Texas blog roundup for the week of November 27

Posted on November 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes everyone has recovered from their tryptophan naps as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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SCOTx has its abortion case hearing

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Here we go.

The Supreme Court of Texas heard arguments Tuesday in a landmark case that could impact how the state’s abortion laws apply to medically complicated pregnancies.

In August, state District Judge Jessica Mangrum ruled that the near-total abortion ban cannot be enforced in cases involving complicated pregnancies, including lethal fetal diagnoses. The state immediately appealed that ruling, putting it on hold.

Texas law allows abortions only when it is necessary to save the life of the pregnant patient. But this lawsuit, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights in March, claims that doctors are unsure when the medical exception applies, resulting in delayed or denied care.

“No one knows what [the exception] means and the state won’t tell us,” Molly Duane, senior attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the justices Tuesday.

The state argues the judge went too far in her injunction by reading exceptions into the law beyond what the Legislature intended.

“What the legislature has done is chosen to value unborn life and prohibit abortion in all circumstances, unless that life is going to conflict with the life of the mother,” said assistant attorney general Beth Klusmann. “The legislature has set the bar high, but there is nothing unconstitutional in their decision to do so.”

Justice Jimmy Blacklock questioned Duane on the “capaciousness” of the injunction, asking whether this might allow abortions as a result of common pregnancy complications like high blood pressure.

“It seems to me, looking at the case you presented and the injunction that was granted, that this very well could open the door far more widely than you’re acknowledging,” he said.

Duane said the injunction would only apply to emergent medical conditions that could become critical or life-threatening if not treated. But she acknowledged that Mangrum’s ruling is “doing more work than normal,” because “legislators don’t usually write laws that people who are regulated by those laws simply do not understand.”

[…]

At the center of Tuesday’s hearing was the question of standing, or whether the plaintiffs have the legal right to bring this suit. The state has argued that because these women are not actively seeking abortions at the moment, clarifying the law would not address their claims.

Justice Jeff Boyd seemed aghast at that argument.

“Your position is that, in order to seek the kind of clarity that these plaintiffs are seeking, you have to have a woman who is pregnant, who has some health condition that she believes places her life at risk or impairment to a major bodily function, but her doctor says, ‘I don’t think it does,’” he said. “And she has to then sue the doctor, and maybe the attorney general, at that point, and then she would have standing and sovereign immunity would be waived?”

Klusmann said that wasn’t the only situation that would generate standing, but “you would at least then know that the law is the problem, and not the doctor.”

“Some of these women appear to have fallen within these exceptions but their doctors still said no,” she said. “That’s not the fault of the law.”

“That’s what gives rise to the need for clarity,” Boyd said, exasperated.

Several of the justices asked Duane why the Center for Reproductive Rights did not bring a wider suit, challenging the law on the grounds that it is too vague to be properly enforced.

“Generally, a vagueness challenge is a facial challenge to the statute, to take down the entire statute,” Duane said after the hearing. “So if that’s what the court wants us to do, we’re happy to do it.”

See here, here, and here for some background. The Chron struck a somewhat negative note.

Several of the Texas Supreme Court’s Republican justices appeared hesitant on Tuesday to clarify an emergency exception in the state’s abortion ban despite claims from nearly two dozen women that they were forced to continue medically dangerous pregnancies.

“Our job is to decide cases, not to elaborate and expand laws in order to make them easier to understand or enforce,” Justice Brett Busby said.

[…]

Molly Duane, a Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer, said the state’s interpretation of standing would require that a woman “needs to have blood or amniotic fluid dripping down their leg before they can come to court.”

The plaintiffs include “patients who are trying to get pregnant now and pregnancy complications are likely to occur,” she said.

Justice Evan Young pushed back, comparing doctors to police officers who have to work out how to comply with the state constitution in use-of-force cases.

“Here we have a statement in the statute that describes the risk of death or the serious risk to a substantial bodily function — how is that so much more nebulous than the entire body of constitutional law that law enforcement has to apply?” Young said.

Duane said the situations are not similar at all, as police officers have qualified immunity against being sued.

Klusmann said the problem is with doctors, not the law. The ban was not written with the intention of discriminating based on sex, the state has said in filings, and abortion care “is not ordinary medical treatment” because “it involves potential life.”

“We’re just trying to identify when it’s appropriate to end the life of an unborn child, and the Legislature has set the bar high,” Klusmann said. “But there’s nothing unconstitutional about their decision to do so.”

Busby noted the cases might have made more sense as medical negligence suits against the doctors.

Duane said her clients don’t blame their doctors for acting within the constraints of the law. Many physicians and hospitals have feared immediately intervening in emergency cases even when there is a clear danger, given the state’s stiff penalties for anyone who violates the ban.

[…]

After the arguments on Tuesday, Duane told reporters she was “optimistic that the court heard us, heard them (the plaintiffs) and saw them.” But if the justices fail to intervene, Texans “will be in the exact same spot that we are today” where physicians remain constrained and patients suffer the consequences.

“While I was sitting in the courtroom, my telephone rang,” Duane said. “It was a call from another patient. This is real. It is happening every single day, and it is not going to stop until someone with accountability in this state can put a stop to it.”

Either that or we finally get a federal law that protects abortion rights. Gonna need to have some positive outcomes in 2024 for that. Might be nice to center some campaigns on that possibility. The Trib story suggests we can expect a ruling by June. CBS News and ABC News have more.

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Whitmire and SJL on the HISD mess

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

As we know, the Mayor has basically no direct influence on HISD, but it’s an issue people care about and the Mayor can certainly make it a point of focus. So what do our two Mayoral runoff candidates have to say about HISD?

Mayoral candidates state Sen. John Whitmire and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee have struck different tones on how to approach relations with state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles and the Board of Managers that replaced the democratically elected Board of Trustees. Both, however, said they would like to use their office to improve schools and return HISD to local control and would be willing to work with district leaders to achieve those goals.

Here’s more on what the candidates had to say on the HISD takeover and how they would use their office to impact public schools.

Whitmire, the leading vote-getter in the general mayoral election earlier this month, has offered fewer public comments about HISD since filing an eleventh-hour bill, which ultimately failed, in March to stave off the takeover. But the longtime state senator said he has been active behind the scenes, meeting separately with both Miles and Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath to offer his opinions and lend his assistance.

Opening clear lines of communication between the mayor’s office and HISD would be the first step in establishing a partnership with the district, Whitmire said. If elected mayor, he said he would appoint an education adviser to brief him regularly on the school district and its impact on the city.

He characterized Mayor Sylvester Turner’s reluctance to work with Miles as unproductive and promised that he would communicate directly with school leaders rather than “shout from a distance.” Turner’s office declined to respond to that accusation.

“The bottom line is the takeover has taken place, and it’s shameful to politicize that, politicize children’s education,” Whitmire said. “Let’s support the students, support the administration that has got the children’s best interests at heart, and go forward.”

[…]

In addition to appointing an education adviser to his staff, Whitmire also said he would “assist (HISD) where possible with resources, talent and community input.”

“As HISD goes is how Houston goes. We have too many citizens that work in Houston and live in the suburbs, often driven by schools. I want people to work and live in Houston and have education choices that include strong public schools,” Whitmire said.

See here for more on the aforementioned bill; as I expected, neither it nor any of the similar bills got as much as a committee hearing. All of this is on brand for Whitmire, who has leaned into his connections and legislative record throughout the campaign, which as noted has its pros and cons as a strategy. It’s as likely to work as any other approach might, which is the polite way of restating the fact that the Mayor has basically no direct influence here. To the extent that it is viable, Whitmire is as good as it gets at giving it a go.

(I do not hold Whitmire’s vote on the original bill that led to the takeover against him. As the article notes, plenty of other Dems also voted for it, on the now obviously naive view that it wouldn’t come to this. I blame Harold Dutton, who no doubt helped sell this bill to his colleagues. Let that be a very painful lesson for a lot of people.)

Jackson Lee, given her capacity as a federal representative rather than a state legislator, was not directly involved with the takeover but has been one of its strongest critics, speaking at TEA forums and leading rallies against the takeover. In March, the congresswoman said she filed a federal complaint to halt the takeover, though it has not resulted in any action thus far. The education bureau did not respond to a request for an update on the status of the complaint. The congresswoman said it is still under review.

Jackson Lee’s outspokenness has earned her the endorsement of the Houston Federation of Teachers, which has emerged as one of Miles’ fiercest opponents since he was appointed to his post. The congresswoman said she would use the “bully pulpit” afforded to the mayor to advocate for a return to local control, higher teacher salaries and public-private partnerships for tutoring and internet access.

“In order to be an ‘education mayor,’ you have to be attentive. I think it’s important that I work with parents, collaborate with PTOs … listen to what parents are saying and find ways for the city to be collaborative,” Jackson Lee said.

[…]

Jackson Lee has also promised to hire at least one full-time staffer to handle issues related to education. She said she would use her position to lobby for philanthropic involvement in schools and improve public safety, parks and recreation and housing opportunities for public school students and their families.

Jackson Lee has criticized some aspects of Miles’ leadership, including the decision to convert libraries in dozens of schools with mostly Black and brown students into “Team Centers” used partially for discipline. But the congresswoman said she would “reserve judgment” on his performance until he has been given more time to show results.

Like Whitmire, Jackson Lee said she would be willing to work with Miles and the HISD administration if elected mayor. She has also already spoken with Miles about the direction of HISD and described the conversations as “professional.”

“I’m opposed to the takeover. I’m not opposed to the success of our children,” Jackson Lee said.

See here and here for more on the federal complaint and SJL’s actions regarding it. All this is also on brand for her. If the platonic ideal outcome of the Whitmire approach is for the Mikes Morath and Miles to see reason and dial some stuff back and give HISD stakeholders more of a direct say in what happens while the state is still in charge, the same for the SJL approach is the Mikes getting whipsawed into backing down, and a riled-up electorate voting at least some of their current enablers out of office. One’s view of the odds of success for each approach is likely correlated with one’s own view of the approach. The choices are clear enough.

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2023 runoff early voting Day Two totals

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s get to it:


Year    Mail     Early    Total
===============================
2015   20,233   22,964   43,197
2019    6,024   29,180   35,204
2023      946   28,113   29,059

Again, the early in person totals look normal. The mail, I have no idea. I just now noticed that early voting in 2015 started on Wednesday, and there were only seven days of it. This is going to get out of whack quickly. I may just pause the comparisons now and pick it up on Sunday. The final daily EV report from 2015 is here, the final daily EV report from 2019 is here, and the Day Two totals for 2023 are here.

If you haven’t voted yet, a reminder about the endorsed Democratic candidates in the races. Now get out there and vote.

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SurveyUSA Mayoral runoff poll: Whitmire 42, SJL 35

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

We finally have a second pollster.

State Sen. John Whitmire maintains a 7 percentage point lead over U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in the Houston mayoral race, with a fifth of likely voters having yet to make up their minds just weeks before the December runoff, the latest poll by SurveyUSA shows.

Researchers interviewed 805 likely Houston voters from Nov. 13 to 18 and found that 42% of the respondents supported Whitmire and 35% backed Jackson Lee. These figures are nearly identical to their vote shares in the general election, where Whitmire had 42.5% and Jackson Lee 35.6%. The two advanced to the Dec. 9 runoff because neither garnered a majority of votes.

Twenty-two percent of likely voters remain undecided, which is not unusual in city elections typically marked by low turnout, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor and co-author of the poll.

