Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

The Congressional situation in Texas

Posted on December 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I’m always happy to see stories like this.

The main group working to elect Democrats to the U.S. House announced Wednesday it sees a path to victory in a district that Texas Republicans just redrew to be more GOP-friendly.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says it will invest in the party’s nominee for Congressional District 35, a seat that was redrawn from a Democratic stronghold into one that would have favored President Donald Trump by 10 points in 2024.

”Democrats will not let (Republicans’) cynical power play go down without a fight,” Susan DelBene, who chairs the national campaign arm, said in a statement Tuesday. “The DCCC will work to ensure the people of Texas’ 35th District have the representation they deserve.”

The open seat is one of two in Texas that the DCCC named to its “Districts in Play,” a roster of Republican-held or Republican-leaning seats the party considers competitive as it seeks to win the majority in the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm. In a news release, a spokesperson for the group argued that voters favor Democratic strategies for addressing rising costs, health care access and working-family issues.

The group’s GOP counterpart set CD-35 as a target in September, soon after Gov. Greg Abbott signed the new map into law. The National Republican Campaign Committee argued Democrats are mistaken in trying to win the redrawn district, which Trump would have won by 5 points in 2016.

[…]

The three Democrats vying for the nomination are taking different approaches with voters. Johnny Garcia, a Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy, has pitched himself as an “old school Democrat” ready to defend working families on both sides of the aisle.

“As a Sheriff’s deputy, you don’t take the call because a house is a Republican or Democratic house, you take it because it’s a family who needs you,” Garcia said in a statement after he filed on Monday. “True public safety means more than tough talk, it means ensuring kids feel safe in school, families can access healthcare, and communities can thrive with affordable housing and economic opportunity.”

Marine veteran John Lira has also sought to appeal to moderates. He has said that his first act in Congress would be to file legislation requiring that active-duty troops and National Guard soldiers be paid during government shutdowns. “I’m running to make sure every Texan has a fair shot, a strong voice, and a future they can count on,” he says on his campaign website.

Also in the running is gun club owner Whitney Masterson-Moyes, whose campaign website centers on pushing back against the Trump administration and “defending the Constitution.”

In a social media post Friday, she foregrounded affordability and health care access.

“I’m running to make Texas more affordable, expand opportunity, protect Social Security and Medicare, and finally fix our broken healthcare system,” she said in a social media post after filing for the Democratic primary.

Johnny Garcia seems like the most viable candidate to me, but we’ll see what the January finance reports say. I’m just glad we found some respectable contestants in a district that Beto almost won in 2018. Of the potentially winnable district for Dems this one is the toughest, but it absolutely deserves a real challenge, especially in a year like 2026.

As the story notes, the DCCC is also in on CD15, which would be a flip of a current Republican seat. The most realistic blue-sky outcome for Dems in Texas in 2026 is a net of zero seats gained or lost, by holding onto four of the five GOP redistricting targets (CDs 09, 28, 34, and 35) and flipping CD15. Just holding CDs 28 and 34 is the minimum for calling this a good year, and anything above that makes this a very good year.

How likely all that is depends largely on how much of the gains Republicans made with Latino voters in 2024 hold up – it’s clear how big a bet they’ve placed on that in the redraw of the Congressional map. That’s looking pretty shaky right now.

Like the races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia in November, exit polling in Miami shows Latino voters flipped heavily back to Democratic candidates after last year’s presidential election, when Donald Trump made major gains with them.

Chuck Rocha, a national Democratic political strategist originally from Tyler, said in New Jersey, Latino voters were feeling a combination of anxieties about the economy and the way Trump has handled immigration. Many may have wanted tougher border security, but that has brought “a certain amount of terror just because they have brown skin.”

The result, Rocha said, is that in some places in New Jersey, there was a 25% shift of Latinos from Trump to Democrats. He said Texas is a very different game because of how big of a presence Latinos have in South Texas. About 80% of the voters in South Texas are Latino, which means just shifting 5% to 8% of Trump supporters could sweep candidates like [CD15 candidate Bobby] Pulido into office.

A group called WelcomePAC, which supports more moderate Democrats, also sees a pathway to victory for both Pulido and U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Brownsville. Even though Republicans redrew congressional lines to favor GOP candidates, the group thinks they made faulty assumptions that Latino voters will vote for Republicans next year just because they supported Trump in 2024.

“If we want to be competitive in more places, we must invest in candidates who offer a compelling centrist vision for Democratic leadership,” WelcomePac co-founder Lauren Harper Pope said.

Both Pulido and Gonzalez are pro-oil industry Democrats who generally support tougher border security.

Republicans say they’ve put in big work in South Texas and will be ready for the 2026 midterm elections. Gov. Greg Abbott specifically has put millions of dollars into helping flip seats in the Texas Legislature and Congress to Republicans.

While Pulido said he doesn’t have much interest in results in other states, he’s feeling a vibe on the ground in the 15th District, a 10-county area that runs from Hidalgo County north to Gonzales County along Interstate 10.

He said he’s been around politics enough to know there is an energy building.

“You’re damn right I feel good about our chances,” he said.

Pulido has to win a primary first, and you never know what might happen. His opponent, Ada Cuellar, may also turn out to be a formidable contender. It’s early, we’ll see how the fundraising goes, who knows where Trump’s approval rating and the national atmosphere will be, etc etc etc.

CNN is on the same beat.

Democrats beat Trump’s 2024 results in five US House districts with special elections this year by at least 13 points. Over-performance at that level next year would flip three of the five new Texas seats to the Democratic column, though it’s unlikely that performance will be replicated in every district around the country, and recent polling suggests that Democrats currently have a more modest national advantage.

“I can feel it on the ground,” said Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, whose South Texas district was one of the five targeted by Republicans. “I really anticipate us taking the majority back next cycle and winning back South Texas and places that had been traditional Democratic districts that have turned on us in the last few cycles, with so many disillusioned people.”

[…]

Trump improved Republicans’ standing with Latino voters in 2024, winning about 46%, according to 2024 exit polls, up from 32% in 2020. Texas’ new maps sought to build on Trump’s strong performance in the state, which he won by 14 points. Notably, Trump won every county in the heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley, which was long a Democratic stronghold.

Four of the five Democratic-held seats targeted by the state GOP are majority Latino under the new maps, with the 28th Congressional District, represented by longtime Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, topping out at over 90% Latino.

But Trump’s standing among Latinos has fallen dramatically nationwide since the start of his second term, outpacing his drop in approval overall. In three statewide races this November – a Democratic-backed ballot measure in California and gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia – Democrats gained the most in counties with higher shares of Latinos, even outpacing Joe Biden’s 2020 margins there.

And in Miami, a Democratic-backed candidate won the mayoral election earlier this month, breaking nearly 30 years of Republican-aligned control of the nonpartisan seat.

In Texas, Trump’s approval rating among Latinos dropped from 44% in February to 32% in October, according to the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll. The 2025 UH-TSU Texas Trends Survey found Latinos in Texas expressing regret for their 2024 vote at higher rates than Texan voters overall. When asked how they would have voted in the 2024 presidential election if they could vote again, Texan Latinos backed Democrat Kamala Harris by a margin of 11 points, a 19-point swing from the 8-point margin by which the same group said they supported Trump in 2024.

Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and founder of Solidarity Strategies, told CNN that he thought Latinos could swing back to Democrats next year by a five- to 20-point margin.

“I think they’re all going to snap back,” Rocha said. “It’s just, do they get back to the norms of where it was before Trump?”

Gonzalez told CNN that he’s been seeing that discontent among his own constituents in the past year. His new district is more than three-quarters Latino.

Gonzalez highlighted that affordability is the top issue in his district, along with a shortage of labor and an increased presence of immigration officers on the ground.

“I don’t think Democrats, and especially Latinos, who voted for Trump ever expected that this would happen,” Gonzalez later said. “And now it has, and it’s compounded – that is compounded with a lot of the other problems that we’re talking about, economic problems and inflation and people, the American people, are continuing to struggle.”

A big swing among Texas Latinos could put the GOP-held 15th Congressional District in play too. Currently held by Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, the 15th District voted comfortably for Trump in 2024 (he won by 18 points under 2026 lines), but his margin was considerably more modest in 2020 (2 points). Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke won the district by 11 points in his 2018 US Senate run. De La Cruz’s electoral margins barely change under the new map.

We’ve talked about the polls before, and there will be plenty more of them to watch as we go forward. I continue to believe that Trump’s position is more likely to degrade than to improve from here, but who knows what that will mean at the ballot box. I’m eager to see what happens in the SD09 runoff, as that may give some indicator of what’s to come. Or maybe it won’t – the Republican candidate there will surely have a massive financial advantage, and that can make up for a lot. This is where we are now. Daily Kos has more.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Ada Cuellar, Beto O'Rourke, Bobby Pulido, CD09, CD15, CD28, CD32, CD34, CD35, Congress, DCCC, Democratic primary, Donald Trump, Election 2018, Election 2024, Election 2026, Henry Cuellar, John Lira, Johnny Garcia, polls, redistricting, Texas, Vicente Gonzalez, Whitney Masterson-Moyes | 1 Comment

California redistricting trial is underway

Posted on December 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Worth keeping an eye on.

The fight over California’s new congressional map designed to help Democrats flip a string of U.S. House seats kicked off in court Monday, where a panel of federal judges is considering whether the rejiggered districts approved by voters last month can be used in elections.

The hearing in Los Angeles sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Trump administration and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been eyeing a 2028 presidential run. The lawsuit asks a three-judge panel to grant a temporary restraining order blocking the new map by Dec. 19 — the date candidates can take the first official steps to run in the 2026 elections when GOP control of the House will be in play.

Voters approved California’s new House map in November in so-called Proposition 50. It’s designed to help Democrats flip as many as five seats in the midterm elections. It was Newsom’s response to a Republican-led effort in Texas backed by President Donald Trump.

[…]

The Justice Department, joining a case brought by the California Republican Party, has accused California of gerrymandering its map in violation of the Constitution by using race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters. Republicans want the court to prohibit California from using the new map. Voters approved the map for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. State Democrats said they’re confident the lawsuit will fail.

“In letting Texas use its gerrymandered maps, the Supreme Court noted that California’s maps, like Texas’, were drawn for lawful reasons,” Newsom’s spokesperson Brandon Richards said in a statement. “That should be the beginning and the end of this Republican effort to silence the voters of California.”

The lawsuit cites a news release from state Democrats that says the new map “retains and expands Voting Rights Act districts that empower Latino voters” while making no changes to Black majority districts in the Oakland and Los Angeles areas. The federal Voting Rights Act, passed in the 1960s, sets rules for drawing districts to ensure minority groups have adequate political power. The lawsuit also cites a Cal Poly Pomona and Caltech study that concludes the new map would increase Latino voting power.

“Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Proposition 50 — the recent ballot initiative that junked California’s pre-existing electoral map in favor of a rush-job rejiggering of California’s congressional district lines,” the lawsuit said.

The Justice Department alleges that Paul Mitchell, a redistricting consultant who drew the map for Democrats, and state leaders admitted that they redrew some districts to have a Latino majority.

The hearing began with a dense, technical discussion spotlighting how one of the districts — the 13th, in the state’s Central Valley — was designed, touching on issues like the Hispanic voting age population, census population blocks and different software used manage and massage the data.

“Race was the predominant interest in drawing the district,” elections analyst Sean Trende, called by the plaintiffs, told the judges. He pointed to a thumb-like appendage jutting out of the northern end of the new district, which he characterized as a precise knife cut to capture certain voters.

Defense attorneys picked away at his analysis, questioning in part whether political shifts in the region could have dictated how lines were drawn rather than racial considerations. At one point Trende acknowledged that the thumb-like bump in the district boundary was not as extreme as congressional maps seen in other states.

Governor Newsom is correct in what the SCOTUS majority said about Texas’ map. That doesn’t mean we should expect them to do such pedestrian things as behave with “consistency” or “integrity” or “following the law”, of course. But first the three-judge panel gets a crack at it, and we’ll see what happens from there.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged California, Congress, Donald Trump, Election 2026, Gavin Newsom, Justice Department, lawsuit, redistricting, Texas | Leave a comment

“Mattress Mack: The Movie”

Posted on December 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Oh my God.

A feature film based on the life of Jim McIngvale, the Texas businessman best known for his philanthropy as the owner and operator of the Houston-based Gallery Furniture retail chain, is in the works from HappyBad Bungalow, Roosevelt Film Lab and Phiphen.

Mattress Mack will star Billy Magnussen (Lilo & Stitch) as McIngvale, Dianna Agron (The Chosen), Darby Lee-Stack (The Holdovers) and Rob Corddry (The Audacity). Shane Andries will direct from a screenplay he also wrote. Production is set to begin this month in Texas.

Set in the early 1980s and 2000s in Houston, the film is based on a true story about Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, a beloved Texas tycoon and retail pioneer who is best known for his generosity and community service.

Often opening his Gallery Furniture stores to shelter and feed people during natural disasters, McIngvale has helped thousands affected by multiple major hurricanes in Texas, earning recognition as a Houston hero. This past summer, McIngvale made headlines after donating 500 mattresses to survivors of the July Fourth Texas Hill Country floods, along with first responders and volunteers who helped out during the historic flood event.

Mattress Mack will follow McIngvale’s journey as he risks everything to open Gallery Furniture alongside his wife and business partner Linda, and the challenges the family faces years later when their youngest daughter battles a debilitating case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Apparently, this has been kicking around for awhile. I did not know that. It sounds like the story will end before Mack gets way into sports betting and right-wing politics, but I guess you have to leave some material for the sequel. Perhaps a different filmmaker should helm that one. Thanks to Therese for the link.

Posted in TV and movies | Tagged Houston, Jim McIngvale | 3 Comments

Whitmire resolution passes

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

In the end, it wasn’t close.

Mayor John Whitmire

Mayor John Whitmire will no longer be able to get endorsements from the Harris County Democratic Party following an overwhelming vote Sunday by the party’s precinct chairs, issuing what could pose as a debilitating blow to his 2027 re-election campaign.

Precinct chairs voted 186-80 at a highly attended meeting Sunday to deny the mayor future endorsements after a coalition of chairs submitted a proposal following Whitmire’s participation in a fundraising event for U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican representing Kingwood and Humble.

Whitmire has faced heat for months from more than 100 precinct chairs who have accused him of undermining the “values and mission of the Democratic party,” and “(standing) on the sidelines” and failing to stand up for Houstonians as Trump changed policy at the federal level.

“John Whitmire’s agenda is indistinguishable from that of a MAGA mayor,” the chairs’ original statement read, referring to the Trump campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

“With Trump in office and pursuing an illegal and authoritarian agenda impacting millions of Houstonians, we deserve to have a fighter who wants to represent us, not a willing enabler of an emerging dictatorship,” the statement continued. “If Whitmire wants to be a Republican, that’s OK, but he shouldn’t be able to do that and count on the support of thousands of grassroots volunteers who shed blood, sweat and tears to knock on doors and elect people who represent our values.”

The proposal sailed through the party’s resolutions committee with a 14-5 vote and its steering committee with a 17-7 vote before going up to the full party on Sunday evening.

Neither Whitmire nor his spokesperson returned a request for comment from the Houston Chronicle on the result of the vote. Whitmire and his spokesperson have not returned any Chronicle reporters’ requests for comment since Aug. 17.

I was there and I voted for it. I’ve said what I have to say about this, so let me add this much. While the Crenshaw fundraiser wasn’t that big a deal to me, it was clearly a significant point of contention. I thought the three Whitmire defenders who spoke on his behalf (the pro- and anti- sides of the resolution were each allowed three speakers before the vote) tried to downplay that, which I disliked. They cast it as him attending a fundraiser, when it has been described as him being the headliner. That’s a significant difference, and I think the Whitmire defenders should have acknowledged why people might have been mad about that. Own it, don’t duck it.

