD-29—and ultimately across the entire state. We will not be silenced.

Rally Locations (Choose One)

CD 9 (Rep. Al Green)

1.  Former Toys R Us
1212 Old Spanish Trail, Houston, 77054

2.  Wells Fargo @ Sharpstown
7302 Bellaire Blvd, Houston, 77036

CD 18 (Vacant)
3.  Sen. Borris Miles’ Office
5302 Almeda Rd, Houston, 77004
4.  Kroger
1352 W 43rd St, Houston, 77018

CD 29 (Rep. Sylvia Garcia)
5. Moody Park
3725 Fulton St., Houston, 77009

👉 Register Now: bit.ly/day-of-protest

What to Bring:

  • Handmade signs or banners (e.g. “HANDS OFF OUR DISTRICTS,” “FAIR MAPS = FAIR ELECTIONS,” “PROTECT DEMOCRACY—END GERRYMANDERING,” “ABBOTT CAN’T PICK OUR CONGRESS”)

  • Water, sunscreen, hats

If the Republicans are hell-bent on passing a new Congressional map in the special session, there’s not much that can be done to stop them. They have sufficient majorities to do it. That doesn’t mean we just have to accept it. Here’s your opportunity to register your dissent. Please be there if you can.

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Re-redistricting watch: El Paso in focus

Not a big surprise.

Rep. Veronica Escobar

President Donald Trump’s request that Texas Republicans seek to create five new congressional seats for the GOP in an upcoming special legislation could involve redrawing boundaries in El Paso, a website focused on Congress says.

Diluting the traditional Democratic stronghold of Texas’ 16th Congressional District, currently represented by Veronica Escobar, is one of the options being considered by Republicans ahead of the special session set to begin July 21, according to Punchbowl News.

Details of a specific redistricting plan in Far West Texas hasn’t been made public, but almost certainly would involve placing much more of El Paso into the 23rd Congressional District, which stretches across a wide swath from El Paso to western San Antonio and is currently represented by Republican Tony Gonzales. It also would have to involve placing more rural voters outside El Paso into Escobar’s district, which is currently entirely within the boundaries of El Paso.

“Texas Republicans are about to engage in mid-year redistricting at the behest of Donald Trump. Make no mistake about it, Donald Trump knows his ‘big beautiful bill,’ which cuts health care and nutrition programs in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy, has made Republicans all over the country vulnerable to the ire of their voters,” Escobar said in a statement to El Paso Matters.

“So to compensate, Trump wants to stack the deck and further gerrymander Texas House seats, adding five more seats for Republicans. And unfortunately, Texas Republicans are so compliant that they are willing to do anything to please Trump. But this is bigger than Texas elections and is a sign of everything Trump will do in order to stay in power and rig the system in his favor. It is not hyperbole to say that our democracy in America is on the line right now, and Texas is central to protecting it.”

[…]

Including El Paso in any Republican redistricting plan could create numerous challenges, including complying with current court guidelines for drawing political lines, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

“Because of population locations and geographic boundaries, it would be pretty hard to cut up Congressional District 16. The more ways that mapmakers carve up the state, the more legal challenges they’ll face. CD 16 is a good example of a district that, if changed, could end up as an exhibit of problematic line drawing,” Rottinghaus told El Paso Matters.

“El Paso’s geographic isolation makes it a challenge to be part of a ranging district that includes large stretches of rural areas and still keeps it mostly compact. It’s a logistical and legal problem for mapmakers,” he said.

I thought CD16 could be a target as soon as the news of this bizarre campaign came out. Based on 2024 results, it’s within plausible parameters, though going by any other year it would be much more of a stretch. But Trump isn’t operating on 2024 levels of support, and, well, that’s not my problem. Greg Abbott may have put his focus on the Houston area, but it would take a lot more than that to get to five possibly winnable new seats for the Republicans.

The main challenge for them is apparent in the current map. You can’t carve up CD16 without heavily involving CD23, which up until 2024 was the epitome of a swing district. Tony Gonzales won by a bigger margin in 2024 than Veronica Escobar did, but he did it against a placeholder opponent, and only after barely surviving the Republican primary; he won a runoff against a MAGA true believer by 1.2 percentage points. Weakening CD23 with Gonzales as your candidate is one thing. Weakening it with a non-incumbent wingnut who spent millions of wingnut billionaire money to take out Tony Gonzales is another thing. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Maybe they can figure out a way to stretch the deep red CD11 or CD19 into the picture. They could take the addition of Democrats more easily than CD23 can, but adding them into the mix means disrupting more districts and thus adding to the chaos. It also may require drawing maps so non-Euclidean that they violate other principles, like compactness. I know, I know, don’t expect much from SCOTUS if and when this ever gets to it. We still haven’t seen a map and are mostly reacting to Trump’s assertions that the Lege could easily find five more districts for him. Until we see something on paper, all we can do is speculate wildly. The San Antonio Report, which focuses on CD28, Lone Star Left, which does some quorum-busting math, and Mother Jones, which lays all of this at John Roberts’ feet, have more.

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Benjamin Flores

We have more than one Democrat running for Governor.

Benjamin Flores

I first met Ben Flores last fall, at his small pig farm on the outskirts of Bay City, a working-class town about half an hour north of Matagorda Bay. The cybersecurity consultant—who relocated his family from Austin during the COVID-19 pandemic to start Lord of the Pigs Ranch—was locked in a heated legal battle with his neighbor Kimberly Brown, who claimed his pigs were a public nuisance. Flores stood his ground, arguing that his organic farming methods prevented any unpleasant odors or ground contamination. (The civil lawsuit is ongoing.)

In 2023, Bay City voters elected Flores to the city council. As a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Republican city, Flores clashed regularly with his fellow council members. Frustrated by his lack of influence, he considered running for mayor but ultimately decided to set his sights higher—much higher. Early last week, Flores declared his candidacy for the 2026 Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He becomes just the second Democrat to throw his hat in the ring, after an East Texas dairy farmer named Bobby Cole.

Flores knows the odds are against him. In 2022, incumbent Governor Greg Abbott defeated Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke by nearly eleven points. Just to win the Democratic primary, Flores will probably need to beat candidates with significantly better funding and higher name recognition. But the Mexican-born tech worker turned farmer told me he relishes the challenge. And, as his neighbors have discovered, Flores never backs down from a fight.

Here’s his website – I couldn’t find any social media accounts for him, and he is listed as his own Treasurer, so I think it’s safe to say this is very much a nascent candidacy. The rest of the story in an interview with Flores, and he sounds like an interesting person, the kind of candidate I’d be excited about if he were running for State Rep or Congress. Running for Governor, well, it’s still early days but I think I’ll hold out for news about Ron Nirenberg, while keeping an eye on Bobby Cole and the rest of the “thinking about it” crew.

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Enron is still out there doing…something

I admire the commitment to the bit. Beyond that, you’re on your own.

The company that took over the defunct Enron brand, led by a “Birds Aren’t Real” cofounder, held a mostly satirical quarterly earnings call Thursday afternoon but gave updates to an application to become a legitimate Texas energy provider.

“I’m super honored to be the CEO of this great company. You know, this company has a legendary history, and some of it’s good and some of it’s bad, and that’s fine. That’s real,” Connor Gaydos, Enron’s 28-year-old CEO, said. “Enron’s name has always carried weight, and one thing that defines us is that we don’t run from that.”

The majority of the meeting was presented as comedy and filled with sight gags. Many of the claims of earnings and the accomplishments of its alleged board were unsubstantiated.

DJ Withee, chief operating officer and legal counsel at HGP Storage, a company developing utility-scale battery storage farms, was introduced as Enron’s vice president of energy service. Withee said he was brought on by Gaydos to set up the customer-facing energy services business.

Enron Energy Texas LLC, a subsidiary of Enron, filed to become a Texas retail electric provider in January. Gaining this designation would allow Enron to sell electricity plans to Texas consumers.

“Our business model is actually going to be very simple,” Withee said. “We buy wholesale electricity, just like everybody else, but because of our efficiency, because of our use of technology, we are going to have lower costs than our competitors. Lower costs means greater savings that we can pass back to our customers.”

Ed Hirs, University of Houston energy fellow and economist, said a retail electric provider is a middleman that purchases electricity from power generators or other wholesale sources, determining the rates and plan structures for consumers.

“What they’re trying to do is match electricity consumption habits to you,” Hirs said.

Withee said Enron filed a motion Thursday with the Public Utility Commission of Texas and expects the company will have an answer by the end of July.

[…]

Hirs said Enron’s promise to provide cheaper electricity to Texans is not any different from anything else other retail electric providers offer.

“The fact of the matter is, they are just a middleman, and they can’t make electricity cheaper than it is,” Hirs said.

Hirs said as a provider, Enron would either be contracting with a power company, offering lower prices at a deficit to themselves, or monitoring the wholesale market every day for the most affordable option, but in either case, they have no control over the electricity that is ultimately dispatched to customers.

See here for the previous update. I am obviously amused at some level by their performance art. I’m fascinated at a whole different level by their attempt to mix in a serious business alongside their silliness. Even more fascinating is the idea that people might take them seriously enough to become customers. Or their employees, working on something as mundane but useful as retail consumer energy plans. I suppose that might be a better business model than what they were doing under Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow. We’ll see what the PUC makes of their application.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of July 14

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes peace and comfort for all those affected by the Hill Country floods as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading

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The long haul of recovery

We only really have a best guess as to how many people are still missing from the Hill Country floods.

More than 10 days after catastrophic July Fourth floods along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, the official death toll across six Hill Country counties has risen to 132 people, while an estimated 101 remain missing, state officials said Monday.

Local and state officials said the exact number of people still missing, though, is difficult to determine. The figure presented Monday was the first time state and local officials had publicly disclosed an updated estimate since Tuesday, when that figure was 161 people.

At a press conference Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott said that 97 people were missing from the area around Kerrville, the Kerr County seat. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said the larger estimate of 101 people includes people missing from other counties.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said during a commissioners court meeting Monday that the search for missing people could take up to six months, but setting a time estimate is also difficult.

“How long is it going to take? I mean, who knows?” Leitha said.

Abbott said Monday most of those still considered missing were people who did not check into hotels or campsites. Abbott said many of those people were added to the list of people who haven’t been located after friends and family reported them missing.

“Those who are missing on this list, most of them, were more difficult to identify because there was no record of them logging in anywhere,” Abbott said.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top official, said during a county commissioners court meeting earlier Monday that local officials don’t know the exact number of how many visitors who traveled to the Guadalupe for the holiday weekend had been caught in the flood.

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” Kelly said. “Don’t be discouraged when you hear that number, we’re doing the very best we can, but it is an unknown at this point.”

Both Kelly and Abbott said officials had a grasp of how many county residents and people at camps along the river are missing.

Before Monday’s updates, local and state officials had provided little public information about the number of people missing after Abbott first put the figure at 161 people from Kerr County. An update to the Kerr County website page providing updates about the number of confirmed deaths and people believed to be missing removed any mentions of both figures when it was updated Friday.

When The Texas Tribune asked spokespeople for Abbott’s office, Texas’ Department of Public Safety and Texas Division of Emergency Management questions last week about how the number of missing people was estimated, they directed reporters to Kerr County officials. The Joint Information Center, a team of county and state employees and volunteers which has been running public communications for the county since the disaster, did not respond to multiple requests last week to clarify how the number was found, but provided the previous, higher number Abbott provided Tuesday.

Recovery teams are thoroughly scouring large debris piles for any people who were swept into the Guadalupe after it swelled in the pre-dawn hours July 4 following heavy rain. Those efforts have been hindered further by continued rain and flooding in areas already impacted by the initial floods, pausing searches across the Hill Country.

The devastating flood is already one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent Texas history. The 1900 hurricane in Galveston claimed over 8,000 lives and the 1921 San Antonio floods killed 215 people. If official estimates that 97 people are still missing is not an overcount, then the final death toll of the Hill Country floods would surpass those of the 1921 floods, potentially making it the second most catastrophic natural disaster in Texas.

I have sympathy for the challenge of knowing who’s missing because of the flood, who’s missing for other reasons, who just hasn’t been accounted for, and so on. It’s entirely possible that some bodies of people who are not currently on this list will be found. It’s likely some will never be found. I have nothing but empathy and compassion for everyone working to find them all.

We’ve talked a lot about the death toll from this disaster, but there were a lot of injuries, too.

The San Antonio-based Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC), which coordinates the EMS and hospital response to mass casualty events for a 22-county area, including Kerr County, reported this week that its emergency response to the July 4 floods grew to 130 units, including 61 ambulances.

“We’ve had over 6,600 patient encounters and 182 patients that have been treated and 109 of those were transported to a hospital somewhere,” said Eric Epley, the CEO of STRAC.

Epley said those figures are only for STRAC, a state coordination office for the Texas emergency medical task force, and seven other regional members.

A ninth component oversees the entire statewide task force. Created and funded by the Texas Legislature, the task force has existed since 2010.

He said local EMS transports are not included in the figures, and it’s a summary total for the task force since the Fourth of July.

[…]

He said injuries continue to come in during current search and recovery efforts, which includes dangerous debris removal. Hundreds of emergency workers and 12,000 volunteers remain on the ground.

He said two mobile medical units, each including two doctors, two nurses, and two paramedics, are positioned at both ends of the region that saw the Guadalupe River flooding — one in Kerrville and one at Canyon Lake, west of New Braunfels.

He said the injuries include bumps and bruises and the occasional tetanus shot when someone gets a cut.

Honestly, considering the scope of the flooding, this seems like a fairly modest number. I wish them all a speedy recovery.

Here’s one more story of interest about alarms.

A small East Texas community is in the final stages of installing a state-of-the-art disaster warning system officials have been working toward for years.

Six new sirens will be placed strategically throughout the city of Crockett, about two hours north of Houston. City officials say they applied for a FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant in 2023 after a tornado tore through the county a year prior that caught many residents unprepared.

“We’re in hurricane season. And while we’re not right on the coast, depending on which side of the aisle you’re on, you get the occasional spin off tornadoes,” said Lee Standley, Crockett’s assistant city manager.

Crockett’s success in accessing federal hazard mitigation funds comes amid deafening public outcry about the role government inaction played in the lack of sirens in Kerr County and whether such a warning could have curbed the devastating July 4 flooding death toll. Rural communities notoriously struggle to access such federal funds because densely populated urban cores receive priority and rural governments don’t have the budget to pony up dollars required to match the federal share.

Experts say Crockett’s success is likely due to an uncommon mixture of timing, know-how and will power.

“It takes state and federal agencies working on the ground with the community to make sure they both understand the risk, and — very importantly — that they have the tools and resources they need to do something about it,” said Kristin Smith, a lead researcher for Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit that helps communities with land management.

Crockett is up in Houston County, also a very red place. There are definitely obstacles to getting this kind of funding that small rural counties face, but just being dark red is not one of them unless its residents choose to make it one. The state can also provide funding for this sort of thing, which could be addressed by the forthcoming special session. Again, if the Lege wants to do that. Check back in about five weeks.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nathan Johnson officially announces for AG

He should be a good candidate.

Sen. Nathan Johnson

State Sen. Nathan Johnson is running for Texas attorney general, the three-term Dallas Democrat announced Tuesday.

He told The Texas Tribune that, if elected, he would look to restore “faith and confidence” in an agency he believes has been stained by scandal and spectacle.

“It’s been so long since people, broadly speaking, thought of the attorney general’s office as a place where they have an attorney, an elected official on their side,” he said. “And that’s wrong.”

Johnson, a business litigator at Thompson Coburn in Dallas, is the first major Democrat to enter the race. Two other state senators, Joan Huffman of Houston and Mayes Middleton of Galveston, are running in the Republican primary, alongside former Department of Justice lawyer Aaron Reitz.

The position is open for the first time in more than a decade after Attorney General Ken Paxton decided to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s GOP primary.

Johnson faces strong headwinds: No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994, and whoever wins the Democratic nomination will likely face a formidable GOP opponent. Middleton is well-funded, Huffman has a long legislative record and Reitz has already garnered significant backing from allies in conservative legal circles.

But Johnson has experience winning tough races. As a political newcomer in 2018, he unseated Republican incumbent Don Huffines, becoming the first Democrat to win the North Dallas district in three decades. That was also a midterm year, where discontent over President Donald Trump’s policies pushed Democrats to turn out at the polls and made mainstream Democrats like Johnson seem more palatable to independents and moderate Republicans.

Johnson is hopeful that a similar midterm environment — and a campaign focused on fundamental shifts to the rule of law, weakening of the separation of powers and undermining of Texas’ independence by the federal government — will lead some right-leaning voters to consider a Democrat.

“I’m not going to use the office to do what the Biden administration says or what the Trump administration says,” Johnson said in an interview. “I’m going to use the office to do what it’s supposed to do, which is to make sure that everybody knows the rules and that everybody follows the rules, and then if you don’t follow the rules, there’s consequences.”

Over the last 20 years, the Texas Office of the Attorney General has led the charge among red states to aggressively litigate against Democratic presidents’ agendas. Paxton’s predecessor, now-Gov. Greg Abbott, started this trend, famously saying, “I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.” Paxton went even further, bragging about suing the Biden administration more than 100 times in four years.

Johnson criticized Paxton for not bringing similar lawsuits against Trump, even when it might benefit Texas. He pointed to the 24 states that recently sued to release close to $7 billion in education funding.

“Why didn’t we join that suit? Because [Paxton] doesn’t want to challenge the Trump administration,” Johnson said. “And that goes to the independence I think this office needs.”

See here for the background. Johnson as noted is not giving up his seat to run for AG, as he is not otherwise on the ballot next year. He raised a bunch of money in that 2018 campaign, and if he can do some of that he’ll be better positioned to bring a message that I think will have broad appeal to the voters. Obviously, a lot of things would have to break right for him, or any Dem, to win, given the track record. All I’m asking is that he and his future ballot-mates put themselves in the best possible position to take advantage if that does happen. The Dallas Observer has more.

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So what’s Colossal Biosciences up to now?

Always be finding new species to say you’re going to de-extinct.

A species of huge, flightless bird that once inhabited New Zealand disappeared around 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers first arrived on the country’s two main islands. Now, a Texas-based biotech company says it has a plan to bring it back.

Genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences has added the South Island giant moa — a powerful, long-necked species that stood 10 feet (3 meters) tall and may have kicked in self-defense — to a fast-expanding list of animals it wants to resurrect by genetically modifying their closest living relatives.

