July 2026 campaign finance reports: Statewide candidates

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

It’s July of an election year – which is to say, it’s July – so you know what that means: Campaign finance reports! You can just feel the excitement in the air, can’t you? I’m going to do a thorough accounting of what’s out there, and we’re going to start with Democratic candidates for statewide office, not counting the US Senate. Normally, there’s little reason to report on these, because there’s whoever is running for Governor and then everyone else with couch cushion money between them all. This year is a little different, for a couple of reasons. One is that 2026 is expected to be a good Democratic year, and while the vast majority of that optimism is in the Senate race, some of it has spilled over into state races. And two, most of the statewide slate are sitting Democratic legislators, who if nothing else have some fundraising experience and some kind of base. Let’s see how that has played out so far.

Gina Hinojosa – Governor
Vikki Goodwin – Lite Guv
Nathan Johnson – Attorney General
Sarah Eckhardt – Comptroller
Clayton Tucker – Ag Commissioner
Benjamin Flores – Land Commissioner
Jon Rosenthal – Railroad Commissioner


Name          Raised      Spent       Loan     On Hand
======================================================
Hinojosa   6,171,779  3,990,461    387,000   3,002,415
Goodwin      397,992    204,980    100,000     317,570
Johnson      363,911    163,138          0     290,566
Eckhardt     319,517    215,570          0     240,002
Tucker       237,124    119,012          0     162,455
Flores         3,604     53,660    100,000       3,001
Rosenthal    167,878    119,832          0      64,511

Note that Vikki Goodwin and Nathan Johnson both had to win primary runoffs, so their July filing report only covers from May 18 – eight days before the runoff – through June 30. Everyone else won in March, with Clayton Tucker and Jon Rosenthal running unopposed. Here’s a summary of how they all did from January on:

Hinojosa reported raising $1.038 million in January, and raised $1.56 million between January 1 and February 21.

Goodwin reported raising $367K in January, and raised $360K between January 1 and May 16.

Johnson reported raising $652K in January, and raised $614K between January 1 and May 16.

Eckhardt reported raising $113K in January, and raised $75K between January 1 and February 21.

Tucker reported raising $108K in January, and raised $27K between January 1 and February 21.

Flores reported raising $19K in January, and raised $8,139 between January 1 and February 21. He gets a pass for his lack of activity.

Rosenthal reported raising $59K in January. His July report covered the full six month period. I’m not sure why this difference between him and Clayton Tucker, my best guess is that Tucker chose to file an 8 day report in February while Rosenthal didn’t. Neither of them had to as unopposed candidates, but I suppose nothing would stop them from voluntarily doing so.

I’m mostly pleased with the totals here. Let’s be clear that James Talarico is going to be doing the heavy lifting for the ticket overall, with some national money being invested in Congressional and legislative races also helping out. But this is a year where multiple statewide candidates can and hopefully will raise a million bucks or more on their own, which they can use in targeted ways. Nathan Johnson has already raised a million this calendar year, and Vikki Goodwin isn’t far behind. Gina Hinojosa is closing in on $10 million for the year. She’ll still be a tick or two behind the likes of Beto, Wendy Davis, and Bill White, but with enough to be on TV around the state if she wants to.

Not much else to add here. Just the fact that there is something worth commenting on is a positive. I’ll look at key legislative races and Harris County races next, and will move on to Congress and the Senate when those totals are finalized. Let me know what you think.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Meet Greg Abbott’s data center sugar daddies

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Always follow the money.

The backlash to the Texas data center boom has Gov. Greg Abbott caught between some of his most dependable donors and his most reliable voters.

Several of the Republican governor’s most generous financial backers are increasingly investing in the boom that has voters in deep-red rural parts of the state up in arms, according to a Hearst Newspapers analysis.

They include real estate titan Ed Roski, Jr., who gave $1 million in April, and energy executive Kelcy Warren, who gave $500,000 in June. Both of their companies recently announced data center-related business deals.

The governor also took $500,000 donations this year from Rhett Bennett of Black Mountain, an energy company building data centers across Texas, and Elon Musk, the tech titan and AI developer who is pushing to send data centers to space.

The donations, shown in the governor’s latest campaign finance report filed this week, underscore how data centers are becoming lucrative business opportunities for an array of Texas industries, beyond just tech and AI companies using their servers.

Abbott has gone from touting Texas as the “epicenter of AI development” to vowing to push back against “AI data centers” in just a matter of months, as he came under mounting pressure from rural voters who polling shows are widely opposed to data center development near them.

“It’s pretty clear that for Republicans in the state in general — and the governor in particular — the backlash to this really creates conflict with what has been a traditional Republican strength and talking point, and that’s an emphasis on economic development,” said James Henson, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.

See here and here for some background, and read the rest, it’s a gift link. Money talks and bullshit walks, or in Abbott’s case it rolls. Abbott knows who owns him, and he will stay bought. Whatever he says to try to calm down the people who vote for him but don’t like that is lip service. You know it, I know it, he sure as hell knows it. Only so much we can do for the others.

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

How was the FIFA World Cup for Houston’s restaurants?

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

It was okay. Kind of depended on where they are.

For months, Houston restaurant owners prepared for a World Cup windfall, with some people comparing the tournament’s expected economic impact to hosting seven Super Bowls. Now, with Houston’s seven World Cup games over, results are in. And they’re a mixed bag.

At Tomball’s Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue, sales climbed an estimated 15% to 20%, owner Scott Moore Jr. said. But road closures and barricades for the FIFA Fan Festival slashed business at EaDo bakery Koffeteria to a crawl. Craft Pita founder Rafael Nasr said he redecorated and brought in some soccer fans — but saw only a minimal lift to his bottom line.

Restaurants “didn’t really see, as a group, any increase whatsoever,” said Mike Shine, the executive director of the Texas Restaurant Association’s Greater Houston Chapter. “When you’re talking about the community as a whole, we didn’t really see a lot from it.”

But Shine said some restaurants capitalized on World Cup fever far more than others.

Businesses in the right locations, like J-Bar-M Barbecue, had a built-in advantage. More than 650,000 domestic visitors came to EaDo between June 11 and June 30 — up 215% from the same period last year — according to East Downtown Management District Executive Director Elizabeth Whitton.

Others created reasons for fans to gather, like Jethro’s Cocktail Lounge in Montrose, which brought in a projector for watch parties. Another subset, like the Kolache Shoppe, catered celebrations. And still more restaurants drew in tourists with must-try Houston foods, barbecue first and foremost.

Barbecue and Tex-Mex restaurants did the best, according to the story. Not surprising, since I assume a lot of foreign visitors were most interested in the food we’re best known for. Most of the quotes in the story are positive ones, so maybe the overall picture was bright. But you probably had to be in the right place, and/or serving the right food, to really take advantage.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston, Food, glorious food, Other sports | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for July 19

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

“Netflix and its copycats forgot why network TV, even with declined ratings, reigns supreme. Sometimes, all we want is 26 episodes of something, with a weekly release and a guaranteed new season the next year.”

“Men found ‘Love Island.’ Then they started betting on it.”

“What we no longer believe is that we will always be able to look at an AI story and know. Bona Books accidentally bought an AI story. Indeed, we very nearly bought two, with a further three longlisted. And this is a problem bigger than just us.”

“But the alternative is bleak. If Google refuses to strike licensing agreements, more premium publishers could follow suit in denying its crawlers access. Doing so would degrade the quality of search results, making it harder for consumers to find accurate news. Just as social media has become a cesspool of misinformation, the open web could be overcome with untrustworthy content too.”

“Even in our true-crime-saturated culture, the story of the bombing of LaGuardia Airport remains little-known. There’s nothing about it in New York City’s municipal archives or the stacks of the Queens Historical Society. Near as I can tell, the bombing has not been the subject of a book or documentary. It says something about the degree to which it’s been forgotten that when I began contacting people connected to the event in the lead-up to the 50th anniversary, they all were surprised to hear from a reporter.”

“A new study suggests that there could be a way to mitigate some of the impacts of future El Niños and global warming: dimming the sun.”

RIP, Sam Neill, New Zealand actor best known for his leading role in Jurassic Park.

“I don’t think he is a grifter, though. I think he’s something much rarer these days — a quixotic, mostly harmless, bona fide all-American crackpot.”

“A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general announced Monday that they filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the looming merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Discovery.”

Lock her up again. Please.

“Lindsey Graham died a coward. His three-decade career in national politics should be remembered for more than his shameless, pusillanimous capitulations — but not, unfortunately, for some noble pursuit or purpose he used his chameleon-like political skills to secure. He should instead be remembered for using his power to bow and scrape, to change his political colors, largely if not solely in service to himself.”

RIP, Pat Oliphant, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.

RIP, Janice McNair, co-founder and former principle owner of the Houston Texans.

An oral history of Muppet Treasure Island, on its 30th anniversary.

“There is no fast food item as beloved as the Costco hot dog.”

“This was the data science — yes, data science — behind the eye-popping, heartburn-inducing, ridiculously-delicious food scene that’s exploded in ballparks over the last 20 years. Just a part of the process, and the place, where all the gastronomic ingenuity happens.”

In re: the never-ending debate about Daylight Saving Time, I fully agree with Chad Orzel. And I did not know that we tried a two-year trial of year-round Daylight Saving Time in the 1970s, and repealed it because people hated it.

“Billionaire Elon Musk likely broke Wisconsin law when he handed out $1 million checks to voters in the 2025 state Supreme Court election, a bipartisan panel has found.”

RIP, Dave Kendall, journalist and MTV VJ who created and hosted that network’s 120 Minutes music video program that highlighted alternative artists.

“Traditionally, presidents are not honored with namesake landmarks or memorials until after their deaths, and no sitting president has ever appeared on U.S. currency, which many equate with the European monarchies that the United States was formed to reject.”

RIP, Hal Williams, actor best known for Sanford and Son and 227.

“What would it take to end child marriage? There’s a new federal push to limit it.”

“Why Is It Always Lettuce?”

“President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on more than a dozen of Trump’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi”.

“Environmental groups sue government to stop a big change to the Endangered Species Act”.

In case you missed the remarkable story of Lionel Messi’s meeting with a baby Lamine Yamal.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | Leave a comment

Independent candidates update

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

From the San Antonio Report:

Of the many candidates who originally filed their intention to run for office without a party affiliation this year, only a handful managed to collect enough signatures to get their name on the November ballot.

Among them is defense attorney Jason Wolff, whose candidacy creates a three-way race to replace retiring District Attorney Joe Gonzales.

The Secretary of State’s office confirmed Friday that Wolff had successfully gathered at least 500 signatures from Bexar County voters — making him one the few candidates in all of Texas to qualify for the November ballot without the nomination of a political party.

“It was 30 days of — when I wasn’t at work — going out and being on the street or going into restaurants and going to flea markets and getting signatures,” said Wolff, who estimated he’s spent about $2,000 so far on his campaign. “I had my wife help me, and I had [a] campaign coordinator, and then I had friends and family members circulating petitions. So it was difficult.”

Another independent candidate, Roy Anthony II, qualified for the ballot to challenge Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert in Precinct 4, according to the Bexar County Elections Department, which handles the signature petitions for most local races. Calvert, a Democrat, didn’t draw a Republican challenger this year.

Meanwhile Ben Mendoza, an El Paso man who has run for local office several times, qualified for the ballot in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, which stretches east into San Antonio. Republican Brandon Herrera and Democrat Katy Padilla Stout are raising big money for that race, after then-U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) resigned earlier this year.

Independent and third-party candidates rarely win in November, but they frequently shape how major party candidates approach a race.

[…]

Of the 125 independents who signed up to run months ago, many said they spent real time and money campaigning — before realizing how difficult it would be to find enough signatures in the short window.

In the end, no independents qualified for the ballot in any of Texas’ statewide contests.

[…]

This year the battle for the U.S. House and Senate both run through Texas, where independent and third-party candidates could play a role in close races.

But now that the ballot is largely set, few independents, Green Party candidates or Libertarians are expected to appear in the most hard-fought races, including the San Antonio-area 35th and 23rd Congressional Districts, in which Democrats are targeting.

The Libertarian Party, which aligns more closely with conservatives, has a candidate in Texas’ 34th Congressional District, where national Republicans are spending big to target U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-McAllen).

It also has contenders in nearly all of the statewide races on the ballot in 2026, including the governor’s race and the U.S. Senate race.

The Green Party, which aligns more closely with left-leaning values, doesn’t have a candidate in U.S. Senate contest between Ken Paxton and James Talarico.

It has candidates in statewide races for comptroller, agriculture commissioner and lieutenant governor, as well as Gonzalez’s 34th Congressional District, and the 28th Congressional District, where Republicans are targeting U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo).

See here and here for some background. I don’t know if Bexar County is an outlier for its independent candidate activity – we sure don’t see anything like that here in Harris County – or if this is just an odd year. It’s hard to find a list of independent candidates anywhere. The Secretary of State’s webpage doesn’t list general election candidates anywhere – you can see a listing of who’s filed for the primaries, but nothing new since then. You can find their list of who filed a declaration of intent to run as an independent – I see my old college chum Scott Cubbler is on there, for CD38 – but not who actually followed through. As the SA Report story suggests, that number is much smaller.

Ballotpedia does provide a more comprehensive list. It’s in an interactive form so I can’t just quote from it, but it does cover all the races. Using their handy filter for the different race types, I confirmed that Ben Mendoza in CD23 was the only indie listed as “On the ballot” in any Congressional or state legislative race. However, they still have Jason Wolff in Bexar County as “Candidacy declared” and not “On the ballot”, so they may not be fully up to date just yet. Beyond that, we’re still waiting for an update in the Mike Collier lawsuit, so until then this is what we know.

UPDATE: Thanks to Souperman in the comments, whose Google-fu is stronger than mine, for finding this page of indie candidate statuses on the SOS website. I was sure something like that had to exist, I just couldn’t get there.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Mexico begins taking legal actions related to ICE

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

We’ll see if this comes to anything.

Mexico formally requested that U.S. state attorneys general criminally investigate cases of migrants who have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody or during raids, the Mexican government said Tuesday.

The request follows the death of Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Houston. Since the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, 17 Mexican migrants have died during immigration enforcement, 14 in ICE custody and three in agency operations.

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry had previously said it would make the request, which was formalized on Tuesday, according to the ministry. It said a similar request will be also sent to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The United States is not legally obliged to act on the requests.

Also, the Mexican government said it has started sending letters to U.S. detention centers where Mexican migrants have died, demanding they “immediately cease the actions or omissions that resulted in these deaths, such as preventing access to prompt and expedited medical care, as well as the application of policies incompatible with medical and penitentiary standards.”

The first center to receive the letter was Adelanto, in California, where four Mexican migrants died.

The letters are a first step toward “the eventual filing of civil lawsuits” against the companies that operate the detention centers to stop human rights violations, according to the ministry.

Last week, Mexican Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco said his country would go directly to U.S. authorities to request criminal investigations in cases of Mexicans killed in ICE custody or enforcement operations.

[…]

Velasco also sent a letter to Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, requesting that U.S. authorities gather information on the deaths of the Mexican migrants in ICE custody and analyze the “compatibility of these events with international human rights obligations.”

The foreign minister also asked Türk to seek the opinion of the Human Rights Council, a U.N. intergovernmental body that promotes human rights, on the cases and offer recommendations.

See here (scroll to the end of the post) for some background. I think blue state attorneys general and civil lawsuits are their best bets for getting results, but perhaps they have leverage in other forms as well. I wish them all the best, because eventually enforcing some accountability on ICE and its many bad actors and willing enablers will very much be a group effort. Texas Public Radio has more.

Posted in Around the world, La Migra | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

TxDOT’s proposal for Austin-San Antonio passenger rail

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

I’m actually kind of impressed. It still seems like a longshot, for reasons explained in the article, but it also feels like the most plausible and realistic scenario I’ve seen.

If improvements are made to existing rail tracks between San Antonio and Austin, passenger trains could make up to eight round trips between the cities each day, transporting thousands of commuters, according to a new study from the Texas Department of Transportation.

That would be a significant increase from the current once-daily, inconveniently scheduled and frequently late Amtrak service. Yet there is a big barrier to making it happen: The owner of the tracks, Union Pacific, doesn’t appear to be interested.

The Omaha-based freight giant opted not to participate in TxDOT’s study. In 2024, an executive informed Travis County Judge Andy Brown in a letter that the company wasn’t looking to host more passenger service and was focusing instead on meeting Texas’s growing need for freight capacity. The tracks, running along Interstate 35 most of the way, serve as a crucial link in the U.S. supply chain.

