Texas blog roundup for the week of September 1

Posted on September 4, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone a happy Labor Day week as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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On being financially prepared for future disasters

Posted on September 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Got to be thinking about it.

Chris Hollins

Houston might need to make some policy changes to ensure that the city has enough money on hand to provide disaster relief as storms become more frequent and more expensive to recover from, Controller Chris Hollins’ office warned Tuesday.

The Bayou City was pummeled by two of the top 10 most expensive storms in history by Hurricane Harvey, which caused $160 billion in 2017, and Ike’s $43 billion of damage in 2008. More recently, Houston had to contend with Hurricane Beryl and a derecho in 2024.

Because the city is spending more money than it is bringing in, the controller’s office warned that leaders may need to consider raising its minimum fund balance, increasing the size of its stabilization fund, dedicating its budget surpluses to the stabilization fund at the end of the year or directing its clawbacks to the stabilization fund, he said.

[…]

The fund balance has historically been used in Houston to help foot the bill for budget deficits instead of holding onto it for potential disasters. When compared to cities like San Antonio and Dallas, Houston keeps less money on hand in its fund balance.

Houston requires 7.5% of the general fund on hand, and typically has anywhere between 8% and 9%. Dallas, on the other hand, keeps anywhere from 19% to 20% of its general fund budget on hand, and San Antonio keeps 15% to 16%. Miami, which tied with Houston for disaster risk, keeps around 20%.

Governors Finance Officers Association best practice, Jones noted, is keeping 16.7% on hand at all times.

San Antonio and Dallas both bolster their budgets with a trash fee, which Houston does not have but officials have considered for years. They also both have smaller budgets and general funds than Houston.

A copy of the Controller’s report, called “Weathering the Storm: Houston’s Financial Preparedness for Natural Disasters”, is here, and the press release that announced the report is here. I don’t know how many times I can say that Houston’s financial problems are mostly about lack of sufficient revenue without crossing into full-blown crankery, but I’m here to say it again anyway. The two simplest things we can do about that – not the easiest, but the simplest – are revise or remove the stupid revenue cap and impose a trash fee like every other damn city does. You can make of all that what you will, I’m going to stand on my porch and stare into the middle distance for few minutes, while pondering again how lucky we are to not have any major weather events this year. So far.

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More on the lawsuit over the latest DEI ban

Posted on September 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I mentioned this in passing last week but wanted to give it its own post.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and a group of LGBTQ+ and student rights organizations are suing to block a new state law that would ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court, attorneys from the ACLU of Texas and Transgender Law Center argue that Senate Bill 12 violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments as well as the Equal Access Act. Gov. Greg Abbott signed the legislation last June, and it will go into effect Sept. 1 alongside an array of other transformative laws for public education in Texas.

“Senate Bill 12 is a blatant attempt to erase students’ identities and silence the stories that make Texas strong,” said Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “Every student — no matter their race, gender, or background — deserves to feel seen, safe, and supported in school.”

[…]

What the ban would do: Authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, SB 12 prohibits public school districts from considering race, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation in hiring decisions. The ban also bars schools from offering DEI training and programs, such as policies designed to reduce discrimination based on race or gender identity, except for when required by federal law.

The law requires families to give written permission before their children can join any school club, and prohibits school groups created to support LGBTQIA+ students. Parents will be able to file complaints if they believe their schools are not complying with the DEI ban, and the law requires school districts to discipline employees who knowingly take part in DEI-related activities.

Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Allen, said SB 12 builds on a 2021 state law barring public schools from teaching critical race theory, an academic discipline that explores how race and racism have influenced the country’s legal and institutional systems. While critical race theory is not taught in Texas public schools, the term has become a shorthand used by conservatives who believe the way some schools teach children about race is politically biased.

DEI advocates say initiatives that promote diversity provide support for marginalized communities in workforce development and higher education, while critics say DEI practices give preference to people based on their race and ethnicity rather than on merit.

What the lawsuit says: Attorneys from the ACLU and the Transgender Law Center are suing Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath and three school districts on behalf of a teacher, a student and her parent. They’re also representing the Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, two organizations that say they would be harmed by the ban.

The suit calls SB 12 an “overzealous” attempt to ban DEI in public schools and argues that it censors constitutionally protected speech and restricts students’ freedom of association. It’s also vague and overly broad, the suit says.

“S.B. 12 seeks to erase students’ identities and make it impossible for teachers, parents, and volunteers to tell the truth about the history and diversity of our state,” said Cameron Samuels, executive director at Students Engaged in Advancing Texas. “The law also guts vital support systems for Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and LGBTQIA+ students and educators.”

As part of the lawsuit, the Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network claims SB 12 singles out the organization by explicitly restricting student clubs based on “sexual orientation or gender identity,” language the group uses to describe the student organizations it sponsors at schools. That restriction harms the freedom of speech of the group and its members, the suit says. The Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network has chapters in Texas at more than a dozen school districts, according to the filing.

Lawsuits against similar laws have had mixed results in the past.

Because of SB 12’s ban on discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms, opponents have compared it to Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, which attracted widespread media attention in 2022 due to its far-reaching impacts in public schools. Civil rights lawyers sued to block it, saying the law violated free speech and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. But a federal judge dismissed the case and said the plaintiffs had no legal standing and had failed to prove harm from the law. The attorneys ultimately agreed to a settlement with Florida education officials that clarified the law to allow discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms only if it’s not part of instruction.

See here for the previous mention. I put it in that special session update even though this involved a law from the regular session because at the time all I had was the ACLU press release. This seems to me to be pretty straightforward viewpoint discrimination, but you never know what the courts will do. I’ll keep an eye on it.

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The “Trump Burger” story

Posted on September 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I suppose we must make note of this.

The thing about Trump Burger is that it was always irresistible, even for those who would rather eat just about anywhere else. The restaurant is what its name suggests: A burger joint devoted to President Donald J. Trump, which began in Bellville and has spawned several other locations that opened to great fanfare within an hour and a half or so of Houston.

What Trump Burger really sells isn’t burgers or chicken fingers or fries. And it’s also not the “Trump revenge tour” baseball caps or the “fake news” T-shirts on the shelves. Trump Burger is a curated experience for like-minded people. It’s a place where Trump voters flock to enjoy life the way they think the country should be. Americana on the walls, politics on the menu, Woke left at the door. The more the libs rage, the better the burgers taste.

Part of the allure, aside from the brash political persona that mirrors Trump’s own, has been the man behind the bun. Trump Burger, according to reports, was opened by a 28-year-old named Roland Beainy. In 2022, the Houston Chronicle wrote he was born in Boston, moved to Lebanon as a child and returned to the United States in 2019 to find the country governed by a president he admired. Other outlets referred to him as a Lebanese immigrant; Fox Business called him a second-generation Lebanese-American.

“Being an immigrant from a place where everything is bad … you see somebody like him to support the country and get the economy doing better,” Beainy told the Chronicle in 2022. “Me being an entrepreneur, I appreciate what he did.”

Even as Beainy built a business in tribute to that vision of America, lawsuits filed earlier this month punched holes through the Trump Burger public image — particularly one allegation buried in an exhibit. Beainy, the filing claims, might not be in the country legally.

“The lawyers are suggesting we shouldn’t comment,” Beainy said by phone on Aug. 6. “A lot of the stuff is fake, though, but it is what it is.”

His lawyer also declined to comment and did not respond to a list of written questions. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security said Beainy was undergoing immigration proceedings and claimed he was born in Lebanon, not Boston.

But the cracks in the tidy Trump Burger tale go deeper than allegations in a single lawsuit. The themes remain intact — but the details don’t.

It’s an untold story with subplots involving a vaccine scam and a murder-for-hire scheme. It’s one of clever branding that meets a moment, of what we as a society require for legitimacy. And it’s a quintessentially American saga.

You probably read about the Roland Beainy ICE detention – Lord knows, the memes about it were all over my Facebook feed for days. Iyed Abuelhawa, also knows as Eddie Hawa, was arrested by ICE in June and is the figure involved in the vaccine scam and murder-for-hire scheme. Those are both gift links, so read the stories as you see fit. You can also read the review of the restaurant if you’re morbidly curious – I can’t imagine anyone reading this who would actually go there, especially considering the countless better options available in this town. But now when someone asks you about this saga you can be prepared to answer them. You’re welcome.

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Nobody knows what to do about the dumb Ten Commandments law

Posted on September 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a mess.

Texas school districts must decide whether to display Ten Commandments posters in every classroom before a new law requiring them to goes into effect Monday, even as its fate remains tied up in court.

A federal judge enjoined 11 school districts from displaying the posters last week, in the wake of a community-led lawsuit, but Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed that ruling and said in a statement earlier last week that districts not enjoined by the court ruling must comply with the law, Senate Bill 10.

“It’s a no-win situation,” said Mark Chancey, Bible Studies professor at Southern Methodist University. “Districts that post the commandments will be faulted for disregarding the courts and the Constitution. Districts that do not post them will be faulted for not following the state law.”

[…]

How to comply with the law, however, is still up for debate.

The law says the Ten Commandments must be displayed in every classroom if they are donated, but it also states that districts don’t have to purchase them if they aren’t donated, leaving schools in legal mire. Leaders must decide whether to purchase extra posters so that every classroom has one, leave classrooms without posters if not enough are donated, or wait until the legality is cleared up in the courts to post them at all.

Biery’s decision temporarily blocked the law in several Austin- and San Antonio-area districts, including Alamo Heights, North East, Lackland, Northside, Austin, Lake Travis and Dripping Springs ISDs. Houston-area districts involved in the injunction include Houston ISD, Fort Bend ISD and Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, while Plano ISD was the only Dallas-area district involved.

The attorney general’s office represented nine of those districts, with the exception of Houston ISD and Austin ISD. In a statement posted on his X account Monday morning, Paxton said Biery’s ruling only affected those nine districts, while the main statement on his website includes Houston ISD and Austin ISD.

Those instructions from Paxton leave school districts in limbo, said law professor at the University of Miami Law School Charlton Copeland.

“According to the attorney general, it seems ‘wait until you’re sued’ is the order of the day,” Copeland said. “Don’t comply before you are sued and before there is a judgment issued against you.”

In his decision, Biery explicitly said the law “is not neutral with respect to religion” and cited a First Amendment clause that bars the government from prohibiting religious beliefs.

“By design, and on its face, the statute mandates the display of expressly religious scripture in every public school classroom,” Biery wrote. “The Act also requires that a Judeo-Christian version of that scripture be used, that is exclusionary of other faiths.”

That ruling sets a precedent for other school districts to follow, said Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

“Ken Paxton’s demand that school districts implement SB 10 is unwise and unlawful,” Weaver said in a statement. “A federal court has ruled that SB 10 is plainly unconstitutional, and school districts have an independent legal obligation to respect the constitutional rights of children and families.”

At a Conroe ISD school board meeting before Biery’s ruling, district counsel Kara Belew advised the district against placing the posters up while awaiting a ruling. That guidance came moments after Conroe received 330 Ten Commandments posters from volunteers.

“The district has begun delivering the required Senate Bill 10 posters to campuses and they will be displayed in classrooms by the first class on Sept. 2, since Sept.1 is a holiday,” Andrew Stewart, executive director of communications for Conroe ISD, said Thursday. “While we anticipate that further court action may result in an injunction requiring their removal, Conroe ISD will continue to comply with the law as it stands.”

See here and here for the background. Unfortunately, we still have no idea what’s going on with that other lawsuit, as that might have provided some more clarity – or possibly more confusion – if there had been a ruling. I’m not sure that case has even been heard yet. Be that as it may, the clear message I got from this story is that parents or other interested parties in districts other than the eleven currently under injunction could file their own lawsuits now and cite this one as a guiding principle. I don’t know how practical that is, and I don’t know how long it might take to get before a judge to argue the case, but one might at least get a quick restraining order until the matter can be heard. Got to be better than waiting and doing nothing. Good luck, y’all.

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We have been so lucky to avoid hurricanes so far

Posted on September 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Because the response would be the bigger disaster.

Employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote to Congress on Monday warning that the Trump administration had reversed much of the progress made in disaster response and recovery since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast two decades ago.

The letter to Congress, titled the “Katrina Declaration,” rebuked President Trump’s plan to drastically scale down FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster response — and more costs — to the states. It came days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest storms to ever strike the United States.

“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the FEMA employees wrote in the letter.

They added that they hoped their warnings would “come in time to prevent not only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American people such an event would represent.”

[…]

Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi caused an estimated 1,833 deaths and $161 billion in property damage and shook the country’s confidence in the government’s ability to handle disasters. President George W. Bush faced intense criticism for the slow federal response to Katrina’s devastation in New Orleans, leading to the resignation of his FEMA administrator, Michael D. Brown, and the passage of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act.

That landmark law required that FEMA administrators have a “demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management.” It also prohibited the homeland security secretary from interfering with FEMA’s “authorities, responsibilities or functions,” among other things.

But the Trump administration has ignored both requirements of the law, the FEMA employees wrote in the letter.

Mr. Trump installed first one and then another acting FEMA administrator who lack experience in emergency management. The current acting head, David Richardson, told employees in June that he did not know the United States had a hurricane season — a comment that unnerved FEMA employees who heard it. The agency later said Mr. Richardson was joking.

And Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has become directly involved in FEMA operations. She has imposed new spending rules that have delayed hundreds of FEMA contracts and that hampered FEMA’s response to the catastrophic floods that swept through Central Texas in July.

At the same time, the administration has eliminated billions of dollars in FEMA grants intended to help communities better withstand disasters. The administration is also now requiring disaster survivors to provide email addresses when applying for FEMA aid, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times — a change that could prevent people with limited internet access from receiving vital assistance.

And the very future of the agency is unclear. In June, Mr. Trump said he wanted to eliminate FEMA after the end of hurricane season and move emergency management efforts “back to the state level.” After the Texas floods in July, when many Americans were focused on the rescue efforts, the administration’s rhetoric softened and officials spoke instead of reforming the agency.