The company stirred widespread excitement, as well as controversy, when it announced the birth of what it described as three dire wolf pups in April. Colossal scientists said they had resurrected the canine predator last seen 10,000 years ago by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genetic make-up of the gray wolf, in a process the company calls de-extinction. Similar efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, are also underway.

To restore the moa, Colossal Biosciences announced Tuesday it would collaborate with New Zealand’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, an institution based at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, that was founded to support the Ngāi Tahu, the main Māori tribe of the southern region of New Zealand.

The project would initially involve recovering and analyzing ancient DNA from nine moa species to understand how the giant moa (Dinornis robustus) differed from living and extinct relatives in order to decode its unique genetic makeup, according to a company statement.

“There is so much knowledge that will be unlocked and shared on the journey to bring back the iconic moa,” Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, said in the statement. For example, the company said, researching the genomes of all moa species would be “valuable for informing conservation efforts and understanding the role of climate change and human activity in biodiversity loss.”

Colossal, which has raised at least $435 million since it was founded by Lamm and Harvard University geneticist George Church in 2021, has committed “a large investment” to New Zealand, the company said without giving further details. Peter Jackson, the New Zealand-born “Lord of the Rings” director, who is one of a number of high-profile investors in the company, is also involved with the project. He has one of the largest private collections of moa bones, according to the Associated Press.

Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, cofounder and director of the Advanced Facility for Avian Research at Western University in London, Ontario, said that because the moa went extinct in the past few hundred years there were extensive bones, egg shell fragments, and even feathers that could be studied. He was not involved in the research.

“The primary explanation for their extinction is overhunting and habitat change following the arrival of Polynesian peoples to the island,” he explained via email.

“Prior to this they had very few predators,” he said. “This is a pattern for flightless birds on islands that have very little defence against hunting or predation (like dodos).”

The idea of reviving a species like this was “intellectually interesting, but really should be a low priority,” MacDougall-Shackleton said. “If we are concerned about island bird conservation there are hundreds of threatened and critically endangered species in New Zealand, Hawaii and other Pacific islands that need conservation resources more urgently.”

See here for the previous entry. As this AP story notes, filmmaker Peter Jackson, who has a large collection of moa bones, is involved. I don’t know if that makes you more or less excited about this prospect, but there you have it anyway. The proof as always will be in seeing one of these critters actually walk around. Here’s Colossal’s page on the moa, where I got that image, if you want to know more.

Posted in Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

What the medical marijuana industry wants from the special session

To protect their interests, of course.

Texas’ medical marijuana dispensaries entered into this year’s legislative session with a two-prong strategy to expand: to loosen the state’s rules on their industry that has made the program largely inaccessible to those who need it and to eliminate the competition, consumable hemp, which has been allowed to proliferate unregulated, cannibalizing users and profits.

The medical marijuana industry, also known as the Compassionate Use Program, notched victories on both fronts with state lawmakers, but, on the latter, failed to win over the man who has the ultimate say — Gov. Greg Abbott.

Now that the governor has vetoed a bill that would have criminalized the sale and possession of hemp-derived THC, medical marijuana dispensaries fear they can’t continue to operate if Texas doesn’t agree to heavily regulate the hemp industry or at least, give the medical program the same freedom.

“I was surprised, just extremely surprised and borderline in disbelief when I heard about the veto,” said Nico Richardson, CEO of Texas Original, a Central Texas medical marijuana company. “The expansion [to the medical marijuana program] was meant to include the hemp restrictions.”

[…]

Abbott urged lawmakers in his veto to consider regulating consumable hemp similarly to alcohol by recommending barring the sale and marketing of THC products to minors, requiring testing throughout the production and manufacturing process, allowing local governments to prohibit stores from selling THC products, and providing law enforcement with additional funding to enforce the restrictions.

Medical marijuana leaders also want regulations to go a step further by banning a significant part of the smokeable hemp industry, products that contain the synthetic THC known as delta-8. The products are cheap to manufacture and have a longer shelf life because they contain a small amount of natural hemp. Delta-9 THC, like marijuana, on the other hand, is derived straight from the plant and is more time-consuming and expensive to produce since it requires a grower’s expertise.

“Our products are comparable in price to the delta-9 THC products. What we can’t compete with is these delta-8 products because we can’t manufacture chemicals, and frankly, we wouldn’t want to because it’s not responsible,” Richardson said.

The Texas Hemp Coalition, the industry’s nonprofit advocacy arm that monitors market changes, supports regulations on delta-8. Aaron Owens, a member of the hemp industry, said he supports an outright ban because it would allow hemp growers to have more control over the market, rather than laboratories.

“The number one problem is these synthetics. You take those away and 95% of the industry disappears because this stuff isn’t coming from the farmer,” said Owens, a hemp farmer and founder of Austin-based Tejas Tonic, a hemp beverage company. “A ban on synthetics would … go back to the old-fashioned hemp-and-cannabis way.”

Members of the hemp industry said they would be willing to accept many of the regulations that Abbott proposed in his veto. They would also agree with implementing an age restriction of 21 to purchase THC-containing hemp products and to bar the sale within 1,000 feet of a school or church.

“I think by bringing those standards up for hemp, I think it will help us coexist,” Singletary said. “I want to make it really clear that we are not anti-hemp, but we do feel like the hemp industry needs to follow some really clear, defined rules.”

This article was written before the expanded agenda was announced. The main effect there will be that the more time spent on those other items, which includes important things like flood alarms and disaster preparation, ridiculous things like banning local governments from hiring lobbyists, and entirely optional things like redistricting, the less that can be spent on figuring out the path forward for THC and Compassionate Use.

There are two things I will note here. One is that this story only quotes from people who basically agree with the medical marijuana position, which is pretty strict on THC. Even saying that members of the hemp industry would support “many” of Abbott’s proposed regulations leaves a lot of room for disagreement, and that’s before we hear from anyone representing the THC retailers or their customers. I kind of suspect that they would prefer a lighter touch. All of this will take some time to negotiate, and it is likely someone will come away unhappy.

And two, there’s still the Dan Patrick factor. Will Patrick play along and just try to get the best half-a-loaf he can get, or will he dig in his heels and say no, it’s a full ban or I salt the earth and let everyone stew in the current chaos until 2027 when I can try again (if I get re-elected)? I don’t know, but how he reacts will certainly have an effect. We’ll know more in a week.

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Just how intimate are those emails?

The mind reels.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott doesn’t want to reveal months of communications with Elon Musk or representatives from the tech mogul’s companies, arguing in part that they are of a private nature, not of public interest and potentially embarrassing.

Musk had an eventful legislative session in Texas this year. In addition to his lobbyists successfully advocating for several new laws, Abbott cited the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as the inspiration for the state creating its own efficiency office and has praised him for moving the headquarters for many of his businesses to the state in recent years.

As part of an effort to track the billionaire’s influence in the state Capitol, The Texas Newsroom in April requested Abbott and his staff’s emails since last fall with Musk and other people who have an email address associated with some of his companies.

Initially, the governor’s office said it would take more than 13 hours to review the records. It provided a cost estimate of $244.64 for the work and required full payment up front. The Texas Newsroom agreed and cut a check.

After the check was cashed, the governor’s office told The Texas Newsroom it believed all of the records were confidential and asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office referees disputes over public records, to allow the documents to be kept private.

Matthew Taylor, Abbott’s public information coordinator, gave several reasons the records should not be released. He argued they include private exchanges with lawyers, details about policy-making decisions and information that would reveal how the state entices companies to invest here. Releasing them to the public, he wrote, “would have a chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”

Taylor also argued that the communications are confidential under an exception to public records laws known as “common-law privacy” because they consist of “information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public, including financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a governmental body.”

He did not provide further details about the exact content of the records.

The language Abbott’s office used appears to be fairly boilerplate. Paxton’s office, in an explanation of the common-law privacy exception on its website, mentions that “personal financial information” that doesn’t deal with government transactions “is generally highly intimate or embarrassing and must be withheld.”

But Bill Aleshire, a Texas-based attorney specializing in public records law, was appalled that the governor is claiming that months of emails between his office and one of the world’s richest people are all private.

“Right now, it appears they’ve charged you $244 for records they have no intention of giving you,” Aleshire said. “That is shocking.”

Aleshire said it’s not unusual for government agencies to tap the common-law privacy exception in an attempt to withhold records from the public. But he’s used to it being cited in cases that involve children, medical data or other highly personal information — not for emails between an elected official and a businessman.

“You’re boxing in the dark,” Aleshire said. “You can’t even see what the target is or what’s behind their claim.”

Aleshire added that due to a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling, there is effectively no way to enforce public records laws against Abbott and other top state officials. He called the decision an “ace card” for these politicians.

Those of you who had “Greg Abbott publicly admits to sharing intimate emails with Elon Musk” on your 2025 Bingo cards, please come collect your winnings. Part of me would love to see the fanfic/Archive Of Our Own army unleash themselves on this writing prompt, just to see how unhinged it could get, while the rest of me would rather get a lobotomy than contemplate any of this more deeply. Some voids should just not be gazed into, you know?

Be that as it may, the reason Abbott may not have to release these emails, which let’s face it sure seem like basic transparency, is because of a recent SCOTx decision shielding Abbott and Ken Paxton from having to release their emails relating to Uvalde. We labor under a lot of forced ignorance in this state, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. But we’ll see in the next 45 days if that applies in this case, for which the AG’s office gets to decide. Don’t hold your breath, that’s my advice.

Oh, and by the way, the special session includes an item added by Abbott to ban cities and counties and school districts from hiring lobbyists to advocate for their interests before the Legislature. But Elon Musk can spend as much as he wants on them to make sure he gets all the goodies he wants. That’s the kind of government Greg Abbott likes. The Barbed Wire has more.

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RIP, David Adickes

A giant has passed.

Greg Smith/CORBIS/Getty

David Adickes, the painter and sculptor responsible for some of Texas’s most popular public art, died on Sunday at the age of 98. His eight-decade career took him from a modest childhood in Huntsville to the galleries of France and Japan before landing him back in southeast Texas, where he became a pillar of the Houston art scene. In postwar Houston, Adickes’s idiosyncratic paintings—many featuring his trademark elongated figures, known as “Adickes men”—were exhibited in museums across the state and collected by wealthy Texans. Later in life, Adickes turned to public art, creating massive statues of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, as well as a nearly complete set of two-story-high presidents’ heads.

The future artist was born in the East Texas town of Huntsville in 1927, the third of four sons. His father owned an electrical-appliance store, while his mother was a homemaker and amateur artist. Adickes felt his vocation from an early age, ruining many of his schoolbooks by drawing obsessively in the margins. His artistic dreams were interrupted by World War II. Too underweight to become a pilot like his two older brothers, Adickes joined the Air Transport Command in 1945.

The ATC was charged with ferrying soldiers and supplies to the recently liberated French capital. “Paris changed my whole life,” Adickes would later say. After the war, he returned to France and enrolled at the Atelier Fernand Léger, recognizing the renowned Cubist painter’s name from an American magazine cover he had seen. Most of the instruction was done by Léger’s assistants, with the master coming by on Fridays to critique portfolios.

In 1951, Adickes returned to Houston, where he quickly made a splash with his colorful, quasi-Cubist landscapes and still lifes. He won major competitions across the state, signed with Houston’s prestigious DuBose Gallery, and attracted a following among collectors. Over the next few years, he had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Antonio’s Witte Museum; and Austin’s Laguna Gloria Gallery.

[…]

Beginning in the 1980s, Adickes shifted his focus to public art, executing a series of increasingly ambitious commissions. He created a 36-foot-high cellist for Houston’s Arts District; a 26-foot-long trumpet for the 1984 World’s Fair, in New Orleans (it’s now on display in downtown Galveston); and an 8-foot-tall bronze statue of George H. W. Bush for Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Topping them all was a 67-foot-high statue of Sam Houston off Interstate 45, in Huntsville. “Big Sam,” billed as the country’s “tallest statue of an American hero,” can be seen by drivers as far as six miles away. During construction, David met his life partner and love of his life, Linda Wiley.

After finishing Big Sam, Adickes dreamed up an even grander project—one that would consume the next three decades of his life and a substantial part of his personal wealth. After visiting Mount Rushmore for the first time in the 1990s, Adickes decided to build his own variation on the monument. “Of course, we don’t have sixty-foot-high mountains in Houston, but I could do smaller versions,” he later explained. While Mount Rushmore depicted four presidents, Adickes resolved to build a complete set.

Constructing busts of 41 presidents took around four years, by which time Adickes was forced to build a forty-second head, for George W. Bush. He installed the set in the early 2000s in Williamsburg, Virginia, where the heads formed the centerpiece of a short-lived tourist attraction called Presidents Park. A second set of heads ended up in South Dakota, where Adickes established a similar park. Both ventures eventually went out of business, although the deteriorating Virginia heads, which now sit on private land, have become a tourist attraction in their own right.

As you know, I have been a fan of David Adickes and his Giant Presidential Heads for basically the entire run of this blog. I was a fan of Big Sam on I-45 before I’d ever heard the name David Adickes. I admire the craft and the talent it takes to pull these things off, not to mention the sheer whimsy of it all. I greatly admire Adkickes’ tirelessness – he was cranking out new statues as recently as two years ago, at the tender age of 96. He’s a legend, and if the more serious parts of the art world took him and his output lightly, it’s their loss. Go drive by Mount Rush Hour and give David Adickes his props. Our city and our state are better for his life. The Chron has more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

There’s still flooding in the Hill Country

It keeps raining.

Emergency crews suspended their search for victims of catastrophic flooding in Central Texas on Sunday morning amid new warnings that additional rain would again cause waterways to surge.

It was the first time a new round of severe weather has paused the search since the flooding earlier this month.

Ingram Fire Department officials ordered search crews to immediately evacuate the Guadalupe River corridor in Kerr County until further notice, warning the potential for a flash flood is high. On a Facebook post, the department warned area residents to stay away from river beds and roads.

“NOW IS NOT THE TIME to be out trying to watch rising water, take videos, or capture pictures of the devastation. We are seeing the same weather pattern today that we experienced on July 4th—and we know how quickly that turned deadly,” the post read.

Search-and-rescue teams have been searching for missing victims of the July 4 weekend flooding.

Search and rescue efforts were expected to resume on Monday, depending on river flow, Fire Department spokesperson Brian Lochte said.

“We’re working with a few crews and airboats and SAR (search-and-rescue) boats just in case,” Lochte said.

As heavy rain fell Sunday, National Weather Service forecasters warned that the Guadalupe River could rise to nearly 15 feet by Sunday afternoon, about five feet above flood stage and enough to put the Highway 39 bridge near Hunt under water. The NWS issued a flood watch — meaning flooding can occur — until 7 p.m.

“Numerous secondary roads and bridges are flooded and very dangerous,” a weather service warning said.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly on Sunday issued an emergency order restricting access to Texas State Highway 39, The Kerr County Lead reported. A candlelight vigil for flood victims scheduled for Sunday night was also postponed, according to a post in Kerr County’s Facebook page.

There’s still a lot of people missing as of today. If all of those who are missing are in fact dead, then the total number of dead from this flood will be around 300. A hundred years from now, we’re still going to be talking about the July 4 floods on the Guadalupe River in Kerr County.

Perhaps that will change the conversation about flooding and local response and preparedness capabilities going forward.

In the week after the tragic July 4 flooding in Kerr County, several officials have blamed taxpayer pressure as the reason flood warning sirens were never installed along the Guadalupe River.

“The public reeled at the cost,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters one day after the rain pushed Guadalupe River levels more than 32 feet, resulting in nearly 100 deaths in the county, as of Thursday.

A community that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, Kerr County constructed an economic engine on the allure of the Guadalupe River. Government leaders acknowledged the need for more disaster mitigation, including a $1 million flood warning system that would better alert the public to emergencies, to sustain that growth, but they were hamstrung by a small and tightfisted tax base.

An examination of transcripts since 2016 from Kerr County’s governing body, the commissioners court, offers a peek into a small Texas county paralyzed by two competing interests: to make one of the country’s most dangerous region for flash flooding safer and to heed to near constant calls from constituents to reduce property taxes and government waste.

“This is a pretty conservative county,” said former Kerr County Judge Tom Pollard, 86. “Politically, of course, and financially as well.”

[…]

By the time the 1987 flood hit, the county had grown to about 35,000 people. Today, there are about 53,000 people living in Kerr County.

In 2016, Kerr County commissioners already knew they were getting outpaced by neighboring, rapidly growing counties on installing better flood warning systems and were looking for ways to pull ahead.

During a March 28 meeting that year, they said as much.

“Even though this is probably one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state where a lot of people are involved, their systems are state of the art,” Commissioner Tom Moser said then. He discussed how other counties like Comal had moved to sirens and more modern flood warning systems.

“And the current one that we have, it will give – all it does is flashing light,” explained W.B. “Dub” Thomas, the county’s emergency management coordinator. “I mean all – that’s all you get at river crossings or wherever they’re located at.”

Kerr County already had signed on with a company that allowed its residents to opt in and get a CodeRED alert about dangerous weather conditions. But Thomas urged the commissioners court to strive for something more. Cell service along the headwaters of the Guadalupe near Hunt was spotty in the western half of Kerr County, making a redundant system of alerts even more necessary.

“I think we need a system that can be operated or controlled by a centralized location where – whether it’s the Sheriff’s communication personnel, myself or whatever, and it’s just a redundant system that will complement what we currently have,” Thomas said that year.

By the next year, officials had sent off its application for a $731,413 grant to FEMA to help bring $976,000 worth of flood warning upgrades, including 10 high water detection systems without flashers, 20 gauges, possible outdoor sirens, and more.

“The purpose of this project is to provide Kerr County with a flood warning system,” the county wrote in its application. “The System will be utilized for mass notification to citizens about high water levels and flooding conditions throughout Kerr County.”

But the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which oversees billions of FEMA dollars designed to prevent disasters, denied the application because they didn’t have a current hazard mitigation plan. They resubmitted it, news outlets reported, but by then, priority was given to counties that had suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey.

All that concern about warning systems seemed to fade over the next five years, as the political atmosphere throughout the county became more polarized and COVID fatigue frayed local residents’ nerves.