While the undecided electorate represents an opportunity for Jackson Lee to potentially overtake Whitmire’s lead, convincing these voters to support her could be a “Herculean task” given the limited time frame, Rottinghaus said. In past Houston mayoral contests, the first-place finisher in the general election has won every runoff since 1977.

Among all likely voters, the ones most certain to cast a ballot in the runoff lean toward Whitmire, whereas those less sure about voting in December appear to favor Jackson Lee. For the congresswoman to secure a victory, her path hinges on quickly energizing these less committed voters, according to Rottinghaus.

[…]

In line with previous survey results, the latest poll reveals Houston’s voter bases are markedly divided along demographic lines.

Whitmire is projected to have a 43 percentage point advantage among white voters (63% to 20%) and a 20-point lead among Latino voters (43% to 23%). Jackson Lee, on the other hand, holds a strong lead among Black voters (63% to 15%).

More male likely voters said they would cast their ballot for Whitmire (51% to 34%), while women voters are evenly split between the two contestants (35% to 35%).

Though Houston city elections are nonpartisan, voters’ party affiliations continue to play a notable role in the latest poll: Whitmire garnered 68% of Republican support to Jackson Lee’s 12%, while Democrats backed Jackson Lee by 55% to Whitmire’s 25%.

The polling memo and data can be found here. It was a joint effort between Houston Public Media, the Chron, and UH, and as such HPM also has a story.

Roughly two-thirds of white voters favor Whitmire, while roughly two-thirds of Black voters support Jackson Lee. But University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus noted that Black turnout in the first round of the mayoral election was down about 20% compared to eight years ago.

“For whatever reason, Black voters are not as enamored with Sheila Jackson Lee as they were with Sylvester Turner,” Rottinghaus said. “You would need to see tremendous turnout in the African American community in order for Sheila Jackson Lee to overcome the support that John Whitmire gets among older Anglos, who are much more likely to vote in municipal elections.”

UH political scientist Jeronimo Cortina said the Latino vote is likely to prove critical, and there too, Whitmire appears to have the edge.

“We’re talking about 43% versus 23%,” Cortina said. “And partially, this is because Senator Whitmire got very important endorsements during his campaign (among others, Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia and State Senator Carol Alvarado), and Jackson Lee, perhaps, did not get as many as those endorsements. However, she got the endorsement of (Harris) County Judge Lina Hidalgo, so that also is important.”

Whitmire also leads overwhelmingly among Republican and conservative voters. His endorsement by former Houston City Councilmember Jack Christie, who openly campaigned as a Republican in the first round, should help Whitmire pick up support among undecideds.

“Typically, those undecideds are distributed to the most Republican member of the candidates who are running. Now, that’s not perfect here, because John Whitmire is obviously a Democrat, but he seemed to be much more conservative than she is in this poll,” Rottinghaus said. “Sheila Jackson Lee is seen to be very liberal by many, and that’s something that can hurt her, especially among voters who are likely to turn out in a municipal race like this.”

Jackson Lee has the advantage among voters under 50, while Whitmire does better among those over 50. Jeronimo Cortina says that balance, too, works in Whitmire’s favor. “Older voters tend to be more reliable in getting out to vote,” Cortina said.

I said my piece about the runoff dynamics in the precinct analysis post. I think I’m more or less in alignment with the two professors here.

The thing that stood out to me about this poll was the large number of undecided respondents. I’m not sure how you can truly be a “likely” voter and not have your mind at least mostly made up. That thought, which made me question how good the sample used in this poll was, led me to take a trip through my archives to look at previous Mayoral runoff polls. Here’s what I found:

2003, Bob Stein/Richard Murray poll – Bill White 53, Orlando Sanchez 35. This post also references a SurveyUSA poll that had White leading 58-40, but I apparently didn’t have a separate post for that and the poll link is broken.

2009, KHOU/KUHF/Rice U – Annise Parker 37, Gene Locke 34.
2009, Chron/Zogby – Parker 42, Locke 36.
2009, KHOU/KUHF/Rice U – Parker 49, Locke 36.

2015, HRBC – Bill King 48, Sylvester Turner 43. Also notes an internal Turner poll that had him up 47-40.
2015, KHOU/KUHF/Rice U – Sylvester Turner 38, Bill King 38.

2019, KHOU/HPM – Sylvester Turner 56, Tony Buzbee 34.

With the exception of that first Parker/Locke poll from 2009, all of these were done in December, often right before Runoff Day, while early voting was taking place. This one as noted was conducted in mid-November, not that long after the initial election. (For years where there are multiple polls, they are in order of when they occurred, so the oldest ones are listed first.) Only the 2015 KHOU/KUHF poll, which did correctly predict the tightness of the race, had as many undecideds among them. I guess most years more people who really are going to vote have their minds made up later on in the calendar. Perhaps if there’s another poll next week we’ll see a result with more definitive answers.

One more thing from the HPM story:

The poll also examined the runoff for Houston city controller between former Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, a Democrat, and former Harris County Treasurer Orlando Sanchez, a Republican. Jeronimo Cortina said Hollins is ahead, but Sanchez could still pull out a win.

“Chris Hollins has a little bit of a lead, 36% versus 25%,” Cortina said. “And here, the most interesting thing is that the percentage of undecided increases. It goes from 22% to 40% undecided, so there is a lot of room for either Hollins or Sanchez, to improve their numbers.”

I’d say that’s more than a little bit of a lead. The higher level of undecided voters for this race is unsurprising, given that far fewer people actually vote in Controller races versus Mayoral races. Six thousand people skipped the Mayor’s race in November, for an undervote rate of 2.36%. Forty-one thousand skipped the Controller’s race, for a 16.25% undervote rate. Whether or not you think there “should” be any undecided “likely” voters in the Mayor’s runoff, there definitely will be more of them for the Controller’s runoff.

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Idaho appeals EMTALA injunction to SCOTUS

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Brace yourselves.

Idaho asked the Supreme Court Monday to stay a lower court injunction, or to take up its case directly, as it attempts to fend off the Biden administration’s challenge of the state’s abortion ban.

The government filed suit in August 2022, arguing that Idaho’s abortion ban — which includes penalties for providers who perform abortions — runs afoul of Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra published a memo shortly after the Dobbs decision reminding hospitals that EMTALA requires them to perform abortions as part of emergency stabilizing care. Idaho’s ban prohibits abortions except when necessary to prevent the pregnant woman’s death.

The government has argued that the gap between those two requirements is large, and that EMTALA preempts the abortion ban in those cases. That argument won at the district court level, and a judge enjoined Idaho’s ban where it conflicts with EMTALA. A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel, composed of three Donald Trump appointees, lifted the injunction in September. The government immediately moved for emergency reconsideration by the Ninth Circuit en banc, which vacated the panel order and denied Idaho’s request to impose its ban in those emergency situations during the appeals process.

Now, Idaho is going to the Supreme Court for permission to fully enforce its ban.

In its new filing, the state rails against the Ninth Circuit’s “unreasoned order,” its “pulling the case away from a panel that had thoroughly considered the merits of Idaho’s stay application” and the federal government’s “unauthorized power grab.”

Lawyers for the state made many similar arguments to those representing Texas in a parallel case which is currently awaiting a ruling from a 5th Circuit panel that made little effort to mask its hostility to abortion in oral arguments earlier this month. Both states’ legal teams made much of EMTALA’s “silence” on abortion and the federal government’s supposed trampling of state rights.

“The district court’s injunction effectively turns EMTALA’s protection for the uninsured into a federal super-statute on the issue of abortion, one that strips Idaho of its sovereign interest in protecting innocent human life and turns emergency rooms into a federal enclave where state standards of care do not apply,” Idaho’s lawyers fumed.

See here for some background on the Idaho case, and here for the latest on the Texas case. If the Fifth Circuit does what it usually does, then there will be a circuit split and SCOTUS will have to take this up. If not, or if they just take their sweet time, SCOTUS can punt, at least for now. The prospect of another high-profile abortion case on SCOTUS’ docket, in a Presidential year, when the zealots’ argument is basically “we should be allowed to let women get as close to death as possible before we’ll grudgingly let a doctor perform an abortion on her to save her miserable life”, would sure make things spicy. We’ll see what SCOTUS does.

Oh, and just to make things more exciting, today is the day that the Texas Supreme Court has its hearing in the lawsuit to allow exemptions to Texas’ super strict anti-abortion law. As you know, a Travis County judge granted an order allowing some exemptions in an effort to clarify what the law does allow. That ruling was put on hold after it was appealed to SCOTx, and today the hearing will determine whether that injunction will remain in place during the litigation process. Another huge deal, and we’ll know more about what the landscape looks like going forward. I will of course keep an eye on it.

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2023 runoff early voting Day One totals

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Early voting for the 2023 runoff elections is underway. Here’s the news you can use from Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudpseth:

As early voting begins for the December 9 Joint Runoff Election, Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth urges voters to cast their ballot before it gets too deep into the Holiday shopping season and they forget. There are 41 voting centers available to Harris County registered voters to exercise their right to vote. The voting centers will be open from November 27 through Tuesday, December 5, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.; on Sunday, December 3, the voting centers will be open from noon to 7 p.m.

“Don’t procrastinate. Go vote, now!” asserted Hudspeth, the County’s chief election official.

According to Hudspeth, Houston voters will decide half of the city’s government elected positions, including Mayor, Controller, four at-large council members, and three single-member council members. Voters in Houston Council Districts D, G, and H will see seven contests on their ballot. All other Houston voters will see six. In addition, District 4 voters in Baytown will elect a council member, and Bellaire voters will elect a new Mayor.

“Voters should be aware that only citizens registered to vote within the legal boundaries of a city on the ballot may vote on the contests offered by the city,” reminded Hudspeth. “For example, a “Houston” postal address does not guarantee that a voter lives within Houston proper.”

Sample Ballots for the December 9 Joint Runoff Election are available at www.HarrisVotes.com. Information regarding the City of Houston’s runoff election candidates can be found at https://houstontx.gov/2023-runoff-election.html.

There you go. And here are the Day One numbers:


Year    Mail     Early    Total
===============================
2015   18,138   11,144   29,282
2019    2,269   19,882   22,151
2023      829   13,673   14,502

I wrote about the Day One 2015 runoff EV totals here and about the final 2015 runoff EV totals here. The final daily EV report from 2015 is here. Similarly, the Day One 2019 runoff EV totals are here, and since there was a weird extra day for before Thanksgiving, I also wrote about the Day Two 2019 runoff EV totals here. Those are the numbers I’ve used above. The final 2019 runoff EV totals are here, and the final daily EV report from 2019 is here. Last but not least, the Day One EV totals for 2023 are here.

Kind of a blah Day One, though at least the in person totals are ahead of those for 2015. I don’t know why the 2019 totals are like that. Different times, different behaviors. Early voting runs through next Tuesday, make sure you get out there and vote. Let me know if you have any questions about this.