Still, about 2,000 employees have left FEMA since Mr. Trump took office, accounting for about one-third of the agency’s permanent work force. Those who resigned included some of the agency’s most accomplished leaders. The situation has alarmed the FEMA employees who signed the letter, which lamented the loss of “experienced staff whose institutional knowledge and relationships are vital to ensure effective emergency management.”

We’ve covered this before. It’s scary to consider how bad this could be. If Hurricane Erin had a moderately different path, the devastation would have been massive. We lucked out this time. Next time – and it only takes one time – we’re screwed. And the people who tried to warn us got suspended for their efforts. It’s going to take a long time to fix what is broken.

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DaSean Jones to resign from his bench in October

Posted on September 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This comes as a bit of a surprise.

Judge DaSean Jones, the elected Democrat in the 180th District Court and the defendant in Harris County’s last pending 2022 election contest suit, plans to resign in October, his lawyer said Friday.

Jones on Wednesday sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott announcing his resignation from the felony court effective Oct. 2, said Oliver Brown, who represents Jones in the election contest.

The letter does not elaborate on the reason for Jones’ resignation.

“It has been my privilege to serve the Great State of Texas — not for accolades or ambition, but for the enduring promise of equal justice under law,” Jones wrote.

A similar letter was also shared with Commissioners Court.

In that correspondence, the judge asked the county to cancel his benefits when he leaves office and that any money that may go to him after his departure should go to the general fund instead. He cited county rules that keep judges on the payroll following their resignation when a successor has not been appointed.

[…]

Pierce is still running for Jones’ bench, according to recent campaign filings.

The latest campaign filings for Jones shows he was most recently seeking to retain his bench. He had more than $48,000 in campaign funds through the end of June.

See here, here, and here for the latest updates in this saga. The single most likely reason for his departure is that he’s accepted a job offer, for whatever the reason. That’s a fairly normal thing and wouldn’t rate anything more than a by-the-way news item, if the overall circumstances were different. I would bet a not inconsiderable amount of money that Greg Abbott will appoint Tami Pierce to this bench as soon as Judge Jones’ resignation takes effect. Now there’s another seat for Democratic hopefuls to aim for.

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Ivermectin for everyone!

Posted on September 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Sure, why not?

The Texas House on Wednesday passed a bill that would make ivermectin — a drug used mostly in this country to treat livestock for parasites — available to Texans without a prescription.

The latest legislative action moves Texas closer to becoming the fifth state to approve the over-the-counter sale of the drug after it became popular as an unproven treatment for COVID-19.

House Bill 25 filed by state Rep. Joanne Shofner, R-Nacogdoches, passed the House, 87-47, after an energetic, three-hour debate along party lines. Shofner, surrounded by more than 20 Republicans at one point, argued her bill was championing medical freedom, giving Texans better access to a drug particularly outside cities where pharmacies outnumber physicians. Her bill does not put ivermectin on pharmacy shelves, but if it passes the Senate and becomes law, the drug would be available upon request from behind the pharmacist’s counter as Texans already do for other drugs, like Sudafed.

“It’s absolutely important for our rural communities — and there’s a lot of people in urban communities that are not able to get to their doctor — that they have more access to their pharmacist than they would their health care practitioner,” she said on Wednesday from the House floor. “It’s already behind the pharmacy counter. This is not a new thing.”

Ivermectin has remained relevant since the COVID-era zeitgeist that fueled skepticism of mainstream medicine and the health care system at large. Medical freedom advocates want to remove barriers that prevent them from taking whatever medication they say will make them healthier — especially if it’s an alternative to vaccines — even if its effectiveness is debatable. And, ivermectin is a model for their beliefs.

[…]

Shofner filed an identical bill during the regular session but the House didn’t vote on it, despite 58 pages of online testimony filed by residents who want to be able to access it without a prescription. This time around, her bill comes with the support of Gov. Greg Abbott who put ivermectin access on his expanded priority list last week after Texans for Vaccine Choice sent 7,000 signatures in support of the drug.

“Like penicillin and aspirin, ivermectin is a safe, affordable medicine with minimal side effects,” Shofner said.

[…]

Noticeably absent from the testimony was the Texas Board of Pharmacy whose members would be directly affected by the bill. The agency did not return a request for comment.

Michelle Evans with Texans for Vaccine Choice said the bill would return the decision-making process to patients.

“HB 25 is simple and long overdue and a shared priority for many in our state, including constituents in each of your districts,” she said. “It would enable Texans to take their health into their own hands.”

Who am I to argue with that kind of logic? But why stop there? Put a shot of ivermectin in your morning coffee! Use it to fertilize your lawn! Let Bahama Mama’s sell ivermectin gummies so they can stay in business after Dan Patrick bans THC! I’s sure someone is working on the Ivermectin Diet book as we speak. The sky’s the limit, let your dreams run wild. The Current has more.

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Weekend link dump for August 31

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“Trump did not invent the fact that it’s expensive to be an American parent—and often expensive in absurd ways—but he sure is not helping the situation. Truly: Why is the government punishing me for purchasing a stroller?”

“It can be easy to criticize parents who participate — or even just let their children participate — in the increasing professionalization and optimization of youth pitching. But the incentive would exist even if any one individual chose not to engage. In some ways, the most dangerous part about programs designed to help youth pitchers throw harder is that they work.”

“President Trump’s attack on numbers includes public polls, an essential feature of the democratic free press.”

“Scientists are exploring whether encouraging the growth of phytoplankton could draw down more atmospheric carbon — without unintended side effects in oceanic ecosystems.”

“Telling overwhelmed parents that God requires them to spank children who don’t instantly obey, while subtracting nonviolent alternatives, results in a toxic equation where parents are likely to escalate their disciplinary measures in order to achieve compliance. It’s a situation ripe for abuse and, in fact, grooms children for it in many ways.”

“James Dobson was a nasty dude. He liked to beat children and dogs with a belt and to rain misery and punishment on the vulnerable; we know all of this about him because he said as much in public, repeatedly, over a long and rancid public life. He enlisted a whole bunch of Ideology—patriarchy, social conservatism, utterly fake upside-down Christianity—in service of those basic motivations, not only to justify his own appetite for and personal acts of sadism and domination, but to cast punishment and predation as far out into the world as he could manage. He studied psychology and the Bible so that he could borrow their authority and instrumentalize them to do widespread cruelty more effectively. He was oriented to evil, at vast scale, by continual lifelong choice. It was his calling, and he made it his job.”

IT’S HAPPENING!

“New research found that countries where men do more housework and child care have higher fertility rates.”

“On Friday, a proposed class action was filed in Washington federal court against Amazon over a “bait and switch” in which the company allegedly misleads consumers into believing they’ve purchased content when they’re only getting a license to watch, which can be revoked at any time.”

Screw you, LinkedIn.

“If Alina Habba’s appointment is illegal, so is much more of Trump’s DOJ takeover.”

“Nathan Fielder Might Actually Make Flying Safer With ‘The Rehearsal'”.

“Denmark’s foreign minister had the top U.S. diplomat in the country summoned for talks after the main national public broadcaster reported Wednesday that at least three people with connections to President Trump have been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland.”

“The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning. My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud. I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur. I reject his and his colleagues’ thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed.”

“I don’t mean to say OKC doesn’t deserve iconic architecture. Far from! I simply think that buildings should reflect the character of a place, like how Santa Fe is all adobe and how Dallas looks designed by a sentient Ford-F150.”

“But Pulte’s attacks on Cook—along with his similar barrages against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—invite scrutiny of his own past dealings.”

“Slavery was very, very bad. It was also a major aspect of American history, which our national museums must continue to explain, if we are to understand our real past.”

You’d think a program designed to reduce the number of children who drown would be a good thing, but then you are not Donald Trump.

“The Trump administration is throwing various hobbies enjoyed by Americans into chaos and is harming small businesses domestically and abroad with its ever-changing tariff structure that is turning the United States into a hermit kingdom. It has made buying and selling things on eBay particularly annoying, and is making it harder and more expensive to, for example, buy vintage film cameras, retro video games, or vintage clothes from Japan, where many of the top eBay sellers are based.”

“Katrina destroyed New Orleans’ early childhood education. 20 years later, it’s a model for success.”

RIP, Dave McNeely, longtime Texas political reporter and columnist. I’d have preferred to refer to his obit in the Statesman, where he worked for most of his career, but it’s paywalled.

RIP, Randy Moffitt, former MLB pitcher mostly for the Giants, brother of tennis legend Billie Jean King, who shared a loving remembrance of him.

RIP, Lee Roy Jordan, five-time All Pro linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys who was on their first Super Bowl winner.

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Camps oppose floodplain restriction

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I gotta say, I’m not sure who they think will be sympathetic to this.

Leaders of three Kerr County youth camps wrote to Texas House lawmakers Friday opposing legislation that would prohibit the state from licensing camps with cabins in the 100-year floodplain.

Directors at Camp Waldemar, Camp Stewart and Vista Camps wrote that the proposed legislation — which passed the House but awaits approval by the Senate — would cost the camps millions of dollars in rebuilding costs and likely force them to close.

The three camps didn’t report any deaths due to the floods, but they all have structures located in the 100-year floodplain. A Texas Tribune analysis found two-thirds of the structures at Camp Stewart and a third at Camp Waldemar are in the floodplain.

Camp Mystic, where 27 girls and counselors died, has several buildings, including its dining hall and recreation hall, located in a floodway, an area deemed “extremely hazardous” by local officials, Hearst Newspapers found.

State Rep. Donna Howard, an Austin Democrat, introduced the floodplain prohibition amendment to House Bill 1, which requires overnight youth camps to create detailed plans for natural disasters and other emergencies, and establishes civil penalties for noncompliance.

Howard noted that 13 summer camps along the Guadalupe River have structures built on flood-prone land.

“These camps were allowed to operate under old statutes and agreements that have been in place for many decades,” she said. “We cannot continue to allow unsafe building practices to continue.”

There’s a copy of the letter in the story. My Lege roundup post noted the floodplain restriction in HB1, and that it hasn’t passed the Senate yet. SB1, which has passed the Senate but not the House, has the same provision. The Trib provides some more details.

State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flood and the primary author of one of the bills, told the Tribune last week there would be no state assistance for camps to comply with pending legislation if it passes.

“No, camps are private enterprises,” Perry told The Texas Tribune after family members of the 27 Camp Mystic flood victims testified before his committee on Aug. 20. “The state’s not rebuilding private sector camps.”

[…]

Originally, legislators had planned just to require that camps evacuate kids from campgrounds in the floodplain if the weather service issued a flash flood warning and to install ladders on cabins so campers could climb onto rooftops if the situation grew dire and for some reason they hadn’t evacuated. But parents of the kids who died at Camp Mystic pushed to get more restrictive, camp-focused legislation on the table.

“The combination of devastating floods and the heavy financial burden proposed under new state regulations presents an impossible challenge,” the camps’ letter stated. “Collectively, our camps would face millions of dollars in mandated rebuilding costs for cabins subjected to the prohibition that did not sustain damage by recent flooding. These additional burdens would come on top of already significant flood repairs, operational expenses, and existing loans.”

A representative for the Camp Mystic families’ campaign for camp safety said, “We believe the parents’ testimonies and recent media interviews speak for themselves. We have no comment about this letter, but we support lawmakers’ efforts to pass SB1 and HB1 to ensure common sense safety reforms are in place for the 2026 summer camp season.”

I don’t say this often, but I agree with Senator Perry. The letter posted in the Chron story was addressed to Speaker Burrows, but the Trib reported that the letter was originally sent to Dan Patrick, with copies sent to Greg Abbott and legislators. I get why these camps are asking for this restriction to be removed, but I have a hard time believing they will get any kind of positive reaction. There’s a lot more that the state can and should be doing, as noted in my earlier post, and maybe some of that will mitigate the financial hit that these camps will feel. None of that changes the fact that building in high-risk flood areas is a bad idea and should be prevented wherever possible.

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Paxton throws a fit over being slowed down by Republican judges

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

There sadly isn’t a good straight news (non-paywalled) story about this, but Raw Story has a decent summary.

Also a big crybaby

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took to X on Wednesday to rage against state appeals court judges after they paused discovery in his case, trying to shut down fundraising for former Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke’s organization, Powered By People.

[…]

Paxton [had] filed to block Powered By People from contributing to the fines, travel expenses, and lost wages of the protesting Democratic lawmakers, alleging it was an illegal bribery scheme.

With his suit at least temporarily scuppered, Paxton accused the judges — who were appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — of helping Democrats break the law.

“What we are witnessing in Texas right now is a constitutional crisis being orchestrated by activist judges on the Beto-loving Fifteenth Court of Appeals,” wrote Paxton. “Beto said, ‘f*** the rules,’ and these unelected justices — Scott Brister, Scott Field, and April Farris — are helping him do just that with his unlawful bribery scheme. What’s worse is that the Texas Supreme Court just made a ruling refusing to stop the appeals court’s insane decision to help Beto.”

“We must stop Beto from buying off our politicians and the judicial activism allowing it to happen,” he continued.

O’Rourke then hit back in a short response to Paxton’s manifesto.

“You think the 15th appeals court judges appointed by Greg Abbott are working for me?” he wrote, astounded. “You okay?”

See here, here, and here for some background. Basically, after Paxton got a Tarrant County judge to issue a restraining order against Beto and Powered by People, Beto got an El Paso judge to put a hold on Paxton’s efforts to pursue the case. Beto also filed a motion to move Paxton’s original case from Tarrant County, which as far as I can tell was chosen by Paxton as a convenient location to file his suit, to El Paso County where both he and Powered by People are located. That was denied by the Tarrant County judge. He also filed a writ of mandamus with the new statewide 15th Court of Appeals, which as noted currently has three judges, all appointed by Greg Abbott, to either dismiss the Tarrant County case or set aside the judge’s denial of the motion to change venues.