TxDOT’s study lays out a long list of proposed infrastructure improvements which it says would allow for new passenger trains to be run without hampering freight traffic. But with Union Pacific controlling the right-of-way — in other words, the land the rail runs on — the railroad’s approval is essential to making any sort of increased passenger service happen.

A spokesperson for Union Pacific didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Another stumbling block is the expected cost of making the improvements outlined in the study. Depending on the route the passenger trains would take and how frequently they would run, the price tag could be between $810 million and $1.9 billion, according to the study.

Meanwhile, Travis County has commissioned a separate study to look at whether a new passenger rail line could be built running beside Interstate 10 and Texas 130, the toll road about 12 miles east of I-35, that could then take commuters between downtown San Antonio and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

[…]

The study notes that the route takes an average of two hours and 26 minutes going north and three hours and 26 minutes going south — traveling at an average speed of 33.7 miles per hour and 23.9 miles per hour, respectively. It arrives on time only 56% of the time, according to the study.

“The single daily round trip between Austin and San Antonio does not support commuters, day trips or same-day returns,” the study concludes.

The study predicts that a two-hour passenger rail service between San Antonio and Austin could attract 2,337 daily riders.

The study considers options for running passenger trains two times, four times and eight times a day between San Antonio and Austin, stopping in San Marcos and New Braunfels along the way. The new service would be in addition to Amtrak’s Texas Eagle.

While a train station already exists for San Marcos, one would have to be built in New Braunfels, at a site that has yet to be determined.

The study proposes five routes for the new service, including the existing Amtrak route. For the northern half of the distance between Austin and San Antonio, the five routes are identical, but starting in New Braunfels, three of them split onto a different Union Pacific track taking them through San Antonio’s North Side, near San Antonio International Airport.

One of the five routes would end not at San Antonio’s existing Amtrak station, which is near the Alamodome, but rather near VIA Metropolitan Transit’s Centro Plaza hub on the near West Side, where at least 10 bus routes stop. It would require a new station to be built.

The study notes that the existing route used by Amtrak would pose a difficulty for increased service because the Amtrak trains have to do a “reverse-move” — in other words, back up — to get to San Antonio’s station. While this is viable for Amtrak’s once-daily service, performing this maneuver with additional passenger trains would likely affect Union Pacific’s freight operation.

One of the proposed routes would avoid this problem by taking passenger trains onto a different track for the last 3 miles to San Antonio’s station. But it would require the construction of new track.

See here, here, here, and here for the most recent posts in this series, including one about that Travis County study of an alternate route, which has not yet been released. The travel time from Austin to San Antonio if one of these routes were to be built would be about two hours, which is longer than driving usually is, but not by that much. And it would be a vastly more pleasurable experience, as one could read or work or nap, anything other than be stressed out about the traffic. This corridor is growing rapidly, so more stations could eventually be added or the line could perhaps be extended, to Georgetown or Killeen, to accommodate future riders; I’m hypothesizing here, this is outside the scope of the study. It just makes too much sense not to do it.

But it would require buy-in from Union Pacific, and of course the money to build. There would be some logistics issues to solve, to keep the freight traffic flowing. It would never be high-speed rail, but it would surely be a lot more reliable than driving would. I have no idea what the odds are of this ever happening. There’s plenty of experience so far to suggest always betting against it. But the fact that this has persisted as an idea for so long is precisely because it makes so much sense and there has always been a desire for it. If it ever does happen, I’m buying a round-trip ticket just to experience the ride. Here’s hoping.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A small bit of insight into the mind of Cornyn voters

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

What will they do?

Rep. James Talarico

For months, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn battered each other in a nasty and expensive race for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Texas.

Now that Paxton has emerged victorious, GOP leaders from Texas to Washington are urging intraparty peace and unity, warning that a divided GOP could lose the seat. But some Cornyn voters aren’t ready to move on — or look past Paxton’s history of scandals.

State Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, wasted no time courting those voters after Paxton won the May 26 GOP runoff. The next day, the Austin lawmaker hit the road for a five-city bus tour that he spent attacking the attorney general over allegations of corruption and extramarital affairs, punctuated by his new refrain, “I have a legislative record. Ken Paxton has a criminal record.”

Whether that message will prove effective in peeling off right-leaning moderates may help decide the election. Now that the dust has settled on the primary, recent polling has found most Republican voters have moved on and plan to vote for Paxton, with a clear shift from earlier surveys conducted in the heat of the bruising primary. Still, Talarico has held on to a chunk of support from moderate Republicans.

In interviews with The Texas Tribune in the weeks after the runoff, a handful of primary voters who backed Cornyn described a range of emotions, with varying plans for how they would vote. Some have decided they are supporting Talarico. Others said they would skip the top of the ticket or are still unsure what to do. Others still are embracing Paxton out of party loyalty.

Todd Shade, a 62-year-old who moved to the Austin area in 1995 after growing up in South Dakota, said he has been “very happy” with Cornyn. The self-described traditional conservative said he favors letting the free market flourish with minimal business regulations, yet is opposed to some of the socially conservative priorities that have dominated the Texas GOP as insurgents like Paxton rose to lead it.

Shade also believes at least some of the accusations against Paxton are true, including the charge from his former deputies that he abused his office to help a friend and campaign donor. Paxton has denied wrongdoing in these matters, which were the subject of his impeachment — he was acquitted by the GOP-controlled Texas Senate — and a federal investigation that fizzled when the Department of Justice declined to prosecute him.

Still, Shade said he plans to vote for Talarico.

“I think Ken Paxton is probably guilty of the things that he’s accused of,” Shade said. “It’s more of an anti-Paxton vote.”

[…]

The Tribune spoke to nine Cornyn voters, who provided a sample that, while not statistically significant, offers a window into how the senator’s diverse array of supporters — spanning self-described moderates to more Trump-aligned Republicans — are thinking about November. Here are their stories.

You should read the rest, some of these people will take you on a heck of a journey. For grins, I tallied up the individual totals from this entirely anecdotal article. Counting Todd Shade up front, we get:

Voting for Paxton = 3
Voting for Talarico = 3
Voting Libertarian = 1
Not voting in the Senate race = 1
Undecided = 1

Gotta say, that’s pretty good for Talarico, even if the undecided voter eventually picks Paxton. No one would claim this is representative, but we know these people are out there. In addition, two of the non-Paxton voters, one Talarico supporter and the one Libertarian voters (Sarah Stogner, who is probably going to get quoted a lot in stories like these) also mentioned voting for at least one other Democrat. That Talarico voter is also going for Nathan Johnson and Jon Rosenthal, while Stogner is also a Rosenthal supporter. I’ll take what I can get.

I’m sure there’s room for plenty more research on this topic. And we should all check in with the non-Democrats in our life, to see how open they are to trying something different this year. That includes the disengaged folks and the haters, because they’re a key demographic this year.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New SOS appointed

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

He’s some guy.

Robert Howden, a senior adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott, will be Texas’ interim secretary of state, Abbott announced Friday. Howden is a longtime Texas politico who worked for GOP governors going back to Bill Clements, serving as Abbott’s legislative director since 2024.

Howden is replacing Jane Nelson, who left her post Friday as Texas’ top election official after three and a half years. Nelson’s resignation, announced in early June, set off a flurry of speculation about why she was leaving and who would replace her ahead of the contentious midterm elections in November.

Howden will need to be confirmed by the Texas Senate when the Legislature returns in January, but can serve until then without legislative approval. Nelson’s three immediate predecessors in the role resigned before the Senate got a chance to approve them.

“Robert Howden has served Texas with distinction in four Republican governors’ administrations,” Abbott said in a statement. “His experience in the legislative process and extensive public service have prepared him to protect the integrity of Texas elections and represent our state with strength on the global stage.”

Nelson has not commented on her departure, other than to say she worked hard “to ensure that voting in Texas is secure, accessible and fair.” Abbott praised her as an “extraordinary” secretary of state.

See here and here for some background. All I can say right now is that I know nothing about the guy. He has a pretty normal profile for this kind of appointment, which doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, as Abbott has appointed a couple of absolute duds in the past as SOS. But neither of those guys were able to stick, so maybe that means he doesn’t have any flaming red flags to scream about. Unlike at least one rumored possible appointee, who’s now in a different job. Scott Braddock hadn’t tweeted anything about him following the news breaking. I mean, there’s no reason to think this guy will be good – he’s a “senior advisor” to Greg Abbott, for crying out loud. He’s likely to be terrible. All I can say for now is that I don’t have specific evidence of what kind of terrible he’s likely to be.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rainbow Pride banners

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Our crosswalk replacements.

Where Montrose’s rainbow crosswalks once stood, new rainbow banners will serve as indicators of LGBTQ+ pride.

In October, the city removed the neighborhood’s iconic rainbow crosswalks to comply with Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to remove “non-standard surface markings, signage and signals,” a move that prompted the removal of rainbow crosswalks across Texas.

The banners will likely be installed by Aug. 15, before the city’s rescheduled Pride Parade, Pride Houston 365 announced in a Thursday news release. The project is made possible through a special designation from the city that allows the rainbow banners to be hung along Westheimer Road through Montrose from 10 poles. Organizers are now waiting for Centerpoint to sign off on the banners, said Jack Valinski, the former president of the Super Neighborhood and a driving force behind the project.

The project was a joint effort between former City Council Member Abbie Kamin’s office, Neartown Montrose Super Neighborhood leadership and Pride Houston 365 — the original sponsor of the Montrose Banner District, according to the news release.

Pride Houston 365 is providing around $10,000 in funding for the project, mainly from donations, Valinsky said. Kamin, who was sworn in as Harris County attorney in June, said she had planned to set aside funding for the banners from her council district, but Valinski said city funding was not used.

See here for previous blogging on the topic. Other cities took different approaches with varying degrees of success. I’m glad we’ve got something there, if only to remind us of what needs to be restored when we are able to do so.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Another ICE roundup

Posted on July 17, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Houston vowed to curb ICE cooperation. Police still waited hours for agents.

Houston police officers have spent hours at a time on traffic stops involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since President Donald Trump took office last year – nearly six times longer, on average, than on all other stops, according to data obtained exclusively by the Houston Chronicle.

One traffic stop in May 2025, for instance, lasted five hours and seven minutes. The officer explained the delay in a summary of the incident report as “ICE hit on traffic stop.”

Officers continued spending far longer on traffic stops after calling ICE than on almost any other type of call, the city data show, even as Mayor John Whitmire and city council briefly limited how long officers should wait for ICE agents to pick up motorists with civil immigration warrants.

The findings offer one of the clearest pictures yet of how Houston police have worked with federal immigration authorities during the Trump administration, despite repeated efforts by city leaders to define, and at times limit, that relationship. That dynamic has come under renewed scrutiny following last week’s fatal ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, fueling calls for the agency to leave the city and resurfacing questions about the role local police play in immigration enforcement.

More than two-thirds of all traffic stops and other cases in which officers called ICE from the start of 2025 through late April tied Houston officers up for at least an hour, according to a Chronicle analysis, leading experts to question whether it was a good use of limited police resources in America’s fourth-largest city.

“I find it outrageous that when you could be patrolling or proactively responding to areas you know in the city that are high-crime areas, you’re instead waiting more than an hour for a civil violation,” said Jorge Colina, a retired Miami police chief who now runs a consulting business for law enforcement agencies. “If I were the chief, I would not allow that. I just wouldn’t.”

[…]

Call records show that even as Houston city leaders briefly altered policies this year to limit HPD’s cooperation with ICE, clearance times on traffic stops still extended well beyond the norm when  officers notified immigration agents.

After initially claiming that Houston police officers were not working with immigration enforcement, Whitmire in March directed officers to wait no more than 30 minutes for ICE agents to reach the scene. Records show, however, that these stops lasted an average of more than two hours even after Whitmire’s announcement.

Then, Whitmire and city council in April approved an ordinance instructing officers not to hold drivers with civil immigration warrants longer than the initial purpose of the stop. The length of those stops dropped to an average of about an hour – still roughly three times longer than the typical stop.

The council quickly walked back the new ordinance under pressure from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, however, and the length of traffic stops involving ICE crept back up the next week.

The policy reversal has left Houston police operating as they did since shortly after Trump took office last year. Officers are instructed to call ICE anytime they come across someone with a civil immigration warrant and wait “a reasonable amount of time” for an agent to come to the scene.

Most of the time, that has happened when an officer has pulled someone over for a traffic violation, city records show. Even when ICE has declined to pick up the motorist, data show, the encounters stretch far longer than the average traffic stop.

If you’re unhappy with HPD’s response times, blame Greg Abbott first, and then Mayor Whitmire second for folding to him. We could be doing a lot better. Greg Abbott won’t even let us try.

This is a reminder that the FBI is not investigating ICE for shooting and killing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. It’s investigating Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, for the purpose of covering ICE’s sorry ass.

The FBI sought a search warrant to seize plastic bags with “crystal-like substances” inside the van of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was fatally shot by an immigration agent last week. The FBI said it suspects methamphetamine, but the lawyer representing Salgao Araujo’s brother on Thursday said it was granulated salt.

“After consulting with my client and his family, our understanding is that this was granulated salt, which is paired with lemon and water as a homemade electrolyte mix used by outdoor workers in extreme Texas heat, not methamphetamine or any other illicit substance,” said Ruby Powers, a Houston immigration attorney representing Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, who was the front passenger inside the van.

Powers said in a statement on Thursday that she is asking the FBI to expedite the testing so “their names can be cleared.

“But no test result, whatever it ultimately shows, will change the fact that deadly force was used against Lorenzo,” Powers said. “You cannot shoot first and ask questions later.”

[…]

An application for an FBI search warrant alleged that there were “small clear plastic bags” in Salgado Araujo’s van containing white “crystal-like substances.” FBI Special Agent David McNeilly, who filed the application, then wrote that he believed the substances could be methamphetamine based on the packaging and appearance.

The application was made public a day after it was filed in court on Tuesday, even though federal agents don’t typically publicize such information that quickly. Court records on Thursday didn’t indicate that the FBI had revealed what was collected from the van, or whether testing had been completed.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare — whose office is running its own investigation into the shooting — has also expressed doubt about the FBI’s suspicions in an interview with CNN, citing information that he said his team has but is not yet releasing.

“But my understanding is that this substance is being tested by the FBI, either today or in the next few days, and I think it’s so important to the public that those results be shared immediately,” Teare said in the Thursday interview.

Emphasis mine. That’s how you know this wasn’t on the up-and-up. We wouldn’t know anything about it if it were. More on this story from the Chron.

And finally, none of what is now happening is a surprise.

Araujo and [Johan Sebastián Durán] Guerrero are among some 20 people who have been shot at by immigration agents since September, according to the New York Times. And there have been at least 17 shootings of motorists by federal immigration officers during Trump’s second term, the Washington Post found.

“When you see now people losing their lives,” said Naureen Shah, the ACLU’s Director of Government Affairs, Equality Division, “it’s not surprising that it’s happening. It’s totally foreseeable in the most tragic way.”

A new ACLU report co-authored by Shah documents how these deadly ICE shootings were not only predictable; they fit into a broader pattern of reckless misconduct by the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement machine. Entitled “Agents of Chaos and Cruelty,” the report analyzes the ways in which this national deportation policing force has inflicted harm in communities around the United States.

The killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, the report’s authors note, “were not the excesses of a few rogue officers.” They were “part of a pattern of civil rights violations arising from immigration enforcement—at a scale and severity without precedent in our nation’s history.”

After reviewing more than 1,200 immigration enforcement-related incidents across eight US states between January and December 2025, the ACLU found for instance:

  • 432 incidents of misconduct by agents, including use of threatened force, intimidation tactics, and retaliation against observers and witnesses;
  • 437 incidents likely involving racial profiling;
  • 418 times agents pushed, shoved, tackled, or pinned people;
  • 375 incidents involving use of force or threatened force by agents;
  • 361 times agents deployed chemical irritants—132 of which were directed at individuals;
  • Dozens of instances of excessive use of physical force that could have been deadly, including 52 times agents pressed knees and hands on people’s backs and necks;
  • 76 times agents pulled people from cars.

“The incidents we reviewed,” the authors write, “indicate agents used force and the threat of force as default tactics and tools to coerce immediate compliance rather than to respond to a threat.” In more than 370 of the reviewed incidents, the agents were masked.

Abolish ICE. Hold everyone accountable for everything that they did during Trump II. And then we can go from there.

