Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

We have another plan for repurposing the Astrodome

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Not sure what the version number is for this, but whatever it is, increment it by one.

Ready and waiting

The Astrodome became the world’s first domed stadium upon opening its doors in 1965. Financed and developed primarily by then-mayor Roy Hofheinz, the Astrodome served as the home of the Astros, Oilers and, for a short time, the Rockets.

Its design was inspired by the Colosseum in Rome. It could seat 50,000 — though a record 68,266 fans packed in for a George Strait performance in 2002. Its inaugural use of artificial grass coined the term AstroTurf. It boasted the first-ever LED scoreboard. It was the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s primary venue from 1966 to 2002. And it earned the nickname of the Eighth Wonder of the World.

On Wednesday, the Astrodome Conservancy unveiled its ambitious $1 billion plan, Vision: Astrodome, with a mission to answer the decades-long question of what to do with the landmark. Gensler Houston design firm created the redevelopment concept.

“The Astrodome has since 2009 struggled with a public relations issue,” Beth Wiedower Jackson, executive director of the Astrodome Conservancy, told the Chronicle.

The conservancy’s chairman, Phoebe Tudor, who established the non-profit organization in 2016 by issuing a $100,000 investment grant, says the building is structurally sound, has undergone remediation for asbestos and is debt-free. “It’s over-engineered, solid and strong,” she said. “It’s in really good shape and just needs some TLC.”

Gensler’s design proposes 450,000-square feet of new, revenue-generating space. It conceptualizes four state-of-the-art buildings under the Astrodome’s iconic roof. Inspired by the Highline in New York, a boulevard would cut through the Astrodome to connect existing buildings within NRG Park. There would be room for 1,500 additional parking spots and animal handling facilities could be located under a new ground floor.

Around the perimeter, Vision: Astrodome has conceptualized a retail village for year-round restaurants, hospitality, exhibitions and shopping. An idea has been put forth to lease out real estate within the Dome’s concrete walls for data storage.

The Astrodome Conservancy aims to address the needs of Harris County, which owns and operates the Astrodome as part of NRG Park, and its two primary tenants, the RodeoHouston and the Texans.

“The rodeo has not had formal conversations with the Astrodome Conservancy in more than a year. The rodeo does not support the previously presented concepts as they conflict with our organization’s strategic vision and operational needs,” said Chris Boleman, president and CEO of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in an email statement to the Chronicle Tuesday.

“We have voiced our concerns on several occasions with the conservancy,” he said. “There is no proposed or official plan that our organization has agreed to or been made aware of regarding the future of the Astrodome. However, the rodeo, Texans and Harris County Sports & Convention Corp. have been working on plans for NRG Park’s future. Our goal remains to focus on the functioning buildings, enhancing our experience, and growing our event.”

[…]

“I get a dozen or more emails a week for how to repurpose it,” Jackson said. “The primary challenge is satisfying the local operations and management of NRG Park. That is not a damning statement. Contracts written 20-plus years ago give both tenants contractual rights to the Astrodome. Any proposal must have the support of those two primary tenants, the rodeo and the Texans.”

The current 30-year lease agreements, which were likely signed in 2001 and 2002, expire in 2031 and 2032.

“The hurdle is, from their perspective, that there are higher priorities at NRG Park,” Jackson said. “The assumption is that the Astrodome’s redevelopment is not possible without significant Harris County dollars and resources. Their argument is that support should first be spent on maintaining NRG Stadium.”

With those time parameters in mind, Jackson and Tudor say they tried to anticipate the Texans and RodeoHouston’s needs for the next 30 years. Their mission in working with Gensler was to create a multipurpose solution that adds value to the existing programs at NRG Park. The biggest challenge was solving the logistical puzzle of not interrupting access during rodeo season and Texans’ game days.

What’s the alternative?

Demolition could cost $100 million and take up to a year, Tudor said.

See here and here for the most recent Astrodome updates. The Astrodome Conservancy has been around for at least a few years. In some ways it’s kind of amazing to me that 25 years after the Astros played their last game at the Dome and 22 years after the last Rodeo there, we’re still trying to figure out what to do with it. There’s never been any shortage of ideas – my archives are full of them – but none have been able to get sufficient funding as well as the buy-in from the Rodeo and the Texans to move forward. Demolition has never really been on the table either, partly because of the desire to repurpose the space and partly because demolition would be expensive and disruptive and would still leave the question of what to do next. Doing nothing remains the easiest answer.

The Astrodome Conservancy has a vision and some people with a record of getting things done behind it. They also clearly have a lot of work to do to get the Rodeo and Texans on board – we haven’t really mentioned the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation or Commissioners Court, though I suspect they’d be willing to at least hear out anyone who could get the Rodeo and the Texans behind them – and of course they would need to either raise a boatload of money or persuade Harris County to fund them. The most likely outcome is that we don’t hear anything further until the next story about someone’s idea to repurpose the Dome comes up. But we’ll see.

UPDATE: A response:

“We respect the efforts of the Astrodome Conservancy and have seen their proposed concept. Over the last few years, we have seen several concepts that, while thought-provoking, haven’t resulted in viable funding and maintenance solutions,” said Bishop James Dixon, chairman of Harris County Sports & Convention Corp., in an email statement to the Chronicle Wednesday.

“We are currently working with Harris County and a team of industry-leading experts to plan for the future of NRG Park. The solution for the Astrodome must be decided within that context. In addition, we cannot consider any future vision for NRG Park without first understanding certain baseline financial information related to the Astrodome,” Dixon said.

The Harris County Sports & Convention Corp. is working to obtain data to use in evaluating proposed plans, he said.

“This critical information will provide us with the most viable path forward, ensuring NRG Park continues to meet the needs of its stakeholders and the public for now, and for the future. We are taking this approach because we are accountable to the public. Accurate and data driven information on financial costs and maintenance will inform responsible, realistic decisions that will eventually involve taxpayer dollars.”

None of this is a “no”, but none of it suggests any real openness to what the Conservancy is proposing. The Press, which calls the Rodeo and the Texans “entitled”, says neither of them is interested in anything but demolition. I wish the Conservancy luck but it’s hard to be optimistic.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Astrodome, Astrodome Conservancy, Beth Wiedower Jackson, demolition, Harris County, Harris County Sports & Convention Corp, Houston, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Houston Texans, James Dixon, Phoebe Tudor, preservation, Reliant Stadium | 2 Comments

Texas and Oklahoma peacefully settle their border dispute

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Well, at least one thing went well this past week.

Laura Buckman for The Texas Tribune

Texas just altered its border with Oklahoma. Well, a small sliver of it, anyway. And, no, Texas didn’t become any bigger.

After years of dispute over how the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma should be drawn at the Red River, the two states reached an agreement last month that shifted Texas’ northern border just slightly, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham announced on Thursday.

The problem began in 2009 when the North Texas Municipal Water District, which provides water to several Dallas-area cities, learned about invasive zebra mussels in Lake Texoma, where it was operating a water pump station.

That raised the question of whether the pump station was in Texas, or in Oklahoma. Federal law prohibits transporting zebra mussels across state lines. The North Texas water district paused pumping to avoid violating federal law. And Texas began investigating which state exactly the pump station sat in.

The state found that the pump station was within Texas borders when it was built in 1989. But a new boundary established by Texas and Oklahoma in 2000 — the vegetation line along the south bank of the Red River — meant that part of the station now sat in the state’s northern neighbor.

In 2021, Texas sent Oklahoma a proposal for a new boundary that would ensure the station lived wholly in Texas. After years of discussion, the two states finally reached an agreement on how the boundary should be drawn. The Texas and Oklahoma Red River Boundary Commissions executed the new border on Oct. 30.

“This redrawn boundary line will ensure that millions of north Texans’ water comes from a secure source in Texas,” Buckingham said.

Texas and Oklahoma exchanged approximately 1.34 acre of underwater land, or about a football field each. Neither of the states grew or shrunk — if either state had gotten bigger, approval from the U.S. Congress would have been required.

Good thing it didn’t need to go through Congress, I’m sure Ted Cruz would have filibustered it. Also good to know we can still solve some border disputes without involving the National Guard. I don’t have anything to say really, I just liked the story and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to crack a couple of cheap jokes. I’ll stop now.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged border, Dawn Buckingham, invasive species, Lake Texoma, Land Commissioner, North Texas Municipal Water District, Oklahoma, Red River, Texas, water, zebra mussels | Comments Off

Six Houston restaurants get Michelin stars

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

And the crowd goes wild.

After months of speculation, the Michelin Guide announced its inaugural Texas selection of restaurants at a private awards ceremony in Houston on Monday night.

The respected guide from the French tire manufacturer doled out 15 one-star reviews statewide — and nearly half of them went to Houston restaurants.

BCN Taste & Tradition, CorkScrew BBQ, Le Jardinier, March, Musaafer and Tatemó — all featured in the Houston Chronicle’s recent Top 100 restaurants guide — garnered one star each.

No restaurants in Texas received more than a single star, which are recognized for “high-quality cooking” and are deemed “worth a stop.” Michelin also recognized 45 Texas establishments for a Bib Gourmand, and 57 were designated as Recommended restaurants. Houston’s strong showing continued with 15 Bib Gourmands and seven Recommended spots.

Michelin’s debut in the Lone Star State is a milestone for Houston restaurant scene, which has gained national and international attention in recent years.

“Texas deserves its place on the U.S. culinary map but also the world culinary map,” said Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin Guides. “We feel the potential.”

Michelin recognized a total of 117 restaurants across the state in and surrounding Houston, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio. Poullennec added that 26 cuisine types were reflected in the guide’s selection.

Austin led with seven one-starred restaurants, including three barbecue joints. Dallas and San Antonio each had a single one-starred spot. Two Austin restaurants, Dai Due and Emmer & Rye, were the only recipients of a Green Star recognizing sustainably-operated restaurants.

Barbecue, however, took center stage in general. Six of the 15 Bib Gourmands in Houston specialize in barbecue, from the globally inspired smoke meats at Blood Bros. BBQ in Bellaire to Truth Barbeque, which originally started in Brenham before opening a second location in the Heights area.

See here and here for the background, and here for a list of all the winners, including the Bib Gourmands. There are a couple of places I’ve been to on that latter list and a few more I’d like to try, but I’ll be honest, I’m too basic for most of them. I’m happy for the winners and for all of the attention this has brought to our state’s food scene. I look forward to future updates.

There was a ton of coverage for this, in Houston and in the other named cities, so here’s a roundup of related links. Happy eating!

Houston food critic Alison Cook on the winners.

The anonymous “Chief Inspector” speaks.

Houston CultureMap’s pregame guide and postgame analysis.

Austin roundup from the Statesman, Axios Austin, and the Austin Chronicle.

Dallas coverage from WFAA, Eater Dallas, the Dallas Observer, and Dallas CultureMap.

And the San Antonio Current, Texas Public Radio, the Fort Worth Report, Houston Public Media, the Houston Press, Houstonia, and Texas Monthly (and again and again). Hope that holds you for awhile.

Posted in Food, glorious food | Tagged Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Houston First, Michelin Guide, restaurants, San Antonio, Texas, Travel Texas | Comments Off

A brief HCC update

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

There’s not a lot of non-election news happening right now, but there was this.

Houston Community College officials are working to integrate virtual reality and more digital advances into every classroom and program by next fall, one of several goals that Chancellor Margaret Ford Fisher shared at the institution’s recent State of the College address.

The speech on Friday came about a year into Ford Fisher’s tenure at the head of the college system. HCC is building off enrollment growth following severe declines during the COVID-19 pandemic: More than 53,000 students enrolled this fall, up more than 7% from last fall, according to college data.

[…]

College officials will have a recommendation to the Board of Trustees by March or April, Ford Fisher said. On Friday, the chancellor called a name change a “must,” even though trustees were divided on the idea at a summer board meeting.

Several members had questioned making a new name a priority while they attempt to raise graduation and retention numbers for better funding from the Legislature. Former revenue formulas were mostly based on enrollment, but the performance-based metrics have not benefited HCC to the extent other institutions have seen.

A few board members had agreed with Ford Fisher, who raised the topic after HCC launched new four-year degrees in artificial intelligence and robotics as well as in healthcare management. They said dropping “community” from the name would appeal to a broader set of students and their potential employers, and they pointed to other community colleges that have changed their names to reflect status.

HCC is also undergoing a review to find where it might add new bachelor’s degrees, though Ford Fisher said the school is looking at labor market demands that are not in competition with local four-year universities.

[…]

HCC is reinventing its urban transportation programs, particularly related to flying taxis, self-driving cars and electric vehicles, according to the chancellor.

Those modes of transportation will require new infrastructure, including in maintenance and construction, that will require new skillsets, she said.

I remain ambivalent about the possible name change. I don’t object, but I do agree that there are higher priorities. I’d also like to see some data to suggest that changing the name, in particular dropping “Community” from the name, would enable the school to appeal to a broader audience. I’m not disputing the assertion, I’m just not accepting it as a given. Surely there’s been some studies, a survey, something to add some evidence to this?

On the subject of flying taxi maintenance, that does indeed seem like a wise direction to go. I’m curious how much of this new curriculum HCC would need to develop on their own and how much they would expect to inherit from the nascent manufacturers and providers. Are there other schools out there with the same idea, and if so how much can HCC collaborate with them? I don’t know what my expectations are here, but I’m very interested to hear more.

Posted in School days | Tagged air taxis, artificial intelligence, driverless cars, electric cars, flying cars, HCC, Houston, Margaret Ford Fisher, robots, taxis | 2 Comments

Three local marijuana decriminalization referenda passed last week

Posted on November 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Forgive me if my enthusiasm is modest.

This General Election, Texans voted to decriminalize marijuana on ballot measures in Lockhart, Bastrop, and Dallas.

According to The Dallas Morning News, about 67% of Dallas voters supported the proposition decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana, Proposition R. The charter amendment prohibits police from arresting or citing individuals suspected of possessing four ounces or less of marijuana, with the expectation og benign part of a felony investigation involving violence or narcotics.

In addition, “Dallas police shall not consider the odor of marijuana or hemp to constitute probable cause for any search or seizure,” Prop R reads.