On the other hand, I thought the Whitmire defenders’ strongest point was one made about Whitmire appealing to Crenshaw to persuade Donald Trump to not block or rescind $350 million in derecho/Beryl recovery aid, as he has done with other cities with Democratic Mayors. That effort was successful, and while I don’t know how much of a role Crenshaw had in that, it is a meritorious point, once one gets past the horror of a President who would ever do that to any American city. Frankly, it’s a point that Whitmire himself should have been making once this issue started to boil up. I might have felt differently if that had been a significant part of the discussion. But then Whitmire would need to be a better communicator, and the fact that he hasn’t even bothered to give a comment to the Chronicle since August (!) speaks quite loudly to that.

Even after all this, it’s not too late for Whitmire to try to mend some fences. I don’t expect him to do that, but it is a path he could take, if he wants to. I’m ready to move on to 2026 and the big elections there that face us. Read the rest (gift link) if you want to know more.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Dan Crenshaw, Donald Trump, Election 2026, Election 2027, endorsements, Greg Abbott, Harris County, HCDP, Houston, Houston City Council, John Whitmire, Mike Doyle | 2 Comments

Finally some numbers on Evolv microtransit

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I appreciate that we got even this much, but there are still many questions about this service.

After more than one year and $1 million of Metro funding, the shuttles – operated via Evolve Houston – have delivered fewer than 100,000 trips. Still, Metro has committed another $4.1 million to keep the Community Connector program moving and to potentially expand its usage, as more people use the service to move about the city.

[…]

To make a firm assessment of a pilot’s success, Metro usually gathers much more information, such as riders per hour and its cost per passenger. Staff already collects the information for its other microtransit program, curb2curb, which operates in low-service areas where connections to other transit are critical but there isn’t enough demand for fixed routes.

“It’s difficult to evaluate the success of the Community Connector program without more specific goals and metrics,” said Peter Eccles, director of policy and planning at the advocacy group LINK Houston.

The information that has been collected on Evolve shows a system that is gaining riders, but still trailing most forms of transit in the area. Evolve’s best route – its downtown zone – carried nearly 5,300 passengers in October. Only three of Metro’s 67 conventional bus routes carried fewer passengers, and those limited routes operate for limited hours and essentially operate to connect people in low-density neighborhoods with more robust transit.

Though heavily promoted by Metro via its website, the Evolve shuttles are not operated by the transit agency, or even Evolve – the city-and-CenterPoint sponsored coalition aimed at boosting electric vehicle use in the region. Evolve Houston contracts with RYDE, a company that supplies the vehicles and drivers, which then contracts with another company, Ride Circuit, for the software that lets riders hail the shuttles.

[…]

Complications aside, drivers said the service is gaining popularity with many residents. In the Heights and Third Ward, drivers said elderly residents in particular have leaned on the rides for doctor’s appointments, grocery trips and other errands.

Data collected by Evolve shows the shuttles have lured loyal riders, albeit slowly and with seasonal swings.

From Oct. 1, 2024 to Oct. 31, 2025, they provided 96,945 rides, according to monthly ridership compiled by Metro and provided by Evolve. Nearly three-quarters of that use during the 13 months has come from the downtown and Third Ward zones, where the system has been successful at tapping into both visitors avoiding car use and transit-dependent Houstonians trying to connect to local destinations.

Evolve Houston executive director Casey Brown said the nonprofit has received “a lot of requests for more cars, more hours, more zones and many of them come with a five star rating. So it’s really cool to see that there’s so many people that we’re impacting their lives.”

Use in Second Ward, the Heights and the Near Northside started small, and has grown incrementally. From June, when the Northside route debuted, the three zones grew from a combined 1,919 riders to 6,025 in October.

Most of that is from Near Northside, with the Heights being the smallest. There’s a chart in the story (gift link), so take a look at those monthly totals. The Heights has only been above a thousand riders in a month since September – the last two months shown are September and October – which very much fits my impression of the service.

While users tout the benefits of a free ride and officials say they are providing a crucial transportation service, Evolve’s shuttles are an infinitesimal share of Houston’s transit network. The shuttles accounted for slightly more than 0.2% of trips in the region during October. Combined, the Evolve partnership delivered nearly 14,530 trips across the five zones in October. In the same month, Metro reported 6.97 million one-way trips.

[…]

As Metro studies and spends money deciding “how to operate and incorporate” Evolve, per Brock, it has a successful system of microtransit that is outperforming the shuttles. All five of the curb2curb routes – including the Sunnyside line that started in January – carried more riders in October than all of the Evolve routes. In the case of the Missouri City, Hiram Clarke and Acres Homes routes, each had 10,000 or more trips during the month, while Evolve routes ranged between 1,300 and 5,300 trips.

There are some comparative limitations to the two types of door-to-door service. Curb2curb charges for rides – though the actual cost of the trip is much higher – while Evolve is entirely subsidized.

Curb2curb operates longer into the evening, uses gasoline-powered minivans and is capable of accommodating wheelchair users. Evolve has more limited hours, operates via open-air electric shuttles and cannot accommodate wheelchair users and others who might have issues getting in and out of the shuttle.

Also confounding the comparison is Metro’s lack of detailed information. On every route in the Metro system, including the curb2curb services, planners report detailed information, including the number of riders per mile driven on the route and the passengers per each hour the route is in service. Those two figures, passengers per mile and passengers per hour, are the basis for testing whether a route works.

“Unlike curb2curb, performance data is not included in Metro’s monthly ridership reports, making apples-to-apples comparisons impossible,” Eccles said.

[…]

Shuttle use has limits, as national examinations have shown. When it duplicates other options, it can be harmful. Downtown, for example, is the most transit-rich area of Houston, crisscrossed by buses and trains more than 20 hours of the day. Door-to-door trips are not as vital when a bus is two blocks away, and seniors and the disabled can call MetroLift.

“Microtransit is a coherent strategy for providing coverage, not ridership,” said Jarrett Walker, a nationally recognized transit expert who helped Metro redesign its bus service in 2016. “It has a role when an agency has decided to provide coverage for non-ridership reasons, such as social need or political geography.”

Those flexible systems, Walker argues, run afoul when they become competitors to more efficient bus routes. As a result, use of the system becomes complicated, because in many ways microtransit is intended for very few people, to meet a specific need that a fixed bus route cannot, or cannot without potentially wasting fuel, money and staff time.

“When we design it, we are careful not to let it become more attractive than fixed routes,” Walker said. “The extreme inefficiency of ridership means that ridership is the worst thing that can happen to it: Ridership just means more vehicles must be added, exploding costs.”

See here for the previous update. LINK Houston’s Eccles also noted that Metro had proposed five new curb2curb zones in the 2019 METRONext referendum, of which only two of those have been implemented so far. Just what I needed, another illustration of how Mayor Whitmire and his Metro board members have nullified the 2019 referendum. The bottom line here is that I’d be a lot less unhappy about all this if Metro were delivering on that promise from 2019 and working towards building the kind of robust and comprehensive transit system our city and its region needs. I’m sure this microtransit system has value, I just don’t trust this board to properly evaluate it.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged buses, Curb2curb, Election 2019, electric buses, Elizabeth Brock, Evolve Houston, Houston, John Whitmire, light rail, LINK Houston, Metro, RYDE | 2 Comments

A resolution to the Arlington nun mutiny

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Peace at last.

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), Doctor of the Church and co-founder of the Discalced Carmelites

More than two years after a scandal erupted between a group of secluded Arlington nuns and a Catholic bishop, the Vatican will allow the Fort Worth diocese to establish a new order of nuns.

In a letter to parishioners this month, Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson said the Vatican’s decision “marks a moment of extraordinary grace for our local Church” and that the monastery will be a “place where the beauty of contemplative life radiates outward into the world.”

The new Discalced Carmelite monastery will be in northern Cooke County outside of Muenster, about 80 miles north of Dallas, on land donated by a member of the church. The diocese has begun raising money to build the monastery, Olson said. Until it is complete, the six nuns and three nuns in training will live at a temporary site in Cooke County.

“This is very much a new chapter for us,” Olson said in an interview this week with The Dallas Morning News. “Our community needs the prayers from a contemplative community of nuns who dedicate their lives to the reparation of sin and sanctification of God’s people.”

Diocese members celebrated the order’s opening this week with a special Mass, one year after its predecessor in Arlington joined the Society of St. Pius X, a breakaway traditionalist Catholic group that is not fully recognized by the church.

[…]

Olson attempted to dismiss Gerlach in 2023, but the nuns refused to recognize the bishop’s authority. In August 2023, Olson warned they could face excommunication if they continued to do so.

In October 2024, the nuns’ Vatican-appointed leader dismissed the nuns from their order and religious life. The nuns called the dismissal ridiculous and egregiously false because they did not recognize the authority of Mother Marie of the Incarnation, who issued the order.

Discalced Carmelite Nuns have lived in Tarrant County since 1958, and until 2023 had little interaction with the diocese. The nuns remain on 72 wooded acres in the Arlington monastery, where they spend their days praying, cooking, cleaning and caring for the grounds. Outside of medical care, they rarely leave the premises.

In Cooke County, the nuns will do the same. Unlike the Arlington order, they do not plan to have a website, Olson said. Instead, they will accept prayer requests by phone at 940-641-5564 or mail: Carmel of Jesus Crucified, P.O. Box 308, Muenster, TX 76252.

See here, here, here, and here for some background. Ginger, who will be back with Dallas roundups in the new year, sent me this story, which I appreciated. I’ve had a soft spot for these nuns all along, but anytime you see a reference to “a breakaway traditionalist Catholic group that is not fully recognized by the church” you know you’ve wandered into some extremely weird (and often really problematic) territory. I can’t say I approve of how the diocese handled this, but it’s probably for the best that there’s a more mainstream convent for this order now. What a ride this was. I wish the displaced Discalced nuns a nice, peaceful, out of the spotlight existence.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Arlington, Catholic Church, lawsuit, Michael Olson, Tarrant County, Teresa Agnes Gerlach, Texas | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for December 14

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Vote for the Golden Dukes!

“So Trump — who didn’t spend a minute behind bars — about to swindle about 50 percent more than the total amount of money paid to the 97 innocent people who were incarcerated for more than 1,200 years in Texas. Or about 12 percent more than the total paid last year to 957 victims of police brutality in New York City.”

“The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Is Detaining People for ICE”.

“Everyone hates gas-powered leaf blowers. So why is it so hard to ban them?”

“Even the loudest and most adamantly anti-DEI MAGAnauts — people as far right as Adam Baldwin — who witness a character making even the slightest demonstration of the virtues of diversity, equality, and inclusion will perceive those virtues as virtuous. This is, to them, intolerable. It makes them mad and drives them mad because they perceive it as a personal attack. If a fictional character who has made choices that I refuse to make is thereby portrayed and perceived as good (even by me), then I am being portrayed and perceived as bad (even by me).”

“How the dollar-store industry overcharges cash-strapped customers while promising low prices”.

“Nordic countries that restructured parental leave, provided free child care, and created more flexible workplace norms that pull men into caregiving have higher fertility. Their rates hover around 1.4 to 1.6 — still well below replacement, but better. In Norway, Iceland, and Sweden, fathers who used their countries’ parental leave policies were more likely to have partners who welcomed a second child. Gender equality isn’t a magic fix, but doubling down on traditional roles seems to make things worse, not better.”

“The Trump administration’s policies on climate, cutting funding to key programs, reducing access to and limiting the collection of climate data, and slashing the ranks of federal regulators are contributing to an increase in property insurance rates for homeowners, said insurance industry analysts and experts.”

“The idea of males, including white males, being at the short end of the stick all of a sudden would be a truly ironic outcome.”

“Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal”.

“The extinct rhinoceros, described in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, is the northernmost rhino known to have ever walked the planet — and it’s already reshaping scientists’ understanding of when many ancient animals spread across the continents.”

“ICEBlock Was Purged From the App Store. Now Its Creator Is Suing the Trump Administration.”

“When you ask why so much of corporate America is beholden to Trump now this is why. A big diversified corporation simply cannot compete and thus, in practice, can’t exist with a determinedly hostile administration.”

RIP, Bill Ratliff, former Texas State Senator and Lieutenant Governor, one of the last true moderate Republicans out there.

“The Main Beneficiaries of Trump’s Pardons? White-Collar Criminals Like Him“.

“But the widespread lack of interest in Kennedy’s role in the story has been glaring. This is one of the most powerful men in the country, the guy whose handpicked vaccine panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently undoing decades of lifesaving progress in public health. He allegedly spent a considerable amount of time having a virtual affair with a journalist during his campaign, then used her as a political resource as he plotted his ascent to the Cabinet. Even his denial, that he met Nuzzi only once, doesn’t deny it. And no one really seems fazed.”

“For the 1st time ever, 8 spacecraft are docked to the International Space Station. It’s the first time all the spacecraft docking ports on the current configuration of the ISS have been occupied.”

RIP, Raul Malo, leader of the country band The Mavericks.

RIP, Rod Paige, former HISD Superintendent, US Secretary of Education, football coach at Jackson State and Texas Southern, implementer of No Child Left Behind.

“An official complaint has been submitted to FIFA’s Ethics Committee, alleging “repeated breaches” of FIFA’s duty of political neutrality by its president, Gianni Infantino, while also requesting an investigation into the process that saw United States President Donald Trump receive the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.”

“Many U.S. shoppers who order grocery deliveries through Instacart are unknowingly part of widespread AI-enabled experiments that price identical products differently from one customer to the next—sometimes by as much as 23 percent. Instacart’s algorithmic pricing experiments were found to be occurring through the platform at several of the nation’s biggest grocery retailers, including Albertsons, Costco, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts Farmers Market, and Target.”

“In other words, Congress was perfectly capable of passing legislation—bipartisan legislation, even!—to address major national problems WHEN majority party leadership was willing to allow that to happen. And that happened when Democrats had agenda-setting power.”

““Peace on earth, good will to all” is the same thing Christians have been reciting every year at Christmastime for centuries, but those Christians can’t say it this year without being — correctly — perceived as “political” and “anti-Trump” and “anti-ICE” and “anti-MAGA,” because “peace and good will to all” is the opposite of everything that Trump and ICE and MAGA stand for.”

RIP, Jeff Garcia, actor and comedian best known as the voice of Sheen Estevez in Nickelodeon’s Jimmy Neutron franchise.

“NASCAR and the two organizations suing it, Front Row Motorsports and the Michael Jordan-owned 23XI Racing, reached a settlement agreement, an attorney said in court Thursday, ending the antitrust case the race teams brought against the league and its chairman and CEO, Jim France.”

Wishing former NBA player Jason Collins all the best.

RIP, Sophie Kinsella, bestselling author of the Confessions of a Shopaholic novels.

“It’s been a very cold and snowy December, but as luck would have it, we have a nice toasty dumpster fire to keep us warm. It’s been building for a while, but now it seems as though practically every prominent right-wing grifter is embroiled in at least one major public feud with another prominent right-wing grifter, to the point where they barely even have time to come up with insane conspiracy theories about the rest of us.” Be sure to see the very helpful who’s-feuding-with-whom spreadsheet at the end.

“The Trump administration has opened a new front in its war on “woke,” this time in a place few Americans ever think to look: the nation’s pocket change.”

RIP, Abraham Quintanilla, father and manager of the late Tejano music legend Selena.