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

Camp Mystic moves lawsuits against it to federal court

Posted on July 17, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Interesting.

Camp Mystic’s owners have successfully moved a wrongful death lawsuit filed by six families from Texas state court to federal court, arguing the case is tied to the camp’s ongoing bankruptcy.

The move adds another layer of uncertainty to five lawsuits filed by families which accuse camp operators of failing to protect their children during last year’s catastrophic flooding in the Texas Hill Country.

In a notice filed Monday, the camp’s owners argued the lawsuit is connected to its ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and should therefore be handled in federal court. The case, originally filed in Travis County state court, centers on the deaths of six girls at Camp Mystic during the July 2025 flood.

They were among 25 campers and two counselors killed when floodwaters swept through the century-old summer camp for girls near Hunt. Camp owner and executive director Dick Eastland was also killed. More than 130 people died across the Texas Hill Country.

The camp’s filing came just two days before a status hearing on the case. Wednesday’s hearing was canceled after the case was moved to federal court, according to Kyle Findley, an attorney representing the six families. In a statement, Findley accused Camp Mystic’s owners of trying to keep the cases out of a public state courtroom.

“These families aren’t asking for anything extraordinary — they’re asking for a public trial, in Texas state court, in front of a jury as is their right in this country,” Findley said.

[…]

The lawsuits have been effectively halted since Camp Mystic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. Chapter 11 typically allows a business to reorganize its finances under court supervision, though the camp’s managers are also considering selling off its assets.

The bankruptcy filing generally pauses lawsuits against a company while the case moves forward. A judge can modify or lift that stay under certain circumstances.

Angela Littwin, a bankruptcy law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, previously told The Texas Newsroom that cases like these are often resolved through the bankruptcy process instead of returning to separate courtrooms.

“The most common outcome of a bankruptcy like this is that the lawsuits would not pick up, that they would be settled in the bankruptcy,” Littwin said last month.

See here for the background. The Kerr County Lead adds some details.

Camp Mystic’s owners filed notice July 13 removing one of the five wrongful death lawsuits against them — representing the Getten, McCown, Pohl, Sheedy, Stevens and Toranzo families — from Travis County state court to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin, citing the camp entities’ ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

The case, formerly Cause No. D-1-GN-25-009976 in the 459th District Court, is now Civil Action No. 1:26-cv-01919. According to the notice, it’s one of five lawsuits — collectively representing 22 sets of plaintiffs — being removed simultaneously by the debtor entities: Camp Mystic LLC, Natural Fountains Properties Inc. and Mystic Camps Family Partnership Ltd.

The filing argues the lawsuits belong in federal court because the debtor entities are named defendants and the claims against them “will have a substantial effect” on the bankruptcy estate, which is before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher M. López in Houston. The camp entities’ four related Chapter 11 cases — Camp Mystic LLC, Natural Fountains Properties, Mystic Camps Management and Mystic Camps Family Partnership — were jointly administered under Case No. 26-90621 following the June 24 bankruptcy filing.

The notice states the debtors intend to immediately file a motion to transfer venue for all five removed lawsuits to the Southern District of Texas — the district where the bankruptcy case is pending — arguing that under federal law, only that court has jurisdiction to decide where the underlying tort claims should ultimately be heard.

Camp Mystic had previously filed motions to move the cases from Travis to Kerr County, and to move the cases to be heard by an arbitrator. It’s not clear to me from the reporting I’ve seen, but I assume that the plaintiffs will have the opportunity to argue that the cases should remain where they were in state court. I’m way out of my depth here, so someone please correct me if I’m wrong on that. In any event, it seems like the bankruptcy case is what we’ll be hearing about for the foreseeable future. KXAN has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Autonomous vehicles and drunk driving

Posted on July 17, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Can you be arrested for driving an autonomous vehicle while drunk? Short answer is Yes.

SAE International, a standards-setting association, has grouped modern vehicles into different levels of automation. Most cars on the road today are Level 0 vehicles, which can provide warnings or safety interventions while driving, or Level 1 vehicles, which assist with either acceleration and braking or steering (but not both). Level 2 vehicles, including Teslas, assist with acceleration and braking and steering, though they still require human supervision at all times; many vehicles can, in turn, monitor the human, tracking the position of the eyes, head, and hands of the driver. (In FSD mode, the pedals don’t move but the wheel turns serenely; one adjusts to the sensation quickly.) Then there’s the Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot, the only Level 3 operating system available to consumers. Such vehicles can drive autonomously, but only at certain speeds and in certain conditions, and the driver must be available to take the wheel when necessary. In short, unless you’re in a Waymo or another driverless Level 4 vehicle, the law expects you to be sober.

But my voyage with the wellness entrepreneur suggested that, perhaps, more semiautonomous vehicle owners drive under the influence than I, the owner of a Level 0 vehicle (make: Kia, model: idiot) previously assumed.

So I asked the people who deal with impaired drivers for a living. Lieutenant William White of the Austin Police Department said its DWI specialists have not observed that drivers of Level 2 vehicles, which began tooling around in 2013, are more likely to drive impaired than drivers of Level 0 and 1 vehicles. Still, he agreed: “I’m not doubting that people will probably do it. People will drive drunk even when they don’t have self-driving mode, so there’s no reason that a person wouldn’t then try to take advantage of it.”

I asked White whether drunk driving a Tesla, in self-driving mode, is any safer than, say, my Kia. “I would argue no,” White answered, gamely. He then questioned whether driver-assistance features might cause impaired drivers to become even less alert—less able to react to unexpected situations on the road or even errors by their vehicles. “If you’re drunk, which is already a factor, and you’re also really not paying attention because you’re relying on the car, to me that’s just as dangerous as a drunk who’s actually paying attention and operating the car.” In April, a 37-year-old Florida woman with a blood-alcohol content more than twice the legal limit was arrested after her Tesla, which had been in self-driving mode, stopped in the middle of the interstate. The woman had fallen asleep in it; after she did not respond to the warnings issued by the vehicle when it detected her inattention, the car stopped.

White also noted that even if autopilot flawlessly disguises impaired driving, a driver under the influence can get pulled over for many reasons besides moving erratically or causing an accident. “If he gets stopped for whatever reason—if someone hits his car, for example—and then the officer starts talking to him and realizes he’s drunk, he’s still going to be arrested for a DUI,” White said. And no car is perfect. “Being in a self-driving mode is not a guarantee that it doesn’t commit traffic violations, because the autonomous vehicles do quite often commit traffic violations.” He pointed to an incident earlier this year when, after a mass shooting at an Austin bar, a Waymo—which, as a Level 4 vehicle, should know better—froze in the middle of the road, blocking a responding ambulance. And White expressed his bafflement over Tesla’s “Mad Max” mode, a feature of FSD that allows the car to drive over the speed limit and make more aggressive maneuvers. “You could be pulled over just for speeding, and you could say, ‘Well, I had it in autonomous mode.’ Too bad. Now we’ve stopped you. We can tell you’ve been drinking, and you’re operating the vehicle, so it’s irrelevant that it’s self-driving.”

[…]

Now, as cars have become more complex, with tools such as FSD, as well as subtler automated features, questions of when and whether someone is “operating” a car have gotten far more complex too. Some distinctions are clearer than others: It is legal for a Waymo to shepherd you around when you’re drunk, but it’s a DWI for a Tesla to do so. But if you use Tesla’s “Actually Smart Summon” function, in which your car self-drives a very short distance to meet you—from across a bar parking lot, for instance—so that your sober friend can take the wheel, have you technically driven?

I assume that a Tesla robotaxi with a safety driver would also be legal transport if you’re drunk. I rarely drink and I have no plans to give any money to Elmo, so I’m not in position to test that hypothesis. This is not legal advice, whatever you decide to do with your one precious life.

When I first saw the headline for this article, I thought it was going to be about how robotaxis would (someday) affect the overall drunk driving rate. We had a similar discussion about a decade ago about Uber’s effect on drunk driving. Modern research backs up the assertion that Uber did have a positive effect, though the scale of it was relatively modest. Autonomous vehicles have made much broader and all-encompassing claims about vehicular safety, and those claims remain unsettled. I can believe that Waymos are having some modest positive effect in the cities where they now operate, but the sample size is probably not large enough yet to separate any signal from the noise. Waymo’s effect on personal privacy is another matter, one that will also need some robust discussion to get a handle on.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Still waiting on the Rangers (who are now finally coming)

Posted on July 16, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

They don’t seem to be keen to get involved in the investigation of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s death at the hands of ICE.

The Texas Rangers have denied a request by Houston-area Democrats to investigate the deadly shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo last week by an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

More than a dozen Democratic members of Houston’s delegation to the state Legislature sent a letter to the Texas Department of Public Safety the day after Salgado was killed asking the rangers to look into the actions that led to his death.

On Monday, DPS Director Colonel Freeman Martin declined the lawmakers’ request, saying the agency could only conduct an investigation at the behest of federal or local law enforcement.

“DPS has not received a request from any federal agency or official to investigate the officer-involved shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and is not participating in that investigation at this time,” Martin wrote in a letter obtained by the Houston Chronicle, noting that the department also has not received a request from local law enforcement or prosecutors.

DPS already had announced that the Rangers would not be investigating Salgado’s death, but Houston Democrats had hoped their request might carry enough weight to reverse that decision.

“The Texas Rangers possess statewide jurisdiction to investigate officer-involved shootings, including those involving federal officers, and to determine whether any state law was violated,” the delegation’s letter stated. “As members of the Legislature representing Harris County, we respectfully request that the Department of Public Safety open a parallel investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding this incident.”

While the agency does not keep a written policy on the subject, a DPS spokeswoman told the Chronicle last week that the Rangers for decades have embraced such investigations only when they are asked by an involved police agency.

“Typically, these requests are received within just minutes or hours of the incident taking place to preserve the integrity of the investigation,” DPS spokesperson Ericka Miller said.

M. George Eichenberg, a criminal justice professor at Tarleton State University, told the Chronicle last week that state police have “pretty much total discretion” to pursue cases.

“The bottom line is whether these agencies have the will, and that is a political decision rather than a truly criminal justice decision,” Eichenberg said.

See here for the background. It’s not like I think DPS and the Rangers are some saviors here, I’m actually more skeptical than hopeful that they’d be an impartial force for the facts, but this is their purview and they want no part of it. Not exactly a profile in courage.

But if they’re going to hide behind the fig leaf that they need “a request from local law enforcement” before they can be roused to action, well, now they have one.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Police Chief Noe Diaz on Tuesday asked the Texas Rangers to conduct an independent investigation into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo last week, hours after the mayor and council faced public criticism for the city’s response to the shooting.

The request, outlined in a letter from Diaz posted on social media Tuesday night, marks the latest development in the city’s response to the July 7 shooting that has outraged Houstonians, prompting residents to hold vigils and protests over Salgado’s death at the hands of ICE agents during a traffic stop in Magnolia Park last Tuesday.

Diaz’s letter also was sent hours after Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin disclosed that the Rangers had not been asked to investigate the shooting in a way that would prompt their intervention. In a letter released Tuesday, Martin told a group of Houston-area lawmakers that while DPS investigates officer-involved shootings involving federal agents when asked, it “has not received a request from any local law enforcement agency or prosecutor to assist.”

“Mayor Whitmire and I are asking for the Texas Rangers to conduct their own investigation, which will ensure it is independent and transparent,” Diaz wrote in the letter posted Tuesday night. “This has been done in previous cases.”

Diaz said he met Tuesday with FBI officials at Whitmire’s direction and facilitated the attendance of the rangers, describing the meeting as an effort to enhance transparency and collaboration among local, state and federal authorities.

HPD certainly counts as “local law enforcement”, so the ball’s in your court, DPS. How are you going to wriggle your way out of this now?

Whatever they decide, we’re already worse off.

The District Attorney’s Office and Houston Police Department have announced an independent probe of federal immigration agents’ fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo last week, but neither immediately sent investigators to the scene – a break from past practice that experts said will hamper their attempts to review the incident.

Salgado’s killing by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during a traffic stop in Magnolia Park last Tuesday has roiled the city, with residents holding vigils and protests and demanding action from political leaders.

The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the incident, but District Attorney Sean Teare said he has begun an independent probe. Houston Mayor John Whitmire – after initially saying the city lacked the jurisdiction to get involved – also has directed Houston police to support Teare’s efforts and to offer resources to federal authorities.

Yet Houston police spokesperson Ericka Ramirez confirmed HPD sent only traffic control officers to the scene, not investigators, after an ICE agent fatally shot Salgado just before 7 a.m. in the 6800 block of Canal Street a week ago.

Ramirez explained the decision by saying federal authorities had claimed jurisdiction over the scene.

But HPD homicide investigators historically responded immediately to all officer-involved shootings in the city, said Charles McClelland, who served as HPD chief from 2010 to 2016 and long worked in the department’s homicide division.

“It would not surprise me if somebody in the HPD chain said, ‘nope, this is a federal shooting. We’re not going to get involved in this political mess,’” said Jay Coons, a Sam Houston State University criminology professor. “But now that you’re saying, ‘We should probably do an investigation,’ you should’ve responded just like you would to any other shooting. And now you’re playing catch-up.”

An investigator and prosecutor from the District Attorney’s office also typically respond immediately to any officer-involved shooting in Harris County, a Teare spokesperson said.

But they are always sent after a law enforcement agency calls to report the shooting, spokesperson Courtney Fischer said, and this is the first time anyone in the office can recall that no agency called.

Prosecutors went to the scene Wednesday morning, she said, when they realized no agency was going to call them. Teare said at a Monday press conference that ICE’s lack of transparency was “unacceptable.”

Sounds to me like the DA’s office followed its standard protocol and was failed by the feds, while HPD didn’t take the initiative it’s known to have. There will still be the issue of the feds withholding evidence from both agencies, which was the experience in Minnesota, but it remains to be seen how much of an impairment that will be. And it remains to be seen how much of an asset the Texas Rangers are, if they do bother to get involved now.

UPDATE: Well, well, well.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that the Texas Rangers will investigate the shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston last week.

The announcement comes amid growing calls for an independent investigation from local leaders and lawmakers. The Department of Public Safety had previously said that the rangers would not investigate without a request from federal or local officials.

The governor said the Department of Public Safety officials met with federal officials and Houston police.

“The Texas Rangers are now going to be involved in an investigation of this matter, working alongside federal officials to get to the bottom of exactly what happened,” Abbott said in response to a question about the shooting at a campaign event in Houston. It was his first public comments on the shooting.

“We don’t want to see people shot. Period,” Abbott added. “That’s separate from whether or not the immigration laws are going to be enforced. I fully expect our immigration laws to be enforced, but it’s proven that immigration laws can be enforced, and stopping illegal immigration from coming across our border can be achieved without shooting people.”

When asked whether it would be an independent probe, the governor said: “Any time the Texas Rangers are involved, they work independently. They’re well known, not just in the state of Texas, but elsewhere, for their independence in conducting investigations.”

DPS spokeswoman Ericka Miller said the investigation would begin immediately and that the rangers have been told they will have access to all evidence collected by federal investigators “in the spirit of investigative integrity.”

“At the completion of the investigation, the Texas Rangers’ independent assessment of the evidence will be provided to the prosecuting entity as appropriate,” Miller said.

I think there’s quite a bit of evidence to contradict that assertion about stopping illegal immigration without shooting people, especially under this administration, but Abbott’s gonna Abbott. He must be feeling some heat to have emerged from his hidey-hole like this. Or who knows, maybe having gone wobbly on data centers, he can’t help himself now. Let the dime-store psychologizing begin! Anyway, we wanted the Rangers to investigate, the Rangers are now investigating, I’ll take the W. And then we’ll see what we’re actually getting.

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

Complaint filed against Paxton for alleged illegal voting

Posted on July 16, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Love the move, don’t expect anything to come of it.

Still a crook any way you look

The Collin County Democratic Party filed a formal complaint Tuesday against Attorney General Ken Paxton, accusing him of violating state law for the past two years by reporting the wrong home address while voting.

It comes in response to a Texas Tribune and ProPublica report this month that found Paxton voted in six elections over the past two years using the address of a Collin County home at which his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, said in divorce filings he no longer lives. Paxton appears to have moved to a house in Denton County, according to the article.

“For someone who’s made a stand against voter fraud, it’s unconscionable (yet not surprising) that Paxton engages in this behavior,” Mary Higbe, the Collin County Democratic Party vice chair, wrote in a complaint to the Texas Secretary of State.

The party also notified the Collin County District Attorney’s Office and Collin County Elections Office.