On Tuesday, the 15th Court of Appeals released an order putting a pause on further activity for now:

It appears from the facts stated in the petition and motion that relators’ request for emergency relief requires further consideration. Because this Court needs sufficient time to review the merits of relators’ emergency motion, we issue the following administrative stay:

We ORDER the hearing on the State’s Application for Temporary Injunction set September 2, 2025, in trial court cause number 348-367652-2025, The State of Texas v. Robert Francis O’Rourke and Powered by People, STAYED until a final decision by this Court on relators’ emergency motion or until further order of this Court. We further ORDER the trial court’s August 15, 2025 Order on Expedited Discovery in trial court cause number 348-367652-2025, The State of Texas v. Robert Francis O’Rourke and Powered by People, STAYED until a final decision by this Court on relators’ emergency motion or until further order of this Court.

In addition, the Court grants the State’s request for an extension of time to file a response and requests the State of Texas, the real party-in-interest, to file a response to the emergency motion and the petition for writ of mandamus on or before September 9, 2025. See Tex. R. App. P. 52.4.

And then the Supreme Court, also all Republican, denied Paxton’s emergency motion to set aside the 15th Court’s order. None of this means that Beto is going to prevail on any of his motions, just that the Court wants to hear arguments about it, and as is totally normal in these situations they put everything on hold until they decide what to do. And this caused Ken Paxton, giant crybaby that he is, to whine and rage about not immediately getting everything he wanted from Republican judges, who are obviously not Real Republicans for not catering to his every whim.

So that’s where we are now. There are two dueling lawsuits, in two different counties, and the appellate courts will need to give some direction about how that will proceed. Pretty normal lawyer stuff, but enough to cause Paxton to melt down. It’s both pathetic and hilarious at the same time. See KVUE’s brief video story, the excerpt from Bloomberg Law’s paywalled story, Bayliss Wagner and Beto himself on Twitter for more.

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What the Lege has done since redistricting

Posted on August 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Just a couple of headlines to ponder, now that the redistricting bill has been signed.

Texas House greenlights ‘bounty hunter’ abortion pill ban

Texas House OKs transgender bathroom ban after years of GOP attempts

Yep, definitely doing the hard work to deal with the serious issues that the people face. This is pretty much all the Republicans care about these days.

Oh, and this too: Bill giving attorney general authority to prosecute election crimes heads to Abbott’s desk. At last report, this was considered a Constitutional matter and not a legislative one, but those clever kids think they’ve found a way around that. You can expect this will land before the Court of Criminal Appeals again.

What about bills related to the Hill Country floods? They did do some things.

Emergency plans for youth camps

House Bill 1 requires sleepaway youth camps to create detailed plans – including evacuation, shelter-in-place and first-responder communication protocols – for natural disasters and other emergencies, and establishes civil penalties for noncompliance.

It also prohibits the state from issuing or renewing a license for a youth camp that operates a cabin in the 100-year floodplain. Several of the camps where girls died, including Camp Mystic, had cabins located in areas deemed “extremely hazardous” by local officials, the Houston Chronicle found.

The measure passed the full House but could still be changed by the Senate before heading to Gov. Greg Abbott.

Disaster preparedness

Senate Bill 2 expands rapid response training for local officials, creates a tiered licensing system for emergency managers and establishes a statewide volunteer database managed by the Texas Department of Emergency Management. The measure has passed both chambers and is being finalized in a conference committee.

Radio communication

House Bill 3, a version of which narrowly failed during the regular session earlier this year, establishes the Texas Interoperability Council to address issues with communication among first responders from different jurisdictions, which may use incompatible devices and infrastructure.

Reporting by the Houston Chronicle found numerous examples of emergency situations across the state – from the Panhandle wirefires last year to the mass shooting in Uvalde in 2022 – when first responders were unable to effectively communicate.

The measure passed the full House and awaits passage by the Senate.

Emergency warning sirens

Senate Bill 3 requires areas prone to flash floods to install emergency siren systems and instructs the governor’s office to create a grant program to assist local governments with the costs of installing outdoor siren systems. Flash-flood areas required to have outdoor sirens will be identified by the Texas Water Development Board.

The bill has passed both chambers and now heads to the governor’s desk for final approval.

All of those things could have been done in the first session before redistricting was prioritized, but they weren’t. Because their actual priorities always come first.

Also:

Although experts praised the measures, some said lawmakers didn’t go far enough to mitigate future disasters.

“In a way, those are the easy issues,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental law professor at Rice University. “The harder issues have to do with flood planning and floodplain regulation and getting accurate information and keeping up with climate change. All of which are issues that the state hadn’t been particularly interested in.”

He said the legislature ought to give counties explicit authority to regulate land use and development in floodplains — and the ability to raise local funds for flood mitigation and management. Of the 1,450 cities and counties in Texas, only 150 collect a dedicated drainage fee, which can be used for projects that reduce flood risk.

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the Legislature created a Flood Infrastructure Fund to help local communities finance flood control and mitigation projects. Lawmakers have allocated roughly $1.4 billion to the fund.

That’s a fraction of what’s needed: In 2024, the first statewide flood plan recommended thousands of specific projects for flood risk reduction, flood mitigation and floodplain management, for a total cost of $54.5 billion.

Most of those projects remain unfunded. In a February report, the TWDB found that the Flood Infrastructure Fund had far more demand than what was available to spend – more than $2 billion in applications for $375 million in available funds.

But as the story notes, some $51 billion has been allocated for property tax cuts. Because priorities.

Here’s one thing that hasn’t happened, and at this point seems unlikely to happen.

After several months of fiery debate and tearful testimonies over the prospect of banning THC statewide, proposed measures to do so have stalled in the Texas House.

Senate Bill 6, which would have created a blanket ban on products containing any “detectable amount of any cannabinoid” other than cannabidiol and cannabigerol, better known as CBD and CBG, non-intoxicating components of cannabis, hasn’t been heard in a House committee after the Senate passed it Aug. 19. The House’s version of the bill hasn’t been heard in its chamber’s committee either.

Ten days might not be long for a bill to sit dormant during a regular legislative session, but with state leadership suggesting that the current special legislative session could wind down in the coming days, lawmakers would have to move fast on THC upon reconvening after Monday’s holiday.

Without further regulations or a ban being discussed by lawmakers in the House, the most likely scenario is that hemp-derived THC remains legal in Texas, but with more enforcement of current laws restricting the drug.

“It seems like a lot of people don’t want anything to do with it,” said Lukas Gilkey, chief executive of Hometown Hero, an Austin-based manufacturer of hemp-derived THC products. “It’s a hot potato.”

You may recall that Abbott’s veto was the original impetus for our special session-infested summer. Abbott then went all squishy on the “allow but regulate” front, but with his typical lack of attention to detail, any legislation that might have done something (good or Dan Patrick-level bad) has languished. Probably just as well, to be honest.

I’ll leave you with two items. One is this press release from Equality Texas about the bathroom bill:

Today, the Texas House passed SB8, the latest version of Texas’ trans bathroom ban. The only amendment accepted during the House floor debate raised the civil penalties to $25,000 for the first offense and $125,000 for the second offense (amendment language attached). Because the House version was amended, the bill will return to the Texas Senate, where the chamber will have the opportunity to concur with changes or create a bi-cameral conference committee. That is the last step before going to the Governor’s desk.

The first bathroom ban was proposed in 2017, and failed to pass after overwhelming opposition from the business community and Texans of all walks of life. No Texas bathroom ban has ever reached this stage in the process.

During the regular session, advocates testified in the Senate against the bathroom ban, but the House did not hold a hearing. During the first special session, yet again, the Senate held a hearing, but the House did not. After some House Democrats broke quorum, the Governor called a second special session, and the Senate suspended the rules to push through SB8 on its own terms at a breakneck speed. Last Friday, the House State Affairs committee held a hearing on the ban. Despite threats of violence against trans people, opposition to the ban far outnumbered support.

Statement from Brad Pritchett, Interim CEO of Equality Texas:

“We judge a society by how it treats those at the margins, and we judge people with power by the choices they make with that power. Today, with the passage of the bathroom bill, Texas lawmakers have failed their constituents on both counts. This bill continues a crusade designed to exclude transgender Texans from participation in public life—but ultimately it will fail. Transgender Texans have always been here and always will be. We’re going to keep fighting until every Texan is free and safe.”

Statement from Ash Hall (they/them), policy and advocacy strategist for LGBTQIA+ rights at the ACLU of Texas:

“It is unconscionable and unconstitutional to pass this bathroom ban.

Texans, including the transgender community, should be able to safely use public facilities that align with our gender identities as a basic matter of respect, safety, and privacy. Instead, S.B. 8 will encourage ‘gender policing’ by bad actors who seek to harass or harm transgender people — or anyone who may not conform to stereotypical gender roles in public spaces. This law puts anyone at risk who doesn’t seem masculine or feminine enough to a random stranger, including the cisgender girls and women this bill purports to protect. Some people might forgo using public restrooms entirely out of fear for their safety, even if it endangers their health.

“This bill is bad for trans and intersex people, bad for cisgender people, bad for business, bad for public health and safety, and bad for Texas. Transgender people have always been here and always will be.”

Statement from Lambda Legal: Regional Director, Shelly Skeen:

“Texas has launched another cruel and unconstitutional attack in its relentless effort to erase a vulnerable and very small percentage of Texans–who will not and cannot be erased,” said Lambda Legal South Central Regional Director Shelly Skeen. “This is not the first such attack on the transgender community, and sadly, it will likely not be the last. It is reprehensible that anti-transgender state legislators in Texas — indeed nationwide — keep singling out transgender people to exclude them from participating fully in society simply because of who they are.  We join with our allies across Texas in condemning this bill. It is harmful, discriminatory and cruel, especially when there are so many real issues confronting Texas and Texans–to focus instead on restrooms, not to mention the fact that it also bans transgender students across Texas from using the same restrooms as their peers, turning them into outsiders in their own communities.”

Statement from HRC President Kelley Robinson:

“Everyone deserves to be safe in the most private of spaces. But this latest attack from anti-equality lawmakers will put all Texans at risk. It represents a dangerous government overreach and is impossible to enforce without exposing people to humiliating inspections and questioning. For transgender Texans in particular, this will make it that much harder to go about their daily lives without fear of violence or harassment. For the bullies in Austin, everything they are doing in this special session is about exerting control simply because they can: control over who represents the people of Texas in Congress, control over the legislators’ ability to leave the legislative chamber, and control over who can safely use the restroom. All Texans deserve better. That’s why we won’t back down. We will organize, mobilize, and fight until every Texan can live freely, authentically, and without fear.”

Statement from Texas Freedom Network Political Director Rocío Fierro-Pérez:

“Government overreach into how we use the bathroom is unacceptable. Texans are worth more than lawmakers who spend their time stripping away the safety and dignity of transgender Texans while weaponizing fear to deny people the basic freedom to exist safely in public life. Regulating bathroom access not only hurts transgender people, but it also opens the door for invasive gender tests at every public restroom. Texas Freedom Network will continue to fight alongside transgender Texans and families until they are fairly represented in our state.”

And from the ACLU, on a bill from the regular session:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Transgender Law Center, and Baker McKenzie filed a lawsuit Thursday evening in federal court challenging key aspects of Senate Bill 12 on behalf of the Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) Network, Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), a teacher, an individual student, and her parent.

S.B. 12 bans programs and discussions relating to race, gender identity, and sexual orientation in all public and charter schools in Texas from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. It eliminates a wide range of activities that foster inclusion and promote equal opportunity, including events celebrating Black, Latine, Asian, and Indigenous history; trainings on cultural awareness and inclusion; and critical conversations between students, parents, and educators about topics relating to race, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

“Senate Bill 12 is a blatant attempt to erase students’ identities and silence the stories that make Texas strong,” said Brian Klosterboer (he/him), senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “Every student — no matter their race, gender, or background — deserves to feel seen, safe, and supported in school. Programs and activities relating to race, gender identity, and sexual orientation not only provide vital support for students and educators of color and the LGBTQIA+ community — they allow all students to encounter a wider range of perspectives and experiences that deepen their understanding of the world around them.

“S.B. 12 is one of the most extreme education censorship laws in the country, undermining the free speech rights of Texas students, parents, and educators. We’re challenging this law in court because our schools should be places of truth, inclusion, and opportunity — not fear and erasure.”

Other components of S.B. 12 threaten the safety and privacy of transgender and nonbinary students in Texas schools by making it much more difficult for educators to support them. The law entirely bans clubs such as Genders & Sexualities Alliances (formerly known as Gay-Straight Alliances, GSAs), which foster a safe, welcoming, and accepting on-campus school environment for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Our mission remains true – we know that trans, queer, and Two Spirit youth exist in Texas, belong in Texas, and have the right to self-determine their futures in Texas,” said J. Gia Loving (she/hers), and Maya LaFlamme (she/hers), co-executive directors at Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network. “No matter the ongoing efforts of state legislators to outlaw and ostracize their own people; we know that we cannot be legislated out of existence. GSAs are here to stay.”

“Across races, backgrounds, and genders, we all share the same hope: that our kids can learn freely, be themselves, and grow up healthy and safe. Yet some politicians are trying to further their careers by silencing teachers and depriving students of educational opportunities,” said Shawn Thomas Meerkamper (they/them), managing attorney at Transgender Law Center. “Schools must be welcoming spaces for all students — places where every young person has an equal chance to learn, form friendships, and thrive in clubs, activities, and events that affirm who they are.”

Additionally, S.B. 12 stops students from receiving information about gender identity or sexual orientation in every grade level. The law’s restrictions apply not just to classroom learning, but to after-school programs, field trips, and informal guidance provided by parents, volunteers, and school employees.

“This law isn’t about improving education — it’s about weaponizing it,” said Cameron Samuels (they/them), executive director at SEAT. “S.B. 12 seeks to erase students’ identities and make it impossible for teachers, parents, and volunteers to tell the truth about the history and diversity of our state. The law also guts vital support systems for Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and LGBTQIA+ students and educators. We’re suing on behalf of students across Texas to ensure that our schools remain places where all students are safe, supported, and given the best opportunity to thrive.”

S.B. 12 was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott in June and has already started being implemented and causing harm across the state.

The plaintiffs also filed a motion for preliminary injunction seeking to block the enforcement of unconstitutional aspects of the law while this case makes its way through the courts. The plaintiffs are challenging S.B. 12’s restrictions as unconstitutional in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and as violating the federal Equal Access Act.