RIP, Dave Ward, longtime Houston news anchor.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | Leave a comment

Salinas, Jefferson Patterson headed to victory

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

As of 10:26 last night, Alejandra Salinas was leading Dwight Boykins in Harris County by about 5,500 votes. You can see the current unofficial results from Harris County here and the final results from Fort Bend County here. Boykins dominated in Fort Bend, winning it by 500 votes, but that wasn’t nearly enough to make a dent in Salinas’ Harris County advantage. When I wrote this, about two thirds of the voting centers in Harris had reported. I don’t see a path for Boykins to win. About 37K total votes had been cast in Harris County, with about 11K of them coming yesterday as of that time, so the final total in Harris should be a bit short of 45K but reasonably close to my WAG from the close of early voting.

Meanwhile HCC incumbent Renee Jefferson Patterson had a 500 vote advantage in a much smaller race. Both she and Salinas were around 57% of the vote. I feel pretty comfortable calling this one as well. Congrats to both of the winners. A Chron story on the Council race is here and on the HCC race is here.

As for SD09, turns out I was confused. It’s on January 31, the same day as the CD18 runoff. I’m not sure why I thought it was the same day as the Council runoff, but at least that explains why there had been no recent news about it.

Posted in Election 2025 | Tagged absentee ballots, Alejandra Salinas, At Large #4, CD18, Congress, Dwight Boykins, Election 2025, Election Day, Harris County, HCC, Houston, Houston City Council, Kathy Lynch Gunter, Renee Jefferson Smith, runoff, SD09, Senate, Tarrant County, Taylor Rehmet, turnout | 1 Comment

Fifth Circuit upholds dismissal of land ownership ban lawsuit

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Not a surprise.

On Thursday, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit against Senate Bill 17, a new law that restricts people with citizenship, permanent residence or political ties to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea from acquiring most types of real estate in Texas, including farmland, homes and commercial property.

[…]

The plaintiff in the case, Peng Wang, is a Chinese citizen who’s lived in Texas for 16 years on a student visa. Wang argued that the law discriminated against him and others like him, making it harder to rent long term or eventually buy a home.

But the appeals court on Wednesday ruled that SB 17 doesn’t apply to Wang at all. To fall under the law, someone must be domiciled in a designated country, meaning that country is their permanent home. The judges noted that Wang considers Texas his home, plans to stay after school and has “no real plans to return to China.”

“Wang is asking this court to find that his true, fixed, and permanent home and place to which he intends to return is an unknown place somewhere in China at which he has never lived and to which he has no intention to ever return,” the ruling read. “We refuse the invitation.”

Because Wang didn’t meet those requirements, the court refused to move forward on the bigger constitutional questions, leaving SB 17 fully in effect.

Justin Sadowsky, legal director at the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance and Wang’s attorney, said he was disappointed in the decision, but believed future legal challenges would be taken against what he described as a “blatantly discriminatory law.”

See here and here for the background. I have to say, with the additional context of this story, I think this was a reasonable decision. If it is as clear as both the district court judge and now the Fifth Circuit say that this law wasn’t intended for people like these plaintiffs, then that’s a positive development, one that I hope would truly constrain Ken Paxton and any future Paxton wannabes. And as noted by attorney Sadowsky, this does not preclude a future challenge by a more suitable plaintiff. Which I hope will happen, because I also do agree that even a narrowed version of this law is still discriminatory, and will almost certainly affect people who are permanent residents like Peng Wang. So, not truly a setback. That’s the hope, anyway.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Asian Texans for Justice, China, Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance, class action, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, lawsuit, Texas, The Lege | Leave a comment

Keep lowering those flying taxi expectations for the World Cup

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Basically, don’t expect anything at this point.

Arlington won’t have flying taxis in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as city leaders had hoped last year.

Arlington Mayor Jim Ross first announced the city was partnering with a startup with the hopes of making Arlington the first American city with advanced air mobility during his state of the city address in October 2024.

“Theoretically, when it’s all done and we expect it to be done for the World Cup in 2026, you can be flying these air taxis right into the Entertainment District,” Ross said during the address.

But a year later, Ross and other experts say that won’t happen.

This is due to a combination of factors, but the biggest obstacle is Federal Aviation Administration regulations that haven’t been completed.

Still, Ross told KERA News in a recent interview, Arlington hasn’t given up on being among the first in the country to have flying taxis.

Those taxis would be eVTOL aircraft – electronic vertical take-off and landing. The vehicle would be powered by an electric motor instead of a combustion engine and would take off and land the same way as a helicopter.

While the air taxis won’t be ready to move people in time for the World Cup, Ross said it’s not unreasonable to expect at least one of them to be in the skies over the Arlington Entertainment District in what the mayor referred to as a World’s Fair type demo.

Ernest Huffman agrees.

The aviation planning and education program coordinator for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, Huffman’s job includes researching new forms of air travel often called advanced air mobility.

The millions of visitors expected in North Texas for the World Cup wouldn’t be able to hop on an eVTOL and fly to the games, but Huffman said it could still benefit the region.

“We’ve been trying to do an advanced air mobility demonstration type day for the World Cup games,” Huffman told KERA News. “This just gets us more momentum and more leverage to do so. And we can use that demo event for our kickoff for our EIPP piloting program.”

Even that’s not certain, though, Huffman said. The FAA has pushed back the launch of eVTOL programs in the past and he wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again.

NCTCOG and Arlington are making preparations, though, so they can be ready if an aircraft has the necessary approval to conduct the demonstration.

Alicia Winkelblech, Arlington’s director of transportation, said it could be 2027 when the first manufacturers of air taxis get FAA certification to move people.

[…]

Huffman’s timeline isn’t quite as optimistic, but isn’t terribly far off.

Huffman said the earliest, most realistic scenario for commercially operated air taxis is likely 2028, when Los Angeles will be home to the summer Olympics.

“If I were to guess, I would say around 2028, around Olympics time, you’ll probably see some commercial operations,” Huffman said. “You’ll see some real small operations, probably in Florida, a New York operation.”

He said there could even be an operation in North Texas by then, but it would likely be one single route.

See here for the previous update. It’s quite the dropoff from “we will have flying taxis to take people to the World Cup games” to “okay, maybe we’ll be able to do a demo”, far enough that Mayor Ross might have been advised to temper his enthusiasm a bit from the beginning. I suppose I can understand the desire for the big vision, but yeah, I think Los Angeles in 2028 is the more realistic timeframe. You know I’ll be on the lookout for further updates.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged air taxis, Archer Aviation, Arlington, eVTOL, Federal Aviation Administration, flying cars, Jim Ross, Joby Aviation, Los Angeles, North Central Texas Council of Governments, Olympics, Texas, Uber, vertipod, vertiport, World Cup | Leave a comment

Did the NRSC astroturf Crockett?

Posted on December 13, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

From The Downballot:

Rep. Jasmine Crockett

The National Republican Senatorial Committee waged what one unnamed operative called an “AstroTurf recruitment process” to convince Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett to run for the Senate, NOTUS’ Reese Gorman reports.

This effort began this summer when the NRSC circulated surveys showing Crockett, whom pollsters had not previously tested, performing well in a hypothetical primary. Gorman adds that Republicans, who are convinced Crockett would be the easiest candidate to defeat, also quietly sent out calls and text messages to Democratic voters in Texas, urging them to contact the congresswoman and ask her to run.

The Republican incumbent that Crockett is now trying to replace, by contrast, openly urged her to take him on.

“Run Jasmine, run!” Sen. John Cornyn tweeted in July after an unknown person registered a pair of “Crockett for Senate” domain names. (Crockett’s team may not have been involved in those purchases, as neither link is currently in use.)

Cornyn reupped that call in October after the congresswoman expressed interest in a Senate bid on the Lurie Daniel Favors Show.

“Every other day there’s a poll that comes out that makes it clear that I can win the primary for the U.S. Senate race in Texas,” she said.

Crockett, for her part, told CNN shortly before Thanksgiving that her internal polling showed she could win if she ran, though she never shared any data publicly. She wound up launching her campaign on Monday, just hours before the candidate filing closed.

Read the NOTUS story and see what you think. I can believe that the NRSC hyped, and even generated, polls that showed Rep. Crockett winning the primary. I have a much harder time believing that they were able to get a significant number of people to call her office urging her to run, or that that had any effect. We’ll never know, of course, and if Talarico wins the primary it’ll just be an odd footnote; if Crockett goes on to win next November it’ll be the 21st century version of “Dewey Defeats Truman”.

What it might be, more than anything, is some fuel for Crockett herself.

TM: Would you rather run against John Cornyn or Ken Paxton?

Crockett: It doesn’t matter who it is. I’m gonna win.

That’s from an interview Texas Monthly just did with her, which you should read (you may have to give them your email address to get full access). I do appreciate the confidence. Now let’s see how the primary goes.

(Yes, I know there’s a new poll showing Crockett up eight points on Talarico. I’m generally leery of primary polls since it’s tricky to model the electorate, so I likely won’t write about individual polls as we go, unless they also include general election matchups. But I will keep track of them.)

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2026, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, NRSC, polls, Senate, Texas | Leave a comment

Metro to spend millions on microtransit

Posted on December 13, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I continue to have problems with this.

Metro may boost its spending to $6 million for microtransit services managed by a nonprofit organization that didn’t have to bid on a competitive contract — and was previously led by Metro Board Chairperson Elizabeth Gonzalez Brock.

Critics of the deal are questioning the lack of competition and Brock’s ties to the nonprofit Evolve Houston as Metro plans to spend millions on its on-demand electric shuttle service, the “Community Connector.” The service provides free short rides in six-seater shuttles in Third Ward, Second Ward, downtown Houston, the Heights and near Northside.

Two Metro board members and an outside critic argue the nonprofit program has outgrown its original scope without being required to undergo a competitive bidding process to get the best deal for taxpayers. The program’s supporters say that ending the service would cut off thousands of riders who depend on it.

Metro board members Robert Fry and Roberto Treviño voted against extending the microtransit service at a public meeting last month. Treviño said when he initially voted for a small pilot program with Evolve in 2024, he didn’t expect it would grow to a $6 million operation without competitive bidding.

“There are no other competitors because this was an interlocal agreement with just this one vendor,” he said. He argued that Evolve is not being held to the same standard as other service providers at Metro that do have to bid on contracts.

Although Brock no longer serves on Evolve’s board and says she has no conflict of interest, her decision not to recuse herself from votes involving the nonprofit troubled Charles Blain, president of the Urban Reform Institute, a Houston think tank.

“I don’t understand why you would not file a conflict of interest (disclosure),” said Blain, who began raising concerns about Metro’s payments to Evolve in October. “What is the reason for not doing it, even if it’s just to have another added layer of saying that there is distance, there is clarity, there is transparency?”

Adrian Patterson, a lawyer who represents the Metro board, said Brock didn’t have a conflict of interest in supporting Evolve because she’s no longer part of the organization. Some Metro officials said the microtransit service started as a city of Houston pilot and operates under an interlocal agreement, a funding arrangement they said is not a traditional procurement process. Metro took on oversight of the program after Mayor John Whitmire appointed Brock to Metro’s board in 2024.

Brock told the Houston Chronicle that riders rely on the free service offered by Evolve. If Metro didn’t extend it, the loss would be felt by those who use the shuttles for work, school, doctor’s appointments, and to connect to public transit stops.

“We would no longer be able to serve the people,” she said.

Thomas Jasien, interim president and CEO of Metro, said that extending the agreement with Evolve would prevent service interruptions. The majority of Metro board members voted last month to extend Evolve’s microtransit service after receiving positive feedback from riders who depend on the shuttles.

The proposal approved by Metro’s board adds $4.1 million to the existing interlocal agreement with the city to fund the microtransit service. If approved by the city council, the service’s total costs could rise to $6 million, keeping the free microtransit rides running through September 2026.

The city council has not yet set a date for voting on the extension, but the deadline is fast approaching — Evolve’s current agreement expires at the end of the year.

There’s more, about the cost of Evolve, about Chair Brock’s past relationship with Evolve, about Evolve not being subject to the same levels of transparency as other Metro partners, and so on. I’m stopping here because I want to focus once again on the fact that Metro has not told us and does not tell us how many people actually use this service, not just to get from Point A to Point B but also to get from Point A to a Metro bus or light rail stop, or vice versa. How many people are riding, and how many of those riders go on to use other Metro services? These are simple questions. In the absence of answers to them, I do not believe any of Metro’s claims about Evolve. In my own neighborhood, I rarely see these shuttles in use. Give me the numbers or GTFO.

UPDATE: This followup story contains ridership numbers, which I appreciate, though they are not nearly as robust as the numbers for every other form of Metro transit and they raise additional questions. I’ll write about this separately.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged electric buses, Elizabeth Brock, Evolve Houston, Houston, John Whitmire, Metro, RYDE | Leave a comment

Today is Runoff Day

Posted on December 13, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

The Harris County Clerk’s Office reminds registered voters that tomorrow is Election Day for the December 13, 2025, Joint Runoff Elections. This is your final opportunity to make your voice heard and help decide the outcomes in select jurisdictions across Harris County. More than 150 vote centers are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“If you did not participate in the November 4 election, you still have an opportunity to ensure your voice is heard,” said Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth. “Runoff elections often come down to just a few votes. Yours could be the one that decides who represents your community.”

Ballot Contests Include

City of Houston – At-large Council Member, Position 4

Houston City College – Trustee District 2

Bring One of these Required Photo IDs

TX Driver’s License

TX Personal ID

TX Handgun License

TX Election ID Certificate

U.S. Military ID (with photo)

U.S. Citizenship Certificate (with photo)

U.S. Passport (book or card)

The use of wireless communication devices is not permitted in voting areas. However, voters may take written notes or their sample ballots to the polling location.

Mail Ballot Drop-Off

You can drop off your mail ballot in person tomorrow at 1019 Congress St. in downtown Houston between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. A valid photo ID is required.

Want to vote in person instead? Take your mail ballot to a vote center to surrender it and vote in person. If you do not have your mail ballot, you may still vote in person using a provisional ballot. Again, you must present one of the seven acceptable forms of photo ID.

For more information and real-time updates, follow @HarrisVotes or visit HarrisVotes.com.

Today is also Runoff Day for SD09, which as far as I can tell continues to be an utter news void. We’ll see if that changes. Get out there and vote, I’ll have all three results for you tomorrow.

How aggressive will Dems be in legislative races?

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is a good start, but I hope they ratchet it up from there.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party’s national arm that targets legislative races, announced Wednesday that it plans to put resources into Texas next year for the first time since 2020.

The national interest reflects Democratic optimism that the 2026 cycle will provide a favorable political climate for the party, amid President Donald Trump’s flagging approval ratings and voter dismay over the state of the economy.

In Texas, the effort to flip GOP-controlled state House districts will be led by the House Democratic Campaign Committee. The group announced Wednesday that state Rep. Christina Morales of Houston will serve as its chair for the 2026 cycle, replacing state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat who is running for governor.

Morales told The Texas Tribune that the HDCC initially plans to target four seats Democrats tried and failed to flip in 2024, and one of the two seats Democrats lost:

House District 34, which Rep. Denise Villalobos, R-Corpus Christi, flipped by an 11-percentage point margin

House District 37, which Rep. Janie Lopez, R-San Benito, won by 10 points

House District 112, which Rep. Angie Chen Button, R-Garland, won by 8 points

House District 118, an open seat that Rep. John Lujan, R-San Antonio, won by 3 points

House District 121, which Rep. Marc LaHood, R-San Antonio, won by 5 points

For the first time in several cycles, Democrats are fielding candidates in every federal and state legislative race in Texas. Among the targeted seats, Morales singled out three Democratic candidates who are running unopposed in their primaries — Zach Hebert in HD 112, Kristian Carranza in HD 118 and Zach Dunn in HD 121 — as contenders who “can relate to the community there and have the right messaging.”

“Republicans have been so good about putting us on the defense, but I want us to focus on being on the offense this time around,” Morales said.

