Measles update: El Paso the exception

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Weird.

As soon as measles started spreading in West Texas, El Paso health officials began preparing schools and day care facilities for the day the virus would inevitably arrive.

But now that it’s here, it’s not kids who are making up the brunt of the cases — it’s adults. Two-thirds of El Paso’s cases so far are among people over the age of 18, and only 7% are among school-age children.

Anyone unvaccinated can contract measles, but it tends to hit children first and hardest. Most children are not fully vaccinated until they are five years old and they spend more time than adults in congregate settings where the virus can spread quickly. More families of young children are opting out of vaccines, leaving them exposed.

Gaines County, the epicenter of the outbreak, followed this traditional path, starting with school-age children before spreading to adults. Almost six months into what is now the country’s largest measles outbreak since 2000, Texas’ 722 cases are about evenly spread between the three age groups the state divides them into: under four, 5-17 and adults.

El Paso stands out for its high rate of adult infections. The county only has 56 cases so far, the third-highest among Texas counties but still too small of a sample size to conclude much, public health experts say. But if this trend holds, it may be a credit to El Paso’s high vaccination rates among kids — 96% of kindergartners and 98% of seventh graders are fully vaccinated for measles, higher than the percent required to maintain herd immunity. The state does not track adult vaccination rates.

“That is one of the protective factors that we feel is helping us,” said El Paso public health authority Hector Ocaranza. “But still we’re going to continue to see cases of measles that are going to be clustering in some of the schools or day cares that have low immunization rates.”

These surprising initial statistics have required public health officials to change their outbreak response on the fly. They’re aiming more of their vaccination events specifically at adults, especially as many health care providers who serve adults do not have the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine on hand the way pediatricians do.

“Most of the adults, they don’t remember whether they’ve had the MMR vaccine,” Ocaranza said. “They were kids, and nobody has a shot record.”

[…]

Healthy adults are generally able to fight off the worst of a measles infection, but anyone who gets infected runs the risk of it morphing into pneumonia or worse, said Ben Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University. Three of the five hospitalizations in El Paso so far are in adults.

And anyone with measles will spread it in the community, potentially to children too young to be vaccinated who are especially vulnerable to the worst outcomes, like encephalitis, deafness, blindness and permanent brain damage.

“Especially kids two years and under, their immune systems are just bad at everything,” Neuman said. “We’re all sort of helping them out with our herd immunity.”

Neuman said it’s possible that El Paso’s high rate of adult cases is “the first sign of something weird,” but he anticipates the data will start to look more normal as more people get tested.

As a reminder, if you’re not sure what your vax status is for the MMR, you can go get yourself a booster. It will only help, and if you’re the least bit anxious about it or at higher risk, there’s no good reason not to.

Good on El Paso for having an above-average child vaccination rate, which has likely helped slow the spread of the outbreak. I’ve been concerned about that since cases started popping up in the big urban centers, but so far so good. Lubbock is a slightly different story.

When Kelly Johnson Pirtle was counting down the days to her due date last year, she pictured her future as a new mom. She thought of family visits, friends becoming her village, and a healthy child.

She never considered that she might have to shield her newborn son John from a once-eradicated disease.

“You want your kids to grow up in a world that’s healthy and moving forward,” Johnson said. “That’s not true during the first few months of his life. It makes me sad.”

Pirtle is one of many new parents in Lubbock who are growing more anxious as the measles outbreak, and vaccine skepticism, spreads. And Lubbock parents aren’t the only ones terrified of their young children contracting the contagious virus. From January to April 30, 7,107 babies have received a dose of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine early, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. It’s the state’s highest number in the last six years. It could be even higher since the data only includes children whose parents opted into submitting their information to the state.

The outbreak has ballooned to 722 cases in Texas since it began in January. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the measles outbreak is now the largest single outbreak since the U.S. declared the disease eliminated 25 years ago. Nine new cases were reported Friday, the lowest number since February. However, health officials can’t consider an outbreak over until there’s been a 42-day period without a new case.

As the outbreak spreads beyond West Texas, skepticism about the vaccine has intensified, including at a national level. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, has spread misinformation about the vaccine. Earlier this month, Kennedy ordered federal health agencies to research new treatments for measles. Public health officials have said two doses of the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles.

However, a lot of time stands between those two doses and a sense of security for new parents. Doctors recommend that children get their first dose of the MMR vaccine when they are 12 months old. The timeline is shorter — just six months — for children in areas with an outbreak.

That is the case in Lubbock, about 87 miles northeast of Gaines County where the outbreak started and more than 400 cases have been confirmed. There have been 53 confirmed cases in Lubbock County. Lubbock, with a population of 267,000, is the largest city in the South Plains and serves as a medical hub for the region. Due to a dearth of rural hospitals and physicians, people from all over the region flock to Lubbock for health care.

It has left the city and its residents to figure out how to protect themselves when so much of the outbreak is out of their control. Some new parents in Lubbock have reverted to COVID-era precautions — limited contact with people outside the home and avoiding crowded places. On social media groups, women ask other moms how young babies infected with measles fared, and share details on vaccine clinics. Others share locations where cases have been reported for other parents to avoid.

And at this point, they aren’t just battling the outbreak. They are also battling the consequences of a growing distrust about the vaccine, including school and child care centers closing as cases pop up.

A 2024 KFF study found that exemption rates have gone up nationwide. The amount of kindergartners in the U.S. who were exempted from at least one required vaccine increased to 3.3%. Since 2018, the requests to the Texas Department of State Health Services for an exemption form have doubled from 45,900 to more than 93,000 in 2024.

In Lubbock County, 92% of kindergarteners reported being vaccinated against measles in the 2023-2024 school year, about 2 percentage points lower than the state average, according to latest state data.

I wish all the people who are taking this seriously well. It’s a real shame that especially in a place like Lubbock where the sick people need to go to get care that new parents have to act like we’re back in the COVID days. Hopefully that won’t be for too much longer, but we know it’s not truly going to go away.

One small bright side of this outbreak is that there has been an increase in children getting vaccinated.

More Texas parents are opting to vaccinate their babies early against measles, nearly a 4.5-fold increase so far this year compared to 2019, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

From January through April, 7,107 children between the ages of 6 months and 11 months were vaccinated for measles, which is typically reserved for infants about to travel internationally or living in a measles outbreak area. Otherwise, doctors usually administer the first dose of the vaccine when they turn 1 year old.

For the same period in 2019, only 1,591 children between 6 months old and 11 months old were vaccinated for measles.

[…]

“It does show that parents really are scared, and that parents don’t want to wait,” said Nina Masters, a senior applied research scientist at Truveta, a Washington-based company that is studying Texas’ vaccination data. “They don’t want to wait 12 months to get their child vaccinated. They want to wait six months and one day, and they want to do it as soon as they can.”

And, since state data only reflects vaccine information parents voluntarily give to them, the number of babies receiving the vaccine early is probably higher. Masters’ company estimates an 11-fold increase in the number of early measles vaccine shots in Texas between 2019 and 2025, according to a study released this week.

The Truveta study found that in March and April of this year, 20% of all first measles vaccine doses given to 2-year-olds and younger were in babies who were 6 months old to 11 months old.

“This is a really big jump,” Masters said.

Increased vaccine uptake is among the reasons local health officials have seen the number of new measles cases drop in recent days. Last week, only nine new cases were reported, the lowest number over a 7-day period since February. Other factors contributing to the slowdown include natural immunity, quick identification of cases by providers and public health workers, and more infected people staying home because of better measles awareness, officials say.

[…]

Because children younger than one have less developed immune systems, the “zero” or earlier dose is weaker than a regular vaccine and offers just enough protection to cover the child, but not enough to offer lifelong protection, said Katherine Wells, Lubbock’s health director.

Wells said if she had a 6-month-old child, she would have them vaccinated with an earlier dose.

For the past few months, Texas health officials have asked parents to consider this earlier dose if they plan to travel or live in the outbreak area or plan to travel internationally.

West Texas public health officials have posted flyers throughout the region and held press conferences and vaccination clinics to encourage more people to vaccinate against measles, which is the most effective way to prevent infection. Pediatricians in West Texas have been emailing and texting patients to let them know they can vaccinate children earlier than 12 months old.

Lubbock, where 53 measles cases have been reported, is 75 miles from Gaines County, where the measles outbreak began in late January. Wells said Wednesday her department has distributed 500 more measles doses than they normally do this year, mostly to children. She said pediatricians in the area are responsible for about another 2,500 more than normal and private physicians have administered most of the early doses to babies.

As with the measles cases, the count of new vaccinations is likely too low, as the data is incomplete and not everyone reports getting the shots. And I’m glad to hear that there’s a nice increase in Lubbock as well. I really hope this is a multi-year trend now and not just a fear-induced bump. That would still be better than nothing, I would just like to think that there will be some lasting effect.

Also, after reading this NBC News story on the same topic, I wonder how much of this is people pushing up the schedule for their kids’ shots – in other words, people who would have gotten their kids vaxxed anyway but just got on it sooner because of the outbreak – and how much of it is people who for whatever the reason might have delayed or failed to get their kids vaxxed doing so. Clearly some, probably most, of it is the former, but surely some is the latter as well. That’s where the real difference will be made.

Because look, we can use all the help we can get.

A government report released on Thursday covering wide swaths of American health and wellness reflects some of the most contentious views on vaccines, the nation’s food supply, pesticides and prescription drugs held by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The much-anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” report calls for increased scrutiny of the childhood vaccine schedule, a review of the pesticides sprayed on American crops and a description of the nation’s children as overmedicated and undernourished.

[…]

Increased scrutiny of childhood vaccines — credited with saving millions of people from deadly diseases — figures prominently in the report. It poses questions over the necessity of school mandates that require children to get vaccinated for admittance and suggestions that vaccines should undergo more clinical trials, including with placebos.

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic, has raised doubts about the safety of shots even as a measles outbreak has sickened more than 1,000 Americans. This week, Kennedy’s health department moved to limit U.S. access to COVID-19 shots.

The report does not provide any evidence that the childhood vaccine schedule, which includes shots for measles, polio and the chickenpox, is to blame for rising obesity, diabetes or autism rates, said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician at Johns Hopkins University.

“It’s not as if they’re positing any kind of causal link,” Adalja said, adding that Kennedy is “is trying to devalue vaccines in the minds of Americans.”

We are awash in bullshit, and people like RFK Jr are out there spraying it around. I don’t know what things are going to look like on the other side of this, but it’s not great right now.

Ahead of the Friday case count update but after the stories above came out, we learn that measles has arrived in Central Texas.

The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) confirmed a case of measles in Atascosa County, just south of San Antonio, on April 21, that was determined to be linked to the West Texas outbreak. The exposure was centered west of Poteet.

On Tuesday, another case in Kyle was confirmed.

With a population of about 63,000, Kyle is located in Hays County on the Interstate 35 corridor between San Marcos and Austin.

These cases are the closest San Antonio has come to a brush with the highly infectious disease since health authorities warned in late February that a West Texas resident diagnosed with measles spent a weekend visit in San Antonio.

Dr. Jason Bowling, an infectious disease specialist and chief epidemiologist at University Health, said that while he is glad there has not been a case in Bexar County, it wouldn’t take much given the outbreaks nationwide and how contagious the pathogen really is — many times more than the COVID-19 virus, for example.

[…]

The recent deadly measles outbreak in Texas appears to have driven an increase in the number of people who are vaccinated against measles, according to data from DSHS.

Though the data is incomplete because most people have not opted in to the Texas immunization registry, more than 320,000 people statewide have received the MMR vaccine since the start of the year versus over 277,000 in the first six months of 2024.

In West Texas where the outbreak is concentrated, that number doubled, from just over 7,500 to over 13,600.

Vaccination rates in Atascosa County are among the highest in the state with 98.5% of kindergartners and 99% of seventh graders having received the MMR vaccine.

The rates are slightly lower in Hays County, with 95% of kindergartners and 96% of seventh graders. Adult vaccination rates are not available.

Good for Atascosa and Hays Counties, hopefully their high vax rates will keep this from spreading too much. I will continue to monitor it, however often I post about it.

And that brings me to the latest update.

The total number of confirmed cases linked to the measles outbreak is now up to 728 in Texas, according to the latest update from the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). That’s a total of six new cases since Tuesday’s update.

Ninety-four people have been hospitalized with measles since it first broke out in Gaines County in January.

The DSHS underscores that this is the total number of people hospitalized over the course of the outbreak. It is not, however, the current number of people in the hospital.

Based on the most recent data, DSHS has identified designated outbreak counties with ongoing measles transmission: Cochran, Dawson, Gaines, Lamar, Lubbock, Terry and Yoakum.

On Thursday, state and local officials confirmed a measles case in Brewster County. This is the first reported case to appear in the Big Bend region since a measles outbreak began earlier this year in West Texas near the New Mexico border.

The DSHS said that the case was directly linked to the ongoing Texas outbreak that began in Gaines County in January.

There were four new cases in that Tuesday update, so ten for the week. This story has a nice graph showing the total case numbers, and the curve definitely flattened as of the May 6 update. We’ll see if we maintain this new roughly-ten-cases-a-week pace going forward. Stay safe out there.

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Trojan “abortion exceptions” bill passes

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

For better or worse.

A bill clarifying when doctors can perform abortions under Texas’ near-total ban will now go to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk after the House approved the bill with wide bipartisan support. Despite some concerns raised by conservative Republicans, the narrow bill does not expand abortion access, but rather aims to ensure pregnant patients can get life-saving medical care.

Bill sponsor Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican from Fort Worth, stressed that this was not a “choice bill,” but rather an attempt to ensure the existing limits of the law are “clear, consistent, fair and understandable.”

“We do not want women to die from medical emergencies during their pregnancy,” Geren said before a preliminary vote Wednesday. “We don’t want women’s lives to be destroyed because their bodies have been seriously impaired.”

Texas banned all abortions three years ago, with a narrow exception that allows doctors to terminate a pregnancy only to save a pregnant patient’s life. Immediately, doctors and legal experts warned that this exception was too narrow and vaguely written, and the penalties too severe, to ensure that women could get life-saving care.

That has proven true in many cases. Dozens of women have come forward with stories of medically necessary abortions delayed or denied, and at least three women have died as a result of these laws. Faced with these stories, Republican lawmakers have conceded that the language of the law might need some clearing up.

Senate Bill 31, also called the Life of the Mother Act, aligns language among the state’s abortion laws, codifies court rulings and requires education for doctors and lawyers on the nuances of the law. It passed the House 134-4 on Thursday.

The bill was tightly negotiated among lobbyists for doctors and hospitals, anti-abortion groups and Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, who authored the bill, and Geren.

“These groups don’t always see eye to eye,” Geren said. “But in this case, they worked together to ensure pregnant women with pregnancy complications get appropriate and timely care.”