Access a video statement from Azeemah Sadiq (she/her), an Alief ISD student and senior policy associate at SEAT: https://aclutx.dash.app/sharing/type/asset/5342a3cc-5ff0-48fc-8ed9-78fdd179021e

Access more information about the lawsuit here: https://www.aclutx.org/en/cases/gsa-v-morath

To access resources on how you can defend students’ rights in Texas, visit: https://www.aclutx.org/en/students-rights-hub

If you or someone you know are impacted by S.B. 12, contact: https://intake.aclutx.org/

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources or support, visit:

Here’s the Trib story about this lawsuit. You can be sure there will be more litigation to come.

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Do we still want flood tunnels if Elon is building them?

Posted on August 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Fascinating stuff.

Japanese flood tunnel

The devastating flooding in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 killed dozens of people, inundated hundreds of thousands of homes and left the community desperate for a solution.

Since then, local flood experts have extensively studied the possibility of a multibillion-dollar tunnel system across Harris County, where Houston is located. Studies have focused on the construction of pipelines, 30 to 40 feet in diameter, that could ferry massive amounts of water out to the Gulf in the event of a storm.

Now, after years of research and discussion, Elon Musk wants a piece of the project.

An investigation by The Texas Newsroom and the Houston Chronicle has found that the billionaire, in partnership with Houston-area Rep. Wesley Hunt, has spent months aggressively pushing state and local officials to hire Musk’s Boring Co. to build two narrower, 12-foot tunnels around one major watershed. That could be a potentially cheaper, but, at least one expert said, less effective solution to the region’s historic flooding woes.

Hunt’s team has said the Boring project would cost $760 million and involve the company getting 15% of the cost up front from state and local coffers.

Within two months of this push, the Harris County Commissioners Court unanimously voted to study a pilot program that included a look at smaller tunnels, with specifications similar to what Boring had pitched. The commissioners court, made up of five elected members including a county judge, oversees the county’s budget.

Both Musk and Hunt stand to benefit should Boring be selected to build any part of the project. Hunt is reportedly considering a challenge to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s Republican Senate primary. And landing a job like this would also be a significant win for Boring, which has not completed a major public project in Texas and faces criticisms for its ventures elsewhere.

The discussions about the Boring pitch have happened mostly out of the public eye. Hunt mentioned the project in passing at a town hall in Houston in February. Since then, he has refused to answer the newsrooms’ questions about when Musk sold him on the idea and why he became its pitchman.

Efforts to reach Musk and representatives with Boring were not returned.

Experts and some local officials question whether Musk and his company are the right pick for the job. The Boring Co. has focused on transportation tunnels, not flood mitigation.

“If you build a smaller tunnel, OK, it’ll be cheaper, but it can carry less water,” said Larry Dunbar, a veteran water resources engineer who has advised Houston-area governmental agencies on drainage issues. “So what have you saved? Have you reduced the flooding upstream by an inch? And are you going to spend multimillions of dollars to do that? Well, maybe that’s not worth it.”

In response to the newsrooms’ questions, state and local officials said no public money has been allocated to Boring. County officials added that they have not chosen a tunnel contractor and any process to do so would follow normal procurement rules.

[…]

As they pushed the idea to state lawmakers, Hunt’s team repeatedly lobbied Harris County officials, reaching out to at least two commissioners, the county’s legislative liaison and flood control experts.

Early on, Houston officials had concerns about what Boring proposed.

The two-page letter from Boring said its tunnels would be “no shallower than 15 feet to 30 feet below ground surface,” while the county’s previous research proposed a much deeper range for the Buffalo Bayou segment.

An engineering expert in County Commissioner Tom Ramsey’s office warned that Boring’s shallower plan could interfere with bridge foundations, utility lines and existing easements.

“It discusses that the tunnel would be much shallower then anticipated,” Eric Heppen, Ramsey’s director of engineering, wrote in an email to other staffers in his office on Feb. 17. “I would quickly confirm if it can be deeper or if that becomes a load challenge for the system.”

Boring said in its pitch that the tunnel depth is “flexible,” but the company did not respond to the newsrooms’ question about whether it can build to the standards outlined in the county’s study.

Volume was another concern. A single 40-foot-wide tunnel can move about 12,000 cubic feet of water every second, county studies show. Two 12-foot-wide tunnels, laid side by side, as Boring proposed, might struggle to keep pace in a flood emergency, according to Dunbar, the veteran water resources engineer.

“One would need eleven 12-foot diameter tunnels to provide the same flow capacity as one 40-foot diameter tunnel,” he told the newsrooms. “Providing only two 12-foot diameter tunnels does not provide the flow capacity that Harris County or the Corps of Engineers are seeking.”

A diagram of tunnels underground. Two tunnels labeled “Boring Co. Plan” are 12 feet wide and 30 feet deep. They look relatively small and shallow compared to another tunnel, labeled “Flood Control District Study,” that is 40 feet across and 140 feet deep.

The county continued to engage with the company despite these concerns.

See here for previous flood tunnel blogging, which I first noted in 2018, as it was then part of the medley of flood mitigation ideas being put forth after Hurricane Harvey. As this story notes, there was a bill passed last year with a push from Reps. Lizzie Fletcher and Wesley Hunt to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete an ongoing study on the efficacy of flood tunnels. This is the first reporting on anything like this in Harris County.

So far it seems like a lot of talk, with no money being committed to anything. I generally align with a quote from Jim Blackburn at the end of the story, where he says that the scope of the flooding issue requires all of us to be “open-minded about ideas”, as long as we’re not rushing into any particular project. I also greatly sympathize with Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who says that we should prefer to keep Elon Musk out of it because of his “blatant disregard for democratic institutions and environmental protections”. At the very least, let’s be fully transparent about what’s going on here.

One more thing, on the subject of the tunnels’ sizes. Commissioner Ramsey’s director of engineering is absolutely right about the math. Given that the length of the tunnels would be the same, the volume of a 12-foot diameter tunnel (36π times the length) would indeed be about one-eleventh the volume of a 40-foot diameter tunnel (400π times the length), and so it is reasonable to ask whether it would be worth it to spend the money to build those smaller tunnels, even if it is a lot cheaper. Let’s be sure we know how much volume we need to make this worthwhile, and then we can determine the best and most cost-effective way of getting there.

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By the way, COVID is still out there

Posted on August 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Just FYI.

Covid cases are climbing again this summer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s forecasting model estimates that infections are growing, or likely growing, in most states.

While the agency is reporting low levels of the virus in wastewater nationally, some states, including Texas, Utah and Nevada, are showing very high concentrations of Covid in their wastewater. Emergency department visits linked to Covid are rising, too.

Researchers have braced for an uptick. Though the virus is largely unpredictable — variants shape-shift and symptoms can change from one infection to the next — Covid cases have gone up every summer since the pandemic began.

Around this time last year, there were higher levels of Covid in wastewater than there are currently; this appears to be, so far, a milder wave.

As of June, when the C.D.C. last updated its variant tracker, the Covid variant NB.1.8.1. — nicknamed “Nimbus” — accounted for the most cases in the United States, around 43 percent.

The variant does not appear to make people sicker than other recent strains of the virus, but it does have a few additional mutations that might make it more transmissible and better at evading the immune system’s defenses, said Dr. Aubree Gordon, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Michigan.

The latest data suggests that while we’re not in a full-on surge, we are in a late summer upswing, said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a senior clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Very clearly, the numbers are going up,” he said. “It’s here.”

The rest of the story gets into why COVID is up, and it’s a familiar litany of reasons – people are travelling and congregating in well-populated public spaces, and also spending more time indoors because it’s so bloody hot outside. Also, immunity wanes over time and it’s been awhile since the last booster. The next booster will be harder to get, so there will be more people susceptible to whatever the latest variant is as we go forward. Sure is a good thing that there haven’t been any nasty variants lately, because when there is we’re all gonna get it.

UPDATE: Also, too, the CDC is a disaster right now thanks to Trump and RFK Jr.

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Hearing set on new Congressional map

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Here we go

A federal judicial panel will hear arguments beginning Oct. 1 for an injunction against the implementation of new congressional boundaries approved by the Texas Legislature.

According to three lawyers who were in the El Paso courtroom Wednesday when judges made the decision, the hearing on the congressional boundaries will take place from Oct. 1-10 in El Paso. That would allow enough time for the three-judge panel to make a decision on whether the maps are legal or violate the federal Voting Rights Act before the December filing deadline for the 2026 elections.

“They came up with the best time under the circumstances,” said Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas NAACP and one of the group’s lawyers. Bledsoe is also a lawyer for U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas.

“We think this is a case where the racial bias is just overt,” Bledsoe said before getting on a flight back to Austin.

A 67-page complaint, filed hours after the map was approved by the Legislature, argues that the redistricting plan is discriminatory.

State Rep. Matt Shaheen, R-Prosper and chairman of the House Elections Committee, said 2026 candidates would likely run under the new boundaries.

“I have a high level of confidence that after further review the maps passed by the Texas Legislature will stand,” Shaheen said.

[…]

Bledsoe said Trump’s request that Texas embark on mid-decade redistricting will be the center of the plaintiff’s case.

“Trump’s letter will be exhibit No. 1,” he said.

See here, here, and here for the background. The plaintiffs have gotten most of what they wanted at this stage, which is the expedited hearing that will give them the chance to stop the new map from being used in the 2026 election. No word at this time on their request to get a final ruling on the original lawsuit. This was the easy part, one in which the defendants were more or less in agreement. Actually getting the map blocked is a much bigger lift, one that would need to withstand the appeals process as well. I’m not sure how sturdy the strategy of hinging the case on “mid-decade redistricting” is, but they’re the experts. What I know for sure is that the October trial will be a marquee event. Michael Li has a copy of the court’s order, and the Lone Star Project has more.

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How Trump made the measles outbreak worse

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Everything Trump touches dies.

As measles surged in Texas early this year, the Trump administration’s actions sowed fear and confusion among CDC scientists that kept them from performing the agency’s most critical function — emergency response — when it mattered most, an investigation from KFF Health News shows.The outbreak soon became the worst the United States has endured in over three decades.

In the month after Donald Trump took office, his administration interfered with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communications, stalled the agency’s reports, censored its data, and abruptly laid off staff. In the chaos, CDC experts felt restrained from talking openly with local public health workers, according to interviews with seven CDC officials with direct knowledge of events, as well as local health department emails obtained by KFF Health News through public records requests.

“CDC hasn’t reached out to us locally,” Katherine Wells, the public health director in Lubbock, Texas, wrote in a Feb. 5 email exchange with a colleague two weeks after children with measles were hospitalized in Lubbock. “My staff feels like we are out here all alone,” she added.

A child would die before CDC scientists contacted Wells.

“All of us at CDC train for this moment, a massive outbreak,” one CDC researcher told KFF Health News, which agreed not to name CDC officials who fear retaliation for speaking with the press. “All this training and then we weren’t allowed to do anything.”

Delays have catastrophic consequences when measles spreads in undervaccinated communities, like many in West Texas. If a person with measles is in the same room with 10 unvaccinated people, nine will be infected, researchers estimate. If those nine go about their lives in public spaces, numbers multiply exponentially.

The outbreak that unfolded in West Texas illustrates the danger the country faces under the Trump administration as vaccination rates drop, misinformation flourishes, public health budgets are cut, and science agencies are subject to political manipulation.

While the Trump administration stifled CDC communications, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fueled doubt in vaccines and exaggerated the ability of vitamins to ward off disease. Suffering followed: The Texas outbreak spread to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Mexico’s Chihuahua state — at minimum. Together these linked outbreaks have sickened more than 4,500 people, killed at least 16, and levied exorbitant costs on hospitals, health departments, and those paying medical bills.

It’s a long story and you should read all of it. A couple of points to note are how previous outbreaks in New York and Washington were successfully contained thanks to significant involvement by the CDC, how the state of Texas didn’t do much to push the Trump administration to take the handcuffs off the CDC so they could get involved sooner, and how RFK Jr did his usual bullshit and how it also contributed to the mess. It’s also important to note those numbers at the end, as they serve as a reminder that this all was and still is much bigger than just what happened in Texas.

One more thing:

To work on the ground, the CDC needs an invitation from the state. But Anne Schuchat, a former CDC deputy director, said that during her 33 years with the agency, federal health officials didn’t need special permission to talk freely with local health departments during outbreaks. “We would always offer a conversation and ask if there’s anything we could do,” she said.

Lara Anton, a press officer at the Texas health department, said the state never prevented the CDC from calling county officials. To learn more about the state’s correspondences with the CDC, KFF Health News filed a public records request to the Texas health department. The department refused to release the records. Anton called the records “confidential under the Texas Health and Safety Code.”

Anton said the state sent vaccines, testing supplies, and staff to assist West Texas in the early weeks of February. That’s corroborated in emails from the South Plains Public Health District, which oversees Gaines County, the area hit hardest by measles.

“Texas will try to handle what it needs to before it goes to the CDC,” Zach Holbrooks, the health district’s executive director, told KFF Health News.

Responding to an outbreak in an undervaccinated community, however, requires enormous effort. To keep numbers from exploding, public health workers ideally would notify all people exposed to an infected person and ask them to get vaccinated immediately if they weren’t already. If they declined, officials would try to persuade them to avoid public spaces for three weeks so that they wouldn’t spread measles to others.

Holbrooks said this was nearly impossible. Cases were concentrated in close-knit Mennonite communities where people relied on home remedies before seeking medical care. He said many people didn’t want to be tested, didn’t want to name their contacts, and didn’t want to talk with the health department. “It doesn’t matter what resources I have if people won’t avail themselves of it,” Holbrooks said.

Historically, Mennonites faced persecution in other countries, making them leery of interacting with authorities, Holbrooks said. A backlash against covid restrictions deepened that mistrust.

Another reason Mennonites may seek to avoid authorities is that some live in the U.S. illegally, having immigrated to Texas from Canada, Mexico, and Bolivia in waves over the past 50 years. Locals guess the population of Seminole, the main city in Gaines County, is far larger than the U.S. Census count.

“I have no idea how many cases we might have missed, since I don’t know how many people are in the community,” Holbrooks said. “There’s a lot of people in the shadows out here.”