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Precinct analysis: 2023 Mayor’s race

Posted on November 27, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The November 2023 election has been officially canvassed and certified, and that means that there’s precinct data available for me to analyze. I’ve been working on it over the weekend, and I will tell you it’s a bit more of a slog than the even-year elections are. Part of this is because of the change in election software that the county is now using, which gives its output in a format that I’m still getting used to. The bigger issue is that the city of Houston does not play well with the established precinct boundaries within Harris County. There are lots of precincts with single digit numbers of registered voters, and a handful that are split between two Council districts. I had to do a fair amount of manual processing to get things to a point where I could do the usual Excel tricks I’ve developed for these posts. I’ve got it for the Mayor’s race, but now I have to repeat all that for the other races of interest, and that’s going to slow me down a bit. Sucks to be me, but luckily for you all you need to know is right here. Let’s dive in:


Dist    Whitm      SJL  Garcia   JackC  Kaplan    Khan   RobtG  Others
======================================================================
A      10,039    4,959   1,977   2,070     695     229     196     720
B       3,247   13,530     682     387     175     100      89     504
C      26,610   12,356   3,483   2,217   1,571     344     537   1,218
D       5,869   15,582   1,091     604     393     154     185     673
E      14,956    5,758   2,379   5,017     942     513     223   1,102
F       3,553    4,221     803     806     323     184      76     498
G      22,006    5,403   2,358   3,588   1,251     378     169     764
H       7,881    6,652   2,011     719     368     130     409     753
I       5,229    6,602   1,510     650     282     132     602     662
J       3,189    3,028     790     601     250     222      88     438
K       6,523    9,782   1,338     906     451     143     142     565

Dist    Whitm      SJL  Garcia   JackC  Kaplan    Khan   RobtG  Others
======================================================================
A      48.07%   23.74%   9.47%   9.91%   3.33%   1.10%   0.94%   3.45%
B      17.35%   72.30%   3.64%   2.07%   0.94%   0.53%   0.48%   2.69%
C      55.05%   25.56%   7.21%   4.59%   3.25%   0.71%   1.11%   2.52%
D      23.91%   63.47%   4.44%   2.46%   1.60%   0.63%   0.75%   2.74%
E      48.42%   18.64%   7.70%  16.24%   3.05%   1.66%   0.72%   3.57%
F      33.95%   40.34%   7.67%   7.70%   3.09%   1.76%   0.73%   4.76%
G      61.27%   15.04%   6.57%   9.99%   3.48%   1.05%   0.47%   2.13%
H      41.65%   35.15%  10.63%   3.80%   1.94%   0.69%   2.16%   3.98%
I      33.37%   42.13%   9.64%   4.15%   1.80%   0.84%   3.84%   4.22%
J      37.06%   35.18%   9.18%   6.98%   2.90%   2.58%   1.02%   5.09%
K      32.86%   49.28%   6.74%   4.56%   2.27%   0.72%   0.72%   2.85%

Obviously, I’m not going to include a breakdown of every no-name candidate in the race, none of whom received as many as two thousand votes total. All of them together had fewer than 8K votes, or about three precent of the total, which would have put them just ahead of Lee Kaplan. The candidates I do name are listed in the order of their finish in Harris County, except that I just realized that Robert Gallegos was ahead of MJ Khan. Sorry about that.

The good news for Sheila Jackson Lee is that her numbers in Districts B and D compare pretty well to Mayor Turner’s from 2015 and 2019. Black voters are the biggest part of her base, she needed to do well in those districts, and for the most part she did, in both of those years. She didn’t do as well in District K, but she did do better in Districts F, H, I, and J than Turner did in 2015, and came close in 2019 when Turner was running against a less formidable field. I think she has some room to grow, which obviously she’s going to need.

The problem for Jackson Lee is that unlike Turner, who got to run off against a stuffy Republican in 2015 and a weirdo in 2019, she’s facing off against a Democrat who’s not only strong in the parts of the city where the Republicans did well, he’s also much tougher in the Democratic districts. A comparison with the 2015 runoff is instructive. Look at the margins Turner ran up in B, D, and K. I think SJL will have a hard time matching those numbers, given John Whitmire’s relative strength with Black voters. Whitmire is going to do well in the Republican districts, he’s likely to surpass King’s tally in District C, and he beat SJL in District H, which Turner easily carried against King. Whatever paths you can see for SJL to prevail, Whitmire seems to have more of them.

Another way of thinking about it is where do you see the other candidates’ voters going in December? For the most part, Whitmire is fine with them staying home, but for those who do turn out I have to assume that the large majority of Christie, Kaplan, and Khan voters will go his way. The Garcia voters will be more split, and I’d expect the Gallegos voters to favor SJL, but that’s a smaller slice of the pie to begin with and will be less tilted towards SJL than the others will be towards Whitmire. Also, too, I’m still seeing plenty of Whitmire ads, thanks to his still ginormous campaign account balance, but have yet to see anything for SJL. Rule One of any election is you have to make sure people know there is an election and that they should vote for you.

Like I said, I think SJL has room to grow in the districts that favored her. The question is whether she has enough room to grow.

Beyond that, there’s nothing in the numbers that surprises me. I might have guessed that Jack Christie would have done best in District G – he’s a District G kind of guy – but the actual result is hardly shocking. Robert Gallegos did his best in his district, for whatever consolation that is. MJ Khan served in District F, but that was before redistricting, and I suspect that much of his support in District J came from his old turf. In retrospect, I have no idea what I expected from Gilbert Garcia, so sure, that he did best in District H makes some sense.

I intend to do this exercise for the other citywide races, including the two Houston propositions. As noted, it may take me a few days, so be patient. In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Musk and Paxton versus freedom of speech

Posted on November 27, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

First there was this.

It didn’t quite happen the moment court was open, as Elon Musk the billionaire owner of X/Twitter had promised, but at the end of Monday, the social media platform did file its “thermonuclear” lawsuit against media watchdog Media Matters for America.

That lawsuit involves a Media Matters report released on Nov. 16, which shows examples of neo-Nazi and white supremacist content on Musk’s social media platform being served up alongside ads from major corporations, including IBM and Apple. However, Musk’s lawsuit contends that Media Matters and the report’s author, Eric Hananoki, “knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content.”

The suit seeks “actual and consequential damages” from loss of revenue, to have Media Matters cover X Corp.’s legal expenses, and for Media Matters to pull the article from everywhere the group published it. The only problem with the suit is that not only can anyone else reproduce the report’s results with trivial effort, but the suit itself seems to confirm the findings.

Be sure to read that report. In the aftermath, just as black mold follows a flooded living room, there was this.

Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation Monday evening into Media Matters for possible fraudulent activity in response to the media watchdog group’s report last week that prompted companies to pull advertisements from X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

Earlier on Monday, X CEO Elon Musk filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas against Media Matters, alleging the organization manipulated information it gathered to defame the social media company.

Paxton said his office would investigate allegations that Media Matters — which he referred to as a “radical anti-free speech organization” — had violated Texas laws protecting consumers from fraud.

“We are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square,” Paxton said in a statement Monday evening.

Two of Paxton’s former top lieutenants filed the lawsuit, former Solicitor General Judd Stone and former Assistant Attorney General Christopher Hilton. Stone and Hilton left the Texas Attorney General’s Office shortly after they successfully helped defend their former boss during Paxton’s impeachment trial.

I’m sure Elon Musk’s boots are nice and shiny now. This is of course all bullshit, but the power of a right-wing grievance and a friendly judge cannot be dismissed. I suggest you read Chris Geidner, Ken White, and Kathryn Tewson for a deeper dive into what it all means. One hopes that this will all go away, but one should not count on that. Thanks to Ginger for those last two links, which were in the most recent Dispatches from Dallas.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Chron covers The MOB

Posted on November 27, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Obviously, I am going to make note of this.

A spectacle on the Rice Stadium football field: A college student wearing a suit and fedora hands a giant check for $0 to a man in a rubber horse helmet.

Scoffs, over in the Southern Methodist University section of the bleachers: The Mustangs forfeited nine years in TV revenue to join a Power Five athletic conference, and Rice University’s band couldn’t resist making the deal the punchline of its halftime show.

“Nothing that we couldn’t handle,” SMU graduate Ryan Alexander says after the performance. “All is fair in love and football, right?”

Members of Rice’s Marching Owl Band would tend to agree, having lampooned teams, universities and political events for decades with productions that make some cackle and others grind their teeth. The group known more affectionately as The MOB has built such a reputation in college sports that fans and rivals alike might arrive at a football game wondering more about what the people in Blues Brothers costumes might do than what might happen on the gridiron.

The MOB got attention this fall for an Austin Powers-themed sketch that painted Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles as Dr. Evil and scorched his decision to remove librarians at around 85 schools. Only at Rice — a university recognized for its academics and quirky student population — could a band blend nerdom with wit and achieve a minor brand of celebrity.

“Rice students, we love that we’re different. The MOB is part of that,” said sophomore Isabella Campos, who is not a member of the organization. “It’s rare that some undergrads have that much power in something like a schoolwide marching band.”

See here for more on that show about Mike Miles. I for one will never forget that he was all pissy about it. Be that as it may, this is a nice long article that is worth your time to read. I spoke to the reporter as well – she attended a game a few weeks ago and talked to a bunch of us – but she focused mostly on quotes from the students, which makes sense. (You can spot me in a couple of the photos, if you care to click through them.) One thing I said to her that I’ll repeat here is that the MOBsters of 2023 would have fit in just fine with the MOBsters of twenty or thirty years ago. There are just fewer of them now than there were then. We do our best to cope with that. Anyway, read and enjoy.

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Weekend link dump for November 26

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

RIP, Rosalynn Carter, passionate champion of mental health, caregiving, and women’s rights, former First Lady, all around excellent person.

“Companies worth billions of dollars are, without permission, training generative AI models on creators’ works, which are then being used to create new content that in many cases can compete with the original works. I don’t see how this can be acceptable in a society that has set up the economics of the creative arts such that creators rely on copyright.”

“After the ex-wife of a Trump Organization insider talked to prosecutors, she lost her children and her home. But she’s still fighting.”

“Re-recording restrictions have gotten tougher in recent years for reasons you can probably figure out. [The labels] don’t want you to duplicate your recordings — like ever — and then they will limit the other types of recordings you can do. So, it’s gotten tougher as the labels get more concerned about artists re-recording their catalog.”

“The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware operation has taken extortion to a new level by filing a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission complaint against one of their alleged victims for not complying with the four-day rule to disclose a cyberattack.” That is next level.

“Starting in December, Disney will begin testing a new version of its streaming services by combining Hulu and Disney Plus into a single app. The news (which follows Disney’s recent acquisition of Hulu) has led to a lot of questions. Is Hulu going away? What will the app experience be like? Do violent movies like Prey or No One Will Save You really fit with the Disney Plus brand? The good news is that the answer to most of those questions likely already exists outside of the US, which I know because I’ve been using it for more than two years. It’s not confusing at all. In fact, it looks a lot like traditional TV.”

“It’s almost like the post-Roe timeline is playing out at 10-times speed. First they tried a constitutional amendment to do jurisdiction stripping, which they talked about after Roe in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Then they talked about passing bans anyway. Then they moved into health regulations.”

Lock them up.

“My $200, 12-year-old Thinkpad has outlasted two high-end Macbooks”.

“How mathematics built the modern world”.

“The company that created ChatGPT was thrown into turmoil Monday after Microsoft hired its ousted CEO and many employees threatened to follow him in a conflict that centered in part on how to build artificial intelligence that’s smarter than humans.”

“A Southern California company is showing how repurposing EV batteries for stationary storage can extend their usefulness for several years.”

RIP, Willie Hernandez, former MLB reliever who won the Cy Young and MVP awards for the Detroit Tigers in 1984.

“Once again, the message from conservatives is clear: Voters just can’t be trusted to make decisions on abortion.”