The DLCC has yet to release its own list of Texas House seats that it plans to target.

[…]

Of the five seats on Morales’ initial target list, three — House Districts 34, 37 and 118 — would have been carried by 2018 Senate nominee Beto O’Rourke had the district lines been in place that year. The two others — Districts 112 and 121 — could have been narrowly carried by GOP Sen. Ted Cruz.

Encouraged by Democrats’ strong showing in elections around the country this year, the DLCC is investing an initial $50 million nationwide to flip 42 state legislative chambers. According to the group’s strategy memo unveiled Wednesday, Democrats overperformed by an average of nearly 4.5 points in races it targeted last month.

“The favorable political environment taking shape for Democrats is on a scale that only comes once in a generation, and the DLCC is poised to meet this moment through the largest target map and political budget ever,” DLCC president Heather Williams said in a press release. “We aren’t wasting a moment to execute on our winning strategy by electing more state Democrats in Texas.”

We’ll get a data point here tomorrow, when the SD09 runoff concludes. That race has gone completely under the radar – I’ve yet to even see The Downballot mention it. One way or the other it will be noticed.

Going by the 2018 data, there are other obvious targets, including HDs 108 in Dallas and 133 and 138 in Harris, with numerous districts in Collin, Denton, and Tarrant counties close behind. Others, some more aspirational than others, can be found elsewhere in the state. Look at the Beto numbers in 2018 and 2022, and the Biden numbers from 2020 for a fuller picture. Some of that is illusory – Dem performance with Latino voters in 2018 and 2020 is likely to exceed what we can do in 2026, at least in some places – but the potential to do better among college-educated white voters, which powered a lot of 2018, is also there. Ambitions are always proportional to fundraising, and candidate quality is a factor that’s not always easy to measure, but I say Dems should be super bold, especially if the polls keep improving. Let’s not leave money on the table.

If nothing else, we know the enthusiasm is there.

For the first time in decades, Texas Democrats have candidates in every state House, state Senate, congressional and State Board of Education race, marking a historic shift for the Lone Star State’s underdog party.

Texas Democrats touted the accomplishment with a Wednesday morning Facebook post trumpeting the dawn of a new era.

“Since 1994, Texas Democrats have allowed on average about 50 of these seats to go uncontested, leaving millions of Texans without the option to vote for Democrats below the top of the ticket,” the post read. “That ends now.”

It’s also been over a decade since Texas Republicans ran a candidate in every race in the state, their last full docket being recorded in 2014.

Though running a Democrat in every race is a huge milestone, Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson says it’s just the first step to seeing a strong Democratic Party in the state of Texas.

“I think it’s a good start,” Jillson said. “There’s just a lot more required to start winning important races in Texas.”

Namely, providing the key party infrastructure that can actually win races.

“What has limited the Democrats over the last quarter century or so is that their party infrastructure has eroded,” Jillson says. That includes “the support that they can give to potential candidates as they seek to prepare to run for office, fundraise for their campaigns and then develop themes on which to campaign.”

Getting candidates everywhere is a good start. Now we need to do something with it. You know what I think. The Chron has more.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Beto O'Rourke, Christina Morales, Collin County, Congress, Dallas County, Denton County, DLCC, Donald Trump, Election 2018, Election 2020, Election 2022, Election 2024, Election 2026, Harris County, HD108, HD112, HD118, HD121, HD133, HD138, HD34, HD37, HDCC, SBOE, Senate, Tarrant County, TDP, Texas, The Lege | 3 Comments

TEA takes over three more districts

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Mike Morath sure is busy.

The Texas Education Agency is replacing the elected school boards of the Beaumont, Connally and Lake Worth school districts, Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced Thursday.

State law allows Morath to either close a campus or appoint new leadership if at least one school in the district receives five consecutive failing grades in Texas’ academic accountability system. Each of the districts met that threshold.

The takeovers add to the growing list of districts subject to state interventions, which also includes two of Texas’ largest: Fort Worth and Houston. The Fort Worth school board has said it plans to appeal the commissioner’s decision, which was announced in October.

The education agency said in August that five school districts were at risk of intervention after enduring five consecutive years of unsatisfactory ratings. Since then, it has announced plans to take over four of them: Fort Worth, Lake Worth, Connally and Beaumont ISDs. Morath has not said whether he plans to intervene in the fifth one, Wichita ISD.

[…]

Before 2015, El Paso experienced the only academic takeover in Texas, due to a widespread cheating scandal. Since the law’s passage, the education agency has officially taken over three districts because of low academic performance: Marlin, Shepherd and Houston.

I don’t know anything about the Marlin and Shepherd ISD takeovers, which were already in place when HISD was assimilated. In particular, I have no idea how they’re doing post-takeover or if they’ve gone through even a small fraction of the turmoil we’ve had to put up with. I don’t have the time to research that now, but I’ll put a pin in it for later.

Of the three latest takeovers, I’m most familiar with Lake Worth ISD, which managed to oust a bad Trustee in November, for all the good that will do now. The Fort Worth Report takes a closer look at this district.

Lake Worth schools will be under the control of state-appointed managers while Superintendent Mark Ramirez’s future remains uncertain after Texas officials announced a takeover of the 3,200-student district Thursday.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath will install a new board of managers and appoint a superintendent in the coming months, tasking them with reversing years of academic decline. In a letter to Lake Worth leaders, Morath attributed the district’s persistently low academics to failure of governance.

“I do not make this decision lightly,” Morath wrote. “The inability of the district to implement effective changes to improve the performance of students in the district or at the campus necessitates the interventions announced by this letter.”

Morath’s decision comes after Lake Worth’s Marilyn Miller Language Academy failed to meet state academic standards for five consecutive years, triggering a Texas law that requires the commissioner to either close the campus or replace district leadership.

[…]

The state’s move follows a near decade of academic underperformance, shrinking enrollment and recent leadership changes that left Lake Worth schools vulnerable to intervention.

“Beyond the performance of individual campuses that are unacceptable, Lake Worth ISD has demonstrated a chronic inability to support students to learn and achieve at high levels,” Morath wrote in the letter sent to district officials Dec. 11.

The immediate trigger was Marilyn Miller Language Academy, an elementary campus of about 500 students where 91% come from low-income families and nearly half are learning English.

The school has failed to earn an acceptable accountability rating for eight years, dating back to 2017, including a 59 in this year’s ratings — just one point shy of passing.

Under state law, once a school reaches five straight failing ratings, the commissioner must either close the campus or install a state-appointed board of managers. At Miller Language Academy, those five ratings were reached with the release of the 2025 scores, officials said.

Ratings labeled “Not Rated” during the pandemic did not break the chain of unacceptable performance, TEA officials said, and enforcement actions tied to the five-year threshold resumed once ratings were publicly released again.

Districtwide results gave Morath further reason to act.

In 2025, five of Lake Worth ISD’s six campuses received an F rating. Only the high school managed a C. Overall, the district improved from an F to a D but still ranked near the bottom of Tarrant County in reading and math proficiency. State officials cited data showing just 22% of students meeting grade level, well below the state average of about 50%.

Enrollment declines deepened the crisis.

Just before the pandemic in 2020, the district enrolled nearly 3,600 students. This fall, that number fell to about 3,250 — a loss of nearly 10% in five years.

It’s hard to defend Lake Worth ISD based on its schools’ performance, though you have to wonder how much of that is a resources issue in a district that has the demographics it does. I suppose the takeover is one way to find out, especially if they get some extra funding and throw a bunch of money at the problem, as HISD has largely done. Lake Worth may get to keep their newish Superintendent, whom Morath went out of his way to praise at the press conference. Good luck, y’all, that’s all I can say.

I’m also interested in what happens in Beaumont.

“I am very disappointed by this decision,” Dr. Shannon Allen said at a BISD press conference on Thursday evening, adding that the announcement of the takeover was an unexpected one.

“This action was triggered by law due to consecutive unacceptable ratings at two campuses, MLK Middle School and Fehl-Price Elementary School,” Allen said. “Despite the fact that King was closed in 2024 and Fehl-Price Elementary was operated by Third Future Schools for the past two years … the commissioner made a decision to move forward with this appointment.”

As part of the TEA takeover, the agency will appoint a board of managers and a conservator in place of the superintendent and the elected school board.

Jackie Simien, director of community and media relations for BISD told Chron that Allen received a letter from the TEA with the official decision earlier on Thursday and spoke directly with Commissioner Mike Morath.

“We’ve been making progress and this year I’ve shared with our community that 16 out of 22 of our campuses showed an increase in overall accountability ratings. The effort and the work matter,” Allen said. “At the same time we recognize that the improvement has not happened fast enough in every single school.”

Simien told Chron the BISD has 30 days to appeal the decision.

As part of Thursday’s press conference, Allen said she will discuss the opportunity to appeal with her board.

TEA previously took control of the Beaumont ISD in 2014 due to financial scandal and shortfalls which left the district in a budget emergency, according to the Beaumont Enterprise. Control was returned to the district in 2020.

Fort Worth ISD has appealed its takeover as well, with no ruling yet. Once again I say, good luck with that. BISD had almost 17,000 students as of 2023-24, much smaller than HISD or Fort Worth ISD but bigger than the others in the crosshairs. If nothing else, we’ll have a lot more data about how these takeovers do and don’t work. The Beaumont Enterprise has more.

UPDATE: As soon as I finished this post, I saw this story about Connally ISD.

In a statement, Morath said multiple years of failing grades at Connally Elementary School and Connally Junior High School represent a “fundamental mission failure and a complete inability to take necessary action to ensure a high quality education for students.”

He said the timeline of the takeover has yet to be announced, and the current board of trustees and the superintendent, Jill Bottelberghe, will remain in place until he chooses new leadership.

In a statement, Connally ISD did not contest the takeover decision but pointed to district improvements over the last two years under Bottelberghe.

“Ms. Bottelberghe remains fully committed to these improvement initiatives and will continue to oversee them as the district’s superintendent until the TEA appoints a replacement,” the statement reads. “While we are supremely proud of the progress that we have made, we recognize that there is still work that needs to be done.”

[…]

Connally Junior High received its fifth consecutive F grade in 2024, but the state did not publicly release the ratings until earlier this year. Several districts had sued the state over changes to the accountability system, effectively pausing the results until a judge recently ruled in Texas’ favor.

Connally Elementary School received its fifth consecutive F in the 2025 ratings.

The school district educates just over 2,200 mostly Black and Hispanic students. Roughly 84% of those students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which the state considers an indicator of poverty.

In a statement, Connally ISD did not contest the takeover decision but pointed to district improvements over the last two years under Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe.

“Ms. Bottelberghe remains fully committed to these improvement initiatives and will continue to oversee them as the district’s superintendent until the TEA appoints a replacement,” the statement reads. “While we are supremely proud of the progress that we have made, we recognize that there is still work that needs to be done.

Good luck to y’all as well.

Posted in School days | Tagged Beaumont ISD, Board of Managers, Connally ISD, Fort Worth ISD, HISD, Lake Worth ISD, Marlin ISD, Mike Morath, schools, Shepherd ISD, Texas, Texas Education Agency, The Lege, Wichita ISD | Leave a comment

We bought some strategic Bitcoin

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Yippie.

The state of Texas recently purchased about $5 million worth of bitcoin through a BlackRock-administered exchange-traded fund, a representative for the state comptroller’s office confirmed in an email to The Dallas Morning News on Monday.

The purchase came several months after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 21, a high-profile and controversial legislative effort that enabled the Texas comptroller’s office to establish a publicly funded strategic cryptocurrency reserve.

It also amounts to one of the first-ever cryptocurrency transactions by a state government amid a broader federal and state government embrace of the recently surging crypto industry. Other states, including New Hampshire and Arizona , have passed similar crypto reserve bills.

And last year, Wisconsin’s and Michigan’s pension funds also purchased crypto, although with the comptroller’s purchase Texas has now become the first state to actually fund such a reserve.

“The industry is maturing and growing — it’ll continue to become more mainstream, and I think Texas staking out a leadership position will be very beneficial to Texans over time, similar to what the oil and gas industry has done over the last century,” said Lee Bratcher , president of the Texas Blockchain Council , a crypto lobbying group that championed the state legislative effort.

“I think we’re only scratching the surface,” Bratcher said.

[…]

While the new state law did not include a specific funding amount, Texas legislators have since allocated $10 million to the reserve. The amount represents a tiny fraction of the state’s $338 billion state budget, although the legislation’s supporters have argued it still amounts to an important measure of support for an emerging industry.

“I think with Texas leading in this way, it’s going to reap benefits for many decades to come across the state,” Bratcher said. “From a job creation perspective to a tax revenue perspective and everything in between.”

Earlier this year, addressing legislators ahead of a vote on SB 21, state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione , R- Southlake — one of the driving forces behind the crypto push — struck a similar note, calling the reserve bill “a forward-thinking measure” that was about “recognizing digital assets not as a trend but as a strategic opportunity” and “strengthening the state’s fiscal resilience.”

Yet even if Texas’ public crypto investment remains minuscule, many economists and fiscal watchdogs have criticized SB 21 along with other recent pro-crypto legislation on multiple fronts, arguing it amounts to a lobbyist-driven effort that’s likely to benefit the crypto industry much more than the state’s residents.

And while Texas has recently embraced bitcoin mining and other facets of the industry, with even Abbott pushing to make the state a global “crypto leader,” critics have pointed out that cryptocurrency itself has long been plagued by concerns about scams, corruption and energy use.

I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that I think this is dumb. If it’s just one-time, $10 million dumb, I can shrug my shoulders and get on with my life. If it’s going to be a regular thing, with increasing amounts of money, it’s going to be a bigger problem. I have no idea where this ends, and I fully admit I could be wrong about crypto’s future – I’ve been wrong about it so far, after all. But with all the well–known problems associated with crypto (*), I’d really we rather spend our money, even our dumb speculative money, elsewhere. Texas Public Radio and the Trib have more.

(*) And water usage, and scams, and money laundering, and its use by cybercriminals, and on and on.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged Bitcoin, Comptroller, cryptocurrency, cryptomining, Giovanni Capriglione, Texas, Texas Blockchain Council, The Lege | 1 Comment

The Dallas County GOP’s hand-counting debacle

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is going to be a disaster.

Dallas County Republicans say they’re planning to go ahead with hand-counting tens of thousands of Election Day ballots cast in the upcoming March 3 primary after raising more than $400,000 towards the effort.

The county GOP party also said more than 1,000 people have signed up to count the ballots in an effort that would make the county the largest jurisdiction in the country to hand-count results on Election Day. Other large jurisdictions in the country have hand-counted ballots, but they’ve done so after an election and to verify the accuracy of machine counts, including as part of an audit.

“Not only are the eyes of Texas upon us, but the eyes of America,” said Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West, a former congressman, in a social media statement Friday. West said the effort is meant to “restore confidence in our electoral process.”

That decision means all Dallas County voters will have to cast ballots at their assigned precinct rather than at countywide vote centers on Election Day. By law, if one party wants to use precinct-based voting, then the other must do the same. And by law, any hand-count of ballots has to be done at each of the county’s polling locations. During the 12-day early voting period, voters will still be able to cast ballots anywhere in the county.

In Texas, political parties have the authority to decide how they’ll administer primary elections and how they want to count ballots on Election Day. State law requires the party to report election results within 24 hours after polls close. Failure to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.

[…]

Voters in the Democratic primary will still use voting equipment to cast their ballots. But Dallas County Democratic Party Chairman Kardal Coleman said the requirement to vote in precincts rather than countywide vote centers means the party will now need to secure more than the usual 450 locations for Election Day and the additional workers to staff them.

“Not just for Democratic voters, but this is going to adversely affect every voter who may show up in the wrong location,” Coleman said. “It’s already causing chaos and confusion.”