We heard repeatedly that the case count in Texas was likely to be short of the real figure, for a variety of reasons including people simply not reporting illnesses in their homes. I did not know about the immigration issue, which of course casts some of this in a wholly different light. I doubt that these conservative cloistered Christians (who I’d guess are mostly white) in a small rural town would be a priority for ICE, but then there’s no reason at all to trust anything this administration or that department is doing. My point is that even in ways you might not have conceived of before, the Trump administration made this outbreak worse through its own malice and incompetence.

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Dispatches from Dallas, August 29 edition

Posted on August 29, 2025 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 we have a lot of budget news in Dallas, the suburbs, and almost every taxing agency in the greater DFW area; Dallas has to fire a new city hire for failing to meet charter requirements; Mayor Johnson’s summer vacation; Monty Bennett has financial problems; the latest on the Dallas Morning News sale; trouble in Commissioner’s Court in both Dallas and Tarrant County; the Dallas County Jail fails a state inspection; another death in the Tarrant County Jail; Tarrant County cuts polling places by a third in what local columnist Bud Kennedy thinks is an anti-Fort Worth disfranchisement effort; Bo French runs his mouth, or at least his typing fingers, on Xitter again; DART keeps trying to make everyone happy or at least kicks some of the cans down the road; the latest in sports news from the Cowboys and the Mavs; and last, but not least, the State Fair food winners.

To get this down to a readable length, I had to do a lot of trimming; next week I hope to talk some about local issues around redistricting, immigration, and schools, all of which took more room than I had this week. The end of the summer has been busy.

Let’s start in Dallas and go from there:

  • Dallas is doubling its facilities budget after figuring out that they hadn’t been spending nearly enough on them. D Magazine has a nice piece on the problems with Dallas’ facilities and even the numbers we’re seeing now are probably an underestimate. Watch the charter amendments, especially Prop U, bite us in the butt again.
  • Speaking of Prop U, people are starting to see what it means and they don’t like it. We’re probably going to lose five library branches, including Skillman, the subject of a major effort to save it last year. Also we’ve had a lot of press coverage about closure of the city’s nine community pools over the next three years. That’s not all our pools but the nine oldest that need the most repairs and are at the end of their lifespan (some of them were built in the 1940s). And as the Dallas Observer notes, most of the closures will hit the southern half of the city. We’ll still have 11 pools and aquatic centers, but the older ones won’t be replaced for now. The Dallas Morning News editorial board, as usual, is the voice of financial reason but somehow its discussion of the fiscal realities of the city neglects to mention Prop U.
  • We’re also fighting about how developer money will be spent for park space, which is an inside baseball story about park fees, new state laws, and the Park Board vs the City Council, which wants to be more developer friendly.
  • Another charter amendment hit: when the city hired its new Inspector General a couple of months ago, they missed the new charter requirement for that post to be filled by an attorney. So they hired someone who isn’t a lawyer and just had to sack him. This was not the search firm who botched the City Manager search last year, with the brochure featuring the Houston skyline. No word on the next search firm the city will be hiring.
  • Wandering back round to the actual budget, our property tax rate may drop but between inflation in general and the rise in property values in Dallas, we’re probably not going to get an actual reduction in taxes.
  • In other Dallas news, our party-switching MAGA mayor wants to rename one of our city departments in a sort of DOGE-ish fashion as part of his effort to streamline the city. He also wants to get rid of City Council’s ability to attend virtually and require them to show up to City Hall in person. He put this rule on the agenda following his own eight-day trip in July to Tanzania to sign a sister-city agreement with Dar-es-Salaam. In addition to his official work, Mayor Johnson visited two luxury safari lodges. The trip cost almost $45,000, some of which will be paid by donors but the rest of which will come from taxpayers.
  • Local billionaire, Dallas Express slime-spreader, and Dallas HERO amendment-sponsoring troublemaker Monty Bennett has been having financial problems with his hotel empire. Read up on the details if you’re into that kind of thing. Couldn’t happen to a nicer, and especially a hotel magnate dependent on leisure money Americans are being squeezed out of and foreigners can’t get here to spend.
  • DallasNews Corp. is putting its sale of the Dallas Morning News to Hearst to a shareholder vote in September. The controlling shareholder, Robert Dechard, also a former chair of the board, is determined to sell to Hearst instead of “vulture” Alden Global Capital, which has inserted itself into the bidding uninvited. D Magazine’s analysis of the sale triangle remains good. I’m not enthused about any of the options: Alden will strip the paper for parts; Hearst owns too many papers in Texas; and the current ownership hasn’t managed the paper very well. But if it’s Hearst or Alden, I’d vote for Hearst too.
  • To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Fort Worth hired former Dallas PD Chief Eddie Garcia, previously seen following former City Manager TC Broadnax to Austin. He’s doing his press rounds in Fort Worth with the usual promises to crack down on crime, be transparent, and strengthen public trust.
  • You may recall that Fort Worth ended its DEI program earlier this month to keep the federal money that the current administration threatened to take away from cities with DEI programs. They’re replacing it with a small business program that went before council on Wednesday. Star-Telegram columnist Ryan J. Rusak says this is the price of being on the federal gravy train.
  • Like every other taxing entity, Dallas County is tightening its belt and considering a tax increase after losing Biden-era federal funding. One particular issue is whether judges should all get a cost of living salary increase or whether increases should be based on merit.
  • Also on the chopping block: Parkland Health could lose half its budget to federal funding cuts.
  • Our Man Downtown, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, is in trouble for yelling at fellow Commissioner Elba Garcia last week. Price, who has been a Commissioner for southern Dallas (and South Dallas) for 40 years now, has a history of throwing his weight and seniority around. Surprisingly, Dominique Alexander, president of Next Generation Action Network, sent him a callout letter. NGAN is the largest civil rights group in North Texas. Nobody is talking about the letter after the initial burst of coverage, but I’m putting a pin in it. I personally think Price is going to leave that seat in a coffin, but I’ve been wrong before.
  • The Dallas County Jail failed a special state inspection triggered by inmate complaints. Specifically, they’ve been keeping inmates in holding cells for longer than the 48-hour limit. The jail also failed to provide one of the men kept too long with his medication for two mornings.
  • Tarrant County is also facing the same budget squeeze everybody else is. Their answer is to lower their budget and their tax rate. They’re also reducing their meeting schedule from twice a month to once a month.
  • Tarrant County is also cutting more than 100 polling sites for Election Day and reducing the number of early voting sites, to the dismay of the Star-Telegram editorial board. Star-Telegram columnist Bud Kennedy accuses the Commissioners of trying to suppress the Fort Worth vote in favor of the more-Republican suburbs by disproportionately cutting the number of polling places in the city. The cuts were also the subject of another brangle between Commissioner Alisa Simmons and County Judge Tim O’Hare.
  • Speaking of Simmons, the Tarrant County redistricting from earlier this year that was designed to force her out of her seat is the subject of another lawsuit. This one was filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County and a Fort Worth chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
  • You may remember those lawsuits against the Tarrant County District Clerk by angry divorcing men we talked about recently. The Commissioners are hiring that same well-connected lawyer to defend the clerk.
  • Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare gave the State of the County speech last week. He believes that business-minded folks should run the county. The Star-Telegram has more, including O’Hare’s interview with Sherriff Bill Waybourn.
  • Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French is back at it: on Xitter, he asked the feds to denaturalize and deport Texas House Rep. Salman Bhojani, a Muslim and a Democrat who represents parts of Arlington, Euless and Bedford. Unsurprisingly, local faith leaders don’t like French’s bigotry. But since it’s not clearly directed at Jewish Texans, don’t expect any action from state Republicans.
  • Last, but not least, a fifth inmate this year has died while in Tarrant County Jail custody of a medical emergency. He was identified as Steven Whittley, age 63, and was found unresponsive in his cell; he died two days later in the hospital. As usual, notice the difference between KERA’s coverage and the Star-Telegram version of the same story.
  • Arlington is also broke and considering a three-cent property tax increase.
  • Collin County’s money struggle is hitting the Sherriff’s office and the county jail hard. Note that the county hasn’t raised its property tax rate in over 30 years.
  • Denton is facing a $14 million shortfall and is considering raising rates for water and sewer bills and recreational fees in addition to a one-cent property tax increase.
  • Steven Monacelli dug up another white nationalist who’s also a court-appointed attorney in Denton County. Jason Lee Van Dyke used to be the national chair of the Proud Boys and used to defend Patriot Front members; he has a Patriot Front slogan tattooed on his shoulder. And he’s defending people of color in Denton County.
  • The city of Garland lost its only hospital back in 2018. Now, in 2025, it’s enrolling people in a telehealth system paid for along with city utilities, with an option to drop out.
  • Ransomware attacks are back. This time it’s the city of Greenville, which was hit on August 5 and is still shut down. They can’t accept utility payments or access city records, and some phone lines aren’t working, but 911 is still accessible. The city has hired a cybersecurity firm to mitigate the damage.
  • This is an ugly story: the sherriff of Johnson County has been arrested on felony corruption charges for harassing female employees and retaliating against witnesses. There are details in the Star-Telegram article on this case that aren’t in the DMN report; consider yourself warned that Sherriff King allegedly behaved like a gross pig.
  • This week I learned about how a container yard full of batteries in Midlothian is bolstering the power grid here in Texas. More like this please! (Assuming they’re not concealing some awful environmental cost.)
  • This week was supposed to be the big Dallas Area Rapid Transit service change vote but it’s been delayed by two weeks on an 8-7 vote. DART did raise fares for next year in this week’s meeting; it had previously changed its plans to cut back on its paratransit system for disabled riders.
  • Meanwhile, if you want to read about the underlying problems DART is dealing with, this D Magazine article is your best source. The short version is Plano is mad they can’t cut their contribution and get paratransit-level service at the same time.
  • Also transit-related: the Trinity Railway Express, which is the rail service between downtown Dallas and downtown Fort Worth, is getting an upgrade to serve as the centerpiece of transportation for next year’s World Cup. On game days, there will half-hour trains stopping at the station near DFW with chartered buses and rideshare vans to take fans to the stadium. (Arlington, home of AT&T Stadium, has no public transit.) No word on where the money is coming from.
  • This is from a couple of weeks ago but I always find it interesting to see who gets a platform in the newspapers here and who doesn’t. Armin Mizani, mayor of Keller and Republican candidate for HD 98, wrote pro-redistricting op-ed for the Star-Telegram. HD 98 will be open in the next election after Giovanni Capriglione decided not to run for re-election because his former mistress came out and didn’t quite say he forced her to abort her pregnancies.
  • And from a few days after the Mizani op-ed, the DMN editorial board slammed Ken Paxton for authoritarianism for trying to jail Beto O’Rourke over Powered by People allegedly giving money to the quorum-breakers.
  • The biggest news in Dallas sports this week is Jerry Jones trading Micah Parsons, which I don’t know any more inside gossip on than this article link provides. That said, I think this trade is going to go down in Dallas sport history next to the Luka trade as a big mistake and a subject of fan discontent.
  • Speaking of Luka, Mark Cuban talked about the Mavericks sale and the DMN and the Star-Telegram both covered it with slightly different angles: he regrets how he did it but not that he did it. My favorite bit, though, was linked in this D Magazine post. Check out the video where Cuban answers a question about GM Nico Harrison. Ouch, and thank you host for going to an ad break there.
  • I like local country singer Charley Crockett, and I really like him sticking up for Beyoncé and Cowboy Carter. Unsurprisingly he took some backlash of his own. Good for him anyway.
  • Dallas PD officers can now wear cowboy hats with their uniforms. Stylin’!
  • Last but not least this week, we’re going to talk about State Fair food. First, a history of how the State Fair food contest got so big. Next, and more importantly, the winners are in! Read about the food coming to the fair in the Dallas Observer and D Magazine. (Eater Dallas, which as part of the Eater network was just hit with massive layoffs, didn’t cover the announcement.) If you don’t want to click through and be tempted, the winners were the Crab and Mozzarella Arancini (savory), the Chill & Thrill Delight (sweet), the Cookie Chaos Milkshake (sipper/drink) and the Wagyu Bacon Cheeseburger Deviled Egg Sliders (most creative). Also for videos, check out this D Magazine post and Axios Dallas’ reviews of the drinks and savory contenders. The State Fair starts September 26 and continues through October 19.
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    STAAR to be replaced with even more tests

    Posted on August 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    I’m so glad my kids have graduated.

    The Texas House on Tuesday greenlit plans to scrap the STAAR test, clearing a path to replace the state exams with three smaller ones given throughout the year.

    The plan passed, 78-58, over opposition from most Democrats, some of whom warned that, while they also dislike STAAR, the plan to replace it came with too many last-minute changes. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, said the bill would actually increase state-mandated testing time and put too much power in the hands of the Texas Education Agency.

    “There is no trust in the TEA and certainly not in the TEA-created STAAR, and rather than eliminating STAAR, we’re going to have the government create these new state-mandated tests,” said Hinojosa.

    The House bill aligns closely with a previous Senate-approved plan and will now face a vote in the upper chamber. Gov. Greg Abbott named replacing STAAR one of his top priorities for the special session.

    House Republicans, led by state Rep. Brad Buckley of Salado, said the plan will decrease high-stakes testing and reduce overall testing time. The new tests will be split into three exams, with the first two given in October and January as diagnostic tests that can help teachers and parents adjust their lesson plans over time.

    School districts will also be restricted from giving their own benchmark tests, such as the widely-used iReady or MAP tests, to measure student growth. That function will be replaced with the new state-mandated beginning- and middle-of-year tests. Some districts, Buckley noted, currently give students more than a dozen benchmark tests throughout the year.

    […]

    Talks to scrap the tests failed earlier this year over divisions on who should administer the replacement, the TEA or a third party. The House on Tuesday defeated an amendment by Hinojosa that would have removed the TEA’s role in writing the tests.

    I guess if it really does reduce the number of benchmark tests then that’s an improvement. Not really what a lot of parents wanted, though. And I agree with the concern about how much power this gives the TEA, as articulated in this Trib story.