There are some quotes that follow that are the sort of thing that people on my side of the aisle, especially from other states, will point to as examples of how Kerr County deserved what it got. I don’t endorse any of that, but I do think the stakes are a lot clearer now than they have ever been. Comal County is about as red as Kerr is, and they managed to come up with the funds for a more robust warning system. I don’t know how anyone could look at those 300 fatalities and claim that something similar for Kerr County could be considered wasteful. But then, I wouldn’t have called it that before July 4.

There is another point that needs to be considered.

The story is here but it’s paywalled. You can get an overview from the thread.

There’s more.

Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.

That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood — one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.

Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors and longtime owner Dick Eastland when historic floodwaters tore through its property before dawn on July 4.

The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by FEMA, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.

But Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA’s flood map determinations, said it was “particularly disturbing” that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.

“It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,” she said.

[…]

In response to an appeal, FEMA in 2013 amended the county’s flood map to remove 15 of the camp’s buildings from the hazard area. Records show that those buildings were part of the 99-year-old Camp Mystic Guadalupe, which was devastated by last week’s flood.

After further appeals, FEMA removed 15 more Camp Mystic structures in 2019 and 2020 from the designation. Those buildings were located on nearby Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a sister site that opened to campers in 2020 as part of a major expansion and suffered less damage in the flood.

Campers have said the cabins at Cypress Lake withstood significant damage, but those nicknamed “the flats” at the Guadalupe River camp were inundated.

Experts say Camp Mystic’s requests to amend the FEMA map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, to lower the camp’s insurance premiums or to pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations.

Pralle said the appeals were not surprising because communities and property owners have used them successfully to shield specific properties from regulation.

There’s more, so read the rest. The point here is that as Houston and Harris County have tried to deal with its flood risk post-Harvey by adding more restrictions on where new construction can occur and buying out some properties that were in high-risk areas, the same kind of approach needs to be taken in Flash Flood Alley. The 100- and 500-year flood plains, whose official maps still need to be updated, ain’t what they used to be. We can accept that reality and adjust accordingly, or we can accept that another disaster like this is just a matter of time, and we don’t mean centuries. Maybe the Lege will deal with this in the special session, and maybe (much more likely) they won’t. But it’s the reality we face.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Paxton divorce filings sealed

Noted for the record.

Still a crook any way you look

A state district court judge in Collin County agreed Friday to seal all records relating to divorce proceedings between Attorney General Ken Paxton and Sen. Angela Paxton, according to reports by The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times.

That will likely keep details of the high-profile divorce from becoming public as Ken Paxton runs to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s Republican primary. That race is expected to be one of the most-watched 2026 Senate race.

Angela Paxton requested the proceedings be sealed, according to the news outlets. The order to seal this case was not immediately available Saturday. It was granted one day after Angela Paxton filed to divorce her longtime husband. In Texas, divorce cases are generally public record but can be sealed if it includes highly sensitive information.

[…]

Before the case was sealed, records obtained by The Texas Tribune showed that the couple had not lived together for more than a year and Angela Paxton had accused her husband of adultery.

See here for the background. It is always possible that some details will get leaked, one way or another. To say the least, there will be interest in knowing more about what happened. For a guy who truly does not deserve it, Ken Paxton has gotten a lot of loyalty and protection from a lot of people.

And he will continue to get it from his rabid fans.

With conservative Christian ideology shaping much of the duo’s political platforms, Angela Paxton’s announcement sparked questions about what the divorce would mean for the attorney general’s U.S. Senate bid and his religious base. But hours later, Ken Paxton announced that he had raised nearly $3 million last quarter as he gears up for a March primary against Sen. John Cornyn.

“The grassroots movement to fire John Cornyn continues to grow stronger ever(y) single day,” Ken Paxton said in a statement early Friday. “And this is only just the beginning.”

The Paxtons are members of the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The grounds for divorce among Baptists is generally limited to cases of infidelity, or if someone is married to “an unbeliever” who has abandoned them, said Michael Emerson, director of the religion and public policy program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial in 2023 highlighted accusations of his infidelity as Angela Paxton listened to the proceedings. The attorney general was initially impeached by the Texas House, but was later acquitted by the state senate.

While the news of the divorce came this week, the impeachment trial made Texas voters aware of the couple’s marital problems long before Ken Paxton announced his bid for Senate. It didn’t stop him from leaping ahead of Cornyn in multiple polls.

The trial and Paxton’s legal troubles are challenges the Senate-hopeful has embraced during his campaign, following the lead of President Donald Trump. Paxton has called himself a victim of a politicized “witch hunt,” like the president has done. The primary next year won’t just be a test of Paxton’s popularity, but also the strategy of pulling from Trump’s playbook.

Trump has often identified protecting Christian rights and values as major goals of his presidency, but has also faced allegations that critics say contradict biblical teachings, including claims of extramarital affairs. Still, much of his voting base has stood by him and, just by doing so, reshaped religious values for the Republican Party, Emerson said.

“Since Trump, there seems to be ways for some people to maneuver (around infidelity allegations),” Emerson said. “To explain it away, to say, ‘What I do personally and what I actually fight for and advocate for are different things.’”

I’m old enough to remember when these people would insist that we judge political candidates by their moral character. By which they meant “were of the same religious beliefs as us”. I always knew they were full of shit, so at least it’s good to see them admit it as well.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ogg’s contempt hearing delayed by special session

You can run, but you can’t hide.

A hearing to determine whether former district attorney Kim Ogg should be held in contempt of a court order is likely to be on hold until after Gov. Greg Abbott’s special legislative session is over.

Ogg’s attorney for the contempt hearing, Mitch Little, is a Texas state representative who will attend the special session with topics ranging from improving early warning systems in the wake of the deadly Hill Country floods, potential redistricting and the end of STAAR testing. He has since asked Judge Josh Hill to postpone the July 28 hearing, according to court records.

The hearing will determine whether Ogg violated a court order limiting extrajudicial remarks about the two men accused of killing 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray.

[…]

Little requested the delay Wednesday in order to participate in the special session, which begins July 21 and is expected to last 30 days. A judge had not signed off on his request as of Thursday.

“It will be difficult for me to be available to respond to discovery, attend hearings, and prepare for trial without interfering with my legislative obligations,” Little wrote.

State law allows the court to put a civil or criminal case on hold until 30 days after the legislative session ends if one of the attorneys is an elected lawmaker participating in those proceedings, meaning the hearing could happen in late August or later.

See here for the previous update. This is a routine request so I expect it will be granted. I will note that Mitch Little is not just a Republican State Rep, he’s one of the bigger wingnuts among them. Just some idea of who Kim Ogg is palling around with these days. And while this is a routine request, it is one that some attorneys who are not state legislators have complained about in the past, on the grounds that they and their clients have been jerked around by these delays. I don’t expect that to be a big deal in this case. It may get pushed back a month or two, but this hearing will happen.

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Weekend link dump for July 13

“So on July 4, 2025, we can celebrate the imperfect start of our national enterprise, despite the dark turn it has taken. As we do so—and as we contend with the discouraging and disturbing developments of the moment—we ought to keep in mind a fundamental fact: There are more of us than them. More Americans reject the cruelty of Trump’s mass deportation crusade than accept it. More Americans oppose the profoundly unfair billionaires-enriching-Medicaid-slashing-deficit-busting tax-and-spending mega-bill than embrace it. More Americans disdain the Trump presidency than hail it.”

“If the Supreme Court’s near-ban on nationwide injunctions was the earth-shattering victory President Donald Trump claimed, no one seems to have told his courtroom opponents.”

“So how exactly is ICE — which has a brief addressed to non-citizens and especially non-citizens without legal permission to be in the United States — supposed to exercise policing powers more generally or compromise state and local governments? We can see the pattern and trajectory in front of us already.”

“If Epstein’s death has become the JFK assassination of this generation, this memo stands to be its version of the Warren Commission report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.”

“Do hackers have your email address? Here’s how to check — and what to do about it”.

“What Does it Take To Get a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?”

RIP, Mark Snow, TV composer who wrote the theme to The X Files and was nominated for 15 Emmy awards.

“It’s almost dystopian. And when I think of people wrapping themselves in the Constitution while they are simultaneously doing violence to it … it is really scary stuff.”

“Thanks to the GOP Megabill, You’ll Pay Higher Utility Bills“.

“The former Librarian of Congress abruptly fired by President Donald Trump has found a new position with the country’s largest philanthropic supporter of the arts.”

“The only possible out here would be a series of fake deals, in which countries pretend to have offered significant concessions and Trump claims to have won big victories. Some people still think that will happen — the new tariffs aren’t supposed to take effect until Aug. 1. But the tone of those letters and Trump’s clear obsession with tariffs make me doubt that he’ll call the tariffs off, in part because of my last observation: Attempts to mollify Trump always end up emboldening him to demand more.”

“If these animals made good, easy pets, we would have had these things domesticated 1,000 years ago—we would have all grown up with foxes and skunks, and not just dogs and cats. The No. 1 problem is that people never want to change their lifestyle to fit the pet or the animal. They want the animal to change to their lifestyle.”

“In 2025, why are men still afraid to come out in professional sports?”

“Tesla’s stock is now down about 25% this year, badly underperforming U.S. indexes and by far the worst performance among tech’s megacaps.”

I have no idea why we are talking about Gary Coleman’s ex-wife taking a lie detector test in the Year of Our Lord 2025, but here we are.

“It is to say that there is something wrong with an entire culture of venerating ripping off others’ creativity and research, and there is definitely something wrong with a culture that wants more ripped-off disposable stuff, that collectively says who cares if it’s quality or not because we’re going to throw it away anyway, and who cares that ripping off others’ research and development means we all get crappier stuff at every price point.”

The streaming service formerly known as HBO Max is back to being HBO Max again. Our long national nightmare is finally over.

“A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the FTC‘s “click to cancel” rule, which would’ve required companies to provide users with simple cancellation mechanisms to immediately halt all recurring charges and get their consent to convert auto-renewals and free trials to paid enrollments. Under the measure, businesses would’ve been barred from making it more difficult to cancel than it is to sign up. It was intended to eliminate drawn-out cancellation processes aimed at trapping users in unwanted subscriptions.” You can thank Donald Trump for that.

“Cars Hit Millions of Monarch Butterflies Each Year. Nets Might Help.”

“Sen. Ted Cruz Stripped Weather Forecasting Funds From Trump’s Megabill. Then the Floods Came.”

“Freedom of the Press Foundation Weighing Legal Options Against Paramount Over Trump Settlement”.

“A staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, recently got high-level access to view and change the contents of a payments system that controls tens of billions of dollars in government payments and loans to farmers and ranchers across the United States, according to internal access logs reviewed by NPR.”

RIP, Paulette Jiles, journalist and bestselling author who wrote most of her books while living in San Antonio and the Hill Country.

RIP, Lee Elia, former MLB player, coach, and manager best known for a hilariously profane postgame rant while he was managing the Cubs, which went viral the old-school way.

I for one endorse Hannah Keyser’s take on how to do the Home Run Derby.

RIP, Frank Layden, legendary coach and general manager of the Utah Jazz.

RIP, David Gergen, political insider and Presidential advisor.

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Why does Greg Abbott hate FEMA?

I mean, FEMA loves Texas, so…

Gov. Greg Abbott was quick to request federal assistance last week after devastating floods hit the Texas Hill Country.

But the Republican governor is simultaneously helping the Trump administration find ways to “wean off” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has sent more than $7 billion to Texas over the last decade for natural disasters like the flooding that had left 120 people dead and dozens more missing as of Thursday.

Abbott is on a Trump-appointed panel drafting recommendations for reforming the agency. He has criticized FEMA as ineffective, even as Texas has been one of the biggest recipients of the agency’s largesse.

“FEMA is slow and clunky and doesn’t solve the needs of those who need it the most,” Abbott said during the panel’s first meeting in May. “States have proven that we can move more nimbly, more swiftly, more effectively.”

Disaster response experts and former FEMA officials say states like Texas, with robust emergency response agencies of their own, are only able to act so effectively because they are bolstered by the federal agency — and billions in federal funding that flows to the state after each disaster.

Texas, on average, has received nearly $900 million from FEMA alone after each disaster that has struck the state in the last decade, according to research by Sarah Labowitz at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The agency has sent more than $7.2 billion to Texas in that time, making it the third-largest recipient of FEMA aid behind Florida and Louisiana.

“If you’re thinking right now that Texas can handle its own disasters because it has a track record — it’s doing that with huge investments from the federal government,” Labowitz said. “When we get $7 billion over the last 10 years for disaster recovery, that underwrites a lot of capacity at the state level. If that money goes away, then what is our capacity?”

How many special sessions would Abbott have had to call in the last decade to appropriate disaster relief funds if there were no FEMA? How slow and inefficient and politicized would that have been? Of course, Abbott would probably prefer that all of those funds come straight from a fund that his office controlled, which is what Trump wants to do with FEMA. If you can’t see the potential for graft and enemy-punishing in that, I don’t know what to tell you.

I wasn’t going to do another Hill Country flood roundup post, but there were a couple of stories I saw that I wanted to mention, so I decided to include them here.

The Texas Floods Amped Up the Battle Between MAHA and the Tech Right

One longstanding fight that has divided the political right has been over whether or not humans should be allowed to modify the weather, with religious conservatives saying absolutely not, while the tech visionaries are all for it. These debates were often theoretical, but then the catastrophic floods in Texas took place.

On July 2, two days before floods devastated communities in West Texas, a California-based company called Rainmaker was conducting operations in the area. Rainmaker was working on behalf of the South Texas Weather Modification Association, a coalition of water conservation districts and county commissions; the project is overseen by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Through a geoengineering technology called cloud-seeding, the company uses drones to disperse silver iodide into clouds to encourage rainfall. The company is relatively new—it was launched in 2023—but the technology has been around since 1947, when the first cloud-seeding experiment took place.

After news of the floods broke, it didn’t take long for internet observers to make a connection and point to Rainmaker’s cloud-seeding efforts as the cause of the catastrophe. “This isn’t just ‘climate change,’ posted Georgia Republican congressional candidate Kandiss Taylor to her 65,000 followers on X. “It’s cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation. If fake weather causes real tragedy, that’s murder.” Gabrielle Yoder, a right-wing influencer, posted on Instagram to her 151,000 followers, “I could visibly see them spraying prior to the storm that has now claimed over 40 lives.”

Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser and election denier, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Russia, told his 2.1 million followers on X that he’d “love to see the response” from the company to the accusations that it was responsible for the inundation.

Augustus Doricko, Rainmaker’s 25-year-old CEO, took Flynn up on his request. “Rainmaker did not operate in the affected area on the 3rd or 4th,” he posted on X, “or contribute to the floods that occurred over the region.”

Meteorologists resoundingly agree with Doricko, saying that the technology simply isn’t capable of causing that volume of precipitation, in which parts of Kerr County experienced an estimated 100 billion gallons of rain in just a few hours. But the scientific evidence didn’t dissuade those who had already made up their minds that geoengineering was to blame. On July 5, the day after the floods, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced that she planned to introduce a bill that would make it a felony offense for humans to deliberately alter the weather. “We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering,” she tweeted.

Lawmakers in both Florida and Tennessee appear to feel similarly; they have recently passed laws that outlaw weather modification. But other states have embraced the technology: Rainmaker currently has contracts in several states that struggle with drought: Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, and Texas, as well as with municipalities in Utah and Idaho.

The debate over cloud-seeding is yet another flashpoint in a simmering standoff between two powerful MAGA forces: on one side are the techno-optimists—think Peter Thiel, or Elon Musk (who has fallen from grace, of course), or even Vice President JD Vance—who believe that technological advancement is an expression of patriotism. This is the move-fast-and-break-things crowd that generally supports projects they consider to be cutting edge—for example, building deregulated zones to encourage innovation, extending the human lifespan with experimental medical procedures, and using genetic engineering to enhance crops. And to ensure those crops are sufficiently watered, cloud-seeding.

The opposing side, team “natural,” is broadly opposed to anything they consider artificial, be it tampering with the weather, adding chemicals to food, or administering vaccines, which many of them see as disruptive to a perfectly self-sufficient human immune system. The “Make America Healthy Again” movement started by US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., lies firmly in this camp.

Indeed, Kennedy himself has spoken out against weather modification. “Geoengineering schemes could make floods & heatwaves worse,” he tweeted last June. “We must subject big, untested policy ideas to intense scrutiny.” In March, he tweeted that he considered states’ efforts to ban geoengineering “a movement every MAHA needs to support” and vowed that “HHS will do its part.”

You can file this under “Let them fight” and “I hope both sides lose”. I mean, Sid freaking Miller is out here trying to talk some sense into the MAHA lunatics. How am I supposed to cheer for that?

Can sirens help save lives in the next flood? Yes, but there’s more to it.

The National Weather Service issued cellphone alerts repeatedly in Kerr County as the Guadalupe River rose early Friday morning. Around the north and south forks that feed the river, forecasters triggered one push alert after another, according to PBS data.

The first went out at 1:14 a.m., then another at 3:35 a.m., then a third at 4:03 a.m. Then a handful more. “Move to higher ground now,” some of the alerts said. “Act quickly to protect your life.” At 5:34 a.m. and 7:24 a.m., more messages went to those along and down the river.

But the series of notifications was not enough to save more than 250 people who died or are counted as missing after the July 4 flood. A week after the tragedy, rescue crews continue scouring miles of riverbank and searching huge debris piles for victims.

For warnings to work, people not only have to receive the alerts but they also need to understand how the warnings apply to where they are and know what to do about it — which is especially hard when it comes to flooding, said Kim Klockow McClain, a senior social scientist supporting the National Weather Service.

“We left way too much up to individuals to receive those warnings, know what to do and know where to even go,” McClain said, adding, “You need to tell people a little bit more.”

State legislators are searching for solutions to improve warning systems in places such as the Hill Country ahead of a special session later this month. The Texas House and Senate announced Thursday that they had formed committees to consider that and other disaster-related topics, starting with a hearing in Austin on July 23.

Lawmakers such as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the state Senate, have suggested the state should support the installation of warning sirens, a technology used decades ago to warn of air raids.

Researchers say there will be no single, simple fix.

Sirens can help in rural places where cell service is unreliable and phone alerts might not go off, according to researchers, but they are no silver bullet.