[…]

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State, told KERA in an email the agency does not investigate complaints like the one filed by the Collin County Democratic Party.

“When election complaints are received, we do an initial review and will then refer to the Attorney General’s office,” Pierce said.

KERA has asked the Attorney General’s office how the complaint will be handled, considering Paxton’s position as attorney general, and will update this story with any response.

See here for the background. Let’s be clear on three things. One, after that article was published it was mandatory that some Democratic individual or group file the relevant complaints against Paxton. This was an absolute layup. Not taking action would be political malpractice of the highest order. Two, nothing is going to come of this. The SOS has no enforcement capability. The Collin County DA is a Republican and likely a Paxton crony. It would also be within their discretion to not take action, all things considered. And three, despite this it was still vital to file the complaint. Keep it in the public’s eye a little longer, highlight Paxton’s brazen dishonesty and lack of care about rules applying to himself, and show our own side that the fight is being fought. Later on, when the complaint goes nowhere, refer to it as a travesty, a coverup, Paxton flouting the law again, and so on. Narratives don’t build themselves. The DMN has more.

UPDATE: More from the Trib.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Initial NTSB report says Tesla crash driver overrode self-driving mode

Posted on July 16, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Wow.

The man who crashed a Tesla into a home in Katy, killing a 76-year-old woman, overrode the vehicle’s self-driving system before the crash, according to preliminary findings released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The NTSB is investigating the June 19 fatal crash in which a Tesla Model 3 crashed into a Houston-area home, killing Martha Avila. The driver of the vehicle, 44-year-old Michael Butler, claimed the car was in autopilot at the time of the crash, according to responding authorities.

However, Butler was later arrested and charged with manslaughter after an investigation by Harris County law enforcement found he allegedly overrode Tesla’s self-driving mode. The NTSB’s preliminary findings corroborate that account.

“At the time of the crash, the driver had engaged Tesla’s Advanced Driver Assistance System, Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” the NTSB wrote on its website. “Electronic data recovered from the vehicle indicated that before the crash, the driver manually overrode [Full Self-Driving (Supervised)] by pressing the accelerator pedal to 100%, and the vehicle’s speed was greater than 70 mph when the crash occurred.”

The NTSB noted the report released Wednesday is preliminary and subject to change.

[…]

In its Wednesday release, the NTSB said all aspects of the crash remain under investigation and it plans to issue “safety recommendations to prevent similar crashes.”

See here, here, here, and here for the background. The original reporting said that it was the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that opened the investigation; I assume it was delegated to the NTSB from there. As I noted in that first post, there was a previous fatal Tesla crash that was initially thought to have occurred while in full self-driving mode but turned out to be from human action. There’s a lot we still don’t know, and as ABC 13 notes, it looks like the driver is still in jail, so who knows when we will find out more. For now, this is what we know. TechCrunch has more.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

An ICE pause?

Posted on July 15, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Maybe. Don’t fall for any hype.

The Trump administration has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to halt most vehicle stops while carrying out operations across the country, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly about the directive.

The order comes after ICE officers killed two people over the past week in Houston and the coastal city of Biddeford, Maine, amid a recent surge in immigration arrests. Both were shot after agents tried to stop their vehicles, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The pause on vehicle stops could hamper the agency’s ability to increase arrests as it faces increasing pressure to deliver on the president’s promise of mass deportations. But it comes as some influential lawmakers and state officials have demanded answers about the latest shootings.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican who is running for re-election this year, said in a statement on Tuesday that the shooting in Biddeford raised important questions, and that she had urged Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”

[…]

The renewed deportation effort in recent weeks has lacked the fanfare of previous high-profile enforcement surges, including in Minneapolis in January, during which two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed. On Monday, a county prosecutor in Minneapolis said the Justice Department had turned over evidence in those shootings to state investigators after months of stonewalling.

Yes, even with Susan Collins putting on her Very Concerned face, I suspect this is mostly a PR move, in the hope of waiting until the heat is off and everyone’s attention is turned to whatever the latest atrocity/shiny object there is. The murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti led to a similar reduction in visible ICE activity. But while they may have burrowed underground for a few weeks, they never went away and they never changed their ways. I don’t expect anything different this time, either.

Here’s more on the news about the Minnesota lawsuits from that last paragraph.

Federal prosecutors turned over key evidence long sought by Minnesota investigators in their ongoing probe into the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during pitched protests against an immigration enforcement crackdown earlier this year, state prosecutors announced Monday.

The progress came as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a motorist in Maine on Monday, and Houston prosecutors complained the administration was still withholding critical information in their investigation into a fatal shooting by an ICE officer last week.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the evidence turned over by U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen’s office included previously withheld hard drives containing statements, police body camera video and other materials in the Minnesota killings. Federal prosecutors also turned over Good’s badly damaged SUV, she said.

“The wonderful thing now is we have all the evidence,” Moriarty said. “Any time the government is responsible in whatever way of taking the life of a community member we need to have a full and thorough investigation.”

[…]

Moriarty on Monday declined to provide details on what prompted the federal government to turn over the evidence.

But documents recently filed in a lawsuit brought by state and local officials suggest the breakthrough came after federal officials sought evidence state investigators gathered in the investigation of ICE agent Christian Castro.

Castro, 52, was charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime in connection with the Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Prosecutors say Castro fired through a Minneapolis home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh while in pursuit of another man.

State and local prosecutors said they would provide evidence in Castro’s case as soon as the federal government agreed to share its evidence in the shootings of Pretti and Good.

“We are willing to share evidence with you if the exchange is reciprocal,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans wrote in a legal filing to federal officials.

Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison later amended their lawsuit to add details about the federal government’s refusal to share the evidence collected in the fatal shootings.

Days later, they said in a court filing that the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office and state officials “have recently re-engaged in discussions about the prospect of mutual information sharing.”

Ellison, in a statement Monday, said he remains “deeply troubled” it took more than half a year for federal officials to hand over the materials.

“It should never have taken this long,” he said. “I hope that this is the beginning of a major course correction on the part of the federal government.”

Moriarty added that she’s not yet prepared to drop the lawsuit against the Trump administration, which seeks access to evidence in the three shootings.

It’s good that Minnesota finally got its hands on evidence that the feds have refused to share for months. But as TPM points out, there are still problems.

While this breakthrough is huge and gives state prosecutors a fighting chance to complete full investigations and make sound charging decisions, a lot has already been lost that could come back to bite any attempted prosecutions of federal agents.

There’s little indication that federal law enforcement fully investigated the three shootings so while the evidence the feds do have is critical it may be incomplete. In addition, time was wasted. Leads that might have been followed if the evidence was available may be harder to follow now.

If any federal agents are eventually charged, they may use the fact of the contested investigation in their defense, raising questions about the delays, the chain of custody of the evidence, and other anomalies that wouldn’t have occurred if the feds hadn’t circled the wagons and refused to cooperate.

It’s also difficult to draw any broad lessons from this episode that might apply in future cases, especially after fatal ICE shootings over the past week in Texas and Maine — other than the obvious: Minnesota’s elected Democratic officials presented a united front and took aggressive action to assert their rights to investigate state crimes and protect their prerogatives in our federal system.

Well, we know that however united local officials are here and how hard they’re willing to fight, they’re going to get zero cooperation from the state. Indeed, the state will fight them every step of the way. There is a solution for that, of course, but it won’t be easy, to say the least.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia adds his perspective.

As a former Harris County sheriff and someone who has been a cop for most of my adult life, I know what responsible policing requires and what it takes to protect the public trust. Too much about ICE’s account of Salgado’s does not add up, and the lack of detail creates questions and strong frustration. Until we have a full and transparent accounting of what happened, Houston’s sense of safety will be harmed. The federal unwillingness to welcome an independent investigation raises serious doubts and encourages conspiracy theories. That should concern us all, regardless of political party.

But still, politics appears to be playing a role. The Department of Homeland Security issued comments that “back-to-back Democrat shutdowns” are to blame for the lack of bodycams and are the reason the public can’t see what happened.

That is no excuse. In April, Congress gave Homeland Security $20 million for “the procurement, deployment, and operations of body-worn cameras” for immigration officers, but according to Rep. Sylvia Garcia, the acting head of ICE says that fewer than a third of officers currently wear them. Failure to buy this equipment puts agents who want to do their job right in a losing situation.

[…]

ICE’s own directives state that cameras “increase officer and public safety, accountability, and transparency,” the Department of Justice prohibits federal agents from discharging firearms at moving vehicles merely to stop an escape.

Federal officials claim that Salgado was a threat because he “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.” But if a vehicle is moving toward the agent in a threatening way, rather than firing, the agent is supposed to move out of the way if at all possible.

And at what point would Salgado even have been sure that the agents in ICE’s unmarked vehicles were, in fact, law officers who he should obey? He lived in a neighborhood that sees its share of crime. How would any of us react if an unmarked SUV, with no sirens or flashing lights, tried to run us off the road?

ICE’s failure to properly equip its agents and its resistance to transparency hurts the public’s trust of law enforcement in general — a trust that I’ve dedicated my career to enhancing. If someone doesn’t trust law enforcement, they’re far less likely to report a crime or offer themselves as a witness when a crime is committed.

We will get these answers eventually. Hopefully, in time to enforce accountability and enact consequences. But the fact that we have to fight every step of the way is a huge problem.

And finally, there’s always a bigger problem.

Last week’s killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was the latest test of an already strained relationship between the two nations that share a border in Texas.

On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that her government will file complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice and with prosecutors in states where 17 Mexican people had died in a federal detention center or during immigration enforcement in the U.S.

Sheinbaum also said the Mexican government will file civil lawsuits against companies that operate immigrant detention centers — fulfilling a promise made shortly after Salgado Araujo was shot to death in Houston to seek justice for what she called human rights violations against Mexicans living in the U.S.

“This is probably one of the toughest moments in the relationship since 1985,” said Tony Payan, executive director of the Claudio X. Gonzalez Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Sheinbaum called on Mexico’s political parties to unite in support of Mexicans living in the U.S. and urged officials to submit inquiries and statements condemning human rights violations of Mexicans.

“I don’t think this situation appears acceptable to anyone,” she said. “This is an issue for all Mexicans.

See here for the background. Most likely, this will be another mess for the next President to clean up. But after the 2024 election, I don’t know how receptive any of our current allies will be to the argument that we’ve turned the page and things will be more normal going forward.

Posted in La Migra | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

HISD seems determined to ignore TEA on special ed

Posted on July 15, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

I dunno, man.

Before Houston ISD can consolidate its special education services, it has to review thousands of students’ individualized education programs and meet with their families. That’s the explicit order from the Texas Education Agency, which investigated the district’s plans.

But HISD said it is already reviewing student records and plans to meet with families as needed during the school year — after it moves students with disabilities to new campuses.

The district’s response has concerned some families who still hope to block the district’s special education overhaul and remain at their original campuses when school starts in August. Experts say HISD’s plans seem to contradict the state’s order and could trigger further sanctions, even as the district remains under a state takeover and conservatorship.

“TEA is not telling Houston, ‘You can’t do this.’ They can. … It’s just, ‘If you’re going to do this, here’s what has to happen first,” said Colleen Potts, supervising attorney for Disability Rights Texas. “It doesn’t seem to me in (HISD’s) guidance, that there’s any promise of holding an IEP meeting for all of these kids.”

[…]

Individual parent complaints rarely spark districtwide change, said Jane Friou, who is an HISD parent and longtime special education advocate. Friou said the TEA’s response marks a “huge win” for families, who launched a “pressure campaign” against the overhaul after it was announced in May.

Still, Friou said the investigation and response do not answer perhaps parents’ most pressing question: where will their child attend school in August? She said even if the district planned to fully comply with the state’s orders, she believes it would be unlikely for HISD to successfully meet with every family in the few weeks before the new school year begins Aug. 10.

She said the conflicting guidance from TEA and HISD could leave students’ original and newly assigned campuses unprepared, potentially forcing many students to stay home.

“Parents feel like phase one was a win. The first day of school is phase two,” Friou said. “Our goal … is to empower as many parents to continue to keep fighting.”

In its letter to HISD, the TEA threatened further state sanctions if HISD does not comply with its order for corrective action by Oct. 9.

Potts said it is unclear what sanctions the state could impose on a district that is already under a state conservatorship and takeover.

See here for the previous update. I suppose this is the sort of thing that can happen when you appoint a Superintendent who then isn’t accountable to anyone. I think the most likely outcome is what we’re seeing now, that HISD is going to continue on with its plans and continue to claim that it’s fully in compliance with the TEA, and whatever happens with the students and their IEPs, happens. The variables for that are 1) the US Department of Education responds to the complaint filed with them in a more forceful manner; 2) someone files a lawsuit; and 3) the potential for Day One chaos grows to the point where HISD voluntarily backs off of at least the plans to shuffle kids around. Place your bets.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New World screwworm versus the feral hog

Posted on July 15, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Who would win?

Two of Texas’s most troublesome invasive species have much in common. They reproduce alarmingly fast, send shudders down the spines of Texas ranchers, and can traverse similar distances (about twelve miles a day). One is the feral hog, capable of outsmarting, outrunning, and outbreeding attempts at its eradication. The other, if presented a pinprick-size opportunity, would eat a live feral hog from the inside out.

The New World screwworm recently returned to Texas, sixty years after the state first fended off the orange-eyed threat. More than thirty cases have been recorded since the confirmed infection of a calf in tiny La Pryor last month. The flying pest inflicts otherworldly horror. It lays its eggs in wounds as tiny as those created by tick bites, and its larvae burrow into and feast on the surrounding flesh.

Any warm-blooded animal is vulnerable, but the screwworm is especially worrisome to cattle ranchers. An infestation can devastate a herd, spreading quickly among animals that share close quarters. If a screwworm infection is left untreated, an adult bovine can succumb in under a week. Fighting screwworm is labor-intensive, requires thorough observation and treatment, as well as the quarantining of sick livestock. This can cause supply chain issues and eventually drive up the cost of your steak dinner.

Meanwhile, Texas has turned into a real pigsty. Our state is home to more feral hogs than any other, and experts estimate that more than half of the country’s entire wild-pig population resides in Texas. John Tomeček, a Texas A&M associate professor of wildlife sciences, pegs the statewide number at between 3.5 million and 6 million. “Those are conservative estimates,” he said. “To give you context, we’re fairly certain there are more pigs in Texas than there are white-tailed deer.”

Feral hogs cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage throughout the state each year. Traveling in groups called sounders, they’re known for destructive rooting, using their snouts to pillage rows of crops in search of food, often outcompeting native species in their hunt for edible plants and acorns. They also cause substantial damage to fences, farm equipment, and irrigation systems, leaving a path of disrepair in their wake.

Could one wildlife problem solve another, with screwworms acting as a natural population check on feral hogs? Possibly. Tomeček said experts speculate that hog numbers have shot up in recent decades in part because there were no longer any screwworms around.

“It’s going to kill pigs, but at what cost? I don’t want to live in a world where screwworms are so widespread that they’re making a landscape-level dent in the feral-hog population,” Tomeček said. “I think if we get to that point, we’ve got an awful lot of problems we’re managing. We may move more screwworms around than kill pigs.”

There’s no real answer to the question, and we’re probably better off not finding out. Get back to developing the anti-screwworm mitigations, as well as the hog mitigation strategies, and hope for the best.

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

We have some video of ICE and Loranzo Salgado Araujo

Posted on July 14, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

The NYT pieced together what we currently have.

Shortly before 7 a.m. on Tuesday, immigration officers were trailing a white work van in the Magnolia Park neighborhood of Houston. Minutes later, the driver had been fatally shot in his abdomen.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement on X and again to The New York Times on Saturday that a federal officer had opened fire at the man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, in “self-defense” after Mr. Salgado Araujo “weaponized” his white van. The agency accused him of ramming one of their vehicles and trying to run over an ICE officer.

Neither Mr. Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived in the United States without authorization for 35 years, nor the three passengers in his van were the initial targets of the operation, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman told The Times.

Footage from bystanders and local businesses obtained by The Times, although incomplete, provides a window into the events that unfolded on Canal Street.

There are multiple clips embedded in the story, along with graphics showing where the vehicles were on Houston’s streets. Go click over and look for yourself. Just seeing how close the two ICE vehicles were to Salgado’s van made me anxious – remember, these are unmarked cars, so from his perspective he might just have been getting harassed by everyday assholes. Which, when there’s no clear escape, is very stressful. I hope more video surfaces to give us a better overall picture.