“We got all 3: Dallas, Lockhart, and Bastrop! Texans continue to prove when they have the opportunity to vote, they will overwhelmingly decriminalize marijuana!” Texas Cannabis Collective, a cannabis advocacy group, wrote on X.

[…]

Other Texas cities such as Austin, Denton, San Marcos, Killeen, and Elgin have also adopted measures to decriminalize low amounts of marijuana. Attorney General Ken Paxton unsuccessfully sued these cities arguing they don’t have the right to adopt such measures, however, it is possible that he’ll try to sue Dallas as well.

Meanwhile, voters expressed their support for the measure.

“We have a lot of people in jail for small amounts of marijuana, and it shouldn’t be like that,” Enoch Correa, a Dallas voter, told The Dallas Morning News.

“Together, we’ve taken a big step toward justice, freedom, and a better future for our community,” wrote Ground Game Texas, one of the groups behind the proposal. “This is more than a victory for marijuana decriminalization—it’s a win for the people of Dallas!”

I think it’s 100% likely that Ken Paxton will aim to block this ordinance from taking effect in Dallas. It is true that the lawsuits he filed against San Marcos and Austin lost in district court, but we all know this will end up at the Supreme Court’s doorstep, and I see no reason to be optimistic about it. And that’s assuming that the next Legislature, which will be both more Republican and more Paxton-friendly, doesn’t take another dump on home rule and local control and negate all of those referenda by fiat.

This has been my concern all along, and while the matter has taken time to move through the legal system, its ultimate fate seems clear. I’ll be happy to be wrong, but I’ll also be greatly surprised to see our Republican overlords allow for this particular finger to be poked into their eyes with no retribution. They have been very consistent on that.

It’s also time to retire the idea that putting forward a progressive ballot initiative will somehow help turnout for candidates who support those ideas. The votes to protect abortion rights in other states and the Ground Game Texas pro-marijuana votes have shown quite clearly that a lot of people are comfortable with supporting a particular issue while also supporting politicians who vehemently oppose that issue. The much harder work of electing a legislative majority for these issues, as well as a statewide leadership that won’t undermine them, is what needs to be done. I respect what Ground Game Texas tried to do, it was worth the effort, but it’s not sustainable. I wish there were an easier way, but there isn’t.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Austin, Bastrop, Dallas, Election 2024, Ground Game Texas, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Lockhart, marijuana, San Marcos, Supreme Court, Texas, The Lege | 2 Comments

Time once again for another “future doctor shortage” post

Posted on November 12, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This continues to seem bad.

Texas’ new abortion laws are stressing the state’s already beleaguered OB/GYN workforce, and threatening the pipeline of new doctors that would help provide relief, a new survey shows.

More than 70% of practicing OB/GYNs in Texas feel the near-total ban has negatively impacted their work, prohibiting them from providing high quality, evidence-based care for their patients, according to survey results released Tuesday.

One in five have considered leaving Texas, and 13% are planning to retire early as a result of the new restrictions. Meanwhile, a majority of OB/GYN medical residents say they’re considering the new abortion laws when deciding whether to stay in Texas after their training concludes.

Manatt Health, a health care consulting firm, surveyed all Texas-based members of the professional association American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and received responses from 450 practicing doctors and 47 medical residents.

Dr. Todd Ivey, a Houston OB/GYN and an officer with the Texas division of ACOG, said the survey results raise concerns about the long-term impacts of these laws. The state is expecting a significant shortage of OB/GYNs over the next decade, with some rural areas already unable to find the doctors they need.

Like many of his peers, Ivey considered leaving but decided to stay and provide the best care he could within the limits of the law. But he understands why a new doctor, who hasn’t yet built a practice or a family in Texas, might choose to go somewhere else.

“Not having people coming up is going to impact women’s health greatly,” Ivey said. “I just hope we don’t get to the day where women can’t get their pap smear screening, they can’t get their breast cancer screening, they can’t get prenatal care.”

[…]

Most Texas OB/GYNs say they haven’t thought about leaving the state as a result of the laws, the survey shows, and of those who have considered it, many said they were staying because of family or financial issues. But almost 15% of surveyed doctors said they were planning to retire early, which could accelerate the state’s looming shortage of OB/GYNs.

By 2030, Texas is expected to have 15% fewer OB/GYNs than is needed to keep up with demand. Many rural areas are already beginning to feel the effects of these shortages. More than 45% of Texas counties are considered maternity care deserts, meaning there’s no doctor to see during your pregnancy and nowhere to give birth.

Texas ranks 50th among states and the District of Columbia for women’s health, according to The Commonwealth Fund, which measured health care quality, outcomes, coverage, access and affordability.

Maternal mortality increased in Texas in 2020 and 2021, the most recent data available, before the state banned nearly all abortions, reversing several years of progress. Infant mortality is increasing faster than the national average, which researchers attribute to abortion restrictions.

[…]

With this retirement wave approaching faster than anticipated, Texas will need to quickly train and retain young OB/GYNs.

Historically, the state has done a lot on this front. Texas trains more medical students than any state other than New York and more residents than any state other than New York or California. About 65% of doctors who come to Texas for residency stay after their program ends, a better retention rate than the national average. In recent years, the state has built new medical schools, expanded residency programs and invested in physician loan repayment programs.

But Texas may be “undermining its own investment,” said Dr. Atul Grover, executive director of the Association of American Medical College’s Research and Action Institute. States that banned abortion saw a 16% drop in applications to OB/GYN residency programs this year, even as the number of applicants ticked up nationally, AAMC found.

There were other changes to the residency application process that muddies the data a bit, but the overall trend is clear, Grover said — medical students hoping to study OB/GYN are shying away from states that have banned abortion.

While some of the hesitation may be about the training they’ll receive or the care they’ll be able to provide, Grover said his group frequently hears another concern: the care these doctors can receive when they become patients.

“If you think about the ages of people who are graduating from med school, they’re 27 to 35,” Grover said. “They are very concerned about their ability to control their own health care or that of somebody close to them.”

The directors of Texas-based residency programs surveyed by Manatt Health said they are not seeing a decline in the quality of applicants and are still able to fill all their residency spots. But whether those doctors will stick around after finishing their program is a different story.

Almost 60% of surveyed residents said they were considering the new laws when deciding whether to stay in Texas after residency, and of that group, half said they were planning to leave as a result.

You can search future doctor shortage for past musings on this. This was drafted before the election, when we could speculate about restoring abortion rights at the federal level instead of worrying about a national ban. Regardless of that, I do worry about the trend. It may take a decade or more to really be felt, and of course those of us with means will feel it the least, but the potential for damage is great. All I can do for now is point it out and note once again what the solution is. The Chron has more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, Kaiser Family Foundation, Manatt Health, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

Precinct analysis: In my neighborhood

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I won’t have access to a Harris County canvass for a couple of weeks, and I may or may not do some countywide comparisons, but I did wonder about how the vote went in my neighborhood. I do a lot of walking, I cover the basic area on foot or on bike pretty regularly, and at least at a vibes level things looked a lot like 2020. Lots of Harris and anti-Trump signs, and the small number of pro-Trump signs were just about all in the same yards as they were four years ago. Nothing to make me think that things right around me were any different.

But there’s vibes and there’s data, and it’s easy enough to look at the canvass returns on the Harris County Clerk website to see what the actual deal was in Precincts 0003 and 0004, where I do most of my walking. Here’s the story the numbers told:


Year     Dem     Rep   Other   Under   Total
============================================
2024   2,840   1,190      63      89   4,182
2020   2,307     956      70      37   3,370
2016   1,658     553     186     145   2,542
2012   1,316     935      82      22   2,355

Year     Dem     Rep   Other   Under
====================================
2024  67.91%  28.46%   1.51%   2.13%
2020  68.47%  28.37%   2.08%   1.10%
2016  65.22%  21.75%   7.32%   5.70%
2012  55.88%  39.70%   3.48%   0.93%

Allred 2,930  70.06%
Cruz   1,145  27.38%
Other     79   1.89%
Under     28   0.67%

A few caveats up front. Voting precincts get redrawn every ten years as well, so this comparison is by nature apples to oranges. I don’t have a map of the pre-2021 boundaries to do a comparison, but I can tell you that as far as registered voters goes, Precinct 0004 is more or less the same while Precinct 0003 now has slightly more than double what it had before. This is why there were so many more votes cast between 2020 and 2024.

That difference could have been even greater, except that in 2020 nearly every voter in both precincts turned out. I mean, 98.94% turnout in 0003, 90.60% in 0004. That’s why there were so many more votes cast in 2020 than in 2016 and 2012. In the other three years listed, turnout for the two precincts combined was in the mid-to-upper 70s. Good, but not world-beating.

That of course is a significant difference in its own right – some nontrivial number of people showed up exclusively in 2020. We can speculate about the reasons for that, but note that the outlier is 2020. Those precincts were the same as in 2016 and 2012, but the voter behavior was quite different. Please incorporate that fact into any hot takes you may have about this year. Note also that even with the extreme variation in turnout, the percentages from 2020 and 2024 are nearly the same.

I originally intended to just do the three Trump years, but then I got curious and threw in 2012 as well. I’m now glad I did, because you can see another stark difference from that year to the subsequent ones. The blue shift in affluent white areas happened here too. Good to know, but not too surprising. I’m pretty sure I know who a few of those Romney-but-not-Trump voters are.

“Other” includes Libertarian, Green, and write-in candidates. There were 18 such votes cast for Evan McMullin in 2016. Outside of that, I could have counted them on my hands and had plenty of fingers left over.

I calculate the percentages including the undervotes, which is not how they would show up on an official report. Normally, we use the votes cast in the race as the denominator. If I did that here, Hillary Clinton gets 69.17% of the votes, while Joe Biden gets 69.21%, which is as insignificant a difference as you can imagine. But I felt that the undervotes tell a story as well, so I included them. Feel free to argue with me about that in the comments.

The bottom line is that at least in my neighborhood, the Kamala Harris/Donald Trump race was nearly identical to the Joe Biden/Donald Trump race, at least as far as percentages go. Turnout was different, but again that was a function of 2020 being unusual, not 2024. If the rest of the country voted like my two precincts here, the current discourse would not be the same. So it goes.

I threw in the Senate race for 2024 at the bottom for grins. As observed elsewhere, there were some Trump/Allred voters in my neighborhood. If I ever find myself talking to one of them, you can bet I’ll have questions.

That’s it for now. I’ve got a couple more posts that don’t depend on the full canvass queued up, and I’ll do more of these when that canvass is available. And as I feel like it. Let me know if you have any questions.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Election 2012, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, Heights, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mitt Romney, precinct analysis, Texas, turnout | 13 Comments

Paxton sues second doctor for providing gender affirming care to teens

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From before the election.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a second doctor for allegedly violating state law and providing gender-affirming medical care to minors.

Dr. Hector Granados is an El Paso pediatric endocrinologist. Paxton accuses him in the lawsuit of prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to more than 20 minors to treat gender dysphoria, or the distress someone can feel when their gender identity doesn’t match their physical appearance.

In 2023, Texas passed Senate Bill 14, which prohibited medical providers from prescribing certain gender-affirming treatments, including puberty blockers and hormones, to minors to assist them to medically transition.

Earlier this month, Paxton filed a similar lawsuit against Dr. May Lau, an adolescent medicine physician and associate professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The lawsuits say these doctors are “radical gender activists” who are circumventing the law. Both suits seek financial penalties as well as the revocation of the doctors’ medical licenses.

[…]

The lawsuit alleges Granados violated SB 14, but also says he engaged in fraud by continuing to provide patients with puberty blockers for gender transition while claiming in medical records that the treatment is necessary for precocious puberty, or the early onset of sexual development.

The minors Granados is accused of treating are between the ages of 12 and 17, with the majority 15 or older.

In August 2015, Granados helped open El Paso’s first clinic treating transgender children and teens through Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. At the time, the clinic was lauded as filling a necessary gap in the region.

“There’s a huge need for the care of trans youths, there’s very little physicians or few who have been trained to do so,” Granados told the Texas Tech student newspaper at the time. “It was very important for me to open this and we’ve seen great results.”

Granados now works in private practice, according to his website. He was an assistant professor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso medical school until 2019. The university did not respond to a request for comment.

See here for the previous lawsuit. Hard for me to imagine a good outcome for these doctors or their patients at this point, especially after Tuesday. but I hope I’ll be proven wrong. For sure, Paxton will keep on doing this until he’s either driven all of these doctors out of the state or been forced to stop by a change in state or federal law. Or, you know, he gets booted out of office. Some combination of those last two would be nice. Oh, and if you think he and his comrades are going to stop at just minors, or at just trans people, I don’t know what planet you’re living on.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Attorney General, Hector Granados, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, May Lau, Texas, The Lege, Transgender Education Network of Texas, transgender rights | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for November 10

Posted on November 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“The European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped by eight percent in 2023, a course correction following a couple of years of post-Covid recovery. The 27 member states are collectively making real progress — though still not enough.”

I was (along with my dad) a volunteer for the NYC Marathon a couple of times in the early 80s when I was in high school. Getting that race up and going is an amazing feat of logistics and communication. The experience of actually running it is not something I shared. It sounds pretty intense.

“‘Wicked’s Two-Part Release Plan Solves a Problem With the Musical We Don’t Like To Admit”. And this is me saying again that the book is vastly different from the musical, mostly because it covers Elphaba’s whole life, and the parts of it that are in the musical make up maybe a quarter of the book.

“10 Scary Space Facts That Will Change How You Think about Outer Space”.

RIP, Quincy Jones, legendary musician, composer, arranger, and producer. I encourage you to listen to the June Hit Parade podcast for a comprehensive overview of Jones and his career.

RIP, Alan Rachins, actor best known for LA Law and Dharma and Greg, and was in the original cast of Oh, Calcutta! on Broadway.

RIP, Greg Hildebrandt, artist and illustrator who drew the original Star Wars movie poster, among many other things.

“A class action lawsuit filed in New York on Friday claims Paramount illegally shared Paramount+ users’ data with third-party apps like Facebook and TikTok. The lawsuit is seeking at least $5 million in damages.”