In the Senate, Republicans threw their support behind the bill, while Democrats pushed back on its narrowness, noting that Texas law still does not allow abortions in cases of rape, incest or lethal fetal anomalies.

“The folks who are working on this fix are, from my perspective, the folks who have created the problem,” said Houston Sen. Molly Cook. “Over the past four years, we’ve watched women suffer and die, and this bill is the confirmation that we all agree that something is broken in Texas.”

In the House, however, the bill faced headwinds from the right, as conservative Republicans rallied to the idea that this bill would allow doctors to resume elective abortions. Rep. Brent Money, a Greenville Republican, said he believed the laws were clear as written but there had been “malicious interpretations” by pro-abortion doctors.

[…]

Some doctors groups, including the Texas chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have criticized the bill for not going far enough to protect doctors and the patients they treat. Others say these changes will be sufficient to free doctors to perform medically necessary abortions without fear of lengthy prison sentences and massive fines.

Texas Hospital Association president John Hawkins said in a statement that the bill’s passage is “a great step forward for Texas women and health care.”

“We’re grateful we were able to move past the politics to find common ground,” Hawkins said. “Lawmakers followed through on input from patients, hospitals and physicians to strengthen and clarify laws to better protect moms. Once finalized, this will have an immediate and positive impact, helping us provide life-saving care to pregnant women in distress.”

See here for some background. Sen. Cook is correct, but this is what we got, and it comes with a lot of caveats. I’ll let Jessica Valenti explain where we ended up.

Abortion, Every Day first reported on SB 31 back in March, warning that it was a Trojan Horse—a bill designed to bring back a 1925 abortion ban that could be used to prosecute abortion funds, helpers, and even patients. AED’s reporting created a domino effect of coverage that put pressure on lawmakers to amend the bill and walk that plan back.

Their original plans foiled, Republicans have since shifted their attention to another bill—SB 2880—where they’re still trying to revive that century-old ban. And SB 31? Still a big problem!

The bill allows Texas Republicans to pretend that they’ve ‘softened’ their stance and offered legal clarity to doctors, even though it doesn’t actually expand exceptions. What’s more, the bill requires doctors to take a continuing education course about the state’s abortion ban—designed and taught by an organization hand-picked by Texas Republicans.

Translation: anti-abortion activists will be teaching doctors when and how they’re allowed to save a woman’s life.

How do I know? Because we’ve seen this before! When South Dakota Republicans passed a similar requirement, the state teamed up with the extremist American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) to create their ‘educational’ materials for doctors.

This is an organization that insists abortion is never medically necessary—and recommends c-sections for women with life-threatening pregnancies rather than safer, faster, less painful abortions. So maybe not the best folks to be giving medical advice!

Per usual, Texas is a testing ground for what anti-abortion groups want nationally. These so-called ‘Med Ed’ bills—which are becoming a trend—let lawmakers pretend they’re working with doctors to clarify care, when what they’re really doing is establishing a terrifying new norm: that the government gets to dictate when and how doctors treat their patients in medical emergencies.

So there you have it. And by the way, that other bill SB2880 got voted out of the House committee, meaning it is likely to get passed if it comes to a floor vote before Tuesday, when another deadline kicks in. What does this bill do?

If the bill becomes law, anyone who manufactures, distributes, mails, prescribes or provides abortion-inducing drugs can be sued for up to $100,000, even if the pills aren’t proven to be the cause of death for the fetus. It expands the wrongful death statute to encourage men whose partners willingly terminate their pregnancies to sue whoever provided the pills for up to six years after the event. It also empowers the Attorney General to bring lawsuits on behalf of “unborn children of residents of this state.”

The bill also contains a controversial provision that says it cannot be challenged in state court before it is enforced, and a state judge who holds the law to be unconstitutional can be personally sued for $100,000.

Isn’t that lovely? Look, SB31 passed with broad bipartisan support, as Democrats believed, with justification, that it was the best they were going to get this session. But that one bill allows for a lot of cover for the others, and there’s no way to look at this session and conclude that abortion access and women’s health are any better off now than they were going in. The narrative that Republicans did something to make things a little better is powerful and enticing, and even if that were objectively true it doesn’t change the fact that on net we’re 99% worse than we were in 2021. We can’t lose sight of that and we can’t let any counterfactual take hold.

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Tesla robotaxis to arrive in Austin in June

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Don’t use them, I say. Make Elon cry.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company will have robotaxis on the streets of Austin, Texas, by the end of June.

In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin debut.

Musk said a Tesla robotaxi service will start with about 10 vehicles in Austin, and rapidly expand to thousands of vehicles should the launch go well with no incidents.

Since 2016, Musk has been promising Tesla investors, customers and fans that the company is about a year away from delivering a self-driving car that’s capable of transporting passengers safely without human interventions, or a human at the steering wheel. However, Tesla does not yet offer a vehicle safe to use without human supervision.

“It’s prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that things are going well and then scale it up,” Musk said.

To start, Tesla has said its robotaxis will be Model Y vehicles equipped with a forthcoming version of FSD, or full self-driving, known as FSD Unsupervised.

Alphabet’s Waymo is currently operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in various U.S. markets. On a recent earnings call, Alphabet said Waymo already conducts 250,000 paid trips per week.

Musk said Tesla “will geofence” its robotaxis in Austin to start, meaning the company will limit where those Model Y vehicles can drive. But there won’t be a human safety driver in the cars, Musk promised.

Tesla employees will be remotely monitoring the fleet, he said.

“We’ll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully and as confidence grows, less of that will be needed,” Musk said.

Musk has previously claimed Tesla’s “generalized” approach to robotaxis is more ambitious than Waymo’s. Tesla relies on camera-based systems and computer vision primarily instead of using sophisticated sensors including lidar and radar in its vehicles.

Musk has said those sensors were expensive and could impede high-volume robotaxi production and scaling of a global fleet.

“What will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence, digital neural nets and cameras,” Musk said Tuesday.

See here, here, and here for some background. As noted, Waymo is already an option and use can use the Uber app to ride them, if you must do rideshare without interacting with a human. While I can see good reasons to use the autonomous taxis, I cannot think of a single valid reason to put any money in Elon Musk’s pocket in doing so. This is a choice – again, there’s already a good option available to you in Austin and soon to be wherever else – so make the right choice. If you choose to use Musk’s rancid service, that’s entirely on you. Don’t be that person.

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Lege goes for full THC ban

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Welp.

The Texas House late Wednesday gave initial approval to a bill that would ban all products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, likely spelling the end for the state’s short-lived hemp industry.

Under the legislation, which is nearing the governor’s desk for approval, adults would face up to a year in jail for possessing hemp products with any amount of THC — a stricter penalty than what is on the books for possessing up to 2 ounces of marijuana.

The bill’s expected passage portends a minor earthquake for the state’s economy, effectively shuttering a field that, by one estimate, accounts for roughly 50,000 jobs and generates $8 billion in tax revenue annually.

THC products, now a ubiquitous presence at gas stations, convenience stores and thousands of other retailers across Texas, are now poised to be taken off the shelves. The about-face comes six years after the Legislature inadvertently touched off a massive boom in hemp-based products when lawmakers, intending to boost Texas agriculture, authorized the sale of consumable hemp.

Though that 2019 law does not allow products to contain more than trace amounts of delta-9 THC, it did not establish that same threshold for other hemp derivatives. Critics say the hemp industry has exploited that loophole to the tune of more than 8,000 retailers now selling THC-laced edibles, drinks, vapes and flower buds.

The vote ended months of suspense over how the House would handle competing calls to ban or regulate THC, the psychoactive element in marijuana.

This session, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who oversees the Senate, has led the charge to eradicate the industry, which he accuses of preying on susceptible minors by setting up stores near schools and marketing products to children. The Senate passed legislation in March to ban all THC products, and the Republican leader threatened to force an overtime session of the Legislature if the House did not get on board.

“I’ve been here for 17 years at the Texas Capitol — 10 years as your lieutenant governor. I’ve never been more passionate about anything,” Patrick said in a video posted on social media Monday evening. “I’m not gonna leave Austin until we get this done.”

Hemp industry leaders and advocates say criticism of THC products and retailers is overblown. Shortly after Wednesday’s House vote, Lukas Gilkey, chief executive of Hometown Hero, a manufacturer of hemp-derived products, said industry leaders would immediately begin preparing a lawsuit to challenge the expected ban.

Gilkey said the legal fight would be waged by the Texas Hemp Business Council, a trade group that released a statement late Wednesday blasting the House for ignoring “the voices of small businesses, farmers, veterans and consumers across the state who rely on hemp-derived products for their livelihoods and well-being.”

In lieu of an outright ban, hemp manufacturers and retailers had urged House lawmakers to adopt stricter oversight and licensing requirements, including those found in the previous House draft of the legislation, which would have preserved some types of THC products.

A majority of House lawmakers did away with that approach on Wednesday, voting 86-53 to back a floor amendment from Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, that overhauled the bill by essentially restoring the version approved by the Senate two months ago. It was a major blow for the hemp industry, which had leaned on the House as the bulwark against the Senate’s unwavering bid to outlaw THC. Several Democrats joined with the House’s Republican majority in support of the ban.

[…]

Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston and chair of the House Democratic Caucus, framed the vote as a move “backwards in time” that defied a trend seen in other states to expand access to recreational marijuana or THC.

“We’re still rehashing parts of ‘Reefer Madness’ from the ‘50s and ‘60s,” Wu said. “We thought that we’ve gotten past this, that we’ve grown, that we’ve gotten smarter. … But here we are, back again.”

He added that the “overwhelming majority” of veterans’ groups are “aggressively supporting legalization” and want regulations rather than a ban — an attitude, Wu argued, that reflects the broader view of Texas residents.

“Texans as a whole do not want something that they’ve had access to for the last five years, something that they’ve enjoyed recreationally, that has helped them medically, that has made their lives better — they don’t want this ban either,” he said.

See here for the background. Good luck with the lawsuit – I’m not sure offhand on what grounds they would sue, but I’ll find out when they do. I will say this again, more slowly this time: The Texas Hemp Business Council and everyone else who liked and used these products and who would someday like to see Texas decriminalize marijuana need to go all in on un-electing Dan Patrick. I mean, what do you have to fear from him at this point? The Sisypheans who keep pushing for expanded gambling every other year can continue to delude themselves that if they throw enough money and lobbyists around they might somehow overcome Danno’s resistance. The hemp folks cannot possibly be laboring under that illusion now. I know that electing a Democratic Lite Guv seems impossible, but 1) you literally have nothing to lose; 2) this is an issue with broad support; and 3) what is the alternative? Take your best shot at throwing him out of office. It’s your only hope. The Chron, Reform Austin, Lone Star Left, and The Barbed Wire have more.

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Winning Humble ISD candidate declared ineligible

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is rough.

A candidate who won her bid for the Humble ISD school board on May 3 has now been declared ineligible after her opponent challenged her candidacy, a district spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

Brittnai Brown, a former educator, was sued by opponent Tracy Shannon after the election, and the lawsuit cited voter records that showed that Brown did was not registered to vote in the district for the required six months before the filing deadline to run for the board.

Brown and Shannon both cast bids to unseat the incumbent trustee Ken Kirchhofer for position four on the board. Vote totals from May 3 show that Brown took the lead, with 4,066 votes, Shannon came in second with 3,237 votes and Kirchhofer came in last place with 3,197 votes.

In the lawsuit, Shannon had asked for an injunction to canvassing the votes and for herself to be named victor instead, because she had the second highest number of votes. She also accused officials in the district of being unable to read at the last board meeting due to the discrepancy.

“The district has taken the right step in declaring Ms. Brown ineligible. The pleadings in the lawsuit speak for themselves,” Shannon said. “I ran against Ken Kirchhofer because I believe the district deserves better. There was a clear call for accountability in the district and I believe the election results reflect that appetite for accountability.”

But the district still canvassed the votes at a board meeting on May 13 because the district’s legal counsel, Jeremy Binkley said that the district was legally obligated to canvass the votes on the 11th day after the election. Binkley also said if the trustee-elect was declared ineligible, it would create a vacant seat on the board that would be filled either with a special election or by board appointment.

After reviewing voter records, the district found that Brown’s registration on Feb. 14 listed a Houston ISD address. Brown changed her address to a Humble ISD address where she now lives likely around the time of the filing deadline, but it did not become effective until March 16, because it takes 30 days for changes on voter registration to become effective, according to Texas Secretary of State guidelines.

Until a decision is made by the board about whether to call a special election or to fill the seat by appointment, Kirchhofer will continue to serve on the board, according to Humble ISD’s Chief Communications Officer Jamie Mount. She confirmed that the school board has not met to determine how to move forward, but that the rest of the candidates who won their seats will be confirmed at a board meeting on June 10.

Mount said that the district “has not experienced a problem with candidate voter registration in prior elections.”

Typically, when the district receives candidate filings, the school district checks that the address on the application for a place on the ballot is within Humble ISD, that the candidate is a registered voter, and candidates sign that they are eligible to hold office under the laws of the state, Mount said.

See here and here for some background. On the surface this seems straightforward enough. I would like to understand why Humble ISD didn’t catch this up front, but that’s for them to figure out. I don’t know if Brittnai Brown was confused or got bad advice or what, but given that her win was a victory for the forces of good sense – and it’s the loser Tracy Shannon who needed to be kept off the Board – her subsequent disqualification is a setback. If Humble ISD doesn’t appoint a replacement – and if they do, please find someone other than Tracy Shannon – I sure hope a good and eligible candidate can be found quickly. This is all very unfortunate.

Posted in Election 2025 | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Winning Humble ISD candidate declared ineligible

That Waymo is watching you

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Huh.

The Los Angeles Police Department obtained video footage from a Waymo driverless car as part of its investigation into a hit-and-run in which a separate, human-driven car hit a pedestrian.

The LAPD published the footage, which has a note on it that reads “Waymo Confidential Commercial Information,” on its YouTube page to ask the public for help identifying the driver of the vehicle. The short clip shows what video footage that law enforcement requests from Waymo looks like.

The situation shows that police in Los Angeles are now looking at Waymo robotaxis as potential sources of surveillance footage to investigate crimes that the vehicles’ cameras and sensors may have witnessed. In 2023, Bloomberg reported that police in both San Francisco and Maricopa County, Arizona, had issued search warrants for Waymo footage. Police have also requested footage from Teslas, extremely pervasive Ring cameras, and Cruise autonomous vehicles.

[…]

A Waymo spokesperson told 404 Media that it does not proactively give footage to police.

“Waymo does not provide information or data to law enforcement without a valid legal request, usually in the form of a warrant, subpoena, or court order. These requests are often the result of eyewitnesses or other video footage that identifies a Waymo vehicle at the scene,” the spokesperson said. “We carefully review each request to make sure it satisfies applicable laws and is legally valid. We also analyze the requested data or information, to ensure it is tailored to the specific subject of the warrant. We will narrow the data provided if a request is overbroad, and in some cases, object to producing any information at all.”