“By the numbers, of four hundred and eight articles on the front page of the Times during the period we analyzed, about half—two hundred nineteen—were about domestic politics. A generous interpretation found that just ten of those stories explained domestic public policy in any detail; only one front-page article in the lead-up to the midterms really leaned into discussion about a policy matter in Congress: Republican efforts to shrink Social Security. Of three hundred and ninety-three front-page articles in the Post, two hundred fifteen were about domestic politics; our research found only four stories that discussed any form of policy. The Post had no front-page stories in the months ahead of the midterms on policies that candidates aimed to bring to the fore or legislation they intended to pursue. Instead, articles speculated about candidates and discussed where voter bases were leaning.”

“The U.S. government just dropped a hammer on the biggest name left in cryptocurrency (as if this week wasn’t wild enough for the technology industry).”

RIP, Marty Krofft, longtime TV producer who along with his brother Sid created H.R. Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, and much more. Mark Evanier has a nice tribute to him.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | Comments Off on Weekend link dump for November 26

Candidate filing update

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

There’s still more than two weeks to go until the filing deadline for the 2024 primaries, so there are still a lot of people who haven’t filed or haven’t made their surprise announcement that they’re not filing yet. So if you don’t see someone you’re looking for yet, there’s still plenty of time.

A longtime correspondent reached out over the holiday to remind me that Trib reporter Patrick Svitek continues to maintain a candidate filing spreadsheet, which you can find via this pinned tweet. He’s done this every season, usually getting it going several months in advance as the earliest candidate announcements are being made, and it’s a super valuable resource.

The Secretary of State has finally added its search form for the 2024 filings that it has received. Your county party will have a more up to date list than they do – basically, they take what the counties send them on a daily basis and update as they go – but it’s a useful way to search for all filings, including those four county-level office. I looked at their federal filings list, and so far none of the Ted Cruz challengers have made it official, and Julie Johnson is the first to file in CD32. I’ll come back to this later.

And here’s the latest version of the HCDP spreadsheet. So far, Molly Cook and Todd Litton are set for SD15, Chase West will try again in HD132, Rosalind Caesar is in for HD139 (which will presumptively be open as Rep. Jarvis Johnson runs for SD15), and Rep. Hubert Vo has picked up a challenger (someone named David Romero) in HD149. Also, former City Council member Jerry Davis has thrown his hat into the ring for Tax Assessor.

I’ll keep an eye on all these and will post a more detailed look around the state shortly. For now, you have the same sources that I do.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Prop A gets its first customers

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

First there was this:

Council Members Carolyn Evans-Shabazz (District D) and Mary Nan Huffman (District G) joined Council Member Amy Peck (District A) to submit notice to the City’s Agenda Office to place an item on the City Council Agenda.

This is the first time council members submitted an ordinance to the agenda after the historic City Charter change by voters in the last election. The item is now in the process for review by the Legal Department.

Council Members Peck, Evans-Shabazz, and Huffman prioritized water bill relief as the first item to be placed on the agenda after hearing from Houstonians who are rightfully frustrated. Houston Public Works often estimates water usage and back-bills customers after the meter is read. This proposed ordinance change would prohibit the Department from correcting bills where the error occurred over three months prior unless the correction is in the customer’s favor. The current practice of being able to look back up to two years often resulted in customers being charged thousands of dollars. Although the Department recently started adopting this new policy, the ordinance would codify this change and ensure that the policy is being applied on every bill. There has not been consistency in this practice.

“Now that council members can place items on the agenda, I intend to offer items like this that make a real difference to people,” said Council Member Peck. “People came to us with a problem, and now we have the ability to fix it. This is how government should work.”

Council Member Evans-Shabazz said, “I am deeply gratified that the first application of our new charter amendment will directly address the concerns of our residents struggling with exceptionally high water bills. This action not only aligns with the core intent of the amendment but also embodies its spirit, offering hope and relief to our community members.”

Council Member Huffman added, “This measure codifies existing policy and will provide residents with meaningful consistency as we prepare to transition to a new administration. Residents of Houston should not be penalized for the city’s error. The amendment we proposed today will cap billing overages resulting from malfunctioning city equipment and will also incentivize Houston Public Works to make sure that their meters are functioning properly.”

That was on Tuesday afternoon. It was followed a couple of hours later by this.

Please attribute the following statement to Mayor Sylvester Turner.

“Over the last few months, Houston Public Works and the City of Houston Legal Department have worked on comprehensive changes to our Municipal Code of Ordinances to address the issue of high water bills. This extensive array of regulatory and process improvements is designed to bring customer relief. My administration will present the proposed changes to City Council in the coming weeks with a target date of December 6, 2023.”

The Chron takes it from there.

High water charges have emerged as a flash point issue at City Hall as some customers have reported huge spikes in their bills, sometimes more than $1,000.

In many cases, the Houston Public Works estimates water usage and back-charges after reading residents’ meters, but that can take time.

Houston’s water meters automatically transmit household usage to the city’s server wirelessly. But aging meters and slow replacements have caused the number of malfunctioning devises in a given month to more than double from 36,800 in 2020, to 91,000 in March, according to Public Works data.

The problems led to extra charges for water customers and a flood of complaints in the departments bill dispute system.

Campos had been following this story, which involved a bit of contretemps between Mayor Turner and KPRC reporter Amy Davis, and which now goes in the books as the first Council-placed item on an agenda. If this is the norm, then Prop A (which I did ultimately vote for, despite my previously expressed reservations) will turn out well. If not, well, at least it got off to a good start.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

We could get an Amtrak connection from Atlanta to Fort Worth

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Or it could all be killed by the Freedom Caucus nihilists. That’s just how these things go these days.

A passenger rail line project touted as a major connectivity and economic boost to the Fort Worth region and beyond could soon be at risk amid proposed federal budget cuts to Amtrak.

Since 2006, members of the I-20 Corridor Council have been working with Amtrak and other regional partners to connect Fort Worth to Atlanta, creating an east-west connection that could eventually be part of the transnational corridor between Los Angeles and New York City.

The passage of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 — which allocated $66 billion in rail service investment — made the 815-mile long-distance route between Fort Worth and Atlanta more of a reality. However, the U.S. House proposed a 64% cut to Amtrak’s 2024 budget has rail advocates worried about its impact on major rail projects, including the Fort Worth-Atlanta line.

“Amtrak has advised us that this (project) is one of their top three priorities,” said Richard Anderson, chairman of the I-20 Corridor Council. “I would anticipate that, if there’s that draconian of a reduction, that we will see a corresponding reduction, if not elimination, of the I-20 corridor.”

Amtrak is currently working on extending two service lines out of Fort Worth. The first would connect Fort Worth to Atlanta, along Interstate 20, adding the missing link from Marshall to Meridian, Mississippi. This project would connect the current Texas Eagle line, which runs between San Antonio and Chicago, and the Crescent line, which runs from New Orleans to New York.

The second project would extend the Heartland Flyer line, which currently runs between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, up to Newton, Kansas.

A possible Amtrak line between Fort Worth and El Paso is being explored as part of the Federal Railroad Administration Long-Distance Service Study. This rail line was lost 50 years ago, said Marc Magliari, senior public relations manager at Amtrak. A report is expected in the spring or summer of 2024.

You can see a fuller map of all the existing lines that would be connected by this project on the I-20 Corridor Council page. There’s a separate project for a high speed rail line between Dallas and Fort Worth, and Amtrak recently announced a partnership with Texas Central for its Houston to Dallas line. I don’t think either of those would be affected by these shenanigans, but I don’t know that for a fact. I do know there are a couple of retiring Republicans who represent this area and who might try to exert some influence over their more frothing-at-the-mouth brethren and sistren, if they care for this. I also know I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that. Best hope – and goal to work for – is for the maniacs to flame out as they usually do and then have the Dems take over again in 2025 so we can avoid this tired bit of nonsense, at least for awhile. In the meantime, here we are.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Harris County drops its lawsuit over the law banning its Elections Administrator

Posted on November 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The right move at this time, though the whole thing still rankles.

Harris County dropped its lawsuit against the state on Wednesday, ending its challenge to a law that went into effect weeks ago eliminating the county’s elections office.

The county had hoped to stop the measure Texas Republicans passed earlier this year that abolished the Harris County elections administrator, an appointed position, and returned election duties to two elected officials, the county clerk and the tax assessor-collector. However, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee on Wednesday called the case “moot” since the county was already forced to comply with the law starting on Sept. 1.

Though more than half of Texas counties have an appointed elections administrator, the new law applies only to Harris County, which created the office in July 2020.

[…]

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee had argued the law violated the Texas Constitution by targeting just one county. A district judge agreed with Menefee in August, temporarily delaying the measure from going into effect and writing in her order that Harris County should not be forced to implement “an unconstitutional statute” that was designed “to deprive Harris County of a statutory right available to every other county in Texas.”

When the Texas Attorney General’s office appealed that ruling, the Texas Supreme Court decided the law could go into effect as planned and was scheduled to hear the county’s argument on Nov. 28 that the law was unconstitutional.

The county instead made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit days before that hearing.

“The Texas Supreme Court’s decision in August allowed the state to abolish the elections administrator’s office,” Menefee said in a statement Wednesday evening. “That mooted the county’s claims. I look forward to continuing to support County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth in elections moving forward.”

I mentioned the appellate hearing in this post, though at the time I thought it had already happened. I agree with the county’s decision to stop pursuing this lawsuit, as the horse is out of the barn and even if we had won it would not make any sense to change how we conduct elections again, for the umpteenth time in three years. It’s all water under the bridge, and it might be best to turn the temperature down a wee bit by conceding on an issue that isn’t of the greatest importance. I remain concerned that the precedent has now been set that the Lege can specifically target one county in a way that will forever only apply to that county, but that will have to be a fight for another day, either when it comes up in another bill or if a future Harris County government wants to go the Elections Administrator’s office route again. For now, we’ll live with this.

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

Anti-porn law un-blocked

Posted on November 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Welp.

Texas can again enforce its new law requiring people to prove they are 18 or older to access online porn.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the state’s request last week to lift a temporary injunction that had blocked implementation of House Bill 1181. Signed into law in June, it requires any commercial entity that publishes or distributes pornographic content online to use age-verification methods to bar users under 18.

In August, a coalition of pornography websites and advocates, including the popular streaming platform Pornhub, sued Texas to prohibit the law from taking effect. A federal judge ruled in their favor, agreeing that the measure likely violated the First Amendment.

But on Nov. 14, a three-judge federal appeals panel on the Fifth Circuit vacated the injunction pending appeal. The panel heard oral arguments last month and said it would “issue an expedited opinion as soon as reasonably possible.”

In the meantime, the state is free to enforce HB 1181, which requires individuals attempting to access sexual material to provide digital identification, government-issued identification or transactional data (like mortgage or employment records) to prove they are not minors. The law prohibits companies from retaining any of the identifying information.

See here and here for the background. The order just lifts the injunction pending a hearing and ruling on the appeal, it does not offer any reasons for doing so. I dunno, man. The Fifth Circuit is gonna do what the Fifth Circuit is gonna do. Maybe someday we’ll have a real Court of Appeals and not a bunch of frothing ideologues over there. Today is not that day. The Current, which notes that as of Tuesday the law was not being observed by at least several leading companies, has more.

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Woolly mammoth de-extinctioning

Posted on November 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Here we go.

In a historic building in Deep Ellum, a colossal effort is underway to bring some of the most famously extinct animals back to life.

The wild mission comes from a Dallas-based company called Colossal Biosciences which is working to de-extinct the woolly mammoth, lost 4,000 years ago.

Matt James is Colossal’s chief animal officer.

“We are creating technology that’s going to change tomorrow with de-extinction but what’s amazing is that those technologies are making a difference to endangered species conservation today,” said James.