    During the regular session, the House pushed for changing how test results were reported. They wanted results to be presented as percentile ranks, which show how a student’s performance compares to their peers. They also wanted schools to be able to meet state testing requirements with national assessments that many students already take, with the hopes of limiting the amount of time testing takes up in the classroom.

    HB 8 would only apply those changes to two out of the three new tests. And to many Democrats’ dismay, the end-of-the-year test would keep features of the current STAAR test.

    Under the legislation, the TEA would not only still create the end-of-the-year test, but also continue to report whether students approached, met or mastered grade-level skills, comparing student performance to benchmarks the state sets. That’s in contrast to the percentile ranks that Democrats preferred to measure academic performance.

    “We’re going to have TEA both create the test that determines whether or not the school and district are taken over by them. That’s a conflict. They should not be in charge of creating the test,” Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, said.

    Buckley pushed back against the idea that TEA would have too much power in creating the test, pointing to a committee of classroom teachers that the bill would create to evaluate the fairness of the test questions.

    Some Democrats worked with Buckley to add an amendment that allowed students with severe disabilities to be exempt from the first two tests. Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, on Thursday also managed to tack on his own amendment to provide districts with financial relief when they ask for tests to be rescored, a rising concern as the state has leaned more on AI to grade tests.

    The Texas Education Agency introduced AI-like technology for grading in 2023 to save dollars. But the inaccuracy with AI grading was central to a recent lawsuit between school districts and the TEA. After the Dallas school district had Texas regrade a chunk of their STAAR tests, five campuses saw their accountability ratings improve.

    See here for more on the AI grading issue. It’s not so much that this is a ridiculous idea as that it was rushed, there wasn’t any beta period where you could opt in for AI grading, the appeal process involved a fee that would be refunded if your grade went up after, which might have prevented some kids from asking for a re-do, and so on. It’s relatively low on the list of things to be worried about, but it’s typical of the casual approach that is too often taken. Again I say, I’m so glad my kids have completed their time with HISD.

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    Fighting healthcare cuts was a winner

    Posted on August 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Good to know.

    The Trump administration’s cuts to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for state and local health departments had vastly uneven effects depending on the political leanings of a state, according to a KFF Health News analysis. Democratic-led states and select blue-leaning cities fought back in court and saw money for public health efforts restored — while GOP-led states sustained big losses.

    The Department of Health and Human Services in late March canceled nearly 700 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants nationwide — together worth about $11 billion. Awarded during the covid-19 pandemic, they supported efforts to vaccinate people, reduce health disparities among demographic groups, upgrade antiquated systems for detecting infectious disease outbreaks, and hire community health workers.

    Initially, grant cancellations hit blue and red states roughly evenly. Four of the five jurisdictions with the largest number of terminated grants were led by Democrats: California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

    But after attorneys general and governors from about two dozen blue states sued in federal court and won an injunction, the balance flipped. Of the five states with the most canceled grants, four are led by Republicans: Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio.

    In blue states, nearly 80% of the CDC grant cuts have been restored, compared with fewer than 5% in red states, according to the KFF Health News analysis. Grant amounts reported in an HHS database known as the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System, or TAGGS, often don’t match what states confirmed. Instead, this analysis focused on the number of grants.

    […]

    Federal CDC funding accounts for more than half of state and local health department budgets, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. States that President Donald Trump won in the 2024 election received a higher share of the $15 billion the cCDC allocated in fiscal 2023 than those that Democrat Kamala Harris won, according to KFF.

    The Trump administration’s nationwide CDC grant terminations reflect this. More than half were in states that Trump won in 2024, totaling at least 370 terminations before the court action, according to KFF Health News’ analysis.

    The Columbus, Ohio, health department had received $6.2 million in CDC grants, but roughly half of it — $3 million — disappeared with the Trump cuts. The city laid off 11 people who worked on investigating infectious disease outbreaks in such places as schools and nursing homes, Columbus Health Commissioner Mysheika Roberts said.

    She also said the city had planned to buy a new electronic health record system for easier access to patients’ hospital records — which could improve disease detection and provide better treatment for those infected — but that was put on ice.

    “We’ve never had a grant midcycle just get pulled from us for no reason,” Roberts said. “This sense of uncertainty is stressful.”

    Columbus did not receive its money directly from the CDC. Rather, the state gave the city some funds it received from the federal government. Ohio, led by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and a Republican attorney general, did not sue to block the funding cuts.

    Columbus sued the federal government in April to keep its money, along with other Democratic-led municipalities in Republican-governed states: Harris County, Texas, home to Houston; the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County in Tennessee; and Kansas City, Missouri. A federal judge in June blocked those cuts.

    See here for some background on that lawsuit. It was one of many that Harris County engaged in, some of which have already been resolved in our favor. According to the story, Columbus is still waiting for its funds to be restored (the lawsuit was resolved in late June), so the matter is still in progress and that may be true for Harris County as well. But fighting was clearly the right thing to do, and it’s a lesson everyone should have learned by now.

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    Feds investigating Tesla for slow reporting of self-driving crash data

    Posted on August 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Not sure what to make of this.

    Federal auto safety regulators are investigating why Tesla has repeatedly broken rules requiring it to quickly tell them about crashes involving its self-driving technology, a potentially significant development given the company’s plans to put hundreds of thousands of driverless cars on U.S. roads over the next year.

    The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a filing on Thursday that Tesla’s reports on “numerous” incidents involving its driver assistance and self-driving features were submitted far too late — several months after the crashes instead of within five days as required.

    The probe comes two months after the electric vehicle maker run by Elon Musk started a self-driving taxi service in Austin, Texas, with hopes of soon offering it nationwide. The company also hopes to send over-the-air software updates to millions of Teslas already on the road that will allow them to drive themselves.

    Investors enthusiastic about such plans have kept Tesla stock aloft despite plunging sales and profits due to boycotts over Musk’s support for U.S. President Donald Trump and far-right politicians in Europe.

    The safety agency said the probe will focus on why Tesla took so long to report the crashes, whether the reports included all the necessary data and details and if there are crashes that the agency still doesn’t know about.

    Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, but the agency noted that the company has told it the delays were “due to an issue with Tesla’s data collection,” which Tesla says has now been fixed.

    The new investigation follows another probe that began in October into potential problems with Tesla’s self-driving technology in foggy weather and other low visibility conditions, which has been linked to several accidents including one death. That probe involves 2.4 million Tesla vehicles.

    The issue of how safe Tesla’s Full Self Driving mode is has been a longstanding bit of background, and I’ve never quite known what to make of it. I guess I never believed that any agency under Trump would take it seriously, no matter what the state of his relationship with Elmo is. I’m happy to be wrong about that. For sure, I have no trouble believing that Elmo was lax in making those crash reports to the feds, that’s 100% consistent with everything we know about him. It still remains to be seen if this actually amounts to something in the end.

    Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

    Texas blog roundup for the week of August 25

    Posted on August 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    The Texas Progressive Alliance now looks to California to finish the job with its new map as it brings you this week’s roundup.

    Continue reading →

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    The scramble begins

    Posted on August 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Barring judicial action that I have said I don’t expect, the new Congressional map will be in place for the 2026 election. That means that a lot of people who are not now in Congress will be gearing up to make a run for it, while several current members of Congress will face a decision about whether to run in a new district against a colleague or not run at all. The Downballot rounds up what we know now. I’m going to focus on one district, but there’s a lot more than this:

    TX-18

    Democratic Rep. Al Green, who turns 78 next week, has said he’ll run for office again, though as noted just above, Texas’ overhauled 9th District shares no more than a number with the constituency he currently serves.

    Earlier this month, though, Green showed interest in running for the redrawn 18th District, which is now home to almost two-thirds of the congressman’s constituents and remains a safely Democratic seat based in Houston.

    Such a move would set off a confrontation between Green and a fellow Democratic incumbent—but he won’t know which one until the end of the year.

    That’s because a whole host of Democrats are facing off in the Nov. 4 all-party special election in the 18th to replace Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died in March at the age of 70 following a cancer diagnosis.

    A December runoff, which could feature two contenders from the same party, would take place unless one candidate wins a majority in the first round, a tall order in a field this crowded. The few polls we’ve seen find a trio of Democrats in contention to advance to the second round: former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, state Rep. Jolanda Jones, and Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee

    While the special election for the 18th will take place under the map passed in 2021, the winner would have to quickly get ready for the March 3 Democratic primary under the new boundaries.

    Whoever wins the old 18th will represent just over a quarter of the residents of the new district bearing that same number. That alone would put the winner at a significant geographical disadvantage against Green. All the major candidates running to replace Turner, though, are significantly younger than Green, which could make a meaningful difference at a time when older Democrats nationwide are facing widespread pressure to step aside.

    There’s a bunch more about other districts and who may be or may not be running for what, all of which is already a little outdated as more names have surfaced. A lot of terrible people are looking to run for Congress now, and I don’t have the energy to list them at this time. There’s always the next quarterly finance report for that.

    I’m going to say something here that will sound obvious but still needs to be said. This effort wasn’t just about electing more Republicans, it was also about taking seats away from Democrats, which among other things will cause some of them to fight against each other for the right to stay in Congress. Having competitive primaries is a healthy sign when it’s about competition and presenting alternate views and holding incumbents accountable. Having them foisted on you because nearly half of your existing turf was removed is not. All that does is foster nasty infighting, which I guarantee you was part of the plan from the beginning. We’ve avoided one such fight but others are out there, if not now then later. And it will suck.

    The best way to fight back is to refuse to concede anything. The Republican gains are predicated on a bet, one that very well may not come true. If it doesn’t, seats like CD09 and CD35, which currently only have Republicans announcing for them, could be winnable. Now is the time to find candidates for them, and once we do now is the time to organize and fundraise for them. The longer we wait, the harder it gets.

    It’s easy to feel down after the high of the quorum busting and the reality of the map passing. Republicans are taking a victory lap. Now is the time to tap into the anger you’re feeling and turn it into action. The best revenge for all of this is for the Republicans to fall well short of their goal. What are you going to do to make that happen?

    Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

    Hotze again asks for pause in his civil trial

    Posted on August 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    “Screw this guy” will always be my response.

    Conservative activist Steven Hotze asked the Texas Supreme Court to pause a lawsuit against him until after the criminal trial of his former private eye, who in 2020 allegedly assaulted an air-conditioning repairman he wrongly thought was tampering with the election.

    Hotze last week asked the state’s highest civil court to order an indefinite stay in the lawsuit brought by the repairman, David Lopez. The case has been under a temporary stay since January.

    Hotze argued that he can’t receive a fair trial if Mark Aguirre, the former Houston Police Department captain charged with assaulting Lopez, can’t testify because of the ongoing criminal case against him.

    “The allegations against Aguirre are inextricably intertwined with Dr. Hotze’s defense in this matter,” Hotze’s lawyers wrote. Hotze “cannot adequately defend himself” if Aguirre pleads the Fifth Amendment to avoid incriminating himself in the criminal case.

    Lopez’s lawsuit accuses Hotze of assault and kidnapping and seeks more than $1 million in damages.

    […]

    Hotze’s lawyers wrote that they want to be able to question Aguirre about his conduct and relationship to the activist. Aguirre could answer questions but could also choose to cite his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

    Civil juries can view a refusal to testify unfavorably and use it as part of their decision. Hotze said such a circumstance could hurt his defense.

    Hotze’s attorneys argue that District Court Judge Donna Roth erred by not pausing the case.

    No trial date has been set for Aguirre’s criminal case. A status conference scheduled last week was reset until October.

    Lopez is expected to respond to the stay request by the end of September.

    See here for the previous update. I don’t know how Lopez’s attorneys responded in January but I daresay they’ll have a similar response now. If this were anyone else I’d have some sympathy for them, but as noted it’s Steven Hotze and screw him. That said, it sure would be nice for the criminal case to move forward.

    Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    The Houston Bike Guide

    Posted on August 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Very useful.

    The typical streets that most people use in a car, and are often recommended to bicyclists who try to map their routes via navigation apps, are dangerous and difficult to maneuver on a bike. The city of Houston website’s ‘Bikeway Maps’ link does not work. Even the Houston Bike Plan’s map of existing bikeways in the city reflects a piecemeal, scattered map of ‘bike-friendly’ segments, not actual routes.

    However, on Madeleine Pelzel’s Houston Bike Guide, the intersection Joplin was hit crossing is highlighted in dark red, signifying ‘Do not bike here’. A few streets up, a blue line indicates a safer route.

    Pelzel’s guide, which has over 140,000 views, is a user-created Google map of Houston with 10 colorful layers over the city’s streets, bayous and transportation networks.

    Pelzel has lived in Houston since 2014, but she spent a year working in London. While there, she began biking to work after she realized she could easily get a map of her neighborhood’s safest cycling routes from the city’s transportation department.

    Pelzel was eager to continue biking when she returned to Houston, but was quickly frustrated by the lack of a comprehensive bikeways map.

    “You would never give a driver a map with just a couple of disconnected lines on it, and that’s what you usually get when you look for a bike map in a city like Houston,” Pelzel said.

    In 2020, she finally decided to take matters into her own hands, drawing upon her personal experience as well as that of seasoned bicyclists, who she realized were operating within their own mental maps of the city’s bikeable routes.

    “Nobody had taken the time to really put together that mental map that many people do have of where you can actually bike around in our city,” Pelzel said.

    As Pelzel began to draw out the routes she typically biked, she realized it would be easier to begin with mapping where not to bike in Houston, as many of her routes purposefully skirted busy thoroughfares, such as Westheimer Road.

    “Those streets where you should not bike are also streets where everyone knows their names and has them in their heads,” Pelzel said. “That’s where they drive, so using those is helpful because people do understand where those are.”

    I’ve long been frustrated by how hard it is to just get a map of all of the existing bike trails in Houston. I know more or less what’s in my area but it’s clunky and not always easy to tell what’s on street level and where the entrances to the off-street stuff is. I like this approach because of the way it situates itself within the existing streetscape. You have to start somewhere, and you’re most likely going somewhere, and this can tell you how to do that in as safe a manner as possible. That’s what anyone who’s on a bike, by choice or by necessity, wants. Good on Madeleine Pelzel for taking the lead on this.