Waymo’s website explains that it conducts training sessions for law enforcement and emergency responders, which is designed to teach them about Waymo and explains what they should do in case they are responding to a car crash or other emergency involving a Waymo. The page says it had “conducted in-person training for 18,000+ first responders at 75+ agencies.”

You can see the video of the crash at the story link. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but I admit I hadn’t thought of it before reading the story. There’s clearly value in that kind of footage being available. There’s also a clear potential threat to public safety when there are authoritarians and wannabes who can get access to it as well. The obvious remedy is laws that require transparency and put strict limits on the use of such footage. We’re going to have to do the best we can until such a law could plausibly be passed.

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Hollins wants a final ruling on the drainage deal before he’ll certify the budget

Posted on May 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Okay.

Chris Hollins

Controller Chris Hollins said he won’t certify Mayor John Whitmire’s 2026 budget until the court makes a decision on the city’s payment agreement with the plaintiffs in a years-long streets and drainage lawsuit, Hollins told the Houston Chronicle following a budget trends report Tuesday.

Whitmire earlier this month presented a $7 billion budget with no added fees for residents and no tax increases. The city’s budget deficit of around $106 million will be eradicated by dipping into the city’s savings account.

The budget includes a payment plan for a denied appeal in a lawsuit that requires Houston to stick to city law and put more money toward street and drainage projects.

The agreement would charge a percentage of the 11.8 cents per $100 of evaluation required by the city law incrementally over the next two years. The city would then start charging the full 11.8 cents starting in 2028 to fully supply the drainage fund.

As a result, the city would see $490 million in its drainage fund in 2026, $525 million in 2027, $540 million in 2028 and $585 million in 2029, Whitmire’s team explained.

But even though the court ruled the city had to comply with the ordinance, the city has not yet received word from a judge on whether Houston’s agreement with the plaintiffs is acceptable.

“We’ve shared with [the Whitmire administration] that they’ll need to go to the court to get that blessing before we can move forward,” Hollins said.

City Attorney Arturo Michel wrote in a statement that the agreement is currently before the court and that all parties involved considered it routine to have it presented without a hearing. Michel said the plaintiffs in the case would contact the court to say the agreement is the preferred payment mechanism.

Michel disagreed with the controller’s position that a court order would be necessary to approve the budget.

“The parties have a binding agreement that has received all city and plaintiff approvals,” Michel wrote.

Whitmire’s Deputy Chief of Staff Steven David added that even if the case were to be reassigned to a different judge in the case, city leadership – including the controller and city council – would still be bound by the agreement it collectively approved.

See here, here, and here for some background. I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with a fellow Dem precinct chair about this post-ruling deal that allowed the city to defer some of the drainage payments. How is it that a defendant that has already lost the lawsuit can engage in what is essentially a settlement deal? My thinking was that if this arrangement is acceptable to the plaintiffs then it satisfies the judgment, and since the enforcement of a judgment is basically the plaintiff going back to the judge to complain about it, then as long as they’re happy it all works. But as we know, I Am Not A Lawyer, and it seems normal and reasonable to check with the judge first to make sure this arrangement is in fact kosher. It probably will be (again, IANAL) but it can’t hurt to wait until the judge officially says so. And so here we are.

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

More on the visa issues for the 2026 FIFA World Cup

Posted on May 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a problem for Houston, too.

Experts are now raising questions about America’s ability to receive such an influx of people, however, as some tourists wait months to obtain a visa, and the Trump administration strains relations with international allies and adversaries alike.

New immigration policies and downsizing in the federal government could make it harder to obtain visas and travel safely between the United States, Canada and Mexico, which are co-hosting the tournament.

Houston’s top World Cup planners say they are doing what they can at a local level to ensure a safe and smooth experience for all who visit next summer, and are confident the tournament will carry on as planned.

“I’m only focused on what I can control here, and I remain optimistic that when this World Cup comes next year, with 104 matches played across three countries, that it’s going to be epic,” said Chris Canetti, president of Houston’s 2026 World Cup Committee.

“I have a lot of faith in soccer as a unifier, and these events unite people and pull people together through geopolitical issues and other things that otherwise might dominate the headlines,” Canetti said.

The quadrennial men’s World Cup routinely draws millions of international tourists to its host country over the course of the monthlong tournament. Next year’s World Cup, with an expanded field of 48 teams, will be the biggest in the sport’s history. A recent report from the U.S. Travel Association said that six million people could travel from outside the country to attend.

But unlike in the two most recent host countries, Qatar and Russia, where tickets to a match essentially doubled as visas to enter the country, the U.S. is still requiring some visitors to obtain approval to enter the country.

Fans from countries that are included in America’s Visa Waiver Program — almost all of which are European and Asian — should be largely unaffected. Travelers from most South American and African countries, however, will have to apply for tourist visas separately from their tickets.

That’s a problem for fans of countries that won’t know if their team has even made it to the World Cup or where they will be playing until the matchups are drawn in December. State Department data shows that wait times for visa interviews at consulates in many countries can stretch for months.

In Colombia, a soccer powerhouse that can be reasonably expected to qualify for the World Cup, the current wait time to obtain a visa is 18 months. The tournament would long be over by the time a Colombian who applied now would be able to receive their travel permit.

As the Trump Administration moves to cut down on federal staff and strengthen the vetting process of people who are allowed into the country, industry leaders worry that hits to the State Department could exacerbate difficulties in processing visas.

“The wait times will absolutely see the impact of staff reductions. … Wait times are only going to go up, not down,” said Travis Murphy, the founder of Jetr Global Sports + Entertainment and a former American diplomat, to the Athletic.

The U.S. Travel Association released a report in February that detailed how unprepared America is to host the millions of people expected to travel to the country over the next several years, not just for the World Cup but for the 2025 Ryder Cup, 2028 Olympics and more.

[…]

David Goldblatt, a British journalist, academic and soccer historian, said that while he ultimately expects stadiums to be full, he wouldn’t be surprised if some fans feel trepidation about traveling for the tournament.

“Who around the world isn’t thinking that the American border is quite a tricky place right now?” Goldblatt said. “It’s a whole new territory, no one has had to think about this in living memory about going to the United States, so yeah, I think it’s an issue.”

Goldblatt, however, also said that the Trump administration seems genuine in its intentions to host a great World Cup, and might make strides to rectify any widespread travel difficulties that arise.

“My impression is that the White House really loves the World Cup. They don’t understand the game but they know that it’s great television, and that’s really important in this White House,” Goldblatt said. “If systematic difficulties were to start emerging, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some action.”

See here for the background. There is a task force set up to deal with the problems, as was recommended by the U.S. Travel Association, and I appreciate David Goldblatt’s optimism about things. I do think, all things being equal, that the Trump administration would like for this to be a big success and bask in the reflected glory of it. I also think that they’ve fired most if not all of the competent people who would be best positioned to achieve that success, that they’ve made this task vastly harder for themselves because of their insane and inhumane immigration policies, and that Trump himself and the slavering troglodytes that enable him are the wildest wild cards in existence, able to deal a huge blow to the efforts at any minute. If we had a normal administration, this would be an entirely manageable issue. But we don’t, and until I see reporting to suggest that the biggest problems have been fully solved, I’m not betting on any grand successes. Avoiding disaster might be the best case scenario.

Posted in La Migra, Other sports | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

RIP, George Coulam

Posted on May 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Wow.

Texas Renaissance Festival founder George Coulam was found dead Wednesday morning in his home in Todd Mission, according to law enforcement officials. He was 87.

The Todd Mission Police Department was dispatched to Coulam’s home just outside the Renaissance Festival’s site at 9:05 a.m., with the Grimes County Sheriff’s Office and Texas Rangers assisting in the response. Coulam was pronounced dead at the scene upon arrival.

The cause of Coulam’s death is under investigation by all three agencies and was unknown as of mid-afternoon.

There was no suspected danger to the public, according to the Todd Mission Police Department.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of George Coulam, founder of the Texas Renaissance Festival. For more than 50 years, he built a community that has become a cherished tradition for generations of performers, staff, and guests.” officials with the Texas Renaissance Festival said in a Facebook post. “At this time, we ask for respect and privacy for Mr. Coulam’s family and the extended Texas Renaissance Festival family as they grieve.”

Festival officials called the death a “deeply personal matter” and did not release any other details.

The news of Coulam’s death comes on the heels of an order for Coulam to sell the festival.

[…]

Houston attorney Anthony Laporte, who represents Rivard said he was “reeling” from the news.

“Obviously, my client is saddened by the loss of George,” Laporte said. “(Meril Rivard) liked George, he got to know George.”

Laporte said Rivard and Coulam had a friendly meeting last week.

“Everything was good, so this is a sad loss,” Laporte said.

In a statement to the Chronicle, Rivard said he and his family were “shocked.”

“Our thoughts go out to his loved ones,” Rivard said. “Like everyone else who loves the Texas Renaissance Festival, we remain committed to ensuring that the festival lives on, and we are working steadfastly to make that happen.”

While the deal was not finalized, Laporte said the process was moving forward. Chaney ordered Laporte to draw up a contract to be approved by the court and a final order issued.

“We like to believe the transactions can be completed and moved forward,” Laporte said. “We have a firm belief and commitment in Ren Fest 2025.”

See here, here, and here for the background. It’s hardly a shock that an 87-year-old might pass away suddenly, it just feels a little dramatic because of the recent news. Given everything we know about George Coulam, that seems fitting. He was a legend – a very complicated legend – and he will be long remembered. Rest in peace, George. CultureMap, Texas Monthly, and the Current have more.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of May 19

Posted on May 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance will not be accepting any Qatari jets in return for this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Long-awaited Texas redistricting trial begins

Posted on May 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Been waiting a long time for this one.

Questions over whether Latinos had their voting power diminished in the Dallas area will be a focus of a federal trial in El Paso that begins Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, is scheduled to testify Friday before the three-judge panel in the case that will determine whether Texas must draw new maps for state and congressional districts.

In a filing last week, Crockett and U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, alleged that the Legislature intentionally used racial discrimination to draw a pair of congressional districts in Houston and another in Dallas.

Among the allegations is that state officials failed to create districts with a majority of voting-age Latino citizens in Dallas and Tarrant counties.

“The Dallas-Ft. Worth area could have gained (but did not) an additional Latino majority congressional district and State Senate district,” the lawsuit alleges.

Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, said the current map “packs Latino voters” in North Texas and the Harris County area, depriving them of equal representation.

In Texas, “voters of color tend to vote for one party, while white voters tend to vote for the other,” she told reporters Monday. “And the white voters do this in a way that blocks minority voters from being able to elect their preferred candidates.”

For the congressional maps, Crockett and Green allege that their districts — and a vacant boundary represented by the late U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston — dilute “minority voting strength” and prioritize racial considerations over traditional mapmaking principles.

“The evidence will demonstrate that [the congressional map] was enacted with discriminatory intent, that the legislators knew of and intended the discriminatory effect on Black and Latino voters, and that it constitutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” attorneys for the federal lawmakers wrote.

See here and here for the most recent updates, in which both the corrupt Trump Justice Department and some plaintiffs dropped out of the case. Since the filing, the SCTOUS decision in the Alabama redistricting lawsuit in 2023 upheld the ban on racial gerrymandering, which is a cornerstone of the Texas case. Whether any of that still applies post-Trump is a question I can’t answer but which we will presumably find out. Michael Li has a nice thread on the various pretrial briefs that have been filed, and a look at the witnesses that the plaintiffs plan to call. Democracy Docket has a broad overview of the case and all of the related filings. The case is expected to take two weeks, and then we’ll wait for a ruling, which of course will be appealed. We’re not getting a resolution any time soon. The Dallas Observer has more.

UPDATE: Here’s the Trib story, published this morning.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Rep. Vikki Goodwin to run for Lite Guv

Posted on May 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Dems have their first official statewide candidate.

Rep. Vikki Goodwin

State Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin, has filed paperwork to run for lieutenant governor in next year’s midterm election, giving up a safe seat in the Texas House to seek one of the state’s most powerful offices.

Goodwin has long been expected to run for the seat, currently held by Republican Dan Patrick, who has said he will seek reelection next year. The four-term Austin Democrat told the Tribune in 2023 she was mulling a run, and since then she has openly signaled her plans to allies.

She appointed a campaign treasurer for her lieutenant governor bid on Monday, the first formal step for a candidate to start raising money.

Unseating Patrick will be a daunting task for any Democrat. The lieutenant governor is sitting on a war chest of more than $33 million, and he has many deep-pocketed conservative allies ready to ride to the rescue if he finds himself endangered.

[…]

Goodwin will have to make up significant ground financially, with just over $150,000 in her campaign account as of Dec. 31, the last date covered by public campaign finance reports.

Goodwin, a 58-year-old real estate agent, has served in the Texas House since 2019, representing a district that covers parts of west and north Austin and the western side of Travis County, including parts of Bee Cave and Lakeway. She is seen as one of the more liberal members of the state House and currently serves on the chamber’s Appropriations and Insurance committees.

Honestly, I think it’s a good sign to have someone announce their entry this early. It can only help from a fundraising perspective, and I’ll be looking at her July report with some interest. My hope is that Rep. Goodwin will soon be followed by others – there are plenty of people circling around the Senate race, and it wouldn’t surprise me if one or more of them move over to, say, Governor or AG. Again, getting organized, getting some news coverage, and getting the fundraising machine going are all better done sooner rather than later. I look forward to seeing Rep. Goodwin when she visits Houston.

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Harris County DA drops criminal charges against Hotze

Posted on May 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Bummer.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office dropped four felony charges filed against Republican activist Steven Hotze, bringing an abrupt end to the case accusing him of plotting a election conspiracy-fueled assault on an AC repairman in 2020.

The DA’s office also announced it would drop three of five charges against Mark Aguirre, a private investigator working for Hotze who is accused of attacking the repairman and threatening him with a gun, in a Tuesday news release.

District Attorney Sean Teare, a Democrat, said while the DA’s office believed the attack was related to “a baseless voter fraud conspiracy scheme,” prosecutors could not stand by indictments implicating Hotze, who had been charged with aggravated assault and robbery.

“This deeply troubling case shows how toxic conspiracy theories can fuel real-world violence that endangers people in our community,” Teare said. “We look forward to vigorously prosecuting the remaining charges in this case that stand up to legal scrutiny. However, unlike the previous administration, we believe ethical prosecutors have a responsibility to do so based on facts — not political theater, media spectacle, or the reckless pursuit of headlines.”

Kim Ogg, the former district attorney, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The DA’s office said it conducted an “exhaustive review” of the evidence related to the charges against the men, and determined that the state cannot prove any of the remaining charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt and that those charges should not have been filed.

[…]

The DA’s office is still pursuing one of the aggravated assault charges against Aguirre as well as the unlawful restraint charge. Terry Yates, Aguirre’s lawyer, said he will continue with a motion to dismiss the remaining charges, citing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct during Ogg’s tenure.

Hotze was first charged with aggravated assault and unlawful restraint in April 2022, and then charged with aggravated robbery and engaging in organized criminal activity in August 2024. All of those charges have now been dropped.

[…]

The DA’s office also said it planned to withdraw a request to seek a hate crime enhancement against Aguirre and Hotze. The request, made by a special prosecutor hired during former DA Kim Ogg’s administration, was “found to be meritless,” the news release said. The prosecutor, Warren Diepraam, is no longer working for the DA’s office.

Teare used the announcement to again criticize cases brought by Ogg, whom he defeated during last year’s Democratic primaries and officially replaced in January.

“As we review more cases filed under the previous administration, a pattern has become quite clear: The former district attorney abused the authority of this office to overcharge and investigate those she disagreed with and outsourced high-profile criminal investigations to friends who shared her political views,” said Teare. “That’s not justice and so long as I’m DA, that’s not how we will do business in Harris County.”

See here for some background. I am of course in favor of going as hard as possible against the walking stain that is Steven Hotze, but if Sean Teare says that the evidence isn’t there to support those charges, I will reluctantly believe him. The one good thing about this is that it should clear the way for the civil trial against Hotze to get underway, and that one should be an easier case to prove. If I can’t see Hotze in handcuffs, I can hope to see him get hit with a huge judgment. Let’s get that going now.

UPDATE: More from the Press.

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Bail disreform advances

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Bad.

The Texas House on Monday advanced a sweeping package to crack down on bail laws, setting a longtime priority of Gov. Greg Abbott’s — to keep more dangerous people accused of violent crimes behind bars — on its clearest path to passage in years.

Lawmakers adopted the package’s centerpiece proposal asking voters to amend the state Constitution to create a list of violent offenses for which, in certain cases, judges must deny bail. Once the Senate concurs on the House’s version, as expected, the measure will be placed before voters on November’s ballot.

But a constitutional amendment to automatically deny bail to any unauthorized migrant accused of certain felonies failed to win the 100 votes required for passage. Because it received support from a majority, 88 to 50, it will have one more shot at adoption this week.

And the House gave initial approval to Senate Bill 9, which would restrict who is eligible for release on cashless personal bonds and allow the state to appeal bail decisions, leaving a defendant jailed for up to 20 days as the appeal is litigated. House lawmakers also advanced Senate Bill 40, which would bar municipalities from using public funds to bail defendants out of jail. Both bills must pass the House once more before going to the Senate, which has already passed its versions of the legislation.

Under the state Constitution, almost everyone who is arrested has the right to be released on bail. The limited exceptions are people charged with capital murder and those accused of certain repeat felonies or bail violations. According to the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court, bail cannot be excessive, and pretrial detention largely should not be considered the default, as criminal defendants are still legally presumed innocent.

Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo and chair of the House Criminal Jurisprudence committee, argued that stricter bail laws were necessary to protect the public from crime committed by dangerous defendants out on bail.

“I’ve never voted on any legislation more important than what we’re getting ready to consider, because it holds the very key to life or death of some very wonderful people, some very innocent people,” he said, telling lawmakers about the families of violent crime victims he had spoken to. “This is what crime has done to some of our families. And what all of these cases and so many more have in common is, they are a result of what Governor Abbott has described as a broken bail system.”

“It may not be perfect, but it’s the best we could do to fix a system that’s been broken for a long time,” Smithee added. “We’ve been working on this for 10 years now, and it’s finally time to get this done.”

The House’s approval of the bail package marks a significant victory for Abbott, who has made tightening the state’s bail laws an emergency item for three consecutive sessions. While lawmakers have previously approved more modest measures limiting the use of cashless bonds, more expansive proposals to overhaul the state’s bail laws have repeatedly died in the lower chamber.

[…]

“We wouldn’t be here if there weren’t real life examples of people being released who plainly should not have been,” said Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso, the lead Democratic negotiator, adding that he was committed to addressing low-level offenders locked behind bars simply because they could not afford their bail.

“That’s how the bail reform conversation started a decade ago,” he said. “For every improperly released defendant who commits a serious crime, there’s 100 low-level offenders held when they shouldn’t be, whose lives are upended. We need to do both.”

Top Republicans and Democrats spent weeks negotiating a package that could gain traction across parties, and they ultimately produced legislation more stringent than initially proposed even while narrowing the types of defendants who would be subject to the harsher rules.

Republicans cast the issue as one of life-or-death, arguing that stricter bail laws are necessary to keep dangerous defendants locked up and to hold judges accountable. They pointed to numerous examples of violent crime committed by people let out on bond, and highlighted the stories of victims and their loved ones.

Civil rights groups and some Democrats, meanwhile, argued that the measures tied the hands of judges and infringed on the civil rights of anyone accused of certain crimes.

Senate Joint Resolution 5, which would require judges to deny bail in certain cases, was approved overwhelmingly, 133 to eight — winning approval by a larger margin than a less stringent proposal in 2021. That legislation, House Joint Resolution 4, was approved 104 to 35, but failed as a casualty of a Democratic walkout over a voting bill.

As approved by the House, SJR 5 goes further than the Senate’s original proposal by requiring judges to deny bail in certain cases, rather than simply giving them the discretion to do so.

The stiffer language was demanded by Abbott, who argued that constitutionally requiring the denial of bail for certain violent offenses was necessary to rein in “activist judges” setting low or cashless bail for defendants who proceed to commit more crimes while out of jail.

As long as some people are allowed to post bail, there will be those who commit crimes while out. The only way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to keep literally everyone locked up until their cases are resolved, and that’s plainly unconstitutional as well as being morally indefensible. What this will do, in addition to being great for the bail bond business, is lock up a lot more people who pose little to no threat to anyone for no good reason. Some of them will die in jail, others will lose jobs and their families will suffer. None of them will get to tell their stories to Greg Abbott, who wouldn’t care about them anyway. And this will cost Harris County a bunch of money and make it that much harder to keep the jail population under control. I’ll be voting against these propositions when they’re on the ballot in November, and you should too. Reform Austin has more.

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Lege set to do more social media bans

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I have three things to say about this.

The Texas Legislature is poised to impose sweeping restrictions on how minors use social media, from banning them from signing up for accounts and requiring parental consent to download applications, to placing warning labels about their dangers.

House Bill 186, filed by Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, has already passed with bipartisan support in the House, and a Senate panel has indicated its support as well. The proposal, the most far-reaching of the bills lawmakers have filed to address online dangers this session, would prohibit minors from creating accounts on social media sites, such as Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and more, and require users to verify their ages. Companies would have to comply with the ban by April 2026.

“Like so many parents across our state, I’ve watched my children grow up in a world that feels less and less safe, not because of where they go physically, but because of where they go online, in spaces that my wife and I can not possibly monitor at all times,” said Sen. Adam Hinojosa, R-Corpus Christi, co-sponsor of the bill, during a State Affairs Committee hearing last week.

The bill would also allow parents to request the deletion of their child’s social media account, and a company must comply within 10 days.

Under this bill, any website that allows users to curate and create content is considered a social media website and cut off from minors. News and sports websites will be safe.

As of June 2024, 10 states, including Texas, have passed laws restricting children’s access to social media, according to the Age Verification Providers Association.

However, a ban on social media for Texans under 18 would be the strictest regulation of the social media industry. Currently, Florida is the only other state with a ban on social media, but it’s only for minors under 14, and they are working to extend the ban to those under 16.

Last week, lawmakers sent Senate Bill 2420, by Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, establishing age verification requirements and mandating parental consent before a minor is allowed to download or make purchases within software applications. Lawmakers are also considering House Bill 499, by Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, which would require social media platforms to have a warning label about the association between a minor’s social media usage and significant mental health issues.

“We have the ability and the power to act today. With House Bill 186, we confront the evil before us and boldly say, ‘You cannot have our children,’” Hinojosa said in an emotional address to lawmakers.

[…]

This isn’t the first time Texas has attempted to rein in social media, but each attempt has ended in a court debate.

“House Bill 186 conflicts with Texas contract law and undermines teens’ right to access information, express themselves, and participate in the digital economy,” said Megan Stokes, state policy director of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, in a news release. “A 14-year-old can legally work in retail or food service in Texas, but this bill would prevent them from even having a social media account.”

Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 18 into law in 2023, known as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act. The SCOPE Act requires certain social media platforms to provide minors with certain data protections, prevent minors from accessing harmful content, and give parents tools to manage their child’s use of the service.

It also required school districts to obtain parental consent for most software and social media applications used in the classroom and look for internet alternatives for instruction.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has already sued TikTok twice under this law, accusing the company of violating deceptive trade law by downplaying its addictiveness and exposing children to explicit material.

The suit argues that TikTok, a short-form video app, violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by listing itself on app stores as appropriate for children and not effectively enforcing its community guidelines. The Apple App Store lists TikTok as rated for those 12 and older, while the Microsoft and Google Play Stores list the app as appropriate for users 13 and older.

TikTok has denied these allegations, and the issue has been playing out in court since last year, with various student groups and internet providers suing Paxton for violating First Amendment rights.

Opponents of this new batch of social media bills told lawmakers the same thing would happen again.

“The way this bill is currently written, it would end up restricting the First Amendment rights of minors,” Stokes told lawmakers Thursday. “Many Texas teens rely on these online platforms to connect with their peers, to share their interests, to find support for personal or academic growth, and this will be taken from them.”

1. I take no position on the wisdom or effect of these bills, though the latter one by Rep. González seems to be the least intrusive and disruptive of the three. No question that social media is generally bad for kids and needs a whole lot more oversight. You’ll forgive me if I have my doubts that bills put forth by Texas Republican legislators are likely to be the best way forward on those matters. Also, and this is my favorite part, my kids are now both over eighteen, so this is officially Not My Problem anymore.

2. There are legitimate First Amendment issues here, as was the case with the still–blocked SCOPE Act, still being fought out in the courts. This too will be fought tooth and nail, and it will be good business for many lawyers. By the way, does Donald Trump know that Ken Paxton is being mean to TikTok?

3. If instead of a state law being passed, the city of Austin had passed an ordinance mandating any of these things for social media companies, the state of Texas would be on them like a ton of bricks, all in the name of allowing for a consistent set of rules for businesses to follow. But the state passing a law that will be a big outlier on the national scene in this way, well, that’s just fine. I just wanted to note that for the record.

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Still more about those CenterPoint generators

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I’m sure CenterPoint will be happy when there are no more stories about the cursed things.

No longer seen at I-10 and Sawyer

CenterPoint Energy “did not adequately follow its own practices” in leasing power generators that went mostly unused after Hurricane Beryl, despite their nearly $1 billion price tag, according to a third-party audit of the deal.

The Houston-area utility couldn’t show evidence that it completed formal risk assessments for the vendor it chose in 2021, or that it considered potential conflicts of interests, the audit found.

Both of those findings affirm key flashpoints in a contentious 2022 legal battle over whether CenterPoint could pass on its costs leasing the massive generators to customers. Texas utility regulators, at the urging of state lawmakers, ultimately went against the recommendations of state administrative law judges to approve the first such rate hike in 2023.

The audit, conducted by consulting firm Moss Adams, came at the behest of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. He was one of many to criticize CenterPoint’s nearly $1 billion generator lease after a Houston Chronicle investigation in Hurricane Beryl’s aftermath revealed none of the large units had been used to restore power.

Since then, CenterPoint has said its set of 15 large generators are meant for rare blackouts that occur when power plants in the state can’t generate enough electricity to meet demand, such as what happened during the February 2021 freeze.

[…]

The finding aligns with the complaints of state regulators and lawmakers who have said that CenterPoint misled them to believe the large generators could be used to restore power after hurricanes. The company’s CEO has previously apologized to lawmakers for not communicating more clearly.

In a Friday email statement, Keith Stephens, CenterPoint’s chief communications officer, said the company “greatly appreciates the valuable insights provided by Moss Adams” in the audit and the community’s feedback over the last year.

CenterPoint has already completed or is making progress toward completing each of Moss Adams’ key recommendations, Stephens wrote. The utility is also more than 90% complete with a “historic” set of improvements to prepare for the upcoming hurricane season, he said.

See here for the previous entry. Not much to add here, I think we can feel confident that CenterPoint learned something from this debacle. It’ll be summer soon, so let’s all hope they learned enough.

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The South Texas situation

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The new TDP Chair would like to improve the party’s performance in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley.

Democrats are ready to fight for South Texas.

That is the message Kendall Scudder, the new chair of the Texas Democratic Party, shared last weekend as he visited the Rio Grande Valley for the first time since being elected in March.

Scudder held two town hall events in the region — once considered a Democratic stronghold — on Saturday as part of a series of town halls he plans to host across the state to declare a new day for Texas Democrats.

Speaking to a crowd in the McAllen public library’s auditorium, Scudder, 35, said the party will throw punches, not just take them.

“If we keep moving backward here, we don’t just lose votes, we start losing sitting electeds that are good people that are fighting for their communities down here,” Scudder said during an interview before the event.

“This is a place that we have to be showing up in and fighting back, and we got into this mess because we weren’t,” they said.

Scudder replaced former Democratic Chair Gilberto Hinojosa, a Rio Grande Valley native, who stepped down in November after 12 years that included last year’s devastating election cycle.

All four Valley counties voted for President Donald Trump, including Starr County which hadn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate in more than 100 years.

To begin making inroads, the party must fill vacancies in their ranks, including precinct chair and county chair positions which are 50% and 20% vacant, respectively, Scudder said.

The goal is to have more people on the ground who know what is happening in their communities and who can help the party reach more voters.

He knows Valley voters have felt that the Democratic Party has taken them for granted, but he hopes to rectify that by focusing on economic issues such as increasing the minimum wage and improving working conditions.

“I think this area has felt kind of abandoned by our party for a while and I want to make sure that it is crystal clear to folks that the Valley matters to us,” Scudder said. “The working people down here deserve advocates who will fight to make sure they get fair wages for working conditions.”

I believe the new TDP Chair will have to solve some fundraising issues to fully realize this goal, but it’s a good goal to have. And I hope we put in commensurate amounts of effort and resources into other parts of the state as well.

One specific thing to focus on as part of this new effort is that new perennial target, CD15.

National Democrats are planning to target U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz in next year’s midterms, putting the Edinburg Republican in their crosshairs for the second straight election cycle as the party looks to rebound from a disastrous showing in South Texas.

De La Cruz’s 15th Congressional District was the only Texas seat included on the initial list of 2026 targets unveiled Tuesday morning by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of U.S. House Democrats. The announcement signals that national Democrats are poised to put money and other resources into flipping the district, a longtime Democratic stronghold before De La Cruz brought it under GOP control in 2022.

De La Cruz was also the DCCC’s lone target in Texas last year, reflecting the lack of competition that has endured since Republican state lawmakers redrew the state’s political maps to protect endangered incumbents. In 2024, De La Cruz won reelection with 57% of the vote — the only one of the state’s 25 GOP-controlled congressional seats where the Republican nominee failed to net 60%.

[…]

In a statement, DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat, made clear the party would target De La Cruz over the economy.

“Monica De La Cruz is running scared, and she should be,” DelBene said. “From tanking the economy, gutting Medicaid, abandoning our veterans, to making everything more expensive, she’s broken her promises to Texans, and it’s going to cost her her seat.”

The DCCC “is already working to recruit authentic and battle-ready candidates in Texas who reflect this community and will work to better Texans’ lives,” DelBene added.

Yes, we noted one of those recruiting efforts already. We’ll see how that goes. There are also some legislative targets, and plenty of things for them all to talk about. I really hope the DCCC is also looking at CD24, which isn’t as close on paper as CD15 is but which is in a part of the state that (pre-2024, at least) had been rapidly trending blue.

And we can’t talk about South Texas without talking about Henry Cuellar, unfortunately.

Former Rep. Mayra Flores, a Republican who is the first Mexican-born woman to serve in Congress, announced on Tuesday that she has switched districts to challenge Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, in 2026 as Cuellar awaits the start of his criminal trial.

Less than three hours after her campaign launched on social media, Flores’ team announced that the former congresswoman has been hospitalized.

“We pray that Mayra will return stronger than ever, ready to continue her unwavering commitment to serving our country,” the team wrote on X.

Flores has been discharged from the hospital, according to a sister who responded to questions from The Texas Tribune.

A statement Tuesday evening from the campaign said that Flores is “now fully recovering and feeling stronger than ever” and will be back on the campaign trail soon. These statements did not provide additional details.

Flores, 39, represented Texas’s 34th district for about six months after she won a special election in June 2022.

She lost her reelection in November 2022 to Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen. The pair ran against each other again in 2024 — when Flores lost by less than three percentage points.

I’m of the opinion now that Cuellar is some kind of ancient eldritch being that cannot be killed. Honestly, it’s the only sensible explanation I can think of. He’ll be fine. And that’s all the time I have to think about Henry Cuellar.

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Of course cuts to Medicaid would hurt Texas

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

They will hurt millions of people around the country, and hospitals and more as well.

Texas hospitals are facing a freeze in billions of dollars in federal Medicaid funding under a budget proposal introduced by House Republican leaders Sunday night.

Republicans are moving to limit access to a tax loophole that Texas and other states have used to tap extra Medicaid dollars for hospitals and medical providers. Texas hospitals would still be able to use so-called provider taxes to access higher federal reimbursements, but they couldn’t be expanded, even as healthcare expenses continue to rise.

“Ultimately it’s a cut to hospitals and other health care providers,” said Darbin Wofford, deputy director of health care at the non-profit Third Way. “As hospitals costs grow and states want to increase base payments or supplemental payments, now you’re tying the hands of the states.”

The cuts come as House Republicans move to cut federal spending in line with President Donald Trump’s plan to extend and expand tax cuts passed during his first term, which are set to expire later this year.

[…]

Texas and other states that opted not to expand Medicaid to low-income workers under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act have become particularly reliant on local provider taxes to keep solvent hospitals that are required to provide medical care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. Hospitals and other medical providers in Texas have essentially levied the taxes on themselves in order to qualify for federal matching funds, which are often double what they send up.

Texas has the largest uninsured population in the country, according to non-profit KFF.

A spokesperson for the Texas Hospital Association said the group was still reviewing the budget language Monday morning. But earlier this year the group and other healthcare leaders said cuts to provider taxes would likely result in the shuttering of clinics and a reduction in hospital services.

As a non-expansion state, Texas would likely be less impacted by the work requirement than other states, Wofford said. Almost three quarters of Texas’s 4.1 million Medicaid recipients are under 19, with the remainder either disabled, pregnant, new mothers or elderly, all of which are exempted.

But the new protocols on proving eligibility were likely to push many Texans off the roles, Wofford added.

“Folks might still fall through the cracks due to the administrative burden and implementation issues with eligibility checks,” he said.

Of course they will. This is exactly what happened after the 2003 legislative session when Texas made it harder to enroll in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and also shortened the enrollment period from a year to six months. People fell off the rolls – which is a polite way of saying “children lost access to health care” – because of needless means testing and extra paperwork. Everyone knew it would happen, and it did. There’s no way that wouldn’t happen here. And many of those clinics that close and those hospitals that have to cut back will be in rural areas, where I’m sure they’ll be thinking they didn’t vote for that. They can do something about that in the next election.

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Five DAs sue Paxton over new reporting requirements

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I wish them good luck.

Still a crook any way you look

Five Texas district attorneys are suing Attorney General Ken Paxton in two separate lawsuits filed Friday over new rules that would give the state’s top law enforcer meticulous access to their office’s records.

The two lawsuits, filed in Travis County District Court, seek to overturn a new rule created by Paxton’s office giving the attorney general office’s employees discretion to request almost all documents from cases county officials work on, regardless of whether they are being pursued. The district attorneys suing Paxton said the rule is an unconstitutional overreach that would needlessly burden offices who would have to present “terabytes” of data to the attorney general.

The rule, which took effect in April, only applies to counties with 400,000 residents or more — a threshold only 13 counties in the state meets. Paxton’s office has marked the provision as a way to “rein in rogue district attorneys” refusing to uphold the law. District attorneys from Travis and El Paso counties filed one suit, while district attorneys from Harris, Dallas and Bexar counties filed another. Both seek to block Paxton from being able to enforce the rule, alleging it violates the state constitution and federal law.

The background: The rule was originally proposed in the administrative code in September 2024 as Chapter 56 and requires district attorneys to provide all documents or communications produced or received by district attorneys’ offices, including confidential information.

Included in the rule’s definition of “case file” materials eligible for review are all documents, correspondence and handwritten notes relevant to a case. It also requires counties to submit quarterly reports to the attorney general on twelve different subjects, including specific information on indictments of police officers or for violations of election code.

The new Chapter 56 rules cite a 1985 statute prompting district and county attorneys to report information to the attorney general “in the form that the attorney general directs.” To enforce the collection of documents and communication, the rule would create an “oversight advisory committee” composed of employees from the attorney general’s office. The committee would be able to request entire case files from district attorneys at their discretion. Failing to provide the requested documentation to the advisory committee would result in “official misconduct” under the rule, allowing a district judge to remove a district attorney from office.

Why the district attorneys sued: The two lawsuits both claim the law cited by the new Chapter 56 does not provide Paxton’s office with the sweeping jurisdiction the rule creates — and that providing the information requested would be both expensive and illegal. One lawsuit from Dallas, Harris and Bexar county attorneys claims the rule seeks to achieve a “political objective” by burdening officials and creating strict consequences for noncompliance.

“These reporting requirements do not make communities safer,” Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said. “They do not identify trends, improve transparency, or enhance public trust. Instead, they create barriers that divert limited resources away from what matters most, which is prosecuting violent offenders and protecting our community.”

The trio’s lawsuit also maintains the rule violates the Texas Constitution’s protections on separation of powers because the attorney general has “no authority” to expand the definition of official misconduct.

The second lawsuit filed by the district attorneys from El Paso and Travis counties marks similar issues with the new rule, and also claims it would require illegally forfeiting the private information of victims working with their offices. In a press release from March, Paxton’s office states the new rule will help “assist citizens” in judging prosecutors’ performance, which attorneys in the second suit worry indicates private information could be shared with the public.

“The Challenged Rules purport to require an unprecedented level of disclosure of privileged and confidential information from only some of the State’s prosecutors for the sole purpose of unconstitutional oversight,” the lawsuit reads.

El Paso Matters has some additional coverage on the first lawsuit, filed by El Paso and Travis Counties. I don’t know enough about the laws in question to offer a reasoned take on this. I do know that there’s no reason to trust Ken Paxton and that he will use whatever power he is given to harass anyone he doesn’t like, so I know who the good guys are in this fight, and I’m with them. We’ll have to see what the courts say.

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Weekend link dump for May 18

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“Companies have long fought off attacks from hackers hoping to exploit vulnerabilities in their software, employees or vendors. Now, another threat has emerged: Job candidates who aren’t who they say they are, wielding AI tools to fabricate photo IDs, generate employment histories and provide answers during interviews.”

“Kennedy’s comments are an excellent demonstration of how, in the Trump era, public statements by administration figures and their congressional backers are heavily influenced by the far-right and conspiratorial internet—sometimes in addled, confused, or strangely remixed forms.”

“Energy Star has saved American families and businesses more than half a trillion dollars in energy costs. By eliminating this program, [Trump] will force Americans to buy appliances that cost more to run and waste more energy.”

“What’s happening here is more than just routine network adjustments; it’s a strategy shift that suggests CBS is no longer hedging its bets on longevity and loyalty. Instead, it’s opting for the cheaper, faster turnover of reboots and spin-offs. If Friends were airing today, NBC wouldn’t be shelling out millions to keep the cast together. They’d be pitching David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston a spin-off where Ross and Rachel move to L.A. after their wedding.”

“Fur might be just what we needed in 2025. It’s the ultimate expression of the mob-wife aesthetic: a braggadocious affect, riding the line of classiness and trashiness while taking up considerable physical and psychic space. The style is ripe for this aesthetic moment, with its maximalist textures, layers, and silhouettes—and for the sociopolitical one, which prizes fleeting dopamine hits and rolls its eyes at moral inquiry.”

“What I think we’re looking at here is an absolute distillation of the ideology of this administration, which is a thoroughgoing hostility to anything that the government does that helps people. If you want to destroy the relationship between the public and government, you’re going to target the Energy Star program.”

“But being “desirable” in the Grid does not feel like being a rare jewel or a vintage wine. It is not about growing in value over time. It is about slowly slipping into obscurity. I cannot name the extra outfielder on the 1953 Detroit Tigers or where else he might have played in the ‘60s. One day, that will be me.”

“But the selection of dolls, in particular, as Trump’s stand-in for consumer prices reflects the gendered ideas about work, money and purchasing that animate Trump’s chaotic economic policy. After all, Trump did not talk about the impact of his trade regime on toy trucks or GI Joe action figures – and he certainly didn’t mention its likely impact on things like video games, basketballs, squat racks or protein powders.”

“A Novel Concept: Will Judges Start Enforcing the Law With DOGE?”

“Amazon is rolling out new ad formats on Prime Video, including contextually relevant pause ads and shoppable inventory.”

“The Congressional Budget Office Still Works”.

“Do you realize how many thousands of balloons it takes to predict the weather?”

“A possible Alvin Scott sighting surely outweighs racing off to fabricate a handful of sham-charges against good neighbors for pseudo-misdemeanors.”

“This “gift” is wildly corrupt, even by Trumpian standards. The idea that a foreign government could “gift” a half-billion-dollar plane to the Pentagon through some sleight of hand that then becomes the personal toy of an ex-president when he leaves office is absolutely absurd from an ethics standpoint and clearly unconstitutional vis-à-vis the so-called “emoluments clause,” which Trump has already severely bent in his first term.”

“A Paris court has found Gérard Depardieu guilty of sexual assault and given him a 18-month suspended sentence.”

“I would say my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant… I don’t want to seem like I am being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”

“With one third of the U.S. economy—from farming to trucking to tourism—being sensitive to weather and climate, the NWS provides an overall benefit of $100 billion to the economy. This is roughly 10 times what the service costs to run, according to an American Meteorological Society white paper.”

“But if Trump seemed somewhat restrained by the appearance of ethical conflicts during his first term, he no longer has any qualms about mixing the country’s business with his own.” Josh Marshall goes a lot deeper on the same topic.

“But in Trump’s America, a run-of-the-mill report from an independent, nonpartisan agency feels momentous, like some tiny part of the government remains untouched by the rampages of Elon Musk’s ostensible Department of Government Efficiency.”

RIP, Joe Don Baker, Texas-born actor known for Walking Tall, various Bond films, and a lot more.

“Russell Vought, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has canceled plans to more tightly regulate the sale of Americans’ sensitive personal data.”

“Congratulations to Amazon on Its Partnership With the Saudi Prince Who Murdered Jeff Bezos’ Employee and Hacked His Phone”.

“Thursday brought an avalanche of data that all point to one outcome: Prices are going up. Just ask Walmart.”

RIP, Charles Strause, three-time Tony Award-winning composer whose musicals included Annie and Bye Bye Birduie, and also wrote “Those Were The Days”, the theme song to All In The Family. If you’ve never heard the latter, enjoy. Mark Evanier has more.

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So are we about to see the beginning of the end of the Mike Miles regime?

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Maybe.

With weeks until the deadline to announce a potential extension of the state takeover of Houston ISD, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath expressed strong support Wednesday for the “spectacular” reforms that have occurred in the district since June 2023.

Morath must decide by June 1 whether to keep the nine members of the appointed Board of Managers in place for up to two more years or announce a timeline for the district’s yearslong transition back to elected board members.

He declined to say during a news conference at HISD’s Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Wednesday whether the takeover would continue. However, he said it’s something he’s “actively considering” as he praised the district’s academic improvements on the 2024 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness and state A-F accountability ratings.

“One year after the intervention, this is the largest academic improvement that has happened at this scale in the U.S.,” Morath said. “The amount of improvement in academic potential and lifetime potential for kids is pretty spectacular.”

[…]

For the intervention to end, HISD must meet three goals under the TEA’s exit criteria, which are having no multi-year failing campuses, complying with state and federal special education laws and improving board governance. Wheatley High School also must have a C or higher rating for two consecutive years, Morath said.

“We have seen progress on all three of (the main exit criteria,) but we also still see work that remains,” Morath said.

[…]

The reform program has faced vocal pushback from multiple HISD parents and community members since its implementation, who have criticized the model for contributing to rigid, stricter learning environments, rising principal and teacher turnover, and an excessive focus on test scores within schools.

“The NES model, in particular, is a very well-structured model to ensure that children always reach mastery on every concept, that they don’t just skip a topic. That instructional design is very intentional,” Morath said. “It does require certain adjustments in the school calendar (and) in the school approach, but I don’t have any long-term concerns about sustainability of that model in Houston.”

Whatever. I don’t have the energy to debate any of this right now. I just want to get this carpetbagger out of here and get back to having a Board that at least gestures at listening to public feedback and holding the Superintendent accountable. If we’re doing so damn well, put us on the path to that.

Said Superintendent doesn’t see himself as a short-timer.

Miles said he didn’t know what decision Morath would make, but he suspected that the commissioner would extend the state takeover. Miles also said he suspected he would continue to be the HISD superintendent for “a few more years” because he was asked to stay in his role while the intervention was ongoing.

Miles said the district’s teachers, principals and students have done “great work,” and he expects that they will continue to do so on this year’s State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. However, he said it would be a couple more years before the district really hits its stride.

“You got to remember where we started, we had 120 D- and F- rated campuses, but more than that, a broken financial system and other systems that were broken in this district,” Miles said. “So to turn it around, it’s going to take more than two years. So we’ve got some work to do.”

“We’re doing great but we’re not at a point where we can take our foot off the pedal” is a perfectly reasonable and defensible position. The good cop/bad cop routine that Morath and Miles appear to have adopted to take that position is annoying, but not contradictory. If that’s where we are, then can we at least please get a look at the detailed project timeline and spell out exactly what markers we’ve achieved, what percentage of each goal we’re at, and roughly when we think we can transition back to normal business? You know, in the name of transparency? I don’t think that’s too much to ask. The Press has more.

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We really should be composting more

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s not too late to start.

Alex Cantoran parks his truck at the final house on the block, jumps out and grabs the five-gallon white bucket sitting near the edge of the property. He unscrews the lid quickly. Inside are several green compostable bags of trash, the contents of which he hauls to the truckbed and transfers into one of his six 90-gallon barrels. He returns the bucket, hops back in the truck and repeats the process at the next house.

For Cantoran, compost collection runs like clockwork. By late afternoon, he and his partner, David Lemons, had already emptied compost buckets at over 200 houses in the city of West University Place. They started early, around 6 a.m., when they drove down from the Woodlands north of Houston with empty barrels rattling around in the back awaiting fresh table scraps and banana peels.

Tuesdays are the longest of the week; Cantoran and Lemons hit just over 400 houses. The two men work for Zero Waste Houston, a residential food waste pickup service that began in 2017. Instead of going to the landfill, the trash is turned into compost – a process that transforms organic waste, such as decomposing plant and food leftovers or yard and tree trimmings, into enriched soil.

Experts and environmental advocates consider zero-waste projects, like composting or recycling, some of the most vital solutions to Houston’s growing trash problem. Composting diverts organic waste before it reaches the landfill, lessening the need for landfill expansion and reducing methane emissions from landfills by more than 50 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It also enriches soil with much-needed natural nutrients and stores carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.

However, city-wide composting programs can be challenging. It can cost millions for local officials to set up a composting project. For cities like Houston, this means starting small and applying for competitive federal funding. Additionally, composting is a relatively new solution in some communities, where residents unfamiliar with using a separate bucket for organic waste may need education through composting classes and community outreach.

But, officials and advocates say this work is far from impossible. In the past decade, businesses like Zero Waste Houston have popped up to fill the gap and local community gardens and schools are instructing educational classes. To catch up with Houston’s growing pile of trash, however, advocates say there will need to be serious dedication from the city – in process as well as budget.

“Right now, composting is kind of looked at like a luxury service,” Lemons said on the drive. “But it’s not. Everyone benefits from it. It’s just like putting out your recycling or your trash. I really hope it catches on.”

[…]

About one-third of food produced worldwide ends up in landfills, where it makes up for 20 percent of all the waste, according to the EPA. Of the 167 million tons of garbage produced by the United States each year, 50 percent of the trash set on the curb is compostable.

Organic waste is also the leading cause of methane emissions at landfills due to how quickly the matter decays. In a landfill, as trash piles on top of trash over time, the waste at the bottom is deprived of oxygen. Tiny bacteria that thrive without oxygen munch on the trash, producing methane gas.

Because compost retains its proper airflow, the presence of oxygen keeps the methane-emitting bacteria at bay.

Methane is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, meaning it is more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere and contributing to climate change.

Organic municipal solid waste landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions in the United States, according to the EPA. The U.S. is the second largest emitter of methane in the world and Texas is the largest emitter in the country.

Of the 201 municipal landfills in Texas, Blue Ridge Landfill in Fort Bend County is the fourth top emitter of methane emissions and the McCarty Road Landfill in North Houston is the 10th, according to a 2022 EPA methane analysis conducted by the organization Industrious Labs.

“We need to tackle the trash problem with a multi-pronged approach,” said Melanie Sattler, the department chair for civil engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. “The cheapest and simplest is to just reduce the waste before it actually gets to the landfill. That’s composting, that’s recycling.”

Another sustainable practice is anaerobic digestion, said Sattler, which occurs in a tank without any oxygen. Without air flow, the digester produces methane and carbon dioxide, which can be captured, cleaned and used as natural gas for heating, cooling and electricity generation. The material left behind – a nutrient-rich semi-solid mixture called digestate – can be used as natural fertilizer for crops, gardens and landscaping.

“Digesters can be located on the same land as a landfill and they could divert organic waste, but it doesn’t have to be,” Sattler said. “A city can also have a separate container for food and yard waste and it can go to a composting facility or a digester rather than the landfill.”

In Houston, the energy company Synthica is constructing an anaerobic digester northeast of the city to take pre-consumer food – such as food manufacturing byproducts and expired produce – and industrial organic waste. The company plans to start operations in early 2026.

The methane problem is real and serious, but the more immediate issue is that Houston is running out of landfill space, as was documented in an earlier Landing story. Plus, you know, landfills are disgusting and foul-smelling and make the lives of everyone in the vicinity – mostly black and brown people – vastly worse. They also take up vast expanses of open land that could be better used for almost anything else, including primarily more housing.

We do little bits of voluntary composting in Houston, for things like Halloween pumpkins and Christmas trees. We’ve run pilot programs for more general use composting in the past, and while they were successful there was no financial support for their continuation, much less their expansion. Some of the financial support for a future program would need to go towards educating people about composting – we could learn from what the city of Austin has done – but one hopes that would decrease over time. This is one of those situations where spending money now would save money later, if only we would get started on it. I suspect we would need a different Mayor for that, but I will be happy to be proven wrong.

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It should still be the same old RenFest

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good to hear.

The Texas Renaissance Festival will soon be under new ownership, but will remain much the same as it has been for the last half century, attorney Anthony Laporte of Houston law firm Hanszen Laporte tells CultureMap.

“All of the vendor contracts are in place for 2025,” says Laporte. “Everyone who was already there will be there this year. Maybe one Dippin’ Dots guy here and there will be swapped out with another, but we’re sticking with what works. Even when the litigation was ongoing, they’re having entertainment auditions. Both the old owners and the new ones are planning to give visitors a great time.”

Founder George Coulam has owned the Texas Renaissance Festivals since 1974. Now in his late 80s, Coulam has teased selling the festival multiple times, a process chronicled in a recent HBO docuseries. After pulling out of the latest sales agreement, the prospective buyer sued Coulam for breach of contract. Grimes County Judge Gary W. Chaney ruled against Coulam on May 7, paving the way for the sale to finally go through.

The identity of the new owner was a mystery for some time. Court documents listed only the corporate entities RW Lands, Texas Stargate, and Royal Campgrounds. The prospective new owner is Meril Rivard, a real estate investor with no prior festival experience who sought to purchase the fair for $60 million. However, Rivard’s son is married to the daughter of Geoff Wilson, owner of several Greek food establishments in the festival. Wilson’s clan, referred to as “The Greeks” in the HBO documentary, were one of the groups featured in the show trying to buy the fair.

“This is a family business now,” says Laporte. “He has family that lives it, works it, and is part of it.”

According to Laporte, an appeal by Coulam and his counsel seems unlikely. He reports that all parties mostly feel relief that the case is over, though until the judgment is finalized in the next couple of months there is still the possibility that Coulam will try one last time to remain king of the festival.

[…]

Coulam will no longer have an official role in the running of Texas Renaissance Festival, though he may advise in an unofficial capacity. Laporte did say there will be no more parades in his honor.

See here for the background. Again, I’m at best a casual RenFester, but I think I speak for many people when I say that keeping it as much as possible as it is, at least for now, is the sort of thing we’re happy to hear in 2025. I’m sure there will be opportunities for innovation and improvement going forward. For now, a little stability and familiarity sounds good.

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Measles update: Maybe we really are slowing to an end

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Can’t get much slower than that.

Texas health officials reported only one new case of measles on Friday, the smallest increase since the outbreak began four months ago.

The latest update from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows there have been 718 measles cases across the state since the first were reported in late January in the South Plains region. The agency provides updates twice per week on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The one new case is in Gaines County, which has been the epicenter of the outbreak. The small county along the New Mexico border has reported 406 infections in total, more than 56% of all cases associated with the outbreak.

Experts told the Houston Chronicle they are cautiously optimistic the outbreak is subsiding, but Texas residents and public health officials must stay vigilant to prevent a resurgence. They also noted that it can take seven to 21 days for symptoms to appear after an exposure, so additional cases could be reported in the next few weeks.

[…]

The DSHS said there is ongoing measles transmission in seven counties: Cochran, Dawson, Gaines, Lamar, Lubbock, Terry and Yoakum. Dallam county was removed from the list because it has been 42 days since its last infectious case.

Texas has reported 15 measles cases in 2025 that are not connected to the outbreak, including four in Harris County, one in Fort Bend County and one in Brazoria County. Most of those cases were related to international travel, according to the DSHS.

Hey, if we’re really coming to a stop, that would be awesome, and a lot sooner than expected. I too remain cautious about this, because there’s still a lot of measles and unvaccinated people out there, but it may well be that a combination of exposure and response have choked this one off. If so, kudos to all of the exhausted professionals who have worked to get to this point. I wish you all a nice vacation.

And you’re going to need it, because we keep doing stuff like this that all but guarantees more and bigger future outbreaks.

The Texas House passed a bill Wednesday that would make it significantly easier for parents to exempt their children from public school vaccine requirements. Authored by Rep. Lacey Hull, R-Houston, the legislation allows anyone to download the exemption form and eliminates the current requirement to request the form by mail and get it notarized. The form applies to vaccines such as those for polio, hepatitis A and B, and measles.

Hull said the bill would streamline government operations and save the state about $177,000 annually in postage and labor. She repeatedly emphasized during debate that “this bill is about where a form is printed,” downplaying concerns raised by Democrats and public health advocates. Critics warn that easier access to exemption forms will lead to lower vaccination rates, threatening herd immunity and putting medically vulnerable children at risk, as first reported by The Dallas Morning News.

Democrats attempted to amend the bill to include additional safeguards, such as requiring parents to read educational materials about vaccines and mandating that schools report immunization rates. These amendments were rejected, largely along party lines. Rep. John Bucy III, D-Austin, argued that the bill’s real-world effects would be “more kids opting out of immunization, more kids opting out of vaccines.”

Asking the question “when will we learn our lesson” presupposes that learning lessons is an aspect of this. The evidence of that is lacking. The best we can do here is weaken the forces of making us all sicker and more vulnerable, and that is something we can and need to do starting next year. As a reminder, Rep. Hull’s HD138 is a district that was very purple before redistricting, and is still somewhat purple now. In a good year, with a stronger opponent, we can take a run at her.

I’m just going to leave you with this.

The cries of sick children echoed down the hallway as Gilbert Handal walked into the measles ward for the first time. It was 1964 in Chile, and the young medical student had been assigned to Manuel Arriarán Hospital’s pediatric infectious disease unit.

Dozens of beds were crammed into the building, each holding a small, feverish body. Some children were struggling to breathe; others lay frighteningly still. Their parents waited helplessly, often outside the doors, while nurses and doctors moved solemnly through the ward. There was little they could do.

“That was just immediately before we had the measles vaccine,” Handal said. “I was just a student, and you’re just studying medicine, trying to save humanity and trying to save the children.

“We tried to save those kids, but many of them died,” he added.

Now 82 years old and a professor of pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases at Texas Tech Health in El Paso, Handal is sounding the alarm over low vaccination rates in West Texas, where a measles outbreak has infected 717 people and killed two school-aged children as of May 13. Though measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. at the turn of the century, rising vaccine hesitancy has fueled the largest surge of the disease in Texas in more than three decades.

“All the outbreaks we’ve had in this country have been associated with the lack of immunization,” he said. “People stopped immunizing their kids, and that was an error.”

Back in Chile, the second floor of the pediatric infectious disease unit was secluded, reserved for children infected with measles. Measles spreads primarily through the air, when infected people sneeze or cough.

The atmosphere was one of anxiety and exhaustion. As part of a team of six doctors, Handal spent up to 120 hours per week tending to rows of children battling high fevers, painful coughs and the signature red rash covering their bodies. According to Handal, the surge in measles cases was so overwhelming that the hospital’s internal medicine unit was often repurposed to care for sick children.

He says most of the children were infants and toddlers.

“The children know they’re sick, and that’s all they know,” Handal said. “They don’t know what’s going on, they don’t know anything, and the sicker they are, the more disconnected they get from you.”

[…]

Handal said he lost count of how many children died during his time in the ward. But he never became numb to it — just learned to manage the grief.

“You don’t get hardened, that’s a bad word to use. You kind of cope with it better, I guess,” he said. “I mean, it’s just – the pain is too much.”

The problem is there are fewer people like Dr. Handal who lived through that and remember it, and more people like Lacey Hull who are blissfully ignorant of it all. I wish I had a good answer for that.

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The end of the road for the Texas Lottery Commission

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

And possibly for the Lottery, though not immediately.

The Texas Senate unanimously approved a bill that would abolish the Texas Lottery Commission, move the state’s game to a different agency and add several new restrictions on how lottery tickets can be purchased.

Senate Bill 3070 would move the Texas Lottery and the state’s charitable bingo operation to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and create new criminal offenses for people who buy lottery tickets online or en masse. The bill also mandates a review in two years by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission that will determine if the game should continue in any capacity.

“They have a two-year lease on life — we’ll see what happens under the new agency,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said as the bill was passed on Thursday.

SB 3070 provides one of only two paths forward for the lottery past September, as the lottery and its agency were already on the chopping block without the added action by lawmakers. The department is currently undergoing a routine review by the Sunset Commission, and requires legislation for it to continue. Senate Bill 2402 is the “sunset bill” that would maintain the lottery commission but it has an additional hurdle: legislators removed all of the lottery commission’s funding in its next budget proposal, and it would have to be placed back into the budget for the commission to continue operating.

Either bill must still pass out of a House committee by May 23 for the lower chamber to weigh in on the game’s fate. The House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee recently heard Senate Bill 28, which would ban couriers, and left it pending in committee.

For months, legislators have placed the lottery commission under scrutiny that has sparked investigations, resignations and calls to abolish the game completely. That criticism has largely stemmed from lawmakers concerned about a $95 million jackpot won in April 2023 by a single group that printed 99% of the 26 million possible ticket combinations in a 72-hour period, a process known as a “bulk purchase.” Under SB 3070, buying more than 100 tickets in a single purchase would be a class B misdemeanor.

See here, here, here, and here for some background. I have no love for the Lottery, but that indifference carries over to the online ticket broker scheme that has everyone up in arms as well. Honestly, I wish that there had been another winner on that $95 million jackpot because it would have basically ruined the scheme in the funniest way possible. Alas, the universe’s sense of humor is fickle. And if the issue here is oversight, then maybe someone should be asking who appointed all those good-for-nothing Lottery commissioners in the first place. We’ll see which of those two paths for the Lottery ends up being the way forward.

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Pour one out for the Houston Landing

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

CityCast Houston sends off the non-profit local news organization that deserved better.

The Houston Landing made a huge splash when it launched as a local non-profit newsroom in 2023. But this week, it’s closing down. So, what went wrong? Host Raheel Ramzanali breaks it down with Michael Hardy, senior writer at Texas Monthly. They explore the outlet’s early missteps, how funding became a challenge, and what its closure means for local journalism in Houston. Plus, we’ll hear from some of the Landing’s journalists themselves about their favorite stories, what they loved about H-town, and more.

Stories we talked about on today’s show:

See here for the background. As I’ve said before, I thought the Landing did a great job, and I will miss their coverage. I can’t speak to the financial issues, and I’m not sure what they could or should have done to better brand or market themselves. The question that I have that this podcast episode didn’t address is how is it that San Antonio, Fort Worth, and El Paso can have local non-profit news sites that provide broad, general-purpose coverage, but somehow the same thing did not succeed here. Maybe it was all about the management of their finances, in which case another effort should be able to learn from that and do better. I agree with the assertions that Houston is far from a news desert, but there’s more than enough news here to support more than what we have covering it. If it’s a matter of needing to specialize, then pick a topic – energy, medicine, technology, climate/environment, politics, diverse communities, immigration, education, transportation, real estate – and dive in, we’ve got plenty of that for you. I refuse to believe that the failure of the Houston Landing means that nothing like the Houston Landing can succeed. I hope another effort gets launched, sooner rather than later.

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Houston hospitals have done worse with the abortion ban than Dallas hospitals have

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Unacceptable.

Nearly four years ago in Texas, the state’s new abortion law started getting in the way of basic miscarriage care: As women waited in hospitals cramping, fluid running down their legs, doctors told them they couldn’t empty their uterus to guard against deadly complications.

The state banned most abortions, even in pregnancies that were no longer viable; then, it added criminal penalties, threatening to imprison doctors for life and punish hospitals. The law had one exception, for a life-threatening emergency.

Heeding the advice of hospital lawyers, many doctors withheld treatment until they could document patients were in peril. They sent tests to labs, praying for signs of infection, and watched as women lost so much blood that they needed transfusions.“You would see the pain in peoples’ eyes,” one doctor said of her patients.

Not every hospital tolerated this new normal, ProPublica found. A seismic split emerged in how medical institutions in the state’s two largest metro areas treated miscarrying patients — and in how these women fared.

Leaders of influential hospitals in Dallas empowered doctors to intervene before patients’ conditions worsened, allowing them to induce deliveries or perform procedures to empty the uterus.

In Houston, most did not.

The result, according to a first-of-its-kind ProPublica analysis of state hospital discharge data, is that while the rates of dangerous infections spiked across Texas after it banned abortion in 2021, women in Houston were far more likely to get gravely ill than those in Dallas.

As ProPublica reported earlier this year, the statewide rate of sepsis — a life-threatening reaction to infection — shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost a second-trimester pregnancy.

A new analysis zooms in: In the region surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth, it rose 29%. In the Houston area, it surged 63%.

[…]

One second-trimester pregnancy complication that threatens patients’ lives is previable premature rupture of membranes, called PPROM, when a woman’s water breaks before the fetus can live on its own. Without amniotic fluid, the likelihood of the fetus surviving is low. But with every passing hour that a patient waits for treatment or for labor to start, the risk of sepsis increases.

The Texas Supreme Court has said that doctors can legally provide abortions in PPROM cases, even when an emergency is not imminent.

Yet legal departments at many major Houston hospitals still advise physicians not to perform abortions in these cases, doctors there told ProPublica, until they can document serious infection.

Dr. John Thoppil, the immediate past president of the Texas Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said he was “blown away” by this finding. He said it’s time for hospitals to stop worrying about hypothetical legal consequences of the ban and start worrying more about the real threats to patients’ lives.

“I think you’re risking legal harm the opposite way for not intervening,” he said, “and putting somebody at risk.”

See here for a bit of background. There’s more, so read the rest. It’s appalling that black-box hospital policies can have such an impact on these women’s health, and appalling that the only way this even came to light is because of dogged investigative journalism. This is exactly the sort of thing that patients should have a right to know about. And while I agree that the hospitals should take action and be more responsible, let’s be clear about who’s really at fault here. This is entirely on the Legislature, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, the Supreme Court, and every Republican who had any role in passing our abomination of anti-abortion laws. All that blood is on their hands, first and foremost.

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Sexual harassment case against former candidate Agwan settled

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Closing the book on an ugly chapter.

A lawsuit accusing a former Congressional candidate and a member of his campaign staff of sexual misconduct in 2023 was dropped earlier this month following a settlement out of court, according to Harris County District Clerk’s Office records.

Details of the settlement between Pervez Agwan, a Democratic primary candidate in the 2024 Congressional District 18 race, and Maha Chishtey, a junior staffer with the campaign, were not made public. An order of non-suit was signed by 55th Civil District Court Judge Lotosha Lewis Payne on May 6, according to court records.

In a statement about the settlement of the case, Agwan maintained that the allegations against him and the campaign are false.

“I am grateful to the voters in TX-07 for giving me the opportunity to serve them,” Agwan said. “It was truly the honor and privilege of my lifetime to run for office to represent Houston in the U.S. Congress.”

Agwan declined to answer questions about the terms of the settlement. He also said he has no plans to run for elected office in the future.

An attorney for Chishtey did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chishtey accused Agwan of overseeing a pattern of sexual misconduct among male senior staffers working for the campaign that played out over several months in the second half of 2023. Chishtey quit her job that October after she said Agwan tried to kiss her when they were alone in the campaign headquarters after work and he prevented her from leaving the office when she rebuffed his advances.

See here for a bit of background. There are links in this story to previous stories by the Houston Landing about the allegations, and you should read them as well. I asked Agwan about this when I interviewed him for the 2024 primary, and, well. I wasn’t impressed by his response. We may never know the terms of the settlement, which come about four weeks before the trial would have taken place. The allegations were awful, and the defense was aggressive. I hope Ms. Chishtey and all of the former staffers who resigned before the lawsuit was filed are doing well.

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Dispatches from Dallas, May 16 edition

Posted on May 16, 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: May election outcomes and the meanings thereof; who dumped money into PACs and what they got for it, including one PAC that can’t even spell right; the latest redistricting news from Tarrant County and other shenanigans; plans for the new DFW terminal get bigger and more expensive; the latest on investigations against EPIC City; the impending state takeover of Fort Worth ISD and other school news; local ties to a legendary Willie Nelson album celebrating an anniversary; and more!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Joan Jett and Billy Idol, whom I saw in a really good show last week. (The Dallas Observer reviewed it; I thought they were a little harsh on Joan. She’s a bar band player and there’s an upper limit on the size of the bar she can fill with music.)

Let’s jump into the news, starting with some business from the recent local election:

  • Just before the election on May 3, local journalist Steven Monacelli documented who’s behind two new PACs in the Dallas area: the Dallas County GOP and AirBnB. The local GOP (remember, run by Allen West), couldn’t even spell “The Committee for a Strong Econcomy”, the name of their PAC, correctly. KERA included this news in their roundup of who dumped money into the election. And the DMN noted Dallas City Council candidates received about $1.6 million in contributions, with about a quarter coming in the last month.
  • The DMN complains we didn’t turn out for the May election, with only 8.4% of 1.4 million registered voters showing up to do their civic duty. (I voted early.) Since, as they mention, there are bills to move Dallas elections to November, one hopes this will be less of a problem in the future.
  • The Dallas Observer has takeaways from the election results for City Council. And KERA has their own take on the results of the City Council races. The DMN spotlights the two runoffs: D8, where Tennel Atkins was termed out, and D11, where Jaynie Schultz retired rather than face the fallout of the Pepper Square redevelopment mess. We’ll get to the Tarrant County results later; there are definitely also things worth talking about.
  • Dallas’ budget is $6.5 million in the red so far rhis year. KERA also has the story. Apparently it’s all because property owners are greedily protesting our rising tax bills. The problem of Prop U, which directs our excess money, is looking smaller suddenly. (Both articles mention it.)
  • New Dallas PD Chief Daniel Comeaux was talking about hiring more officers in accordance with Prop U when he was sworn in earlier this month. The more I read about what Comeaux is doing vs what Interim Chief Igo, who resigned when he didn’t get the top job, thought was realistic, the more I think Igo dodged a bullet.
  • Dallas County DA John Creuzot will seek the death penalty for the retrial of “Texas Seven” defendant Randy Halprin, who was part of a group that escaped from prison in 2000 and killed a police officer in Irving. The retrial comes after Halprin’s original verdict was overturned over the the antisemitic views of his judge; Halprin is Jewish. This is the first time Creuzot has sought the death penalty since he became DA in 2019.
  • Over in Fort Worth, we also have some police news: they’re looking for a new chief per the Star-Telegram and the Fort Worth Report. And Fort Worth PD has cleared their backlog of 900 rape kits, discovered last fall. How did they do it? They only had two of seven certified DNA scientist positions filled, so they offered signing bonuses of $5,000, an 8.5% raise for the position, and outsourcing while they onboarded the new hires and got them FBI certified. In other words, they spent a bunch of money.
  • In Tarrant County, there’s always news about Tim O’Hare: he hosted a luncheon for the National Day of Prayer, featuring Kevin Sorbo as the keynote speaker and group prayers led by, among others, Leigh Wambsganss of Patriot Mobile. Three charities benefited from the luncheon, one of which is the Mercy Culture Church organization to help sex trafficking victims. You may recall that the city of Fort Worth lost a fight with Mercy Culture when the church wanted to build a shelter for sex trafficking victims. More on this topic at the Fort Worth Report.
  • In Tarrant County Jail news, autopsy results for Kimberly Phillips, who died in the jail in February, were announced. Phillips died of dehydration. Per the article, she was a vegetarian and wasn’t offered vegetarian food. She died at JPS (the local hospital) but she is one of several inmates who’ve died of dehydration during Sherriff Bill Waybourn’s tenure.
  • Meanwhile, you may recall that we also had an in-custody death here in Dallas County in March. the Texas Commission on Jail Standards picked the Tarrant County Sherriff’s Office to investigate this death. Click through and read this: the Dallas County Jail isn’t great but Tarrant County is worse, and why on earth the state would send this investigation to Tarrant County when they don’t follow the law with their own jail is beyond me.
  • I said we were going to talk about the election results in Tarrant County. It was ugly out there for Republicans and their chosen candidates for city councils and school boards, per the Fort Worth Report. The Tarrant County GOP endorsed a slate of 26, of whom 14 lost; the True Texas Project endorsed a similar slate of 33, of whom 19 lost. This is another good read if you’re interested in the True Texas and Patriot Mobile folks and their effect on Tarrant County local politics. Along the same lines, WFAA talked to Republican consultant Brian Mayes about the election results, both the GOP wipeout and the successes of the local school bond elections. And as referenced by Mayes Star-Telegram columnist Bud Kennedy points out the GOP went 0 for 11 in 12 key city, school and college board elections (the 12th has a runoff). Ouch. As Kennedy notes, Tarrant Dems didn’t do well either, but not as badly as the GOP. And the DMN’s Gromer Jeffers Jr. suggests that national partisan issues that sell well in Republican primaries don’t sell well with the nonpartisan suburban electorate. He also talks about the difference between November elections in even years (partisan) and November elections in odd years, which could still be nonpartisan, to the extent anything is allowed to be any more.
  • Of course, that only matters when elections are competitive, and the Tarrant County GOP would like to ensure they’re not. Unsurprisingly, the proposed Tarrant County Commissioners’ redistricting map favors Republican candidates, over the complaints of some residents who think their voices are going unheard. The Mayor of Arlington has asked the city staff to look into the redistricting, with the idea that if they find something wrong, the city council can act. The new map splits Arlington between Districts 1 and 2, instead of leaving it in District 2 where it’s currently located.
  • DFW airport is putting in a much bigger Terminal F with some help from American Airlines and it’s going to run about $4 billion dollars. Pick your poison: DMN; D Magazine; Fort Worth Report; and a DMN explainer in case you need to catch up on this project from zero. It also has the answer to the most important question: how will all this affect my flights?
  • In an announcement of a type long familiar to my Houston-area readers, we have our first West Nile mosquito in Tarrant County.
  • And in another health announcement we’re all getting too familiar with, Denton County has had its second case of measles.
  • Arlington is expanding its DFR (Drone as a First Responder) program from fireworks calls to include calls about shootings, domestic violence, burglaries, missing persons and other crimes. The idea is that the drone gets there before the police officers, not instead of, which I was wondering about when I initial heard about the program. This is another one where you might want to check out the details, particularly if you’re into the intersection of technology and law enforcement.
  • Speaking of the intersection of tech and law enforcement, the suburb of Carrollton has signed up with Flock Safety to integrate security camera data, like your doorbell’s camera, with Carrollton PD’s feed. You may remember Flock for the trouble it had in Fort Worth with unauthorized cameras last fall. You may also be interested in this 404 piece about how Flock is building a tool to integrate its license plate readers with other databases to give police insight into the movements of individuals without court orders or warrants.
  • More election news, this time from Irving. In the Place 2 at-large city council runoff, losing candidate Vicky Oduk, who had about 5% of the vote, endorsed Families for Irving candidate Sergio Porres, who had about 45% of the vote. Families for Irving is pro-school choice, single-family housing, and “traditional family values” for keeping an eye on politics in the suburbs. David Pfaff, the other runoff candidate, had about 47% of the vote in the May election. Porres is anti-casino; I don’t know where Pfaff stands after a quick review of his website.
  • Mercy Culture Church is in the news again: one of the apostolic elders of the church, a Messianic Jewish pastor, Michael Brown, has been accused of sexual misconduct in the 2000s after a third-party investigation. Mercy Culture, unsurprisingly, is standing by their man; this despite the fact that they’re about to break ground on their shelter for sex-trafficking victims. Also unsurprising to me, though I didn’t know: Mercy Culture was “planted” in 2019 by Gateway Church, which was formerly led by accused child molestor Robert Morris.
  • As you probably know, John Cornyn, in his efforts to run right against Ken Paxton in the 2026 senate primary, asked the Department of Justice to investigate the EPIC City development. They’re going to do it, per the AP and KERA. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an editorial about what they call the “political bullying” of the business. If you’re just finding out about this case, the Dallas Observer has a timeline for you. Good luck to the East Plano Islamic Center; they continue to need it.
  • Another story that’s unfortunately familiar to my Houston readers is the runup to the state seizure of an urban school district. We’re now seeing this in Fort Worth, where Mike Morath is winding up to take over Fort Worth ISD next school year, per the DMN, the Star-Telegram, and the Fort Worth Report. The FWISD sixth-grade school that failed five times was already closed, but other schools are also struggling. And local lawmakers, like State Rep. Phil King and State Sen. Kelly Hancock, both Republicans, support the takeover. The Star-Telegram editorial board, on the other hand, doesn’t support the takeover and points to the significant changes at FWISD, including the change of superintendent and the closure of the offending school, since the failures occurred. I wish FWISD good luck, because based on the example of Houston, they’re going to need it, and more of it if Mike Morath takes over the district.
  • Having made his point, or at least threatened enough people, Attorney General Ken Paxton has dropped his lawsuit against Coppell ISD for teaching critical race theory. More from the DMN. The gist seems to be that Paxton thinks he won because the school won’t teach about racism as much; the school thinks they won because nobody (else) had to get the sack; and I think the voters and state taxpayers lost because this is one more nonsense lawsuit filed to show Paxton’s loyalty to MAGA before the 2026 senate primary.
  • The Star-Telegram editorial board would like you to know that the movement to split Keller ISD shows why we need to enforce the Open Meetings Act. They’re not wrong, either.
  • KERA has the latest on the online scandal surrounding the death of Austin Metcalf at the hands of Karmelo Anthony at the Frisco UIL meet last month. Not only are there a lot of people using the case for their own ends, there’s also a lot of general misinformation out there. For example, the DMN confirms that despite stories that say otherwise, Karmelo Anthony won’t walk in the Frisco ISD graduation. He will receive his diploma and graduate, but will not participate in any ceremony.
  • The Texas Observer has a scorcher of a profile of State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian).
  • UT Dallas is getting a new president per KERA and the Texas Tribune. Maybe Prabhas Moghe, currently Rutgers University’s chief academic officer, can figure out a better way to handle student protestors than the current leadership.
  • In a worrying development, the green card-holding drummer of an Austin metal band was detained at DFW on their way to their now-cancelled European tour. I’m not surprised when immigration issues happen on the way into the US, but grabbing someone on the way out is another example of the disturbing immigration policy of the current administration. The Austin Chronicle has more details.
  • You may remember the trouble that Johnson County folks are having with PFAS “forever chemicals”, purportedly from Fort Worth sewage biosolids being used as fertilizer. Texas Monthly has the story of how this session’s bill to limit PFAS came out of Johnson County. The Fort Worth Report has a similar story, so Rep. Helen Kerwin must be out pushing it in hopes of getting traction on the legislation. The Texas Tribune has the latest on the bill, which doesn’t look good: it missed a key deadline on Monday.
  • D Magazine asks: How Much Is a Joint Replacement in North Texas? The answer is: pretty damn expensive. The only city more expensive for a knee replacement than DFW is New York. Click through to see the charts for motivation to keep your joints in good working order.
  • If you’re feeling down about the mess at the Texas Renaissance Festival in Magnolia, you should know we have a renaissance festival in North Texas in the spring. KERA has a puff piece on Scarborough Faire’s raptor program for you to enjoy.
  • Architecture news and commentary from the DMN: first, Robert Wilonsky on how the city is going to kick the can down the road yet again on fixing the Kalita Humphreys Theater, the only theater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. And architecture critic Mark Lamster writes an open letter to Carlos Basualdo, the new director of the Nasher Sculpture Center, on his arrival in Dallas from Philadelphia.
  • I know about the Sixth Floor Museum, which delves into the John F. Kennedy assassination, but I didn’t know that it leased the building from Dallas County. They may not be there much longer if they can’t satisfy Commissioners’ Court about building updates and funding. Good luck to them trying to raise money in this economy.
  • Proof that Dallas is getting to be a Big Movie Town: Big Movie Star Tom Cruise is coming to town to surprise moviegoers at the new Mission Impossible movie.
  • A Luka Doncic-signed Mavs jersey is up for auction with bids up to $1500. What’s so special about it? It also says FIRE NICO. It’s not clear whether it said so when Luka signed it. Some people in this town are never going to get over Nico Harrison trading him away.
  • And finally, this year is the 50th anniversary of the classic Willie Nelson album Red Headed Stranger, which was recorded in the suburb of Garland, a few miles from where I live. Dallas musicians are reflecting on the legendary album and festivities in Garland will honor the anniversary this weekend.
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Maria Rojas appeals clinic shutdown order