The county Republican party also must secure a minimum of 360 polling locations with the required space needed to conduct the hand count — fewer than the Democrats because Republicans are the minority party in Dallas County. The GOP will have to find enough money for all needed supplies, including everything from ballot boxes to printing tally sheets to the tables and chairs needed for counting. It isn’t clear how much of that has been done.

In a brief text message Monday, West clarified the party does not plan to hand-count absentee ballots or ballots cast early in person — only Election Day ballots.

According to a 2024 primary election final cost report Votebeat obtained from the Texas Secretary of State Office through a public records request, Dallas County Republicans employed more than 1,400 workers on Election Day at a cost of more than $248,000. Polling place rental fees cost nearly $50,000. Those costs are certain to increase, because hand-counting requires more people to count and additional locations.

See here for some background. This really sucks for Dallas County Democrats, who are yoked to this hair-brained scheme against their will. I hope they really push the idea of voting early to their voters, so as to avoid the chaos on Primary Day as much as possible.

In 2022, as a point of comparison, Dallas County Republicans cast 48,931 votes on Primary Day. That’s six times as many votes that Gillespie County cast in the 2024 primary, which as we know was an error-ridden debacle that cost them a ton of money – per the story, “more than $40,000 for 355 workers who spent nearly 24 hours counting” versus “45 workers at a cost of nearly $7,000” in 2020 when they machine-counted. And it’s a far less transparent method than the normal way:

The only people permitted in the area where the hand count is happening are precinct judges, who are in charge of supervising the polling locations, the election clerks counting ballots, and poll watchers appointed by candidates or political action committees.

And unless a candidate requests a recount or the party decides to do so, no provision in state law requires a recount or an audit of hand-counted election results to check for accuracy.

One can see the vast potential for lawsuits here, which we should all be rooting for. And yet, with all that, Gillespie County will be hand-counting again this year, because addicts need their fix. I have to imagine the Dallas County GOP will declare success no matter how far off the rails this little indulgence goes. Hey Dan Patrick, this is why your people file frivolous lawsuits over the results of constitutional amendment elections.

UPDATE: Tarrant County Republicans will not hand count, but they are handcount-curious, so maybe next time.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Allen West, Dallas County, Democratic primary, Election 2024, Election 2026, electronic voting machines, Gillespie County, hand counting, primaries, Republican Party, Secretary of State, Tarrant County, Texas | 1 Comment

SCOTUS lets Llano County ban books

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

No other way to put it.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge against a small Central Texas county’s removal of 17 books from its public libraries, including some that focus on race and gender.

The Monday move by the high court lets stand the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that says the First Amendment doesn’t acknowledge a right to receive information. It is also a major blow to the yearslong legal fight led by seven Llano County residents against what they have called a coordinated censorship campaign by the county government, amid a broader wave of book bans in Texas.

Attorneys for the library patrons and the county didn’t immediately respond to comment requests from The Texas Tribune.

PEN America, a nonprofit that tracks book bans throughout the country which filed a brief in support of the residents, blasted the rejection in a news release.

“Leaving the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in place erodes the most elemental principles of free speech and allows state and local governments to exert ideological control over the people with impunity,” said Elly Brinkley, staff attorney for the group’s U.S. Free Expression Programs. “The government has no place telling people what they can and cannot read.”

Bob Corn-Revere, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s chief counsel, also said this was a missed opportunity for the Supreme Court to clarify public libraries’ constitutional status.

“Because it failed to do so, we will face a period of uncertainty as appellate courts in different parts of the country apply different standards governing the freedom to read,” he said in a statement.

See here, here, and here for the background. There was an en banc hearing at the Fifth Circuit along the way, with the original district court ruling against Llano County being overturned by a 10-7 margin. I recommend again that you read this thread by appellate lawyer Raffi Melkonian, as there is some nuance here. You want to allow a library to respond to a request to remove a book with racist images on its cover, for example. But you also want some rules on how heavy-handed a library can be, and this ruling more or less gives people driven by ideology some wide latitude. Nothing good will come of that.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged ACLU of Texas, censorship, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, FReadom Fighters, lawsuit, libraries, Llano County, PEN America, SCOTUS, Texas, Texas Library Association | Leave a comment

The anti-vax movement for pets

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

You knew this would be a thing.

In the four years since she opened her own veterinary practice, Dr. Kelly McGuire has seen her fair share of heartbreaking cases.

There was the dog whose kidneys shut down after it contracted leptospirosis, a bacterial disease often carried by rodents. Several of her canine patients had come down with such severe cases of parvovirus that they died after “sloughing their guts to the point of dehydration and malnutrition,” said Dr. McGuire, who owns Wildflower Veterinary Hospital in Brighton, Colo. And, after she was unable to rule out rabies, she had been forced to euthanize a 20-week-old puppy that was having seizures.

The deaths were wrenching, especially because they were preventable: Those pets would likely have survived had they received all their recommended vaccines.

For most of her career, vaccination was a routine, unremarkable part of Dr. McGuire’s work as a small animal veterinarian. But after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, she found herself having long, sometimes adversarial discussions with pet owners about the safety and necessity of vaccines. Clients accused her of pushing the vaccines to line her own pockets. And, increasingly, pet owners insisted on spacing out shots or refused vaccines altogether, including for deadly and incurable viruses like rabies.

“I actually had someone scream and yell at us and storm out because we required rabies vaccines for her cats,” Dr. McGuire said, adding that the owner had accused her of trying to “kill her cats with vaccines.”

Over the last several years, the anti-vaccine movement has gained ground in the United States, fueled, in part, by the politicization of the Covid-19 vaccines and the increasing power of vaccine critics like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Childhood vaccination rates have fallen. Once vanquished diseases, like measles, have come storming back. And vaccine mandates are under fire: Last month, Florida announced plans to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren.

But antipathy toward vaccines is also spilling over into veterinary medicine, making some people hesitant to vaccinate their pets.

“I talk to thousands of veterinarians every year across the country, and the majority are seeing this kind of issue,” said Dr. Richard Ford, an emeritus professor at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine who helped write the national vaccine guidelines for cats and dogs.

The phenomenon has clear parallels to the anti-vaccine movement in human medicine and could, experts fear, lead the nation down a familiar path, resulting in a loosening of animal vaccination laws, a decline in pet vaccination rates and a resurgence of infectious diseases that pose a risk to both pets and people.

“Are we going to start undoing mandates for rabies vaccinations?” said Simon Haeder, a health services and policy researcher at the Ohio State University who has studied veterinary vaccine hesitancy. “We’re kind of at a pivotal time here.”

[…]

There is no centralized database of pet vaccination rates in the United States, and it remains unclear whether they have fallen in recent years. “We have a real data issue,” said Dr. Audrey Ruple, a veterinary epidemiologist at Virginia Tech. But, she said, “we will definitely know when disease starts to break through.”

Declining pet vaccination rates would not be a threat to animal health alone; several vaccine-preventable illnesses, including leptospirosis and rabies, can spread from pets to people. “Dogs are sharing our beds with us now,” said Dr. Steve Weinrauch, chief veterinary officer at Trupanion, a pet insurance company. “They’re kissing our children’s faces.”

Indeed, before health agencies launched mass-vaccination campaigns for pets in the mid-20th century, bites from rabid dogs caused most human rabies cases in the United States.

Most states require dogs to get rabies vaccines, but not all states do, and some mandates are stricter than others. With vaccine antipathy on the rise, Dr. Motta worries that officials may see a political advantage in rolling back these requirements.

“As we’ve seen very much over the past couple of months, health policy is dynamic,” Dr. Motta said. “It is subject to political motivations and orientations. It is a reflection of public opinion.”

Dr. Ford said he was encouraging vets to to get ahead of the problem: If they have learned anything from what has unfolded in human public health, it’s that dismissing concerns about vaccines does not make those concerns go away.

“There’s this mentality among some physicians and veterinarians to say, Get over it, just get the vaccine,” he said. “We’re trying to convince veterinarians to take these concerns seriously.”

This is not a brand-new thing – the story cites survey data from 2023 that shows a distressingly high rate of vaccine skepticism among pet owners. The idea that dogs and cats could get a form of autism as a result of being vaccinated (spoiler alert: there’s no such thing) is now out there. I for one won’t be surprised when there’s a pet owner’s “bill of rights” introduced in a forthcoming legislative session. Now you know. Wonkette and Slate have more.

Posted in Technology, science, and math | Tagged coronavirus, measles, rabies, RFK Jr, vaccinations, veterinarians | 1 Comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of December 8

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance will take on the fight with the map we have as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Off the Kuff is happy to see a class action lawsuit filed over the Ten Commandments law.

SocraticGadfly talks about Camp Mystic and accountability.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said Mayor Whitmire & many on Houston City Council say nothing when Houstonians are told what words they can use to oppose ICE in Houston, or how they can question Council.

=========================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

The Current reports on ICE using memes from “Halo” to recruit new agents, and the pushback to same.

Naomi Rees criticizes UTEP for inviting border czar Tom Homan to be the featured speaker at a campus event.

The Texas Signal observes World AIDS Day.

Isaiah Martin analyzes the TN-07 special election.

Texas 2036 explains what’s going on with employer-provided health insurance.

Your Local Epidemiologist pans the latest ACIP meeting.

The Bloggess previews the 16th Annual James Garfield Miracle.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Leave a comment

Deadline Day roundup, part 2

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Part 1 is here. So far I haven’t found much that wasn’t known at deadline time. It’s an odd year for there to be so few true last-minute surprises, but here we are. A few items to note:

– There’s a number of notable omissions on the SOS candidate filings page for Democrats, such as Jasmine Crockett for Senate, Julie Johnson and Colin Allred for CD33, while Marc Veasey is still listed there, so I don’t want to make any final statements about who’s running for what yet. I do think there’d be a story if say Rep. Lizzie Fletcher had picked up a primary opponent or if someone else had jumped into CD18, so I’m assuming for now there’s just a few lags in the system. But it’s possible there’s still some news here.

– On that score, this Community Impact article rounds up who’s listed on the SOS pages as having filed for statewide office. Note again the omission of Rep. Crockett; this told me nothing I didn’t already know, but at least they compiled it all.

– So far, the statewide situation looks like this:

Seven candidates for Governor; as noted yesterday, Benjamin Flores moved to the Land Commissioner race.

Three candidates for Lite Guv, State Rep. Vikki Goodwin and two people I’ve never heard of.

Three candidates for Attorney General – Joe Jaworski, State Sen. Nathan Johnson, and Anthony Box.

Three candidates for Comptroller – Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, Michael Lange, and HISD Trustee Savant Moore, whose entry into this race was news to me.

Two candidates for Land Commissioner, the aforementioned Benjamin Flores and Jose Loya, who appears to be a legislative staffer.

Clayton Tucker (Ag Commissioner) and State Rep. Jon Rosenthal (RR Commissioner) are unopposed, as far as I can tell at this time.

– The statewide judicial situation is confusing. In October I noted the launch of a statewide judicial slate. That was before the opening of the filing period, so perhaps things happened along the way. The only candidates I saw as of yesterday on the SOS page were Maggie Ellis, for Chief Justice; Kristen Hawkins, current District Court judge in Harris County, for Supreme Court Place 7; and Holly Taylor, for CCA Place 9. Only Taylor is on that statewide slate. I searched for the other candidates listed on the slate and found campaign websites for all of the Supreme Court candidates except Gordon Goodman – Holly Taylor was the only CCA candidate with a website – so I suspect this is another example of lagging. But put a pin in it just in case.

– There will be lots of contested judicial primaries in Harris County. I’ll skip an accounting of this for now, but know that I’ll be sending out judicial Q&As in the very near future.

– No further updates on other local races. This Chron story has a few words about Matthew Salazar, the third Democratic candidate for Harris County Judge. No new candidates I am aware of, Teneshia Hudspeth and Carla Wyatt and both County Commissioners remain unopposed. I’m also trying to figure out what my interview schedule will look like – first things first, I have to decide which races to interview in, as there’s only so much time and only one of me. I’ll be getting on that ASAP as well.

– The one minor late surprise was on the Republican side, where an old familiar face once again emerged from under a rock.

Former Republican Rep. Steve Stockman, who spent time in both the House and federal prison, launched yet another comeback bid just ahead of Monday’s filing deadline.

Stockman, dubbed “Congressman Clueless” by Texas Monthly after he lucked into a House seat during the 1994 GOP wave, was just as quickly swept out two years later. He worked his way back into the House in 2012 but pursued a hopeless Senate bid rather than run for another term.

Stockman was later convicted of fraud and sentenced to 10 years behind bars, but his sentence was commuted by Donald Trump in 2020. He faces several other notable Republicans who are hoping to flip the Houston-area 9th District, which is now an open seat thanks to the extreme GOP gerrymander that drove Democratic Rep. Al Green to seek reelection in the 18th District instead.

Death, taxes, and Steve Stockman. Everything old is new again. The Downballot had noted this possibility earlier, but it was during Thanksgiving week and I was too turkey-addled to write about it. But here we are, and the absolute funniest thing that could happen would be for Stockman to beat out Briscoe Cain and Alexandra Mealer, two of the twerpiest candidates on the ballot. Stockman was batshit crazy before it was cool. He’s forgotten more conspiracy theories than they’ll ever believe. Truly, the candidate that Harris County Republicans deserve.

I’ll keep coming back to this until we’re sure everything is finalized. Let me know if there’s something that looks missing or outdated to you. Lone Star Left notes another candidate to be warned about, and Daily Kos writes about the Senate primary.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Anthony Box, Attorney General, Benjamin Flores, CD09, CD33, Clayton Tucker, Colin Allred, Comptroller, Congress, Court of Criminal Appeals, Democratic primary, Election 2026, filing deadline, Gordon Goodman, Governor, Harris County, Harris County Judge, Holly Taylor, Jasmine Crockett, Joe Jaworski, Jon Rosenthal, Jose Loya, Julie Johnson, Kristen Hawkins, Land Commissioner, Lite Gov, Maggie Ellis, Matthew Salazar, Michael Lange, Nathan Johnson, Railroad Commission, Sarah Eckhardt, Savant Moore, Secretary of State, Senate, Steve Stockman, Supreme Court, Texas, Texas Justice Democrats, Vikki Goodwin | Leave a comment

Final December runoff early voting: Is anger the key?

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

An interesting take on the Houston City Council At Large #4 runoff, for which early voting ended yesterday.

Salinas ran on a decidedly progressive platform for voters dissatisfied with status quo politics — advocating for legal action to fight against the Republican-controlled state government and calling for multimodal transportation options. Boykins, by contrast, positioned himself as a pragmatic moderate operating outside partisanship.

“Everybody — Democrats, Republicans, gay, straight, black, white, Hispanic, Pakistani and Asian — they all came and said, ‘Dwight, we’re with you,'” he said.

Boykins emphasized his willingness to work with Mayor John Whitmire and his experience representing District D in South Central Houston on the city council. He received about 20% of the vote.

The moderate versus progressive dynamic is familiar, but the election itself is unusual.

It’s the first city election in which a candidate, Boykins, acknowledged using ChatGPT to write his priority platform after Salinas accused him of plagiarizing hers. To date, the platforms have remained almost identical.

More importantly, it’s an off-year for local elections. The citywide, at-large city council seat is only on the ballot because Letitia Plummer is stepping down for a bid to replace Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Plummer declined to make an endorsement in the race to fill her position.

“It’s hard to get people to vote in a period when it’s not a traditional election cycle,” said political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus with the University of Houston.

He argued emotion could play a role in who turns out to vote — specifically, negative emotions.

“Anger is a tremendous motivator in politics,” he said. “That is not uncommon in most elections. It’s a little different and unusual to have it in a city election where typically the issues aren’t quite so firebrand.”