RIP, Tyka Nelson, singer, songwriter, Prince’s sister.

RIP, Jonathan Haze, actor best known for roles in a dozen Roger Corman movies, including as Seymour in the original Little Shop of Horrors.

From the “Who Asked For This?” department: “Amazon has turned to AI to create recaps for TV shows on Prime Video — starting with its own original series — in a way the company says won’t risk revealing spoilers.”

“[Prince Andrew,] The Duke of York has been cut off financially by his brother King Charles, according to an updated royal biography.”

RIP, Chauncy Glover, news anchor in Los Angeles and formerly Houston.

“Most of our problems — most of the problems with the world as a whole — come from people who understand and accept that they are important, and unique, and infinitely valuable, but then forget that the same exact thing is just as true of every other person they will ever meet.”

RIP, Elwood Edwards, local news broadcaster and voice actor who gave us the “You’ve got mail!” greeting for AOL.

RIP, Bobby Allison, NASCAR Hall of Famer.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

If we’d listened to OB-GYNs in the first place we wouldn’t be having these problems now

Posted on November 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I very much appreciate what they’re saying, but let’s be honest, their words will have no effect.

The newly reported deaths of two pregnant Texans sparked a renewed plea from Texas OB/GYNs, including dozens in the Houston-area, for lawmakers to change the state’s abortion laws.

More than 60 Houston-area OB/GYNs were among 111 of their colleagues across the state who signed a letter saying that the “heartbreaking” deaths of the two women — Josseli Barnica, of Houston, and Nevaeh Crain, of Vidor — “will continue to echo throughout our state and our nation.” The deaths were first reported last week by ProPublica.

“Texas needs a change,” the letter states. “A change in laws. A change in how we legislate medical decisions that should be between a patient, their family and their doctor.”

Texans cannot vote on abortion laws on Election Day, though the laws have been a central issue in key races, including U.S. Rep. Colin Allred’s bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Allred has cast Cruz as a defender of Texas’s abortion ban and, during the October debate, invoked the names of pregnant Texans who have been forced to flee the state for care. Cruz has accused Allred of voting to allow abortions in the third trimester but has largely avoided the issue on the campaign trail.

Both Barnica and Crain experienced delays when they sought care for miscarriage treatment, and experts said their deaths may have been preventable, according to ProPublica. Physicians had warned for months of the possibility that delays could lead to deaths in Texas, but no such stories had been publicly documented until now.

Doctors and patients have criticized the abortion bans since they took effect in September 2021, saying they go beyond banning elective abortions. The vague exceptions in the law, combined with strict penalties that include life imprisonment for physicians, disrupt the standard process for treating pregnancy complications, they have said in court filings and news reports.

Dr. R. Todd Ivey, a Houston OB/GYN and district officer of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said the group of physicians felt they needed to send the letter after reading the “gut-wrenching” stories. Ivey, who spearheaded the effort, posted the letter to social media on Sunday.

“These laws are not clear, and they’re not allowing women to get the life-saving care they need,” he said. “We need to change this, and we need to decriminalize this.”

See here and here for some background. The reason nothing will happen is because the fanatics who imposed this law on us already think it’s perfectly clear and that all of the problems we’ve experienced so far – the deaths, the bleeding out in parking lots, the unplanned trips to other states, that sort of thing – is the fault of the doctors who refuse to risk jailtime and their licenses and the pro-abortion activists who keep bringing this stuff up. I know I don’t need to tell you again what the solution to all this is, but I’m going to tell you again what the solution to all this is: Voting the bastards who passed these laws out. That feels a lot more daunting now, I know. But that’s what needs to be done regardless.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Election 2024, Josseli Barnica, Nevaeh Crain, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Texas, The Lege | 3 Comments

The Women’s Pro Baseball League

Posted on November 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Very cool.

A professional women’s baseball league aims to begin competition in the U.S. in 2026, according to a news release issued Tuesday.

The Women’s Pro Baseball League will feature six teams, based in the northeastern United States, and will be the only professional women’s baseball league in America, the release says.

The league’s co-founders are Keith Stein, a lawyer and businessman, and Justine Siegal, founder of Baseball For All, a nonprofit that provides opportunities for girls to play and coach baseball. In 2015, the Oakland A’s hired Siegal as a guest instructor for their club in the Arizona Instructional League, and she became the first female coach in Major League Baseball. She has also pitched batting practice for a handful of MLB teams.

Decorated Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato and former MLB manager Cito Gaston, who won back-to-back World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays, will serve as special advisors.

Sato was featured in “See Her, Be Her,” a two-hour documentary that premiered on MLB Network last Sunday and tells the stories of several top female baseball players. The film features a cameo by Maybelle Blair, 97, who played for the Peoria Red Wings in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1948.

[…]

The league is working on securing a national broadcast deal for its inaugural season.

In the news release, Stein, the WPBL co-founder, cited the success of the WNBA and National Women’s Soccer League as examples of “incredible interest and support for women’s sport.”

The announcement of this new league comes soon after the conclusion of what WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert recently called “the most transformational year in the WNBA’s history,” capped by a Game 5 that was the most-viewed WNBA Finals game in 25 years.

Also on Tuesday, the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) announced it is preparing to expand beyond its inaugural six teams, possibly as early as in the 2025-2026 season. The league’s second season is set to begin Nov. 30.

I’m excited to hear this. It is a great time for women’s sports – kudos to the PWHL on their planned expansion, by the way – so this new league should have some momentum behind it. I will admit that my first thought was to wonder where the talent pool would come from, since softball is far more prevalent and visible in the US, but there is a Women’s Baseball World Cup, which goes back to 2004 and which was hosted in the US for the first time in 2018, so there shouldn’t be any problems getting the rosters together. Awareness may be the bigger issue – I didn’t know there was a WBWC, for what it’s worth – but with the start of the league in 2026, there’s time to work on that. Maybe some kind of partnership with MLB, who knows. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on this. Yahoo Sports has more.

Posted in Baseball | Tagged Baseball, Baseball for All, hockey, Justine Siegal, Keith Stein, MLB, PWHL, Women's Baseball World Cup, Women’s Pro Baseball League | Comments Off

TDP Chair Hinojosa resigns

Posted on November 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Obviously.

Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa announced his resignation Friday on the heels of another election cycle in which his party suffered blowout losses atop the ticket and vastly underperformed expectations.

In a statement acknowledging Democrats’ “devastating defeats up and down the ballot,” Hinojosa announced he would step down in March when the party’s governing executive committee is scheduled to meet.

“In the days and weeks to come, it is imperative that our Democratic leaders across the country reevaluate what is best for our party and embrace the next generation of leaders to take us through the next four years of Trump and win back seats up and down the ballot,” Hinojosa said, calling on Democratic leaders “at all levels to join me in lifting up the next generation in order to unite our party.”

In the months leading up to Tuesday’s election, Hinojosa and other party leaders promoted Texas as a competitive state where Democratic candidates had a real shot of winning a statewide race for the first time since 1994. Instead, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump carried the state by nearly 14 percentage points and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz defeated his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, by nearly 9 points. Democrats also lost three seats in the Texas Legislature and nearly every contested state appellate court race, and saw Republicans win 10 countywide judicial races in Harris County — reversing several years of Democratic dominance in Texas’ largest county.

Republicans also set a high-water mark among Latino voters, with Trump capturing 55% of the key voting bloc statewide, according to exit polls. He carried all four counties in the traditionally deep-blue Rio Grande Valley, including Cameron County, where Hinojosa previously served as county judge.

In an interview with The Texas Newsroom this week, Hinojosa said Democrats’ poor performance was in part a result of the way they handled the issue of transgender rights — comments that stirred backlash from party members and LGBTQ advocates.

“You have a choice as a party,” Hinojosa said. “You could, for example, you can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.”

Hinojosa later apologized for the comments, saying he recognized “the pain and frustration” my words have caused.

What happened in November was a “fire the coach” moment. As is often the case with the sports analog, there may have been factors beyond the coach’s control, but faith has been lost and a new direction is needed. There was no way he could credibly continue as TDP Chair.

I don’t know who should be next, nor do I have any advice for that person beyond “figure out what happened and what is and isn’t working, and go from there”. Whoever does take this position next has their work cut out for them. It won’t be easy, that much I know. Good luck, whoever you are.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Election 2024, Gilberto Hinojosa, TDP, Texas | 5 Comments

Whitmire’s Montrose Boulevard plan passes on second try

Posted on November 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Dammit.

A controversial Montrose Boulevard redesign plan is set to move forward with key revisions introduced by the Whitmire administration after board members of the area’s Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone voted to accept the changes Friday morning.

The Nov. 1 meeting drew over 120 attendees in person and online as polarized residents spoke for and against implementing revisions to the original boulevard overhaul plan.

The meeting was held by the Montrose TIRZ less than two weeks after the board first rejected a motion to move forward. Now that the motion passed, contractor Gauge Engineering will expedite a revised plan following the city’s new priorities for the roadway.

The meeting kicked off with a presentation by Muhammad Ali of Gauge Engineering, who said he had heard concerns after the last meeting and wanted to emphasize that the project’s original goals of improving drainage, improving safety and mobility and promoting a pedestrian-friendly environment would still be in effect.

“The only thing is we added a fourth objective, which is to preserve as many trees as possible,” Ali said, as well as adjusting plans for the road and sidewalk widths “consistent with the new city guiding mobility principles.”

Those new principles satisfied some attendees while drawing ire from others, whose comments were echoed by board members such as Jeffrey Watters who voted against the changes.

The new plan “suffers from a remarkable lack of vision,” Watters said, decrying the decision to leave the road’s lane widths at 12 feet and nix enlarged sidewalks.

See here for the previous update. Those of you who have a hankering to restore the Houston glory days of the early 80s, you’ve got the right Mayor. Those of us who’d like to see Houston move into the future, it’s now three years until the next mayoral election. Houston Landing has more.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Abbie Kamin, accidents, bicycles, density, drainage, flooding, Houston, John Whitmire, Montrose, pedestrians, sidewalks, TIRZ, trees, Trees for Houston, urbanism, Vision Zero | 2 Comments

Mike Miles is disappointed in us

Posted on November 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

So sorry.

Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles called voters’ rejection of the district’s proposed $4.4 billion school bond — the largest school bond in Texas history — “unfortunate and wrong” in a statement Tuesday.

Miles conceded the bond election after approximately 60% of the roughly 350,000 voters who cast early or mail-in ballots voted against both propositions of the proposal, according to preliminary early election returns from the Harris County Clerk’s Office. HISD has made history as Texas voters have never rejected a proposed school bond measure exceeding $1 billion.

“The politics of adults beat out the needs of our children … but I want to assure you that it will not limit our ability to do the things that our students need,” Miles said in a message to the HISD community Tuesday evening. “I know our most effective principals and teachers can reach students even in the worst of facilities, because they’ve been doing so for more than a year.”

[…]

The bond’s defeat marks a significant public failure for Miles, who had previously said he believed voters would put aside politics during the election and support investing billions into improving school facilities for approximately 174,000 students in the district.

In his statement, Miles said the bond was a unique opportunity for the community to come together, and he is disappointed about the results. He said voters let down schools like Bonham Elementary School, which has 28 “crumbling” temporary buildings that would have been replaced if the bond passed.

“This bond was a unique opportunity for this community to come together on behalf of its children. I’m sure many of you felt the same and are very disappointed in the result,” he wrote. “I share your disappointment, but I also hope you will remain optimistic. Our accomplishments far outweigh our setbacks and most importantly, we have and will continue to put the needs of our students first.”

Miles said, going forward, he could not promise that the district’s aging facilities and systems would not be a barrier to student learning. However, he said teaching and learning will continue, and he would continue to transform HISD for all students.

“We will do our best to keep long-expired heating and cooling systems running, but on very hot or very cold days, we are likely going to have to close campuses to keep students safe,” Miles said. “More frequently, students are going to be forced to learn in conditions that are not ideal, in classrooms that are either too hot or too cold to learn comfortably.”

There’s a companion story about the activists who worked to defeat the referenda that you should read as well. Mike Miles is the reason this vote went as it did, and again I say all this as someone who voted for both propositions. The one thing he has absolutely earned in his time here is that “no trust, no bond” slogan that the opponents successfully used. At every opportunity, he has failed to build consensus and gain support for his actions, many of which are puzzling and alienating to large groups of HISD stakeholders. He F’ed around, he found out. Now he gets to deal with the fallout.

UPDATE: Welp.

Hours after Houston ISD residents delivered the sharpest rebuke to date of Superintendent Mike Miles, shooting down a $4.4 billion bond proposal that became a referendum on his administration, the district’s state-appointed leader made one thing clear.

He’s not bending to voters.

Faced with the clearest evidence yet that a large swath of HISD families oppose his drastic overhaul of HISD, Miles on Wednesday blamed the bond’s resounding failure on his critics, accusing them of “misleading the community” and “intentionally putting politics and other things in the way of kids.”

Miles’ comments followed nearly 60 percent of about 441,000 voters rejecting the bond proposal — a result that two state-appointed HISD school board members described as a “wake-up call” for the district.

“Changing course is not even a question. It’s not even in the cards,” Miles said.

[…]

Yet Tuesday’s bond results leave no doubt that resistance to Miles’ approach extends to tens of thousands of voters across HISD. In interviews Wednesday, school board members Adam Rivon and Rolando Martinez said the bond vote opened their eyes to potential blind spots in their understanding of family concerns.

“I think that there’s something that people are saying that we need to listen to,” Rivon said. “I believe that it’s about how we bring people along, and not drag them along.”

[…]

Judith Cruz, a former HISD trustee who supported the bond and served as a co-chair of an advisory committee that provided feedback on the proposal, said she believes the decisive vote should prompt soul-searching on the district’s part.

“This goes far beyond the folks that show up to board meetings, or are emailing board members or the superintendent. This is a much larger community that is speaking up with their vote,” Cruz said.

“I hope that the district will take the opportunity to take a step back and engage with community leaders and families across the district in a very intentional way of understanding how we all get to our north star, which is making sure that our kids reach their potential.”