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    The HISD and HCC lineups

    Posted on August 26, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    The filing deadlines have passed for HISD and HCC, so this seems like as good a time as any to look at who is running for what. Note that the deadline for CD18 and Houston City Council is September 3, so we’ll have to wait for those. Here are your candidates for HISD Trustee:

    District I: Felicity Pereyra. She showed up in our early look at who was running; most of the other candidates listed here are mentioned there, and I wrote what I knew about them then. As incumbent Trustee Elizabeth Santos did not file for re-election and no one else joined in, she will be the new Trustee in my district. Note her strong anti-takeover stance, that is going to be a theme going forward.

    District V: Maria Benzon and Robbie McDonough. As expected, incumbent Sue Deigaard did not file for re-election, so we will have at least two new Trustees next year. Benzon ran in 2021 – you can listen to my interview with her here – and she was the more left-leaning candidate at that time. I have not met or spoken with Robbie McDonough yet so I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but his campaign webpage touts an op-ed he wrote last year saying he had hope about the Mike Miles administration at the beginning but based on everything that had happened he had morphed into a protester. I think it’s safe to say that this district will also have a vocal takeover opponent in place.

    District VI: Incumbent Kendall Baker, and challenger Michael McDonough. Yes, there could be two Trustees named McDonough, and yes that temporarily threw me off in writing this post. Michael McDonough was known to be a candidate as of that early look post, while Robbie McDonough is the newcomer on the scene. As noted before, I do not like Kendall Baker and am rooting for his defeat. Michael McDonough is a former HISD teacher and principal and would be another strong opponent of the takeover.

    District VII: Incumbent Bridget Wade, and challenger Audrey Nath. Nothing new to add here, just that Nath would be – you guessed it – another strong opponent of the takeover. The Board could be very different in a few months.

    District IX: Incumbent Myrna Guidry is unopposed. I suppose I don’t know what her position is on the takeover.

    Here’s what we knew about their July campaign finance reports before HISD redid their webpage. The three districts where there are active elections should be spirited races. I’m looking forward to doing these interviews.

    For HCC, we have the following:

    District I: Incumbent Monica Flores Richart, and challenger Milton “Miles” Sasser. I’ve known Monica Flores Richart for a number of years and I think highly of her as a person and a Trustee. She’s a periodic guest on the CityCast Houston podcast, go search their archives if you want to hear some recent takes from her; my interview with her from 2019 is here. I couldn’t find anything about Milton “Miles” Sasser online other than that he’s a licensed attorney. I have been informed by a reliable source that he’s a MAGA guy who may have been recruited by Dave Wilson, which tracks since Flores unseated Wilson in 2019 and it wouldn’t surprise me if he carries a grudge. If you’re not in CD18 and you’re looking for a race to get involved in outside of City Council, go give Monica Flores Richart a hand.

    District II: Incumbent Renee Jefferson Patterson, challenger Kathleen “Kathy” Lynch Gunter, and challenger Desmond Spencer. As noted before, Jefferson was appointed to fill the seat vacated by now-Rep. Charlene Ward Johnson. This is her first election for this seat, though she ran for Houston City Council District B in the past. Gunter ran for this seat in 2022 after it was vacated by the resignation of then-Trustee Rhonda Skillern Jones; my interview with her for that election is here. Spencer is a new name, he reached out to me following the deadline to introduce himself. This should be an interesting race and may go to a runoff.

    District VII: Incumbent Cynthia Lenton Gary is unopposed. She was unopposed in 2019 as well – nothing beats a little luck in politics.

    Here are the July finance reports, which won’t tell you much. I’ll be doing some interviews here as well. Let me know what you think.

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    Paxton orders other school districts to follow Ten Commandments law

    Posted on August 26, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Not a surprise.

    Attorney General Ken Paxton instructed schools across Texas to follow the requirements of the state’s Ten Commandments display law, despite a federal court ruling that temporarily blocked the law for nearly a dozen schools last week.

    Paxton’s guidance comes days after U.S. District Judge Fred Biery sided with 16 families who sued their school districts to stop the law from going into effect Sept. 1. The attorney general filed an appeal Thursday.

    “From the beginning, the Ten Commandments have been irrevocably intertwined with America’s legal, moral, and historical heritage,” Paxton said in a statement. “Schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide by (Senate Bill 10) and display the Ten Commandments.”

    […]

    When the district court’s decision was made, Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said the ruling set a precedent.

    “As a technical matter, the injunction covers the school district defendants. But all school districts have an independent obligation to respect students’ and families’ constitutional rights,” Weaver wrote in a statement. “This ruling makes clear that SB 10 is unconstitutional. Every school district should heed it, even if they are not a defendant in the case.”

    See here for the background. That first paragraph should say “for nearly a dozen school districts”, not schools; that list of districts includes HISD. I suppose Paxton is technically correct here, as the case was limited to those defendants. There is that other lawsuit, for which I still don’t when there will be a hearing. The defendants in that case include Mike Morath and the TEA, in addition to a handful of districts, so I think that would cover the rest of the state? If it ever gets to a courtroom and a ruling is issued. Stay tuned.

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

    On expansion and realignment

    Posted on August 26, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Some big changes could be coming to MLB in the next couple of years.

    Drew Jordan/The Athletic

    In an interview during ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcast from the Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pa. on Sunday night, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred reiterated his perspective on the possibility of expanding the league to 32 teams and the likelihood of rearranging the various divisions based on location.

    “I think if we expand, it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign,” Manfred said during the broadcast, which featured the Seattle Mariners and New York Mets. “I think we could save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel. I think our postseason format would be even more appealing for entities like ESPN because you’d be playing out of the East, out of the West and that 10 o’clock where we sometimes get Boston-Anaheim would be two West Coast teams. That 10 o’clock slot that’s a problem for us sometimes becomes a real opportunity for our West Coast audience.”

    Manfred has said he wants to have the locations of two new teams picked out by the time he retires in 2029, although the clubs won’t yet be playing. But Manfred has long said league expansion will follow after the Rays and the Athletics complete their long-running quests for new stadiums.

    […]

    While a recent USA Today story noted that MLB views Nashville and Salt Lake City as the two strongest potential expansion markets, Manfred refused to identify any potential cities when discussing the topic last month on CNBC.

    “The cities that are out there almost exclusively have been cities that have self-reported. They’re coming to us saying we’d like to have (a team),” Manfred told the network, noting that the two cities would likely include one Eastern time zone-based market and one in the Mountain or Pacific time zone. “There’s a whole list of them and I don’t like to differentiate between them because we’re just not at that point yet in the process.”

    While Manfred declined during that appearance to discuss a specific fee that a new expansion franchise would have to pay to join the league, he did suggest that it would “be a number that begins with a ‘B’.”

    There’s been talk (and some action) about the next round of MLB expansion for awhile, with cities like Austin and San Antonio getting some mentions, as well as a more generic “Central Texas” entity. There’s also a case to be made for a second team in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but we’ll put that aside for now. Wherever the next two franchises end up, there will be some form of realignment that apparently will focus on better geographical grouping, which makes sense from a number of perspectives.

    Having eight divisions means two more than there are now, so that would be quite the shakeup. The Athletic takes a look at one possible way this could go. That depends to some extent on where the expansion teams are, but most of the likely possibilities work well with that idea. And don’t worry, there are plenty of others out there. There’s a dependency on the idiot owner of the A’s finally getting his Las Vegas stadium dreams off the ground, but one way or another this is the general direction we are heading. The Chron has more.

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    Motion to block implementation of new map filed

    Posted on August 25, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Once again, from the inbox:

    Today, plaintiffs supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) filed a preliminary injunction to block the implementation of HB 4, which further gerrymanders the Texas congressional map.  After filing a supplemental complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas challenging the map, now the NRF-supported Gonzales Plaintiffs are asking the court to block the implementation of HB 4 and order Texas to use the prior congressional map for the 2026 elections as this case continues in court. The NRF is directing litigation and providing financial support on behalf of the Gonzales plaintiff group in this case. The preliminary injunction can be viewed here.

    Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the NRF, issued the following statement: 

    “The court has already agreed to consider expediting the case against the mid-decade Texas gerrymander, and now we are asking them to block its implementation ahead of the 2026 elections entirely, because it illegally dilutes the voting power of people of color. Texas’s existing map was facing legal challenges for cracking and packing minority voters to limit their ability to elect the candidates of their choice. This new map exacerbates those fundamental flaws; it is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that intentionally discriminates against Black and Latino voters, and it must not be allowed to go into effect.”

    ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

    Following the 2020 Census, Texas was the only state to gain two congressional seats due to significant population growth. The census data also showed that 95% of the state’s population growth came from communities of color. Despite this, in 2021, the state of Texas enacted a congressional map that reduced the number of districts where voters of color have a fair chance to elect candidates of their choice and increased the number of majority-white districts. Immediately after the congressional map was enacted, the NRF filed Voto Latino v. Scott, now renamed Gonzales v. Nelson and consolidated under LULAC v. Abbott, challenging Texas’s 2021-enacted congressional map for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

    Just two months after the trial in the case against the 2021-enacted map, at the request of President Trump, Governor Greg Abbott called for an August special session in the Texas Legislature to redraw the state’s congressional map. Coming out of the 2025 special legislative session, the State of Texas enacted a new congressional gerrymander that goes even further to diminish the voting power of communities of color.

    In their supplemental complaint, the NRF-supported plaintiffs make several claims against the 2025-enacted Texas congressional gerrymander, including the following:

    1. Intentional Vote Dilution: The new gerrymander was drawn with discriminatory intent in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

    2. Racial Gerrymandering: Several congressional districts on the new gerrymander are racial gerrymanders in violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Those districts are TX-9, TX-18, TX-22, TX-27, TX-30, and TX-35.

    3. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act: The newly enacted Texas gerrymander fails to include at least six additional Latino opportunity districts, in which Latino voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. In order to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Latino voters in Texas should see one additional opportunity district in the Dallas–Fort Worth metro area, one additional opportunity district in Harris County, two additional opportunity districts in Central Texas, and two additional opportunity districts in the Rio Grande Valley. The new gerrymander does not include any of these districts.

    4. Malapportionment: Given that the State of Texas used five-year-old data to draw a new gerrymander, the new map fails to account for shifts in Texas’s population. For example, recently, the Census has issued estimates that indicate rapid population growth in Texas in recent years, particularly driven by communities of color, which make up 60 percent of the statewide population. Therefore, the new gerrymander fails to achieve the precise mathematical equality required by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This creates a dynamic where Texas voters who reside in overpopulated districts will have their votes diluted by other Texas voters who live in underpopulated districts.

    5. Unnecessary Mid-Decade Redistricting: The new gerrymander violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, because the Texas Legislature considered racial information and pursued a partisan advantage in an unnecessary mid-decade redraw.

    Prior to the enactment of the new gerrymander, the NRF filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas asking the court to quickly set a hearing for a preliminary injunction that will be filed in order to block the enactment of a new gerrymandered congressional map. The court has scheduled a conference to hear arguments on that motion for Wednesday, August 27, in El Paso, Texas. To learn more about the NRF’s work, click here.

    See here for the background. You may ask what the difference is between the two filings. The first one was the actual lawsuit against the new map, laying out all of the ways in which the plaintiffs allege it to be illegal. The remedy they seek, in addition to declaring that all these things are in fact illegal, is for a new map to be drawn. Which is what these same plaintiffs are seeking with the original map, for which there will be a hearing on Wednesday about the other recent motion asking for an expedited hearing on the new map and a formal ruling on the current one.

    This motion is the request that the court prevent this new map from being used while the lawsuit that was filed on the 23rd is being litigated, and to continue to use the current map instead. This is standard practice, on the grounds that the plaintiffs, who say they are likely to prevail on the merits, will suffer a needless injury if the thing they’re fighting against is allowed to happen in the meantime. The same request has been made with previous gerrymanders, and the recent history is that the courts – really, SCOTUS – have allowed the new map to be used while the fighting is in progress. We are using the 2021 Congressional map today and not the 2011/2013 map, after all. I would generally expect the plaintiffs to fail on this motion, at least at the appellate level, but given how weird and unprecedented this case is, especially in the way that the Republicans just blithely threw out all of their claims from the first case, there’s at least a chance that they could prevail. That would be a huge victory, since it would mean keeping the current map in place at least for this election. Again, I would not bet on this outcome, but I do think it’s not a sure thing.

    On a side note, The Downballot has its analysis of the adopted map, using 2024 and 2020 data. I used 2018 data in my analysis because I think that’s the more useful comparison if 2026 is the kind of year we hope it will be, but this is a good cautionary note, and a reminder of how much hinges on the changes we saw with the 2024 electorate. Now we need to start recruiting candidates. I’ll have more to say on that another time.

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    What the HISD students are asking for

    Posted on August 25, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    In case the district wants to listen.

    Chavez High School graduate Ximena Acosta is about to leave Houston to attend Vanderbilt University.

    That academic achievement happened in spite of, not because of, Houston ISD, Acosta said. She told media at the Houston Federation of Teachers’ office last week that high schools are removing high-performing students from eighth-grade algebra, “kids who could have gotten ahead are now being … denied” the chances Acosta received.

    “In reality, we’ve had advocates. We had luck,” she said. “We had moments where someone stepped in and opened doors that the system would try to keep closed. HISD has always had many problems long before the state takeover, and my biggest concern is access to opportunity and the illusion of meritocracy. The takeover hasn’t fixed this. It’s only made it worse.”

    Her testimony joined that of a few other HISD high school students, who seek to create student groups to protest the state takeover. The student activists are affiliated with Community Voices for Public Education, a group opposed to the takeover. The students complained about teacher turnover and a lack of wraparound services to provide necessities.

    […]

    [Emily] Yanez, a Northside High School junior, said teachers were overwhelmed and many resigned because they were “forced into new… classrooms without warning.”

    “Some were told to teach subjects they had no training in,” she said, among several examples of reassignments and turnover. “Like my biology teacher being reassigned to physics, which later caused freshmen to shuffle because my biology teacher had not once in her teaching career at my school taught physics.”