Political scientist Mark Jones with Rice University said the national context is important.

“The anger and desire to actively be pushing back against the Trump administration that exists among many Harris County Democrats, particularly the most active ones, should work in Salinas’ favor more than Boykins’,” Jones said.

One of those national issues is playing out at the local level — through the Houston Police Department’s coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to Mayor John Whitmire’s administration, officers, under state law, must notify federal officials when they encounter someone with an immigration warrant.

Plummer, who currently occupies the at-large seat, has advocated for a change in city policy intended to curtail that collaboration — without much success.

Asked about the coordination on Houston Public Media’s Hello Houston talk show, Boykins deferred to the administration.

“You need to follow the law,” he said. “That’s just the bottom line with that, and I’m okay with that.”

Salinas wanted the city to do more.

“Where the law is wrong, we need to fight back and bring litigation,” she said.

Jones said some voters are looking for that fight.

“That could work to her favor,” Jones said. “If what she’s able to do is mobilize progressive anti-Trump Democrats to turn out and vote for her as a way of signaling their disapproval of the Trump administration and the Whitmire administration’s ICE policies.”

For what it’s worth, I have always thought that the CD18 special election both boosted turnout and helped Boykins in November. I can’t say how much, but I believe it was something. Whatever it was, that dynamic isn’t here in the runoff, because CD18 will be decided in January. (That’s because of a difference in federal versus state law – there are many reasons to be mad at Greg Abbott, but he didn’t go out of his way to do anything nefarious this time.) I’ve gotten plenty of mailers from the Salinas campaign, more than I have on behalf of Boykins. We’ll see how much it all matters.

Final EV totals are here. So far, 25,903 people have cast a ballot, which is more than I thought we’d get when we started. For comparison, there were 103,784 votes cast early in the November election – please note that in all cases I’m just counting the Harris County part of Houston – but that was a regular election, with the state ballot propositions in addition to CD18 to bring people out. Slightly less than half the vote was cast early in November; I’m going to guess it’s more the other way around this time. My WAG for this one is some 40-45K. Not a lot, obviously, but it is what it is. There is also the HCC District 2 runoff in progress, with Renee Jefferson Patterson aiming to hold off Kathy Lynch Gunter. Have you voted yet?

On a side note, Saturday is also Runoff Day for the SD09 special election. The only real news I’ve seen involves how many voting locations there will be on Saturday, in which Tarrant County is doing its usual thing. If anger and a desire to fight back is the driver there, then we could be in for a bice surprise. Anyone out there have a view on this one?

Posted in Election 2025 | Tagged absentee ballots, Alejandra Salinas, At Large #4, CD18, Congress, Dwight Boykins, early voting, Election 2025, Harris County, HCC, Houston, Houston City Council, Kathy Lynch Gunter, Renee Jefferson Smith, runoff, SD09, Senate, Tarrant County, Taylor Rehmet, turnout | Leave a comment

Waymo and school buses

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is a real problem.

In November, on Austin’s South First Street, cameras caught a Waymo automated vehicle drive past an Austin Independent School District school bus’ flashing stop signs. At first, the driverless car stopped while a student crossed in front of it – but video shows the car accelerating forward before the student could cross the other lane of traffic or get out of the road.

Just two days before, in north Austin, bus surveillance cameras also recorded a different Waymo illegally passing an AISD bus as students crossed the street.

The traffic violation was one of many times the stop-arm cameras AISD installed on all its buses in 2016 had been recording (and sending tickets to Waymo) over similar violations this school year. District records show since the first week of school, AISD’s system caught Waymo illegally passing its school buses 19 times.

Texas law requires motorists to come to a complete stop when a school bus is stopped with its stop-arm extended and its lights flashing. Drivers are not allowed to proceed until the school bus resumes motion. According to the Austin ISD Police Department, since August 2025, the district has mailed more than 6,700 school bus citations.

Videos KXAN obtained show some Waymos not stopping for the district’s school buses. In some cases, the automated vehicle would drive past the first stop-arm on the bus and abruptly stop alongside the bus before passing the second stop-arm. In others, the Waymo would stop briefly and then seconds later maneuver around the bus while the stop-arm was still deployed.

In six of the videos KXAN reviewed, children could be seen in a video frame.

Because of the safety concerns – which Waymo officials said they’ve already addressed with software changes – AISD leaders are asking Waymo to stop operating during hours when students are getting on and off buses throughout the city until the company can guarantee the vehicles will comply with Texas law.

“My belief is that if we are truly concerned about student safety that we stop doing things that we knowingly have documentation is creating safety issues for kids,” Austin ISD Police Chief Wayne Sneed said.

[…]

On Nov. 5, email records show Waymo sent Austin ISD’s legal team a letter indicating it had made “certain software updates” to improve performance around school buses.

On Nov. 20, district leaders said its system had recorded seven more violations, with the most recent incident on South First Street on Nov. 14.

“The situation has escalated. There have been several additional violations, including camera footage showing Waymo vehicles in motion while our students are present,” Senior Counsel Jennifer Oliaro wrote in a Nov. 20 email to Waymo.

The district, according to its Nov. 20 letter, wanted Waymo to immediately cease operating its fleet of automated vehicles from 5:20 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and again from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. “until more in-depth software updates” were completed and the company could guarantee the vehicles could comply with the law.

“This is a serious, dangerous situation for Austin ISD. Austin ISD is reviewing all potential legal remedies at its disposal and intends to take whatever action is necessary to protect its students,” Oliaro told KXAN.

Waymo told KXAN it had identified issues where its vehicles may initially slow down or stop for a school bus, but then ended up proceeding while the bus stop sign was extended or flashing lights were active. The company said during the incidents identified by the district, its automated vehicles proceeded cautiously when no individuals were in the path of the vehicle.

“Safety is our top priority at Waymo, including how we interact with school buses. We have already implemented software updates to address this situation and are committed to improving road safety through our ongoing learnings and experience,” Waymo officials told KXAN.

The company said the software updates meant to address its vehicles’ issues with school buses were implemented over a period of days and were completely incorporated into Waymo’s fleet by Nov. 17.

When asked whether the company would agree to AISD’s request for Waymos not to operate while buses were loading and unloading students, Waymo officials said they believed the software updates meaningfully improved performance.

This story is from last week, and yesterday Waymo said it would issue a recall for its software to fix the issue. That’s good and I expect they will get it fixed. I will also stipulate again that Waymo’s safety record is quite a bit better than human drivers, and that in the medium to long term autonomous vehicles will almost certainly have a significant effect on road safety. That is also good.

In the meantime, though, this is a reminder that there’s nothing the city of Austin could have done to affect what was happening. Cities have no regulatory authority over driverless vehicles in Texas thanks to the wisdom of the Legislature. The state has some form of oversight, and offhand I have no idea what it might be. The safety record of Waymos aside, I will note that a couple of well-placed traffic cops and a few tickets that carry hefty fines for passing school buses do a lot to deter human drivers from this behavior. Assuming it’s even possible to send a ticket to Waymo’s corporate office, I doubt they’d worry about a few thousand bucks here and there, assuming they ever bothered to pay them. Maybe this is a loophole that the Lege ought to address at its next opportunity. Just a thought.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Austin, Austin ISD, driverless cars, school buses, school zones, taxis, Texas, The Lege, Waymo | Leave a comment

Deadline Day roundup, part 1

Posted on December 9, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I’m putting Part 1 in the headline because there’s always some delays between filings at county headquarters and what you can see on the SOS candidate filings page. I was waiting on the Jasmine Crockett announcement as I began this, and I put it in a separate post when it broke. There’s been a few items of interest already and that’s what this post is for. Lone Star Left has been tracking filings all along, so refer to their resources as well if you’re confused about a particular race.

The news kicked off with Colin Allred’s announcement that he was dropping out of the Senate race to run in CD33.

Allred, a former Dallas congressman, was the party’s nominee for Senate in 2024, losing to Sen. Ted Cruz. In July, he launched a 2026 bid for Texas’ other Senate seat, but his path to the nomination was complicated by the September entry of state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, and an expected run from U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a fellow Dallasite who is hosting an announcement event later Monday.

Allred’s swerve came on the last day for candidates to file for Texas’ 2026 primaries. In a statement, he said he was deciding to exit the Senate race because he wanted the party to avoid a runoff — a likely outcome if Crockett decided to run — and maximize its chances of winning in November. The nominee will face the winner of a three-way GOP primary between U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston.

“In the past few days, I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlickers Paxton, Cornyn, or Hunt,” Allred said. “That’s why I’ve made the difficult decision to end my campaign for the U.S. Senate.”

Instead, Allred said he will run for Congress in Texas’ newly drawn 33rd Congressional District, one of two winnable seats left for Democrats in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area after the U.S. Supreme Court last week allowed the state to use a new GOP-friendly map crafted earlier this year. The district contains about a third of the residents from Allred’s former congressional district, which he represented for six years after flipping the seat in 2018.

Texas’ 33rd District is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, but the new boundaries remove his hometown and political base of Fort Worth. He plans to run instead for the 30th District — currently represented by Crockett — if she gets into the Senate race as expected, a source familiar with the matter told the Tribune.

To capture the 33rd District, Allred will need to defeat his successor, Rep. Julie Johnson, a former state lawmaker who won the race to replace Allred when he gave up his seat to run for Senate in 2024. Johnson has represented the 32nd Congressional District since January, but the district was dismantled by Republicans in their mid-decade redistricting this summer. Now, both Allred and Johnson are running in the new 33rd Congressional District — an amalgamation of three current Democratic seats in the Metroplex.

That primary for CD33 could get nasty, which was a big part of the Republicans’ goals in doing the map again. Making Dems fight among themselves while also making the bench smaller are gains for them even if they fall short in the number of seats they pick up in Congress.

Also changing race is Sen. Sarah Eckhardt:

State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, on Monday announced she was no longer running for Congress and would instead run for state comptroller.

The pivot, coming on the last day to file for Texas’ 2026 primaries, ends Eckhardt’s roughly monthlong campaign for the 10th Congressional District, a Republican-leaning seat that is being vacated by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin. Eckhardt has served in the Texas Senate since 2020 and was reelected in 2024, meaning she will retain her seat if she loses the comptroller race. Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas since 1994.

At least one other Democrat has filed for comptroller: Michael Lange, an investment manager who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for land commissioner in 2022.

If elected, Eckhardt said she wants to tackle government waste and fraud as a watchdog of the state’s $337 billion budget — one of the comptroller’s main responsibilities. She pointed to her experience as Travis County judge, during which she said she delivered balanced budgets, as proof she’s the best candidate for the job.

The state comptroller collects more than a quarter trillion dollars of revenue from a variety of taxes, fees and assessments. The office is also tasked with rolling out the state’s new school voucher program to offer parents public funds to pay for private school and educational materials. Eckhardt said she would seek to apply oversight to the program.

“We don’t have time for funny business and sweetheart deals that benefit the powerful and not the people,” Eckhardt said in a statement. “We need a Comptroller who will work to ensure every dollar is used in the best interest of everyday Texans, and who is not afraid to expose state leaders when they refuse to play by the rules and deliver affordability.”

Comptroller is an often-overlooked office, also often one in which Dems have done the worst statewide, but it is one with a lot more power now. Not just the voucher scam, but the Comptroller is the enforcer of the various bullshit anti-DEI and ESG laws that Texas has been passing. There’s a lot of potential to at least mitigate damage, if not do good, if we can win this one.

Also changing offices, which I found while scrolling the filings page: Erstwhile candidate for Governor Benjamin Flores is now running for Land Commissioner. I’m good with that.

I will also do a roundup on Harris County later, as there’s often some last-minute maneuvering. For Congress, so far we have two candidates for CD08, four for CD09 (including astronaut and former Senate candidate Terry Virts), four for CD18 (current CD09 Rep. Al Green, CD18 special election finalists Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards, and someone named Gretchen Brown), three for CD22, two for CD36, and three for CD38. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher is unopposed in CD07, which will be my new Congressional home, while former State Rep. Jarvis Johnson is running against Rep. Sylvia Garcia in CD29. Challenger Shaun Finnie in CD02 also appears to have the primary to himself.

So far four incumbent State Reps have drawn primary challengers – Reps. Charlene Ward Johnson (HD139), Harold Dutton (HD142), Mary Ann Perez (HD144), and Hubert Vo (149), while at least four people have filed in the open HD131. For county offices, a third candidate named Matt Salazar has filed for County Judge along with Annise Parker and Letitia Plummer, it’s still a two way race for County Attorney between Abbie Kamin and Audrie Lawton Evans, and there’s a bunch of people running for District Clerk. County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth and County Treasurer Carla Wyatt were as yet unchallenged, as were County Commissioners Adrian Garcia and Leslie Briones.

That’ll do for now, by the time I’m finishing up any further news can wait. More to come as the stories get written.

UPDATE: I stand corrected about there not being late news for me to note here.

In a last-minute political maneuver, Fort Worth Democrat Marc Veasey is running for Tarrant County judge instead of reelection to Congress.

Veasey, who was elected to the U.S. House in 2012, was expected to announce he was running for District 30 after Texas’ redrawn congressional maps pushed his current District 33 entirely into Dallas County. Many speculated he would seek Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s District 30 seat as she announced plans to run for the U.S. Senate.

The congressman’s staff confirmed to the Fort Worth Report that he filed for the county judge race. He is set to face County Commissioner Alisa Simmons and business owner Lydia Bean in the March primary to determine the Democratic nominee. Republican incumbent Tim O’Hare is seeking his second term and will face precinct chair Robert Buker in the primary election.

Veasey’s filing, minutes before the state’s 6 p.m. deadline for candidates to file their candidacy for political office in the March primary, was unexpected as political observers watched news around Crockett’s drawn-out announcement, which she timed for late on the day of filing.

But drama came earlier in the day when Dallas minister Frederick Haynes III, leader of Friendship-West Baptist Church, entered the race for District 30. His mega-church has about 13,000 members, including Crockett.

The twist of Veasey leaving Congress left political experts surprised.

“He was in a difficult situation,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. “Veasey is associated with Tarrant County, and that’s a Dallas-dominated district. He believed he would not have an advantage in the district and the African-American electorate would not support him but Haynes.”

Both Veasey and Haynes are Black, and the district is predominantly Black.

However, Haynes lives in the district while Veasey does not. District 30 largely covers much of southern Dallas County, which includes the church, and only a small portion includes Tarrant County.

“Crockett, in some ways, put Veasey in a difficult situation,” Jones said.

I’m sad to see Rep. Veasey exit Congress, but again that was a big part of the Republican plan.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Abbie Kamin, Adrian Garcia, Al Green, Amanda Edwards, Annise Parker, Audrie Lawton, Benjamin Flores, Carla Wyatt, CD02, CD07, CD08, CD09, CD10, CD18, CD22, CD29, CD30, CD33, CD36, CD38, Charlene Ward Johnson, Christian Menefee, Colin Allred, Commissioners Court, Comptroller, Congress, Democratic primary, District Clerk, Election 2026, filing deadline, Governor, Gretchen Brown, Harold Dutton, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, Harris County Clerk, Harris County Judge, Harris County Treasurer, HD131, HD139, HD142, HD144, HD149, Hubert Vo, James Talarico, Jarvis Johnson, Jasmine Crockett, Julie Johnson, Land Commissioner, Lesley Briones, Letitia Plummer, Lizzie FLetcher, Marc Veasey, Mary Ann Perez, Sarah Eckhardt, Senate, Shaun Finnie, Sylvia Garcia, Tarrant County, Teneshia Hudspeth, Terry Virts, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Rep. Jasmine Crockett to run for Senate

Posted on December 9, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

As expected by this point.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, on Monday filed to run for U.S. Senate, scrambling the Democratic field after teasing her potential entry for months.