“Flash Flood Alley, from what I’ve read, that sounds like the perfect place to put sirens,” said Jeannette Sutton, a leading expert on warning systems and associate professor at the University of Albany. “It’s kind of remote. They know that there’s a high risk in that area.”

But, she added, “They can’t let it just be one solution.”

How sirens can help: They can be set up to trigger automatically if water reaches a certain height, which could require additional investment in flood gauges. This can be effective because it doesn’t require someone to be awake or rely on a judgment call on when to trigger them. There are also sirens that blare voice messages about impending danger.

But researchers emphasized that people may not hear sirens if they’re indoors during a heavy thunderstorm, and they need to be taught what the sirens mean when they go off, perhaps with signs in public places or pamphlets passed out to visitors when they check into a hotel or RV park.

A visitor from a tornado-prone area, for example, might run inside instead of fleeing to higher ground before a flood strikes.

Other states have already found ways to educate out-of-town guests about local hazards. McClain, the researcher who supports the Weather Service, pointed to the coasts of Oregon and Washington as places that have worked to prepare visitors for a tsunami with signage along evacuation routes and in hotels.

“Is it going to be perfect? Probably not,” McClain said. “But is it going to be better than doing nothing? Absolutely.”

I am once again putting on my cybersecurity hat to say that this is why we take an approach called defense in depth. No one strategy for cybersecurity is close to being sufficient, but each individual aspect of it plays an important role and they all come together to be a robust strategy. (There’s a close analogy to gun control that I have made more than once and no doubt will make again.) Sirens, education, cellphone alerts with their own distinct ringtones, radios, being careful to not overdo anything so people don’t tune it all out, and more. I think the Lege could handle this, even in a short 30-day special session, if they focus on this as a priority and not get distracted by redistricting and red meat. Good luck with that.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

This session’s fight over casinos was mostly billionaire-on-billionaire violence

A good read from Texas Monthly about how Miriam Adelson tried to throw a bunch of money around and hire every lobbyist in the state to get casino gambling on the ballot, only to run into a different billionaire throwing his own pile of money around to stop her.

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

Sands is not the first to try to strong-arm legislators and citizens into legalizing casino gambling. Native American tribes, horse-track owners, and other gambling interests have tried for decades, only to get repeatedly tripped up by their mutually destructive avarice and the enduring power of religious conservatives. But no company has played hardball like Sands.

In Austin, the business has 104 lobbyists—43 more than AT&T, the company with the second most. The Sands team includes at least eight former legislators, Karl Rove’s wife, and chiefs of staff to the two previous Speakers of the House, at a cost of between $5 and $10.4 million, according to ethics disclosures. Since January 2024, Adelson has pumped $13.2 million into two political action committees, Texas Sands PAC and Texas Defense PAC, which in turn spent lavishly in recent election cycles.

Texas’s political system runs on cash. But the Vegas money seemed less about well-placed bets than about a show of force—a slot machine spewing money all over the casino floor. When state Representative Matt Shaheen, a right-wing Republican from Plano, publicly swore to kill gambling legislation and linked casinos to sex trafficking, one of Adelson’s PACs began running ads in his district accusing him of being a “moderate” who “voted against 18,000 good jobs.” The aggressive move provoked a behind-the-scenes rebuke from Republicans.

But Abboud is hardly chastened. “If they don’t like what happened to Shaheen, you better get used to it,” he said. “If you cross the line and you continually lie about the company and the family, then we’re going to hold you accountable. And if they don’t like that, too bad—it’s not going to change, and it’s only going to amplify over time.”

There is little doubt about what Sands wants. It sold its last U.S. property in 2022. Its six casinos are all in Asia. Texas is the company’s path back home. In 2020, Abboud told a conference that the state was “the biggest plum still waiting” to be plucked “in the history of hospitality and gaming.” Worth an estimated $32 billion, Adelson is betting that limitless cash can overcome any opposition. It’s a long game, with immense profits as the reward, one that her most ardent enemies admit may pay off someday.

And yet, though Texas lawmakers may be for sale, there are other buyers, other billionaires—many of them homegrown. As ever, there’s Tim Dunn, the Midland oilman who presides over an empire of pressure groups, PACs, and propaganda outlets pushing the Texas GOP to the right. It was the Dunn-affiliated Texans for Fiscal Responsibility that provided the organizing muscle for the Irving protesters, while his news outlet, Texas Scorecard, poured on with articles attacking Sands. Dunn’s PACs pumped money into candidates with anti-gambling bona fides.

Politicians are torn, then—between a Vegas sin merchant who promises to share some of her fortune with those willing to play her game and a Texas-born Christian nationalist with his own long-term vision for the state and the funds to make it a reality. Irving was a live experiment: Were Texans ready for legal gambling? How would a local community react to a casino proposed in its backyard rather than the abstraction of a “destination resort” somewhere in the state? In forcing the issue, Sands reignited one of the oldest struggles in Texas, the battle between vice and virtue, licentiousness and conformity, high rollers and holy rollers.

“I think [Abboud] came in, he stomped around, and thought this is like anywhere else,” said Mike Lavigne, a bald, fast-talking poker fanatic who has mainly worked for horse-track owners who want to expand legal gambling. “I’m not some kind of Texas exceptionalist, except for when I realize it isn’t like any other f—ing place.”

It’s a long story, with a lot of information about the history of gambling and people’s attempts to legalize it and keep it illegal. It will never cease to amaze me that Adelson thought that the problem was that no one had spent enough money or hired enough lobbyists to make it happen. Though to be fair, a bill did pass the House in 2023, and she shoved enough money in Greg Abbott’s pockets to get him to mumble something vaguely supportive about the effort. As I’ve been saying for the last 47 years or so, none of that will get you past Dan Patrick. Maybe one of these days someone with that kind of juice will get the bright idea to try to un-elect Patrick. But as long as it’s one asshole wingnut billionaire versus another asshole wingnut billionaire fighting over exclusive control of the Republican Party and the Legislature it enables, leave me out of it.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Still more microtransit

Now in the Near Northside.

METRO’s free, on-demand electric shuttle service has expanded to Houston’s Near Northside neighborhood, with service there launching Monday.

The “Community Connector” initiative launched as a pilot program in the Third Ward in 2023. It has since expanded to the Second Ward and the Heights along with the downtown area.

The micro-transit service allows residents to request short-distance rides in low-speed electric vehicles by using an app on their phones to get to places such as grocery stores, doctor’s appointments and other public transit options.

Chelsey Trahan, a spokesperson for METRO, said it has 18 vehicles across all service zones with the goal in mind to improve quality of life and provide greater access to resources.

“We’re trying to connect our community,” Trahan said. “We understand that the city is growing rapidly. We have to find innovative ways to grow, and this has been a way to help people to not only get to our services but to travel throughout the community.”

Since the service launched, the Community Connector program has had more than 36,000 riders, according to METRO. The electric shuttles operate from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Users can request rides through the Ride Circuit app.

METRO, the Houston region’s public transit provider, said it’s investing $10 million in micro-transit options for the 2025 fiscal year. The Community Connector program is a partnership with nonprofit Evolve Houston to provide a way for people to get around their communities and connect with other transit services.

That story is from June 23, I was travelling when it came out and meant to circle back to it sooner, and now here we are. You know how I feel about all this. I don’t know how much of that $10 million (!) we are spending on this micro-initiative, but the original allocation made to Evolve a year ago was $216K, so we sure have ramped it up. And all for 36,000 riders – not sure if we’re measuring that from the date of the $216K grant to Evolve or to a year before that when the Third Ward pilot started, but either way it’s a laughably small number when compared to Metro bus routes. How many of those 36K people are using this to actually get to Metro services? We don’t know, they don’t say. The “micro” in “microtransit”, that does say a lot.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Opening look at the re-redistricting effort

They’re coming for our districts.

More than one million Houstonians could have new congressional representation as early as next year under Gov. Greg Abbott’s push to redraw the state’s political maps.

Abbott has ordered the Texas Legislature into a special session beginning July 21 that includes redrawing the state’s congressional districts. In his order Wednesday, the Republican governor singled out Houston’s majority-minority areas like the Greater Fifth Ward and the East End, suggesting their boundaries could be reshuffled ahead of the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump’s political team has been pressing lawmakers to redraw Texas’ congressional districts to help Republicans pick up additional seats next November as they look to defend their U.S. House majority against a potential Democratic surge.

Right now, Texas Republicans control 25 seats in Congress, compared to 12 for Democrats. Former U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner’s seat is vacant, but the Houston-area district leans heavily blue. Creating more potential pick-up opportunities for Republicans would mean making safely red districts more purple.

“They are completely out of control. It’s all about a power grab,” said U.S Rep. Sylvia Garcia, whose Democratic, mostly Hispanic 29th Congressional District in Houston could potentially be reshaped. “They don’t really care who they hurt.”

In a proclamation ordering the special session, Abbott said he wants a “revised congressional redistricting plan in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

He was referencing a letter issued by the Justice Department on Monday that stated the 9th, 18th, and 29th Congressional Districts in Houston and the 33rd based in Fort Worth “currently constitute unconstitutional” districts because they were created to favor candidates from minority communities.

Even if there were at one point reasons to justify race-based districts, they cite a 2023 ruling from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that said “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

The 18th Congressional District has its roots in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and was originally won by Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman from the South to be elected to Congress. More recently, it was represented by the late Sheila Jackson Lee and by Sylvester Turner, who died in March, leaving the seat vacant. U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat and former president of the Houston NAACP, represents the 9th Congressional District is represented by

Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas NAACP, said Republicans for a long time have been trying to go after the 18th Congressional District. By putting in writing their desire to target four specific districts, all represented by Black or Hispanic leaders, the message is clear.

“What this means is the intention is to disenfranchise African American and Latino voters,” he said.

Bledsoe said the end result will almost certainly mean fewer majority-minority districts, specifically in Houston. He said white voters constitute 40% of the state’s population, yet dominate 28 of the state’s 38 congressional districts.

“Now the governor wants to increase that number even more at the expense of Texans of color,” Bledsoe said.

See here for the background. Obviously, the attempt to destroy CD18 enrages me, but it also kind of puzzles me because I’m just not sure how they’re going to move around a significant number of Democratic voters to squeeze even one extra Republican district in the area. I’ll get to some numbers in a minute, but first let’s take a closer look at the legal about-face that Abbott and the Trump Justice Department are engaging in as their pretext.

At first, the question of whether Texas would take the extraordinary step of redrawing its congressional maps in the middle of the decade was just a political calculation — would Gov. Greg Abbott go along with President Donald Trump’s plan to try to squeeze a few more GOP seats out of the midterms, despite concerns from congressional Republicans?

But then, the Department of Justice offered Texas a legal justification to pursue this long-shot strategy, warning the state in a letter Monday that four majority-minority congressional districts in the Houston and Fort Worth areas are unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. Soon after, Abbott set a special session agenda calling for mid-cycle redistricting “in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

This comes just weeks after the conclusion of a trial over Texas’ current maps, in which representatives for the state argued repeatedly that a race-blind process was used to draw the boundaries of the existing districts. Critics say the apparent reversal — with Abbott now acknowledging concerns that some districts were drawn “along strict racial lines” — suggests this is a ploy to provide Texas with political and legal cover to try and add more Republican seats.

“They contended that what they drew was completely satisfactory, so now that they are acquiescing in some concocted allegation of illegality from the Trump administration is astounding,” said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is part of the legal challenge.

[…]

At trial in El Paso, representatives for the state and its map-drawers repeatedly testified that they were blind to race when crafting the maps and said they did not draw “coalition districts,” where different minority groups are combined to constitute a majority, which the state maintains are unconstitutional.

But in its July 7 letter, the DOJ argued that four of Texas’ districts should be redrawn, three because they are coalition districts and one because it is a majority Hispanic district created as a result of neighboring coalition districts.

All four seats are held by Black or Latino Democrats, or most recently were — Texas’ 18th Congressional District is currently vacant but was previously represented by Sylvester Turner, who died in March.

That seat and the adjacent 9th Congressional District, represented by Rep. Al Green of Houston, are plurality Hispanic districts with sizable Black populations. The letter says those districts gave rise to Rep. Sylvia Garcia’s neighboring 29th District, where a majority of residents are Hispanic. The 33rd District, held by Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, is also an unconstitutional coalition district, the letter says.

The DOJ cites a 2024 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that the Voting Rights Act’s protections do not apply to racial or ethnic groups that have combined their ranks to form a majority in a district. The case, which involved a challenge to Galveston County’s commissioners court map, reversed years of precedent, including by the 5th Circuit itself, putting the appellate court for Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana at odds with most other circuits.

“Although the state’s interest when configuring these districts was to comply with Fifth Circuit precedent prior to the 2024 … decision, that interest no longer exists,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote, adding these districts are “nothing more than vestiges of an unconstitutionally racially based gerrymandering past, which must now be abandoned, and must now be corrected by Texas.”

In his proclamation announcing the July 21 special session, Abbott referred to “constitutional concerns” raised by the DOJ, apparently alluding to Dhillon’s letter. And on Friday, House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Republican Senate leader, released a joint statement that said both chambers were “aligned in their focus to ensure redistricting plans remain in compliance with the U.S. Constitution.”

Chad Dunn, one of the lawyers challenging the state’s current maps, said Texas’ swift acquiescence to the DOJ letter contradicts legislators’ testimony.

“During the trial we had in El Paso, ‘blind to race’ was used by a member of the Legislature more times than I can count,” said Dunn, who was previously general counsel for the Texas Democratic Party. “Now the Department of Justice is saying that the Republican legislators who authored this plan weren’t telling the truth, and actually were drawing it on the basis of race. It’s going to be interesting to get to the bottom of that.”

Several of the plaintiffs asked Thursday to reopen the case for new testimony, saying the DOJ letter and the state’s testimony are “flatly contradictory.”

See here for more on the Galveston verdict, and here for more on the just-concluded trial in El Paso over the 2021 redistrcting. The hypocrisy and gaslighting is par for the course, but it may wind up being too clever by half. If the motion for re-opening testimony in El Paso is granted, I’m not sure how Republican legislators are going to answer the “were you lying then or are you lying now” questions. I Am Not A Lawyer, but it sure seems to me there is some risk of that court intervening in the process here.

The other risk is of course that by trying to eliminate one or more of the Democratic districts in the Houston area, regardless of the pretext, you’re going to have to shove a bunch of Democratic voters into Republican districts and/or a bunch of Republican voters into Democratic districts. You can also try to squeeze a few more Democratic voters from one Dem district into another, so you have fewer of them that need to be stashed in red districts. This, I believe, will not be as easy as it sounds.

Here are the numbers that make me think this will be a challenge. I’m going to look at the Beto/Cruz numbers from 2018 and the Harris/Trump numbers from 2024 to see what the ranges are for the potentially affected districts. Here’s the current map for reference. There are nine total districts that include a piece of Harris County, but for these purposes I’m also including CDs 10 and 14, which border Harris in Waller (CD10) and Galveston (CD14) and may be part of any redraw.

2018


Dist    Dem %   GOP %
=====================
02      37.3%   62.0%
08      36.5%   62.8%
10      40.6%   58.4%
14      36.7%   62.6%
22      40.9%   58.4%
36      35.0%   64.4%
38      39.4%   59.8%

07      67.0%   32.3%
09      79.2%   20.3%
18      76.9%   22.4%
29      75.7%   23.8%

2024


Dist    Dem %   GOP %
=====================
02      37.5%   61.3%
08      32.4%   66.3%
10      36.8%   61.6%
14      32.5%   66.5%
22      39.2%   58.7%
36      31.1%   67.8%
38      38.7%   59.4%

07      58.8%   38.1%
09      71.2%   27.2%
18      69.1%   29.4%
29      59.6%   39.2%

In a good Democratic year like 2018, the blue districts are a lot bluer than the red districts are red. Even in 2024, the top end of the blue scale is more intense than the top end of the red. Some districts – CDs 02, 22, and 38 in particular – didn’t change much from one year to the other, while most of the change that did occur was in CD29; the other three Dem districts were generally more volatile than the Republican districts.

The first question the mapmakers will have to answer for themselves is do they think 2026 will be more like 2018 or 2024? In a 2024 scenario, after you’ve set fire to what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, I can see a path to making CDs 07 and 29 at least red-leaning. In a 2018 scenario, I say fat chance. If we’re somewhere in between, who knows? If Donald Trump’s approval rating ticks down a bit more, maybe 2026 could be better for Dems than 2018 was. Up until a couple of weeks ago we weren’t expecting to have any interesting Congressional action outside of the CD18 Dem special election and primary. I feel confident that candidates and the ability to fundraise would materialize quickly if all of a sudden there were some not-so-red seats up for grabs.

(Any changes to the Houston-area districts can also ripple out past the districts named here, and I am not taking into account the targeting of CD33 or of the two least blue existing districts, CDs 28 and 34. Obviously, this can get even more complicated depending on what the Republicans try to do.)

So look, I don’t know what’s going to happen. We haven’t even seen any proposed maps yet. The Lege will have its hands full and things could go off the rails. I’ll be keeping an eye on it all. Mother Jones, Democracy Docket, Reform Austin, and the Trib have more.

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No more backup power mandates for senior living places

That’s our Legislature, y’all.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, thousands of seniors across the Houston region were stuck in buildings without power or air-conditioningoften left to fend for themselves in the sweltering summer heat.

The suffering galvanized Houston-area Democrats to once again fight for what had repeatedly failed: Passing legislation requiring generators or other backup power sources at senior homes, which house hundreds of thousands of Texas’ elderly residents.

The region’s lawmakers and advocates for the elderly began this year’s Texas legislative session with optimism that change might finally be possible. After all, the spirit of reform was in the air as the state’s most powerful leaders vowed to hold electric utilities accountable for lengthy outages. And lawmakers had promised in 2023 to set aside $1.8 billion in this year’s state budget to help critical facilities adopt backup power, so the money would be there, too.

Yet, a year after Beryl, none of the many bills requiring backup power at senior homes passed. The $1.8 billion program was funded, but advocates worry that it won’t be a gamechanger in an industry that has already proven wary of installing permanent backup power, as facilities would have to voluntarily seek out the grants.

Only one bill addressing emergency preparedness at senior homes, backed by the long-term care industry, became law. The new statute doesn’t require existing senior homes to adopt backup power. Instead, it directs just one kind of senior home, assisted living facilities, to ensure residents have access to an “area of refuge” during power outages. How providers keep temperatures safe in the designated space is up to them.