In the meantime…

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was involved in a fatal shooting in Biddeford, Maine Monday, less than a week after an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, according to Maine Speaker of the House Ryan Fecteau.

Fecteau offered few details on what he said was a shootout on Facebook shortly before 7:20 a.m. CDT. He said state police and the Department of Public Safety were at the scene, and he expects the FBI to investigate.

“A person was killed,” he wrote. “ICE was involved.”

ICE did not immediately return a request for comment, and local police directed the Chronicle to the federal agency.

“MSP is currently on scene assisting but we are not (the) primary investigating agency,” Shannon Moss, a spokesperson for Maine State Police, wrote in an email to the Chronicle.

Biddeford is a coastal Maine city roughly 15 miles south of Portland. More than 21,000 people live there, according to the city’s website.

[…]

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat who represents Biddeford, said she was working to get more information about the shooting. She expressed anger, extended her sympathy and said she needed answers about whom ICE was pursuing, what led to the shooting and whether agents were wearing body cameras.

“More than anything else, I want to know why are you in Maine?” she said.

It’s a good question, and I think the simplest answer is because Maine is a blue state and ICE’s mission today is to harass and torment as many people as they can in blue states and blue cities. This was a very preliminary story, I’m sure there are more details out by the time this is published. I just wanted to acknowledge that this happened.

And back here in Houston, it’s the same old same old from ICE.

A week after an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare’s office still doesn’t know the names of the agents who were there. “That is unacceptable,” Teare said during a Monday news conference.

Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis said he will present a proposal to the Commissioners Court to fund Teare’s independent investigation into Salgado’s death, which the DA said should be treated no differently than any other officer-involved shooting.

A week after an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Teare’s office still doesn’t know the names of the agents who were there. “That is unacceptable,” Teare said during a Monday news conference.

Teare said it was hours after the shooting before investigators from his office were able to get onto the scene. He said his office has spoken with Houston-area Homeland Security investigators and ICE special agents-in-charge, but they aren’t leading the investigation. His office has not been in contact with the federal branch that is investigating.

[…]

Teare said he expects the investigation to be lengthy and that investigators are taking every avenue available to his office to get “every shred of evidence,” including eyewitness statements.

“We cannot do it without the support of the public and the commissioners,” Teare said. “We are running this investigation so we can be transparent. Regardless of what happens with the investigation. We will let the public see why we got to that determination.”

The day will come when the people who are enabling this will be held accountable. We just have to get there. The Trib has more.

Posted in La Migra | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The data center fiasco in Taylor

Posted on July 14, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Wild stuff.

The Taylor City Council was set to consider a proposed ordinance Thursday night that would temporarily ban data centers. But 15 minutes after the council meeting began, the city released a statement on its Facebook page saying council members would not be taking any action on the proposed ban.

“State law does not allow a city to enact or change its zoning by popular vote,” Mayor Pro Tem Kelly Cmerek said at the meeting. “This is a determination about the legal process made available to the city. It’s not a judgment about a policy issue — about the concerns you guys have voiced.”

The decision and the way it was communicated caught many people attending the meeting off guard. Multiple residents inside the council chamber gasped as they learned about the Facebook post from organizer Sarah Winters’ public remarks criticizing it.

“After this meeting started, y’all posted this on Facebook, knowing we were all coming here?” Winters told council members. She pointed out that the mayor wasn’t at the meeting, adding: “Tell me this is not shady, shady business. Shame on all of y’all.”

Cmerek said Mayor Jim Buzan was not at the council meeting because he was out of the country on vacation.

The citizen-initiated ordinance was submitted to the city last month, along with more than 1,400 signatures from residents. The hope was that if council members didn’t take action on the proposed ban themselves, they would place it on the ballot for voters to decide.

Cmerek said council members made the determination to not take action on the proposed ban or place it on the ballot after speaking with outside counsel. He also apologized for the way the council’s decision was communicated.

“Obviously, this information was put on the website inappropriately. I do apologize for that,” he said.

Cmerek said council members plan to address some of the concerns about data centers through changes to the city’s comprehensive plan and land development code. He encouraged residents to stay involved.

A city spokesperson, Jerrod Kingery, would not say when the city or its council members first determined that action wouldn’t be taken on the proposed ban.

Carrie D’Anna, an organizer with the Halt Taylor Data Center Coalition, helped submit the citizen-initiated ordinance to the city last month. She said the city did not communicate its decision to her or other organizers before Thursday’s meeting.

“They could have told us at any point in time, but instead they allowed us to organize, and then they post their decision before we’ve even started speaking on the website?” D’Anna said. “That’s humiliating. It’s humiliating. It feels like they’re intentionally trying to make light of what we’re trying to say.”

The Statesman wrote about what the Halt Taylor Data Center Coalition was trying to do last week, reprinted by the Chron. It provides some context to what was happening before the city’s weird about-face on the ordinance.

If approved, new data center development would be immediately banned under a measure to remain in place “unless and until a zoning district specifically created for digital infrastructure uses is adopted,” according to the petition.

“This is not anti-AI, it’s not even anti-business,” said Carrie D’Anna, a Taylor resident who supports the ban. “It’s a people-first prerogative.”

[…]

Under Taylor’s city charter, a valid petition, defined as one with signatures from at least 10% of registered voters, requires the City Council to either enact the proposed ordinance within 30 days or send it to voters at the next general election.

“We knew that it’s unreasonable to say that we could ban them completely,” D’Anna said. “But it was reasonable to say that we needed adequate protection for the people who already live here.”

Taylor, a fast-growing city that now has a population of about 18,000, has seen a wave of large industrial growth in recent years. The boom has been led by Samsung Electronics’ $17 billion chip factory, which is on track to be operational by the end of the year. The semiconductor plant also has attracted several data centers to the area.

In March, the City Council unanimously approved a $2.5 billion center next to the Samsung plant. Nearby Hutto also has given a green light to several data center projects, including Skybox’s 160-acre, 600-megawatt “PowerCampus.”

In 2024, Taylor approved a 135,000-square-foot data center planned by Blueprint Data Centers at 1601 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

But after nearby residents received construction notices on their doors, community members began questioning how the 87-acre site was marked for development.

The tract was transferred to a public trust for $10 in 1999, with the former farmland earmarked for a public park. The development is about 500 feet from a small neighborhood of about 35 predominantly Black and Hispanic families, D’Anna said.

“We didn’t plan on being data center activists in the beginning, we say there’s an inequity happening here,” she said. “But we started realizing our zoning was just inadequate. It was very easy for data centers to come in and follow the rules, but data centers are not a daycare or a gas station. We stepped back and asked, ‘How can we slow this down to get conversation started around this.’ ”

Pushback against the development eventually led to a lawsuit against Blueprint, though the case was dismissed by a state district court judge in October. The plaintiffs have appealed the decision. Blueprint did not respond to a request for comment.

While those data centers have been approved, the proposal would keep them from receiving permits until the city creates a zoning district that allows them.

“Council wants to extend our city limits and incorporate these data centers so they can get the tax revenue, so they don’t miss out on what they say is control,” D’Anna said. “But if you don’t have zoning? That’s not control. It’s just responsibility that the taxpayers are bearing the burden of for the next 30 to 50 years.”

The coalition submitted its petitions a month ago, so it’s easy to understand the group’s frustration with how this played out.

Did you see that bit in the story about how the land on which one of the data centers is to be built was supposed to be a park? That story is also wild.

What was once gifted to this Central Texas city as parkland nearly three decades ago is now headed for a very different future: a sprawling, billion-dollar data center.

When a family in Taylor, Texas, transferred 87 acres to a public trust for $10 in 1999, the goal was simple: the land was supposed to become a public park, according to 404 Media. Instead, the site, located at 1601 E. Martin Luther King Blvd., took a different path.

After being granted to the Williamson County Park Foundation in the early 2000’s, and then to the City of Taylor, the land was then sold to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation in 2008, according to Fox 7. Then, in April 2025, the corporation sold the property to Blueprint for $10 million to make way for a 135,000 square-foot data center.

The City of Taylor and the Taylor Economic Development Corporation did not immediately respond to Chron’s request for comment.

Taylor residents have pushed back on the proposed development, even prompting a lawsuit against Blueprint—a case that was ultimately dismissed by a state district court judge in October 2025, according to KUT. The plaintiffs have appealed the decision to Austin’s Third Court of Appeals, Spectrum News reported in November.

You have to sign up for a free membership at 404 Media to see that full story. Newsweek also wrote about it, and the 404 Media folks discussed it in their June 24 podcast episode. How the original donation to the city turned into a multi-million-dollar sale to a developer sounds awfully shady to me, but it’s held up in court so far. All I can say is that I’m rooting for the Halt Taylor Data Center Coalition to succeed with their ordinance, one way or another.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Don’t Elon my Boca Chica

Posted on July 14, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Good Lord, this is duuuuuuuumb.

A federal committee rejected a proposal on Thursday to rename Boca Chica Beach in South Texas to “Cyber Beach.” The move preserves the historic name despite a SpaceX supporter’s effort to rebrand the public beach near the company’s Starbase launch site.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names’ Domestic Names Committee voted against the proposal during its monthly meeting. The decision means Boca Chica Beach will remain the official name used on federal maps and records.

Boca Chica Beach sits at the southern tip of Texas near the mouth of the Rio Grande. The beach has carried its current official name since 1936 and has long been a destination for fishing and camping along the Texas Gulf Coast.

In recent years, however, it’s become the center of SpaceX’s growing footprint throughout the region. The public beach sits next to the company’s Starbase launch and production complex, where SpaceX builds and tests its Starship rockets.

The name-change proposal was submitted in late 2024 by Josh Hazel, a SpaceX supporter from Mississippi who said the new name would recognize the beach’s role in spaceflight development at SpaceX’s nearby Starbase launch site. The area has become the focus of ongoing debates over public beach access, environmental protections and Elon Musk’s expanding influence in the region, particularly after voters approved incorporating the company town of Starbase in May 2025.

In the proposal, Hazel wrote that enthusiasts commonly refer to the area as “Cyber Beach” and that formalizing the name would commemorate “the location where inter-planetary travel was started.”

When asked about the significance of the term “cyber,” Hazel said it was “a hat tip to the CyberTruck.”

“Many references around Starship and the CyberTruck use the Cyber moniker just to infer the reference of out-of-this-world exploration or experiences and such,” Hazel wrote.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, the proposal received little institutional support.

That’s putting it mildly, as the city of Starbase (already renamed for Elon!), Cameron County, the Texas Geographic Names Committee, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a passel of elected officials all said some form of “hell no” to this. In a less brain-rotted world, the idea that some out-of-stater could get the federal government to rename a part of Texas would be treated like out-of-state picante sauce. I’m glad some shred of sanity was maintained, but how did it even come to this? What are we even doing?

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Hinojosa rebate

Posted on July 13, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

I like this.

Rep. Gina Hinojosa

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for governor, is promising to send each Texas household a $1,500 check drawn from the state’s rainy day fund if she defeats Gov. Greg Abbott this November.

“The government is broken,” Hinojosa said Tuesday in front of Pyburn’s Farm Fresh Foods in Houston’s South Union neighborhood while announcing the proposal. “It is more, right now, a burden than a help for people. That changes when I’m governor.”

The $1,500 one-time rebate program — which Hinojosa dubbed a “corruption tax refund” — would cost the state $17 billion, her campaign estimated. It would be drawn from Texas’ rainy day fund — which is formally known as the Economic Stabilization Fund and serves essentially as a state savings account — which stood at a record $24.8 billion as of November 2025.

Hinojosa’s rebate proposal — which would require legislative approval — would draw down roughly two-thirds of the current account and leave around $10 billion in reserves. Her campaign pointed to estimates by the comptroller’s office that the fund will grow by roughly $2.5 billion to $3 billion a year, and historical trends that kept the account at around $10 billion for several years before swelling after 2022.

“It’s never been hoarded the way it currently is,” she said, adding, “We cannot find an economist who says it makes sense for us to be sitting on this money. It is irresponsible. This money should be in our economy in Texas.”

[…]

The Legislature created the rainy day fund in 1988 to help Texas weather fluctuating economic conditions. Largely funded by oil and gas tax revenues, the account has ballooned in recent years, with the Texas comptroller’s office projecting that it would exceed the cap on its balance and reach a record $28.5 billion by the end of fiscal year 2027.

The Texas Constitution limits the fund’s maximum balance using a formula based on how much general revenue was deposited into the account during the previous biennium. The fund is also subject to a statutory minimum balance of $12.4 billion for the 2026-27 biennium, according to the comptroller’s office.

State lawmakers have approved a total of $17.4 billion in spending out of the rainy day fund since its creation, according to the comptroller’s office. That spending has gone toward water infrastructure projects, natural disaster relief, public education and more. As the fund has grown, lawmakers have intensely debated how much of it to spend and how.

Rather than one-time investments in such programs, Hinojosa argued that her rebate proposal would be one of few policy ideas that a supermajority of lawmakers could get behind.

“We are paying into a system that is working against us, and I can’t think of anything else where we would all come together and have the votes to spend that kind of money to benefit real Texans,” she said. “I can’t imagine any politician voting against $1,500 to their constituents.”

There’s a lot here so I’m going to bullet-point this.

– Abbott’s big idea every two years is a property tax cut, which gives a lot of money to a much smaller group of people, as well as being a huge windfall for business interests. He’s now talking about eliminating property taxes all together, which would be a budgetary disaster and would have drastic effects on all kinds of programs. Any discussion of the merits of Gina Hinojosa’s proposal, which would spend money in a way that would not affect the biennial budget, needs to address that.

– The great irony of the Rainy Day Fund, more accurately known as the economic stabilization fund, is that it’s almost never been used for the purpose of mitigating tough economic times for the state. In 2011, the Republican-dominated Legislature cut over $5 billion from public education instead of using some money from this fund to offset the loss of other revenue sources. As this story notes, it’s been used in recent years for various expenditures, but never something to like this.

– In past years as the Rainy Day Fund balance has grown, numerous Republican legislators have made the not-unreasonable point that this fund wasn’t intended to accumulate wealth but to be used, for the benefit of the people. I’m sure there’s a reporter out there, or just someone like Harvey Kronberg, who can dig up a few quotes along those lines. That doesn’t mean you have to like this particular proposal, or even just that a Democrat is proposing it. My point is that this is not close to being out of the norm for our discourse.

– And as Rep. Hinojosa notes, there will still be plenty of money left in the RDF, and normal growth expectations will erase this spending in a couple of years. The downside risk, that we’d have a sudden need to tap into the fund for its emergency purposes, is quite low.

– It’s good politics. People are feeling the pinch from inflation and the Trump tariffs. This is as broad a benefit as there is. It won’t have any of the negative effects on the budget that a reckless property tax cut would have, and won’t just benefit the few. Go ahead and vote against it if you want, on whatever “fiscal responsibility” tap dance you can conjure.

The main question is how well Hinojosa can get this message out. I think it will resonate if she is successful at that, but that’s easier said than done. The Chron has more.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mexico to pursue legal action over ICE deaths

Posted on July 13, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

We’ll see what this means.

Mexico plans to pursue criminal and civil action in the United States over the deaths of Mexican nationals in ICE custody and enforcement operations, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday.

The announcement comes after an ICE agent fatally shot 52-year-old Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during an enforcement operation in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood on July 7. Salgado had lived in the United States for decades and had a work permit application pending.

Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco said Mexico has recorded 17 deaths of Mexican nationals linked to ICE since the start of the current U.S. immigration crackdown: 14 in detention centers and three during enforcement operations, including Salgado Araujo.

Sheinbaum said her government would no longer rely solely on diplomatic protest notes.

“We are going to do everything in our power,” she said, adding that Mexico could not fail to act in response to the deaths of Mexicans during ICE enforcement operations or in detention centers run by private companies contracted by ICE. She said Mexico would continue providing consular support to families and detainees, especially Mexicans “whose only crime is working honestly in the United States.”

Velasco said the Foreign Ministry will ask Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office to refer the cases to U.S. state prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Justice, seeking criminal investigations. He said the referrals would be filed “against whoever is responsible.”

[…]

Mexico’s legal strategy also includes civil action against private companies that operate ICE detention centers. Velasco said Mexico will send cease-and-desist letters to the companies demanding changes to practices and detention conditions that Mexico says have violated human rights and contributed to the deaths of Mexican detainees.

“Formally, we are asking these companies to stop carrying out these actions,” Velasco said, explaining that the letters will also demand changes to the conditions that have led to Mexican deaths.