Mike Miles is never going to change. That “wake-up call” is not for him.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Board of Managers, bond referendum, bonds, Election 2024, HISD, Houston, Mike Miles, New Education System, schools | 3 Comments

Dispatches from Dallas, November 8 edition

Posted on November 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, election results, and only election results, because we’re all dealing with our grief right now. Next week will be time for analysis and consideration of what we do next. I wish I could give all of y’all a good hug. Please take care of yourselves, friends. We have been in hard times here in Texas for a while, and harder times are coming. Each one of you is needed to hold up the barricades.

You’ve already seen the national and statewide results, so let’s talk about what happened in the metroplex. If you want the overall results, you can get them from the Dallas Morning News; the Star-Telegram should have a similar page but its election page is just a mass of stories. You’ll do better looking for numbers at the Fort Worth Report’s election page.

In Dallas, we are in a big hole of our own making. Remember the HERO amendments? Two of them passed. We now have given any old idiot the right to sue the city with no defense, and we lost the important one, Prop U, so we’re now on the hook for adding 900 cops and giving half our money to Dallas PD. And of course with state law around defunding the police, we’ll never get any of that money back to our city budget. So our streets and lights will be going unrepaired, our library and parks unfunded, etc. until we can get this fixed, which is going to take a while. Turnout in Dallas County was down, as it was nationwide for Dem voters. We did vote for Prop R to decriminalize up to four oz. of the devil’s lettuce, but given that other cities who have done the same have been sued by Ken Paxton, I foresee the same here in Dallas. Or possibly a citizen suit under Prop S.

We only had one opposed race in Dallas County. Most of our Democratic officials cruised to reelection after beating rivals in the primaries. Theresa McDaniel prevailed in Precinct 1. Meanwhile, “our man downtown”, John Wiley Price, the long-serving commissioner from South Dallas, marks a half century of public service.

Tarrant County held red again. Republicans held the tax assessor-collector, the sherriff (a real blow, considering how many people have died on his watch since 2017), and their seat on commissioner’s court that was up. Dems held their seat on the court as well but that was all the good news we got out of Tarrant County.

In Congressional news, all the incumbents held, and unsurprisingly Craig Goldman won CD 12, Kay Granger’s old seat. John McQueeney picked up HD97, Goldman’s old seat. And in Richardson, incumbent Angie Chen Button held off Democrat Averie Bishop in HD 112, a race we’d had our hopes up for.

The Fifth District Court of Appeals here in the Metroplex looks like it’s flipping red as part of the Republicans running the table statewide. School bonds in Frisco failed and part of Allen’s package failed as well, though parts passed. And in Tarrant County, Northwest ISD voted a tax increase down though it looks like Grapevine-Colleyville passed an increase in their district.

Last, but not least, I’m going to give you this adorable video of Baby Bruce, a calf with the zoomies. We all need a moment of uncomplicated lightness right now. Enjoy, and we’ll see you next week, friends.

Posted in Blog stuff, Election 2024 | Tagged Congress, Dallas, Dallas County, Election 2024, guest post, Tarrant County, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Just a couple of thoughts because I’m not ready for more yet

Posted on November 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

There’s an older gentleman who rides his bike around the neighborhood. I see him pretty regularly when I’m out walking the dog. We always wave hello as we pass by. On Sunday he pulled his bike over to the curb as I was out with Dexter, to talk to me about the election. We’d never engaged beyond a smile and wave before then, but I presume he’d heard from other neighbors that I was a Politics Guy and he was feeling understandably anxious and wanted to know what I thought. I told him I was feeling optimistic because I was, and I think he felt some reassurance after we were done.

And so now I feel guilty about that. He wasn’t the only person who had expressed similar feelings to me in recent weeks – I mean, we all felt that way to varying degrees – and I would respond with my generally positive vibe because that’s who I am and that’s how I felt. To say the least, I don’t feel that way right now.

There are lots of obvious reasons to feel upset and more right now, but one of them for me is that I didn’t see what happened in Texas coming. For all the discourse about polling, the national polls were reasonably accurate. It was a close race that ultimately tipped one way. But the polls here were way off. We had every reason to expect something in the range of the 2020 election, with Trump carrying the state by five or six points. Maybe at one end it’s like the Hillary result in 2016, down nine, and maybe at the other it’s like Beto in 2018, down two or three. There was nothing in the polls, statewide or the polls we got of Harris and Bexar Counties, to suggest a 14-point margin. Or that any Democratic countywide candidate here had anything to worry about.

The shock of that, on top of everything else, has me reeling. I thought I knew some things, I thought I understood some things, but I was a fool. At some point I’ll be able to study the numbers, but I don’t know how much that will help. Everything I thought I knew was wrong.

I don’t know where we go from here, and I don’t know how much I can offer on that. Maybe I’ll feel differently when the shock wears off, or when we’re forced into defensive mode. For now I’m just trying to find my footing.

I will make two observations for now. One is that the Republicans did what they did this year by more or less hitting their vote marks from 2020. Jane Bland was the high scorer in 2020 for the GOP with 740K votes. Four statewide judicial candidates plus one appellate court candidate got between 744K and 752K this year, with David Schenck getting the top tally. The downballot Republican judicial candidates did a little better overall than in 2020 but with numbers that wouldn’t have come close to winning that year. The Dems on the other hand lost around 100K votes from 2020, which unsurprisingly roughly matches the drop in overall turnout from 2020 – 1,656,686 four years ago, 1,558,304 this year (that figure is likely to increase as provisional ballots get cured). Whatever there is to understand about what happened this year, that’s where to begin. Colin Allred was the top votegetter with 835,445, which would have been on the lower end of the 2020 scale. Kamala Harris just nosed above 800K – she’s now at 803K – but no one else got there. The low score in 2020 was 814K. There’s your problem.

And on the subject of judicial races, remember the celebration of “Black Girl Magic” in 2018, as a historic number of Black women were elected to the bench in Harris County? Whatever the opposite of that is, it’s what we got: Of the ten Democratic district or county court judges who lost on Tuesday, seven of them were Black women; the others were Nicole Perdue, Allison Mathis, and Robert Johnson. Make of that what you will. (The incumbents who lost were previously elected in 2020 and possibly 2016, so they’re not the same as the class of 2018.)

(Note: As of the 8 PM update last night, Nicole Perdue trails by 1,261 and Elaine Palmer trails by 2,342. It’s at least possible that provisional ballots could have an effect on their races.)

I’m going to be posting at a slower rate for the next few days at least. I’ve got a few drafts from before Tuesday that I’ll get to, and I’ll get back into the news-watching stuff eventually. Thank you for sticking around as we get through this.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Colin Allred, Election 2016, Election 2018, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, judicial races, Kamala Harris, polls, President, Senate, Texas, turnout | 25 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of November 4

Posted on November 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is doing its best to make it through as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Comments Off

Well, that sucked

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s about 10:30 PM as I write this, and I don’t care to stay up any longer. The national situation looks dicey, but it’s not yet clear what will happen. I’ll put that off for now.

It was bad here in Texas. One of the national story lines is that the polls that predicted a tight tossup Presidential race were accurate. Except here in Texas, where the polls that suggested fairly close statewide races were badly wrong. As I write this, Trump is leading statewide with Mitt-Romney-in-2012 numbers. No poll I saw suggested anything like that. There’s a lot of the Election Day vote to be counted, and I suppose it could be that Dems did more of their voting on Tuesday, because they sure didn’t do it early. But this was a lot less competitive than we had any reason to think, and it really sets things back.

It also means that not only were there no pickups to be had, Dems are right now losing three seats in the House and one in the Senate and SBOE, with several South Texas races not having reported anything yet. (Not even the early vote on the SOS page.) Even Rep. Vicente Gonzalez in CD34 was trailing, which would be a big loss and would make it that much harder for Dems to take the House, which was still a possibility. Just a disaster, top to bottom.

Here in Harris County, Kamala Harris was leading Trump 52-46, with Colin Allred up over Ted Cruz 54-44. At least the polls got that Allred was outperforming Harris. The Democratic candidates for executive countywide offices were all leading, though only Sheriff Ed Gonzalez could be called comfortably ahead. Several judges were trailing, with all of the Appellate Court incumbents on their way to defeat. Some of this could be salvaged if Dems carry Election Day. If not, it could get worse.

The Harris County Flood Control District proposition was narrowly ahead, while the two HISD bonds were going down by a 60-40 margin. That at least was no surprise to me.

The one bit of good news is that the city of Amarillo soundly defeated the abortion travel ban referendum. I don’t know how much that will matter given the bigger picture, but it’s a nice win anyway and a testament to the hard work the organizers did there. Kudos to them all.

I don’t have the energy to write anything more at this time. I’ll update this post as needed and will have more to say later. For now, take care of yourself. It’s going to be a rough ride, whatever happens next.

UPDATE: Overnight, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez came back to win in CD34 and Dems won the SBOE seat they had trailed in, but Sen. Morgan LaMantia lost in SD27. Dems lost two seats in the House. Overall turnout was 11,255,951, a tiny bit less than it was in 2020.

In Harris County, it was a bit like 2022 in that Dems held on to all of the executive offices but lost some judges. Election Day was modestly Democratic, with turnout of just over 300K, for about 1.44 million overall. Republicans basically hit their 2020 turnout marks, Dems fell short of theirs. Just a lousy day.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged abortion, Amarillo, Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance, bond referendum, CD34, Colin Allred, Congress, Donald Trump, Ed Gonzalez, Election 2024, Harris County, Harris County Sheriff, HISD, judicial races, Kamala Harris, President, SBOE, Senate, Ted Cruz, Texas, The Lege, Vicente Gonzalez | 22 Comments

Today is Election Day

Posted on November 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox.

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth announced that more than 1,170,000 voters cast their ballots in person during the 12-day early voting period for the November 5, 2024 Special and General Election. Including the 57,000 received mail ballots, it represents 46% of Harris County’s 2.68 million eligible voters.

“In the last four presidential elections, a substantial number of the county’s voters have cast ballots before Election Day,” said Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth. “If you have not voted, your final opportunity to do so is Tuesday.”

On Election Day, Harris County registered voters can exercise their right to vote at any of the 700 vote centers open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“While the presidential contest is first and foremost in voters’ minds, there is much more on the ballot,” added Clerk Hudspeth. “Voters will see between 58 and 77 contests, depending on where they reside.”

For more information, voters are encouraged to visit HarrisVotes.com to review all the contests on their ballot. Voters may print their personal sample ballot and take it to the polls.

“We want every voter to have the information they need to ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible,” concluded Clerk Hudspeth. “Again, if you didn’t vote during early voting, Election Day is your last chance to make your voice heard.”

What to Know for Election Day:

Voting Hours: Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Polling Locations: Voters can cast their ballot at any one of the 700 vote centers in the county.

Identification: Voters must bring one of the seven acceptable forms of photo ID:

Texas Driver’s License issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)

Texas Personal Identification Card issued by DPS

Texas Handgun License issued by DPS

U.S. Military ID with photo

U.S. Passport (book or card)

Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS

U.S. Citizenship Certificate with photo

Voters who do not have an acceptable photo identification may complete a Reasonable Impediment Declaration and use other acceptable credentials, including a voter registration certificate, to vote.

Items not allowed at the polls (Election Advisory No. 2024-29):

Wireless communications devices are prohibited within 100 feet of the vote centers, including cell phones, cameras, tablet computers, laptop computers, sound recorders, smart watches capable of messaging or recording sound or images, drones, any other device that may communicate wirelessly, or be used to record sound or images.

Firearms are prohibited with the exception of law enforcement officers who are on or off duty.

A person may not wear apparel, including expressing preference for or against any candidate, measure, or political party, regardless of whether they are or are not on the ballot, or relating to the conduct of an election.

For additional information, visit www.HarrisVotes.com. For the latest news and updates, follow @HarrisVotes on social media.

You know the drill by now. I’ll post results as I can and we’ll go from there. Yesterday’s CityCast Houston podcast was an interview with longtime election judge Poppy Northcutt, so listen to that for some idea of what to expect from a logistics perspective, or listen to my interview with County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth about what her office has done to be ready for this. I am reasonably optimistic but I don’t know anything that others don’t know. Hopefully we’ll all have a clearer idea of what happened by the time I sign off tonight. Happy voting if you haven’t already, and happy stress-eating for the rest of you.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Donald Trump, Election 2024, Election Day, Harris County, Harris County Clerk, Kamala Harris, President, Teneshia Hudspeth, Texas, voting centers | Comments Off

A brief list of things I’ll be watching for today

Posted on November 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

In no particular order…

1. I don’t expect Democrats to win statewide in Texas. It would be great, it would do a world of good, but I’d be setting myself up for disappointment if I start there. What I want as a bottom line is for Kamala Harris to come closer to Trump than Joe Biden did in 2020 when he lost by 5.6 points. It’s my belief that if Harris can get within, say, four points, we will be at a point where Texas will be seen not just as an opportunity for Democrats, but a priority. Well, maybe my hope. But the closer we get, the harder it will be to deny. Also, I’ll be looking to see if Colin Allred outperforms Harris, and on the flip side if Ted Cruz can outperform Donald Trump. I know what the polls have mostly said so far, I’m just not sure I believe them.

2. I expect Dems to easily win Harris County – among other things, as you know, we ain’t getting anywhere close to being competitive statewide without a big win here. I’m hoping it’s big enough to be sufficient to carry the many Appellate Court candidates, mostly incumbents, to victory. We’ll need a big turnout today to make the HCDP goal of 1.1 Democratic votes in the county a possibility. I dunno about that one.

3. I absolutely do not expect the HISD bonds to pass. I won’t be surprised if they fail to get 40%. I think the Harris County proposal will pass, but it’s low enough profile that it could struggle.

4. I hope Dems can pick up three legislative seats net to deny Greg Abbott a voucher majority. The five topline seats in Bexar, Dallas, and Cameron are enough, though if the Republicans flip HD80 it takes all five to be sure. Holding on to SD27 would also be very nice.