Using DNA from Asian elephants and DNA recovered from woolly mammoths frozen in the arctic tundra, researchers at Colossal Biosciences are using gene editing technology to reengineer the genome of an Asian elephant until it reflects that of a woolly mammoth.

“As it turns out the woolly mammoth and Asian elephant are 99.6% gnomically similar,” said James.

And that’s just part of the project.

Inside its labs in Deep Ellum, work is underway to create artificial wombs to grow a woolly mammoth calf.

Colossal has set a due date for the year 2028.

“When I was offered this position, I was sort of considering my life choices in this amazing opportunity to work at Colossal, my little brother called me and said, ‘Do you understand you could be the first modern human to ever see a woolly mammoth? You could be the first person that’s there to take that photo with a mammoth,’ and that opportunity is not lost on me. That privilege is incredible and it’s an amazing driving force,” said James.

But there’s an even bigger driving force.

James says restoring a mammoth ecosystem can preserve permafrost, or ground that remains frozen, and slow the release of greenhouse gases.

“This is probably worth 100 different lifetimes of achievement to accomplish this goal, but we have to push as fast as we can because we are facing this imminent threat of global climate change,” said James.

See here for some background. As the story notes, Colossal Biosciences is also working on projects to revive the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger. The idea behind it all, beyond the inherent coolness, is that these animals were crucial to their local ecologies and having them back would be a boon for them. I’m not qualified to speak to that and it seems like a big bet, but that’s what they’re doing. We’ll see where they are in five years. Reform Austin has more.

Posted in Technology, science, and math, The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Paxton whistleblowers demand depositions

Posted on November 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

As always, I am rooting for them.

A crook any way you look

Lawyers for the Ken Paxton whistleblowers are moving forward with their lawsuit in Travis County after another judge cleared the way, asking the Austin-based court to force the attorney general and his top aides to sit for depositions.

The whistleblower lawyers filed a motion Tuesday to compel the depositions, calling it a last resort after they could not reach an agreement with lawyers for the Office of the Attorney General.

“OAG’s effort to resist these straightforward depositions is nothing more than a continuation of OAG’s cynical effort to deny Plaintiffs their right to access to the justice system,” the whistleblower lawyers wrote.

The whistleblower lawyers specifically want to take depositions from Paxton; Brent Webster, the first assistant attorney general; Lesley French Henneke, chief of staff at the agency; and Michelle Smith, Paxton’s longtime political aide. The lawyers proposed a schedule where Paxton is deposed Dec. 12, Webster on Dec. 14, Henneke on Dec. 18 and Smith on Dec. 20.

[…]

In their latest filing, the whistleblowers’ lawyers say the Burnet County lawsuit was just the latest delay tactic by Paxton’s side in the 3-year-old case. The lawyers asked the Travis County court to compel the depositions so that the whistleblowers “may at long last pursue justice.”

If the whistleblowers’ motion is granted, it would be the first time Paxton would be required to answer questions under oath related to the allegations of bribery and corruption made against him. Paxton did not take the stand in his Senate trial in September.

While the Burnet County judge, Stubbs, allowed the Travis County case to restart last week, the more recent lawsuit in his court remains pending. Stubbs set a Dec. 14 hearing on a motion by the whistleblowers to change the venue to Travis County.

See here for the previous update. I have a hard time seeing what the argument is for not allowing such depositions, though I’m confident that Team Paxton will make one and that it will be deeply annoying. I’m also not sure what remains to be argued in that Burnet County lawsuit, but I guess we’ll find out on December 14. In the meantime, let’s all think up what questions we’d like to ask Ken Paxton when he is under oath and the threat of perjury hangs over his guilty little head. I’m sure there’s a very long list.

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PragerU videos? Seriously?

Posted on November 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Once again I have to ask, what the hell is going on at HISD?

A Friday lesson intended to teach students at dozens of Houston ISD schools how to think objectively included a video that mocked the idea of human-caused climate change from PragerU, a Florida nonprofit criticized for pushing biased, conservative viewpoints.

Meant to help students discern fact from opinion, the seven-minute clip encouraged viewers to “do your own research,” citing examples that push back on the idea that humans have caused climate change.

PragerU, the video’s creator, describes itself as “the world’s leading conservative nonprofit that is focused on changing minds through the creative use of digital media.” It has published content on the supposed dangers of gender-affirming care and how slavery may have benefitted Black people. Despite the name, it is not a university.

The video was included in PowerPoint slides created by HISD for a course called the “Art of Thinking,” a feature of Superintendent Mike Miles’ new program for 85 schools. The lesson plans, obtained by the Houston Landing, means the video likely reached students at the 73 overhauled elementary and middle schools.

HISD will discontinue the use of PragerU content going forward, Chief Communication Officer Leila Walsh said Tuesday in response to questions from the Landing. The district had included the video with the intent of helping students assess the reliability of information and recognize hidden biases, using examples they may encounter in the real world, she said.

“The lesson was designed to help students think critically about the accuracy and subjectivity of information. After speaking with the curriculum team, they have decided to no longer use PragerU video content,” Walsh wrote in an email.

Parents from Pugh and Wainwright elementary schools confirmed their fifth-graders had been shown the PragerU video in class on Friday. Three teachers also supplied the district-created lesson plans to the Landing. The parents said they were disturbed by the content, but said it was the first time they were aware of a video from the conservative nonprofit appearing in a lesson.

“In a way, they’re already subliminally telling our kids to totally dismiss the whole global warming thing,” said Jessica Campos, whose daughter attends Pugh.

The video includes many short skits meant to help students understand objective thinking, several of which take aim at climate change. One example points out that temperature fluctuations occurred prior to industrialization, and another implies climate change believers think the world will end in 12 years.

“Some of it was legit and some of it seemed weird or out of place and it was all rather fixated on beating down the idea of climate change,” said Texas State Climatologist and Texas A&M Professor John Nielsen-Gammon, who reviewed the video at the request of the Landing. He said humans definitely are causing changes to the earth’s climate and the world definitely will not end in 12 years.

University of Texas at Austin College of Education Professor David DeMatthews added that, to him, it was a red flag that HISD would include any content from PragerU in a lesson.

“A lot of the material that (PragerU) provides is highly controversial, highly biased and is not really aligned with historical, or even, at times, scientific consensus around particular issues,” DeMatthews said.

Un-fucking-believable.

Let me make two points very clear. One is that in a world where the HISD Superintendent had any accountability, the elected Trustees would be well within their rights to call the Super onto the carpet and demand answers about who thought shoving propaganda down students’ throats was a good idea and why haven’t they been fired already. They would be within their rights to make it clear that the Super’s job was on the line over this as well. We do not live in that world, which is how we end up with a wishy-washy non-answer from the communications officer instead. I am incandescent with rage about this.

And two, if “parents rights” means anything, then as an HISD parent I have the right to object to this kind of “content” being shown anywhere in an HISD classroom. Which, again, if we had a functional Board that was responsive to the will of the stakeholders and which had actual oversight of the Superintendent, would result in some accountability. Again, I am angry to the point of wanting to smash things.

I don’t know what else to say. Because we have no way to effect any change at HISD right now, because there is no forum for expressing our views in a way that will be heard and taken seriously, this is just another thing that happened that Mike Miles doesn’t even have to acknowledge. And I’m supposed to accept that this guy is the savior of our schools. Un-fucking-believable.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

The business brief against the state abortion ban

Posted on November 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Would like to see a lot more co-signers on this.

Forty Texas companies and business leaders are entering the fight against Texas’ abortion ban, filing a brief with the Texas Supreme Court that argues the “ambiguity” in the law’s medical exceptions cost the state an estimated $14.5 billion in lost revenue every year.

Austin-based dating app giant Bumble is leading the effort, submitting an amicus brief ahead of the high court’s arguments in Zurawski v. Texas. Lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski is challenging the state’s abortion ban after she nearly died of sepsis due to a pregnancy complication. She says the Texas abortion ban’s medical exceptions are too vague, preventing her doctor from providing a medically necessary abortion until she had nearly died.

“We feel it’s our duty not just to provide our workforce with access to reproductive health care, but to speak out – and speak loudly – against the retrogression of women’s rights,” Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said. “Texas’s confusing medical exceptions increase business costs, drive away talent, and threaten workforce diversity and well-being.”

Dozens of other companies signed onto the brief, including South by Southwest, Zilker Properties, ATX Television Festival, and Central Presbyterian Church.

The brief cites research from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) to arrive at their claim that Texas’ abortion ban costs the state nearly $15 billion annually. They assert that the ban translates to women earning less, taking more time off work, and leaving the workforce.

IWPR’s research estimates more than 80,000 women between 15 and 44 could enter the workforce without the abortion ban.

“An uncertain and confusing Texas regulatory environment is creating professional and personal difficulties for those who work and travel in Texas, as well as adversely impacting employee recruitment and retention, and creating obstacles for attracting new businesses, visitors and events,” law firm Reed Smith explained.

See here for the previous update, and here for that cited research. I appreciate the effort, though I’m always a bit leery of studies like this and don’t know how much impact these briefs can have. I think there’s a chance the plaintiffs can prevail in this lawsuit – not a great chance, maybe fifty-fifty at best, but a chance. Even a total victory will mean only a small loosening of the extreme anti-abortion law, so the best case here is limited. Vital, to be sure, but still a huge step back from where we once were. The only way forward, to truly get back to a better place, is at the ballot box, here and at the national level. Knocking out Ted Cruz, for example, would be massive. I care a lot about this case and will keep paying attention to it, but we’ve all got to keep our eyes on the bigger goals. We need to win more elections. There’s no other way to do it. Texas Monthly, which takes a closer look at Bumble’s angle on this, has more.

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

Thanksgiving video break: It’s about Alice

Posted on November 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

We don’t have many traditions here but we like the ones we have.

I am as always thankful for my family and friends, my health, the fact that I still get enjoyment from things I’ve done for a long time like this blog, and for you my readers. Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving however and wherever you celebrate it.

Posted in Music | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Yet another effort to kill the Voting Rights Act

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Just a reminder that the Fifth Circuit isn’the only home for terrible appellate judges.

A divided federal appellate panel took a pipe to the knees of the Voting Rights Act Monday, handing down an eyebrow-raising decision that would severely curtail the effectiveness of the landmark civil rights law.

Two of the judges on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel — one appointed by Donald Trump and one by George W. Bush — ruled that individuals can no longer bring lawsuits under the VRA. They assert that only the U.S. attorney general can bring enforcement actions under the law.

If the decision holds, VRA cases would nosedive even under Democratic administrations due to limited resources, and would likely stop completely under Republican ones. Currently, voting rights organizations usually collaborate with individual voters to bring VRA claims, one of the last tools with which to challenge gerrymandering on the federal level.

Chief Judge Lavenski Smith, another Bush appointee, dissented and would have preserved the private right of action under the VRA.

The case originated as a VRA lawsuit brought by the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and Arkansas Public Policy Panel alleging racial gerrymandering in the map dividing the districts for the Arkansas House of Representatives. It names state officials, including Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), as defendants.

Judges Raymond Gruender and David Stras, in changing the nature of the VRA as we know it, rejected both Supreme Court guidance on the topic as well as legislative history. The justices had discussed Section 2 — the part of the law under which vote dilution cases are brought in court — in a 1996 case over a different part of the VRA. They rested that decision on their assumption that the private right of action applied to Section 2 as well.

But that wasn’t enough for Gruender and Stras.