I have no idea what to expect from this. I don’t believe for a minute that the Trump Justice Department will treat any of this seriously, but I do think quite a few state AGs will be receptive. California, Illinois, New York, I’m sure they’ll be all in, and for good reason. The civil actions are harder to get a handle on – does Mexico have any leverage, like threatening to cancel existing or proposed contracts? It wouldn’t surprise me if much of this turns out to be for display, in the hope of scaring or shaming others into better behavior, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some real followup. I just don’t know how much of each, or how effective the real thing will be. I will keep an eye on it. The Washington Post has more.

Posted in Around the world, La Migra | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Half Price Books to return to Montrose

Posted on July 13, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

And there was much rejoicing.

Five years after Half Price Books left Montrose, the booksellers purchased the former Soundwaves building and plans to return in 2027.

Soundwaves announced it was closing its last remaining location that sat off 3509 Montrose Boulevard in April. More than a month later, the general warranty deed to the Montrose building was transferred to a Bookmoor LLC by Soundwaves Reality L.P., according to court records.

This location will mark the return of Half Price Books to the area after closing its Montrose location in 2021.

The company tried to return to the neighborhood “for years,” Half Price Books president Kathy Doyle Thomas said in a statement to the Chronicle.

“We were thrilled when we had the opportunity to purchase this building,” Thomas said. “Our previous store in the Montrose neighborhood closed in early 2021 when the landlord decided to redevelop the area. We’ve heard from countless customers in the last five years how much they miss the Montrose store, so we’re looking forward to being back in the loop.”

There was a time, for many years, when there was a Half Price Books in Montrose and a Half Price Books in the Rice Village. Those were good times. And then, one day, they were both gone, and we were sad. Now at least one of them will be back, and a small amount of balance will be restored to the universe. Good things are still possible. CultureMap has more.

Posted in Books, Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for July 12

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

“Turn off this Meta setting before someone generates AI images of you“. Or set your account to Private.

“Woman Thought Date Was a ‘Jerk’ for Not Calling, but He Was Actually in a Coma After Being Attacked by a Bear (Exclusive)”.

“As an atmospheric scientist myself, I can say firsthand—the forecasts I’m able to offer you are less accurate than they would otherwise be. I’m not able to predict severe weather with the confidence I normally would. That is extremely concerning.”

“Also, be the not-generated-by-AI content you want to see in the world.”

“The Four Fallacies at the Heart of SCOTUS’ Decision on Trans Athletes”.

“What it all boils down to: A yearslong boom in chip demand ran facelong into a forced monthslong production slowdown (the Iran war), which accentuated investor fears of an A.I. bubble burst and routed the most valuable tech stocks in the U.S. and Korea. The chipmakers themselves are regaining public confidence thanks to their ability to charge up the wazoo for their very valuable output. The companies that rely on those chips, however, are stuck waiting in line behind a couple of the biggest A.I. firms—which, thanks to waves of venture capital, have cash on hand to splurge on semiconductors now as well as promises of more chips in the future. The Big Tech types whose main value still stems from their consumer products, like Apple, have no choice but to wait behind the preferred clientele, and to price-gouge their own shrinking inventories in the meantime.”

“Before the [One Big Beautiful Bill Act] was signed, researchers had already modeled the consequences. A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, published in June 2025, projected that coverage losses would result in more than 16,000 preventable deaths annually. A JAMA Health Forum study published two weeks after the signing reached similar conclusions. Both analyses projected that 7.6 million people would lose Medicaid coverage once the law’s work requirements and eligibility changes were fully implemented. Both were based on what would happen when individuals lost insurance. Neither could account for what would happen when states, facing new budget pressure from the law’s tax provisions, eliminated whole programs before the law’s major Medicaid provisions even took effect.”

“As prediction markets boom and a new wildfire season begins, fire survivors and ethicists say that the betting encourages and rewards callous thinking — and dangerous behavior, too.”

RIP, Bill Archer, former member of Congress who served CD07 from 1970 through 2000, succeeding George H. W. Bush in that seat.

“The Best Show On TV Is The Glitchy 3D Graphics On The MLB App“. You don’t need to know anything about baseball or care even a little bit about it to find the embedded clips hilarious.

“As much as these freaks talk about “civilization,” as much as they love to claim that somehow our policies will turn the US into a “third world nation,” they’re the ones out here encouraging teen pregnancy, discouraging college, embracing policies that lead to an extremely high maternal mortality rate, pushing back on gains made by women, LGBTQ+ people, and ethnic minorities, wanting to bring back firing squads and public executions, dismantling the social safety net, and loving their wannabe strongman dictator. All things far more common in developing nations than in wealthy, generally stable, nations.”

“Five years after Anthony Broadwater was belatedly cleared for the sexual assault of Alice Sebold, the questions of how he came to be wrongly convicted and how one or more serial rapists operated for years with little consequence have only deepened.” A great story, terrific reporting.

RIP, George E. Johnson, businessman and entrepreneur whose hair product company, a longtime sponsor of “Soul Train,” was the first Black-owned company listed on a major American stock exchange.

“It’s not clear that Trump has a plan to subvert the midterms, and even less clear that he and his crew have the skills to execute a plan should he get one. And beyond that, there’s actually a good deal that ordinary people—you and me—can do to make sure the midterms don’t go off the rails.”

“Any efforts to fuel fertility need to take this reality into account, and not by telling women to lower their standards.”

“Below, we take a look back at eight celebrities who’ve been banned from talk shows, from Bobcat Goldthwait to Barbra Streisand”.

GTFO already. Hopefully by the time you read this we’ll never have to hear that asshole’s name again.

“Justice Department leaders’ shutdown of a long-running criminal case against Abbott Laboratories over contaminated baby formula has fueled a broader pullback on corporate prosecutions protecting consumer health, said people familiar with the situation.” Refilling the swamp, one corrupt action at a time.

“Instead, I think it is useful to ask whether the Supreme Court, as its majority is currently constituted, is democratically corrupting. The answer, under Mark [Warren]’s definition, is an unqualified yes. And what is useful about Mark’s approach is that it shows how apparently quite different lines of Supreme Court jurisprudence are mutually reinforcing. Across various dimensions, they systematically corrupt the democratic process.”

All this heat is bad for the roads, too. Maybe that will convince some climate change deniers that maybe we ought to Do Something.

RIP, Louise Lasser, actor best known for the TV show Mary Hartman and a number of Woody Allen movies.

“The women who wouldn’t let climate data disappear”.

“The president didn’t rescue Balogun. He didn’t give the U.S. greater odds to win. He didn’t fix the tournament by correcting a mistake. He repossessed the World Cup. He made Balogun, whose class and character represented the entire squad, the face of a fix. He helped create the snooty American attitude that gave Belgium a motivational boost.”

“Cape Verde’s football team have been welcomed home by tens of thousands of elated supporters following a historic run at the World Cup.”

“A cybersecurity startup dangling millions of dollars to acquire zero-day security vulnerabilities in popular software is run by a pair of far-right conspiracy theorists and convicted felons whose most recent ventures included fake intelligence companies and a now-defunct AI-based lobbying platform they operated under assumed names.”

RIP, Bonnie Tyler, singer best known for “It’s A Heartache”, “Holding Out For A Hero”, and of course, “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”. If you’ve never seen the literal video version of that song, now is the time to make your acquaintance, in her honor.

“Campaign staffers keep trying to bet on races despite push to curb insider trading”.

RIP, Wally Funk, aviation pioneer who finally got to go to space in her 80s.

Three words: Neil the Seal. You’re welcome.

“No matter how many rich, jacked, gorgeous men gallivant around the World Cup, it is the goofballs and weirdos who win out in the end.”

RIP, Randolph Mantooth, actor best known for the TV show Emergency!.

RIP, martha Ann Lillard, last US polio survivor using an iron lung. The machine was from the 1940s and had started to fail, and no one knew how to fix it.

“A content creator who runs a satirical cat account trolling Vice President JD Vance on Instagram is suing after being banned from one of his events by the Secret Service.” If you’re not following “Cats on a Couch”, on Instagram or Threads, you’re missing out.

RIP, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Republican from South Carolina. Let this and this be how he is remembered.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 4 Comments

Where are the Rangers?

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

No one will say just yet.

When a federal immigration officer shot and killed a 23-year-old on South Padre Island last year, the Department of Homeland Security asked the Texas Rangers to investigate.

But as calls grow for an independent investigation into the shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, the federal agency has so far not called in state authorities.

“If ICE is saying they did everything on the up and up, nobody should have a problem with Texas Rangers conducting an independent investigation,” said state Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Houston Democrat who has called for the state to look into the shooting.

Alvarado and 12 other Democratic lawmakers are urging the Department of Public Safety to step in. But the state agency says because it was not involved in the shooting, it would not be standard practice to do so without a request, either from the federal government, the governor or local officials with jurisdiction. The agency doesn’t have a written policy outlining that.

“For decades, it has been the standard, established practice of the Texas Rangers to investigate officer-involved shootings when requested by an involved law enforcement agency – local, state or federal – or a prosecuting entity,” said Ericka Miller, a DPS spokeswoman. “Typically, these requests are received within just minutes or hours of the incident taking place to preserve the integrity of the investigation.”

The rangers investigated the South Padre shooting last year at the request of Homeland Security Investigation, an office within ICE. DHS claimed Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23 year old from San Antonio, was intoxicated and struck an agent with his car. Another agent shot him multiple times through a side window at point-blank range.

The rangers sent their findings to Cameron County and a grand jury did not find probable cause to charge anyone in the March 15, 2025, shooting.

DHS did not answer questions about why it has not asked for a state probe this time. The FBI referred questions to DHS and said: “To be clear, currently FBI Houston is only leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”

Regardless, Alvarado said DPS has such a request – from herself and the 12 other lawmakers who wrote to the agency Wednesday. Their letter asked for a “parallel investigation.”

“We are asking the Texas Rangers to do something they have done in the past,” Alvarado said, pointing to the South Padre investigation. “They should abide by that and conduct the investigation.”

At this point there are multiple investigations, including ones by the Harris County DA and the city of Houston, in addition to whatever the FBI is doing. It’s not that I think the Texas Rangers are indispensable here, nor do I expect better cooperation from the feds for them over the other agencies, it’s more a question of why the same process wasn’t followed as with the previous case. And why, given the request from Sen. Alvarado and her colleagues, it’s not happening now. Maybe it will in the next day or two and we can chalk it up to bureaucratic delays. But nobody involved here gets the benefit of the doubt.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, La Migra | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

TEA rejects HISD’s proposed special ed changes

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Good. Especially good for the affected students and parents.

A Texas Education Agency investigation found Houston ISD violated federal requirements for students with disabilities, forcing the district to review thousands of students’ individualized education plans before it overhauls special education.

The district’s plan, which would send about 5,000 students with disabilities to new campuses, sparked multiple complaints from Houston families and a federal investigation into potential discrimination.

The agency has ordered HISD to review individualized education programs for affected students, including any “potential harmful effects of any proposed placement;” meet with families to review changes before moving campuses; and offer training to all district-level special education staff.

Parent Stefanie Naranjo filed a complaint with the state after her son learned in May he was reassigned to another school next year — even though his individualized education program said he would attend his current campus, Sinclair Elementary. He was among about 5,000 students with disabilities who received abrupt reassignments.

In response to her complaint, the TEA ordered HISD to take corrective action for Naranjo’s child and make “systemic corrections for all students with disabilities” in the district. It warned that it may impose more sanctions if HISD fails to comply.

The agency said in a July letter that HISD violated two provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees students with disabilities a right to a free and appropriate public education. It cited federal regulations requiring students to be educated near their homes and a meeting with the student’s IEP team — which typically includes teachers, parents and advocates — before changing their campus assignment.

In its investigative report, the agency said the district “cannot unilaterally amend a student’s IEP.”

“It requires the (district) to ensure that, unless the student’s IEP requires some other arrangement, the student is educated in the school that he or she would attend if not eligible for special education,” the agency wrote. “The student cannot be moved to the new campus until the IEP team has met and remedied these errors.”

See here, here, and here for the background. HISD has until August to report on the changes they’ve made in response and could face “additional interventions or sanctions” if they’re not fully in compliance by October. I don’t know what that means and I hope to not find out. Note that there is also a federal investigation related to the proposed HISD plan, which as far as I know is still ongoing. That could mean further required action on HISD’s part to undo what they were going to do. Feels like a pretty big loss on the district’s part, and a well-deserved one. Let this be a lesson in engaging stakeholders before charging ahead with massive changes.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A couple of water stories

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Story #1: Texas’ Refusal to Plan for Climate Change Created a Crisis in Corpus Christi.

A decade ago, Corpus Christi’s regional water plan projected shortages as soon as 2050. The next plan, released five years later, shortened that timeline to 2030.

The next plan, released this year, said shortages were imminent, putting city leaders in a desperate scramble to avoid an emergency.

Something’s not right with the calculations that underpin these plans, said John Michael, an engineering executive who has worked on local water infrastructure for 44 years.

“Whether it’s climate change or something else, our reservoir system is not as dependable as we once thought,” he said at his office in May.

He pointed to the regional water plans on his office table—700 pages in four-inch binders—which are prepared every five years by local committees using methodology provided by the State of Texas. These plans never factored in climate science or considered the projections that a warming planet could contribute to a drought as extreme as the one Corpus Christi now faces.

In fact, as climate models predicted, every drought for the last 30 years in Corpus Christi has exceeded the parameters contemplated in local plans, thanks to fatal delusions deep in the heart of Texas’ methodology: Texas doesn’t plan for droughts to get worse.

“The droughts keep getting worse,” said Michael, vice president of Hanson Professional Services in Corpus Christi.

Four droughts have punctuated his career, each hotter and drier than the last. Each one left the city scrambling to build out its water plans ahead of schedule. For decades, intensifying droughts consistently outpaced planning efforts until, by the start of this drought, the region ran out of plans.

The problem is that methods developed by the Texas Water Development Board, an agency headed by appointees of the governor, use the worst drought conditions on record as a worst-case scenario for the future.

“Drought‑of‑record planning is a foundational element of Texas water planning,” said a TWDB spokesperson, Kaci Woodrome. “It provides a consistent, statewide minimum baseline for evaluating water supply reliability.”

The TWDB guides water planning processes for 16 regions in Texas, some of which plan for conditions worse than the drought of record, Woodrome said. It is well known that droughts worse than the drought-of-record can occur, she said. Climate scientists have concluded that the Earth’s warming atmosphere has made droughts worse over the past 25 years and will continue to do so over the next 25.

But that isn’t reflected in Texas’ water plans. “Climate-related projections are not something that any of Texas’ state water plans have included,” Woodrome said, referring questions about climate to the Office of the State Climatologist.

“The majority of factors point toward increased drought severity,” said an assessment of weather trends by the climatologist’s office in 2024, Corpus Christi’s hottest year on record. “Future rainfall deficits comparable to those earlier in the 20th century will have greater impacts due to higher temperatures.”

The region’s 2026 water plan, released in January, “explicitly recognized that, in the event of a repeat of the drought of record, the City of Corpus Christi, as a major water provider, was already facing an immediate shortage,” Woodrome said.

She added: “Such a shortage might increase if a new drought of record were to occur,” which is exactly what happened.

By early this year, officials suspected that drought conditions in Corpus Christi had again surpassed the worst on record. The city’s models never indicated the reservoirs would get this low, said Corpus City Manager Peter Zanoni. But the models didn’t consider the possibility, or the science describing the likelihood, of a drought as severe as the region now faces.

“We based it on the last drought-of-record,” Zanoni said. “This is the worst one yet.”

[…]

“The water plan has to be realistic,” said Larry Soward, a former executive director of the Texas Water Commission. “If you seriously looked at climate change, it would say: We can’t grow anymore unless we make some major changes.”

Political leaders in Texas have intentionally ignored this reality for decades, said Soward, who spent 35 years in state government. Acknowledging the risks of climate change would disrupt their economic agenda, Soward said, and interfere with the growth of business and industry.

Soward witnessed Texas’ irrepressible growth as an attorney for the Water Quality Board in the 1970s, director of the Texas Water Commission in the 1980s and in the 1990s as special counsel on water for the Texas Department of Agriculture. During that time, the state built its last reservoirs but failed to devise a subsequent strategy, Soward said. So Texas kept growing, but its water supply didn’t.

“There’s been a real lack of leadership,” he said. “Especially at the state level.”