Crockett, a second-term congresswoman, has skyrocketed to fame through viral spats with Republicans and as a frequent presence in the Democratic media ecosystem. The 44-year-old’s fiery clashes with Republicans have earned her legions of social media followers and donors, turning her into one of the party’s most prolific fundraisers even as she has been passed up for multiple House leadership roles.

Crockett is joining a field that already includes Austin state Rep. James Talarico, also known as a strong communicator and for his progressive brand of Christianity. But her path was made easier by fellow Dallasite Colin Allred’s decision to exit the Senate race, which he announced early Monday morning. Both Allred, the 2024 Democratic nominee, and Talarico had been running for months, with Allred launching his campaign in July, followed by Talarico in September. The primary is March 3.

But as Crockett began to move closer to a bid, she called both Allred and Talarico to discuss her internal polling of the race, and the prospect of forming a slate. That did not pan out; a similar effort to divide up the marquee statewide offices over the summer also failed, with too many candidates drawn to the Senate race over other contests such as governor and attorney general.

[…]

In a November interview with Politico, Crockett said she would only run for Senate if the data from her internal campaign polling showed that she could win a general election.

More recently, she has said her internal polling has shown she can win a general election. Crockett also publicly discussed her desire to form a winning slate of Democratic candidates for statewide offices. While the Senate candidates ultimately did not work out a statewide slate, Allred’s exit leaves only two high-profile candidates vying for the nomination, lowering the chances of a May runoff.

So far, no public poll has shown Crockett winning a general election against Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton or Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston, each of whom are running for the GOP nomination.

See here for some background. My thoughts remain the same. There hasn’t been that much public polling on the Senate race yet, and only some of that even included Crockett. The most favorable polling I’ve seen recently didn’t have any of the candidates at the time leading either Cornyn or Paxton – it remains my policy to not take Wesley Hunt seriously – so she’s not under any exceptional handicap that I know of. All I know is that I was happy with Talarico in the race, and I will need to be convinced otherwise. Welcome to the race, Rep. Crockett.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged CD30, Colin Allred, Congress, Democratic primary, Election 2026, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, polls, Senate, Texas | 1 Comment

Jeff Kent elected to MLB Hall of Fame

Posted on December 9, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I’m just going to go with what Jay Jaffe says here.

On an eight-man Hall of Fame ballot featuring three players who were linked to performance-enhancing drugs, and four others who had shortened careers that ended by age 37 due to declines accelerated by injuries, it appeared from the outset of this cycle that Jeff Kent — a former MVP who holds the record for most home runs by a second baseman — had the easiest path to a plaque. Sure enough, when the votes from the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era Committee were counted at the Winter Meetings on Sunday in Orlando, Kent was the lone candidate elected to the Hall. He’ll be inducted on July 26, 2026 in Cooperstown alongside any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

Meanwhile, in a repudiation that echoed the one that he received from the 2023 edition of this committee, Kent’s former Giants teammate and clubhouse nemesis Barry Bonds again received fewer than five votes. So did Roger Clemens (again) and first-timer Gary Sheffield, the two other candidates connected to PEDs, as well as the late Fernando Valenzuela. Based on a new rule introduced earlier this year, all four are ineligible for consideration on the 2029 Contemporary Baseball ballot, assuming the format goes unchanged; the earliest they can next appear is the 2032 ballot, to be voted on in December 2031. If any of those candidates again slips into the fewer-than-five zone, they will be ineligible for future consideration, period — an aspect of the rule that appears ripe for abuse given the heavy hand the Hall has demonstrated when choosing its committees.

Astute readers of my coverage will note that those four candidates were the ones from this ballot whom I endorsed for election. I argued that Valenzuela, who barely made a dent in two years on the BBWAA ballot (2003–04), should be considered primarily as a modern-day pioneer for serving as a beloved global ambassador and international icon who brought generations of Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball. That’s on top of a very good — but not Hall-caliber — playing career which included six All-Star selections and four top-five finishes in the Cy Young voting, highlighted by his incredible age-20 season, in which he won the NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards, led the Dodgers to their first championship in 16 years, and emerged as the centerpiece of a cultural phenomenon, Fernandomania.

As for Bonds, Clemens, and Sheffield, this was an extension of the support I gave them during their tenures on the BBWAA ballot, first virtually and then once I joined the voting pool starting with the 2021 cycle. All three were among the very best of their day, with Bonds and Clemens perhaps the best position player and pitcher of all time — period. As for their connections to PEDs, I’ve long drawn a distinction between PED use that dated to the time before testing and penalties were in place, when a complete institutional failure prevented the league and the union from adopting a coherent drug policy. This isn’t a fringe view within the BBWAA electorate, either. Particularly once Bud Selig, who as commissioner presided over the game’s steroid mess, was elected to the Hall via the 2017 Today’s Game election, all three received support from a substantial majority of Hall voters, climbing to at least 63% by the end of their runs on the ballot (2022 for Bonds and Clemens, 2024 for Sheffield).

Judged by the outcome, this committee was far less forgiving on that front.

[…]

Even with five of this ballot’s eight candidates ruled out for 2029, the 11-member BBWAA Historical Overview Committee that creates the next slate faces a challenge, as the list of intriguing candidates is only growing. Setting aside the PED-linked Manny Ramirez, who with two positive tests isn’t going to leapfrog Bonds et al. into Cooperstown, candidates who could fill those vacancies in 2029 include [Lou] Whitaker and Dwight Evans, both frozen out after solid showings on the 2020 Modern Baseball ballot, plus Jim Edmonds, Keith Hernandez, Kenny Lofton, Johan Santana, and Omar Vizquel, none of whom has appeared on an Era Committee ballot before.

With its reputation for cronyism and for choosing candidates who don’t measure up to their BBWAA-elected brethren, the Era Committees, like the Veterans Committees before them, have often invited criticism and even cynicism. Perhaps the joke is on any of us who looked at this slate and dared to imagine that this time it could be different, that voters could break free of past patterns by finding nuance within the Steroid Era, or even break new ground by recognizing a modern-day pioneer. In the end, the only consensus reached was on the ballot’s safest pick. Welcome to the byzantine world of Cooperstown, Jeff Kent.

There’s a decent chance that Pete Rose could soon get elected to the Hall of Fame, so I have a lot less tolerance for the usual preening about PEDs, and that’s before we get to the raw deal that guys like Gary Sheffield have dealt with. I’m fine with Jeff Kent being elected, but the issue is who has been bypassed and overlooked while others have been ushered in. Those are bigger questions for another day. Congrats to Jeff Kent, good luck to everyone else. ESPN has more.

Posted in Baseball | Tagged Barry Bonds, Baseball, Gary Sheffield, Hall of Fame, Jeff Kent, Lou Whitaker, MLB, Roger Clemens, steroids | 1 Comment

Cuellar and Trump

Posted on December 8, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I’m sorry, but this is hilarious.

Rep. Henry Cuellar

President Donald Trump lashed out at U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar on Sunday, accusing the Laredo lawmaker of disloyalty for filing to run for reelection as a Democrat shortly after Trump pardoned him and his wife of serious corruption charges.

In a lengthy social media post, Trump pointed out it was the Biden administration’s Department of Justice that pursued the case against the Cuellars. He slammed Cuellar for “continuing to work with the same Radical Left Scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in Prison – And probably still do!”

“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Sunday morning. “Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”

A federal grand jury in Houston indicted Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, in April 2024 on charges of bribery, money laundering, working on behalf of a foreign government and conspiracy. They were accused of accepting $600,000 in bribes between 2014 and 2021 from a Mexican bank and an oil and gas company in Azerbaijan. The case was scheduled for trial in April of next year, with each of them facing up to 204 years in prison if convicted. Both have denied wrongdoing.

Trump pardoned the couple on Wednesday in response to a letter from their daughters. In his post, Trump said he didn’t speak to Cuellar before the pardon but added that “God was very happy with me that day.”

Cuellar thanked Trump in a social media post and said he planned to thank Trump in person at the White House Christmas party.

The president did not take the step of endorsing Cuellar’s GOP opponent, Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, on Sunday, who declared his candidacy the day before Trump pardoned Cuellar.

Cuellar was pardoned last week, a couple of days before SCOTUS rubber-stamped the new Congressional map, which among other things was supposed to make it easier to flip his seat. I have no idea what Trump was thinking – trying to guess at that is a pathway to madness – but I love how he hoisted Tano Tijerina and a pallet of other Republicans on the petard with him. Meanwhile the Dems are like “yeah, cool, thanks”, even as many of us can’t stand Henry Cuellar. It’s all far too stupid to be a B-plot on The West Wing, and that’s just the Trump experience. The Current has more.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged CD28, Congress, Donald Trump, Election 2026, Henry Cuellar, pardon, redistricting, SCOTUS, Tano Tijerina, Texas | 2 Comments

Lawsuit filed over labeling requirement in Texas MAHA law

Posted on December 8, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s that time, when new laws face whatever court challenges they’re going to get.

Several food and beverage trade associations are asking a federal court to strike down a package-labeling provision in a new state law aimed at combating obesity, diabetes and some cancers

The associations said in a news release that they support the nearly all of the elements of Texas’ version of the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign. The labeling provisions, however, would require companies to make “false and misleading claims” about their products, according the federal lawsuit filed Friday in Waco.

The Texas law calls for a warning label for products with specific ingredients that states: “This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada the European Union or the United Kingdom.” But the suit said several of the ingredients that trigger the warning have not been found to be harmful and in some cases have not been flagged by the foreign entities listed.

Requiring the labeling would run afoul of the First Amendment, the suit said.

“We urge the court to allow for nutrition education, protect the freedom of Texans and curb the influence of foreign regulatory bodies in the state by quickly reversing this specific portion of SB 25,” the associations said in an unsigned statement.

The suit was filed by the American Beverage Association, the Consumer Brands Association, the National Confectioners Association and the Food Industry Association.

There’s more, it’s a gift link so read the rest as you will. I’m sure this group of plaintiffs is no one’s idea of sympathetic or underdogs. The discussion about “ultraprocessed foods” is a good one to have, though I suggest you listen to this episode of Maintenance Phase first so we can all at least agree on terminology. On the other hand, the whole MAHA thing is being led by a brainworm-addled sociopath who is working to give measles and polio (and now hepatitis B) to millions of children, and this bill was written by legislators who I’d bet couldn’t pass a middle school biology test. I’d rather we go by facts and data, and that leads me to want to see this lawsuit succeed. So there you have it.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged American Beverage Association, Consumer Brands Association, Donald Trump, Food Industry Association, Lacey Hull, lawsuit, Lois Kolkhorst, MAHA, National Confectioners Association, RFK Jr, Texas, The Lege | Leave a comment

Here’s your World Cup schedule for Houston

Posted on December 8, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Make your plans, if you’ve got the money to buy a ticket and aren’t grossed out by their Trump-pandering.

Houston learned it was hosting games in the 2026 World Cup way back in June 2022.

Now, we finally know the teams and the schedule at NRG Stadium.

It will be a mix of old (Germany) and new (Cape Verde), powerful (Portugal) and small (Curaçao). Houston will also get to see Cristiano Ronaldo twice, as the 41-year-old star goes for his first World Cup title with Portugal.

There’s also an element of mystery still surrounding the Houston schedule as two of the teams playing have not yet been decided.

“The announcement of the countries that will play FIFA World Cup 2026 matches in Houston makes the thrill of what’s to come even more tangible,” Chris Canetti, Houston’s World Cup host committee president, said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to showing Cabo Verde, Curaçao, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan the hospitality that is the signature of our city, and providing locals and visitors alike with an incredible experience from the stadium to FIFA Fan Festival and beyond.”

The 2026 World Cup in Houston at a glance:

Group play games in Houston

June 14

Germany vs. Curaçao, noon

June 17

Portugal vs. Winner of Playoff 1 (Jamaica, New Caledonia, Congo), noon

June 20

Netherlands vs. Winner of Playoff B (Ukraine/Sweden/Poland/Albania), noon

June 23

Portugal vs. Uzbekistan, noon

June 26

Cape Verde vs. Saudi Arabia, 7 p.m.

Knockout round games in Houston

June 29

Round of 32: Winner of Group C vs. Runner-up of Group F, noon

July 4

Round of 16: Winner of Group A runner-up vs. Group B runner-up against Winner of Group F winner vs. Group C runner-up, noon

Here’s what to expect for Arlington, where JerryWorld will be renamed “Dallas Stadium” for the duration; NRG will be “Houston Stadium”. It’s a FIFA thing, don’t ask. Good luck with your tickets.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged Chris Canetti, Cowboys Stadium, Dallas, FIFA, Houston, Reliant Stadium, soccer, Texas, World Cup | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for December 7

Posted on December 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“Protecting children from the sometimes fatal advice of chatbots has felt like going after “Big Tobacco” in the 1990s; accusing Republicans of giving “Big Tech” whatever it wanted is the sort of anti-billionaire populism that’s second nature to most Democrats.”

“Across the West, porcupines are vanishing. Wildlife scientists are racing to find where porcupines are still living, and why they’re disappearing.”

“Each time I serve pumpkin pie, I get to share a little known slice of American history. Although meant to unify people, the 19th-century campaign to make Thanksgiving a permanent holiday was seen by prominent Southerners as a culture war. They considered it a Northern holiday intended to force New England values on the rest of the country. To them, pumpkin pie, a Yankee food, was a deviously sweet symbol of anti-slavery sentiment.”

RIP, Tom Stoppard, playwright and screenwriter, best known for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

“The Duffer Brothers Made a Very Sweet Casting Choice for ‘Stranger Things’ 5″.

“Even as feminists’ warnings have materialized into a horrific reality, we remain dismissed as hysterical—by the same anti-abortion leaders who are quite literally killing us! Now we’re “hysterical” for warning that Republicans want to impose a national abortion ban and that they’re targeting birth control.”

“A 115-page report compiled from interviews with dozens of current and former FBI agents found that FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have turned the agency into a ‘circus,’ with agents describing the two men as clowns more obsessed with their personal image and posting to social media than they are with running the law enforcement agency.” And again I wonder, when will pop culture – specifically, crime fiction in both books and TV shows – begin to depict this reality.

“Rosa Parks’ story didn’t end in Montgomery. These students are proof of that.”

“How a bald coach solved volleyball’s ponytail predicament“. If that’s not a headline to make you want to read the story, I don’t know what would be.

“What Really Happens When You Win A Car On The Price Is Right, According To Past Winners”.

“Netflix has removed support for casting from its mobile apps to most TVs, including Chromecast with Google TV and Google TV Streamer devices.” I guess it’s a good thing we can access it directly from our TV now.

“After three days of voting in which more than 30,000 people had their say, we have chosen rage bait as our official Oxford Word of the Year for 2025.”

“A president killing boaters on specious claims of “narcoterrorism” while pardoning major drug traffickers should be a major scandal.”

“But when I read the news of the return of Rush Hour, I also figured there must be more to the story. Why this franchise? Why these action stars? I remember enjoying the first movie as a 10-year-old boy (arguably its target audience), but I confess I mostly forgot there had been a second installment, let alone a third. Why was Trump so keen to return to this world? I decided to find out by doing the only thing that seemed right: mainlining all three Rush Hour movies in 24 hours.”

“A new study out last week in JAMA Network Open found that cutting down on social media use even for a week can significantly reduce mental health symptoms in young adults.”

“But we needn’t get so deep in the theological weeds here. Basic Mister Rogers stuff remains a good starting point. These insecure, anxious, persecuted hegemons driven by their fears of anticipatory humiliation need, somehow, to learn what they should have learned from Fred Rogers when they were kids: 1. You are special and immeasurably worthy and good, and 2. So is everybody else.”