“Taken at face value, these statements appear to create an open-and-shut case that there must be a way to privately enforce § 2,” they wrote. “If five Justices assume it, then it must be true. The problem, however, is that these were just background assumptions — mere dicta at most.”

They also make short work of the legislative history. Both the Senate and House Judiciary Committees in 1982, when Congress amended the statute, wrote that Congress had “clearly intended” for individuals to be able to sue under Section 2 of the law.

“There are many reasons to doubt legislative history as an interpretive tool,” they shrugged, adding: “Nor is it clear how the 1982 Congress could possibly have known what a different set of legislators thought 17 years earlier.”

[…]

The case will likely reach the Supreme Court, a venue that has been particularly hostile to the VRA under John Roberts’ stewardship, but which batted back a major challenge to the law in a surprising decision last session. The VRA, even one weakened by the Supreme Court, remains so essential to this kind of litigation because the Court shut the federal courthouse doors to partisan gerrymandering cases, leaving only racial ones available.

“Until the Court rules or Congress amends the statute, I would follow existing precedent that permits citizens to seek a judicial remedy,” Smith wrote. “Rights so foundational to self government and citizenship should not depend solely on the discretion or availability of the government’s agents for protection.”

A copy of the opinion is embedded in the story. I Am Not A Lawyer, but I do know Calvinball when I see it. Sorry to ruin your Thanksgiving with this kind of news, but here we are. The Associated Press has more.

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The Mike Miles effect so far

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

A couple of explainers from the Chron. First up, this one about what has actually happened so far in HISD since Mike Miles took over.

Superintendent Mike Miles has made sweeping changes in Houston ISD since he was appointed by the Texas Education Agency in June to run the largest school system in the Lone Star state.

Nearly six months into his tenure, Miles has championed systemic reforms and swiftly implemented policies, some of which have sparked great pushback and turmoil among families, teachers and school communities across the district. For his part, the new superintendent says the drastic changes are necessary to significantly improve academic achievement, especially among Black and Hispanic students, by raising expectations and providing high-quality instruction.

The Chronicle has compiled below a recap of the biggest changes so far in HISD under Miles.

Most of what’s in there is familiar, but given how fast everything has happened and how many stories there have been about what’s been going on, you’d be forgiven if there were one or two things you’d forgotten or missed the first time around. I have a hard enough time keeping up.

Two, there’s this story about the District of Innovation stuff and what the relevant laws are that the district’s DoI application are meant to do.

Texas has dozens of laws governing how school districts must operate, but districts can opt out of almost all of them through the process of becoming a “District of Innovation.”

Since the Legislature established the status in 2015, nearly every eligible school district in the state earned the DOI designation. Houston ISD has been one of a few dozen hold outs, but the district is now on the verge of becoming a DOI after the District Advisory Committee voted Tuesday in favor of the plan outlining the exemptions the district wants to seek.

The HISD Board of Managers is expected to vote on the plan during its regular meeting Dec. 14. If at least two-thirds agree, it would go into effect immediately.

The plan would exempt the district from seven state regulations, including ones regulating the school start date, the certification of teachers and teacher evaluations. Here’s why education policy experts say these regulations exist and why HISD is seeking an exemption to them:

Again, you probably know most of this already, but you might have missed a few things in your attempt to drink from the firehose. If the net effect is that you feel dizzy and a little disoriented, I don’t think that’s accidental.

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Dispatches from Dallas, November 22 edition

Posted on November 22, 2023 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, it’s the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination; the Bishop of Tyler gets the sack; Elon and Ken Paxton going after Media Matters in Fort Worth; voter turnout; filing news; schools and universities; assorted haters and bigots; Dallas area cybersecurity; “amortization”, environmental justice, the Lege and the Dallas City Council; the difference between D Magazine and the DMN on bribery lawsuits; and more, including a new zoo baby!

This week’s post was brought to you by Ludovico Einaudi, whose music is a good soundtrack for working.

As most people know, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated here in Dallas on November 22, 1963. This was an event that shaped the history of the city and the nation, for good and ill. In the flurry of coverage surrounding the anniversary, I found a few gems. Here’s a somewhat defensive DMN story about Dallas needing to embrace having been the City of Hate to get over the assassination. I don’t agree with everything in it; for one thing, it’s pretty clearly directed at white Dallas. But it was interesting to read from someone who was a child here in Dallas when it happened and is still in the journalism business. The Star-Telegram has a slate of stories, the most interesting piece of which, to me, anyway, was trying to figure out who Lee Harvey Oswald’s pallbearers were. Apparently the reporters on the scene did the duty, except for the DMN’s guy, who was afraid he’d get fired for supporting (in the casket) a (dead) Communist, but now they’re not sure who a couple of the men in the photos were. The Washington Post has reminiscences from a surviving Secret Service agent who has a new book out. And here’s a fascinating piece from the Guardian on the anniversary that spends a fair amount of time talking about how the conditions that surrounded the assassination are the national norm in 2023.

Meanwhile, in Tyler, the (now former) Bishop, Joseph Strickland, a notorious archconservative and complainer about the Pope, was relieved of duty on November 11. This was another story with international coverage (Guardian; NPR; Washington Post.) If you’re not Catholic or simply don’t get the intricacy of canon law, Texas Standard has a good explainer.

Since Tyler is right around the corner from Dallas, it’s gotten outsized coverage from the local news, like this reaction piece from local Catholics and this analysis piece from one of the DMN’s religion reporter. Although there was a lot of advance reporting on a march in Tyler in support of Bishop Strickland, there hasn’t been much coverage of it since (this short WFAA report was about it) and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the last news about it. While I’m not Catholic, I am a medievalist by training, and I know that grumbling about Papal rulings without following through is a pastime with a centuries-long history.

In other news:

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of November 20

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance broke its calculator trying to figure out how many turkeys Jimbo Fischer could buy now as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Runoff early voting begins Monday

Posted on November 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Early voting for the December 9 Joint Runoff Election begins Monday, November 27, and runs through Tuesday, December 5. Vote centers will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day except Sunday, December 3, from noon to 7 p.m. On Election Day, Saturday, December 9, the vote centers will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The deadline to apply for a ballot by mail is Tuesday, November 28 (received, not postmarked).

“Harris County will open 41 vote centers during Early Voting and 450 on Election Day. Registered voters can vote in the runoff election even if they did not vote in November,” said Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth. “More than 450,000 people voted in the November 7 election out of the more than 2.5 million registered voters in Harris County.”

City of Houston races include Mayor, At-Large Position 1, At-Large Position 2, At-Large Position 3, At-Large Position 4, Controller, and three single-member districts: Council Member District D, Council Member District G, and Council Member District H.

“The number of contests in which a voter can cast a ballot vary and are dictated by the residence and political subdivision where a voter is registered to vote,” added Clerk Hudspeth. “Voters should be aware that only citizens registered to vote within the legal boundaries of the City of Houston can vote on the contests offered by the City of Houston. A “Houston” postal address does not guarantee that a voter lives within Houston proper.”

Information regarding the City of Houston candidates in the Runoff Election can be found at https://houstontx.gov/2023-runoff-election.html.

Also on the ballot are the City of Bellaire Mayor and the City of Baytown, Council Member District No. 4.

Sample Ballots for the December 9 Joint Runoff Election will be available before Thanksgiving at www.HarrisVotes.com.

For news and updates, follow us on social media at @HarrisVotes and @HarrisCoTxClerk.

A map of the voting centers for early voting is here; the interactive map is not ready yet. A fact sheet for the runoff is here. The final official election results are now up and I’ve gotten my hands on the precinct data. I’m aiming to have some numbers for you early next week.

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Three stories about abortion

Posted on November 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

All from Texas Public Radio, which has been doing a great job with these.

Big Bend area group plans anti-abortion pregnancy centers in Presidio, Alpine.

A local nonprofit formed earlier this year is seeking to open two new anti-abortion pregnancy centers that the group says will help address the Big Bend region’s persistent lack of maternal care resources.

The Presidio Pregnancy Center plans to open two facilities in the region – first in Presidio and later in Alpine – that would operate as affiliates of Care Net, a national religious group that opposes abortion and oversees a network of more than 1,000 pregnancy centers across the U.S.

Local advocates for the plan say the facilities, often called “crisis pregnancy centers,” would offer much needed social support and educational resources for pregnant people in a region that has been described as a “maternity care desert.”

But critics, including at least one prominent medical trade group, have argued that such facilities often provide misleading or false health information to pregnant people.

The local group’s representatives have outlined their plans to area officials and community members over the past few months as they seek funding for the facilities.

At an Oct. 11 meeting that included representatives from the state health department, the nonprofit’s board president Lynette Brehm said the initial Presidio location would offer everything from free pregnancy tests to “coaching” and classes about what to expect before, during and after childbirth.

“One of the things we learned in talking with women that have had their pregnancies here is they felt very much alone,” she said. “Yes, maybe they had abuela or mom, but they kind of wanted to have some agency over their pregnancy.”

Brehm said the center would employ community health workers to provide “non-clinical, community-based support services” that “add and enhance” standard medical care that people should receive when they’re pregnant.

In an interview, Brehm said the center would not provide any kind of actual medical care, but rather would focus on services like pregnancy training, helping women find an obstetrician and signing up for Medicare or Medicaid.

In its presentations and promotional materials, the local group has not discussed the issue of abortion at length. One version of the group’s website doesn’t mention abortion at all, while another version states the center’s aim is to provide “a safe confidential place where a woman can receive compassionate care to make a life-affirming choice.”

Brehm said the center would not refer any of its clients to abortion providers.

“We want to help that mom become a healthy mom,” Brehm said. “At the end of the day, she’s going to have that decision though, but we will hope that she can see that she can do it, and we’ll be there to help her.”

That “medical trade group” is the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a group of people who do provide actual medical care, unlike this collection of yahoos with a storefront and Google access. It’s such a level of self-parody that I don’t even know where to start. But not only does this not help with the acute lack of access to prenatal and maternity care in the region, it makes the problem worse by giving the impression that something has been done. It’s a complete farce.

Texans highly motivated to travel to New Mexico for abortions.

It’s 2:45 in the morning, and the Sunset Limited is pulling out of Amtrak’s San Antonio station heading west.

The passenger train is just one of many ways that Texans are traveling to New Mexico where abortion remains legal.

Since September 1, 2021, when the Texas fetal heartbeat law went into effect, many pregnant women in Texas have been forced to flee the state to find abortion care.

Some women are able to afford an airline flight; many others are not. Driving is an option if there’s access to a dependable car that can cross hundreds of miles of Texas desert. There is the bus, but Amtrak is even cheaper and has the advantage of being more comfortable.

From San Antonio, the train takes about 12 hours to arrive at the El Paso station. From there, it’s a short rideshare trip to the closest abortion clinic in New Mexico.

Women’s Reproductive Clinic is less than a mile across the state line. Inside the waiting room, there’s a large yellow sign that reads “Welcome East Texans to New Mexico, Land of Enchantment.”

We’ve discussed New Mexico and abortion for several years now, with a more recent focus on the efforts to make it illegal in some fashion to travel to places like New Mexico from Texas to get an abortion. I would think that under the “abortion travel ban” ordinances that some counties have passed – none along the route of the Sunset Limited, as far as I know, yet – in theory the conductors and ticket-takers and food vendors and train cleaners and pretty much everyone else would be legally liable. That would be civil liability,. if the matter were ever relevant and pursued, but criminal liability is hardly off the table. Are we going to make abortion interrogations a part of the TSA security checks at some point? That may sound ridiculous, but look around. Lots of things that used to sound ridiculous are increasingly part of the mainstream now.