    Yanez called into question why state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is touting higher state exam scores when freshmen are placed in physics with no background in Algebra I and geometry as a strategy to increase biology state exam scores.

    “Tell me, why is it that students, parents and teachers protest against you? Why is it that for three years there have been walkouts dedicated to your actions?” the high school junior questioned. “You should be grateful that we are protesting against you, because this should tell you that we are worried about our education and we want change.”

    It’s good that the test scores are up, but it takes more than that to be successful. These students don’t represent everyone’s opinion, but I don’t see anyone out there protesting in favor of Mike Miles. Maybe that should tell us something.

    Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on What the HISD students are asking for

    Weekend link dump for August 24

    Posted on August 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    “Donald Trump’s Navy and Air Force are poised to cancel two nearly complete software projects that took 12 years and well over $800 million combined to develop, work initially aimed at overhauling antiquated human resources systems.” But don’t worry, some of Trump’s sycophants will get their beaks wet on the rebound.

    “[Last] week, two of our most essential online institutions reckoned with major shifts in the operation and governance of the World Wide Web—and they all point to a future where the once immutable principle of the “open internet” will be dismantled, byte by byte, pixel by pixel.”

    “Bogus quotations on the internet are not new, but AI chatbots and their hallucinations have multiplied the problem at scale, misleading many more people, and misrepresenting the beliefs not just of big names such as Albert Einstein but also of lesser known individuals.”

    Also, Meta’s AI is creepy and inappropriate. Kill it with fire.

    “The Ed Sullivan Theater After Colbert: Last Days of a Late-Night Icon”.

    RIP, Terence Stamp, English actor perhaps best known as the villainous General Zod in Superman 2.

    “But in a culture which seems to celebrate and encourage drinking, what’s up with more Americans putting down their glasses?”

    “Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.” These geniuses either left them or forgot to pick them up from the hotel business center printers.

    “Anti-Abortion Playbook, Flipped: Arkansas Abortion Fund Opens Its Own “Crisis Pregnancy Center””.

    “For the last few weeks, my TikTok feed has been mired in country music filth.” Read on at your own risk, it’s wild stuff and all AI slop. This recent episode of What Next TBD had some other examples of truly bizarre AI music slop.

    “The CPSC’s position — and Trump’s position — is that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should be given more authority for overseeing America’s efforts to keep kids from dying unnecessarily. The Supreme Court helped that along.”

    “How public health can fight back in a time of dangerous nonsense”.

    “Don’t Say People In Glass Houses, But Dr. Phil Just Got Countersued By Trinity Broadcasting For “Reprehensible Conduct” In $500M Deal”.

    “What Should Anti-Trump States Focus On?”

    James Dobson has died. That link will tell you what you need to know.

    RIP, H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, pioneering motorsports promoter, former president and general manager of Charlotte Motor Speedway, voice of Tex Dinoco in the Cars movies.

    “This is the kind of book you can write about a member of the royal family only after they have been thoroughly disgraced, and it is not usual that a member of the royal family has fallen so decisively.”

    Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 1 Comment

    New legal challenge filed against redistricting map

    Posted on August 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Fron the inbox:

    Today, plaintiffs supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) initiated a legal challenge against the newly enacted congressional gerrymander in Texas in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking the court to strike it down on several grounds. The challenge was filed as a supplemental complaint in the ongoing lawsuit, LULAC v. Abbott. The NRF is directing litigation and providing financial support on behalf of the Gonzales plaintiff group in this case. The full brief can be viewed here.

    Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the NRF, issued the following statement:

    “What’s happening in Texas underscores that racially discriminatory voting practices, unfortunately, remain alive and well to this day, and the courts must continue to enforce voting rights protections. Texas’s existing map already dilutes the voting power of communities of color, which now make up 60 percent of the statewide population in the Lone Star State, and has been the subject of ongoing litigation. In spite of that, the state has doubled down with an even more extreme racial gerrymander that goes even further to pack and crack communities of color and minimize the number of congressional districts where minority voters have the ability to elect candidates of their choice. The court has already agreed to consider expediting this case, and we are confident that justice will be delivered for Texans.”

    ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

    Following the 2020 Census, Texas was the only state to gain two congressional seats due to significant population growth. The census data also showed that 95% of the state’s population growth came from communities of color. Despite this, in 2021, the state of Texas enacted a congressional map that reduced the number of districts where voters of color have a fair chance to elect candidates of their choice and increased the number of majority-white districts. Immediately after the congressional map was enacted, the NRF filed Voto Latino v. Scott, now renamed Gonzales v. Nelson and consolidated under LULAC v. Abbott, challenging Texas’s 2021-enacted congressional map for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

    Just two months after the trial in the case against the 2021-enacted map, at the request of President Trump, Governor Greg Abbott called for an August special session in the Texas Legislature to redraw the state’s congressional map. Coming out of the 2025 special legislative session, the State of Texas enacted a new congressional gerrymander that goes even further to diminish the voting power of communities of color.

    In their supplemental complaint, the NRF-supported plaintiffs make several claims against the 2025-enacted Texas congressional gerrymander, including the following:

    1. Intentional Vote Dilution: The new gerrymander was drawn with discriminatory intent in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

    2. Racial Gerrymandering: Several congressional districts on the new gerrymander are racial gerrymanders in violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Those districts are TX-9, TX-18, TX-22, TX-27, TX-30, and TX-35.

    3. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act: The newly enacted Texas gerrymander fails to include at least six additional Latino opportunity districts, in which Latino voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. In order to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Latino voters in Texas should see one additional opportunity district in the Dallas–Fort Worth metro area, one additional opportunity district in Harris County, two additional opportunity districts in Central Texas, and two additional opportunity districts in the Rio Grande Valley. The new gerrymander does not include any of these districts.

    4. Malapportionment: Given that the State of Texas used five-year-old data to draw a new gerrymander, the new map fails to account for shifts in Texas’s population. For example, recently, the Census has issued estimates that indicate rapid population growth in Texas in recent years, particularly driven by communities of color, which make up 60 percent of the statewide population. Therefore, the new gerrymander fails to achieve the precise mathematical equality required by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This creates a dynamic where Texas voters who reside in overpopulated districts will have their votes diluted by other Texas voters who live in underpopulated districts.

    5. Unnecessary Mid-Decade Redistricting: The new gerrymander violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, because the Texas Legislature considered racial information and pursued a partisan advantage in an unnecessary mid-decade redraw.

    Prior to the enactment of the new gerrymander, the NRF filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas asking the court to quickly set a hearing for a preliminary injunction that will be filed in order to block the enactment of a new gerrymandered congressional map. The court has scheduled a conference to hear arguments on that motion for Wednesday, August 27, in El Paso, Texas.

    See here for the background. They obviously had this ready to go, I got the press release Saturday morning, not long after the Alvarado filibuster was squashed and the bill was passed. I have no idea how this will go, but I look forward to Wednesday’s hearing on the supplemental motions for the original case. The Trib has more.

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    West Texas A&M drag ban blocked

    Posted on August 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Good.

    A federal appeals court Monday blocked West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler from enforcing a campus drag show ban, ruling that the performances are likely protected under the First Amendment.

    The 2-1 ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a lower court’s decision upholding Wendler’s 2023 cancellation of a drag show, which he argued was demeaning to women and compared to blackface.

    The decision means Spectrum WT, the student group that brought the lawsuit, can produce drag shows on campus while its lawsuit continues in a lower court.

    Judge Leslie H. Southwick, who wrote for the majority, said the context of the students’ event made its message of supporting the queer community clear.

    “The viewers of the drag show would have been ticketed audience members attending a performance sponsored by LGBT+ student organizations and designed to raise funds for LGBT+ suicide-prevention charity, “ wrote Southwick, who was appointed by George W. Bush. “Against this backdrop, the message sent by parading on a theater stage in attire of the opposite sex would have been unmistakable.”

    The court concluded that Legacy Hall, where the drag show was scheduled to take place, was a designated public forum open to a variety of groups, including churches and political candidates. That meant banning drag shows targeted the content of the event, something the Constitution allows only in the rarest cases.

    Finally, the court found that students faced ongoing irreparable harm to their speech rights, noting Wendler had canceled another drag show planned for 2024 and declared that no drag shows would ever be allowed on campus.

    That conclusion gave the judges another reason to block the ban for now, since courts only grant such relief when plaintiffs have a strong case and risk being harmed without it.

    […]

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represents Spectrum WT in the West Texas A&M case and the Queer Empowerment Council in the Texas A&M System lawsuit, hailed the ruling as a major victory for student speech.

    “We’re overjoyed that our clients will now be able to express themselves freely, and we’ll be watching to make sure that President Wendler obeys the laws of the land while the case proceeds,” FIRE Attorney Adam Steinbaugh said in a statement.

    I didn’t follow this case specifically – the judge who originally upheld President Wendler’s ban was our old friend Matthew Kacsmaryk – but the law that would have criminalized drag shows in general was ruled unconstitutional in 2023; that case was appealed to the Fifth Circuit and we are awaiting their opinion. A similar on-campus drag ban at Texas A&M was blocked in March. I will just say, if there are drag shows being planned and now performed in Canyon, Texas, where West Texas A&M is, then there’s no credible argument that drag is some kind of weird niche thing or that it’s only for big cities. The weirdos are the ones who want to ban them. Even the Fifth Circuit can see that.

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    The Alvarado filibuster

    Posted on August 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    Bring it on.

    Sen. Carol Alvarado

    State Sen. Carol Alvarado of Houston plans to filibuster the House-passed redistricting map during floor debate on Friday in a last-ditch effort to delay passage of the plan to create five new winnable seats for the GOP.

    Alvarado, the Democratic caucus chair, informed Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Friday of her intent to hold the floor for as long as possible. Other senators and staffers confirmed to Hearst Newspapers that her Democratic colleagues will assist Alvarado by questioning her on the dais.

    “Republicans think they can walk all over us. Today I’m going to kick back,” Alvarado wrote in a social media post Friday that featured her gray, yellow and blue sneakers. “Going to be a long night.”

    The maneuver is not expected to prevent the map from passing: Alvarado would need to speak, without taking bathroom breaks, eating or drinking, until the ongoing special session times out in two weeks. The state Senate is the final step before the map, which was requested by President Donald Trump ahead of next year’s midterms, goes to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

    On Friday, members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus questioned Republican senators on the bill during its initial reading, aiming to gather material for a future court challenge of the maps. Alvarado plans to begin her speech before the final vote. A spokesperson for state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, said she had compiled 12 hours of remarks on the new map from people across Texas and that she plans to read them aloud while questioning Alvarado. Eckhardt and state Sen. Molly Cook of Houston were both wearing sneakers in the lower chamber Friday morning.

    The odds are good that by the time you read this she will be done – those of us who remember Wendy Davis’ filibuster in 2013 know how hard it is to maintain these things. It will not – it cannot – prevent the bill from passing, it will just take up time and annoy the Republicans. But it will also remind Democratic voters and people who don’t like this naked attempt to rig the map for Donald Trump but aren’t partisan Dems that Democratic elected officials are fighting for what they believe in. There’s been plenty of complaints about Dems not doing or not doing enough of that. Here’s a counterexample, to go with the quorum busting. Good on you, Sen. Alvarado. The Trib has more.

    UPDATE: And they’re done.

    The Texas Senate voted to send President Donald Trump’s requested mid-decade redistricting map to the governor’s desk shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday after Republicans crushed Democratic state Sen. Carol Alvarado’s bid to filibuster the bill.

    GOP senators used a procedural move to force a final vote on the proposed map, cutting off Democrats’ last avenue to delay the plan to carve out five new winnable GOP congressional seats ahead of the 2026 midterms. The upper chamber then voted 18-8 along party lines to pass the measure.

    In calling the motion for previous question, state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, accused Alvarado of using the filibuster to raise campaign funds. He told his colleagues that Alvarado sent out an email at 3 p.m. that day “to promote her filibuster as a campaign fundraising event.”

    Alvarado’s plan “effectively holds hostage the entire Senate and forces employees to assist and participate in her campaign,” Perry said. “It’s disrespectful. It violates the decorum of the Senate, and personally, I’m offended by it.”

    Well, we can’t have that, obviously.

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    Doggett will not challenge Casar if new map passes

    Posted on August 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

    For the best.

    Congressman Lloyd Doggett on Thursday said he would end his 52-year political career and stand aside for fellow Austin Democrat Greg Casar in the 2026 primary if Republicans’ new redistricting plan is upheld in court, a bombshell announcement that came one day after the Texas House passed the new congressional map.

    “If the courts give Trump a victory in his scheme to maintain control of a compliant House, I will not seek reelection in the reconfigured CD37, even though it contains over 2/3rd of my current constituents,” Doggett, 78, said in a statement.

    The decision not to go head-to-head with Casar avoids a potentially bitter and expensive primary showdown with generational overtones. At 36, Casar is less than half of Doggett’s age and could have cut into the liberal base that has helped Doggett win election after election since first running for the state Senate in 1973. His only loss came 41 years ago when handily defeated in a run for U.S. Senate. He has served in the U.S. House since 1995.

    The two were drawn into the same district under the new map, which is all but certain to pass the Texas Senate and be signed into law. Doggett had in recent days publicly encouraged Casar run in what would be an uphill race in his redrawn district that would not include any part of Austin.

    In his statement, Doggett did not mask his disappointment that Casar would not follow his suggestion to run in the other district.

    “While his apparent decision is most unfortunate, I prefer to devote the coming months to fighting Trump tyranny and serving Austin rather than waging a struggle with fellow Democrats,” Doggett said “If Trump extreme gerrymandering prevails, I wish Congressman Casar the best.”

    I’ll be honest, I would have liked to see Rep. Casar run in the new CD35 as well, as I think he’d have the best shot at holding it. But if that wasn’t in the cards – and I can hardly blame him for wanting to put himself in that position – then it’s for the best that Rep. Doggett step aside and let the younger man succeed him. None of this is good – we deserve to have them both in Congress – but this is better than having a nasty primary to hold onto power. Fundamentally this sucks, but this is the slightly less bad outcome. The Austin Chronicle has more.

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