Climate change and the current water crisis in Corpus Christi, for which the start date has been pushed back into 2027 thanks to the recent rains, are not likely to be high on anyone’s issues priority list this year. But they still fit into the message that I’ve been suggesting, which is that everything that is a problem in Texas today is the Republicans’ fault. That’s partly because they have bad policies, and partly because they’ve been in charge for 25 years, longer than that at the statewide level. Anything they say needs fixing is something they could have started fixing before now or something they could have prevented or at least made less bad, but didn’t. They don’t get to run away from anything, and we can’t let them. Whatever it is, they own it.

Story #2: How a Tiny Texas River Agency Plans to Build the Largest Desalination Plant in the Country.

Something moved John Byrum. He believed he could succeed where others had not.

The executive director of the Nueces River Authority (NRA)—a small, rural agency based 200 miles from the coast—decided to take up the banner, in 2024, of a desalination plant on Corpus Christi Bay.

Plans to build seawater desalination plants had floundered for years near Corpus Christi, which provides water to a major complex of chemical plants and refineries, and the likelihood of water shortages was growing.

“Texas needed a sustainable supply of water in that area to protect the industry,” said Byrum, a veteran water manager with silver hair and a charming drawl. “This was the way to do it.”

The Port of Corpus Christi never secured financing for the multi-billion-dollar project, so Byrum would fund it one piece at a time. He took up collection, not from the region’s large industrial water users like ExxonMobil, OxyChemical and Valero, but from small towns and rural utilities in the hinterlands of San Antonio, 150 miles from the coast, that could theoretically be connected by pipeline to the desalination plant, according to records obtained by Inside Climate News.

The agency collected $6.4 million from 18 cities, towns and utilities since March of last year, records show, while it doled out lobbying and engineering contracts for the Harbor Island desalination project near Corpus Christi.

Executives collected money from as far away as the city of Kyle, south of Austin, where NRA’s chief operating officer at the time presented the City Council in October with plans to build the enormous pipeline from the coast by 2032, and an opportunity to reserve some of its water.

“We’re actually 90 percent sold out now,” Travis Pruski, the official, told the City Council. “You would buy the last 10 percent of the water.”

However, records show, Kyle bought the water, but Pruski didn’t stop selling. The agency continued to sell reservations for five months after Kyle paid its $500,000 deposit. In fact, the water was never sold out, records show.

Pruski resigned from the NRA in May, after alleging that Byrum misrepresented financial figures to Corpus Christi’s City Council and the agency’s board members. Byrum denies that and continues his work to build the desalination plant.

Pruski, a career fundraising professional and former mayor of the small town of Poth, declined to comment on the specifics of his time with the NRA or the allegations in his resignation letter.

“I’m not really wanting to talk about that right now,” he said. “I’ve kind of moved on with my life.”

In May, Byrum’s NRA announced a partnership with Israeli desalination giant IDE Technologies, which described the Harbor Island plant as the largest seawater desalination project in the Western Hemisphere.

First outlined in 2017 by the Port of Corpus Christi, plans for Harbor Island stalled amid feuding with the city government and its competing desalination project.

Later, the little NRA faced steep skepticism over its wherewithal to take on such an enormous endeavor.

Now, the partnership with IDE, a global leader in seawater desalination, marks the strongest sign yet that the landmark project could become a reality. It also means future Texans might pay a foreign company for water.

Everything about this is insane. I can’t do it justice, you have to keep reading. I’m rooting for them to somehow pull this off, just to see how it would work.

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

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was not ICE’s target

Posted on July 11, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Unbelievable.

Photo by Ronaldo Salgado

The 52-year-old Houston man fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent earlier this week was not the target of the agency’s operation, said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, who has called for release of any video footage capturing the deadly episode.

Garcia told The Texas Tribune that acting ICE Director David Venturella informed her in a call Thursday afternoon that ICE agents didn’t have any body-worn cameras or dashboard cameras during the shooting.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that it had received a tip from an unspecified law enforcement agency that led ICE agents to surveil a Houston residence and subsequently Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s van.

“After receiving a credible tip from our law enforcement partners, our officers conducted surveillance on a target’s address,” the DHS statement said. “Weeks prior to the incident, they noted two white vans at the property. On July 7, officers were almost at the target’s address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop.”

Agents had an administrative warrant for someone other than Salgado Araujo or his brother, who was also in the van, Garcia said Venturella told her.

According to the New York Times, ICE agents had administrative warrants for two Guatemalan immigrants. According to Salgado Araujo’s sons, their father, uncle and two other men in the vehicle are from Mexico. An administrative warrant does not have the same legal power as a criminal warrant, which must be reviewed and signed by a judge.

According to ICE intake information, two of the three men are from Mexico and were being held at the Montgomery ICE Processing Center in Conroe as of Thursday afternoon.

Garcia said she got a commitment from Venturella that all officers in the field would have a body cam by the end of the month.

A DHS spokesperson confirmed that the officers involved in the shooting didn’t wear body-worn cameras, saying that they had not been issued that equipment and blamed Democrats for holding them up. After Congress recently provided “historic funding,” the spokesperson said they would be provided.

“Body cameras have been deployed to more than half the field offices with the remaining half to receive them in the next 60 days,” the department’s statement said.

[…]

Garcia added that ICE said it would respond to a demand letter the congresswoman issued Thursday with other Democratic lawmakers after DHS’s Office of Inspector General completed its investigation, but didn’t provide a timeline for that investigation.

See here and here for some background. Untold billions of dollars appropriated for ICE, and this is what we get, a bunch of undertrained trigger-happy yahoos who couldn’t find their own asses with a flashlight and printed instructions. And the reason these tragedies keep happening is because an entire political party decided they don’t need to take responsibility for anything they do, the concept of taking responsibility is anathema to them. These are the stakes for the election this November and beyond. The Chron, the Times, and Talking Points Memo have more.

Two other items of interest: The silence from the Republicans continues to be deafening.

Three days after federal immigration agents fatally shot a man during a traffic stop in Houston, most of Texas’ Republican leaders had yet to weigh in on the incident or respond to calls from Democrats and civil rights advocates for an independent investigation.

As public outcry has rippled across the internet and the streets of Houston, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and most of the state’s GOP congressional delegation have kept mum about the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national who had lived in the country for decades. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot him to death earlier this week when authorities tried to stop his van during an operation.

[…]

At a press conference Friday, [Rep. Sylvia] Garcia and other Houston Democrats renewed their criticisms of ICE and their demands for an investigation conducted outside the agency. They also called for ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to release evidence supporting their claims.

Garcia, who represents the neighborhood where the shooting occurred, said she had not heard from Abbott nor any of her congressional Republican colleagues.

The governor’s office declined to respond Friday when asked about Garcia’s comments. A spokesperson referred the Tribune to the Texas Department of Public Safety for “information on how Rangers investigations start.”

Garcia said the differing accounts between ICE and witnesses, as well as DHS’ original reference to the incident as a targeted enforcement operation without mentioning Salgado Araujo was not the target, underscores the need for an outside probe.

“That’s why we need a complete, thorough investigation, and a fact-finding from top to bottom — and we have to make sure that it does include our local partners,” Garcia said, alluding to calls for Houston police and DPS to step in. “ICE cannot be doing this [investigation] alone, because otherwise, we’ll end up just like in the [Renee] Good case — nothing.”

[…]

The shooting occurred in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood, a heavily Hispanic area near the Houston Ship Channel in the city’s East End. But the area was moved out of Garcia’s district when Republicans redrew Texas’ congressional map last summer, putting it in the 9th Congressional District. GOP nominee Alex Mealer is the favorite to win the Republican-leaning seat in November.

Responding Tuesday night to DHS’ post on X detailing the agency’s claim that the ICE officer acted in self-defense, Mealer expressed her belief that the feds would get to the bottom of the matter.

“Today is yet another reminder of the dangers law enforcement face everyday as they protect our safety,” Mealer wrote on X. “I have full confidence in law enforcement’s ability to conduct a thorough investigation and ensure justice is served.”

Mealer has not made any public statements about the shooting since Tuesday, and her campaign did not immediately respond Friday to questions about whether she supported an independent investigation or believes ICE should release evidence.

Yeah, that’s about what I’d expect from a lightweight like Mealer. I’m sure she’ll have something to say once she’s been told what to say by other Republicans.

And finally, this was a surprise.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire vowed Friday to “pursue an independent and transparent” local investigation into Tuesday’s deadly ICE shooting but said federal control over evidence is proving difficult to overcome.

Whitmire said he directed Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz to be “proactive” in pursuing an investigation amid witness statements that contradict ICE’s account of the fatal shooting of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

Diaz has a meeting with Houston’s FBI bureau chief next week, Whitmire said, adding that the chief asked the federal agency to “start sharing information.”

“Our hands have been tied, but I’ve instructed the chief [and] city attorney to untie those hands,” Whitmire said in an afternoon news conference.

[…]

Whitmire also expressed frustration about ICE’s handling of the shooting and offered condolences to Salgado Araujo’s family, who have lived in Houston for decades.

“Mr. Salgado was chased by unmarked vehicles, [and] before he could identify himself and speak as a Houstonian, he was shot and killed,” Whitmire said. “I’ve met with his family today and expressed the entire city’s condolences and anger, and assured them that I and the levels of government represented here today, and the DA’s office, would do everything, use all of our resources and our waking hours, to pursue an independent and transparent investigation.”

The Harris County district attorney’s office launched its own investigation into the shooting on Thursday, but District Attorney Sean Teare said his office has had limited access to evidence in part because of the federal agencies’ involvement.

Whitmire said he had spoken with Teare about the difficulty of conducting their own investigations, as the FBI is “tightly controlling” all of the evidence related to the shooting.

“They control the scene, the deceased, the van, the witnesses. So yes, they control the investigation,” Whitmire said.

Friday’s announcement was a shift from Whitmire’s statements a day after the shooting, when he indicated that the city and its police department were incapable of investigating Salgado Araujo’s death because “there cannot be two ongoing investigations.” HPD said none of its officers were involved in the shooting, which Whitmire also said meant they lacked jurisdiction to investigate.

Not sure what caused the change of direction, but I’m glad to see it. The more eyes on this, the better.

Posted in La Migra | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Fifth Circuit rejects DREAM Act intervention effort

Posted on July 11, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Dammit.

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected an effort to defend the Texas Dream Act, leaving in place a ruling that ended a longstanding state law that allowed some undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court said advocacy groups, Austin Community College and a student could not step into the case to defend the Texas Dream Act because federal law bars states from giving undocumented students a tuition benefit based on residency unless the same benefit is available to all U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live.

The law allowed students who attended and graduated from high school in Texas to pay in-state tuition, even if they did not have legal immigration status.

[…]

Marco Julian Gonzalez, a University of Texas at Austin business student whose fraternity and sister sorority filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the students working to preserve the Texas Dream Act, said he was disheartened by the ruling and wondering what steps they could take next.

“We know who these people are and we know who they are not, and when you have politicians go on the airwaves and call our friends criminal illegal aliens we take offense and that kept us motivated to keep going,” Gonzalez said.

Judge Jerry E. Smith wrote the majority opinion for the 5th Circuit Court that Judge Don Willett joined. Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez dissented.

Smith was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Willett by President Donald Trump, and Ramirez by President Joe Biden.

See here, here, and here for the background. I’m sorry, but this is a total screw job, and a big pile of cowardice from the Fifth Circuit. This was a corrupt Justice Department, a corrupt Attorney General, and a disgraceful judge conspiring to do by fiat what the Legislature failed to do. This law was on the books for over 20 years, having been passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, and only just now did these forces decide it was actually illegal all along. Again I say, court reform has to be a lot bigger than just SCOTUS, because as long as unscrupulous plaintiffs can hand-pick a friendly judge and then get full backup from a lawless Fifth Circuit, it doesn’t even matter what’s happening in Washington DC. Texas Public Radio has more.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Replanting the trees lost in the Kerrville flood

Posted on July 11, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Good work.

Plateau Live Oak acorn seeds with their first leaves. Credit: Courtesy / Michael Eason

As Michael Eason drove along the banks of the Guadalupe River late last summer, amid places he had worked and photographed over the years, he couldn’t help but be moved by the devastation.

“Depending on where you were standing and where you’re counting, it was just gone,” he said.

Along with homes and businesses, iconic century-old bald cypress and American sycamore had been washed away and severely battered by the catastrophic flooding on July 4, 2025, and the ensuing cleanup.

A once bucolic river was left lined with mangled debris in a community also reeling from the loss of 119 lives. Thousands of homes and businesses washed away or were damaged.

“It was so devastating,” with deadwood extending from Hunt to Pasadena Point, and over half the tree canopy destroyed, said Eason, vice president of conservation and collection at the San Antonio Botanical Garden.

“When you drive down the highway, you look out and you see our oak trees, and you see our junipers, and there along the river, the bald cypress, and you think that they can never go away,” he said. “But they can.”

In fact, between 52% of the vegetation and tree canopy was lost within the floodway along 30 river miles from Hunt to Comfort, according to the Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District. Some parcels lost as much as 99%.

“Some of the most impacted areas are below large impoundments, such as Ingram Dam and Nimitz Dam,” said Clinton Carter, watershed ecologist and field operations manager.

Before-and-after images from Carter’s vegetation loss analysis are published to a dashboard, and Carter said the River and Environmental Working Group and the City of Kerrville are now trying to acquire new aerial imagery and data to monitor changes over time.

The loss from the flooding is significant considering only about 1% of the land in Texas is considered riparian or along natural waterways, according to some estimates, said Katherine Romans, executive director of the nonprofit Hill Country Alliance.

”It’s a very small band of land alongside these water bodies, and at the same time it has an outsized impact on biodiversity on water resources, on our quality of life,” she said.

“When you think about where you want to be in the hottest months of the summer, it’s alongside the river.”

[…]

For Eason, replanting trees seemed like the best way he could help.

Along with grasses and other plantings, the trees are critical to creating systems that are functional, he said, even helping to slow the water to prevent flooding, to clean the water and stabilize the riverbank.

They set a goal of planting 50,000 trees, and not just any trees — “native trees where the seed was collected locally there in the watershed … trees that in the long run will have the best chance of survival,” he said.

But they needed to move quickly to collect the seed when it became available at varying intervals last fall. A group began monitoring the trees for seed production.

Then for several weeks last fall, Eason led volunteers on a harvesting mission in the Texas Hill Country, plucking hardy native plant seeds from the riverbanks and the remaining trees on public and private land.

“Camp Stewart [for Boys] was one of the first properties we were able to access, and they were a great partner in this and have allowed us to collect quite a bit of seed from their property,” he said.

In all, the team collected more than 850,000 seeds from a variety of species, including cypress, sycamore, pecan, oak, walnut, red buckeye, and several herbaceous plants and grasses, including some that are not commercially available.

Prepared and then shipped to growers throughout the region, now those seeds have sprouted and made their way back to the botanical garden as saplings.

At least 30,000 plants are resting in cone-shaped containers under a makeshift shade structure waiting for the fall season when it’s optimal to plant.

Volunteers will be trained in the coming weeks and planting events are scheduled over several weekends, with 1,500 to 2,000 saplings sowed each time. Thirty sites along the river have been identified so far on both private property and public park space.

“Some of them will probably go through some sort of transplant shock [and] we will replace those, and so the goal isn’t just to plant 50,000 trees, the goal is to have 50,000 trees survive,” Eason said.

Consider this story to be a followup to this one from January that documented the damage to the area around the river. Michael Eason of the San Antonio Botanical Garden wrote about the vision and plan to remediate it around the same time. If you’re reading this and want to help I’d suggest contacting the San Antonio Botanical Garden or the Hill Country Alliance for more information. Kudos to all for making this happen.

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

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo roundup

Posted on July 10, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

For 35 years, a Mexican father built homes in Houston. Then a morning drive ended in tragedy.

Photo by Ronaldo Salgado

For the last 35 years, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s day began the same way: He woke up at 5 a.m., kissed his wife goodbye, loaded his work van and drove off to pick up his construction crew for work in Houston, his family said.

But on Tuesday, Salgado Araujo’s day would not end as it always did. He would not come home to eat a hearty dinner prepared by his wife, then spend the rest of the evening on the porch listening to music in the house he had built for his family.

Around 7 a.m., as the 52-year-old father of three picked up the last of his crew in Houston’s East End area before heading north to finish construction on several houses, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in an unmarked car fatally shot the Mexican man inside his van, Salgado Araujo’s oldest son recounted Wednesday.