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Keep an eye on this.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office can’t prove that a Houston-area midwife provided an illegal abortion, her lawyers say.

In an appeal submitted to the Texas First Court of Appeals on Monday, lawyers for Maria Rojas suggested that a woman who told state investigators that she received an abortion from Rojas may have actually been treated for a natural miscarriage.

The 54-page appeal seeks to throw out a March 27 injunction issued by a Waller County judge that closed four clinics operated by Rojas in Harris and Waller Counties. Lawyers argued that Texas’ 2021 abortion law doesn’t allow Attorney General Ken Paxton to seek injunctions against clinics, but rather leaves that power to the Texas Medical Board.

The appeal also attacks the legitimacy of the months-long criminal investigation into Rojas and her clinics and argues the attorney general’s office has presented little proof that abortions occurred.

“In the attorney general offices’ rush to find and prosecute someone for violating the state’s total abortion ban, it conducted a shoddy investigation and leapt to wild conclusions,” the attorneys wrote.

See here, here, and here for some background. The Trib adds some details.

Her lawyers now argue the injunction was improper because it didn’t explain why it was necessary or what it prohibited, and it didn’t set a trial date. They assert that there is no evidence that Rojas practiced medicine without a license, as opposed to providing services consistent with a midwife, and question why the chief investigator was not present at the hearing to be questioned.

Rojas is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based nonprofit law firm that has led high-profile lawsuits against state abortion bans, including in Texas.

In the appeal, Rojas’ attorneys raise questions about whether the woman investigators claim underwent an illegal abortion was actually treated for a miscarriage. The appeal asserts that Rojas told the woman her pregnancy would not be successful and gave her a low dose of misoprostol — a treatment regimen appropriate for managing a miscarriage, not inducing an abortion. The lawyers questioned why investigators didn’t fact-check this woman’s story with the data stored on the clinic’s ultrasound machine, which they seized as part of the investigation.

Rojas’ lawyers also questioned whether Paxton has the authority to seek a temporary injunction or bring a lawsuit on behalf of the state in an abortion-related case. Texas’ abortion ban has criminal and civil penalties, but does not explicitly allow the Attorney General to pursue injunctive relief or file suit on behalf of the state, the appeal says.

This story says that Rojas still hasn’t been formally indicted for any crimes, which is wild since she was arrested two months ago, with a whole lot of fanfare and chest-thumping from Ken Paxton. The flip side of that is just how little evidence the AG seems to have, and what he does have doesn’t point to any actual crimes. Maybe there’s more that hasn’t been made public yet, but that sure sounds like the reason why indictments are pursued in the first place. The bottom line, as I’ve said from the beginning, is don’t take Ken Paxton’s word for anything, not until you hear what the defense has to say.

One last note, there’s a motion to move this appeal to the new statewide 15th Court of Appeals, as that court is for lawsuits filed by or against the state. As of the publication of this story, that motion is pending.

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Spring Branch ID to appeal redistricting verdict

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

As expected.

Spring Branch ISD officials plan to appeal last month’s federal ruling that the district violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by holding at-large elections, the board president said Monday night after an executive session discussion.

While awaiting the appeal, the district must comply with the court order by choosing a preferred plan for how to create geographic representation districts on the board. The district’s attorneys will submit an election map to the court on June 6 with five single-member districts and two at-large positions, Board President Board President Lisa Alpe wrote in a letter to the community Tuesday.

“Drafts of this map remain confidential right now because they have not been fully finalized. The final proposed map will be published on SBISD’s website and social media channels when it is filed with the court on June 6. If the court approves SBISD’s proposed map, the district will then develop a transition plan to adjust its election procedures to implement the new system,” Alpe’s statement says.

It would likely not be finalized until next school year.

[…]

Alpe wrote to the community last week that the district appeal to defend its at-large system.

“The at-large system promotes teamwork and reduces territorialism. It ensures that EVERY trustee is accountable to EVERY student, parent, and constituent, ALL the time. It discourages trustees from fighting over resources for “their” part of the district. The voters recognize that SBISD is one school district, and the current Board intends to fight to keep it that way. We will respect the will of the voters and appeal this case at the first opportunity,” the district statement said.

[…]

Once the district sends the details of their plan back to the court, the plaintiff can file one round of objections to the plan, but then they will have to settle on the districts, at which point Spring Branch ISD will be prohibited from conducting at-large elections in the future and must have elected trustees represent geographic districts, barring any effects of the appeal process.

The appeal will not cost the district money because the legal fees are covered by the Texas Association of School Boards’ pool risk, officials said.

See here for the previous update. I was told about this decision last week by Diane Alexander, who attended the board meeting that followed the verdict and the May election. I didn’t see a news story before Tuesday, I suppose they hadn’t formally announced the decision before then. Barring action from the appeals court, the next election should feature the new districts. I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

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We’re sinking

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I think at some level we all knew this was true.

Groundwater and oil extraction are causing the ground beneath Houston to sink faster than any other major city in the U.S., according to a new study in Nature Cities.

A group of researchers from across the country used satellite data to measure vertical land movement in the 28 most populous U.S. cities. The academics were able to map shifts down to the millimeter.

More than 40% of Houston’s land mass is subsiding at least one-fifth of an inch per year, they said, but that rate varies drastically across the city. The worst spots are sinking 10 times faster.

“While often considered solely a coastal hazard due to relative sea-level rise, subsidence also threatens inland urban areas, causing increased flood risks, structural damage, and transportation disruptions,” the authors wrote, adding that across the nation the land was sinking “mainly due to groundwater extraction.”

In Houston, they said, oil and gas extraction has also had a major impact on the topographic shifts.

Other cities in Texas, including Fort Worth and Dallas, were among the fastest-sinking as well. Study authors pointed out the damages sustained by large cities facing uneven land shifts.

“Over time, this subsidence can produce stresses on infrastructure that will go past their safety limit,” said Leonard Ohenhen, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Columbia Climate School.

Houston’s well-known subsidence issues have been hotly debated over the years. Many companies and landowners have doubled down on their right to extract underground stores of water and oil, even as authorities like the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District initiated regional collaboration to up the area’s use of surface water in an effort to reduce the city’s sinking.

The link in the story is to the news release about the study. I have no idea what we can do about it, but at least now we know. If there are any scientists and science funding left in a few years, maybe we’ll be able to make some plans to mitigate things.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of May 12

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance can’t get enough Chicago Pope memes as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Measles update: The wastewater still has something to tell us

Posted on May 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Very cool.

An outbreak detection program found the presence of the measles virus in samples of Houston wastewater in early January 2025, before cases were reported, new findings show.

The findings were possible because almost three years earlier, a team of researchers, including from Baylor College of Medicine, the School of Public Health at University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston, the Houston Health Department and Rice University, had developed an outbreak detection program that analyzes genetic material.

A study using the program then detected the virus in samples collected on Jan. 7 from two Houston water treatment facilities that serve more than 218,000 residents. A parallel investigation confirmed on Jan. 17 that two travelers who contracted the virus resided in the same area serviced by the sampled water treatment plants. More information about the travelers and the facilities was not immediately available.

“In such cases our next step is always validating the signal with a second method, and we were able to do so through a collaboration with the Houston Health Department and Rice University,” said Dr. Sara Javornik Cregeen, a member of the team and an assistant professor in the Alkek Center for Metagenomics and Microbiome Research at Baylor. “They tested for the virus presence in samples from the same date and collection site and confirmed the signal using another technique, PCR.”

[…]

“Because no other cases have been reported and the detections occurred in the same area where the travelers resided, it is reasonable to assume that the measles signal detected in wastewater is from the two infected cases, which underscores the high sensitivity of the method,” said Dr. Anthony Maresso, a member of the team and a professor in molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor.

The researchers are not currently detecting measles viruses in wastewater in Houston, but they are in West Texas cities, where most of the state’s cases are concentrated.

The wastewater detection program that was started during COVID has gotten national attention for its innovation and utility. We’ve used it in the past to help detect the presence of mpox and RSV and the flu, and more recently bird flu. That it was able to detect measles, even that small an amount – just two infected people – is not a surprise but a very welcome and reassuring development. Kudos again to everyone involved.

And here’s your midweek case update.

Texas health officials reported eight new measles cases on Tuesday, with the outbreak spreading to three new counties.

The Texas Department of State Health Services has reported 717 measles cases amid the largest outbreak in the United States in at least 25 years. But the outbreak has appeared to slow recently; Texas reported 26 cases during the one-week period that ended Friday, its lowest one-week total since Valentine’s Day.

Carson County, in the Panhandle, and Collin and Rockwall counties, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, all reported their first measles cases associated with the outbreak. All three counties reported one case on Tuesday.

There have been 93 people hospitalized for treatment amid the outbreak. Two children, an 8-year-old girl and a 6-year-old girl, died after contracting the virus.

Two-thirds of cases have been in children and teens. Nearly 96% of cases have been in individuals who have not received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, or whose vaccination status is unknown.

The DSHS estimated that fewer than 10 measles cases — about 1% of the statewide total — are actively infectious. An individual may be infectious up to four days before a rash appears and up to four days after it’s gone.

The eight new cases reported in Texas on Tuesday includes two in Gaines County. The county has seen 405 cases in total, nearly 57% of all infections connected to the outbreak.

El Paso County also reported two new cases, while Lubbock County reported one. Both counties have now reported 52 cases in total.

The DSHS said there is ongoing measles transmission in eight counties: Cochran, Dallam, Dawson, Gaines, Lamar, Lubbock, Terry and Yoakum.

Of the 717 cases in Texas, 211 have been in children younger than 5 years old and 273 have been in children and teens between 5 and 17, according to the DSHS.

Only 30 cases have been in people who received at least one dose of MMR vaccine prior to an infection.

Texas has also reported 15 measles cases in 2025 that are not connected to the outbreak, most of them related to international travel. That total includes four in Harris County, one in Fort Bend County and one in Brazoria County.

So yeah, definitely slowing. That’s the good news. The bad news, at least potentially, is the continued appearance of the virus in much more populated counties, where the pool of possible victims is so much greater than it was in places like Gaines County. That doesn’t mean that it will start breaking out again in big numbers – these counties have better vaccination rates and more available health care – but it could. We’ll just have to see how it goes. In the meantime, the national case count is now over a thousand. And while that’s a big number, there’s no reason to think that a new outbreak, someplace else a few months in the future, couldn’t easily exceed it. There’s plenty more places like Gaines County out there.

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