5. Flipping CD15 is possible but not something I’m counting on. Cutting the margin in the likes of CD24 and CD03 to put them on the radar for 2026 would be big; doing the same for CDs 21, 22, and 38, just enough to make them possible down-the-road targets would be amazing.

6. I really, really want ARFA to win that referendum in Amarillo. It seems like such an uphill battle in obviously difficult territory, but I have a ton of respect for what the leaders of that fight have done. I have no idea how hopeful to be about this.

7. Beyond that, again, let me see progress. Can we carry Tarrant County? How about Collin County? Can we make Brazoria County a slightly bluer shade of purple? Can we hold the margins in places like Montgomery and Comal to what they were in 2020?

8. Last but certainly not least, I’d like to eventually be able to go to bed tonight with at least some idea of where the Presidential race is. And, you know, for Kamala Harris to be comfortably leading. I’ll worry about the rest of it later.

That’s what I’ll be thinking of today. What about you?

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged abortion, Amarillo, Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance, bond referendum, bonds, Brazoria County, CD03, CD15, CD21, CD24, CD38, Colin Allred, Collin County, Comal County, Congress, Donald Trump, Election 2024, Harris County, HD108, HD112, HD118, HD121, HD37, HD80, HISD, Houston, Kamala Harris, Montgomery County, President, Senate, Tarrant County, Ted Cruz, Texas, The Lege, turnout | 3 Comments

The billboards of Fayette County

Posted on November 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I have three things to say about this.

Members of the local Democratic party in rural, bright red Fayette County were thrilled this month when they learned their hours of phone banking and fundraising would finally pay off.

The party’s record $9,000 haul was more than enough to fund a large billboard for Vice President Kamala Harris along Highway 71, the well-trafficked road that connects Houston to Austin, party chair Mary Wolf said.

But their excitement was short-lived. Just two days after the ad went up, SignAd, the Houston-based billboard company, reached out to party volunteer Becky Schenker to say the landowner had received threats and complaints. It had to come down.

“I said, ‘Well now you know what it’s like to be a Democrat in this county,’” Schenker recalled of the conversation. “Our goal in this advertising campaign is largely to make the point that Democrats do exist in our county and we are here and we do not want to be intimidated.”

SignAd did not respond to a request for comment. John Ewald, owner of the Kubota farm equipment dealership that leases land to the billboard company, said in an email Wednesday that the business did not receive any threats but did receive “calls from customers asking why we were endorsing one candidate over another.”

The billboard is roughly the same height as Kubota’s sign and stands parallel just several yards away.

[…]

The county’s Democratic party picked the billboard on Kubota’s lot in La Grange for its large size and prominent position over a major roadway. It cost $2,500. The ad went up Oct. 14 and they hoped to run it through election day.

When Schenker spoke with SignAd a few days later, she said the company representative offered her two choices. The same ad could be relocated to a billboard in a different location or the contract would be voided and the money returned.

Moving it was off the table, Schenker said. “The party is trying to make the point that we are here and you cannot intimidate us, so moving the sign to somewhere else smaller and less prominent doesn’t make the point we want to make.”

She said she hadn’t yet responded to SignAd with a decision when a member drove by the billboard on Oct. 23 and reported that the party’s ad had been taken down. Wolf called the SignAd representative, who informed her the company had canceled the contract and mailed a refund.

The party has asked the Texas Democratic Party and its lawyers for guidance on whether there might be any recourse.

In this situation, “there could be a breach of contract issue depending on the terms of any contracts entered by the involved parties,” said Aaron Terr, a lawyer and director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “But generally there is no First Amendment right to speak on another’s private property.”

1. It would be nice to have some clarity about whether there were threats made to the Kubota dealership or not. We can talk all we want about civility and neighbors being neighborly and maintaining personal connections across political disagreements, but threats and intimidation are another story. The one way to reduce the prevalence of this behavior is to enforce consequences for it. That could mean law enforcement action, it could mean a civil suit, or it could mean some old fashioned naming and shaming. But first we need to know what happened, and I would hope that whatever the resources the TDP can provide here would focus on that.

2. Whether there were threatening calls or just complaints from customers, I don’t blame Kubota for wanting the sign to be taken down. I’m not going to pretend I wouldn’t be judgmental about this as a customer. I hope for the next election the Fayette County Democratic Party has some options to advertise that doesn’t depend on the consent of a public-facing business.

3. As noted, Fayette County is deep red – 78.6% to 20.6% for Trump over Biden in 2020 – and it’s also not very populous, with 12,941 votes cast there that year. But there are a lot of counties like Fayette around Texas, and while the big urban and suburban counties have been getting more Democratic, those counties – most of which were pretty red to begin with – have gotten steadily more Republican. Their sheer number – 180 counties in Texas have fewer than 50,000 people in them, and 153 have fewer than Fayette County – means their smaller gains have a significant cumulative effect. Trump won Fayette County by 6600 votes in 2016 and by 7500 in 2020, and that kind of gain was seen over and over again. Putting a brake on that, in Fayette and in the counties like it, would go a long way.

That’s way easier said than done, of course, and it will take a significant investment. But a part of that is what the Fayette County Democratic Party had figured out, that just letting people know that they’re not alone and that their voice matters makes a difference. Making whatever resources we can gather available to the local folks who can do the real work is the way to go.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged advertising, billboards, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Fayette County, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mary Wolf, TDP, Texas | 1 Comment

No observers allowed here

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Texas Tribune: Texas tells U.S. Justice Department that federal election monitors aren’t allowed in polling places.

Texas’ top elections official told the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday its election monitors aren’t permitted in the state’s polling places after the federal agency announced plans to dispatch monitors to eight counties on Election Day to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws.

The Justice Department regularly sends monitors across the country to keep an eye out for potential voting rights violations during major elections. The agency said monitors would be on the ground in 86 jurisdictions in 27 states. The Texas counties are Atascosa, Bexar, Dallas, Frio, Harris, Hays, Palo Pinto and Waller counties.

Late Friday evening, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson told the federal agency that its election monitors aren’t among those allowed inside Texas polling places or in central locations where ballots are counted under state law. Election Day is Tuesday.

A spokesperson from her office said that there is nothing Nelson can do to change who is allowed in a polling place and that they are merely following the law. The Texas Election Code lists who is authorized to be inside a polling place, and does not include federal election monitors. Election monitors are still allowed outside polling places.

“Rest assured that Texas has robust processes and procedures in place to ensure that eligible voters may participate in a free and fair election,” Nelson wrote to a DOJ official Friday evening.

[…]

For decades, the Justice Department has dispersed election monitors across the country to observe procedures in polling sites and at places where ballots are counted. That was a power granted to the federal government under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices and sought to equalize voting access. After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted parts of the law years ago, the agency now must get permission from state and local jurisdictions to be present or get a court order.

My original angle on this post was to wonder what the rules are supposed to be. It wasn’t until I copied this last paragraph that I realized I had the answer already. Would have been nice to maybe move that up a bit, but at least it was there. I assume that the DOJ had some reason for doing this, though per the story none has been publicly given. I’d like to see them seek a court order, though that could end up being an opportunity for the Fifth Circuit or SCOTUS to commit a last-minute atrocity. Maybe just hops for the best at this point, I dunno. And then keep pushing for a revised Voting Rights Act for the future.

UPDATE: That’s that.

The U.S. Department of Justice has agreed not to send federal monitors to Texas polling places after Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a request to block the department from monitoring the state’s election. As part of the agreement, the state has withdrawn its request to block the department from monitoring the election process.

Paxton had filed the request on Monday, hours before the Election Day, arguing state’s law doesn’t allow DOJ monitors in polling places. The Texas Tribune reported that, as part of the agreement, the DOJ’s monitors will remain outside in eight Texas counties and at least 100 feet away from polling and central count locations.

[…]

Paxton argued the DOJ did not have the authority to dispatch the election monitors, as the state law only gives a list of 15 categories of people allowed in polling locations, including voters and minors accompanied by voters, state and local election officials, and poll watchers who have completed state mandated training.

Despite this, Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Rights Project and a previous Democrat candidate running against Paxton for attorney general in 2022, told the Houston Chronicle that while law does not expressly bar federal monitors for entering polling places, it does allow “a person whose presence has been authorized by the presiding judge in accordance with this code.”

Garza added that election judges could choose to greenlight federal monitors at their polling locations.

OK then.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Atascosa County, Bexar County, Dallas County, Election 2024, Frio County, Harris County, Hays County, Jane Nelson, Justice Department, Palo Pinto County, SCOTUS, Secretary of State, Texas, Voting Rights Act, Waller County | 4 Comments

Loving County defunds its police

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

How is it that a place with so few people can generate so much news?

When activists demanded cuts to police budgets in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 death at the hands of Minneapolis police, Texas lawmakers reacted swiftly, passing a law financially penalizing municipalities that reduce their law enforcement spending.

“Texas remains a law-and-order state,” Gov. Greg Abbott said then. “These new rules will prevent cities from making reckless and downright dangerous decisions to defund the police.”

The 2021 law applied only to large, typically left-leaning metropolitan centers that saw the loudest anti-police protests. No one could have foreseen that the state’s most politically charged police-defunding battle would actually be waged in deep-red Texas, in the country’s least-populated county.

Two weeks ago, commissioners in Loving County — pop. 75, more or less — approved a 2025 budget eviscerating local law enforcement. On January 1, Sheriff Chris Busse’s salary will be slashed in half, making his paycheck smaller than those of the part-time county commissioners’. The commissioners also eliminated two of six deputy positions, and zeroed-out salaries for two support clerks.

The five-member Commissioners Court next took its budget knife to the county’s sole elected constable. Brandon Jones’ 2025 salary was hacked from $126,000, the standard for all full-time elected Loving County officials, to just $30,000 — the federal poverty level for a family of four, a statistic of particular concern as the constable’s wife also holds one of the eliminated clerk jobs.

The Texas Municipal Police Association has protested the deep cuts, vowing to take the dispute to Austin when state lawmakers convene early next year. What’s happened in Loving County — sudden and drastic reductions in law enforcement spending because of apparent political differences – “is the definition of defunding,” said the association’s Tyler Owen.

The cuts definitely weren’t about money. Situated in the heart of the petro-soaked Permian Basin, Loving County is one of the richest jurisdictions in the state. Engorged by oil and gas taxes, its budget has more than tripled since 2022. In fact, most employees will see a raise next year.

Nor was the defunding for a lack of work. About 1,500 oil field workers temporarily live in the county on the New Mexico border, and police warn about drug trafficking and thefts. The endless stream of heavy equipment has made local roads among the most dangerous in the country. Loving County’s six sheriff’s deputies logged more than 2,700 hours of overtime last year, Busse said.

In an interview, the county’s top official, Judge Skeet Jones, said draining the sheriff’s budget is simple to explain: “Five words — bad behavior and poor performance.”

And what of the constable, who also happens to be Judge Jones’ nephew? “Same five words.”

Not everyone is buying the terse explanation. Loving County’s tiny population means most positions of power are held by people linked by blood, marriage or an alliance in the latest simmering feud. Politics are almost always personal, and vice versa.

[…]

No one is keeping track, but Loving County almost certainly has one of the higher intra-government squabbles-per-capita ratios in Texas, if not the country.

In the past few years alone:

The local appraisal district sued the county commission.

The justice of the peace jailed a county commissioner, who filed a federal lawsuit in response.

The district clerk was the subject of a whistleblower lawsuit.

Judge Jones was charged with cattle rustling, along with two others, who subsequently ran for commissioner and sheriff.

The county commissioners court sued the sheriff and prohibited him from accessing government security cameras.

Five election lawsuits have been filed and appealed; three are on the way to the Texas Supreme Court, two years after the vote.

For a community of some six dozen residents, “We’ve had a lot of political fighting going on,” acknowledged County Attorney Steve Simonsen. “That’s the simplest way to put it.”

You can say that again. I’ve blogged about Loving County’s shenanigans before, and we’ll just add this to the collection. I suppose the Lege could expand their “you can only spend more on the cops” law in response to this, which would make a bad law worse, but maybe they won’t care enough to bother. Whatever the case, read the rest. It’s as bonkers as ever. No one county delivers as much content on a per capita basis as Loving.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Brandon Jones, Chris Busse, Cody Williams, Constable, Election 2022, Leroy Medlin, Loving County, police, Sheriff, Skeet Jones, Texas, Texas Municipal Police Association, The Lege | Comments Off

On cryptomining and power plants

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I say again, there’s a political opportunity here, and it involves being on the right side of an issue.

About 150 angry residents gathered in a conference center here on Monday for a public meeting hosted by the state environmental agency regarding Constellation Energy’s proposal to build a new 300-megawatt power plant alongside two existing power plants that border residential neighborhoods.

But it was not only the power plant stirring up controversy. Marathon Digital, a Florida-based cryptocurrency company, operates a 300-megawatt Bitcoin mine on Constellation Energy’s property. For months, residents have complained about the constant noise emanating from thousands of fans cooling Marathon’s computers that run round-the-clock processing Bitcoin transactions.

The unyielding low-frequency sound waves have caused loss of sleep, and residents believe it may also be responsible for a host of unexplained health problems that have arisen since the Bitcoin mine opened in 2022.

At the meeting, a representative from Constellation, two of the company’s environmental consultants and five officials from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality responded to questions for about 50 minutes before listening to dozens of official public comments from residents of Granbury and neighboring towns.

“It’s not right. Y’all moved in on top of us. We didn’t move in on y’all,” said Nick Browning, looking directly at the Constellation Energy representatives as he delivered his remarks. For more than 30 years, the 81-year-old has lived about 800 feet from the property where Constellation Energy started building power plants in the early 2000s.

Constellation’s plan is to erect eight new turbines powered by natural gas to generate electricity. The company applied for air permits to release more than 796,000 additional tons of carbon dioxide per year. To sequester that amount of CO2 would require planting nearly 12 million trees and allowing them to grow for 10 years, according to EPA estimates.

The permit also proposes increased emissions at the site for a host of other pollutants, including particulate matter, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds.

By their presence alone, the crowd of largely white elderly and middle-aged Texans — several donning Trump campaign attire — showed that fossil fuel power plants can face opposition from all political stripes, especially when tied up with loud Bitcoin mines. United by concern for how more air emissions coupled with noise pollution could impact their health, the community also expressed mistrust in the process itself, believing that the meeting was for show, and the permits will be approved.

“What I’m hearing,” said Jim Brown of Granbury, “is as long as the government is OK with it, the public just has to submit.”

[…]

In an effort to bolster grid reliability, the Texas Legislature passed a loan program, the Texas Energy Fund, designed to help more gas-fired power plants come online.

Voters approved the program in a statewide election in 2023, and last month, the Constellation Energy expansion, known as Wolf Hollow III, was among more than a dozen selected projects that could receive taxpayer-funded loans if agreements are finalized.

In a statement, Constellation Energy said that the power from its new addition “would be prohibited from directly serving industrial load,” such as Bitcoin. The company said it is “sensitive” to noise concerns, and that currently, no expansions of Bitcoin mining are planned.

But Jackie Sawicky, a founding member of the Texas Coalition Against Cryptomining, told Inside Climate News that even if the new generation does not directly power Bitcoin, Wolf Hollow III would be replacing the energy capacity that Wolf Hollow II has set aside for Bitcoin, since both the mine and the new power plant have a capacity of 300 megawatts.

Sawicky said that the Texas Energy Fund is “another handout” for the fossil fuel industry and by extension the Bitcoin mining companies that she said “ingratiate themselves on our grid.”

Shannon Wolf, a Republican precinct chair for Hood County, where Granbury is located, said at the meeting that she voted for the ballot proposition to create the Texas Energy Fund. But she said she does not support Wolf Hollow III being built in an area “surrounded by ranches and farms and churches and an elementary school.”

“I am worried about what’s going to happen as a result of these pollutants,” Wolf said.

Another point of contention at the public meeting was how often Wolf Hollow III would operate, with the company saying it is designed as a peaking plant that only turns on when required to meet electricity demand. Constellation said the new power plant would be limited to operating only about 40% of the year.

“It’s not really clear who’s going to monitor that,” Adrian Shelley, Texas director for the nonprofit Public Citizen, said at the meeting.

See here and here for some background. I’m hard pressed to think of a worse reason to approve 796,000 additional tons of carbon dioxide per year. If everyone else’s experiences with the TCEQ are any indicator, this will indeed be approved.

This story is from September; I drafted this back then and then didn’t get around to posting it because there’s been so damn much news. I’m trying to clear out anything I have in the drafts that had election valence, so here we go. I’ve said before, Democratic candidates need to be showing up in places like Granbury to express their support for the people who are fighting these pernicious effects of sprawling cryptomining. It doesn’t matter that these are deep red places or that the issues involved are more local than state or federal, the point is to seek out common ground and give those people a reason to see you a little differently. Of course it will be a tough sell, and you shouldn’t expect much, but there’s nothing to lose by doing so. A message along the lines of “we don’t agree on much but on this we are in complete agreement, if you vote for me I will stand with you and will do everything in my power to fight this” at least has a chance of reaching some people and maybe winning a few votes. I don’t see any downside to it.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged Bitcoin, blackouts, Constellation, cryptocurrency, cryptomining, Earthjustice, Election 2024, ERCOT, Freeze 2021, Hood County, Marathon Digital Holdings, noise, Public Citizen Texas, TCEQ, Texas, Texas Coalition Against Cryptomining, Texas Energy Fund, The Lege | Comments Off

Weekend link dump for November 3

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Have you voted yet?

I didn’t think we needed a “Brady Bunch” reunion series, and after reading this I’m glad we didn’t get it.

Drinking coffee may or may not be good or bad for you. Hope that helps.

The lesson I take from this is that you should never click on a Facebook ad. I admit that might be a tad bit overzealous, but only a tiny bit.

How SiriusXM is planning for the retirement of Howard Stern.

“Abortion Is on the Ballot in These 10 States”.

“But here’s the big problem that no one talks about very much: Simple and defensible decisions by pollsters can drastically change the reported margin between Harris and Trump. I’ll show that the margin can change by as much as eight points.”

“If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”

RIP, Jeri Taylor, Emmy-nominated scribe, producer, director and showrunner behind Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.

“See, he wants to show that he’s like Gideon — a defiant hero smashing false idols. But since there weren’t any such false idols lying around — or, rather, none of the sort that he would recognize as such — he had to bring his own. He had to make his own. Jonathan Cahn literally built an altar to the Goddess Ishtar. He made unto himself a graven image.”

“At the very least, we can all agree that if Tony Hinchcliffe did unwittingly tip the election for Kamala, it would be, by far, the funniest thing he’s ever done.”

“More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions [to the Washington Post] by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters.”

“You think it’s nothing to do with you, but people look at you — how you look, how your last name is. They are not going to ask you are you a U.S. citizen or not.”

“Are we finally ready to face the sexual abuse of men and boys?”

RIP, Teri Garr, Oscar-nominated actor and national treasure, known for many great roles in Young Frankenstein, Tootsie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Mr. Mom, and Friends. I rarely include videos in these roundups, but:

“Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush, spent part of her weekend in Pennsylvania campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris with just days to go before the 2024 presidential election.”

“After two hours of driving around, I’d used the Turning Point app to identify two dead people, one missing college student, an elderly woman with a protectively hostile son, a closet Democrat, and one Trump supporter who needed no persuasion.”

“It is not sufficient for your campaign to apologize. It is important that you, personally, apologize for these comments.”

RIP, Leon Cooper, Nobel prizewinning physicist who did groundbreaking work on superconductivity and in understanding how memory and the brain work.

RIP, George Chandler, D-Day veteran who served aboard a British motor torpedo boat during the invasion of Normandy.

“Remember, what happens in the booth, stays in the booth. Vote Harris-Walz.”

“Sure, The Borg have been a bit of a problem. Their tendency toward mass assimilation and the stripping of individuality and personal freedom doesn’t exactly jibe with our idea of what makes a great leader. But let’s be honest. Kathryn Janeway hasn’t been perfect.”

“Her life was at risk. Alabama didn’t care.”

“Donald Trump Talked About Fixing McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines. Lina Khan Actually Did.”

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

Final November 2024 early voting: Definitely short

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Early voting is done, and I have to say, we didn’t get to where I expected we would:

The numbers after eight days of early voting are

Mail = 57,059
In Person = 1,175,901
Total = 1,232,960

I thought we’d get at least 200K votes cast on the last days but instead we got 130,717, of which 127,930 were in person. The early total is not only well short of the 1,435,221 total early votes from 2020, it’s short of the 1,264,811 votes cast in person. We did average 97,992 in person votes per day, which is well above the 70,227 in person day rate from 2020, but those six extra days more than made up for it.

I’m really not sure what to make of this. We need about 420K votes on Tuesday to match the overall turnout from 2020. That feels like a stretch but it isn’t impossible. We had over 400K votes cast on Election Day in 2008 and 2012. I admit that feels like another era, but it still means that about 74% of the vote was cast early. That’s a small uptick from 2016, so not really an outlier. I guess the question is, did the conditions in 2020 – COVID, the extra week of early voting, the push for mail ballots, the convenience of drive-through voting, the urgency of ejecting Trump – mostly change people’s behavior in terms of when and how they voted, or did they also get people out to vote who wouldn’t have voted otherwise and thus maybe aren’t bothering this year?

My gut says it’s more the former than the latter, but I’ve been led astray before. I also don’t have the data on how many old reliable voters there are out there who are waiting for Tuesday. The regular voters who haven’t shown up yet, I expect them to turn out. The rest, I have no idea. Did you vote differently – mail versus in person, early versus Election Day, drive through versus anything else – in 2020 than this year? Let us know about it in the comments. And as the man once said, hold onto your butts.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged absentee ballots, coronavirus, Donald Trump, early voting, Election 2008, Election 2012, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, Kamala Harris, Texas, turnout | 2 Comments

Houston re-ups its membership in H-GAC

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s hard not to get really effing discouraged sometimes.

Houston City Council voted 9-4 to renew its membership in the Houston-Galveston Area Council Wednesday after fiery discussions over whether the city’s continued involvement violated the city charter.

Council Members Tarsha Jackson, Abbie Kamin, Edward Pollard and Letitia Plummer voted against renewing the city’s H-GAC membership. Council Members Julian Ramirez, Tiffany D. Thomas and Twila Carter were all absent from the meeting.

H-GAC is the 13-county regional planning body made up of more than 100 Houston-area governments that is responsible for distributing federal funds for major projects that include infrastructure, climate mitigation and workforce development.

Wednesday’s vote to remain part of H-GAC comes after Houstonians in November enthusiastically approved a ballot measure that was meant to give Houston and Harris County “population-proportional” representation on the council, or leave the organization entirely.

Advocates of the measure argued that Houston and Harris County have been shortchanged on funding decisions for flood relief and overruled on major decisions such as the Interstate 45 expansion, despite being home to the majority of the region’s residents.

[…]

City Attorney Arturo Michel said Wednesday that withdrawing from H-GAC was not as simple as Proposition B laid it out to be. A decision not to renew, Arturo argued, would violate state and federal laws that dictate that a region’s largest city must be part of a metropolitan planning organization — in this case, H-GAC’s Transportation Policy Council.

Michael Moritz, an organizer with Fair For Houston, the organization that championed Proposition B, said that while he appreciated the council’s discussion, he was “disappointed” with Michel’s interpretation of the laws.

Michel repeatedly stated that withdrawing from the Transportation Policy Council would require approval from Gov. Greg Abbott and a three-fourths vote from the council’s membership. In actuality, federal transportation code indicates that representatives of 75% of the area’s population — not 75% of the council’s members — must approve a redesignation, a point that Michel himself clarified toward the end of the discussion.

Because Houston makes up more than 25% of the area’s population, the city essentially has veto power over any redesignation agreements, Moritz said. Given that the Transportation Policy Council will have to renegotiate its structure to accommodate new members from Austin County and the Woodlands by 2026, he argued the renewal vote offered a good opportunity for Houston to exercise its leverage.

“The campaign’s position is that the city should not be renewing its membership now, it should be issuing notice to the TPC that the city is in violation of its charter and that it holds leverage over redesignation, and that good faith negotiation is the solution,” Moritz said.

See here for the previous update. Mayor Whimire’s answer for this, which seems to be his answer for a lot of things, is that he’ll go ask his buddies in Austin for help in fixing this, whatever that means. Maybe he can get something done – again, first we need to know what that “something” might be – but my concern here is what it has always been, which is that Greg Abbott and the Republicans in the Lege have no incentive to help Houston out. Why would they? They don’t care about Houston. We’re an unruly and disagreeable force that they want to contain and control.

I have sympathy for CM Sallie Alcorn, who is currently serving as the H-GAC Chair and who would be in a very awkward position if the city had held out. She’s one of the good guys and she’s doing what she can to make things better. The bigger problem here is that now for the second time in less than one year of the Whitmire administration, we are blatantly ignoring the outcome of a clear and decisive election. It was bad enough that Metro under Whitmire’s chosen Chair decided that the 2019 election didn’t happen. Now City Council, minus the four members listed above, has voted to ignore the 2023 election. What do we need to do around here to make an election count?

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Abbie Kamin, Arturo Michel, Austin County, Edward Pollard, Election 2023, Fair For Houston, Harris County, HGAC, Houston, Houston City Council, John Whitmire, Letitia Plummer, Sallie Alcorn, Tarsha Jackson, The Lege, The Woodlands | 3 Comments

John Devine continues to be an ethical quagmire

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This guy, I swear.

In January 2022, Elvie Kingston’s dementia took a turn for the worse. The 76-year-old millionaire and longtime conservative activist was declared by a doctor to be partially incapacitated, after which she signed legal documents that removed her family’s right to make decisions about her health and finances.

Two years later, those powers remain almost entirely in the hands of a state Supreme Court justice and his wife.

Justice John Devine has said Kingston is essentially family. In public political appearances, he’s described their relationship as loving — like mother and son — and said he and others helped rescue Kingston “from a really dire situation.”

But legal experts say Devine’s control of Kingston’s trust is a clear violation of Texas ethics rules that prohibit judges from overseeing the trust or estates of non-family.

At the same time, his wife, Nubia, serves as Kingston’s legal guardian. The arrangement gives the Devines broad control over Kingston’s personal, financial and medical decisions — despite objections from Kingston’s niece and three of her friends, who say she was once close with the Devines but, in the years before her mental health declined, made it clear that she didn’t like or trust them.

“She didn’t want anything to do with them,” said Dorothea Hosmer, who said she has been Kingston’s close friend for 25 years. “So when I found out John Devine basically has control of her, I was dumbfounded.”

[…]

In August 2022, Kingston’s niece, Michelle Hartman, filed a complaint against John Devine with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, accusing him of flagrantly violating the judicial ethics code and using her aunt’s trust for his own financial benefit. The commission declined to comment on the complaint or confirm any related investigation.

In court filings, however, Nubia Devine accused Hartman of trying to exploit her aunt’s finances. She said, under Hartman’s watch, Kingston was living in squalid conditions that posed an “imminent danger” to her health and necessitated that Nubia Devine step in.

John Devine said through an attorney that he has fully complied with all disclosure requirements as set out in the trust and under Texas law. Nubia Devine and her attorney did not respond to requests for interviews or a detailed list of questions.

A spokesperson for the Texas Supreme Court said “the court is aware of the claims involving Justice Devine and has no comment on the matter.” The court did not respond to a follow-up question about whether any exemption was granted to Devine that would allow him to continue serving in that role.

The Texas Code of Judicial Conduct states that “a judge shall not serve as executor, administrator or other personal representative, trustee, guardian, attorney in fact or other fiduciary, except for the estate, trust or person of a member of the judge’s family, and then only if such service will not interfere with the proper performance of judicial duties.”

Devine has for years faced questions about his ethics as a judge. He is one of three Republicans on the all-GOP Supreme Court who is up for reelection this year, running against Harris County District Court Judge Christine Weems.

Earlier this year, Devine was confronted by a private media firm working for his GOP primary opponent about his relationship with Kingston. He denied that he was violating ethics rules because they considered each other family. “She’s held me out to be her son for 30 years,” he said, according to a video of the exchange.

Legal and judicial ethics experts disagree. “The rules are pretty clear,” said Heather Zirke, director of the Miller Becker Center for Professional Responsibility at the University of Akron School of Law. “A judge can serve in that capacity for their own family. But serving as a trustee or administrator for a non-family member still creates the potential for a conflict of interest and serving as a trustee or administrator for a non-family member is prohibited by the Code of Judicial Conduct.”

There’s also the Pressler matter, which the story touches on later, his utter lack of objectivity, his focrd birth fanaticism, and so on. There were already plenty of reasons to vote the guy out. But if you needed one more, there you go.

UPDATE: Still want one more reason to vote for Christine Weems in her race against John Devine? OK, here you go.

Christine Weems, a six-year district court judge in Harris County running for Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine’s seat, has been endorsed by every major Texas newspaper. But the only thing people want to know about her is her cameo in the comedy cult classic “Office Space.”

Aside from her 24-year passion for law, Weems is a self-proclaimed theater lover and even runs her own theater company with other law professionals in Houston. In fact, her penchant for acting is just as long as her law career. Her side acting gig first started when she submitted her picture on a lark to become an extra on a little movie that was filming in Austin the summer between her first and second year of law school.

That movie happened to be “Office Space” a satirical film about the work life of a group of weary individuals working in a software company in the late ’90s, written and directed by Mike Judge, of Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill fame.

“I joke about how when I was at the polls in 2018 and 2022 campaigning [for district judge] and I would tell people, ‘Hey, Christine Weems for the 281st Civil District Court,’ they would keep walking and the second I yelled I was in ‘Office Space,’ half of them would turn around and come back to me,” Weems told Chron.

“I think everybody has this idea of judges, it’s not like we’re not people, but people look at you as a job and not a person,” Weems added. “I mean, I’ve been endorsed by every major newspaper in Texas, the Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, The San Antonio-Express News, but the thing that resonates with everybody was that I was in “Office Space.'”

Scroll down to see a still from the movie with her in it. That’s awesome.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged abortion, Christine Weems, Election 2024, ethics, John Devine, judicial races, Paul Pressler, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Supreme Court, Texas | 1 Comment

Nevaeh Crain

Posted on November 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

ProPublica said it had two stories of women who died after being unable to get an abortion during a miscarriage. This is the second one.

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.

Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.

In states with abortion bans, such patients are sometimes bounced between hospitals like “hot potatoes,” with health care providers reluctant to participate in treatment that could attract a prosecutor, doctors told ProPublica. In some cases, medical teams are wasting precious time debating legalities and creating documentation, preparing for the possibility that they’ll need to explain their actions to a jury and judge.

Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, said patients are left wondering: “Am I being sent home because I really am OK? Or am I being sent home because they’re afraid that the solution to what’s going on with my pregnancy would be ending the pregnancy, and they’re not allowed to do that?”

There is a federal law to prevent emergency room doctors from withholding lifesaving care.

Passed nearly four decades ago, it requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients in medical crises. The Biden administration argues this mandate applies even in cases where an abortion might be necessary.

No state has done more to fight this interpretation than Texas, which has warned doctors that its abortion ban supersedes the administration’s guidance on federal law, and that they can face up to 99 years in prison for violating it.

[…]

Crain is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, ProPublica found.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has successfully made his state the only one in the country that isn’t required to follow the Biden administration’s efforts to ensure that emergency departments don’t turn away patients like Crain.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, the administration issued guidance on how states with bans should follow the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. The federal law requires hospitals that receive funding through Medicare — which is virtually all of them — to stabilize or transfer anyone who arrives in their emergency rooms. That goes for pregnant patients, the guidance argues, even if that means violating state law and providing an abortion.

Paxton responded by filing a lawsuit in 2022, saying the federal guidance “forces hospitals and doctors to commit crimes,” and was an “attempt to use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

Part of the battle has centered on who is eligible for abortion. The federal EMTALA guidelines apply when the health of the pregnant patient is in “serious jeopardy.” That’s a wider range of circumstances than the Texas abortion restriction, which only makes exceptions for a “risk of death” or “a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

The lawsuit worked its way through three layers of federal courts, and each time it was met by judges nominated by former President Donald Trump, whose court appointments were pivotal to overturning Roe v. Wade.

After U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, quickly sided with Texas, Paxton celebrated the triumph over “left-wing bureaucrats in Washington.”

“The decision last night proves what we knew all along,” Paxton added. “The law is on our side.”

This year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the order in a ruling authored by Kurt D. Engelhardt, another judge nominated by Trump.

The Biden administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the justices to make it clear that some emergency abortions are allowed.

Even amid news of preventable deaths related to abortion bans, the Supreme Court declined to do so last month.

Paxton called this “a major victory” for the state’s abortion ban.

He has also made clear that he will bring charges against physicians for performing abortions if he decides that the cases don’t fall within Texas’ narrow medical exceptions.

Last year, he sent a letter threatening to prosecute a doctor who had received court approval to provide an emergency abortion for a Dallas woman. He insisted that the doctor and her patient had not proven how, precisely, the patient’s condition threatened her life.

Many doctors say this kind of message has encouraged doctors to “punt” patients instead of treating them.

Since the abortion bans went into effect, an OB-GYN at a major hospital in San Antonio has seen an uptick in pregnant patients being sent to them from across Southern Texas, as they suffer from complications that could easily be treated close to home.

The well-resourced hospital is perceived to have more institutional support to provide abortions and miscarriage management, the doctor said. Other providers “are transferring those patients to our centers because, frankly, they don’t want to deal with them.”

See here for the story of Josseli Barnica, the first woman who died during a miscarriage because she wasn’t allowed an abortion that ProPublica wrote about. I skipped the details of Nevaeh Crain’s case in this post because they’re pretty gruesome; take care when you read the rest of the story, as you should. There are lots of people who are and should be held responsible for their deaths, but you have to give a special shoutout to Ken Paxton for really going above and beyond. He sure had a lot to say when the Dobbs ruling was handed down and when the EMTALA ruling that allowed criminal charges to be filed against doctors who would have helped Josseli Barnica or Nevaeh Crain was handed down. He hasn’t had much to say about their deaths – Republicans in general have been resoundingly silent about them . One of the usual forced birth stooges was there later in the story to claim that the anti-abortion law he helped pass was clear and the doctors were wrong, because that’s what they tell themselves. We sure don’t have to believe them. The evidence is right there in front of us.

Oh, and plenty of women have faced criminal scrutiny following a miscarriage since Dobbs. It can get so much worse, and it will if we’re not able to change course.

I’m heartbroken for these women and their families. I’m also furious. And I know there will be more of these stories for as long as this travesty of a law is in effect and the elected officials who put it in place remain in power. You know what to do and why to do it.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, Amanda Zurawski, Election 2024, EMTALA, Greg Abbott, Josseli Barnica, Kate Cox, Ken Paxton, Nevaeh Crain, SCOTUS, Ted Cruz, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Paxton takes his fight against the State Fair gun ban back to district court

Posted on November 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

As threatened and expected.

Howdy, folks

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intends to continue challenging the State Fair of Texas’ gun ban, despite the fair ending last week, according to new court filings.

Paxton filed a motion Monday to dismiss his appeal against the court’s decision to block a gun ban by the State Fair of Texas. The Texas Supreme Court ruled in September to deny Paxton’s emergency motion for temporary relief of the ban after the motion was previously denied by the Dallas County District Court and the Fifteenth Court of Appeals.

“Because the State Fair ended on October 20, the State no longer wishes to pursue this appeal from the denial of a temporary injunction,” the filing states.

However, the state intends to continue challenging the ban in trial court, the filing states.

“Texans have a right to lawfully carry and the City of Dallas has no authority to contract their rights away to a private entity,” Paxton said after the Texas Supreme Court denied his appeal in September. “This case is not over. I will continue to fight this on the merits to uphold Texans’ ability to defend themselves, which is protected by State law.”

This gun ban comes one year after a shooting at the State Fair’s food court where three people were injured.

See here for the previous update; Ginger noted this in Friday’s Dispatches. The fight up until now had been over a restraining order – the merits of the case have yet to be adjudicated. That’s what will happen in district court, a full trial before the judge in which a permanent injunction will (or won’t) be issued. You will recall that SCOTx rejected Paxton’s appeal for the temporary order on the highly technical grounds that his argument was total bunk; go back and read that previous post to see why. I have to assume Paxton will amend his argument in response to SCOTx’s gentle feedback, but who knows? This may be another one of those “hi, it’s me, Kenny, asking you to please give me what I want” situations, and who’s to say that will be unsuccessful. We’ll know when SCOTx gets another crack at it.

UPDATE: Here’s his next move.

Three fairgoers have joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in suing the State Fair of Texas and the city of Dallas over the fair’s policy banning all firearms from its properties.

Monday’s filing is the latest maneuver from Paxton in an ongoing battle surrounding the State Fair and its gun ban. In September, a day before the event kicked off, the Texas Supreme Court denied Paxton’s request to overturn the policy — stating it has no role to “decide whether the State Fair made a wise decision” — after a Dallas district court judge allowed the gun ban to stand.

Paxton filed the update naming the newest plaintiffs in his ongoing case before the Dallas district court, which is expected to have another hearing next year.

In it, Paxton accuses State Fair and city officials of violating state law that bars most government bodies from prohibiting weapons on their properties. Paxton also says officials violated the constitutional rights to bear arms of fairgoers Maxx Juusola, Tracy Martin, and Alan Crider. They ask for up to $1 million in civil damages and to allow people to carry guns on the fairground.

A million dollars, good grief. Should we expect to see an amicus brief from Doctor Evil? Anyway, there you have it. I don’t think it improves his case any – the city of Dallas is still not involved here – but it will eventually be up to SCOTx and the Lege.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Dallas, gun control, guns, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, State Fair of Texas, Supreme Court, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

Compost those pumpkins

Posted on November 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

News you can use.

The day after Halloween, the city of Houston will roll out its annual effort to keep pumpkins out of landfills where they would contribute to the production of harmful greenhouse gases.

The city’s Solid Waste Management Department recently announced the return of its pumpkin composting drop-off program Nov. 1-Dec. 6.

This is the fourth year the city has implemented the collection effort as more locations and extended hours have been added, according to a news release.

The program is an effort to cut down on waste after the jack-o-lantern-styled accoutrements from decorative experiments, the emptied shells from baking or the retired gourds from festivals and pumpkin patches fall out of season.

Used up pumpkins and the accompanying seeds and pulp usually end up in the trash in a landfill where it can become a toxic threat to the environment, said Kay McKeen, the executive director and founder of SCARCE, an Illinois-based environmental education organization that started its own Pumpkin Smash events, which collected residents’ expired pumpkins for compost.

The goal of programs like the Pumpkin Smash, held in November, is to educate people about the importance of composting, McKeen said.

[…]

In 2023 the Houston program collected and composted more than 16,000 pounds of pumpkins and with more locations and longer hours of operation, the city is hoping to create more awareness of its importance.

Mark Wilfalk, director of the city’s solid waste management department, said the city hopes to pursue additional funding to build on and expand composting initiatives.

All pumpkin waste can be dropped at the following locations:

Reuse Warehouse, 9003 N. Main St., Houston, Tuesday – Friday 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. (open every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month from 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.)

Westpark Recycling Center, 5900 Westpark, Houston, Monday – Saturday 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

See here for some background, here for more on the city’s program, and here for more on SCARCE, which includes a nice explainer of why you want to keep pumpkins out of the landfills. You might find some other local efforts for this – there’s a house in my neighborhood that collects post-Halloween pumpkins for composting as well, they’re already advertising for it. The pumpkins also make pretty good feed for various types of livestock, as I understand it. Point being, as with your Christmas tree, you have far better options than throwing them in the trash. Please take advantage of them.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged compost, Halloween, Houston, landfills, pumpkins, Sallie Alcorn, SCARCE, Solid Waste Management Department, Texas | Comments Off

November 2024 early voting Day Eleven: One more day

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Hard to believe, it seems like this election has been going on since the late 90s, but we have one day of early voting to go. Your early voting results through Thursday, Day Eleven:

The numbers after eight days of early voting are

Mail = 54,272
In Person = 1,047,351
Total = 1,101,623

A small uptick from Wednesday but still less than 90K total. We’re going to need over 300K votes today to match the early vote total from 2020. I do think we’ll get a bigger Election Day turnout than we got in 2020, if only because it’s hard to imagine getting a smaller share of the vote on Election Day. Between tomorrow and Tuesday we’ll need about a half million votes to match the final tally from 2020, and we’ll need more than that to equal turnout as a percentage of registered voters. We’ll see what today brings. Anyone out there who still hasn’t voted yet? I voted on Wednesday.

Is this the year Tarrant County finally goes blue?

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Maybe.

“Tarrant County is the 15th-largest county in the country, so it should get a lot of attention. And it’s the third-largest county in Texas, so it makes sense that there would be a lot of focus there,” said Mark Hand, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. “The reason there is and should be so much focus on Tarrant County is that it’s one of the very few large counties where Republicans have held power for a long time, and that’s now very much contested.”

In 2020, Tarrant voters narrowly supported President Joe Biden over incumbent Trump, turning the county blue by just over 1,800 votes. Biden is the second Democratic presidential candidate to win the county following Lyndon B. Johnson’s victory in 1964. Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke also won the county in 2018, beating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

Meanwhile, all countywide positions continue to be held by Republicans.

As Election Day approaches, voters, candidates and political experts alike are wondering: Will Tarrant swing back to red or continue trending toward blue? Is the future of Tarrant County purple?

James Riddlesperger, a political science professor at Texas Christian University, said there’s reason for Democrats to think they might be more competitive in Tarrant County than ever before.

“Certainly, the numbers over the last several election cycles show that Tarrant County is narrowing in its gap between Republicans and Democrats,” Riddlesperger said. “But, on the other hand, all things being equal, you would have to say that the Republicans have a fairly significant advantage in Tarrant County simply because of the kind of voting habits of Tarrant County over the last third of a century, where Republicans have been so firmly in charge.”

Riddlesperger said a variety of factors could influence whether Tarrant County tilts blue again at the top of the ticket this election cycle — or not.

Voting patterns can be hard to change, Riddlesperger said. And the history of Republican support in Tarrant has positioned the party’s candidates for success thanks to greater political experience, resources and favor, he added.

“Those are some of the things that are kind of stubbornly holding on in Tarrant County,” Riddlesperger said. “The only thing we know for sure is that Tarrant, like all counties, will change over time, but you can’t really predict which direction it will change.”

The political landscape looks different than it did in 2020, he noted. Four years ago, one of the top issues on voters’ minds was COVID-19, and many people were troubled by Trump’s response to the pandemic. With the current election, top issues include reproductive health, changing perceptions of the economy, and the Israel-Hamas war.

Riddlesperger said changing voter demographics could also lead to new voting patterns in Tarrant. As older voters die, young voters of newer generations replace them, he said.

“The electorate in Tarrant County isn’t the same as four years ago. We’ve had a lot of migration in Tarrant County,” Riddlesperger said. “It’s growing rapidly, so we’re going to have more voters, and some of those new voters are not going to be as steeped in the history of Tarrant County as the voters who were four years ago.”

There’s a table in this story that shows how up until 2016, Tarrant County was an eerily accurate predictor of what percentage of the vote the statewide candidates would get. Beto overperformed by a little more than a point in 2018, then Biden in 2020 and Beto again in 2022 outperformed by more than that in Tarrant, carrying the county and 2018 and 2020 but falling short in 2022. I covered all of that here. What this basically means is that Tarrant, like Harris and pretty much all of the big urban counties, is now more Democratic than the state as a whole is. And what that means is that whether Tarrant goes blue, either at the top of the ticket or all the way down, is at least partly a function of how Dems are doing overall. If this trend continues and if statewide Dems are consistently getting 45-46%, then I think there’s a decent chance some Democratic candidates for county office could break through.

I don’t know what the odds are, and I don’t know if the hard-right turn of the Tarrant GOP, exemplified by its County Judge and Sheriff and especially its noxious Republican Party Chair, will help or hinder that trend. As is the case with Harris, much of Tarrant’s county government is up for election in 2026, so continuing that trend and making a bigger push to win statewide would be a big help. It’s not just the symbolic value, it’s the removal of power from some bad actors, and also potentially putting a significant number of legislative seats in play. I’ve said before, the margin of partisan advantage that Tarrant Republicans get in their State Rep districts look a lot like what Dallas Republicans were getting in the 2010s, and we know where that ended up when Dallas County finally got too blue to sustain them. Dems don’t have a path to taking over the Lege without taking a big part of Tarrant County with them.

So yeah, outside of the Harris County-involved races and the State Rep districts of interest, I’ll be keeping an eye on Tarrant County. How Dems do there matters, for this election and the next.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Beto O'Rourke, Bill Waybourn, Colin Allred, County Judge, Dallas County, demography, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2022, Election 2024, Election 2026, Governor, Harris County, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, President, Senate, Sheriff, Tarrant County, Ted Cruz, Texas, The Lege, Tim O'Hare | 3 Comments

Dispatches from Dallas, November 1 edition

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: more on the Roberson case; election updates and the HERO amendments; the latest on Crystal Mason; the new Dallas police monitor; updates on the Marvin Nichols reservoir and the GAF shingle plant; more from the nuns in Arlington, who are maybe not nuns any more; the War on Christmas comes to. or maybe for, Neiman Marcus; a local JFK tour that’s longer and more expensive than I expected; where to get your OG Lu-Ann Platter fix in the Metroplex; and more.

The mister and I voted this week. We had to get up and be in line at about 7 AM to get in and out quickly. We’d planned to vote Friday on the way out of town to the Texas Renaissance Festival (we had a great time) but the line was over an hour long. Early morning was the only time the election judges were seeing short lines. We were both in and through the line in under half an hour even with the Dallas ballot, which isn’t as long as the Houston ballot but wasn’t short either.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Apple’s shoegaze and dreampop essentials, which seemed right for Halloween, which is when I’m writing this post.

I know the biggest story this week is really the upcoming election, but I’m stuck on the role that the Robert Roberson case is playing in Texas politics. I said last week that I was really glad that Jeff Leach was interfering in the trial, but I didn’t know he’d also asked the judge to consider a new trial and that the request was an ethics violation. I still appreciate Leach acting on a matter of conscience (and hope the State Bar treats him accordingly) but I’m not enjoying watching Ken Paxton question Leach’s, or well, anybody’s ethics and ask Leach to resign, a standard Paxton won’t live up to in his own cases. Also I was sad to read that the maternal family of Roberson’s child still wants him executed.

Last but not least, it turns out, unsurprisingly, that the allegations about sexual abuse and some other matters brought up in Paxton’s brief about the Roberson case weren’t in the actual court records. This is because they weren’t part of the prosecution’s case but were merely mentioned in the prosecution’s notes. Pretty sure Paxton doesn’t consider accusing Roberson of molesting a baby without sufficient evidence to bring it to trial an ethical lapse.

In other news, starting with next week’s election:

The Dallas Observer got the editor of SMU’s student paper to write up her observations about voting and the election at SMU. KERA, meanwhile, talked to Black women voters in South Dallas about their concerns in the 2024 election.
Today I learned from this Texas Tribune piece that even though it’s legal for folks convicted of misdemeanors to vote, the only counties that help prisoners vote are Dallas County and Harris County.
Crystal Mason has filed an appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals over her conviction for illegal voting. Click through to read the Tarrant County DA’s mealymouthed statement on the case and if you’re in Tarrant County, remember to vote against him when he’s on the ballot.
The Texas Tribune has fundraising numbers for Texas elections and I noted the numbers for a couple of local races: Rep. Angie Chen Button raised $1.6 million last month, which was a lot more than challenger Averie Bishop; my state rep, Rep. Morgan Meyer, raised $1.5 million, some of which I have seen in the form of multiple flyers; and Democratic Rep. Mihaela Plesa of Dallas hauled in ten times as much money as her Republican challenger, though the Tribune gave no figures at all in this race.
Lots of talk about what I have taken to calling the STUpid amendments (not my coinage, but amusing nonetheless), aka the HERO amendments, aka Monty Bennett wanting to ruin Dallas. D Magazine frames their piece around the Dallas Regional Chamber debate between the HERO folks and former city officials and the things the HERO team doesn’t say. The DMN is all about the unintended consequences of the amendments, which the D Magazine folks think is an unwarranted assumption of good faith on the part of Dallas HERO. The DMN also has five things to know, one of their many articles breaking down the big issues into bite sized questions and answers.
KERA has a piece on the Judicial Fairness Political Action Committee, which is nominally going after judges who grant bail too often but actually only endorses business-friendly appellate judges. Who’s giving the money behind the PAC? Ken Fisher, a billionaire Trump supporter; Ross Perot, Jr.; ConocoPhillips; Jeffery Hildebrand, an O&G billionaire; and Phillip Huffines, twin brother of right-wing Republican Don Huffines.
Quinn Yeager’s Substack has a guide to intermediate state appellate courts. Scroll down to find out about the relevant courts in Texas and what will be on your ballot.
Interested in early voting numbers in north Texas? The Dallas Observer has some early numbers for Dallas County and the Fort Worth Report covers similar turf for Tarrant County.
KERA reports on voting machine issues in North Texas. The expert verdict is that it was mechanical problems, not election interference.
If you’re in Tarrant County and want to track your vote, the Star-Telegram has you covered.
Sam Eppler, the Democrat who’s running to unseat my congresscritter, Beth van Duyne, in CD-24 reports sign stealing and dog-poop leaving on his supporters’ lawns. I can’t speak to the dog poop on the porch, but the local Facebook groups are full of reports of Democratic signs being stolen or defaced (with some photos of the latter), so I believe that much.
If my reports do not convince you that Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French is an asshole, click through and scroll down to see what he’s saying about Democrats on Xitter. Using “gay” as a slur and the slur that starts with r for folks with intellectual disabilities is not cool.
The suburb of Keller has a mayor who was born in Puerto Rico but he still supports Trump even after what that DMN article I’m linking called a “raucous” rally with the bigoted comic. The Star-Telegram also covers the mayor’s Xitter post. I’m sure the leopards won’t eat his face when the time comes. Meanwhile, the DMN has a piece on young Latino political activists who are trying to turn out Latino voters in this election.
In the spring elections, a lot of people were very mad because talking about education policy made school boards look like they were pro-Democrat. Turns out what’s bad for Democratic geese is also bad for Republican ganders: the board president of Mansfield ISD endorsed a Republican candidate for the State House and is now in hot water because it might appear that the board is illegally supporting him.
It’s not too early to talk about the May elections for 2025. Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker has confirmed she’s running for her third term.
Two of our local congressfolks have questions for the medical examiners in Dallas and Tarrant counties following on from the UNT Health Science Center body-selling scandal. I hope Marc Veasey and Jasmine Crockett get some answers on how it all happened from the counties’ side and how to keep it from happening again.
The DMN has an interview with/profile of Michele Andre, Dallas’ new police monitor. It all sounds good in theory, but given how badly the previous police monitor did before she was pushed out, as alluded to in the piece, I’m not really confident Andre will be able to significantly improve police conduct or community relationships.
DISD is considering converting a historic Black elementary school in South Dallas whose campus closed in 2013 into a proposed $50 million career institute. I wish South Dallas good luck in obtaining and enjoying this school.
Plano ISD is closing four schools and will be selling three campuses: two elementary and one middle school. This is part of the ongoing story of demographics and declining enrollment in public schools in north Texas.
A side effect I hadn’t considered to the DEI ban for Texas universities: Tarrant College cancelled a Hispanic Heritage Month event because it might break the law.
Parkland Health, the public health system that operates Parkland Hospital here in Dallas, has had a data breach that may affect up to 6,500 Texans.
This report on Fort Worth’s annexation of some land in Parker County interested me because it reported that the fiscal impact for the first five years would be negative as infrastructure is built out. I’d be interested to learn when the tax increases would outpace the infrastructure increases, but the article doesn’t tell me that.
The city of Dallas does annual audits; next year’s audit will focus on, among other things, the failure of Dallas’ lead abatement program, the city’s zoning application process, and the creation of affordable housing.
Two items around north Texas water infrastructure came up this week. First, the city of Dallas broke ground on a new pumping station on the Trinity River that should reduce flooding in Dallas. Second, on Wednesday afternoon there was a public meeting about the upcoming Marvin Nichols reservoir in east Texas that saw more than 200 attendees and 38 public speakers, most of whom were against Marvin Nichols. The Star-Telegram also has the story.
The latest on the GAF shingle plant in west Dallas is that residents protested the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s upcoming renewal of the plant’s air permit at a public meeting last week. The meeting probably won’t have any effect on the renewal process, unfortunately, but at least they got to say their piece. Meanwhile, protestors who tried to block the road to the plant on Earth Day as an act of civil disobedience were found guilty of obstructing the roadway and fined $97 each. They plan to appeal.
The Arlington nun story has taken a turn this week. When last we left the nuns, they had rejected a Papal order to put themselves under the governance of Mother Marie of the Incarnation and instead affiliated themselves with the Society of Saint Pius X, a group that was so traditionalist Catholic that they were in schism with the Vatican for a while. The Vatican and Mother Marie have had enough, though, and they dismissed the women from monastic life over their refusal to follow Mother Marie’s directives. Part of the offense is that the nuns have put the property of the monastery in the hands of a foundation, which Mother Marie referred to as expropriating Church property. Her comments may be grounds for a civil lawsuit. The ongoing interplay of lay and canon law is absolutely fascinating to me. The DMN and the Star-Telegram also have the story.
The founding pastor of Koinonia Church in Arlington was arrested in July on sexual assault charges, and had been replaced by an interim pastor until this week. Now Ronnie Goines is back preaching and the interim pastor has resigned by request.
According to a volleyball coach and athletic coordinator for a Fort Worth ISD high school, Fort Worth City Council member Elizabeth Beck bullied them and threatened their jobs if they didn’t put her daughter on the volleyball team. It looks like Beck will be up for election again in May 2025, so Fort Worth voters may need to look into this case further and keep it in mind when voting next spring.
The War on Christmas is coming for Neiman Marcus, which is now calling its fantasy gift catalog the Holiday Book instead of the Christmas Book. I find this particularly amusing since Stanley Marcus, the name brand founder and long-time leader of the store, was Jewish by heritage and religious practice.
This week I learned that Cutting Edge Haunted House in Fort Worth is the spookiest haunted house in America according to USA Today.
You may remember that PETA made some allegations about animal abuse at the SeaQuest aquarium in Ridgmar Mall in Fort Worth. The aquarium has now shut down after police and federal agency inquiries.
KERA has a story on historic preservation in Dallas. I didn’t know that the Texas Theater, which is where we go for repertory films and live score silent films, played a role in the JFK assassination saga.
Restaurant Beatrice, a Cajun restaurant in Oak Cliff that the mister and I like, is the first restaurant in Texas to earn a B corp certification for environmental performance, accountability and transparency. I’m delighted for them and hoping to go back soon.
This is a lovely tribute to the retiring head of the Nasher Sculpture Center by a friend and fellow artist.
I went to Medieval Times, the cheesy faux-medieval entertainment with food that has an outpost in Dallas, recently. So I was really interested to learn about how falconry saved the falconer at Medieval Times. I’m not an expert by any means, but I’ve been watching people fly birds at fairs and festivals around the country for three decades now, and I was impressed by the Medieval Times’ falconer’s control and artistry. Now I’m even more impressed.
Speaking of JFK, as we were earlier, a Texas Monthly writer did the $800, 8-hour JFK tour on offer by a local obsessive. I’ve been to the Book Depository museum but I don’t need that much JFK, so I’m glad someone else did it and I could read about it.
Last, but not least, for our old skool Texans: if you want to eat a Lu-Ann platter just like the good old days, there’s a location on I-820 in Fort Worth where you can do exactly that.

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