San Antonio abortion doctor who challenged SB8 treating Texans in New Mexico.

Sitting in his Albuquerque, New Mexico office, Dr. Alan Braid remembers what things were like before Roe v. Wade when he was practicing medicine in San Antonio. He said things were bad.

“I remember distinctly a 16-year-old girl. She had someone had hacked her vagina with old rags and put a catheter in her uterus for her to abort, and she died of sepsis and organ failure,” Braid said.

The 78-year-old Braid said that the memories of treating other failed attempts at illegal abortions in 1972 still haunt him, and he doesn’t want to go back to that.

“We would see women who sought care either in Mexico or someone who would do that in San Antonio, and they died,” he said.

When SB8, the Texas fetal heartbeat law passed in 2021, Braid decided he wasn’t going to leave Texas. He was going to stay and fight it.

He continued to perform abortions and wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post challenging someone to sue him over it.

Braid wrote, “I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.”

A judge eventually threw out the SB8 lawsuits filed against Braid. The judge ruled the people had no connection to the prohibited abortion and weren’t harmed by it. They didn’t have standing.

This didn’t overturn SB8 but weakened it considerably. Then came the leaked Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, and Braid knew it was time to leave Texas.

“If we’re going to continue, where should we go? New Mexico was the first place we thought of. So, Dobbs came out June 24, (2022). We saw our first patient here August 15,” said Braid.

Braid’s entire practice, including his San Antonio staff, made the move to New Mexico. And he took the name with him.

“’Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services.’ We decided to just keep the name. It would just be easier for our patients to find us,“ he said.

Braid says Texans are still finding their way to his office. 85 percent of his business comes from Texas.

Alan Braid is a goddamn hero. That is all.

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

Installing the ice

Posted on November 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Just in case.

While Toyota Center undergoes several years of renovations, an upgrade that will not be immediately seen could prove to be among the most important.

When listing plans for future phases of renovation, Rockets president of business operations Gretchen Sheirr included “making sure this building is ready for anything, which includes making sure it’s hockey ready.”

The Rockets plan to add the “ice machine” that would be needed for Toyota Center to become an NHL venue, though there are no immediate plans to bring the NHL to Houston.

That addition would be the only change needed for hockey, with the arena and the favorable downtown location widely considered to be the NHL standards. No construction would be necessary.

[…]

Toyota Center does not have the equipment to produce NHL-quality ice. Portable machines can be brought in, as with the NHL’s annual Winter Classic outdoor games or with ice shows. That would be about a four-day process in an arena and unlikely for an NHL venue.

Adding the equipment needed to make Toyota Center suitable for the NHL, however, sounded to be more of a plan than a possibility.

See here and here for some background, and here for more on the Toyota Center renovation plans. For all the stories about how there are no plans for expansion in the NHL and how other cities would also be in the running if there were, there’s also been a lot of recent stories about how Houston would be ready to make a pitch for an NHL team. You know, in case it happens. And who knows, in a few years, maybe it will. We’ll be ready if it does.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Time for another chat about voter registration and turnout

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s do it.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Texas Democrats came away from Beto O’Rourke’s surprisingly narrow 2018 defeat to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz with a simple plan: register to vote the millions of nonvoting Texans that demographics suggest lean Democrat and electoral victories will follow.

Harris County, the biggest, bluest population center in the state filled with unregistered potential voters, would be the linchpin of that strategy.

Recent statewide defeats and turnout percentages below the national average in Harris County and the state as a whole, however, indicate that gameplan has not entirely panned out.

The first part — registering voters — has worked. Since 2014, Texas’ population has grown by 3 million people. More than 3.5 million people have been added to the state’s voter rolls in that time. More than 500,000 of those new registrations came from Harris County.

The growing voter rolls only shrank the county’s overall turnout percentage, however.

Fewer than one out of five registered voters in Harris County cast a ballot in last week’s elections, which featured an open mayoral seat in Houston and a host of state constitutional amendments, among other local races. Harris County’s turnout in the 2022 gubernatorial election was 9 percent points lower than in 2018.

[…]

Statewide, O’Rourke’s return to the top of the ticket in a 2022 challenge to Gov. Greg Abbott also saw depressed voter turnout.

Even in 2020, which saw Texas’ highest turnout percentage this century and a record number of raw votes, Texas still found itself in the bottom handful of states for turnout.

“The problem isn’t just registration, the problem is turnout of registered voters,” said Mike Doyle, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party.

Doyle said he found the low turnout last week concerning heading into 2024, but not insurmountable.

[…]

“Getting folks registered, great,” Doyle said. “That’s always part of our strategy, but if we already have a registered voter that’s not turning out and we know when they turn out they’re going to vote Democratic more likely than not, that’s an easier target.”

Those efforts will be focused in state House of Representatives districts controlled by Democrats, Doyle said.

The story is more about strategy than numbers, and I’m a numbers guy. I’ll get to that in a minute. I just want to note that I had some thoughts about what Harris County Democrats should be aiming for in 2024. As far as that goes, I’m pretty satisfied with current Chair Mike Doyle.

I’ve done variations of this post before, so I’m going to keep this simple. If you want to compare numbers in local and state elections, I suggest going back a little further than 2014. This is what things have looked like in Texas since 2002. I’m separating the Presidential and non-Presidential years for more meaningful comparisons.


Year   Registered     Turnout      Pct
======================================
2002   12,563,459   4,553,979   36.24%
2006   13,074,279   4,399,068   33.64%
2010   13,269,233   4,979,870   37.53%
2014   14,025,441   4,727,208   33.70%
2018   15,793,257   8,371,655   53.01%
2022   17,262,143   8,102,908   45.85%

2004   13,098,329   7,410,765   56.57%
2008   13,575,062   8,077,795   59.50%
2012   13,646,226   7,993,851   58.58%
2016   15,101,087   8,969,226   59.39%
2020   16,955,519  11,315,056   66.73%

And here it is for Harris County:


Year   Registered     Turnout      Pct
======================================
2002    1,875,777     656,682   35.01%
2006    1,902,822     601,186   31.59%
2010    1,917,534     798,995   41.67%
2014    2,044,361     688,018   33.65%
2018    2,307,654   1,219,871   52.86%
2022    2,543,162   1,107,390   43.54%

2004    1,876,296   1,088,793   58.03%
2008    1,892,656   1,188,731   62.81%
2012    1,942,566   1,204,167   61.99%
2016    2,182,980   1,338,898   61.33%
2020    2,431,457   1,656,686   68.14%

A couple of things to note. One, at both the state and Harris County level, there was more growth in voter registration between 2012 and 2016 than there had been between 2002 and 2014. Voter registration was basically flat between 2002 and 2012. As I’ve said before, in Harris County that was largely due to having a collection of Tax Assessors who were more interested in throwing people off the voter rolls than in registering new voters. Statewide, the effort of Battleground Texas got things moving a bit in 2014, and various groups that sprung up post-Trump like Swing Left took it from there. Those efforts continue today.

As far as turnout goes, the main thing to note is that even as 2022 was a step back from 2018, it was still a step forward from before 2018. We’ll see how 2024 compares to 2020, but 2020 similarly stands way out in comparison to every election before it.

There’s not really much more to say at this point, and bringing in the admittedly unexciting turnout from the 2023 Mayor’s race is a tangent at best – the conditions are just too different for any comparisons. Texas’ turnout is not going to rival any state that has universal mail voting or same-day registration, but I think we are in a generally higher-turnout era than we were in a few years ago. That’s all hypothetical until we get more data points, and the next opportunity for that is next November. I’m sure I’ll check in with another roundup of these numbers at that time.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Sure, Jared

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The campaign ads will write themselves.

Rep. Lacey Hull

Prominent anti-LGBTQ+ attorney and former Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill is running for the Texas House and to replace House Speaker Dade Phelan.

Woodfill announced his candidacy for House District 138 this week, touting his legal challenges to COVID-19 mandates and LGBTQ+ legislation, and the four “Republican sweeps” that Harris County Republicans saw during his tenure as the local GOP’s leader from 2002 to 2014.

He’s running against incumbent Republican Rep. Lacey Hull, who was first elected to represent the northwest Houston district in 2020 with backing from Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston. Hull was ranked as one of the most conservative members of the Texas House this year based on an analysis of voting records by Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.

Woodfill’s campaign has already tried to frame Hull as a Republican in Name Only — RINO — by citing D ratings from two conservative activist groups. His campaign also accuses her of conspiring with Phelan — a longtime nemesis of Woodfill and other ultraconservative Texas Republicans — to “undermine” conservative legislation and impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton.

[…]

Woodfill has for years been at the helm of conservative Christian and anti-LGBTQ+ movements in Houston and Texas. In 2015, he and well-known Houston GOP powerbroker and anti-gay activist Dr. Steven Hotze played key roles in the defeat of an ordinance that would have extended equal rights protections to LGBTQ+ Houstonians, during which they compared gay people to Nazis and helped popularize “groomer” rhetoric.

The two have remained close, leading a pro-Paxton fundraising group during the attorney general’s impeachment this summer and spearheading legal challenges to COVID-19 closure mandates and election results in Harris County. Woodfill is also representing Hotze in a criminal investigation stemming from a 2020 incident in which a private investigator, allegedly acting at Hotze’s behest, held at gunpoint an air-conditioning repairman who he believed was transporting fake ballots.

Woodfill has faced his own legal issues: He has for years been at the center of an ongoing lawsuit in which a man accuses Woodfill’s former law partner and Southern Baptist leader Paul Pressler of decades of sexual abuse. In March, The Texas Tribune reported that Woodfill testified under oath that he was alerted in 2004 about child sexual abuse allegations against Pressler, who Woodfill was representing at the time in an assault lawsuit that was settled for $450,000. Despite that, Woodfill continued to work with Pressler, providing him with a string of young, male personal assistants who worked out of Pressler’s home. The lawsuit is set for trial early next year.

We know that Woodfill is a piece of shit, and he is also a pedophile enabler. There are very few people I’d like to run a campaign against more than him. I hope this primary is so ugly and nasty it makes the entire state want to take a shower.

Beyond that I will just say this: As the story notes, Lacey Hull won re-election last year by a 57-43 margin. That was better than Greg Abbott, who carried the district 54-44. It was also better than Ken Paxton, who carried it 53-44. Go ahead and tie yourself to Paxton, dude. In 2020, HD138 was more purple, as Trump beat Biden 52.0 to 46.6. I’ve fallen into the trap of rooting for the worse Republican to win in a primary on the theory that they’ll be easier to beat in the general before, but this time I think it might be different. I’m willing to take that chance if the Republicans in HD138 are willing to throw away an objectively stronger candidate who is also an incumbent in favor of this bucket of toxic waste.

Also, too: Stephanie Morales, who was a fine and hard-working candidate who didn’t get enough financial support, will be running again. If she doesn’t get a lot more love from the donor classes, especially if she ends up against Woodfill, that will be a shocking and unfathomable failure on our part. We cannot screw this one up.

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Warfarin update

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Warfarin is a toxicant that has shown promise in reducing the feral hog population. A few years ago the Lege asked for a study on its effects before it could be approved for more general use. We now have the results of that study.

There are mixed results from a study on the effectiveness of using toxicants to reduce Texas’s feral hog population. The good news is a warfarin-based toxicant has proven to be an effective tool. The bad news is it is very time-consuming.