“Several businesses and nonprofits have launched AI-powered tools to help patients get their insurance claims paid and navigate byzantine medical bills, creating a robotic tug-of-war over who gets care and who foots the bill for it.”

“Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity. We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image, which directly contradicts these values.”

“The United States, which has military forces deployed around the globe, cannot build a safer world for its own servicemembers by discarding basic laws of war. History shows that when America blatantly abandons humane norms and the law of war, it ultimately endangers its own people.”

“this video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”

“ALL OF WHICH RAISES A QUESTION: Why has there been no similar accountability for another of Epstein’s pen pals—Steve Bannon? Trump’s consigliere, strategist, propagandist, and former senior counselor at the White House was on very friendly terms with Jeffrey Epstein. He exchanged hundreds of emails with the convicted felon and conspired to whitewash his public image.”

As Josh Marshall notes, that Bannon-Epstein stuff has actually been known for awhile, thanks to Michael Wolff.

“Dear Troops: Please Don’t Go to Jail for Pete Hegseth”.

RIP, Frank Gehry, legendary architect who designed the Guggenheim Museum in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, among many others.

“A federal grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, refused to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud on Thursday”.

“Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, filed a complaint to the newly appointed CBS News ombudsman on Wednesday over the way that 60 Minutes edited its recent interview with Donald Trump.”

“Now, the World Cup is just another vehicle to curry favor with President Donald Trump by celebrating Donald Trump, and it’s so gross.”

RIP, Roy Kramer, former Southeast Conference commissioner who led its initial rise to the top of the heap.

Why Sohla El-Waylly was not in the NYT’s Cookie Week this week.

The record for most rushing yards in a single season for Texas high school football, which had been set in 1953, was broken on Friday.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

A brief thought about the Jeffrey Epstein situation

Posted on December 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is from Brian Beutler’s Off Message Substack, and it’s actually about Ghislaine Maxwell, but I think you’ll take my point.

Look at this week’s warning about Trump and the files from the New York Times editorial board. They rightly caution that Trump has manipulated the public at every step of the process, and that his manipulations will continue. You shouldn’t trust any information Trump clears for release, according to the Times, given:

Trump’s long friendship with Epstein and his jokey statements about Epstein’s perversions

The creepy cartoon birthday card Trump drew for his pal

Trump’s use of Epstein file conspiracy theories for campaign advantage, only to pretend the whole thing was a hoax once he was responsible for disclosure

Pam Bondi’s gleeful displays of fake transparency to MAGA podcasters, followed by her ham-fisted stonewalling after informing Trump that he’s in the files

And finally, Trumps machinations, intimidation and threats to (unsuccessfully) block a Congressional vote, and, thus, to keep the files secret

All of that, but not a single word about Ghislaine Maxwell. How is this possible?

Trump’s treatment of Maxwell—a convicted sex trafficker— is by far the most glaring, brazen, and openly corrupt part of the current moment involving the president. It should be a show-stopper. It should be sending reporters into the faces of every Trump ally and causing them to fall over each other with incredulity at every Oval Office press availability. But in the warped reality surrounding Trump, it’s being taken, by all of us, as some strange, lower-priority, given.

When the politics of the Epstein fiasco began to tighten on Trump over the summer, he dispatched the Deputy Attorney General to Florida to privately interview Maxwell. We now know, thanks to Epstein’s emails, that Maxwell lied about how much Trump knew about Epstein’s and her own abuse. DAG Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal attorney, left the receipts from the Epstein estate out of the chat.

Whether by intention or error, he failed to get the truth out of Maxwell.

(“Mr. President, when will you order Todd Blanche to re-interview Maxwell given the evidence contained in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, and why haven’t your ordered it already? Don’t you want to know the truth?”)

Immediately after her jailhouse interview, someone in the Trump Administration moved Maxwell from a high-security federal prison in Florida to a much more comfortable one in Texas. Maxwell is a sex offender and under Bureau of Prison rules not eligible for minimum security incarceration. But she’s also getting special meals, private access to the gym, visit time with a dog, and other privileges like unlimited toilet paper, according to a whistleblower. According to experts, the only people authorized to issue the special waiver allowing Maxwell to be treated unlike virtually any other sex offender are the BOP director and the Deputy Attorney General.

(“Mr. President, you claim you didn’t know about Maxwell’s transfer. But now that you know, why haven’t your ordered the Bureau of Prisons to return her to maximum security?”)

(“If you won’t order her return, why not? Why should she stay in a prison the rules say isn’t fit for a sex offender?”)

(“Maxwell was your friend for many years. Sir, why is your Administration giving her special treatment?”)

In July, 2020, Maxwell was arrested and charged with six felony counts including conspiracy, perjury, and sex trafficking minors as young as 14. In the face of these alleged abominations, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, would only say of Maxwell, “I wish her well.”

(“Mr. President, in 2020 you said repeatedly that you wish Ghislaine Maxwell well. Why would you wish someone charged with trafficking 14-year-old girls well?”)

(“Sir, Maxwell said in her jailhouse interview that she likes you and admires your achievements. And you’ve said you wish her well. Why are you and a child sex trafficker saying such friendly things to each other through intermediaries?”)

I would just like to point out that every one of these questions could be addressed to Greg Abbott, because Ghislaine Maxwell is as noted here in Texas, in that nice cushy federal pen that she was moved to in order to curry favor – and hopefully a pardon – from Donald Trump, and also because Trump is Greg Abbott’s daddy. All of these words are equally true for Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton, and pretty much every Texas Republican on the ballot. But we’ll focus here on the big three for simplicity’s sake.

Because these guys don’t bother talking to the mainstream media, the questions will need to be brought to them in a different way. What I envision is all of the current Democratic candidates for Senate, Governor, Lite Guv, and AG calling a press conference about this and taking turns lambasting Abbott, Patrick, Paxton, and Cornyn for acquiescing to all this happening in our state and demanding that they do something about it. That would take a lot of coordination and stagecraft and would require figuring out who gets to speak and so on, but I think we would all agree it would get a lot of attention. Hype it up beforehand, livestream it everywhere, and make some noise. The media, as Beutler notes, doesn’t know how to handle this situation. But they would know what to do with an event like this. I know this is all blue-sky stuff, but why not try?

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Attorney General, Dan Patrick, Donald Trump, Election 2026, Ghislaine Maxwell, Governor, Greg Abbott, Jeffrey Epstein, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, Lite Gov, Senate, Texas | 3 Comments

Of course that DPRIT lawsuit filed by crackpots was done incorrectly

Posted on December 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s more fun this way.

If an Austin court hearing this week is an early indication of how a lawsuit blocking Texas’ $3 billion dementia research fund will fare, state leaders who championed it and the voters who overwhelmingly approved it by more than a 2-1 margin may have little worry.

On Tuesday, it took 21 minutes of back-and-forth between state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble and one of plaintiffs — a self-proclaimed Texas voter representing herself without an attorney — for the judge to politely but firmly point out she had missed a critical step to move forward with any lawsuit: properly notify the people she is suing.

“You’re not going to have a temporary injunction hearing today,” the judge told Shannon Huggins that she and fellow plaintiffs Lars Kuslich and Jose Silvester had missed properly serving Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock with their Nov. 13 lawsuit.

The trio’s case is still in play — and the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute, one of 17 constitutional amendments voters passed on Nov. 4, is still blocked from going into effect — but this first shaky court appearance offered a look at what Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick considered a pressing problem: “frivolous” challenges to constitutional amendments.

Challenges to constitutional amendments have become such a growing concern and problem that this year the Texas Legislature passed a comprehensive judicial bill that included a provision to prevent lawsuits from halting constitutional amendments like DPRIT’s Proposition 14, which 2 million Texas voters approved.

However, that law, House Bill 16, didn’t go into effect until Thursday, much too late to have blocked last month’s lawsuit from halting DPRIT.

[…]

In the most recent lawsuit challenging DPRIT, it’s not clear whether the plaintiffs’ flub as shown during Tuesday’s hearing will result in the same outcome as the 2023 cases. Abbott’s office offered no comment on the matter, saying only that the governor had advised Texans to vote for all the constitutional amendments. The Texas Attorney General’s office has not returned requests for comment on the DPRIT lawsuit or the next legal steps to be taken.

The fear for DPRIT supporters is that it could meet the same fate as a 2021 constitutional amendment. Filed by Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, that amendment — which would have allowed counties to issue more bonds — hasn’t gone into effect because the lawsuit against it is still caught up in court.

“So the court can kill the constitutional amendment and override two thirds of each [legislative] body and the will of the people,” Nichols said. “That’s insane to me.”

[…]

Nichol’s 2021 measure would have provided counties the ability to create special taxing authorities to allow the issuance of bonds to improve roads; 63% of voters approved the measure.

In that case, plaintiffs challenged the amendment language as being vague and won a ruling in their favor. However, it remains in limbo because the state has not answered whether it will appeal, according to plaintiffs’ lawyer Tony McDonald and Nichols.

“They killed it by district court,” Nichols said. “They should not be able to sit on it forever.”

See here for some background on this lawsuit, with links from there about the 2023 lawsuits and how similar clownishness led to them being mooted. I was not aware of the 2021 case, but I have to ask how it is that the state hasn’t decided to appeal that verdict. Isn’t that the job of the Attorney General? Has anyone asked Ken Paxton about this? I find that more stunning than anything about this lawsuit. Anyway, my guess is that one way or another this little piece of ridiculousness will wither away, it’s just a matter of how long it can hold on before its inevitable demise.

Posted in Election 2025, Legal matters | Tagged Attorney General, constitutional amendments, Dan Patrick, DPRIT, Election 2021, Election 2023, Election 2025, electronic voting machines, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Robert Nichols, Secretary of State, Texas, The Lege, Travis County | Leave a comment

Why Kerr County turned down state flood grant money

Posted on December 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Very interesting.

Three weeks after flash floods in Texas’ Hill Country killed more than 100 people, state lawmakers chastised Kerr County leaders for rejecting money a year earlier to create a warning system that could have alerted residents to rapidly rising water.

Several lashed out as a Kerr official representing the local river authority tried to explain why it declined money from a $1.4 billion state fund to help guard against destructive flooding.

One state senator on the special legislative committee tasked with investigating the deadly floods called the decision “pathetic.” Another said it was “disturbing.” State Rep. Drew Darby, a Republican from San Angelo, said the river authority simply lacked the will to pay for the project.

But Kerr leaders were not the only ones who rejected the state’s offer, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. In the five years since the fund’s launch, at least 90 local governments turned down tens of millions of dollars in state grants and loans.

Leaders from about 30 local governments that the news organizations spoke with said the state grants paid for so little of the total project costs that they simply could not move forward, even with the program’s offer to cover the rest through interest-free loans. Many hoped the state program would provide grants that paid the bulk of the costs, such as the ones from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which typically supply at least 75%. They believed that they could raise the rest.

Instead, many were offered far less. In some cases, the state offered grants that paid for less than 10% of the funding needed.

In Kerr’s case, the state awarded a $50,000 grant for a $1 million flood warning system, or roughly 5%. It said the river authority could borrow the rest and repay it over the next three decades, but local officials were not sure they would be able to pay back the $950,000 — and failure to do so could carry state sanctions.

City officials in Robinson, located between Dallas and Austin, sought about $2.4 million in funding to buy and tear down homes directly in the floodway. The state offered $236,000 and required that the city conduct an engineering study that would have eaten up more than half of those grant funds, the city manager told the news organizations.

The state also proposed giving the East Texas city of Kilgore a fraction of what Public Works Director Clay Evers had anticipated for a drainage study aimed at minimizing flooding. The city needed the money, Evers said, but the state’s offer required a far larger match than the council members had planned to set aside based on the federal grant system as a guide. The state also required the city to go through a second application process to secure the grant, which Evers said would further strain resources.

So, Evers dropped out.

Four years after he turned down the state funding, Evers watched in shock as lawmakers lambasted Kerr leaders. It could have just as easily been him trying to defend a choice he never wanted to make in the first place.

“I don’t have this unlimited pot of money,” Evers said. “That is an incredibly difficult decision, and when the impossible, improbable, traumatic happens, how do you defend the decision you just made?”

Several Texas leaders who created and oversaw the fund defended the program as a significant investment and said that local communities must also be willing to invest in flood warning and mitigation projects.

Local officials, particularly those in smaller, rural communities, said a limited tax base, along with continued state restrictions on their ability to raise new taxes, have made it difficult to fund necessary projects.

After learning of the newsroom’s findings, two lawmakers and a former state employee who helped launch the fund expressed concerns over the high number of communities that turned down the money. Though state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso, and Darby said that the state can’t pay for the entirety of every project, they acknowledged lawmakers created a flawed system.

“I absolutely know that what we’re doing now is not adequate for the people that we represent,” Moody said. “It’s OK for us to admit that the system isn’t good enough. We shouldn’t be afraid of saying that. The question then is, what are we going to do about it?”

Moody and Darby said the state program merits a thorough review by lawmakers during the next legislative session in 2027.

“It is a frustrating prospect that we have this program that’s designed to be important to help people’s lives, and the Legislature determined it to be a priority, and we put money in, and to find it still in the bank accounts, and not being deployed,” Darby said. “We need to fix it.”

I know I had critical things to say about Kerr County and the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, though I’m not able to find the posts now. I appreciate the clarification, and of course it makes sense that the state would take the cheap way to do this. I hope they follow through and address this in the next session. The state can afford it, that’s for sure.

(There were of course other reasons to criticize Kerr County officials following those deadly floods.)

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged Drew Darby, Flood Infrastructure Fund, flooding, Guadalupe River, Joe Moody, Kerr County, Texas, Texas Water Development Board, The Lege | Leave a comment

CM Kamin files for County Attorney

Posted on December 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Not exactly a surprise.

CM Abbie Kamin

Houston City Council Member Abbie Kamin filed to run for Harris County attorney Friday, confirming rumors that the District C council member was seeking to replace Christian Menefee as the county’s top civil litigator.

Her filing triggered Texas’ resign-to-run law, which mandates elected officials tender their resignation upon announcing a campaign for another office. While Kamin’s resignation technically takes effect immediately, she will remain in her position as a holdover until a special election is held to replace her.

Kamin told the Houston Chronicle in an exclusive interview Friday that, while she valued her time representing District C, she felt she could do more to help residents as county attorney.

“I couldn’t take it anymore, seeing what Donald Trump is doing, what Greg Abbott is doing and the entire MAGA machine — they are coming after our families, our neighbors, our local governments,” Kamin said. “When the county attorney’s position came open, I really started considering whether I should be diving into the fight and making a bigger difference than what I’m capable of through my service on city council.”

[…]

“I’ve seen time and time again bad actors — whether it’s a bar creating a dangerous environment in the surrounding neighborhood, or just like yesterday, the tragedy of the apartment complex fire and negligent slum lords preying on innocent Houstonians,” Kamin said. “It is critical that there is that proactive role in protecting the people of Harris County, but it’s also imperative that the business operations of the county run as smoothly as possible. That means every contract that comes through is moved out effectively and efficiently, while also making sure that it’s done properly and accurately.”

See here for some background. I’ve heard CM Kamin’s name mentioned as a possible Harris County Attorney candidate for some time, though obviously with the resign-to-run provision any chatter about it had been in the background. Kamin is opposed in the primary now by Audrie Lawton Evans, who has been serving as the presiding judge of Harris County Civil Court at Law No. 1, a position she too will have to resign. I look forward to interviewing them for the primary, and I hope the fight continues to be over standing up to the depredations of the Trump administration and its local enablers.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Abbie Kamin, Audrie Lawton, CD18, Christian Menefee, Commissioners Court, Democratic primary, District C, Election 2026, Harris County Attorney, Houston City Council, resign to run, special election, Texas | Comments Off

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