ICE said Salgado Araujo attempted to evade arrest as agents tried to conduct a traffic stop as part of a “targeted operation.” He rammed into a law enforcement vehicle and refused to follow several verbal commands before an ICE agent fired his weapon in self-defense, the agency told CNN in a statement Tuesday.

Salgado Araujo had been living in the US without legal authorization, ICE said, without specifying whether the agents had been looking for him. He did not appear to have a criminal record, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Disputing the government’s account, Salgado Araujo’s family says they believe the man who’d been seeking a work permit would have stopped and complied with federal agents if he had known the car following him belonged to ICE or other law enforcement.

CNN has asked the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE, whether immigration enforcement agents identified themselves to Salgado Araujo.

[…]

Ronaldo Salgado wants the world to remember his father not for how he died but for his life as a family man who believed in the American dream.

“He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of ‘Mexican man shot and killed by ICE,’” he said. “He deserved to live a quiet life as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a husband, a father, and a job creator for dozens of men who also wanted the American dream.”

Salgado Araujo and his wife met when they were teenagers in Mexico, according to their son. He raised his three sons “on the idea of education taking us so far in life,” Ronaldo Salgado said. The eldest son became a teacher, while his brothers went into engineering.

Salgado Araujo ran his own construction business and “was known for his work ethic, his fairness, and his willingness to help anyone who needed it,” a GoFundMe page says. When people knocked on his door asking Salgado Araujo for opportunities, he would hire them to work with him, his son recounted.

Ronaldo Salgado said his father “only wanted to get back to work and back to us.”

“I am deeply heartbroken to see that the man who taught me the value of hard work, family values and education will no longer spend an evening on that porch,” he said.

I’ve been fortunate to know lots of people like Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in my life. The thought that something like this could happen to any of them makes me sick.

Harris County DA investigators return to east Houston scene of ICE agent shooting that killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare is urging anyone who witnessed Tuesday’s fatal ICE shooting in east Houston to come forward as his office conducts a parallel review into the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

In a statement posted Wednesday on X, Teare said Salgado Araujo, who was shot and killed during an attempted arrest in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood, “was a husband, a father, and a longtime member of our community.”

“When anyone in Harris County loses their life during an interaction with law enforcement, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office conducts an investigation parallel to the agency leading the investigation,” Teare wrote. “Unfortunately at this time, federal authorities continue exclusively handling all aspects in this case.”

On Wednesday, five investigators from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office were seen at the scene of the shooting, taking photographs and documenting evidence.

When asked about their presence, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said investigators are pursuing all available avenues despite federal authorities maintaining control over key evidence.

“Although access to key evidence remains under Federal control, we are pursuing investigative avenues available to us and will conduct a review of any information we collect within our reach,” the spokesperson said.

[…]

On Wednesday, 13 lawmakers sent a letter to the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety requesting a parallel investigation be opened into Araujo’s death.

“The Texas Rangers possess statewide jurisdiction to investigate officer-involved shootings, including those involving federal officers, and to determine whether any state law was violated. As members of the Legislature representing Harris County, we respectfully request that the Department of Public Safety open a parallel investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding this incident. This authority is inherent in Texas’s status as a dual sovereign and under its police powers,” the letter states.

The letter was signed by State Senators Carol Alvarado, Borris Miles, and Molly Cook, as well as State Representatives Christina Morales, Senfronia Thompson, Ana Hernandez, Gene Wu, Jon Rosenthal, Penny Morales Shaw, Jolanda Jones, Charlene Ward Johnson, Mary Ann Perez, and Armando Walle.

You can see a copy of the letter in the story. That was then followed by this.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Thursday his office is committed to investigating the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by a federal immigration agent but cautioned that local prosecutors face challenges accessing evidence.

His comment came amid mounting calls for independent investigations of the Tuesday shooting in Houston, particularly from 52-year-old Salgado Araujo’s family and community advocates who said they didn’t trust the federal government to fairly scrutinize the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the case.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General is leading the investigation, and Teare said it remains to be seen whether the agency would share anything with his office.

“My office is running an investigation,” he said in a radio interview with Houston Public Media. “But we do not have the same level of access that we do in almost any other officer-involved shooting.”

[…]

Teare also said he has been in contact with the Hennepin County attorney’s office, which launched inquiries into the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents earlier this year. The Minnesota officials sued the federal government to gain access to evidence.

“No one is more familiar with these kinds of situations than them,” he said.

See here for more. I’m very glad to see DA Sean Teare do what he and his office can to try to investigate this. It won’t be easy, but they have to try.

Can Houston officials investigate Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s death? Yes, but it would be complicated.

The calls for action and murky responses from local officials raised the question: Do local governments have the authority to investigate a federal official on their own? And if they do, what happens?

Legal experts, former police chiefs and former prosecutors all agree that Houston police and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office unquestionably have the authority to conduct their own investigation into Salgado’s death. In past fatal shootings caused by federal officials, like one involving an FBI agent in 2018, Houston police conducted a parallel investigation and Harris County prosecutors made their own charging decisions.

These experts also said that it is exceedingly difficult to gather any productive information if federal authorities do not cooperate. That’s because local officials have no ability to compel federal officials to appear in court, and they have no right to force them to hand over evidence collected at the scene.

“The state court doesn’t have the power to drag those people in the court — make them do anything — because they’re acting in their capacity as the federal government,” said Jules Johnson, a former Harris County civil rights prosecutor who worked on the case involving the FBI official. “You can issue a subpoena, and they never even have to respond to it — they just ball it up and throw it away.”

Officials in Minnesota, where high-profile ICE killings earlier this year led to nationwide protests, are encountering that obstacle right now. The state of Minnesota and Hennepin County are conducting their own investigations into the shootings of Good, Alex Pretti and Julio Sosa-Celis, but federal authorities for months have refused to turn over evidence. The state and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty have filed a lawsuit to force them to comply, and that suit is still being heard in court.

Still, the uphill battles have not dissuaded Houston police investigations in the past. Former Chief Charles McLelland, who led the department from 2010 to 2016 and spent his entire career with the Houston Police Department, said it was standard protocol during his time for local officials to conduct their own investigations.

“This shooting and death occurred in Houston proper, in Harris County,” said McLelland. “Whenever the medical examiner classifies this shooting, it’s going on HPD’s books. It has to be accounted for in the crime stats. How are you not going to have anything to do with the investigation?”

[…]

Ken Magidson, a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas and Harris County district attorney, said ICE is playing a very different role now than it has in the past.

During his four-decade-long prosecutorial career, Magidson said ICE focused on immigrants who had lengthy criminal records and posed a threat to the community. As the agency increasingly focuses on longtime residents without a criminal past, federal agents are collaborating with local law enforcement less and encountering more people who are not expecting to be targeted.

He estimated that in 90% of the use-of-force cases during his career, federal and local authorities collaborated on the investigation. When they don’t, he said, the feds have the upper hand.

“The question is, can you prove it in court beyond a reasonable doubt? And that’s where the rubber meets the road,” Magidson said.

No question, ICE and the rest of the federal government will obstruct and delay every step of the way. With a bit of luck, some help should be coming after November, and again in 2029. The point is to not give up in the meantime.

Democrats are calling for an investigation into Houston ICE shooting. Republicans have been mostly silent.

As of Wednesday afternoon, few Republicans had weighed in on the Tuesday morning shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during an encounter with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Houston’s East End. By contrast, Democrats have almost singularly criticized the shooting and called for an independent investigation of it.

“If this is a routine traffic stop, then everybody in Houston has to kind of fear for driving on our roads, and we’re going to be stopped by ICE, and this is going to be the end result,” U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, whose district includes the predominantly Latino area where the shooting took place, said on Hello Houston on Wednesday.

Garcia also noted that her office has had difficulty speaking with representatives from ICE, even at one point being told that “they didn’t have enough staff to deal with all our inquiries,” she said. Houston Public Media also reached out to ICE’s media contact for more information on other arrests on Tuesday and was directed to ICE’s Office of Partnership and Engagement, which asked for “2-3 days for follow-up.”

[…]

Among the other Democrats to call for an investigation are Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia; Houston City Council member Joaquin Martinez; Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo; Houston Mayor John Whitmire; state Sen. Carol Alvarado; and state Rep. Ana Hernandez, all of whom are Democrats representing the area where the shooting took place. Other officials calling for an investigation include Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico and Texas House Democratic Caucus leader Gene Wu, among others.

In the race for Harris County judge, Republican nominee Orlando Sanchez, one of few Republicans to go on the record on the matter, told Houston Public Media in a statement, “It is far too early in the investigation for me to have a comment on this incident. Let’s wait and allow those tasked with investigating to do their jobs.”

Letitia Plummer, the Democratic nominee, by contrast called for an independent investigation into the shooting and called for limits on interactions between local police and ICE.

Whitmire said the Houston Police Department was not involved in Tuesday’s shooting, his office stated that the city “lacks access to the evidence, witnesses, or investigative authorities necessary to conduct a complete review of federal actions.”

Interim Harris County Attorney Abbie Kamin, whose office handles civil cases involving the county government, stated “there needs to be serious questions as to why the city is taking the position that it’s taking” in not conducting its own investigation.

“In any investigation involving a death of a person within city limits, HPD can be involved in that investigation,” Kamin said on Hello Houston on Wednesday. “There are different avenues — again, I’m not saying leading investigations, or anything like that — but when something happens in our city, in our county, it is also our responsibility to ensure that evidence is preserved and that justice reigns at the end of the day.”

That’s the goal, however long it takes. The four Dems who represent Houston in Congress are also demanding answers from the feds. The more the merrier there. It’s hardly a surprise that Republicans don’t want to talk about this. But don’t worry, at some point they’ll figure out what their party line is.

ICE lies. And now they’ve killed a Houstonian.

Lorenzo may not have been an American on paper, but he was damned well a Houstonian.

He lived in Houston for 35 of his 52 years, his family said.

When he moved here from Mexico, the Oilers still played in the Astrodome. Beltway 8 hadn’t been completed. The population of the Houston metro was a little over half what it is today. As a construction worker, Lorenzo helped build that booming metropolis — and rebuild a proud city that has endured more hurricanes and 500-year storms than we can keep track of.

“This is about a Houston family led by a father who has been here for 35 years with absolutely no criminal history,” said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, who sat with Ronaldo at the hospital.

According to the Salgado family, Lorenzo was trying to fix his immigration status, a narrow and expensive process that usually takes decades. He had recently begun applying for proper authorization, Ronaldo said: “We dotted every i, crossed every t, filled every document, attended every appointment. He was close to obtaining his legal status.”

But Lorenzo would never get that chance.

ICE says that their officers only shot in self-defense. That the victim was attempting to run them down.

We’ve heard that before: the flat-out lies told by federal agents and amplified by government leaders.

We heard it in Minneapolis after the killings of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Administration nurse, and Renée Good, a poet and mother. We heard it in Texas after the killing of Ruben Ray Martinez on South Padre Island. All three were U.S. citizens.

Now ICE has killed one of our own. Blood stains Canal Street.

Every fellow Houstonian should demand a thorough investigation, and also the release of video footage, including from dash and body cameras. Citizens should also share whatever information they have, video, eyewitness accounts. The city should review and share its own municipal camera footage, including from license plate readers. Businesses should share any security video they have.

Video has been key in proving previous ICE lies. I hope there’s video evidence in this case as well.

‘I recognized him immediately’: Son recounts frantic search for father killed in Houston ICE shooting.

The son of a Mexican immigrant killed Tuesday by federal immigration agents in East Houston learned his father had been shot when he found a video on social media of his dad crying out in pain on the sidewalk.

“I saw video posted on Facebook that he had been shot,” Ronaldo Salgado said, holding back tears at a news conference Wednesday morning. “I recognized him immediately. Not from his appearance but from his voice crying for help as he laid on the street bleeding out.”

[…]

Salgado praised his father’s work ethic, saying his goal was to provide for his wife and their three sons. He did that quietly and without fanfare for 35 years. He was a man of routine who was in the process of obtaining a work permit.

Tuesday morning began like most days, Salgado said — his dad rose early, stocked up on breakfast and coffee, then headed out in his work van to pick up his crew and head to a job site.

“Around 7 a.m., I was notified by my mom that something bad had happened to my dad,” he said. “At 7:05, five minutes after, I left the house, drove all the way up to his work site an hour away to find any evidence of his van.”

He couldn’t find his dad at the work site. At around 8 a.m., he saw a Facebook post describing ICE activity on Canal Street near his home. He wasn’t sure if his dad was involved, but he headed that way and found the street blocked off by police.

“I saw my dad’s van, but no sign of him. I frantically called family, friends, loved ones to see if they can find any information,” he said.

At 10 a.m., he watched a video on Facebook and heard his father crying for help.

“I went to Ben Taub Hospital and demanded answers, but no one could give them to me. I learned of my father’s passing from a news report on social media, not the hospital, not law enforcement,” he said.

“Through a collective effort from local organizations and elected officials, we got answers,” he added. “My father’s death was confirmed. I had to call my mom right away to give her the terrible news of my dad’s passing before she had to find out the same way.”

Araujo had no criminal record, his son said, and woke up at 5 a.m. every weekday to work construction.

“My father was a simple man, a family man,” he said. “He dedicated his life in the United States to giving his family the American dream. He raised my brothers and I on the idea of education taking us so far in life.”

My heart goes out to Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s family and friends. May they find peace, comfort, and justice.

Posted in La Migra | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Texas Tech sued over censoring professors

Posted on July 10, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

I wish them luck.

Faculty groups sued Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the university system’s regents Wednesday, asking a federal judge in El Paso to block classroom restrictions they say have censored professors who teach about race, gender identity and sexual orientation and intentionally discriminated against Black faculty.

The lawsuit, brought by the Texas American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers and the national American Association of University Professors, challenges two memos Creighton issued after becoming chancellor last year.

The groups argue the restrictions outlined in the memos violate the First Amendment by allowing Texas Tech officials to suppress viewpoints they dislike, violate the Fourteenth Amendment by leaving professors unsure what they can teach without being disciplined and discriminate against Black faculty by singling out instruction about Black history, racial inequality and efforts to remedy it.

Creighton’s first memo, issued Dec. 1, told faculty they could face discipline if they did not comply with new limits on course content involving race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. It required faculty to submit course material related to those topics for regents to review and approve.

A second memo, issued April 9, went further, ordering the phase-out of academic programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity and requiring professors in core and lower-level undergraduate courses to use alternate materials if readings, assignments or lectures included those topics.

The memo said some material could still be taught if needed for patient care, professional credentials or advanced coursework, but the lawsuit argues those exceptions were applied inconsistently.

The policies apply across the five-institution system, which includes Texas Tech University, two health sciences centers, Angelo State University and Midwestern State University.

The complaint includes new accounts of how the restrictions have been applied. It alleges a Texas Tech Health Sciences Center professor in Lubbock was told medical students could not participate in or observe care for transgender patients, even when those patients sought treatment for unrelated conditions such as hypertension, migraines or cancer. It also says a professor was told a Holocaust course would have to leave the core curriculum if it included instruction on gay and bisexual victims of the Nazis, and that regents barred professors from teaching Plato’s Republic and Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ National Book Award-winning book about racism in America.

The medical-training allegation underscores the lawsuit’s claim that Texas Tech’s stated exceptions were confusing and inconsistently applied. Creighton’s memos said some material could still be taught when needed for patient care or professional credentials. But the complaint says the Lubbock professor was initially required to remove material about transgender and intersex patients from a medical school course, even though the professor considered it vital to the course and necessary for medical certification exams. The professor was later told medical students could treat transgender patients during third- and fourth-year clinical rotations, according to the complaint, but only after some students’ rotations had already passed.

The groups are asking a judge to declare Creighton’s memos unconstitutional and block the system from enforcing them or any similar policy. The lawsuit, saying faculty members have already had to certify compliance for summer and fall courses, argues the restrictions will continue to harm them as well as deprive students of instruction they would otherwise receive.

I didn’t blog about this at the time, because sometimes it’s all just too much. The “best” part of all this was Brandon Creighton claiming that his little censorship spree was needed to foster “diversity of viewpoint” at the school. You know, diversity spanning the full range from A to B. While I applaud and agree with this action, I also feel depressingly confident about how it will play out: The plaintiffs will win a significant ruling from the district court, and then the Fifth Circuit will trip over itself to issue a stay on the ruling, which they will eventually overturn because that’s what they do. Court reform: It isn’t just for SCOTUS anymore. Anyway, as I said, I wish them all the best. But I fear it will take a lot more than just a righteous lawsuit to overturn this.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment