The post-Beryl cellphone experience

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We’ve heard a lot less about this than we have about power outages.

During Hurricane Beryl, a record 2.26 million CenterPoint Energy customers lost power, sending line crews scrambling across the region once the storm passed. The epic loss of electricity led to state hearings and assurances from the utility to improve its reliability and harden its system.

Yet as CenterPoint service returned gradually after Beryl, some still waited days for their telecommunications service to return, or the strength of cellular signals in their neighborhood to rebound.

Twenty-four hours after Beryl rushed through the area, the major telecom companies said 90% or more of their customers were restored, in many cases with cell service returning to a neighborhood before electricity did.

For an isolated few, often with an issue directly related to their home or business, the wait was longer.

[…]

Since Beryl, the telecom companies have strengthened some parts of their systems, but much of getting phones and computers back online is having a backup plan. Asked about changes or improvements this year, most officials pointed to adding battery power where practical, along with repairing or replacing vulnerable lines keeping data centers and cell towers active.

The same protocols are happening in the Texas Hill Country this week, following devastating flooding centered in Kerr County. As the community rebuilds, telcom companies deployed emergency equipment in Kerrville, aimed in part with relieving demand on the system as equipment is repaired.

Another major focus over the past year for many of the companies — along with many Houston-area homeowners — was adding natural gas powered generators in key locations, or improving the ones already there.

In many cases, officials with multiple phone and internet providers said, delays occurred during Beryl because either lost power crashed the system, or their own fiber or telecommunications lines were damaged by felled limbs or toppled poles.

“We go in after CenterPoint,” said Foti Kallergis, spokesman for Comcast in the Houston region. “If they have to replace or repair a pole, they will go out and do that, and the (electrical) lines will take precedence. Then, when they are done, our crew can go place the line.”

We lost power for three days after each of Beryl and the derecho. As best I recall, we generally had cell service during those times. Internet came back after power was restored, within a day or so. I’m not sure why the telcoms did better than the utilities, but I suspect that having actual competition for the business might have something to do with it.

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Start of the special session flooding roundup

Posted on July 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Just a reminder of why we’re supposedly here, the non-THC reason.

Texas lawmakers largely ignored recommendations aimed at helping rural areas like Kerr County prepare for flooding

Sixteen months had passed since Hurricane Harvey tore through the Texas coast in August 2017, killing more than 80 people and flattening entire neighborhoods. And when Texas lawmakers gathered in Austin for their biennial session, the scale of the storm’s destruction was hard to ignore.

Legislators responded by greenlighting a yearslong statewide initiative to evaluate flood risks and improve preparedness for increasingly frequent and deadly storms. “If we get our planning right on the front end and prevent more damage on the front end, then we have less on the back end,” Charles Perry, a Republican senator from Lubbock who chairs a committee overseeing environmental issues, said at the time.

In the years that followed, hundreds of local officials and volunteers canvassed communities across Texas, mapping out vulnerabilities. The result of their work came in 2024 with the release of Texas’ first-ever state flood plan.

Their findings identified nearly $55 billion in proposed projects and outlined 15 key recommendations, including nine suggestions for legislation. Several were aimed at aiding rural communities like Kerr County, where flash flooding over the Fourth of July weekend killed more than 100 people. Three are still missing.

But this year, lawmakers largely ignored those recommendations.

Instead, the legislative session that ended June 2 was dominated by high-profile battles over school vouchers and lawmakers’ decision to spend $51 billion to maintain and provide new property tax cuts, an amount nearly equal to the funding identified by the Texas Water Development Board, a state agency that has historically overseen water supply and conservation efforts.

Although it had been only seven years since Hurricane Harvey, legislators now prioritized the state’s water and drought crisis over flooding needs.

Legislators allocated more than $1.6 billion in new revenue for water infrastructure projects, only some of which would go toward flood mitigation. They also passed a bill that will ask voters in November to decide whether to approve $1 billion annually over the next two decades that would prioritize water and wastewater over flood mitigation projects. At that pace, water experts said that it could take decades before existing mitigation needs are addressed — even without further floods.

Even if they had been approved by lawmakers this year, many of the plan’s recommendations would not have been implemented before the July 4 disaster. But a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of legislative proposals, along with interviews with lawmakers and flood experts, found that the Legislature has repeatedly failed to enact key measures that would help communities prepare for frequent flooding.

Such inaction often hits rural and economically disadvantaged communities hardest because they lack the tax base to fund major flood prevention projects and often cannot afford to produce the data they need to qualify for state and federal grants, environmental experts and lawmakers said.

[…]

This week, the Legislature will convene for a special session that Abbott called to address a range of priorities, including flood warning systems, natural disaster preparation and relief funding. Patrick promised that the state would purchase warning sirens for counties in flash flood zones. Similar efforts, however, have previously been rejected by the Legislature. Alongside Burrows, Patrick also announced the formation of committees on disaster preparedness and flooding and called the move “just the beginning of the Legislature looking at every aspect of this tragic event.” Burrows said the House is “ready to better fortify our state against future disasters.”

But Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, a Democrat from Richardson, near Dallas, said state lawmakers have brushed off dire flood prevention needs for decades.

“The manual was there, and we ignored it, and we’ve continued to ignore these recommendations,” said Rodríguez Ramos, who has served on the House Natural Resources Committee overseeing water issues for three sessions. “It’s performative to say we’re trying to do something knowing well we’re not doing enough.”

Funny how there’s always money for tax cuts but never for most other priorities. Anyone want to bet on a different outcome this time around?

You may have noticed that this article listed the number of missing as just three. Yes, that’s a big change.

The number of people missing in Kerr County after the July 4 flood was revised to just three Saturday evening, according to a news release from county officials.

Until the Kerr County Flood Disaster Joint Information Center released the new tally, the figure had stood at more than 160. County officials said Saturday that “many individuals” who had been reported missing were safe and removed from the list.

“We are profoundly grateful to the more than 1,000 local, state, and federal authorities who have worked tirelessly in the wake of the devastating flood that struck our community,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said. “Thanks to their extraordinary efforts, the number of individuals previously listed as missing has dropped from over 160 to three.”

“This remarkable progress reflects countless hours of coordinated search and rescue operations, careful investigative work, and an unwavering commitment to bringing clarity and hope to families during an unimaginably difficult time,” Rice said.

No explanation given for the change, so who knows how that came about. I assume that the data they had was messy and had duplicates and needed verification, and now they’re at a point where some followup could be done. Or maybe there were a lot of people who were on the missing list without realizing it, and they came forward. I’m delighted that this number was so greatly reduced without an accompanying increase in the fatality count. I’m just a little whiplashed by it.

This story has the headline “New details emerge about chaotic rescue effort at Camp Mystic” and it’s about how director Dick Eastland and many of the young campers died in the flood. It gets right into it in the first paragraphs. You may or may not want to read that, so I’ll just leave it right there.

The Hill Country does have flood warning sirens. Here’s where they are and how they work.

In fact, sirens have been in place for years in some nearby Hill Country counties — and officials say that although they’re far from foolproof and are not an all-in-one solution, they have been well worth the cost and effort.

Comfort, the cities of New Braunfels and San Marcos, and parts of Comal County installed sirens along rivers more than a decade ago, and they’ve recently spent more to replace and upgrade parts of the systems.

It’s impossible to say how effective sirens would have been in Kerr County on July 4. It would depend how many there were, where they were located, when they sounded and whether people in the path of the flooding heard them and knew what to do.

But despite their limitations, it’s better to have sirens than not, say officials in communities that have invested in them.

“If this just saves a couple lives, it’s well worth it,” said San Marcos’ emergency management coordinator, Rob Fitch.

We can debate the answer to that question, and why some places had sirens and others didn’t all we want. At this point, any place in the high risk zone that doesn’t have some form of alert system that can be easily heard at night and isn’t dependent on possibly flaky cell service is a choice. The Lege can make it an easy choice if the Republicans want to prioritize that. We’ll see.

Response to deadly Texas floods was ‘a masterclass in how not to communicate,’ experts say

After devastating floods tore through the Hill Country on the Fourth of July, government representatives faced intense scrutiny about how they’ve handled the disaster, and whether earlier public warnings could have saved lives.

In response, President Donald Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials have pushed back against pointed questions and stayed mostly silent on what local leaders did during the crucial early morning hours before the Guadalupe River surged.

“It’s a masterclass in how not to communicate,” said Tom Stewart, a Texas public relations specialist who has worked in the past on storm response.

Professional crisis communicators like Stewart watched the news conferences with dismay. Deflecting blame is not helpful if politicians want to build trust with the public, they say.

“There’s no comms plan in the world that will take away the number of deaths and the pain of the families that lost children and relatives,” said Jeff Eller, another public relations veteran based in Austin. “What it can do is give comfort that the government cares, understands that there was a tragedy here and is making the resources available to make it better.”

Yet, “the more the questions came, the less credible they became,” Eller said.

Parents like Kristen Washam, a Hill Country native who now lives in the Houston area, intently listened to the official responses from day one. She didn’t like what she heard.

Washam’s 11-year-old son was at a camp along the Guadalupe River on July 4, though he ended up staying out of harm’s way. She listened to press conferences streaming on her home TV, but turned it off when she said she heard officials patting themselves on the back instead of providing crucial and timely information.

“People like myself, we want those in charge to be transparent, and it doesn’t seem like they’re being transparent. We’re getting a lot of deflection,” Washam said.

[…]

Missing from the defensive comments, Dallas-based public relations professional Jo Trizila said, is empathy and humility in acknowledging that mistakes had to have been made somewhere for so many to have died, even if it’s not clear yet what went wrong or what could’ve been better.

“So far, we see people trying to blame somebody else. It just looks like a big cover-up. And I don’t think that’s what it is. I think nobody wants to admit that we failed,” Trizila said.

“What people want to hear is: ‘Hey, we screwed up. I’m sorry. We’re going to do better, and this is what we’re going to do, and these are the lessons we learned,’” she added.

To address the issue from the previous story, their track record of being accountable is not great. I’d keep my expectations modest. Twenty-nine days to go.

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An early look at who’s running for HISD Trustee

Posted on July 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

From the Chron, which notes that five seats are up for election this year and that until Mike Morath gives us back our power there won’t be that much for them to do.

District I

Felicity Pereyra

Felicity Pereyra, a data scientist and small business owner, is the founder of Elevate Strategies, a Houston consulting firm. She is an HISD alumna who attended Shadowbriar Elementary School, Revere Middle School and Westside High School.

Pereyra previously worked for the Democratic National Committee and presidential campaigns of former President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris. She is also on the board of Momentum Education and Annie’s List Training and Engagement Fund.

District V

Maria Benzon

Maria Benzon is HISD parent and public education advocate who has worked for more than 25 years in education, including as a teacher, curriculum specialist and professor. She is an HISD alumna who graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for Engineering Professions.

She was previously an assistant principal at Southwest Schools and a math teacher at Madison High School and Lawson Middle School. She also serves as the President of Bellaire Young Mothers, a Girl Scout co-leader and Odyssey of the Mind coach.

District VI

Kendall Baker

Kendall Baker, the former secretary of the HISD school board, is running for his second term. After graduating from HISD’s Forest Brook High School, Baker worked for nearly 30 years for the City of Houston, including for Houston Public Works and the Office of the Mayor.

Baker — an ordained minister — is a member of Houston Ministers Against Crime, which is a volunteer organization assisting with crime prevention. He is also a former member of the Houston Area Pastor Council and chairman of the Houston Police and Clergy Alliance.

Michael McDonough

Michael McDonough is a former Houston ISD principal, teacher and coach who worked in the district for more than 30 years before retiring. He currently works as a professor of practice at the University of Houston and as a train operator at Hermann Park.

McDonough, the parent of two HISD graduates, previously led Pin Oak Middle School and Bellaire and Westside High School as principal. He also was a math teacher at Attucks Middle School and Westbury High School.

District VII

Audrey Nath

Audrey Nath is a pediatric neurologist, HISD parent and advocate against the state takeover of the district. She earned a doctorate in neuroscience from UTHealth Houston and completed her residency at the Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital program.

Nath is also a board member for Momentum Education, The Village Connect and Healthcare For Action. She was previously an assistant professor in the neurology department at Texas Children’s Hospital/Baylor College of Medicine.

Bridget Wade

Bridget Wade, the former second vice president of the HISD school board, is running for her second term in the role. She is a conservative, Houston native and HISD alumna who attended Briargrove Elementary School, Paul Revere Middle School and Wisdom High School.

Wade previously was the former Briargrove Elementary School PTO president, chair of the The Blaffer Museum of Art advisory board and Blanton Museum board member. She is currently a member of the Houston ISD Foundation board and The First Horizon advisory board.

District IX

Myrna Guidry

Myrna Guidry, the former first vice president of the HISD school board, is seeking re-election to her second full term in the role. She has worked as an attorney in Houston for more than 20 years and as an adjunct law professor in mediation at Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

Guidry volunteers for several organizations, including the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Houston Volunteer Lawyers, the Star of Hope — Miles Ministry and the Riceville Mount Olive Baptist Church.

The story notes that this is an “at this time” edition and will be updated as new names emerge.

Baker, Wade, and Guidry are incumbents. Elizabeth Santos is the incumbent in District I (my district). I don’t know if she is planning to run again or not. Sue Deigaard is the incumbent in District V, and thought I have not asked her directly I’m about 99.9% certain she will not be running for re-election.

Felicity Pereyra was also a figure in the since-dismissed and highly controversial indictments brought against three staffers of County Judge Lina Hidalgo. District I is pretty blue and any serious opponent she might face (Santos or otherwise) will be a Dem, so I don’t think this will be a big issue in the race. I can’t say no one will mention it, but if they do then Pereyra will get to point out that this was a Kim Ogg obsession and that special prosecutors from Ken Paxton’s office ultimately concluded the charges were basically bunk. So again, I doubt this will amount to anything. But there it is.

Maria Benzon ran for District V in 2021, finishing third. Here’s the interview I did with her at the time.

Michael McDonough retired as principal from Bellaire High School in January 2023. He has been a critic of Mike Miles. He would be a significant improvement over Kendall Baker.

Kendall Baker is the incumbent in District VI. Don’t vote for him.

Audrey Nath is another outspoken critic of Mike Miles. I’ll be happy to have more of them on the Board. She was recently featured in a Chron story about HISD parents rallying to pick up the slack for students who were left behind by HISD’s cutback in wraparound services.

Bridget Wade knocked off Anne Sung in the 2021 election; she and Baker represented a gain for conservative candidates for Trustee. Hard to say how she might have operated if the elected Board had remained in power, but with the Board being sidelined she’s been as muted as the rest of them. Here’s the interview I did with her in 2021.

Myrna Guidry is the incumbent in District IX, winning in 2021 with 60% of the vote against two lower-profile candidates. She was appointed to the seat in December 2020, replacing Wanda Adams after Adams got elected Justice of the Peace that November. Far as I can tell she’s fine. Here’s the interview I did with her in 2021.

That’s what I know at this time. I’ll do a post on the campaign finance reports for Trustees and candidates in the near future. If you know about other candidates out there, leave a comment and let me know.

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From the “Our service area is bigger than yours” department

Posted on July 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Actual headline: Waymo responds to Tesla’s dick joke with a bigger Austin robotaxi map. We live in truly stupid times.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk posted an image of Tesla’s robotaxi service area in Austin, Texas, that was in the shape of a penis. Hilarious, I know, but more importantly: it appeared that Tesla’s map was slightly larger than Waymo’s service area, which covers just 37 square miles in Austin.

Today, Waymo announced its own expansion — minus the puerile humor. It’s just a bigger map with more customers for the Alphabet-owned company’s budding robotaxi business. And more pressure on Tesla to drop the dick jokes and get serious about autonomous driving.

Waymo’s new map covers 90 square miles in Austin, which is an increase from the current 37-square-mile service area. New neighborhoods include Crestview, Windsor Park, Sunset Valley, Franklin Park, and more, as well as popular destinations like The Domain and McKinney Falls State Park. Waymo provided a map, with the old service area in dark blue and the new one in light blue.

In its announcement, Waymo stressed that it’s “the only fully autonomous, 24/7 experience for anyone in Austin,” a clear reference to Tesla’s limitations. Waymo’s vehicles are unsupervised and available at any time, while Tesla’s vehicles include a safety monitor in the passenger seat, only operate between 6AM and midnight, and are invite-only.

Still, this is one of the first times that Waymo is experiencing competition in one of its robotaxi cities, and the company clearly relishes the fight. Waymo also stressed “no waitlists or caveats” as part of its service, which is available exclusively on the Uber app.

Service area is a key metric in operating a robotaxi service. Companies tend to target denser areas with more customers and more desirable locations, while also keeping in mind that expanding too rapidly could compromise safety.

Tesla’s robotaxis have already racked up a list of mistakes, and the presence of the safety monitor is a clear sign that the company isn’t confident enough in its technology to deploy its vehicles without supervision. Meanwhile, Austin residents have filed numerous complaints with the city about Waymo’s slow-moving, overly cautious vehicles. One customer got stuck inside a Waymo on a busy street. Still, there have been no serious safety incidents involving either company in Austin yet.

See here for the previous update. This was from last week, but you know how it is. Here’s a more recent story that looks at why this was more of a stunt on Elmo’s part than anything else, and that there remain real concerns about the full self-driving (FSD) tech at the heart of the autonomous Tesla business and why that is a hindrance to them scaling up.

While those two companies are out there measuring their, um, tailpipes, there’s a new kid in town.

More self-driving cars are making their way onto Austin’s roads, and one new company has roots right here in the Texas capital city. Avride is currently testing its autonomous vehicles throughout Austin.

The Austin-based tech company started developing its autonomous vehicles back in 2017. The engineering center where the cars are assembled, the software engineering team and the company’s offices are all located at its headquarters in North Austin.

The company said that what makes Avride unique from other similar companies is the collaboration between its two products: cars and robots. About two years after Avride started working on its self-driving cars, the company began developing autonomous food delivery robots.

“We are probably like the only company on the market which is developing the two products simultaneously, cars and robots,” said Yulia Shveyko, head of communications for Avride.

Both the autonomous vehicles and robots use similar technology like sensors, LiDAR (light and detection ranging) on the top and cameras to help them navigate the road and sidewalks safely.

“They use the same technological approaches, and when breakthrough happens in the robot team or the car team, these teams are happy to share this solution with each other,” Shveyko said.

[…]

Currently, there’s about a few dozen autonomous vehicles driving around Austin, but in the coming months, Avride plans to have up to 100.

Avride’s food delivery robots are already in commercial deployment in Dallas, Austin and Jersey City, New Jersey, through Uber Eats. The company plans to start by launching its autonomous vehicles first in Dallas by the end of the year, then eventually in Austin.

Currently in Austin, Waymo and Tesla’s self-driving cars have been deployed, but Zoox and VW ADMT’s cars are still in testing.

Avride is a spinoff of the Russian company Yandex. I don’t know how good I’d feel about giving them my business; I’d probably pick them over anything still owned by Elon Musk, but that’s about it. Your mileage may vary. Avride, Zoox, and ADMT have all been mentioned here before. Per Axios, there’s a sixth company testing its rides in Austin, Hyundai’s Motional, which may someday be merged or subsumed by Waymo or Avride. Zoox, meanwhile, could be an underrated force. Me personally, I’d like to know just how much room there is for all these services in Austin. Like, does anyone drive themselves in Austin anymore? Place your bets on when any of this will be generally available in Houston. Reuters has more.

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July 2025 campaign finance reports – Senate and Congress

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

PREVOIUSLY:

Harris County

Back in April I just took a look at who had already started raising money for CD18. There wasn’t much else to report so I thought I’d wait till the July report to see what was going on elsewhere. Turns out, everything is happening. Republicans are running amuck with re-redistricting, so until we know what districts are being affected I’ll keep an eye on all of the Dem incumbents in addition to the challengers of interest. We also have a couple of Senate candidates, so here they are as well. Let’s get into it:

Colin Allred – Senate
Terry Virts – Senate
Michael Swanson – Senate

Shaun Finnie – CD02
Evan Hunt – CD03
Jordan Wheatley – CD03
Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Al Green – CD09
Tayhlor Coleman – CD10
Veronica Escobar – CD16
Amanda Edwards – CD18
Isaiah Martin – CD18
Christian Menefee – CD18
Jolanda Jones – CD18
Zoe Cadore – CD18
Rain Eatmon – CD18
Stephen Huey – CD18
Joaquin Castro – CD20
Santos Limon – CD23
Kevin Burge – CD24
Jon Buchwald – CD24
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Sylvia Garcia – CD29
Jasmine Crockett – CD30
Julie Johnson – CD32
Marc Veasey – CD33
Vicente Gonzalez – CD34
Greg Casar – CD35
Lloyd Doggett – CD37
Melissa McDonough – CD38


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Allred
Sen   Virts           201,255    115,652  125,374     85,602
Sen   Swanson           2,503      1,329    1,698      1,174

02    Finnie        1,018,455          0  680,000  1,018,455
03    Hunt            118,088     35,107   55,925     82,980
03    Wheatley         18,462     13,817        0      4,645
07    Fletcher        569,440    248,811        0  1,637,291
09    Green           437,470    147,224        0    509,331
10    Coleman          58,585     22,443    1,279     36,415
16    Escobar         423,028    214,828        0    324,044
18    Edwards         803,348    181,444        0    623,117   
18    Martin          188,079    171,018        0    191,695
18    Menefee         977,795    337,206        0    640,588
18    Jones           100,989      9,423        0     91,566
18    Cadore          239,235     56,653    4,311    182,582
18    Eatmon           13,546     10,908        0      2,687
18    Huey             12,335        174        0     12,160
20    Castro           71,526    142,146        0    168,036
23    Limon           356,755      6,815  354,400    349,940
24    Burge            22,779      4,650        0     18,128
24    Buchwald         12,474      4,300   11,341      8,173
28    Cuellar         642,834    331,578  200,000    359,215
29    Garcia          129,648    306,349        0    195,052
30    Crockett      3,836,453  1,679,780        0  3,767,905
32    Johnson         531,094    253,456        0    508,541
33    Veasey          390,333    556,217        0    843,596
34    Gonzalez        857,476    207,089        0    932,447
35    Casar           264,846    185,034   10,000    450,651
37    Doggett          62,149     65,791        0  6,224,186
38    McDonough         8,870      1,606  113,239     29,963

Reports for Dem Senate candidates are here and for Dem Congressional candidates are here. The January reports are here.

There was not yet a report for Colin Allred, for whatever the reason. Terry Virts’ $200K may not look like much, but he announced about a week before the deadline, so that’s a pretty good start. If Rep. Joaquin Castro decides to run for something other than re-election, he starts out with less on hand than what Terry Virts raised in that week. Some people see a disconnect between the talk about Castro (and about Ron Nirenberg) and his current campaign balance.

I don’t normally review all of the Dem incumbents’ reports, unless they’re known to be facing a strong challenge. With the special session looming and who knows what will happen to the map, I figured I’d keep track of everyone for now. At least until we know where they end up. Some are in a better position at the outset than others. Jasmine Crockett may have the chance to be quite the hero this cycle given where she is.

In the absence of re-redistricting, the most objectively flippable seat for Dems is CD15, which under the current map is the new CD23 and has appropriately been the focus of a lot of attention and fundraising. There’s no Dem candidate for CD15 and a finance report for July, but as of July 17 that has changed, as Harlingen doctor Ana Cuellar (no, no relation to Henry) has made her candidacy known. Tejano music star Bobby Pulido, whose recruitment by Dems I noted in the January roundup, is still out there as a possible candidate as well.

Speaking of CD23, that’s the placeholder candidate with $350K on hand, pretty much all of it thanks to a loan to himself. I don’t remember him being any kind of moneybag last cycle, so I’m not sure what to make of that. My advice would be to keep looking for an upgrade.

As of this drafting, there were 17 CD18 candidates who had links to FEC finance report pages, but only the seven listed above had anything to report. I will not be paying attention to anyone who does not have a report to file. Christian Menefee continues to be the financial frontrunner, with Amanda Edwards mostly keeping pace and being almost dead even in cash on hand thanks to lower expenditures. We are going to be inundated with ads, mailers, and door-knockers before we know it. Isaiah Martin still has a decent amount of cash on hand, but with that burn rate he’s going to have a hard time keeping up. Jolanda Jones is the most recent entrant to the race, and was limited to June for her fundraising because the Lege was in session. She’s about to be on the sidelines again, and if she’s unlucky that could drag on. Keep an eye on Zoe Cadore, who posted some strong numbers. Given her first-time status in a field with big names, that’s impressive.

I first saw Shaun Finnie‘s name in this Downballot story, then allowed my eyes to pop a little when I went and looked up his report. I agree with their assertion that under the current map he’s a big longshot, but if CD02 winds up as a 55% red district, and especially if the wingnut Steve Toth takes out Dan Crenshaw, it could get really interesting. This is exactly the risk the Republicans are toying with.

I’m also interested in Evan Hunt, Tayhlor Coleman, whose vanlife Instagram is a great follow, whoever can make some noise in CDs 23 and 24 and hopefully 21, and more. Marquette Green-Scott is back in CD22 but hasn’t raised any money yet. Melissa McDonough is also back in CD38, and now she’s joined by Marvalette Hunter, former Chief of Staff to then-Mayor Turner and former Chief Development Officer for the Harris County Housing Authority. I’ll be looking for her October report. Again, any of these districts – and who knows, maybe others – could suddenly become a lot more competitive. We’ll know soon enough.

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On pursuing rural voters

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is an op-ed written by former State Rep. Glenn Rogers, who was targeted and ousted by Greg Abbott in the 2024 primaries because he was anti-voucher. He has not taken that defeat lying down.

Glenn Rogers

Our great state is experiencing an explosive population boom. Yet most of the growth is in the Texas Triangle — anchored by Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston — with a combined population over 20 million. Many rural counties are declining. According to the Texas Demographic Center, more than half of the 254 counties in Texas decreased in population between 2010 and 2020, and 75 counties shrank in population between 2022 and 2023. Our state, once an agrarian and rural bastion, is urbanizing rapidly.

Texans, while living in mostly suburban and urban environments, should still care deeply about the issues facing their rural neighbors. Maintaining and strengthening rural America is crucial for food and water security, energy security and, ultimately, national security.

Historically, and by their chosen location, most rural Texans are independent-minded and support traditional conservative values of limited government (both federal and state) and local control. On red meat issues such as abortion and guns, most rural Texans lean strongly to the right. Republicans have politically dominated rural Texas, everywhere except the Rio Grande valley, for decades.

Despite overwhelming rural support, the Republican Party of Texas is surprisingly anti-rural and opposed to legislative solutions for the most critical issues facing rural Texans. To get elected and stay elected in Texas, Republicans have to take their marching orders from organizations linked to party leadership and megadonors — organizations such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Texans for Fiscal Responsibility and the True Texas Project. These and other Republican-led advocacy groups make recommendations in elections and take positions on pending legislation. Their track record is consistently anti-rural.

Based on my personal experience and discussions with rural-focused organizations, I would say the top priorities for rural Texas are supporting public schools, providing access to quality health care, improving the quantity and quality of water resources, and improving communication capabilities. These four categories are important to all Texans, but the effects may be more acute in rural communities. Rural Texans struggle to access resources that their urban and suburban counterparts take for granted.

Unfortunately, these topics are not listed as legislative priorities by the current Republican Party of Texas, and bills dealing with these issues are consistently opposed by allied groups funded primarily by the party’s biggest donors.

[…]

How long will rural Texans continue supporting Republican politicians who clearly do not listen to the needs of rural Texas? To quote the classic Wolf Brand Chili commercial, “Well, that‘s too long!”

That was written in late May, I’ve had it sitting in my drafts since then. With the special session gaveling in today this seemed like as good a time as any to bring it out. What he’s saying here sounds like an opportunity to me. As noted above, former Rep. Rogers has been loudly proclaiming his discontent about Greg Abbott, the state Republican Party, and the priorities of the wingnut billionaires that fund them and tell them what to do. I’m not going to claim that Rogers is an ally – one of the reasons he’s been so vocal is because of the betrayal he feels as someone who had been such a staunch supporter of Abbott only to have Abbott viciously backstab him because of vouchers – but the issues he highlights are totally compatible with our own priorities. I’ve been saying since last March that Rogers’ Democratic former colleagues in the Lege need to be talking to him and to his fellow voucher victims about teaming up in 2026 to take down the likes of Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Ken Paxton, both as a matter of principle and to defend their own honor. We have enough in common to make it work, if we try.

And why wouldn’t we? Look, we know from the 2024 election that Democrats had and have issues with inspiring and turning out their base. My point here is that Republicans are taking their base for granted, and that gives us room to make an overture to them. We don’t have to abandon our principles to make such an overture, as shown by the priorities Rogers outlines. I think the same basic pitch, in a time of chaos and destruction and tariff–driven inflation and economic shocks, will sound good to a wider swath of people. Throw in the THC ban and add a twist of making government work for people and not for billionaires and cronies, and I think we’ve got something. It won’t be easy, it will take time and money and effort, and some number of people will reject the messenger even if the message resonates, but honestly, what do we have to lose? It’s not like there’s a tried and true formula we can fall back on. When I say this is an opportunity, I mean it’s something we can take or we can waste. Which way do we want to go?

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The Astrodome at 60

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We still don’t know what we’re going to do with it.

Doesn’t look a day over 59

In the winter of 2018, Ed Emmett thought he found the perfect plan to save the Astrodome and make it useful for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo — the organization that was one of the biggest proponents of tearing the building down.

Emmett, who was the Harris County judge, immediately called the Rodeo’s CEO Joel Cowley to explain his proposal. They’d raise the floor of the building to ground level, open the sides where they could place a food court, a petting zoo or some children’s rides, and build a parking garage below.

It would cost $105 million and didn’t require a bond vote. Cowley agreed to the idea, Emmett said, as did the rest of the county commissioners’ court. It was the closest Harris County had come to figuring out a solution to one of its biggest conundrums of the past decade.

But the plan never happened.

And seven years later — 17 years after the Houston Fire Department first declared the Astrodome unsafe and closed its doors to the public — the Eighth Wonder of the World still remains vacant with no solution in sight.

The abandoned building, plastered with “Do not enter” signs and secured with locks and chains, is now used as a de facto storage unit. For more than two decades after its last tenant left, politicians and other community leaders have grappled with the same question of what to do with the Astrodome: Invest money in its restoration, let it sit idle, or pay to demolish perhaps the city’s most iconic landmark.

The county, which owns NRG Park, ultimately has the power to decide the Astrodome’s fate. But that could change in a few years, as the county and its two tenants at NRG Park — the Houston Texans and the Rodeo, two of the most influential private entities in Harris County — negotiate a new lease agreement that likely will give both more control of the Park, its buildings and the events that go on there.

How the Astrodome reached this point — where it would sit dormant for two decades — is a story of politics, money, influence and a little nostalgia.

“No elected official wants the Astrodome’s blood on their hands,” said Beth Wiedower Jackson, the executive director of the Astrodome Conservancy, a non-profit whose mission is to save the building. “But the flip side of that coin is nobody wants to piss off the Rodeo or the Texans.

“It’s still very fresh in everyone’s memory — Bud Adams and the (Houston) Oilers leaving town.”

Jackson, who has been the executive director of the Astrodome Conservancy since 2018 and a board member since 2013, has long advocated for the Dome’s restoration.

I’ll stop there because this is a long story – which you should read – and you can see what the Conservancy’s latest proposal is here. The problems they face are that Harris County doesn’t want to spend its own money on it and doesn’t want to ask the voters to float a bond for it, and the Rodeo and the Texans don’t want anything to do with it. Still, their idea of putting a replacement for the also-run-down Reliant Arena inside the Dome has some merit and might be cheaper than other alternatives. Good luck convincing them of it. See also this Chron story for a peek inside the Dome.

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Weekend link dump for July 20

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“The NFL craves Canada more than ever. There’s untapped corporate money, growth in youth football, philanthropic connections and long-term fans to help build a league with massive, global plans. Buffalo, a small-market club with 60 percent of its market population lying across the border, needs it most. But are Canadians in the mood to play along?”

“I recently spoke with a dozen current and former ICE agents and officers about morale at the agency since Trump took office. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing their job or being subjected to a polygraph exam. They described varying levels of dissatisfaction but weren’t looking to complain or expecting sympathy—certainly not at a time when many Americans have been disturbed by video clips of masked and hooded officers seizing immigrants who were not engaged in any obvious criminal behavior. The frustration isn’t yet producing mass resignations or major internal protests, but the officers and agents described a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.”

“An estimated 6 percent of lawyers in the United States are Hispanic and 41 percent are women — though they make up a larger share of the country’s immigration lawyers. Women represented 60 percent of respondents to a recent membership survey by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which has more than 17,000 members.”

“The Trump administration wants to take away citizenship from naturalized Americans on a massive scale.”

“Being the subject of a federal civil or criminal denaturalization process in federal district court and up through whatever appeals level is inherently incredibly destabilizing, disorienting, and often expensive, even if you win. The process is a sort of punishment, which is certainly the point. So although the administration’s chances of going through with anything resembling a true mass denaturalization campaign seem extraordinarily unlikely, we should expect to see the White House wield it as a political weapon.”

The most unflattering sports cards of all time.

“Easy there, Mr. Lefty Movie Director. Human kindness? That sounds like soft, liberal talk, not the kind of toughness I want to see in a fictional character who, as long as I ignore everything about Superman laid out in decades of comic-book and film lore, stands for being an America-first, take-no-prisoners badass.”

“You can trick AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini into teaching you how to make a bomb or hack an ATM if you make the question complicated, full of academic jargon, and cite sources that do not exist.”

“The Trump administration’s broadsides against scientific research have caused unprecedented upheaval at the National Cancer Institute, the storied federal government research hub that has spearheaded advances against the disease for decades.”

“Skenes deserved to pick his own future, and what the Pirates have done since selecting him without his input to join their diseased organization is one of the best arguments against sports drafts that I can muster.”

“Between 1950 and 2008, the name Bill (or more specifically William), became gradually and increasingly uncool in the United States, according to data from the Social Security Administration. Even by 1980 a kid might as well have been named Jehoshaphat, Algonquin, or Xythron The Enfeebled. Most likely, Bill is the name of your last living relative, and if it isn’t, may he rest in peace. If you have a Bill in your family, cherish the old coot. Water him regularly, and keep the air in front of his easy chair free of things he can trip over. You need him mobile and independent, at least from you. But in sports, well, forget about it. You can draft all the Ethans, Noahs, Olivers, and Jaydens you want and you’ll be lucky if you hit a single Bill.”

“Occam’s Razor continues to take an undeserved beating.”

“I first learned about Epstein the way that most Americans did — thanks to the reporting of Julie K. Brown and her team at the Miami Herald. This was a local story there in Florida, because that’s where Epstein was initially sentenced in an extravagantly lenient plea deal that still has not yet been explained.”

“Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein post contradicts what top Fox hosts have argued”.

“Don’t Ever Again Try To Claim That ‘#MeToo Went Too Far’”.

“Trump thought nothing would get in the way of his base’s loyalty to him. But it may be that the one thing that will rattle their faith is this stark reminder that he’s always been the villain, and they are his accomplices.”

“Epstein’s address book, meanwhile, has been public since Gawker published portions of it in 2015. Writer and filmmaker Leland Nally called everyone in it and wrote about the results for Mother Jones in 2020″.

“If you’re puzzled by all of this, or wondering whether it really matters (spoiler: it does), here’s a thorough breakdown of the ongoing mess known as “the Epstein List.””

“It’s a sad Sunday when ‘non believers’ have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian💔”.

“James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ Leads to More Than 500% Surge in Dog Adoption Interest, Thanks to Krypto”.

“Trump, 79, Can’t Remember Appointing His Own Fed Chair”.

“The Miccosukee Tribe in Florida joined environmental groups on Tuesday to sue the federal and state agencies that constructed an immigrant detention center known as the “Alligator Alcatraz” and located in the Everglades National Park.”

RIP, Connie Francis, pop singer best known for “Pretty Little Baby” and “Who’s Sorry Now”.

RIP, Bryan Braman, former NFL linebacker for the Texans and the Eagles, with whom he won a Super Bowl.

RIP, Bubba McNeely, Houston-based singer, emcee, and all-around gay icon.

“I say all of this to note that we tend to see, and Trump wants us to see, the administration as a vast structure responding to his will. And in a way it is. But in another way it’s far less like that than any other administration we’ve known. And when weird stuff like the Schnabel thing happens — assuming there’s more to it than the wife contract, which might not be the case — it may be part of some skullduggery contained entirely within NIH or HHS. The rest of the administration may be as in the dark about it as we are. Something may be crooked but it might be a scam that Trump doesn’t even get a taste of. I’m not excusing them, mind you. It’s that the whole administration is more gangland than just the mafia boss at the top. Trump’s created a context in which there are lots of these gangs — lots of free-fire zones for all kinds of corruption and likely worse.”

“The CEO seemingly having an affair with the head of HR at his company at the Coldplay concert is a viral video for the ages, but it is also, unfortunately, emblematic of our current private surveillance and social media hellscape.”

“We really thought that broad bipartisan support we have had for 25 years — ever since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in 2000 — would provide us some protection, and it did not. And I think people are really both surprised and disappointed.”

RIP, Bob Stein, longtime Rice University political science professor, political analyst, and bike activist. I got to know Bob over the years – he and his UH colleague Richard Murray were the twin towers of local political commentary for the news – and he was smart, engaging, and a fast talker in the way only a boy from New York can be. The local scene is a little less interesting now. Here’s Rice’s statement on his passing. Rest in peace, Bob.

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There’s a map

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The special session gavels in tomorrow and there’s a new proposed Congressional map, but before we get to that let’s look at the lay of the land going into the session.

On Monday, state lawmakers held a call with U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, and former Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the special session. They did not directly encourage members to stage a walkout, a source who was on that call told ABC News. Still, the source added the state House members are continuing to keep all their options open.

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is being more explicit – telling the Pod Save America podcast that he has spoken to state lawmakers about calling a special session to begin making changes to state law in order to redraw their districts in response to Abbott.

“If we’re gonna play fair in a world that is wholly unfair, we may have the higher moral ground, but the ground is shifting from underneath us. And I think we have to wake up to that reality,” Newsom said.

California has an independent redistricting commission intended to prevent gerrymandering, but Paul Mitchell, an elections and redistricting expert, said Newsom could go around the commission either by getting voters’ approval on a ballot measure in a special election or by arguing in court.

A potential ballot measure could halt the commission’s authority to draw congressional districts until other states began using similar commissions, and “could all be done in time for the next election” without legal issues. The biggest uncertainty in this scenario would be whether or not voters would support it.

Alternatively, Newsom could argue the commission only has authority over decade-end redistricting, but the legislature can still redistrict mid-decade. Mitchell said it was a coin toss whether the California Supreme Court would uphold this argument.

Jeffries huddled with California’s congressional delegation to discuss the prospect Wednesday, a source familiar said. Experts suggested to ABC that other Democratic-held states could follow California’s lead, such as New York, Maryland or Illinois, but it’s unclear if there would be a significant strategic advantage.

Marina Jenkins, the executive director Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement that Republicans are trying to “suppress votes” and believes an “an immediate avalanche of lawsuits” will come if the maps are redrawn.

“This moment requires all hands on deck to stop them,” said Jenkins.

From walkouts to retaliatory redistricting to lawsuits, I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s easy to cheer for legislative Dems to flee the state, but as Lone Star Left pointed out, it’s a lot easier said than done. For one thing, Abbott can keep calling sessions, and the costs associated with being away will pile up. For another, there are issues on the agenda that Dems would like to have a say in, most notably related to flooding and THC regulation. You can be sure that the Republicans will blame their inability to pass laws on those topics on the absent Dems. It will be an argument made in bad faith, but it will be made and we know how easily people can be swayed by that. There’s a lot more to any case for or against breaking quorum than just that aspect of it.

We also don’t know what pressure Republicans may be under relating to this.

Some Texas Republicans in Congress say the issue is out of their hands.

“The Legislature has the prerogative to do it, and so they’ll look at the maps, we’ll see what they do,” said U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin. “We have no voice in that as members of Congress.”

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, appeared on board with the effort. He pointed to the gains Trump made in the 2024 elections.

On social media, the senior senator said, “Hispanic voters in Texas have rapidly shifted in favor of the GOP, in large part thanks @realdonaldtrump, so a mid decade redistricting will mean significant gains for Texas Republicans.”

When the news broke last month that the White House was pushing the effort, barely any Texas Republicans wanted to speak on the record about it. Changing the district lines could backfire by making some solidly red districts less Republican and more competitive.

“Everything comes at a cost,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington, D.C. office. “Can you get people all aligned to do a thing again? But also, can you do it in a way that might make some members more vulnerable than they would be under the current version of the map?”

Senator Cornyn might want to look at some current polling numbers before he gets too comfortable in that statement. Be that as it may, there will be risks assumed by the current Republicans in Congress if a new map is adopted, and not just in the general election. They could be vulnerable in a primary just because so many of their current voters would no longer be theirs.

To see what I mean, here’s the current map and here’s the first proposed map. There may be others, but given the lag between when this idea was first floated (there were rumors about it before it was ever reported on) and now, you have to assume something like this was being shown around before now, and with the session being short and packed, we’re unlikely to see much more. A few observations:

– Hard to know what the weirdest-looking district is under this map, but CDs 23 and 32 would surely be on the short list. When I said a map that achieved what Republicans said they were aiming for would look like the world’s ugliest bowl of spaghetti, this is what I meant. I never want to hear another complaint about CD18 or CD33 again.

– CD23 no longer touches Bexar County. CD10 is out of Travis County. CD26 no longer has a piece of Tarrant County. CD17 was almost entirely east of I-35 and largely east of I-45, now it straddles I-35. CD25 now goes from Travis County to the Panhandle. CD01 is no longer in Smith County. These are all Republican districts, and I doubt anyone could properly identify all of them on an unmarked map. The bigger question on their side is, how many incumbent Republican members of Congress would no longer live in their districts? For sure, that will be a problem for them.

– Obviously, more violence was done to Dem districts, though CDs 16 and 18 appear to be mostly the same. They spread the Black voters around, for sure. I haven’t seen electoral analysis, but it wouldn’t shock me if this achieves the goal of making five more districts majority red, at least under 2024 data. How they might perform under 2018 conditions – or even more blue, if things keep getting worse for Trump – is another question altogether.

You can zoom in to street level on that district viewer, so if you’re not sure at first glance where you’ve ended up in this map you can verify it. I’d be in CD29 if this passes, the first time since 1989 that I’d not be in CD18. (I lived in a garage apartment in West U my first year in Houston and don’t know what district I was in; my best guess is it was CD07 under Bill Archer. After that I was in Montrose and then the Heights and it’s been CD18 all the way.) It looks like under this map, CD29 would be the only district entirely within Harris County. There’s going to be a hearing in Houston this week, I’ll pass along that info when I get it. They won’t listen, but you can show up and yell at them about this anyway.

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There will be more measles outbreaks

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This one may be coming to an end, but the underlying conditions for it aren’t going away.

Texas appears to be past the worst of its largest measles outbreak in 30 years, but the state will be vulnerable to future outbreaks of the virus and other infectious diseases unless vaccination rates improve, experts said.

Texas has reported about three new measles cases per week since June 1, a far cry from the average of about 50 cases per week between Valentine’s Day and Easter. The state reported nine new cases on Tuesday.

Experts believe the outbreak has peaked in Texas, even as cases continue to spread in the state and other parts of the country.

“It’s hard to tell what’s going to happen,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. “But right now it looks encouraging.”

The decline in cases is a promising sign, particularly in parts of West Texas that have been hit the hardest during the outbreak. But many Texas communities still fall short of the threshold of 95% vaccination coverage that is needed to achieve herd immunity, which prevents widespread outbreaks.

Unless vaccination coverage improves in those areas, measles outbreaks like the one in West Texas could become more common, said Kirstin Matthews, a science and technology policy fellow at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

“I don’t think this is the last time we’re going to see this,” Matthews said. “I think we’re going to be seeing them on an annual basis.”

[…]

Health officials see encouraging signs the Texas outbreak is in its final stages. Measles is no longer being detected in the wastewater in Gaines County or in Lubbock, the city’s director of public health, Katherine Wells, said Thursday.

Part of the decline is likely because so many unvaccinated children and adults have already been infected, Troisi said.

“Once you run through the group of unvaccinated people who are exposed, then the virus dies out,” she said.

Although Texas is reporting fewer cases, it could be some time before the state’s outbreak is officially over. Measles outbreaks are considered over once it’s been 42 days, or two full incubation periods for the virus, since the last case was identified. Texas identified its most recent case July 1.

Texas has seen a 14% increase in measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations amid the outbreak, with more than 423,000 shots administered through the first six months of 2025 compared to about 330,000 during the same timeframe last year, according to data from the state’s Department of State Health Services.

Some parents may have decided against vaccinating their children until this year because it had been so long since the state had seen a large measles outbreak, Wells said Thursday during a forum hosted by the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute.

“Now they’ve seen what can happen with measles,” Wells said. “They’ve heard about the deaths. They’ve heard about the hospitalizations. And now that risk is greater.”

The national county is now over 1300. This year’s outbreak was a specific confluence of factors, but the bottom line is there’s still a lot of unvaccinated people – mostly children – out there. While the numbers reported at the end of this story are encouraging, it’s a relatively small increase and it’s not clear to me that it’s anything more than a blip. I hope to be wrong about that, but between RFK Jr and our own Legislature, the pressures and incentives are all pointing in the wrong direction. Maybe it’s a couple of years before we have another big outbreak, but given the conditions it’s just a matter of time.

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Appeals court upholds “Death Star” law

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Bad, though not yet actually damaging.

Two years after a district court declared that a new state law diluting the policy-making power of blue urban areas was unconstitutional, an appeals court on Friday overruled that decision.

Texas lawmakers in 2023 passed House Bill 2127, dubbed the “Death Star” bill by opponents, which aims to overturn cities’ progressive policies and prevent them from enacting future ordinances that aren’t aligned with broad swaths of state law.

The law prevents cities and counties from creating local ordinances that overstep state laws, such as those passed in Dallas and Austin mandating water breaks for construction workers.

The bill, long sought by Gov. Greg Abbott, marks Texas Republicans’ biggest attempt to undercut the power of the state’s largest metropolitan areas, home to the most Democratic-leaning constituents and leaders.

A month after the bill passed, Houston, later joined by San Antonio and El Paso, sued the state to block the new law, arguing that it deprived elected officials of the power to enact local ordinances on a broad range of issues, such as noise regulations and mask mandates. They also were concerned that the law made it so difficult for local leaders to self-govern that it would push them to propose fewer policy changes.

“What this means is that cities like the city of Houston cannot pass ordinances in these areas unless the state of Texas explicitly gives us permission to do so,” late Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in 2023. “That is a total reversal from the way things have been in this state for more than a century.”

A Travis County judge ruled in August 2023 that the law was unconstitutional, but on Friday the Third Court of Appeals overturned that decision.

In its ruling, the appeals court said it agrees with the state largely for two reasons: the cities failed to point to “sufficient concreteness” of how the bill would hurt them, and made a weak case for how the state is to blame for their concerns.

The San Antonio city attorney’s office, however, noted that the court dismissed the case because “cities don’t have standing to challenge” the law because “at this point, there have been no challenges to any of our ordinances under this statute.”

See here for the previous update. I can understand where the Third Court is coming from in this ruling. It’s not crazy to say that in the absence of any demonstrated injury, there’s no cause to sue. On the other hand, the district court ruled that this law was unconstitutional, and call me a militant originalist but I think being unconstitutional should mean something. Allowing an unconstitutional law to stay on the books because it hasn’t caused a tangible injury yet, instead of just allowing that the very unconstitutionality of the law is itself an injury, seems misguided at best to me. See anything SCOTUS has done in the last six months for more than enough examples of this. No one is listening to me about this, so we’ll just have to see what happens next. Sooner or later this issue will be forced.

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The flood insurance problem

Posted on July 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is only going to get worse unless we take steps to mitigate it.

Less than 5% of residential properties in high-risk areas in Kerr County were covered by flood insurance before the July 4 storm, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis, highlighting a growing problem for inland regions in Texas that are experiencing stronger and more frequent rainfall.

The county has nearly 3,000 residential properties that fall within the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year floodplain. Yet fewer than 150 of those properties were insured through the federal government’s flood insurance program on July 4.

That puts the county far below the national average: over 15% of homes in FEMA’s 100-year floodplain typically have federal flood insurance.

The Chronicle also found FEMA’s flood maps didn’t adequately demonstrate the risk to Kerr County homeowners, thousands of whom fell outside the agency’s mapped floodplains but still saw their properties impacted. Nearly all of those homes – over 98% – lacked federal flood coverage.

The vast majority of flood insurance is provided through the federal government.

Any property with a federally backed mortgage in a floodway or in the 100-year FEMA floodplain, where there is a 1% chance of flooding each year, is required to carry flood insurance. But experts say enforcement can be spotty, and homeowners who don’t have mortgages often choose to forgo the expense, leaving what is for many their largest asset vulnerable to financial devastation.

Homeowners in Kerr County without flood insurance will receive far less federal recovery assistance than if they had coverage, and may be left to rely on savings or donations to rebuild.

“For those who are impacted who have insurance, they have an immediate pathway to recovery,” said Roy Wright, the president and CEO at the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety and the former chief executive of the National Flood Insurance Program. “Those who don’t have insurance, it’s a much, much longer road home.”

Many of the federal agency’s maps are long out of date, and critics say they don’t adequately capture the risks of climate change or take into account high-intensity rainfall events like the one that hit the Hill Country. If communities were better informed of risk, they said, property owners and local government officials might be better prepared, elevating new structures above the floodplain, setting up more reliable emergency response systems for disasters and buying flood protection for recovery.

No one should hold their breath waiting for this version of FEMA to update the floodplain maps. Regardless of that, the risk should be clear to anyone living in the area. Hell, anyone living anywhere in this state ought to be checking out what their risk is, because after the flood is too late. The cost of insurance – if it’s even available – is going to be a big problem, especially at a time when everyone says they’re concerned about the cost and availability of housing. I’m sure you don’t need to be told that climate change is exacerbating all of this, and that is also going to be getting worse at a time when we have a federal government that is hostile to anything that would mitigate it. Be that as it may, this is a problem that needs to be addressed at the federal and state level. And since neither the current Congress nor the current Legislature have any answers, Democratic candidates need to be talking about it.

And speaking of FEMA…

Two days after torrential rains set off fatal flash flooding in the Texas Hill Country, President Donald Trump authorized staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to travel to the flood zone to help state and local officials begin the rebuilding process.

But that quick response, following widespread media coverage of a disaster that claimed at least 134 lives and left 100 people missing, marked a sharp shift in approach since Trump took office in January, experts say.

As natural disasters like flooding, tornadoes and landslides piled up across the country this spring, FEMA accumulated a backlog of disaster requests that is still lingering as the Gulf of Mexico’s hurricane season gets underway.

Currently, five states including Indiana, Oregon and Maryland are awaiting a federal response more than a month after they requested a federal disaster declaration to unlock funds and other critical resources.

“You’re waiting weeks, sometimes months to have your disasters declared,” said Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow at the non-profit Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Texas is the exception, not the rule.”

[…]

Disaster declarations are necessary to allow the release of federal disaster funds that do everything from giving survivors money to buy food and other necessities and begin large-scale debris removal.

In the two weeks leading up to hurricane season, which began on June 1, FEMA had an average of almost 13 disaster requests pending each day, compared to an average of four during that same period over the previous nine years, according to analysis of federal data by Carnegie.

The backlog comes amid mass firings and departures that have resulted in a 20% decrease in FEMA staff, according to an op-ed by MaryAnn Tierney, the former Region 3 administrator for FEMA.

“Thousands of temporary employees remain on the job, but their contracts are running out. These are people trained to work with disaster survivors. FEMA cannot replace them or bring in new talent because of hiring restrictions,” she wrote.

Tierney, along with Region 6 Administrator Tony Robinson who covered Texas and four other states, were among a wave of senior FEMA officials who left the agency in recent months, amid what critics have characterized as a “brain drain” at the agency.

That has left some wondering how FEMA will manage once hurricane season gets into full swing later this summer.

“When you lose that expertise it means you don’t have the knowledge about what’s possible and how to cut through the red tape,” said Caitlin Durkovich, the former deputy homeland security advisor for resilience and response during the Biden administration. “These are people experiencing the worst day of their lives. They have nothing left. They’re lucky if they have a phone. And when you delay approval it’s delaying money going to people when they need it most.”

In Missouri, officials waited more than a month for FEMA assistance after a tornado struck St. Louis in May, killing five people. In West Virginia, which is still waiting for a response from its June 20 request for FEMA assistance, torrential rains caused rivers to overflow their banks, flooding dozens of homes and businesses and killing nine people.

Even when FEMA officials are on the ground, they no longer have the freedom to order up cleanup crews and debris removal contractors as they once did. Under new Trump administration rules, they must get clearance from Noem to move ahead on all contracts over $100,000.

We’ve talked about this before. We’re not even into the heavy part of hurricane season. I think we got a fast response because of the scope and visibility of the disaster, plus Trump favors Texas and he will always do more for an ally than for an enemy. (And yes, the fact that we have to talk about a President in those terms is disgusting, but here we are.) It is inevitable that a future disaster will get a thoroughly bungled response from Trump’s FEMA. It’s just a matter of when. Oh, and the death toll of the flood is now officially 135. With many more still missing.

And we have to talk about alert fatigue.

Of the questions surrounding the deadly July 4th Kerr County flooding, one of the most consequential involves the flash flood warnings issued ahead of the high water. The National Weather Service began broadcasting alerts to nearby cell phones well before the waters began dramatically rising: Why weren’t they more effective at getting people to evacuate?

Wireless reception can be spotty in the area, and some in the Guadalupe River basin said the warnings never arrived. Yet there is another possibility: People ignored the alerts because they have received so many in the past that the pocket vibrations and jarring tone had blended into the daily soundscape of living near a river.

“As soon as it starts raining we get them, because of the low water crossings,” Lorena Guillén, who owns the Blue Oak RV Park, told Hearst Newspapers.

Some may even have become so annoyed at the steady chirp of alarms that they deliberately set their phones to block them. Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice told NBC News he didn’t hear the early morning flood warning because he had silenced his cell phone’s weather alerts.

In Texas, he’s far from alone. A recent study of the system that beams emergency alerts to mobile phones found that residents here opt out of the warnings at nearly double the national average, and far more than any other state. A likely reason: The sheer volume of warnings Texans receive has numbed them to any sense of urgency, known as “alert fatigue.”

Many notify residents of the wide variety of wild weather that hits the state. At any given time, Texas can see life-threatening hurricanes, tornados, severe thunderstorms, high winds, coastal flooding and freezes.

Yet some of the barrage is manmade. Texas lawmakers have steadily added to the list of public safety alerts that regularly light up cell phones at all hours. Residents can receive Silver Alerts (missing mentally impaired elderly), Blue Alerts (violent attacks against law enforcement), Endangered Missing Person Alerts (those with intellectual disabilities) and CLEAR Alerts (everyone else). That doesn’t include the self-explanatory Power Outage and Active Shooter Alerts.

Perhaps the most well-known are Amber Alerts, broadcast when a child is thought to have been abducted. Conceived in Texas, the warnings have spread across the country. But Texans receive far more of them than any other place — by a margin too large to account for the state’s population alone.

In 2021, Texas broadcast 13% of the country’s total Amber Alerts. Last year, authorities here broadcast 29% of Amber Alerts sent out nationally — more than three times as many as California, the next-closest state.

Individually, each alert signals an emergency. But collectively, experts say, they can be noise. In all, the number of public safety alerts Texas authorities sent out has more than doubled since 2018.

Such numbers raise questions about whether the balance between important public warnings and alert fatigue has been lethally tipped in Texas.

I’m pretty sure I have most of these silenced on my phone. They are very loud and can be disruptive when you’re, say, at work. But this is a reasonably solvable problem. First, limit some of these alerts to a tighter geographic area – that Lubbock blue alert that woke up people across the state should never happen – and assign risk levels to everything while giving people the ability to receive only the alerts at whatever risk level they want. That’s not perfect, but it should at least reduce the fatigue factor – there’s more on that in the story. For areas with acute and life-threatening weather-related risks, other alerting methods such as sirens need to be in the mix as well. Point being, there’s a lot that can be done here to improve this situation. If the Lege doesn’t make that a priority for this special session, you know where the responsibility lies.

We close once again with some positive news.

The Texas Diaper Bank is set to distribute at least 500,000 essential items over the next several months to people across six counties impacted by the recent catastrophic flooding.

Diapers, adult diapers, bed pads, feminine hygiene products, supplies, household products and other hygiene products will be among the about 100,000 items distributed by the nonprofit this week alone. Items will be provided to flood victims in communities like Kerrville, Hunt, Mason, Kempner, Sandy Creek and San Saba.

Individuals needing assistance or nonprofits needing supplies can reach out to the Texas Diaper Bank at 210-731-8118 and press 8 option or email info@texasdiaperbank.org.

The diaper bank’s CEO, Jorge Medina, said once first responders begin wrapping up their work, the diaper bank will step in to provide essential supplies.

“It’s very rewarding when we are able to respond to people that are in need,” Medina said. “We plan to provide support and assistance to the families for the next six months or more, depending on how long the supplies last.”

[…]

More information on how to donate to the Texas Diaper Bank can be found here.

That story was produced by Texas Public Radio. I get a lot of news for myself and my blog from TPR and various member stations – KUHF in Houston, KUT, KERA, and more. You know what’s going on right now. Give your local public broadcasting company a hand if you can. That’s a resource we can’t afford to lose.

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Appeals court upholds news orgs’ access to Uvalde school shooting records

Posted on July 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

A state appeals court judge on Wednesday ordered Uvalde County and its school district to release records and documents related to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, affirming a previous trial court order.

A coalition of 18 news organizations, including The Texas Tribune, sued the City of Uvalde, Uvalde County and the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District in 2022 for access to body camera footage, 911 call records and communications made during the school shooting. Law enforcements’ response to Texas’ deadliest school shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed, has been scrutinized extensively for failures in communication that delayed response time while the shooter was still in two classrooms with children.

Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell had opposed providing the records, pointing to criminal proceedings against former Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo that she said could be hampered by the documents’ release. But Judge Velia Meza with Texas’ Fourth Court of Appeals wrote in the opinion for the case that the criminal proceedings and a separate lawsuit were not enough reasons to withhold the records.

“In response, these entities offered only minimal justification — citing a grand jury investigation and a civil lawsuit — without providing legal or evidentiary support for withholding the information,” Meza wrote.

The lawsuit was filed in 2022, and the district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs last year. Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton can keep their Uvalde secrets, but Uvalde County and the school district can’t, so at least we get that much. The order doesn’t specify when the records must be released, so even if there’s no further appeals this may take awhile. The case information is here, at the time I looked I didn’t see a copy of the opinion.

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Joe Jaworski to run for AG again

Posted on July 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Another contested primary on our side.

Joe Jaworski

Joe Jaworski, an attorney and former Galveston mayor, is running for Texas attorney general again, three years after making an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination to become the state’s top civil lawyer.

Jaworski will face another competitive primary this cycle, with state Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, launching his own bid for attorney general earlier this week.

Since his 2022 runoff loss, Jaworski said he has spent much of the last three years reflecting on how he can best serve Texas, as well as building name recognition through social media and a radio show.

He said his 35 years as an attorney “fighting for clients’ constitutional and civil rights against notorious offenders and wrongdoers,” as well as his term as Galveston mayor, have equipped him to lead the attorney general’s office.

“AG, to me, that’s the sweet spot in state government if you want to make a change in one office,” he said in an interview, adding that he was running “to be an advocate for the people of Texas, rather than a general counsel for a political party.”

In 2022, Jaworski eked out a second-place finish in the March primary, finishing well behind civil rights attorney Rochelle Garza, who went on to easily defeat him in the runoff.

“I immediately endorsed Ms. Garza, and I was sad to see her lose to the most reprehensible attorney general in America,” Jaworski said. “Maybe it wasn’t my time then, but I feel that the time is right now.”

He said he is better prepared this time, with a stronger team that includes campaign manager Diana Arévalo, a Democratic strategist who served one term representing San Antonio in the Texas House.

[…]

Jaworski predicted that by November 2026, there would be a “growing sense of alarm” among moderate Republicans opposed to some of Trump’s more extreme policies, and whoever wins the Democratic nomination for attorney general will be facing an opponent “who will be parroting Trump’s talking points. And I think that person will be very vulnerable.”

He plans to roll out a platform in the coming weeks but said his focus would be on things like making it easier for eligible Texans to vote, including encouraging more high school students to register, and consumer protection, as well as pivoting away from the office’s current focus on blocking liberal policies from going into effect.

“Texas specifically needs a Democrat to serve as attorney general to investigate corruption, to hold those who are corrupt responsible, and to form coalitions with other states attorneys general to fight the administration’s assault on individual rights and on the United States Constitution,” Jaworski said.

See here for some background. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that either Jaworski or Johnson would be a billion times better than Paxton or one of the Paxton wannabes. I look forward to interviewing them for the primary.

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July 2025 campaign finance reports – Harris County offices

Posted on July 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s mid-to-late July, and you know what that means: It’s campaign finance report season! We’ve got a lot to cover, as there’s more angles and intrigue than usual, certainly a lot more than there was three months ago. I’ll start with Harris County and then hit the Congressional reports, and then to the city of Houston and maybe some state stuff. The January reports for Harris County candidates and officeholders are here.

Lina Hidalgo
Annise Parker
Warren Howell
Oscar Gonzales
Aliza Dutt

Rodney Ellis
Adrian Garcia
Richard Vega
Raquel Boujourne
Tom Ramsey

Teneshia Hudspeth
Carla Wyatt
Marilyn Burgess

Sean Teare
Ed Gonzalez
Christian Menefee
Annette Ramirez

Kim Ogg
Kathy Blueford-Daniels


Candidate     Raised       Spent       Loan     On Hand
=======================================================
Hidalgo       26,049     141,460     51,400     600,492
Parker        96,105       9,793          0      92,755
Howell         2,800      71,157     67,000       1,357
Gonzales       3,625       3,148          0         476
Dutt         132,500       2,337    118,200     246,662

Ellis        808,522     289,467          0   7,351,102
Garcia     1,426,368     411,292          0   2,559,209
Vega          19,749       5,549          0       9,749
Boujourne     33,795       2,764    100,000     131,030
Ramsey        73,900      80,188          0   1,563,132
Briones      868,866     278,181          0   3,007,305

Hudspeth       8,420       5,445          0         752
Wyatt            910          80          0       2,128
Burgess       29,800      12,400      5,207      34,513

Teare         60,405      50,987          0      39,031
Gonzalez      51,756      23,416          0      96,179
Menefee          465      20,598          0     226,825
Ramirez        5,625      10,248          0       7,625

B-Daniels      2,000       1,026      2,700       3,462

You may be looking at this and saying “wait, I thought you said that Lina Hidalgo had no money in her account, where did that $600K come from?” I wondered that myself. According to her report, it came from Schedule K, which is for “Interest, credits, gains, refunds, and contributions returned to filer”. A total of $653,945 in refunds for legal services, plus $1,500 for “security deposit for office rent”, were added to her account. I have to assume the former is for the charges that were eventually dropped against her staffers. She still spent over $100K more than she raised, and she had less than $100K on hand in January, so she needed that money to stay afloat.

Campos noted this as well, and he speculated that not only might this mean that she is running, she’d be the favorite to win the primary. I think all things being equal and Judge Hidalgo being a motivated candidate, I’d bet on her to win as well. But this is now three cycles in which she’s done little to no fundraising, she still hasn’t unequivocally said she’s running, this kind of windfall isn’t going to happen again, and I just don’t see her as being motivated to run. I presume she will let us know soon enough.

I might have expected a bigger total from Annise Parker, who has long been a strong fundraiser, but she only filed her appointment of Treasurer on June 11, so all her contributions are from between then and June 30. I expect a much bigger number for her in January.

Republican Aliza Dutt has a pretty good cash on hand total, largely from a loan to herself. Which she weirdly claimed was fundraising, for whatever the reason. Much of the funds she actually did raise came from a small number of big donors.

That said, she did do better than the other Republicans who had filings. Warren Howell’s expenditures were filed as “unitemized”, so there’s no listing of them on the form. My best guess is they’re from personal funds, though there’s a form you’re supposed to fill out for that, which he did not do. Oscar Gonzales has had a campaign sign up at the C&D Hardware on 11th for some time. Doesn’t seem to have helped much.

Letitia Plummer filed her appointment of Treasurer on July 8, the day of her announcement. We won’t see a finance report from her until January. As noted before, she has been lax in filing her city finance reports. I haven’t checked the current batch of city reports as I write this, so the state of her campaign finances could remain a mystery until then.

Commissioners Garcia and Briones are doing what you’d expect them to do. I’m sure they will run good campaigns. I hope they play well with others and help lift the tide in the county overall. Commissioner Ramsey is just breaking even, as he did in the previous report. He’s not up until 2028, he’s got plenty on hand, and he’s in a pretty solid precinct. I’d do the same.

Richard Vega and Raquel Boujourne are both Republicans, both in Precinct 2. No one with a report is listed as an opponent for Briones yet. $10K of Vega’s funds raised was an in-kind donation for food and a venue, so I presume for a fundraiser. I suspect his cash on hand total is not correct as a result. Boujourne loaned herself the $100K. They’ve got a ways to go. In a good year for them it might not matter so much. This cycle, they’ll probably need all the help they can get.

Most of the rest of the reports aren’t that interesting. The bigger-money offices, specifically DA and Sheriff, are on their off cycle, so they’re not doing too much. Christian Menefee is still County Attorney and so still has a report to file here, though he obviously didn’t do much with it. All of the fundraising and most of the expenses came from before his campaign announcement for CD18; the expenses that continued were for recurring items like software. I looked to see if he had transferred any funds to his Congressional account – assuming it’s legal to do that – and the answer is no. The non-County Judge incumbents don’t usually do much fundraising, and as far as I can tell don’t yet have any opponents. Chris Daniel, both his personal account and his PAC, filed reports but neither showed any funds raised, so I’m not counting him as a candidate.

Kim Ogg spent $3,077 and has $446 on hand. I just thought you’d want to know that.

I forgot that we will have HCAD elections next November – I believe one will be up then, and the other two in 2028. Either Kathy Blueford-Daniels is the trustee who has to run next year, or she’s just more active than the others.

OK, that’s what I’ve got for now. Next up is Congress. As always, let me know what you think.

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Dispatches from Dallas, July 18 edition

Posted on July 18, 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: one of our state senators is going for AG; more about the sale of the DMN to Hearst; Dallas police and court news; Robert Roberson gets another date with the death chamber; Eddie Garcia may be headed to Fort Worth; the latest on the Prairieland ICE detention center attack; Metroplex media on the special session redistricting effort; defunding DART may be back on the menu; the latest on EPIC; Black rodeo; King of the Hill; Dallas’ lack of culture; and more!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Lorde.

A short list this week:

  • As our host mentioned, local State Senator (from my district) Nathan Johnson is running for Attorney General on the Democratic ticket. I’ve been pretty happy with Johnson. He hasn’t always been as far to the left as I’d like, but he doesn’t seem to be opposed to working with the left, which you can’t say about a lot of centrists. You’ve probably already read the announcement, or as much news about it as you need to, so I’ll point you at Johnson’s conversation with Dallas Morning News political reporter Gromer Jeffers, Jr. and if you need the overview, at KERA, the Dallas Observer, and the Texas Tribune.
  • D Magazine drops an important detail about the DMN’s sale to Hearst: DallasNews Corp. was trading at $4.39 before the sale, had been as low as $2.98, and Hearst bought it at $14. Hard to argue with that. The Dallas Observer also has some opinions about the sale in an article titled What The Dallas Morning News Sale Means to a Dallas Times Herald Staffer. The subhead is “Revenge served cold still tastes pretty damned good.” It’s worth reading for an analysis of power in Dallas and the DMN’s editorial agenda.
  • A number of items from the Dallas area police and courts:
  • In other court news, and not good news, we have a new execution date of October 16 for Robert Roberson, the East Texas man convicted in 2003 for killing his child based on now-discredited shaken-baby science. I don’t know why AG Ken Paxton is bound and determined to kill Roberson, but he is. More from KERA, the Texas Tribune, the Dallas Observer, and the Texas Observer.
  • You remember when we talked about how Bo French had finally gone too far and had Dan Patrick bop him in the nose with a rolled up Xitter printout on the nose? Local GOP leaders are unsurprisingly standing by their man and the whole thing has basically blown over.
  • A federal judge has dismissed another lawsuit over the death of a Tarrant County jail inmate. This time it’s the death of Trelynn Wormley, who died in 2022 of a fentanyl overdose. The Star-Telegram’s coverage of the dismissal is headlined “Federal judge dismisses lawsuit alleging ‘drugs run rampant’ in Tarrant jail”, which is an interesting choice.
  • The bizarre case surrounding the shooting at ICE’s Prarieland Detention Center continues, with a twelfth suspect, Benjamin Hanil Song, arrested in Dallas. Fourteen people have been arrested in total; the last two were charged with helping the twelfth suspect, a former Marine reservist, escape arrest. Song has been charged with three federal counts of attempted murder; three federal counts of discharging a firearm during a violent act; and state charges of engaging in organized criminal activity, aggravated assault on a public servant, and aiding in commission of terrorism. More from the DMN.
  • The Star-Telegram ran an op-ed on Paxton divorce won’t matter in his Senate primary and why it should. I agree that Paxton’s “private” conduct (to the extent that it’s still private after the impeachment and trial two years ago) reflects a pattern that should disturb voters. But I also think there’s plenty of evidence in his public life that should be disqualifying. Republican voters in this state clearly disagree. I’m not keen on sealing the Paxton divorce records more for reasons of privilege than because of any prurient interest in what’s in there. That said, I’m pretty sure that whatever recent discovery prompted Angela Paxton to finally kick Ken’s sorry ass to the curb is also relevant to this pattern. It doesn’t mean the voters would listen this time around even if they could hear what he’s (alleged to have) done.
  • I have three items on the upcoming redistricting effort in the special session from the Metroplex’s papers for your review. First, the DMN would like you to know that experts say that redistricting might backfire on the GOP. This story has some good maps of the Houston and Fort Worth maps that are due for reconfiguration and explains that the effort is also aimed at changing boundaries in South Texas, where Republicans have been trying to grab seats for a while. Second, the Dallas Observer says “duh” to the observation that Texas has a gerrymandering problem and how the state’s agreement to the Trump DOJ’s complaints about minority coalition districts contradicts its stance in the recent lawsuit by LULAC and the NAACP. And the Star-Telegram, whose headline on its article is the much blander “Texas redrawing congressional district after feds say maps unconstitutional”, focuses on CD 33, which includes parts of Fort Worth and is currently held by Democrat Marc Veasey. Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, the Arlington Democrat who was the chief target of the recent Tarrant County redistricting, says Tarrant County was the test run for the state’s plan.
  • Speaking of the special session, five cities in the DART service area, led by Plano, want to revive the bills from the regular session to cut DART’s funding and reconstitute its board with less influence from Dallas.
  • Just when we thought we’d gotten rid of Dr. Phil with the bankruptcy of Merit Street Media, he’s back with a new company, Envoy Media. Envoy will be headquartered somewhere in the Dallas area, and combine news, entertainment, and “citizen journalism”. More from the Hollywood Reporter.
  • Longtime readers of Dallas-area news may remember the scandal in the University of North Texas music department over the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and racism some years ago. The professor whose statements set the incident off back in 2020 sued the school and has just been awarded $725K in a settlement over the whole thing. Of interest to readers here: one of Professor Timothy Jackson’s attorneys was former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell.
  • In the latest on EPIC City, the Texas Funeral Service Commission is permitting the East Plano Islamic Center to perform burial rites again, two weeks after EPIC sued the commission.
  • This week I learned that the 36th annual Texas Black Invitational Rodeo will be held in Fair Park on July 26. It celebrates the historical legacy of Black cowboys, which most people don’t know much about. The DMN has the story.
  • King of the Hill is coming back: a new trailer dropped this week for the revival, which will be season 14 of the show. I learned from the DMN article that the fictional town of Arlen is based on Richardson, which makes it even more interesting to me. Also fascinating to me as an oil brat who lived abroad as a teen: Hank and Peggy have been living in “the compound” in Saudi Arabia.
  • Last, but not least, the DMN isn’t immune to the lure of hanging a Reddit link out there as a story source. This time it’s about Dallas’ lack of culture. I read the Reddit post and the overwhelming votes for Dallas as the city with no culture in the comments. I think what they’re getting at is that Dallas has no unifying points in its culture other than money and status. Its arts and music scenes aren’t united around anything and the city is pretty blandly white where there are east and south Asian cultural hubs in the suburbs. Houston has some of the same problems but the people are friendlier, which makes up for a lot.
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Hands Off Our Districts protest tomorrow

Posted on July 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Dear Democrats, friends and neighbors,

We’re asking everyone who believes in fair representation to join us this Saturday at 10:00 AM for the Day of Protest, “Hands Off Our Districts.” In solidarity with community leaders, elected officials, and precinct chairs across Harris County, we’ll stand together against the partisan gerrymander called by Governor Abbott at President Trump’s request—just prior to the 2026 mid‐term elections.

What: Day of Protest – “Hands Off Our Districts”
When: Saturday, July 19, 2025 • 10:00 AM–11:30 AM
Why: This mid-decade redistricting threatens to dilute the votes of our Black, Brown, working-class, and urban communities in CD-9, CD-18, CD-29—and ultimately across the entire state. We will not be silenced.

Rally Locations (Choose One)

CD 9 (Rep. Al Green)

1.  Former Toys R Us
1212 Old Spanish Trail, Houston, 77054

2.  Wells Fargo @ Sharpstown
7302 Bellaire Blvd, Houston, 77036

CD 18 (Vacant)
3.  Sen. Borris Miles’ Office
5302 Almeda Rd, Houston, 77004
4.  Kroger
1352 W 43rd St, Houston, 77018

CD 29 (Rep. Sylvia Garcia)
5. Moody Park
3725 Fulton St., Houston, 77009

👉 Register Now: bit.ly/day-of-protest

What to Bring:

  • Handmade signs or banners (e.g. “HANDS OFF OUR DISTRICTS,” “FAIR MAPS = FAIR ELECTIONS,” “PROTECT DEMOCRACY—END GERRYMANDERING,” “ABBOTT CAN’T PICK OUR CONGRESS”)

  • Water, sunscreen, hats

If the Republicans are hell-bent on passing a new Congressional map in the special session, there’s not much that can be done to stop them. They have sufficient majorities to do it. That doesn’t mean we just have to accept it. Here’s your opportunity to register your dissent. Please be there if you can.

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Re-redistricting watch: El Paso in focus

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Not a big surprise.

Rep. Veronica Escobar

President Donald Trump’s request that Texas Republicans seek to create five new congressional seats for the GOP in an upcoming special legislation could involve redrawing boundaries in El Paso, a website focused on Congress says.

Diluting the traditional Democratic stronghold of Texas’ 16th Congressional District, currently represented by Veronica Escobar, is one of the options being considered by Republicans ahead of the special session set to begin July 21, according to Punchbowl News.

Details of a specific redistricting plan in Far West Texas hasn’t been made public, but almost certainly would involve placing much more of El Paso into the 23rd Congressional District, which stretches across a wide swath from El Paso to western San Antonio and is currently represented by Republican Tony Gonzales. It also would have to involve placing more rural voters outside El Paso into Escobar’s district, which is currently entirely within the boundaries of El Paso.

“Texas Republicans are about to engage in mid-year redistricting at the behest of Donald Trump. Make no mistake about it, Donald Trump knows his ‘big beautiful bill,’ which cuts health care and nutrition programs in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy, has made Republicans all over the country vulnerable to the ire of their voters,” Escobar said in a statement to El Paso Matters.

“So to compensate, Trump wants to stack the deck and further gerrymander Texas House seats, adding five more seats for Republicans. And unfortunately, Texas Republicans are so compliant that they are willing to do anything to please Trump. But this is bigger than Texas elections and is a sign of everything Trump will do in order to stay in power and rig the system in his favor. It is not hyperbole to say that our democracy in America is on the line right now, and Texas is central to protecting it.”

[…]

Including El Paso in any Republican redistricting plan could create numerous challenges, including complying with current court guidelines for drawing political lines, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

“Because of population locations and geographic boundaries, it would be pretty hard to cut up Congressional District 16. The more ways that mapmakers carve up the state, the more legal challenges they’ll face. CD 16 is a good example of a district that, if changed, could end up as an exhibit of problematic line drawing,” Rottinghaus told El Paso Matters.

“El Paso’s geographic isolation makes it a challenge to be part of a ranging district that includes large stretches of rural areas and still keeps it mostly compact. It’s a logistical and legal problem for mapmakers,” he said.

I thought CD16 could be a target as soon as the news of this bizarre campaign came out. Based on 2024 results, it’s within plausible parameters, though going by any other year it would be much more of a stretch. But Trump isn’t operating on 2024 levels of support, and, well, that’s not my problem. Greg Abbott may have put his focus on the Houston area, but it would take a lot more than that to get to five possibly winnable new seats for the Republicans.

The main challenge for them is apparent in the current map. You can’t carve up CD16 without heavily involving CD23, which up until 2024 was the epitome of a swing district. Tony Gonzales won by a bigger margin in 2024 than Veronica Escobar did, but he did it against a placeholder opponent, and only after barely surviving the Republican primary; he won a runoff against a MAGA true believer by 1.2 percentage points. Weakening CD23 with Gonzales as your candidate is one thing. Weakening it with a non-incumbent wingnut who spent millions of wingnut billionaire money to take out Tony Gonzales is another thing. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Maybe they can figure out a way to stretch the deep red CD11 or CD19 into the picture. They could take the addition of Democrats more easily than CD23 can, but adding them into the mix means disrupting more districts and thus adding to the chaos. It also may require drawing maps so non-Euclidean that they violate other principles, like compactness. I know, I know, don’t expect much from SCOTUS if and when this ever gets to it. We still haven’t seen a map and are mostly reacting to Trump’s assertions that the Lege could easily find five more districts for him. Until we see something on paper, all we can do is speculate wildly. The San Antonio Report, which focuses on CD28, Lone Star Left, which does some quorum-busting math, and Mother Jones, which lays all of this at John Roberts’ feet, have more.

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Benjamin Flores

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We have more than one Democrat running for Governor.

Benjamin Flores

I first met Ben Flores last fall, at his small pig farm on the outskirts of Bay City, a working-class town about half an hour north of Matagorda Bay. The cybersecurity consultant—who relocated his family from Austin during the COVID-19 pandemic to start Lord of the Pigs Ranch—was locked in a heated legal battle with his neighbor Kimberly Brown, who claimed his pigs were a public nuisance. Flores stood his ground, arguing that his organic farming methods prevented any unpleasant odors or ground contamination. (The civil lawsuit is ongoing.)

In 2023, Bay City voters elected Flores to the city council. As a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Republican city, Flores clashed regularly with his fellow council members. Frustrated by his lack of influence, he considered running for mayor but ultimately decided to set his sights higher—much higher. Early last week, Flores declared his candidacy for the 2026 Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He becomes just the second Democrat to throw his hat in the ring, after an East Texas dairy farmer named Bobby Cole.

Flores knows the odds are against him. In 2022, incumbent Governor Greg Abbott defeated Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke by nearly eleven points. Just to win the Democratic primary, Flores will probably need to beat candidates with significantly better funding and higher name recognition. But the Mexican-born tech worker turned farmer told me he relishes the challenge. And, as his neighbors have discovered, Flores never backs down from a fight.

Here’s his website – I couldn’t find any social media accounts for him, and he is listed as his own Treasurer, so I think it’s safe to say this is very much a nascent candidacy. The rest of the story in an interview with Flores, and he sounds like an interesting person, the kind of candidate I’d be excited about if he were running for State Rep or Congress. Running for Governor, well, it’s still early days but I think I’ll hold out for news about Ron Nirenberg, while keeping an eye on Bobby Cole and the rest of the “thinking about it” crew.

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Enron is still out there doing…something

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I admire the commitment to the bit. Beyond that, you’re on your own.

The company that took over the defunct Enron brand, led by a “Birds Aren’t Real” cofounder, held a mostly satirical quarterly earnings call Thursday afternoon but gave updates to an application to become a legitimate Texas energy provider.

“I’m super honored to be the CEO of this great company. You know, this company has a legendary history, and some of it’s good and some of it’s bad, and that’s fine. That’s real,” Connor Gaydos, Enron’s 28-year-old CEO, said. “Enron’s name has always carried weight, and one thing that defines us is that we don’t run from that.”

The majority of the meeting was presented as comedy and filled with sight gags. Many of the claims of earnings and the accomplishments of its alleged board were unsubstantiated.

DJ Withee, chief operating officer and legal counsel at HGP Storage, a company developing utility-scale battery storage farms, was introduced as Enron’s vice president of energy service. Withee said he was brought on by Gaydos to set up the customer-facing energy services business.

Enron Energy Texas LLC, a subsidiary of Enron, filed to become a Texas retail electric provider in January. Gaining this designation would allow Enron to sell electricity plans to Texas consumers.

“Our business model is actually going to be very simple,” Withee said. “We buy wholesale electricity, just like everybody else, but because of our efficiency, because of our use of technology, we are going to have lower costs than our competitors. Lower costs means greater savings that we can pass back to our customers.”

Ed Hirs, University of Houston energy fellow and economist, said a retail electric provider is a middleman that purchases electricity from power generators or other wholesale sources, determining the rates and plan structures for consumers.

“What they’re trying to do is match electricity consumption habits to you,” Hirs said.

Withee said Enron filed a motion Thursday with the Public Utility Commission of Texas and expects the company will have an answer by the end of July.

[…]

Hirs said Enron’s promise to provide cheaper electricity to Texans is not any different from anything else other retail electric providers offer.

“The fact of the matter is, they are just a middleman, and they can’t make electricity cheaper than it is,” Hirs said.

Hirs said as a provider, Enron would either be contracting with a power company, offering lower prices at a deficit to themselves, or monitoring the wholesale market every day for the most affordable option, but in either case, they have no control over the electricity that is ultimately dispatched to customers.

See here for the previous update. I am obviously amused at some level by their performance art. I’m fascinated at a whole different level by their attempt to mix in a serious business alongside their silliness. Even more fascinating is the idea that people might take them seriously enough to become customers. Or their employees, working on something as mundane but useful as retail consumer energy plans. I suppose that might be a better business model than what they were doing under Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow. We’ll see what the PUC makes of their application.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of July 14

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes peace and comfort for all those affected by the Hill Country floods as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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The long haul of recovery

Posted on July 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We only really have a best guess as to how many people are still missing from the Hill Country floods.