State Sen. Carol Alvarado, the Houston Democrat who led efforts to require backup power, said in a passionate speech on the Senate floor that the new law “does hardly anything.” Long-term care advocates also argue it doesn’t add protections, as state rules already exist requiring that assisted living facilities maintain temperatures within a safe range.

“We’re in the same place as we were this time last year,” said Alexa Schoeman, the deputy state ombudsman, a state employee independent of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission who is charged with advocating for long-term care residents.

In fact, the new law includes a provision overriding any conflicting local regulations. That means Harris County’s recently adopted backup power mandate for nursing homes and assisted living facilities will likely no longer be able to take effect.

“It set a precedent that … if you’re going to attempt to do any kind of local mandate on these facilities, you absolutely cannot,” said Andrea Earl, associate director of advocacy at AARP Texas. Harris County officials say they’re evaluating the new law.

See here and here for some background. The industry didn’t want the backup power mandate, and they got what they wanted from the Republicans in the Lege. Keep that in mind when you hear all the high-minded talk now going around about flood alarm systems and the like.

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Dispatches from Dallas, July 12 edition

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: an attack on an ICE facility near Fort Worth; what’s being done about flooding and emergencies in the Metroplex; the DMN gets bought by Hearst and editorializes against our absent mayor; the latest in Tarrant County news, including the election of a new Democratic chair; the big mad locals are having about DART system cuts; the sanctions against a Dallas judge; museum updates; and at last, a zoo born.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Wet Leg, who have a new album out and will be touring this fall. Sadly we’re going to miss their show because it’s the night between MARINA and Garbage and grown-ups can’t do three shows on school nights in a week.

Jumping straight into the news:

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Hill Country flood roundup

Just some articles of interest, no real thread.

Climate Change Helped Fuel Heavy Rains That Led to Devastating Texas Flood

Climate scientists said the torrential downpours on July 4 exemplify the devastating outcomes of weather intensified by a warming atmosphere. These disasters, they said, will become more frequent as people around the world continue to burn fossil fuels and heat the planet.

“This is not a one-off anymore,” said Claudia Benitez-Nelson, a climate scientist at the University of South Carolina. Extreme rainfall events are increasing across the U.S. as temperatures rise, she said.

Warmer temperatures allow for the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, producing heavier rainfalls, she and other climate scientists said. This coupled with old infrastructure and ineffective warning systems can be disastrous.

“It is an established fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes since pre-industrial time, in particular for temperature extremes,” the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2021. “At the global scale, the intensification of heavy precipitation will follow the rate of increase in the maximum amount of moisture that the atmosphere can hold as it warms about 7% per 1°C of global warming.”

The U.S. government’s fifth National Climate Assessment, released in November 2023, says that “the number of days with extreme precipitation will continue to increase as the climate warms” and that “these changes in precipitation patterns can lead to increased flood hazards, impacting infrastructure, ecosystems, and communities.”

Central Texas is infamous for its flash flooding and arid soil, hard-packed ground into which water does not easily infiltrate. So when rain hits the ground, it runs off the region’s hilly terrain and canyons and accumulates into creeks and rivers rapidly, overwhelming them, causing them to rise quickly.

The flash flooding wasn’t a result of a full-strength storm, Benitez-Nelson said, but a remnant of a tropical storm. “That, to me, is really sad and deeply alarming,” Benitez-Nelson said. “Climate change is turning ordinary weather into these disasters.”

Damp remnants of Tropical Storm Barry moved up from eastern Mexico as humid air also moved north from Mexico’s southwestern coast, stalling over Texas’ Hill Country. The warm air in both the low and high levels of the atmosphere is a recipe for intense rainfall, said John Nielsen-Gammon, the state’s appointed climatologist for more than 20 years.

He and his colleagues compiled a list of all the rainfall events in Texas that produced more than 20 inches of rain a few years ago. One common feature the climatologists found was when wind blew from south to north, or when moisture was brought northward from the tropics, he said. “That sets up the possibility of very heavy rainfall,” Nielsen-Gammon said. He concluded in a report last year that extreme rain in Texas could increase 10 percent by 2036.

None of that will be on the special session agenda, of course.

The Texas Flash Flood Is a Preview of the Chaos to Come

Climate change doesn’t chart a linear path where each day is warmer than the last. Rather, science suggests that we’re now in an age of discontinuity, with heat one day and hail the next and with more dramatic extremes. Across the planet, dry places are getting drier while wet places are getting wetter. The jet stream — the band of air that circulates through the Northern Hemisphere — is slowing to a near stall at times, weaving off its tracks, causing unprecedented events like polar vortexes drawing arctic air far south. Meanwhile the heat is sucking moisture from the drought-plagued plains of Kansas only to dump it over Spain, contributing to last year’s cataclysmic floods.

We saw something similar when Hurricane Harvey dumped as much as 60 inches of rain on parts of Texas in 2017 and when Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina last year — and countless times in between. We witnessed it again in Texas this past weekend. Warmer oceans evaporate faster, and warmer air holds more water, transporting it in the form of humidity across the atmosphere, until it can’t hold it any longer and it falls. Meteorologists estimate that the atmosphere had reached its capacity for moisture before the storm struck.

The disaster comes during a week in which extreme heat and extreme weather have battered the planet. Parts of northern Spain and southern France are burning out of control, as are parts of California. In the past 72 hours, storms have torn the roofs off of five-story apartment buildings in Slovakia, while intense rainfall has turned streets into rivers in southern Italy. Same story in Lombok, Indonesia, where cars floated like buoys, and in eastern China, where an inland typhoon-like storm sent furniture blowing down the streets like so many sheafs of paper. Léon, Mexico, was battered by hail so thick on Monday it covered the city in white. And North Carolina is, again, enduring 10 inches of rainfall.

[…]

That the United States once again is reeling from familiar but alarming headlines and body counts should not be a surprise by now. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the number of extreme weather disasters has jumped fivefold worldwide over the past 50 years, and the number of deaths has nearly tripled. In the United States, which prefers to measure its losses in dollars, the damage from major storms was more than $180 billion last year, nearly 10 times the average annual toll during the 1980s, after accounting for inflation. These storms have now cost Americans nearly $3 trillion. Meanwhile, the number of annual major disasters has grown sevenfold. Fatalities in billion-dollar storms last year alone were nearly equal to the number of such deaths counted by the federal government in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000.

The most worrisome fact, though, may be that the warming of the planet has scarcely begun. Just as each step up on the Richter scale represents a massive increase in the force of an earthquake, the damage caused by the next 1 or 2 degrees Celsius of warming stands to be far greater than that caused by the 1.5 degrees we have so far endured. The world’s leading scientists, the United Nations panel on climate change and even many global energy experts warn that we face something akin to our last chance before it is too late to curtail a runaway crisis. It’s one reason our predictions and modeling capabilities are becoming an essential, lifesaving mechanism of national defense.

“No one could have seen this coming,” they said.

Greg Abbott’s Bizarre Postflood Football Analogy

In response to a question about who was to blame for the mistakes that led a disaster to become a massive tragedy, Abbott decried the term “blame” as “the word choice of losers” before going into his analogy. “Every football team makes mistakes,” Abbott declared into his microphone. “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, ‘Don’t worry about it, man, we got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again, that we’re going to win this game.’ ”

The statement attracted a lot of attention. It was, frankly, nonsensical on several levels. There are no “winners” in a devastating storm; suggesting that all of us asking that reporter’s question, including Texans who lost loved ones, are “losers” is wildly belligerent and tone-deaf. But also, Abbott seems to misunderstand how successful football teams operate.

Casting blame can be helpful or harmful after a team loses a game. If the person doing it is trying to deflect from their own mistakes and shortcomings by passing the buck to someone else, it’s harmful—it hurts morale, avoids accountability, and makes it harder to improve by refusing to acknowledge an individual’s mistakes in the first place. If it’s being done critically—say, by watching every play made during a film session to see what mistakes were made and by whom, which every football team, from the smallest high school operation to the most robust NFL club, does—then it’s the key to getting better.

Great football coaches do the same thing with their successes, looking for even the slightest opportunities to develop their players or their game plans for the future. Win or lose, they examine every detail in order to get better. When Davis exploded at his players, he was furious that they were failing to treat the situation with the seriousness he felt it deserved. You could play his rant in response to Abbott’s press conference, and you wouldn’t need to change a single word.

But this isn’t a game. Abbott, and the officials he’s deflecting blame from, are tasked with protecting lives. More than a hundred of our neighbors and loved ones have died. Even more than that remain missing. Many of those are children. Throughout the region, countless Texans are feeling the effects of the tragedy, either because they know someone among the lost or because they have personal connections to the place.

This is not the first time on Abbott’s watch that Texans have endured weather-related tragedies. We’ve boiled snow when the water was unsafe to drink; we’ve waited days for the power to come back on; we’ve been promised that next time, things would be different; and we’ve learned that when disaster strikes, we’re on our own.

Abbott could have met the moment. He could have displayed the kind of passionate intensity that coaches who actually have won championships do. He could have insisted that he’d be going through the choices of every individual and entity tasked with safeguarding the public to look at what they did wrong, what they did right, and how he could have made better decisions. He could have focused not on casting blame elsewhere, but on soberly seeking accountability at every level. He could have displayed the kind of leadership that Texans need in a moment of tragedy. He could even have kept the damn football analogy.

But then he wouldn’t be Greg Abbott. As you know, I work in cybersecurity. We care a lot about why security incidents occur, what went well and what went badly in our response to them, what we can learn from them so we can do better the next time, and so on. And we do this in an environment of not assigning blame but of taking responsibility. It works pretty well for us. Maybe Greg Abbott would do well to spend some time in an environment like that, because he sure isn’t fostering one around himself.

FEMA’s response to Texas flood slowed by Noem’s cost controls

As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, like they have in countless past disasters.

But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN.

As CNN has previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.

For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.

In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.

“We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”

For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.

In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.

But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.

Does Greg Abbott have a football coach analogy for this? Josh Marshall and Mother Jones have other examples of Noem making things worse. I dunno, maybe someone in a position of power could complain about this. Like Ted Cruz, maybe? [checks notes] OK, maybe not.

Kerrville mayor says he wasn’t aware of state resources that Gov. Abbott said were in place ahead of flooding

Kerrville’s mayor said he was unaware of any help sent by the state to his community ahead of the flood, a day after Gov. Greg Abbott said the state had “assets, resources and personnel” in place two days before a flood tore through the Hill Country.

“The state was aware that there was a possible serious flooding event days in advance and pre-positioned assets and resources and personnel,” Abbott said at a Tuesday press conference. “We originally pre-positioned those assets, personnel and resources on Wednesday. Then, when greater clarity was discerned on Wednesday, we moved them closer and made sure we had adequate supplies going into Friday. We were ready.”

The Texas Division of Emergency Management “activated” state emergency response resources across West Texas and the Hill Country on July 2, according to a TDEM press release. TDEM cited “heavy rainfall with the potential to cause flash flooding” and encouraged Texans to prepare for flooded roads and monitor weather forecasts.

The state agency listed a number of state agencies and Texas A&M services “available to support local flood response operations,” such as rescue boat teams, helicopters, and personnel to monitor road conditions.

Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring said during a press conference on Wednesday that he wasn’t aware of any resources or personnel sent to his area, although the TDEM had people in Kerrville after the floods struck his city.

“I haven’t seen the governor’s remarks … I don’t know what resources TDEM had in place at that time,” Herring said.

The National Weather Service sent out its first flash flood warning to residents at 1:14 a.m. Friday, about three hours and 21 minutes before they received the first reports of flooding along the Guadalupe River, which runs through Kerrville.

NWS officials said they communicated directly with local officials the night of the flood, but Herring said he wasn’t aware of the flooding until around 5:30 a.m. when the city manager called him. By that time, floodwaters were already meters high and parts of Highway 39 were flooded, limiting evacuation efforts.

I mean, it sure would be nice to have a better understanding of why Mayor Herring was unaware of what was happening at the time. Maybe the failures are all his, maybe this is evidence that the alerting system has shortcomings, maybe it’s at least partly the failure of the state’s emergency management processes. Maybe some of each, maybe other factors as well. Who knows? A Governor who cared about these things would sure want to find out.

“Disasters are a human choice”: Texas counties have little power to stop building in flood-prone areas

Camp Mystic, the private summer camp that now symbolizes the deadly Central Texas floods, sat on a tract of land known to be at high risk for a devastating flood.

Nearly 1.3 million Texas homes are similarly situated in parts of the state susceptible to dangerous floodwaters, according to a state estimate. A quarter of the state’s land carries some degree of severe flood risk, leaving an estimated 5 million Texans in possible jeopardy.

Yet, local governments — especially counties — have limited policy tools to regulate building in areas most prone to flooding. The state’s explosive growth, a yearning for inexpensive land, and a state far behind in planning for extreme weather compound the problem, experts said.

While cities can largely decide what is built within their limits, counties have no jurisdiction to implement comprehensive zoning rules that could limit people from living close to the water’s edge.

Camp Mystic and many of the other camps along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, where the disaster’s wreckage has been concentrated, were far outside city limits and any regulatory authority of the Kerrville City Council.

Some guardrails exist when it comes to building on flood plains. For property owners in flood-prone areas to tap federal flood insurance, localities have to enact minimum building standards set by the federal government. And counties can use a limited supply of federal dollars to relocate residents out of flood zones. However, those programs have had mixed success. Other programs to fortify infrastructure are tied to federally required hazard mitigation plans, which most rural counties in Texas do not have on file.

Also not on the special session agenda. It’s not too late, you know. Maybe ditch some of the needless wingnut stuff to make it happen.

Once again, I will close on a positive note:

H-E-B, James Avery embrace their Kerrville roots with support for flood victims

Two of the state’s best-known brands, both born in Kerrville, are showing their support for Hill Country flood victims in a big way.

Grocery giant H-E-B started as a tiny family-owned store in Kerrville in 1905. H-E-B, a household name to most Texans and headquartered in San Antonio, now has 435 stores in Texas and Mexico.

Volunteers from H-E-B have been on the ground serving up meals, distributing gift cards, handing out bottled water and clean-up products, and pitching in with the clean-up themselves.

H-E-B and the H.E. Butt Foundation have also committed $5 million in funding to nonprofits providing aid and recovery support to communities most in need.

“For 120 years, the Butt family has proudly called Kerrville home,” said Howard Butt III, H-E-B CEO. “Our hearts ache for the children, families, and communities facing tremendous loss throughout Texas in the wake of these floods. Our Partners have big hearts, and we will continue to support our neighbors. H-E-B and our dedicated Partners are here to help.”

Two million dollars will be gifted to the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country to support its Kerr County Flood Relief Fund.

The fund backs rescue, relief, and recovery efforts and flood assistance to Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort.

H-E-B is also supporting nonprofits that are providing direct support including the American Red Cross, Texas Search and Rescue (TEXSAR), and the Salvation Army.

[…]

What is now James Avery Artisan jewelry was started in 1954 by James Avery in his mothers-in-law’s garage in Kerrville, according to the company’s website. The self-taught jewelry-maker fell in love with Kerrville as he underwent training at Lackland Air Force to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corp.

Avery died in 2018, and his son Chris has served as CEO and chairs the company’s board.

The company’s manufacturing facility is based in Kerrville on property purchased by James Avery. It temporarily closed this week due to the flood. The company today has 1,000 associates and 30 retail stores and is selling its famous charms to raise money for flood victims.

The company took to social media to say that 100% of the proceeds from the sale of their “Deep in the Heart of Texas” charm would go directly to supporting victims of the flood and relief efforts in the Kerrville community and the surrounding areas.

Supporters responded, and over the next couple of days, the charm sold out.

“We’re humbled by the support you’ve shown our friends and family in the Texas Hill Country and surrounding areas. The Deep in the Heart of Texas Charm sold out faster than we could have imagined,” a company statement said.

“We’re now taking backorders and remain committed to donating proceeds from both the sterling silver and 14K gold charms ordered through August 4.”

There’s a reason people are fanatically loyal to HEB. Thanks to them and to James Avery for taking care of business at home.

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Measles update: There’s good news and there’s bad news

The good news.

Texas health officials on Tuesday said the county at the center of the state’s measles outbreak is no longer classified as an outbreak county.

The Texas Department of State Health Services reported no new cases of measles tied to the West Texas outbreak in their weekly update.

The state has been tracking case numbers since the outbreak began in late January.

Only Lamar County is listed as an outbreak county in the latest update.

Since late January, 753 measles cases have been confirmed by state officials.

Gaines County, the center of the outbreak, has reported 414 cases since the outbreak began in January. The county accounts for more than half of the state’s cases.

Only Lamar County has been designated as an “outbreak county” by DSHS.

There have been 98 patients hospitalized since the outbreak started. The state says these hospitalizations are from earlier in the outbreak.

Since January, 21 cases have been reported in people who were considered fully vaccinated and 22 cases in people who only had one dose of the vaccine. 710 of the 753 people who tested positive were unvaccinated.

In Texas, two school-aged children have died from complications with the measles. Both were not vaccinated and had no known underlying conditions, state health officials said.

We may finally be at the tail end of this thing. Given how grim some of the earlier projections were, this could have been a lot worse. I’m not ready to hoist the “Mission Accomplished” banner yet – let’s give it at least one more no-new-cases week, please – but we’re getting close.

Well, in Texas we are. Because here’s the bad news.

This year’s measles outbreak is the worst since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. Halfway through 2025, reported cases have already surpassed 1,274 − the peak for all of 2019.

According to data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation, it reported a total of 1,277 confirmed cases, as of July 5. The majority of cases are linked to a large outbreak that originated in west Texas. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said other cases arose from community transmission or during travel.

The outbreak has led to at least 155 hospitalizations, including 431 adults and 824 children. There have been three confirmed deaths.

[…]

Confirmed measles cases have been reported by 39 states and jurisdictions as of July 5. Most of the cases have been reported in Texas, New Mexico and Kansas, according to the Center for Outbreak Response Innovation and the CDC.

TPR has the national count at 1,281 as of July 8, up from 1,267 the week before. That’s slow growth, but it’s still growth. And every new case is a new high.

And as a reminder, we have a lunatic in charge of our public health.

It’s difficult to keep track of all the ways in which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is undermining public health. When it comes to the Food and Drug Administration, his assault ranges from firing the administrative staff who support drug safety inspectors to deciding that artificial intelligence will fix everything.

One of the Trump administration’s myriad purges of federal workers took out the staff that coordinates travel for inspectors of foreign drug factories. While those eliminations might sound like small potatoes in the face of the terminations of top scientists and officials at the FDA, they make it much more difficult for those inspections to occur.

Most people who have ever had a normal job understand this. You can’t fire support staff without compromising the work of the staff they support. But since Kennedy, President Donald Trump, and former co-President Elon Musk have no idea how real jobs work, they’re probably unfamiliar with the concept. Still, these support staff cuts mean that managers, rather than support staff, are now forced to handle travel, budgets, visas, translators for FDA inspectors, and other tasks.

Guess what happens if FDA inspectors aren’t inspecting foreign drug factories that manufacture products for the United States market? You guessed it: Safety violations will go unnoticed and unaddressed. ProPublica documented that when FDA inspectors visited a Sun Pharma factory in India in 2022, they found metal shavings on equipment, contaminated drug vials, and unknown matter being mixed into drugs. Around the same time, a visit to an Intas Pharmaceuticals factory in India found manipulated testing records covering up the fact that things like glass were making their way into the drugs manufactured there.

So it appears Americans are going to experience the joy of taking drugs tainted by ground glass and god knows what else. Seems bad! But maybe things are better stateside?

Nope. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are planning to use artificial intelligence in the drug approval process. How? Well, Kennedy isn’t so clear on that part. He says AI will be used to “look at the mega data that we have and be able to make really good decisions about interventions”—which is a word salad.

It goes on from there. But here there is also some potentially good news. As with so many things these days, it comes via lawsuit.

A pregnant physician is at the center of a new lawsuit against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and doctors say her concerns about whether she’ll have access to a COVID-19 vaccine reflect a growing confusion about vaccine policy across the country.

The pregnant person — identified in court filings as “Jane Doe” — is one of several plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed this week in Massachusetts that features a coalition of medical societies, including those focused on children and pregnant people such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM). Doe herself is a physician.

According to the lawsuit, Doe is more than 20 weeks pregnant and works in a hospital “where she puts herself at risk of infectious diseases every day to care for patients and save lives.”

She was vaccinated against COVID-19 before becoming pregnant, but her doctors advised her to get another dose later in pregnancy for better protection against the disease, according to the lawsuit. While Doe has not yet tried to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine, she intends to while pregnant. She fears she will be unable to because of Kennedy’s recent changes to COVID-19 vaccine policy for pregnant people, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.

“Her worries are not just for herself, but also for the health and safety of her unborn child,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit focuses on Kennedy’s announcement in May on social media, which plaintiffs describe as a directive, that COVID-19 vaccination would be removed from the recommended vaccine schedule for healthy pregnant people and healthy children. The change was made without consulting vaccine experts or staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the lawsuit.

Richard Hughes, an attorney with Epstein Becker Green who represents the plaintiffs, said the lawsuit seeks to show Kennedy’s directive was “arbitrary and capricious,” in part because it did not follow the longstanding process for vaccine recommendation changes and it did not include a detailed explanation on the decision. Kennedy also did not cite an emergency or change in circumstances to justify the move. An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the secretary.

I for one will be rooting for Dr. Doe et al to succeed. If they do, that may have beneficial effects beyond just the COVID shots. But keep getting your shots, and vote for the people who will support you in that. We must all do our part.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Paxtons getting divorced

Whoa.

Still a crook any way you look

State Sen. Angela Paxton announced Thursday she has filed for divorce from her husband, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation,” Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said in a post on X. “But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”

In his own statement, Attorney General Paxton cited the “pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny” as the reason the couple had “decided to start a new chapter.”

[…]

Paxton’s record of aggressively suing the Biden administration is matched only by his penchant for scandal, culminating in his impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023. The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him after a nearly two-week trial.

Angela Paxton attended her husband’s trial but was not allowed to vote on any issues or participate on deliberations over whether to convict or acquit.

The impeachment claims focused on benefits Paxton provided to Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, as well as an alleged extramarital affair the attorney general had with a former Senate aide. According to investigators, the affair ended briefly in 2019 after Angela Paxton learned of it, then resumed in 2020. The woman he allegedly had an affair with was called to testify before the Senate and came to the chamber, but left without speaking.

Yes, tell us more about how all the political attacks and public scrutiny led to your inability to keep it in your pants, Ken. Actually, please don’t. I’d like to eat again sometime this week. I have no love for Angela Paxton, but she’s the one who was done wrong here. Anything you’d like to tell us about all this, Angela, you go right ahead. The Dallas Observer, KUT, and CBS News have more, and if you want to better understand the Biblical aspect of “biblical grounds for divorce”, read The Slacktivist.

UPDATE: NOTUS notes that this divorce is already a thing in the Republican primary for Senate next year.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

So now the Lege will get involved

As I said yesterday, I don’t know if Greg Abbott would have called a special session to address the great tragedy happening in the Hill Country if one hadn’t already been on the calendar for other reasons. He didn’t call one following Hurricane Harvey. But here we are, and now we can talk about things the Lege could do to help mitigate the next flash flood in this part of the state.

It was still too early for several lawmakers to say what long-term policy changes and investments should look like. But a few critical improvements were emerging as potential priorities:

‘Old-tech’ sirens in flood-prone areas

The lack of sirens along the Guadalupe River has piqued lawmakers’ interest, with some saying they trust their efficacy more than even some modern systems.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said Monday he would file a bill “at the earliest opportunity” to assist counties in installing physical sirens, as opposed to newer alerts sent to cell phones, which he said many people may miss at nighttime.

“It’s time to go back to what worked and still does in Tornado Alley, Civil Defense Sirens,” Bettencourt posted.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also says he supports buying more sirens, telling Fox & Friends on Monday that he and the governor had spoken and were in agreement about investing state dollars in support for local governments, though some jurisdictions including Kerr County, which was hardest hit by the flooding, have opted against siren systems in the past.

“It’s clear those sirens need to blast,” Patrick said. “If the cities can’t afford it, then we’ll step in, and if the cities don’t want to do it, we’ll step in.”

State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, a Democrat from Austin and former Travis County Judge, echoed that sentiment.

“I think it is a fairly obvious thing that our advanced warning systems in our rural areas are insufficient, and they don’t have the tax base to build the infrastructure without state assistance,” Eckhardt said.

Better, modern monitoring systems

House Speaker Dustin Burrows praised an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle Tuesday morning that called for more flood gauges and a modern radar-based flood assessment system that could provide officials with more real-time information.

“The Texas House will work with leading experts like @RiceUniversity’s  SSPEED Center to identify and help fund solutions like those outlined,” Burrows said of the op-ed, written by Phil Bedient of Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education, & Evacuation from Disasters Center.

Modern assessment systems installed in Houston in 2020 could benefit other flood-prone areas like the Hill County and San Antonio, Bedient wrote.

Nick Fang, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, said cost was typically the biggest hurdle for more widespread use of the systems, especially in rural, cash-strapped counties. Fang led a research group contracted by the state in 2021 to study early flood warning systems.

The cost of projects that Fang reviewed varied widely, from $26,000 to $1.5 million. Hearst Newspapers reported Monday that in 2016, Kerr County officials estimated they would need $1 million to implement an early warning system but failed to secure the funding locally or convince the state to assist with the investment, despite at least three separate requests.

One option could be newer, low-cost sensors, Fang said. These are cheaper to build, work using battery or solar power rather than plugging into the electrical grid, and transmit data using existing wireless networks. They also require less personnel to operate.

The Texas Water Development Board is currently contracting with AtkinsRealis, Inc. & WEST Consultants, Inc. to produce a report on best practices for using such systems; that report is due in August. An American Society of Civil Engineers study in 2022 found that the systems are likely to replace older, higher-cost systems when those wear out because of their affordability.

The most advanced early warning systems will work in conjunction with hydrological models that take in rain and stream gauge data and forecast how much water will accumulate within a certain time period, Fang said. But even the most rudimentary siren system is “better than nothing,” he said.

“Given what happened this last weekend, the loss of so many people, and especially those young kids, that’s the future of our country. There should be designated money,” Fang said about the possibility of the state assisting local governments with warning system funding.

[…]

Emergency response council and disaster preparedness plans

Lawmakers may look to revive legislation that failed to pass this spring, during the Legislature’s regular session, as starting points for negotiation.

Several of the bill’s co-sponsors, including state Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, have called for the Legislature to reconsider the bill or parts of its language.

“I joint authored HB 13 because this is an area of public safety that needs significant and immediate attention,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, in a statement to KXAN. “The absolute last thing we can afford is to do nothing. We should be exploring all avenues and turning that into concrete policy now.”

The bill passed the House, with only a dozen lawmakers opposed, but later died in the Senate. The Texas Tribune reported Monday that state Rep. Wes Virdell, a Republican who represents Kerr County, was reconsidering his previous opposition to the legislation.

A spokesperson for Patrick said HB 13 would only have covered the cost of running the council and did not appropriate funds to purchase warning systems. He also noted the Legislature made “unprecedented” investments this year in aircraft and regional response facilities, among other emergency resources.

State Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, who also filed a disaster preparedness bill this session, said lawmakers needed to take a more proactive approach. Though shoring up infrastructure now is necessary, the Legislature has limited ability on its own to predict and recommend systems that could prevent future disasters.

Anchía’s House Bill 2618, which would have required state agencies including TDEM to create severe weather adaptation plans, passed the House on a bipartisan vote but failed in the Senate. He said he is prepared to refile the bill, if it fits the parameters of Abbott’s call.

“We as a Legislature seem to always be reactive,” Anchía said. “It’s the Boy Scouts’ motto: be prepared. We need to make sure the state government is in the same position.”

Slate’s Henry Grabar touched on some of this as well. The risks are known, but the solutions are as well. I’ll be happy for the Lege to adopt these ideas, and not just for Kerr County but for everyplace in the state that is at risk of flash floods. Throw in HB13 to address other matters like wildfires and everything else as well. But let’s not praise ourselves too vigorously if that happens, and let’s definitely not let Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick take any bows either. All of these risks have been known for years, all of these solutions have been available for years, and all this time Abbott and Patrick and the Republicans in the Lege have sat on their thumbs. (That’s a gift link, be sure to read it.) Better late than never, sure, but we’re very late and much more than a dollar short at this point.

One thing not specified above is what if anything to do about the camps themselves.

Camp Mystic, Heart O’ the Hills and several other Kerr County camps hit by last weekend’s deadly floods sit partially in areas deemed “extremely hazardous” by officials, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis.

The catastrophic flooding that tore through a number of historic summer camps along the Guadalupe River has led to the confirmed deaths of more than two dozen children. Though the disaster sent shockwaves across the nation, experts said it merely laid bare risks that have been known for years.

A Chronicle review of property records and federal flood maps found that many of these camps sit amid a patchwork of special hazard flood areas. Some even have parts of their grounds in a designated floodway – the channel where water flows most forcefully during a flood, posing the greatest danger to anything in its path.

“In Texas, we have been very irresponsible about the way we treat floodways and floodplains,” said Jim Blackburn, a Rice University professor who specializes in environmental law and flooding issues. “We have always treated them as a kind of environmental red tape rather than a true danger area, and I think that has dis-served us across the board.”

Notably, while nearly all these camps touch floodways or floodplains, most of their grounds lie outside federally designated flood zones, which are usually drawn narrowly along the water. Blackburn said this is yet another example of how the Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps fail to account for changing weather patterns and underestimate the true risks.

“Those maps you’re looking at are outdated,” he said. “We’re seeing storms that are increasingly larger and larger. The predictions need to be updated from a statistical standpoint in ways that we haven’t even begun to do.”

Summer camps having “excellent flood escape plans” was an item on Phil Bedient’s list, and that seems to have gotten Speaker Burrows’ attention, so we’ll see about this. I like the idea that was bandied about in earlier comments here about mandating evacuation drills at all these camps. We were just on a cruise, and one of the first things we did, even before we left the port, was an all-ship evacuation drill, in which we had to go to our designated muster points and see how to find and put on the life jackets. Schools and office buildings do fire drills, make the camps do evacuation drills. Make them have up-to-date evacuation plans. Make them prove they do both of these things on a regular basis. Seems like not too much to ask.

Well, it turns out they do have to do this sort of thing.

It is far too early to assign blame — or to declare such uncommon and fast-moving tragedies unavoidable. Local officials are still conducting recovery operations. Nearly a dozen people remain missing. Families have only begun to grieve.

But questions of whether it could have been mitigated are coming. Among other topics, they will almost certainly include an examination of how camp leaders prepared for floods in an area known for them, received and heeded warnings and — if possible under the conditions — followed their own emergency plans.

Social media has multiple accounts of Camp Mystic leaders acting heroically, directing girls to safety as the waters rapidly rose. The beloved longtime owner and director, Dick Eastland, perished in the flood, reportedly trying to save his campers.

But it also remains unclear how and when the camp was alerted, and how much time leaders and campers could have had to implement their evacuation plan and move out of harm’s way.

The National Weather Service’s first flash flood warning was broadcast at 1:14 a.m. Friday morning.

“At 3:11 am was woken up to help evacuate campers from their cabins,” a Camp Mystic program director recently posted on social media. “By 4 am I was on a roof with the water right up to me.”

[…]

Mystic is just one of many youth camps situated along the Guadalupe River, some of which have been in business for nearly a century. The possibility of flash flooding in the area is well-known. A 1987 flood killed 10 campers.

“As with all adventures, Campers will be exposed to certain risks,” Camp Mystic’s liability waiver states. Among others, they include “uncertain terrain, the river and river frontage, heat, cold, rain, floods and lightning.”

Three of nine board members for the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which promotes flood safety and warnings, are local camp directors. Kerr County meeting transcripts include past discussions among county officials about the informal system camps along the river have deployed to help each other stay aware of water levels.

“If there’s a rise, they’re phoning their competitors or colleagues downriver and letting them know what happened,” a commissioner explained in 2017, as the county was contemplating adding to the system of river monitors. “It’s informal, but it’s been a very good system to let them know over time.”

Youth camps are required to be licensed and inspected annually by the Texas Department of State Health Services. As part of the process, each must have an emergency plan “to be implemented in case of a disaster, serious accident, epidemic, or fatality [and] shall include procedures for emergency shelter and for evacuation of each occupied building and the facility.”

The plans must be posted in every building, the code states. “Campers shall be instructed as to their actions in the event of fire, disaster, or the need to evacuate. These procedures shall be reviewed by the staff with specific assignments made to each staff member and counselor. All camp staff and volunteers shall be made aware of this plan during the staff-training program or volunteer briefing.”

A spokeswoman for the health services department said each camp is responsible for developing its own emergency plan, although all must address a list of basics. State inspectors use a checklist to verify the general criteria are met, she said.

Several parents and camp workers at Guadalupe River youth camps said it is common for the plans to be reviewed at orientation. In case of flooding, campers are told which buildings are on higher ground and the paths to take to get there.

Although some camps along the Guadalupe River also are accredited by the American Camp Association, a process that focuses on a facility’s “health, safety, and risk management practices,” according to the organization, Camp Mystic was not.

This also gets into the notification systems in Kerr County, which I’m comfortable saying fell short. If nothing else, the Lege needs to take a hard look at both of these things, and mandate suitable improvements. If they don’t, we all know what will happen next, and we’ll know who is to blame.

Let me end this on a positive note.

Several Kerrville Independent School District teachers and staff members drove school buses full of hundreds of campers from Camp La Junta and Camp Mystic to reunification sites on July 4.

Catastrophic Guadalupe River floods swept people and structures away early that morning as it rose nearly 30 feet in under an hour. Both camps, located along the river, reported the campers that were accounted for were safe but had no electricity or running water available due to the flooding.

On the evening of July 4, KISD Superintendent Brent Ringo said he received a call from Katie Fineske, one of the owners of Camp La Junta, asking for the district’s help to get campers to safety before the sun went down.

“I look at my own kids, and if my kids were stranded somewhere at a camp, or wherever that may be … I would hope somebody would say ‘Yeah, we’re going to be right there,’” Ringo said. “We were humbled to be asked to help and honored to be asked to help.”

Within ten minutes of the call, Ringo said the district gathered about a dozen people who said they were willing to help.

Ringo said all KISD coaches are required to have a Commercial Driver’s License. One driver who volunteered to help —Aubrey Pruitt— had earned her bus license only a week ago and had never transported students on a bus until that evening.

Ringo said while he didn’t have a Commercial Driver’s License of his own, he used his pickup truck to transport campers.

“When we arrived, and you see kids just in t-shirts and shorts, the clothes they slept in, and no shoes, and hundreds of them, it is very heart wrenching,” Ringo said.

After transporting campers from Camp La Junta, about 300 campers were also transported from Camp Mystic at about 7 p.m. after being brought to the buses by the National Guard, Ringo said. Assistant Superintendent Shelby Balser, Tivy High School Principal Rick Sralla and other KISD coaches and bus drivers were among those who stepped up to get the campers to safety.

Prior to the emergency bus rescues, Ringo said that on July 4, KISD designated campus sites for first responders and state agencies to assist with rescue and recovery efforts. He said the district wanted to make sure first responders had privacy and a place to rest and shower.

“Those are the people coming in to support our city and save lives, so we wanted to make sure we get our first responders taken care of,” Ringo said.

Thank you, Kerrville ISD, Superintendent Ringo, and everyone who pitched in to help.

Posted in That's our Lege, The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Abbott adds redistricting and wingnut priorities to special session agenda

And also some flooding stuff, which was clearly top of mind for him.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday unveiled a jam-packed agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, calling on lawmakers to redraw Texas’ congressional maps and address several unfinished conservative priorities from earlier this year.

The governor, who controls the agenda for overtime legislative sessions, also included four items related to the deadly Hill Country floods over the July Fourth weekend, directing legislators to look at flood warning systems, emergency communications, natural disaster preparation and relief funding for impacted areas.

The flooding has killed more than 100 people, with more than 160 still missing in Kerr County alone.

Abbott’s call also includes redrawing the state’s congressional districts — following through on a demand from President Donald Trump’s advisers, who want to fortify Republicans’ slim majority in the U.S. House by carving out more GOP seats in Texas. Republicans in Texas’ congressional delegation have expressed unease about the idea, worrying it could jeopardize control of their current districts.

More than 40 Republican lawmakers, including Patrick, signed onto a letter to Abbott in June asking him to include the abortion pill proposal on the special session agenda. Senate Bill 2880, considered the most wide-ranging legislation to crack down on abortion pills in the U.S., passed the Senate earlier this year but stalled in a House committee.

The so-called “bathroom bill” similarly failed to reach the House floor. An earlier bathroom measure also made it onto Abbott’s agenda for the 2017 special session, where it died under opposition from business interests.

The governor’s call to bar local governments from spending public money on lobbyists — a practice dubbed by critics as “taxpayer-funded lobbying” — has also failed to gain traction through multiple sessions, despite long-running support from conservative activists and a vocal contingent of GOP lawmakers.

Abbott is also directing lawmakers to reconsider a proposal to allow the attorney general to prosecute state election crimes. Texas’ attorney general does not have authority to independently prosecute criminal offenses unless invited to do so by a local district attorney, which the state’s highest criminal court has repeatedly upheld.

But after successfully unseating three members of the Court of Criminal Appeals in November, Attorney General Ken Paxton pushed the Legislature to carve out an exception for allegations of election fraud. The Senate passed one such proposal, but it didn’t clear the House. Abbott is asking lawmakers to reconsider the idea in the form of a constitutional amendment, which requires support from two-thirds of both chambers and voter approval in a statewide referendum.

[…]

The agenda sparked immediate condemnation from some Democratic state lawmakers. Houston Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, blasted Abbott for pairing flood-related items with an agenda otherwise dominated by GOP priorities.

“Governor Abbott listed flood preparedness at the top of his special session call, but then buried it under a pile of cynical, political distractions,” Wu said in a statement, calling Abbott’s agenda a “stunning betrayal.”

I mean, yeah, it’s hard to argue that this was about flooding and emergency preparedness when there’s all this other red meat on there. And it’s not stuff that was narrowly defeated by Democratic trickery, it’s stuff that the Republicans haven’t been able to pass on their own. I know Abbott can call as many sessions as he wants, but I don’t know what exactly he thinks he’s going to get. I also know he thinks he’s invincible, but boy this sure has the potential to be a really bad look. We’ll see how it plays out. Oh, and California really needs to follow through if the Lege does indeed pass a new map. To do nothing would be total chump behavior. Don’t let us down, Gavin. The Chron has more.

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The opening lineup in At Large #4

Three and counting, with more surely to come.

CM Letitia Plummer

Letitia Plummer’s bid for Harris County judge means her at-large seat on Houston City Council is now open.

The Houston City Council will soon decide when to hold an election to fill the slot, but it will likely take place this Nov. 4.

Here are the candidates who say they plan to run.

[…]

Dwight Boykins

Boykins, who formerly served on City Council representing neighborhoods like the Museum District and Third Ward, told the Chronicle Tuesday he too would be entering the race for Plummer’s position.

Boykins was elected to the council initially in 2013. He also ran for mayor in 2019 and floated a run for Texas governor in 2018.

If elected to council, Boykins said he wants to tackle the city’s finances, enhance public safety and ensure infrastructure improvements are sustainable and equitable across Houston’s neighborhoods.

“Serving the people of Houston has been the greatest honor of my life,” Boykins said in a Tuesday news release. “I’m running for At-Large Position #4 because our city needs leadership that’s bold, experienced, and ready to act on the challenges we face — from public safety and food deserts to caring for our seniors and neighborhood revitalization.”

He continued: “I am the only candidate that will enter this race that can hit the ground running on day one. I just couldn’t continue to sit on the sidelines while our city faces so many pressing issues.”

Boykins has so far received endorsements from Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex-Tatum, Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and Houston City Council Member Willie Davis.

Al Lloyd

Lloyd, a native Houstonian, got involved in politics when Ada Edwards ran for Houston City Council. He has since worked with Harris County Flood Control and on infrastructure projects in the area, but only as a community leader and civic club president at South MacGregor.

Through his service in the community, he told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday he found getting resources diverted to what you need when you’re not working from the city is hard, which ultimately steered him toward running for the position.

“Our city deserves leaders who show up, follow through, and deliver,” Lloyd said in a Tuesday statement. “I’m not running to talk, I’m running to do. Houstonians are ready for a fresh, accountable voice at City Hall who will fight for jobs, infrastructure, and quality of life across every zip code.”

Lloyd’s campaign will focus on workforce development, small business support, enhancing public safety, improving drainage and expanding access to city services, he said.

See here for the background. The article led off with Alejandra Salinas, but I wrote about her yesterday so I’m skipping her here.

You may be thinking, as I did at first, “wait a minute, isn’t Dwight Boykins term limited from Council?” And the answer is no, because he was an incumbent when the updated term limits law was passed, which changed the limits from three two-year terms to two four-year terms. Incumbent Council members who were in their first (two-year) term when this passed were allowed to run for two four-year terms. Boykins, who was elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2015, did not run for that second four-year Council term and thus may run for one more. Confusing, I know, but there it is.

As was the case with Alejandra Salinas before, this is my introduction to Al Lloyd (*), who also seems like a solid candidate. You have to raise some real money to break through in an At Large race, because the voters tend not to know who many of the candidates are unless they were already a recognizable name going in. It might be a little different this November, as the electorate will be smaller and thus more hardcore, but you still have to get your name out to them. I’ll see who might have been raising money in anticipation of this before the June 30 deadline – as noted, this was The Worst Kept Secret in Houston politics – but the next reporting period won’t be until October, for the 30-day reports. So we may not know very much about some of these folks before then.

(*) – There was an Al Lloyd who ran for Pearland ISD in 2018. I can’t tell if this is the same person or not.

UPDATE: The count is now four:

Obes Nwabara

Nwabara, who works at power company Calpine and serves as the president of Art Colony Association, Inc., previously ran for the council’s at-large 2 seat. The race was ultimately won by Council Member Willie Davis.

Nwabara said his campaign will focus on affordable housing, water infrastructure and food insecurity.

I know Obes from his previous candidacy and from his Democratic activism. Again, I expect there to be more candidates in this race.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of July 7

The Texas Progressive Alliance hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

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The flood warning history of Kerr County

They’ve tried for awhile to get some funding for a flood warning system. They’ve failed every time.

Nearly a decade before catastrophic flash flooding killed at least 75 people in Kerr County, including 27 children, several local officials were hard at work convincing their peers to buy into a new early flood warning system.

The once “state of the art” program installed along the Guadalupe River back in the 1980s was in desperate need of an upgrade, they argued. It wasn’t good enough for Kerr County, which sits at the heart of “flash flood alley,” a portion of the Texas Hill Country whose climate and terrain make it uniquely susceptible to sudden and catastrophic floods.

“I’m not trying to put a dollar on a life or a flood, but the fact of the matter [is] floods do happen, and we need to be prepared for them,” then-Kerr County Commissioner Bob Reeves noted during a series of public meetings that began in 2016. And, his former colleague Tom Moser pointed out, “We also have more summer camps than anybody else along the Guadalupe River.”

The wide-ranging discussions back then — captured in transcripts archived online — proved to be a chilling precursor to the disaster that unfolded early on July 4. That’s when a slow-moving, massive rainstorm caused the Guadalupe River to rise by 22 feet in just three hours, catching those living and camping on its banks off-guard in the middle of the night.

But the new warning system never became reality. Though local officials agreed to spend $50,000 on an engineering study, which made specific recommendations for such a project in 2016, they never secured the $1 million they estimated would be needed to implement it – despite asking for help from state officials at least three separate times.

“We never were successful in getting that funding, or putting the matching funding with it to do anything,” said Moser, who retired in 2021, in a phone interview. He said he hopes the county can “go back to the drawing board on this, and hopefully it’ll be a model that could be used all over the United States.”

In 2017, Kerr County and the Upper Guadalupe River Authority asked the state to give them federal disaster relief dollars, but their application was denied. They tried a second time after Hurricane Harvey, when more federal funds became available and Gov. Greg Abbott encouraged local entities to submit applications. They were rejected again.

Both applications would have been handled by the Texas Department of Emergency Management, whose spokesman, Wes Rapaport, said the agency could not immediately respond to specific questions because “we are in the middle of ongoing response operations.”

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Abbott said in a news conference that flood response will be handled during the state’s upcoming legislative session, which starts on Monday, July 21.

The river authority, UGRA, also applied for state funding through the Texas Water Development Board. But the agency only agreed to chip in 5% of the estimated $1 million cost, according to documents from the river authority and the water board. The remaining price tag was too steep for Kerr County, whose annual budget in 2016 was about $30 million. UGRA has far fewer resources; last fall, the authority approved spending about $2.3 million.

“At that point we sort of dropped it,” said William Rector, president of the board of UGRA, which has supported the effort for years and paid for a portion of the 2016 study. Abbott appointed Rector to the board in 2016 and named him president two years ago.

[…]

In recent days, other local officials have bristled at the suggestion that a warning system could have made a difference, pointing out that even national weather forecasters underestimated how much rain could fall in such a short period of time. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s highest-ranking elected official, told reporters over the weekend that “nobody saw this coming.”

Phil Bedient, who has spent decades designing flood protection and prediction systems as director of Rice University’s SSPEED Center, disagreed.

“We have radar, and we have cell phones, and we have sirens, and those three things together can be used to create a pretty good system,” he said. “It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what’s that versus 80 or 100 people dying in a flash flood?”

Rector said UGRA is continuing to move forward with a flood warning system plan. Documents show the river authority agreed to pay an environmental firm about $73,000 to once again assess what new infrastructure Kerr County might need to implement an early flood warning system – though that’s likely a tiny fraction of the total cost of putting one in place.

“This storm has told us we just can’t wait anymore,” he said.

I agree with the decision for them to not get Hurricane Harvey relief funds. Let’s just say that remains an extremely sore subject and move on. Why all the other attempts failed I couldn’t say. The area around the Guadalupe River is called “Flash Flood Alley” and its history is long and well known. I don’t know why Kerr County never found the money for this.

Now compare that experience to that of nearby Comfort, Texas.

As heavy rain triggered flash flood warnings along the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country early Friday, the small unincorporated town of Comfort had something its neighbors upriver in Kerr County didn’t: wailing sirens urging residents to flee before the water could swallow them.

Comfort had recently updated its disaster alert system, installing a new siren in the volunteer fire department’s headquarters and moving the old one to a low-lying area of town along Cypress Creek, a tributary of the Guadalupe that is prone to flooding. Friday was the first time the new two-siren system had been used outside of tests, providing a last-minute alarm for anyone who hadn’t responded to previous warnings on their cellphones or evacuation announcements from firefighters driving around town.

“People knew that if they heard the siren, they gotta get out,” said Danny Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department.

Morales said that no one died in Comfort, a town of about 2,300 people in Kendall County. But in Kerr County about 20 miles away, dozens of people, including young girls staying at Camp Mystic, a riverside Christian summer camp, were washed away when the Guadalupe surged over its banks and swamped the surrounding countryside. As of Monday evening, officials said, 104 people had been confirmed dead, 84 of them in Kerr County, including dozens of children. Kerr County has no siren system despite years of debate, in part because some local officials felt it was too expensive to install.

[…]

It is impossible to know whether a siren system in Kerr County would have saved lives; they are meant to alert people who are outdoors, not in bed indoors, as many of Kerr County’s victims were when the river rose overnight — at one point by 26 feet in just 45 minutes.

The weather service issued a flood watch for the area Thursday afternoon and an urgent flash flood warning for Kerr County at 1:14 a.m. Friday, a move that triggers the wireless emergency alerts on cellphones.

By the time flooding inundated low-lying parts of Kendall County, where Comfort is located, it was later Friday morning. The first weather service flash flood alert for Kendall came at 7:24 a.m. When the sirens went off, many residents were already awake and aware of the dangerous flooding. A Facebook video recorded by Jeff Flinn, the managing editor of The Boerne Star, shows the emergency sirens in Comfort sounding at 10:52 a.m.; he said the alert lasted for about 30 seconds.

Kerr County was relying on the emergency alerts that blare on cellphones. Those alerts may not get through, particularly in rural areas with bad service or in the night when phones are off or when there are no phones around; the girls at the summer camp weren’t allowed to bring them. And some may choose to ignore them, because they’re bombarded by phone alerts.

[…]

Cruz Newberry, who owns Table Rock Alerting Systems, a Missouri company, installed Comfort’s new computer-backed system last year at a cost of about $60,000. Morales said a local nonprofit group provided most of the money, with Kendall County kicking in a smaller amount.

The system, linked to the National Weather Service by a satellite dish that can withstand violent weather, can be set up to automatically trigger sirens when the agency declares flash flood emergencies for the area. But Comfort opts to trigger its sirens manually, when officials notice flood waters have risen past a certain point.

Newberry stressed that sirens are a piece of a broader warning apparatus that also includes the news media, social media and cellphone alerts. Sirens, he said, are a measure of last resort.

“The nice thing with an outdoor warning system is it’s one of the few methods that local officials have at their disposal where they can literally press a button and warn citizens themselves,” Newberry said. “It’s difficult to ignore a siren blaring for three minutes straight.”

The story also touches on Kerr County’s experience trying to get funds for an alert system there, as well as the failed legislative effort from this year. Sixty grand doesn’t sound like a lot of money to me, but Kerrville has ten times the population of Comfort, so that may not be a good comparison. At this point, the bigger issue is trying to learn all we can about what the options are.

That first article mentioned Phil Bedient, of Ike Dike and SSPEED fame, and here he is expanding on his assertion about a proper flood warning system.

The Guadalupe River needs more flood gauges. The Guadalupe River is 230 miles long. Its river basin is 6,700 square miles — meaning that the rain that falls on all that land drains toward the river.

Right now, there are only about five rain gauges on the Guadalupe River, and not all of those worked. That leaves far too much of the river unmonitored.

The Rice University SPEED Center recommends that 20 or more gauges be installed and maintained, and that a radar rainfall system be implemented for the region.

The State of Texas needs an alert system along the Guadalupe River. There were no warning sirens in those vulnerable towns along the Guadalupe or at certain critical river sections. We need a comprehensive alert system that would protect not just the towns, but also rural and remote sections of the river.

Summer camps must have excellent flood escape plans. For the summer camps along the Guadalupe’s banks, there are few established escape routes. Each camp must work with local authorities to establish robust escape routes and develop flood risk responses.

We need a modern flood warning system. Finally, the Guadalupe River requires a modern computer model such as the FIRST model (Flood Information & Response System), developed by the SSPEED Center, that the city of Houston has used since 2020. FIRST is an advanced, radar-based flood assessment, mapping and early-warning system that provides emergency managers with near-instantaneous flood predictions — showing, for instance, whether a hospital or nursing home is likely to be inundated.

We need to address San Antonio too. Flooding in this part of Texas isn’t isolated to rural areas. Less than one month earlier, San Antonio experienced severe floods in which 13 people died in cars swept off of roadways. That city, too, needs alerts, escape plans and an improved flood warning system.

Those all seem like good ideas, and things that the Lege could address in a special session, if Greg Abbott wants to include that. Which he seems inclined to do at this point. One can certainly wonder why some of this stuff had never been addressed before, and one can certainly wonder if Abbott would have actually called a special session – which as we know he did not do after Harvey – if one to deal with his THC ban veto wasn’t already on the calendar.

Back to Kerr County and its emergency alerts:

In his first press conference after the deadly floods last weekend, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said unequivocally that the area did not have an emergency alert system.

“We have no warning system,” he said on the morning of July 4, just hours after the Guadalupe River topped its banks. When pushed about why evacuations did not occur earlier, Kelly doubled down. “We didn’t know this flood was coming. Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming. …This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.”

And when asked Tuesday at what time warnings were issued, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said he was focused on search and rescue.

“It’s not that easy, and you just push a button. Okay? There’s a lot more to that, and we’ve told you several times,” he said. A reporter then asked, “Did it happen?” to which Leitha responded, “I can’t tell you at this time.”

But The Texas Newsroom has learned that not only does the county have a mass-alert system for public emergencies, first responders asked that it be triggered early Friday morning.

The Guadalupe River rose as much as 26 feet in 45 minutes around 4 a.m., said Lt Gov. Dan Patrick.

According to emergency radio transmissions The Texas Newsroom reviewed, volunteer firefighters asked for what’s called a “CodeRED” alert to be sent as early as 4:22 a.m. Dispatchers delayed, saying they needed special authorization.

Some residents received flood warnings from CodeRED within an hour. Others told The Texas Newsroom they did not receive their first alert until after 10 a.m., raising questions about why the messages that residents received were sporadic and inconsistent.

[…]

According to information on the Kerr County website, CodeRED “has the ability to notify the entire county or only the affected areas of the county about emergency situations in a matter of minutes.” The system was approved by county commissioners in 2009 for $25,000 a year.

“The system delivers pre-recorded emergency telephone messages, such as during instances of severe weather,” the site adds, “and other emergency situations where rapid and accurate notification is essential for life safety.”

Historically, the Kerr County sheriff has had the ultimate authority on sending an alert out to the public. The department did not respond to questions about whether this authority has changed under the current sheriff or why the CodeRED alerts appeared to be inconsistent.

But CodeRED has some drawbacks.

It uses publicly available phone numbers and voluntary sign ups to send text messages, voicemails, and emails to people in the area specified by government officials sending the alert.

This means its warnings may not go out to all residents or visitors in a disaster area.

Seems like there’s more than just technology and funding to address. Kerr County voters ought to be asking their elected officials some pointed questions.

Sadly, the death toll keeps rising.

The death toll in Kerr County due to deadly floods is now at 94 people, with 161 people still missing in that county, Gov. Greg Abbott said in a Tuesday news conference.

The number of known fatalities in Kerr County as a result of the Hill Country flooding on July 4, increased by seven since Tuesday morning, when the death toll was at 87. Gov. Greg Abbott and state officials held a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Hunt on the continued response to severe flooding in Hill Country.

Abbott said at least 161 people are still missing after the state’s catastrophic floods, with a total death toll of 109 across the state.

Abbott said state lawmakers will consider better allocating resources for those impacted in Central Texas, including Kerr and Kendall County during a pre-planned special session in Austin later this month.

“We want to make sure that when we end that session, we end it making sure these communities are better, more resilient and have the resources they need for the next chapter of their lives,” House Speaker Dustin Burrows said.

Abbott said lawmakers will also consider legislation during that special session that will prevent flooding disasters in the future.

As noted above, we’ll see what that means.

Throughout the day yesterday, the deaths of several of the previously missing Camp Mystic girls were confirmed by their families. Five of them still remain among the 161 people named above. This is going to get so much worse. I wish them all peace and comfort.

Finally, a tale of heroism.

It was his first rescue operation.

Scott Ruskan, a 26-year-old Coast Guard rescue swimmer based in Corpus Christi, Texas, woke up to banging on his door in the early hours of July 4. There was flooding around San Antonio and he was being deployed, he was told. Did he have a chain saw?

Mr. Ruskan was part of a crew that was tasked with evacuating hundreds of people at Camp Mystic, an all-girls’ Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River that has become a hub of loss in the catastrophic floods that killed more than 80 people across Central Texas. About 750 girls were at the camp this session, officials said.

Mr. Ruskan and his team took off on a helicopter around 7 a.m. Central on Friday to the camp, near Hunt, Texas. It took them nearly six hours to reach San Antonio because of poor visibility and challenging weather conditions. “A white-knuckle experience,” he said.

By the end of their operations, Mr. Ruskan was credited with saving 165 people from Camp Mystic.

Thank you, Scott Ruskan. Thank you very much.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

CM Plummer formally announces for Harris County Judge

Houston’s worst-kept secret is a secret no more.

CM Letitia Plummer

Houston City Council member Letitia Plummer plans to resign her position to run in the Democratic primary for Harris County judge, she told the Houston Chronicle in an exclusive interview.

The seat was one Plummer said she never thought would open. While there hasn’t been an official announcement, Plummer said she based her decision on extensive conversations with County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Plummer said her understanding is that Hidalgo won’t seek re-election.

“I’m going to run for the county judge seat. I believe I’ve made the commitment to people, people have asked,” Plummer said. “But, let me be very clear, I’m doing and making that decision on the auspice of having multiple conversations with her. It would never be a situation to where I jumped out saying that I was running against Judge Hidalgo. I made my decision based on hundreds of community conversations, sit downs with her.”

Plummer’s move follows a similar maneuver by former U.S. Rep. Erica Lee Carter, who announced on Monday she would run for county judge should Hidalgo not seek re-election.

Hidalgo has yet to announce a decision on whether or not she will run again, but said she will soon.

[…]

“All of the good work that I’ve done at City Hall, I can now do on a larger stage, really focusing on my priorities,” Plummer said.

Plummer said she’s helped residents through seven natural disasters and focused on quality of life issues across the city.

She said that she believes sometimes people lose track of what exactly the county judge does. Another reason why she thinks she is apt for the job is because she’s been the CEO of her own company. The county judge, Plummer said, is the CEO of the county.

“We can bring Harris County back, because we’ve got some financial challenges we’ve got to deal with,” Plummer said. “We can bring it back, and we can put enough pressure on the federal government and the state to give them what’s duly ours; disaster recovery support No. 1, infrastructure dollars and ensuring that the city of Houston and the county and all of the municipalities that are part of the county can continue to thrive.”

Should Plummer cinch the position, she said her top priorities would be infrastructure, namely increasing the number of resiliency projects the same way she helped Kashmere Gardens Multi-Service Center get a generator so it could be operational in storms; spurring economic development; and healthcare.

See here and here for the background. As the story notes, former Mayor Annise Parker is in the race, as will be former HCDE Trustee and CD18 Congress member Erica Lee Carter, if indeed Judge Hidalgo does not run again. I expect we’ll get an answer to that soon. I also expect this will not be the last candidate announcement for this office.

And yes, this means there will now be a special election in November for City Council At Large #4.

Weeks ahead of Plummer’s formal announcement, information about her candidacy had been inadvertently released twice. Both times called into question whether she would have to resign her council seat early.

Last month, the Spring Branch Democrats Club posted then deleted an image of a document on their Facebook page that read “Dr. Letitia Plummer Democrat for Harris County Judge” with a caption that read “Another candidate for County Judge.”

Then, Houston Style Magazine posted then deleted a news story with the headline “Letitia Plummer: A Bold New Chapter in Harris County’s Leadership Legacy” that said Plummer was “preparing to launch her candidacy for Harris County judge.”

In the story, Plummer was quoted as saying, “The County Judge is the only official elected by all of Harris County. I’m already serving the entire city. Now, I’m ready to serve the entire county. I’ve been there for our seniors, our veterans, our women- and minority-owned businesses. I’ve stood up for police and I’ve stood up for our children. It’s time we build a county government that does the same.”

Plummer said the first information leak by the Spring Branch Democrats Club happened as a result of someone who used to work for her. She says she was misquoted in the Houston Style story and said she did not say, “I’m already serving the entire city. Now, I’m ready to serve the entire county.”

Had Plummer been forced to resign early before her Tuesday announcement, the city would have had to spend its own limited funds to hold a special election for her seat on council.

And just like that, this announcement hit my inbox yesterday morning:

Alejandra Salinas

Nationally recognized attorney Alejandra Salinas announced her candidacy today for Houston City Council, At-Large Position 4.

The incumbent, Council Member Letitia Plummer, has resigned to run for a different office. A special election will be held to fill Plummer’s unexpired term. The special election is anticipated to be held on Tuesday, November 4.

Salinas said: “Houston is a strong and resilient city with hard-working families and individuals. I am fighting for what my neighbors want and every Houstonian deserves: safer neighborhoods, affordable and reliable city services, and a strong infrastructure that keeps the lights on and keeps flood waters out of our homes and cars.”

Salinas enters the race with a powerful list of early endorsers, including Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, County Commissioner Adrian Garcia, District Attorney Sean Teare, At-Large City Council Member Sallie Alcorn, and more. (A full list is available at www.AlejandraSalinas.com.) She also starts off with nearly $300,000 in her campaign account.

Salinas is a partner at Houston-based Susman Godfrey, the leading law firm that stood up to Donald Trump and won a sweeping injunction nullifying Trump’s illegal executive order and protecting the rule of law.

She has protected Harris County elections from partisan interference and reversed discriminatory school policies, and served as a surrogate for President Barack Obama.

Outside of the courtroom, Salinas devotes time to mentorship and community organizations. She serves on the board of Greater Houston LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce, Second Mile Haiti, a non-profit that works to provide prenatal and family care to mothers and families in Haiti and C. 60, a non-profit dedicated to the restoration of LULAC’s first clubhouse in Houston. Salinas and her wife Elizabeth live in Montrose and are members of St. Philip Presbyterian Church.

Sounds like a pretty good candidate to me, but we’ll see who else gets in. I would expect this to be a pretty big field as well, maybe not CD18-sized but still substantial. I can’t wait to see what this finance report looks like, as having $300K already on hand is impressive no matter when she started raising it. And yes, I will do interviews with the AL4 candidates. I’m old enough to remember when this was supposed to be a quiet election year for us. The Press has more.

Posted in Election 2025, Election 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Fifth Circuit keeps SB4 block in place

A bit of good news.

A Texas law that would deputize state and local police to question and arrest people they suspect of being in the country illegally was blocked once again. The law would also authorize local judges to order immigrants returned to the border.

The three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion late Thursday that kept the law, Senate Bill 4, from going into effect.

“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has recognized that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of aliens — is exclusively a federal power,” the ruling said.

[…]

The ruling is a flashpoint in a two-year legal drama that began when Texas enacted the law in 2023, testing the limits of a state’s immigration enforcement powers.

The Biden administration immediately sued. The law was blocked by a federal judge in Austin, keeping it on hold as the Fifth Circuit weighed whether to allow the law to go into effect.

During that time, Donald Trump was re-elected as president. His administration dropped the lawsuit, seeking to work with Texas on immigration enforcement. But immigrant rights groups and El Paso County kept the lawsuit going.

For the plaintiffs, the ruling from the conservative Fifth Circuit was a surprise given the climate of immigration politics. The Fifth Circuit has handed down some of the most conservative rulings that have been appealed to the Supreme Court in recent years on issues like voting rights, abortion, and immigration.

“We’re very surprised and glad that the Fifth Circuit has long recognized what has long been a longstanding legal principle,” said El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez.

El Paso County argued the law, known as SB4, would be a burden on local governments.

“We would have had to divert law enforcement resources to handling this. How and what were we going to do to figure out who is here on legal status or not? Where were we going to put these individuals if they became arrested?” Sanchez said. “Does this bring racial profiling concerns or other civil rights concerns once these individuals are detained by our local law enforcement?”

El Paso County is one of the plaintiffs in the suit, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights project on behalf of El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Austin-based American Gateways.

See here for the previous update – the hearing for this was last April, so this has been a typically slow process – and here for a copy of the opinion. Of the two judges that ruled for the plaintiffs, one is a George W. Bush appointee and the other is a Biden appointee, so at least this wasn’t the result of an unexpected 2-1 Democrat-appointed panel. That may matter if there’s an en banc appeal – Ken Paxton has already said he will appeal – and who knows, it may even matter when this finally gets to SCOTUS. I’m not holding my breath on that one, but a win is a win so let’s celebrate it for now. Here’s the ACLU’s press release, and Reform Austin has more.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On the value of disaster warnings

It’s hard to know where to start with this.

Rep. Wes Virdell

For the last three days, state Rep. Wes Virdell has been out with first responders in Kerr County as they searched for victims and survivors from the devastating floods that swept through Central Texas early Friday morning.

“All the focus right now is let’s save all the lives we can,” Virdell, who was still on the scene in Kerrville, told The Texas Tribune on Sunday.

Virdell’s closeup view of the havoc wreaked on his district has made a lasting impression, he said, and left him reconsidering a vote he made just a few months ago against a bill that would have established a statewide plan to improve Texas’ disaster response, including better alert systems, along with a grant program for counties to buy new emergency communication equipment and build new infrastructure like radio towers.

“I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now,” said Virdell, a freshman GOP lawmaker from Brady.

The measure, House Bill 13, would have created a new government council to establish the emergency response plan and administer the grant program, both of which would have been aimed at facilitating better communication between first responders. The bill also called for the plan to include “the use of outdoor warning sirens,” like those used in tornado-prone Texas counties, and develop new “emergency alert systems.”

Authored by Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, the legislation was inspired by last year’s devastating wildfires in the Panhandle, where more than 1 million acres burned — including part of King’s property — and three people died. The bill failed in the Texas Senate, prompting newfound questions about whether lawmakers should have done more to help rural, cash-strapped counties stave off the deadly effects of future natural disasters.

As of Sunday evening, at least 79 people had died in the floods. Of those, 68 were in Kerr County, many of them camping or attending a private summer camp along the Guadalupe River.

Virdell, a Hill Country native who lives about 100 miles away, made his way to Kerrville early Friday after seeing news that rains raised the Guadalupe more than two feet, swamping its banks in Hunt and other river communities that host thousands of holiday vacationers.

He stressed an alarm system may not have helped much in this instance because the floodwaters came so quickly. Between 2 and 7 a.m., the Guadalupe River in Kerrville rose from 1 to more than 34 feet in height, according to a flood gauge in the area.

“I don’t think there was enough evidence to even suspect something like this was going to happen,” he said. ”I think even if you had a warning system there, this came in so fast and early in the morning it’s very unlikely the warning system would have had much effect.”

Virdell said he doesn’t recall the specifics of the bill or why he opposed it, though he guessed “it had to do with how much funding” was tied to the measure.

Even if it had passed, it would not have gone into effect until Sept. 1, after the Hill Country flooding.

The bill’s initial $500 million cost drew heavy criticism from fellow Republicans including state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington.

“This shouldn’t be about anything other than the fact that it’s a half a billion dollars,” Tinderholt, a hardline conservative and budget hawk, said during the April 1 House floor debate. “This is probably one of the most simple votes we should be able to take today. It’s that this interoperability council is going to spend money to try and get these departments to be able to talk together.”

Steven Aranyi, a spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, noted that lawmakers — including the Texas Senate, which Patrick oversees — made several “unprecedented” investments in disaster response during this year’s legislative session, totaling $547 million. That included:

The flaw with HB 13, Aranyi said, was that it proposed rolling out the local grant money over an estimated timeline of up to 10 years.

“By the time any system was developed, it would be outdated due to advances in technology,” Aranyi said. “The grants in the bill were limited to planning purposes only; they did not support disaster response.”

I’m just going to bullet point this, because my thoughts are falling all over each other…

– How many times do we have to have an emergency in this state before the Republicans in the Legislature, not to mention Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, do something to try to mitigate against it happening again? They failed us on Beryl, they failed us on Winter Storm Uri, they failed on the Panhandle fires, and now they’ve failed on disaster alert systems. The pattern here is stark.

– I don’t know if HB13 was the best possible way to increase our disaster preparedness capabilities, but it was a reasonable attempt by a legislator with a good reputation, and it passed the House by a vote of 129-18. Surely it had some merit, and even if it was flawed it had passed on April 2, meaning that there was ample time for the Senate to hold a hearing, make some amendments, and at least send a version of it back. But HB13 never even got assigned to a committee – its Senate companion bill did get assigned to the Finance committee, the day after HB13 passed in the House, and then was left to die. That’s on Dan Patrick.

– Spending some money on disaster response is nice, but that’s primarily reactive. It does nothing to help prevent or mitigate disasters before they happen. Now again, there are legitimate questions about how this could be done effectively – we must acknowledge that the floods happened very quickly, in the middle of the night, and many people had become accustomed to the risk of more normal levels of flooding. It’s entirely possible that even with the best alert systems available, many lives would still have been lost. But we’ll never know that.

– It’s also true that even if HB13 had passed, that law wouldn’t have been in effect until September 1, and there would be a significant lag between then and the counties doing something with the funding they would have been able to apply for. But not passing HB13 means that we would have been waiting another two years to try again (modulo whatever Abbott does with the special session call). If your argument is “we wouldn’t have been able to move fast enough to do anything”, then waiting another two years seems like an odd way to approach that.

– Then there’s the money complaint, as put forth by the lowlife Tony Tinderholt. Obviously, there’s a risk/reward tradeoff to consider, and there is a limit to how much money we should spend on any security system, especially when we can only speculate about the value of said system. But that’s not the issue for Tinderholt or his nihilist crew. They just don’t want to spend money on anything other than border security or various corporate giveaways. And so here we are.

– I don’t know enough about Rep. Virdell to know how comfortably he fits in that camp, or if maybe he just balked at the price tag and/or got bad advice. I will say, maybe next time have a staffer who is able to brief you on a bill like this before you vote on it. There are thousands of bills filed each session, and 80% or so never see the light of day, so I’m not saying “read them all”, as that would be ridiculous and pointless. But do read the ones that matter, and have a staff in place that can tell which ones they are. This is why electing people who care about these things is important.

I really don’t know what could have been different if we had better emergency alert systems in place, or if local officials had done more to warn their residents of this threat, or if the people who did know of the threat had acted more quickly. There is as I’ve said a lot we will need to learn from this, and to pass laws and get into a different mindset for the next time. Because I do know that the death toll is now 84, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, which still does not include the ten campers and one counselor who remain unaccounted for. I would like to think that this time, at least, we’ll take what happened seriously and try our best to prevent it, or at least lessen its impact, in the future. I’ll turn this over to the Chron editorial board:

As families grieve, Gov. Greg Abbott can act by adding a formal investigation and policy response to the agenda for his upcoming special session, which begins on July 21. Texas is too vulnerable to sudden, catastrophic flooding for our leaders in Austin to let this tragedy become just another unheeded warning. To his credit, Abbott has hinted that something is in the works.

“We have a special session coming up and the way to respond to this is something the special session will address,” he said at a Sunday press conference.

This time it was the Guadalupe River. Next time it could be the Brazos. Or the Trinity. Or Buffalo Bayou. Whether driven by climate change or upstream development or nature’s sheer unpredictability, these sorts of unprecedented floods are no longer once-in-a-generation events. They are a grim routine — and our state is unprepared.

Could campers have been saved if local officials had acted more urgently? Hours passed between when the National Weather Service issued a flood warning and a wall of water hit Camp Mystic.

AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said in a statement Saturday that had camp organizers and local officials heeded warnings they could have saved lives. And when asked why the camps weren’t evacuated, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly had no answer.

Where did communication break down? Were late-night cell phone warnings ignored after years of overuse for far-away Amber Alerts? Does Texas need to step in to mandate flood sirens in flood-prone areas or invest in stronger resiliency infrastructure for our state’s Flash Flood Alley?

We don’t yet know what actions could have saved lives from the tragic Hill Country flood. But we do know the Legislature has the power to find out — and to help prevent the next one.

“When Texans face a challenge, we come together,” Abbott said at a press conference on Saturday. “We unite.”

Houstonians know that unity fades not long after the skies clear.

No special session followed Hurricane Harvey. Sixty inches of precipitation wasn’t enough to tap the state’s Rainy Day Fund. After Hurricane Beryl, lawmakers promised they would hold CenterPoint accountable for blackouts and corporate opacity. Yet the strongest reforms quietly died in the Legislature.

The Panhandle knows this struggle, too, as Suzanne Bellsnyder has documented at the Texas Rural Reporter. After the devastating 2023 wildfires, state Rep. Ken King led an investigation that called for better emergency communications infrastructure in rural Texas. House Bill 13 could have funded those upgrades — but it died in the Senate. That bill, too, deserves another chance in the special session.

Sadly, disaster investigations and infrastructure funding often cannot compete with political priorities such as securing the border or banning THC.

Too often, natural disasters are treated as a distraction from the Austin agenda — or worse, a stage for political theater. Some have already tried to twist this moment into a partisan spectacle. State Rep. Biscoe Cain bizarrely warned of a growing government. Too many progressives leapt at any opportunity to blame this tragedy on President Trump and his federal staffing cuts.

“In this particular case, we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all in this event,” Houston meteorologist Matt Lanza wrote on The Eyewall. “Anyone using this event to claim that is being dishonest.”

In a moment of mourning, partisan posturing only deepens the pain.

Texans deserve better. Families deserve real answers. Flooding deserves to be treated with the seriousness it demands.

Yes it does. It also demands that people not act like assholes, or get in the way of rescue efforts. (I mean, Jesus H. Christ on a goddamn pogo stick.) Stop pointing fingers and spreading conspiracy theories, and start working to figure out how to do better. Go take a vacation if you can’t commit to any of that.

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