“We saw a high level of reduction in individual sounders that were feeding on toxic bait,” said Mike Bodenchuk, state director for the Texas Wildlife Service. Bodenchuk helped spearhead a two-year study on the effectiveness of using poison on feral hogs.

“The legislature directed us to study whether or not the toxicant would be effective in landowner use. So, our study was to use landowners to apply the toxicant,” said Bodenchuk. “We were directed to do it in multiple regions and in multiple seasons.”

Bodenchuk says if landowners followed the very precise protocols for use of the toxicant it was effective at reducing the pig population. The bad news is the process is time-consuming. It takes six weeks to set up the traps and properly bait the hogs.

“This isn’t a single-feeding type of bait. It requires multiple feedings,” said Bodenchuk.

Those multiple feedings involve luring the pigs into an area to eat while slowly adding the warfarin-based toxicant until they receive a lethal dose. The protocol can easily be disrupted, greatly reducing the effectiveness of the baiting process.

“If landowners tried to cut corners on that process, reduce the time, go too fast then their efficacy goes down. We actually had one bunch of pigs, someone shot at them while they were using the feeder and they quit using that feeder,” said Bodenchuk.

See here for the previous update in this saga, which was in 2017. I don’t know what the next steps might be, so I can’t say whether this moves the use of warfarin any closer. It sounds like it could be helpful, but isn’t a panacea. You can see more in this A&M AgriLife report on the study.

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Weekend link dump for November 19

Posted on November 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

“Return To Work: List of First TV Series To Restart Production After SAG-AFTRA Strike”.

“Why Is the Entertainment Industry So Desperate To Own Dead Celebrities?”

“Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk’s rocket company: crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds and one death. SpaceX employees say they’re paying the price for the billionaire’s push to colonize space at breakneck speed.”

“As more abortion bans have gone into effect across the country, it has become far more difficult to perform a standard element of gynecological care: screening patients for domestic abuse.”

“Well, so much for getting to the bottom of the story of Crystal Clanton, the judicial law clerk accused of sending racist texts. And so much for all the talk about having Supreme Court justices abide by the code of conduct that covers other federal judges. In this case, at least, the mechanism to enforce that code turned out to be toothless. The judicial discipline system is better at self-protection than self-policing.”

“Still, one can take a hard, law-and-order line on sentencing and still be opposed to locking up innocent people. Indeed, you could make a strong argument that you can’t be authentically “law-and-order” without vigorously opposing the incarceration of innocent people. And yet many self-described law-and-order politicians seem to be okay with it — or at least have little interest in knowing when it has happened.”

“The book, I suppose, offers a moral about extravagant Christmas displays, and as November arrives and the first of my neighbors cover their houses in thousand-dollar LED extravaganzas, it’s a not-unwelcome message. But it’s a bit of a disappointment to see the Grinch reduced to the role of child throwing a tantrum. Losing a contest and storming off in a huff is certainly relatable to kids—indeed, more than one cheery holiday get-together in my house has been darkened by a child doing that exact thing—but it’s not diabolical. It’s not stealing the freaking Christmas tree. It’s hard to imagine a child listening to this sequel with the same fear and trembling with which they respond to the original. More likely, kids will nod sagely and identify the Grinch as that most familiar of childhood archetypes: the sore loser. It’s a dispiriting fate for perhaps the greatest elemental force of malevolence in children’s literature.”

“Trump could try to blame his lawyers for Jan. 6. But it just got a lot more difficult“.

We may get to see Coyote vs. Acme after all.

“I wish I could wrap this up with a neat little formula — with One Simple Trick that lets us know how to find what’s worth keeping from creepy comedians, or from theologians who were serial-rapists or enslavers. And, more importantly, with the secret key that would assure us that we were able to learn only the Good Things from Bad People, wholly distinct and compartmentalized from all the awful things they chose to do because knowing those Good Things didn’t stop them from doing them. But I don’t know what that formula is. I suspect there isn’t one.”

RIP, Peter Seidler, owner of the San Diego Padres.

“The percentage of kindergartners who are fully vaccinated declined from 95 percent in the 2020-2021 school year to 93 percent in 2021-2022—below pre-pandemic levels. Since schools still require routine vaccinations, more families than ever before are asking permission for their school-aged children to skip the shots, as well. Requests for exemptions increased in 41 states, and in 10 states, more than 5 percent of parents made such requests. That exemption rate is significant, because when more than 5 percent of a given population is unwilling to be vaccinated, “herd immunity” is compromised and outbreaks are possible.”

It would be a good idea for David Zaslaz to just stop talking for awhile.

“At no point does Representative Santos appear to have owned a Maserati, despite telling campaign staff otherwise.”

“Attorneys for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the mother-daughter election workers who are suing Giuliani, claim he severely harmed them by falsely accusing them of ballot tampering and are seeking $15.5 million to $43 million in compensation, plus punitive damages and potentially interest.” I hope they get all that and more.

But he’s so “nice”. So very “nice”.

“Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled that China will send new pandas to the United States”.

RIP, Roger Kastel, artist who created the iconic movie posters for Jaws and The Empire Strikes Back.

“It may not get a lot of attention. In a way it doesn’t matter since I don’t think anyone cares that George Santos going to do serious time in prison. But in addition to the mistake he made not resigning soon after the original New York Times report last December, he made another big mistake staying in office until this week’s House Ethics report was released.”

RIP, Bert Levinson, educator, coach, Staten Island Sports Hall of Famer. I knew Mr. Levinson (he will always be Mr. Levinson) through the Hall of Fame Warriors Baseball Camp, which was the defining feature of my summers as a kid. Truly a legend.

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Harris County elections update

Posted on November 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

No news is good news.

By all accounts, Harris County pulled off a smooth local election last week under its newly reconfigured election administration. But officials didn’t have time to revel in it before a judge took them to task for the serious mistakes that marred its election one year ago.

Nonetheless, Harris County officials say they believe they’re now on a path to deliver a successful 2024 presidential election under a new election chief, County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, and are clear-eyed about the work they still have to do.

[…]

The problems last year in Harris — the third most populous county in the country — were not unprecedented or large in scale, but the long wait times and the ballot paper shortages at about 20 polling locations could have been avoided with better planning, experts say. Harris County provides voting on Election Day through countywide vote centers, which allow voters to go to any location to cast a ballot, unlike a precinct-based system. At these vote centers, each voter’s ballot is printed to reflect the local races based on where they live.

Bruce Sherbet, Collin County elections administrator, who has been running elections in Texas for over two decades said, to be on the safe side, it is best practice to plan for more than just the additional 25% supply of ballot paper that the election code mandates.

“You have to go at least 50% over that number. You just can’t take the risk of running low. And if you do run lower, you’ve got to have a really robust and good training curriculum to tell your workers to monitor their stock,” he said.

By the time the November 2022 general election came around, the county elections office had already seen its first leader step down, voters were still getting used to new equipment, and the then–newly appointed election administrator, Tatum, had less than three months to prepare. Logistical problems surfaced.

“The elections office had too many Election Day voting centers [in 2022], relative to the resources they had available,” said Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University who has done research into election supply allocation and vote centers. “And the biggest problems were at the newest voting locations where there was no history of voting.”

The primary and presidential election will rely on the county’s ability to train what is likely double the number of election workers and run many more polling locations, and based on the county’s performance this off-cycle election year, it may be positioned to do that well in 2024, Stein said.

[…]

The problems last year in the heavily Democratic county prompted Republican state lawmakers to pass legislation abolishing the elections administrator position — only in Harris. The county sued the state to prevent it from taking effect, but couldn’t beat back the new law.

Despite the county’s effort to challenge the law in court, it went into effect on Sept. 1, placing Hudspeth in charge of administering elections and Ann Harris Bennett, the county’s tax assessor-collector, in charge of voter registration heading into the presidential election. Lawmakers have signaled they’re watching closely.

See here for some background, and remember that I covered a number of these topics when I interviewed County Clerk Hudspeth. I have total faith in her ability to run the elections.

That doesn’t mean I think it was a mistake to switch to an Elections Administrator. Many counties use them, there’s nothing particularly controversial about that. If you were designing county government from scratch, I can’t imagine you’d separate the tasks of voter registration from conducting elections – you would of course put them under the same office. Isabel Longoria didn’t work out, Cliff Tatum had a very short initiation period before the November 2022 election, and we were breaking in these new machines with the more complicated process and equipment. There were challenges and we should have done better, but it didn’t have to work out this way.

As it happens, this past week was when SCOTx heard the appeal of the original injunction that blocked the law abolishing the Harris County Elections Administrator’s office, which SCOTx put on hold pending said appeal. At this point, given everything that has gone on, while I continue to oppose the law that was passed to abolish the Elections Administrator’s office and am rooting for Harris County to prevail on the principle that the Lege should not be allowed to pass a law that targets one and only one county for perpetuity, I don’t want any more change to how we conduct our elections. Whatever happens in this case, please keep things as they are for at least the next few years. What we need right now is some continuity. Make Harris County elections a little more boring, please.

Posted in Election 2023, Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Whitmire and SJL on Prop B and H-GAC

Posted on November 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

Houston’s two remaining candidates for mayor appear to have cooled their earlier support of local Proposition B now that it has been approved by voters and the candidates find themselves an election away from becoming the person in charge of carrying out its promise.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and state Sen. John Whitmire both endorsed the proposition to require Houston to leave the Houston-Galveston Area Council if the regional planning body fails to offer it proportional voting power. It was approved overwhelmingly Nov. 7, but in a Wednesday forum hosted by Transportation Advocacy Group – Houston, both Jackson Lee and Whitmire said the path laid by the proposition will be difficult for the city to navigate.

“As it’s presently conducted, it is not the best pathway forward, but I will not rush to judgment before I assess how we can come together and have those monies distributed to ensure we’re unified as a region,” Jackson Lee told dozens of elected officials and transportation advocates from around the region gathered in the Royal Sonesta ballroom.

Whitmire joked about the proposition’s promise to make the regional council more fair to Houston and argued that during upcoming negotiations the city needs to ensure it is being fair to governments in the surrounding region, as well.

“Yes, we got the petition to be fair to Houston. Who the heck wouldn’t sign that petition?” Whitmire said.

Both noted the risk of losing federal funding distributed by H-GAC if Houston simply withdrew from the council, concerns that were outlined in an August memo sent by City Attorney Arturo Michel to Mayor Sylvester Turner.

[…]

The next mayor’s negotiations with H-GAC will be a crucial first step to funding any large transit projects in the city of Houston, both said.

In a room populated with officials from surrounding cities and counties, both candidates expressed interest in unity with H-GAC partners in the interest of improving transit across the region.

We are headed into Thanksgiving week so I’m going to keep this brief.

The stated intent of the Fair For Houston/Prop B organizers was for this item to lead to a new agreement via negotiations. It does not specify any numeric requirements. This has been covered before. As long as everyone goes into the negotiations in good faith, and so far that seems to be the case, we ought to be able to come to an agreement.

The question of what happens if the negotiations fail and Houston exist H-GAC remains an open question, at least to me. The Fair For Houston/Prop B organizers have said they consulted with lawyers on this. Maybe some further consultation is in order.

But seriously, I think everyone wants this to continue to work. So, you know, work towards that goal. If you don’t want to be the Mayor that has to deal with a exit from H-GAC, then don’t be that Mayor.

There’s also some stuff in the story, which you can read for yourself, about the two candidates’ approach to the I-45 project. Suffice it to say that I prefer SJL’s approach to Whitmire’s. Your mileage may vary.

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