More than 10 days after catastrophic July Fourth floods along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, the official death toll across six Hill Country counties has risen to 132 people, while an estimated 101 remain missing, state officials said Monday.

Local and state officials said the exact number of people still missing, though, is difficult to determine. The figure presented Monday was the first time state and local officials had publicly disclosed an updated estimate since Tuesday, when that figure was 161 people.

At a press conference Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott said that 97 people were missing from the area around Kerrville, the Kerr County seat. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said the larger estimate of 101 people includes people missing from other counties.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said during a commissioners court meeting Monday that the search for missing people could take up to six months, but setting a time estimate is also difficult.

“How long is it going to take? I mean, who knows?” Leitha said.

Abbott said Monday most of those still considered missing were people who did not check into hotels or campsites. Abbott said many of those people were added to the list of people who haven’t been located after friends and family reported them missing.

“Those who are missing on this list, most of them, were more difficult to identify because there was no record of them logging in anywhere,” Abbott said.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top official, said during a county commissioners court meeting earlier Monday that local officials don’t know the exact number of how many visitors who traveled to the Guadalupe for the holiday weekend had been caught in the flood.

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” Kelly said. “Don’t be discouraged when you hear that number, we’re doing the very best we can, but it is an unknown at this point.”

Both Kelly and Abbott said officials had a grasp of how many county residents and people at camps along the river are missing.

Before Monday’s updates, local and state officials had provided little public information about the number of people missing after Abbott first put the figure at 161 people from Kerr County. An update to the Kerr County website page providing updates about the number of confirmed deaths and people believed to be missing removed any mentions of both figures when it was updated Friday.

When The Texas Tribune asked spokespeople for Abbott’s office, Texas’ Department of Public Safety and Texas Division of Emergency Management questions last week about how the number of missing people was estimated, they directed reporters to Kerr County officials. The Joint Information Center, a team of county and state employees and volunteers which has been running public communications for the county since the disaster, did not respond to multiple requests last week to clarify how the number was found, but provided the previous, higher number Abbott provided Tuesday.

Recovery teams are thoroughly scouring large debris piles for any people who were swept into the Guadalupe after it swelled in the pre-dawn hours July 4 following heavy rain. Those efforts have been hindered further by continued rain and flooding in areas already impacted by the initial floods, pausing searches across the Hill Country.

The devastating flood is already one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent Texas history. The 1900 hurricane in Galveston claimed over 8,000 lives and the 1921 San Antonio floods killed 215 people. If official estimates that 97 people are still missing is not an overcount, then the final death toll of the Hill Country floods would surpass those of the 1921 floods, potentially making it the second most catastrophic natural disaster in Texas.

I have sympathy for the challenge of knowing who’s missing because of the flood, who’s missing for other reasons, who just hasn’t been accounted for, and so on. It’s entirely possible that some bodies of people who are not currently on this list will be found. It’s likely some will never be found. I have nothing but empathy and compassion for everyone working to find them all.

We’ve talked a lot about the death toll from this disaster, but there were a lot of injuries, too.

The San Antonio-based Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC), which coordinates the EMS and hospital response to mass casualty events for a 22-county area, including Kerr County, reported this week that its emergency response to the July 4 floods grew to 130 units, including 61 ambulances.

“We’ve had over 6,600 patient encounters and 182 patients that have been treated and 109 of those were transported to a hospital somewhere,” said Eric Epley, the CEO of STRAC.

Epley said those figures are only for STRAC, a state coordination office for the Texas emergency medical task force, and seven other regional members.

A ninth component oversees the entire statewide task force. Created and funded by the Texas Legislature, the task force has existed since 2010.

He said local EMS transports are not included in the figures, and it’s a summary total for the task force since the Fourth of July.

[…]

He said injuries continue to come in during current search and recovery efforts, which includes dangerous debris removal. Hundreds of emergency workers and 12,000 volunteers remain on the ground.

He said two mobile medical units, each including two doctors, two nurses, and two paramedics, are positioned at both ends of the region that saw the Guadalupe River flooding — one in Kerrville and one at Canyon Lake, west of New Braunfels.

He said the injuries include bumps and bruises and the occasional tetanus shot when someone gets a cut.

Honestly, considering the scope of the flooding, this seems like a fairly modest number. I wish them all a speedy recovery.

Here’s one more story of interest about alarms.

A small East Texas community is in the final stages of installing a state-of-the-art disaster warning system officials have been working toward for years.

Six new sirens will be placed strategically throughout the city of Crockett, about two hours north of Houston. City officials say they applied for a FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant in 2023 after a tornado tore through the county a year prior that caught many residents unprepared.

“We’re in hurricane season. And while we’re not right on the coast, depending on which side of the aisle you’re on, you get the occasional spin off tornadoes,” said Lee Standley, Crockett’s assistant city manager.

Crockett’s success in accessing federal hazard mitigation funds comes amid deafening public outcry about the role government inaction played in the lack of sirens in Kerr County and whether such a warning could have curbed the devastating July 4 flooding death toll. Rural communities notoriously struggle to access such federal funds because densely populated urban cores receive priority and rural governments don’t have the budget to pony up dollars required to match the federal share.

Experts say Crockett’s success is likely due to an uncommon mixture of timing, know-how and will power.

“It takes state and federal agencies working on the ground with the community to make sure they both understand the risk, and — very importantly — that they have the tools and resources they need to do something about it,” said Kristin Smith, a lead researcher for Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit that helps communities with land management.

Crockett is up in Houston County, also a very red place. There are definitely obstacles to getting this kind of funding that small rural counties face, but just being dark red is not one of them unless its residents choose to make it one. The state can also provide funding for this sort of thing, which could be addressed by the forthcoming special session. Again, if the Lege wants to do that. Check back in about five weeks.

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Nathan Johnson officially announces for AG

Posted on July 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

He should be a good candidate.

Sen. Nathan Johnson

State Sen. Nathan Johnson is running for Texas attorney general, the three-term Dallas Democrat announced Tuesday.

He told The Texas Tribune that, if elected, he would look to restore “faith and confidence” in an agency he believes has been stained by scandal and spectacle.

“It’s been so long since people, broadly speaking, thought of the attorney general’s office as a place where they have an attorney, an elected official on their side,” he said. “And that’s wrong.”

Johnson, a business litigator at Thompson Coburn in Dallas, is the first major Democrat to enter the race. Two other state senators, Joan Huffman of Houston and Mayes Middleton of Galveston, are running in the Republican primary, alongside former Department of Justice lawyer Aaron Reitz.

The position is open for the first time in more than a decade after Attorney General Ken Paxton decided to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s GOP primary.

Johnson faces strong headwinds: No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994, and whoever wins the Democratic nomination will likely face a formidable GOP opponent. Middleton is well-funded, Huffman has a long legislative record and Reitz has already garnered significant backing from allies in conservative legal circles.

But Johnson has experience winning tough races. As a political newcomer in 2018, he unseated Republican incumbent Don Huffines, becoming the first Democrat to win the North Dallas district in three decades. That was also a midterm year, where discontent over President Donald Trump’s policies pushed Democrats to turn out at the polls and made mainstream Democrats like Johnson seem more palatable to independents and moderate Republicans.

Johnson is hopeful that a similar midterm environment — and a campaign focused on fundamental shifts to the rule of law, weakening of the separation of powers and undermining of Texas’ independence by the federal government — will lead some right-leaning voters to consider a Democrat.

“I’m not going to use the office to do what the Biden administration says or what the Trump administration says,” Johnson said in an interview. “I’m going to use the office to do what it’s supposed to do, which is to make sure that everybody knows the rules and that everybody follows the rules, and then if you don’t follow the rules, there’s consequences.”

Over the last 20 years, the Texas Office of the Attorney General has led the charge among red states to aggressively litigate against Democratic presidents’ agendas. Paxton’s predecessor, now-Gov. Greg Abbott, started this trend, famously saying, “I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.” Paxton went even further, bragging about suing the Biden administration more than 100 times in four years.

Johnson criticized Paxton for not bringing similar lawsuits against Trump, even when it might benefit Texas. He pointed to the 24 states that recently sued to release close to $7 billion in education funding.

“Why didn’t we join that suit? Because [Paxton] doesn’t want to challenge the Trump administration,” Johnson said. “And that goes to the independence I think this office needs.”

See here for the background. Johnson as noted is not giving up his seat to run for AG, as he is not otherwise on the ballot next year. He raised a bunch of money in that 2018 campaign, and if he can do some of that he’ll be better positioned to bring a message that I think will have broad appeal to the voters. Obviously, a lot of things would have to break right for him, or any Dem, to win, given the track record. All I’m asking is that he and his future ballot-mates put themselves in the best possible position to take advantage if that does happen. The Dallas Observer has more.

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So what’s Colossal Biosciences up to now?

Posted on July 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Always be finding new species to say you’re going to de-extinct.

A species of huge, flightless bird that once inhabited New Zealand disappeared around 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers first arrived on the country’s two main islands. Now, a Texas-based biotech company says it has a plan to bring it back.

Genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences has added the South Island giant moa — a powerful, long-necked species that stood 10 feet (3 meters) tall and may have kicked in self-defense — to a fast-expanding list of animals it wants to resurrect by genetically modifying their closest living relatives.

The company stirred widespread excitement, as well as controversy, when it announced the birth of what it described as three dire wolf pups in April. Colossal scientists said they had resurrected the canine predator last seen 10,000 years ago by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genetic make-up of the gray wolf, in a process the company calls de-extinction. Similar efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, are also underway.

To restore the moa, Colossal Biosciences announced Tuesday it would collaborate with New Zealand’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, an institution based at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, that was founded to support the Ngāi Tahu, the main Māori tribe of the southern region of New Zealand.

The project would initially involve recovering and analyzing ancient DNA from nine moa species to understand how the giant moa (Dinornis robustus) differed from living and extinct relatives in order to decode its unique genetic makeup, according to a company statement.

“There is so much knowledge that will be unlocked and shared on the journey to bring back the iconic moa,” Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, said in the statement. For example, the company said, researching the genomes of all moa species would be “valuable for informing conservation efforts and understanding the role of climate change and human activity in biodiversity loss.”

Colossal, which has raised at least $435 million since it was founded by Lamm and Harvard University geneticist George Church in 2021, has committed “a large investment” to New Zealand, the company said without giving further details. Peter Jackson, the New Zealand-born “Lord of the Rings” director, who is one of a number of high-profile investors in the company, is also involved with the project. He has one of the largest private collections of moa bones, according to the Associated Press.

Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, cofounder and director of the Advanced Facility for Avian Research at Western University in London, Ontario, said that because the moa went extinct in the past few hundred years there were extensive bones, egg shell fragments, and even feathers that could be studied. He was not involved in the research.

“The primary explanation for their extinction is overhunting and habitat change following the arrival of Polynesian peoples to the island,” he explained via email.

“Prior to this they had very few predators,” he said. “This is a pattern for flightless birds on islands that have very little defence against hunting or predation (like dodos).”

The idea of reviving a species like this was “intellectually interesting, but really should be a low priority,” MacDougall-Shackleton said. “If we are concerned about island bird conservation there are hundreds of threatened and critically endangered species in New Zealand, Hawaii and other Pacific islands that need conservation resources more urgently.”

See here for the previous entry. As this AP story notes, filmmaker Peter Jackson, who has a large collection of moa bones, is involved. I don’t know if that makes you more or less excited about this prospect, but there you have it anyway. The proof as always will be in seeing one of these critters actually walk around. Here’s Colossal’s page on the moa, where I got that image, if you want to know more.

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What the medical marijuana industry wants from the special session

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

To protect their interests, of course.

Texas’ medical marijuana dispensaries entered into this year’s legislative session with a two-prong strategy to expand: to loosen the state’s rules on their industry that has made the program largely inaccessible to those who need it and to eliminate the competition, consumable hemp, which has been allowed to proliferate unregulated, cannibalizing users and profits.

The medical marijuana industry, also known as the Compassionate Use Program, notched victories on both fronts with state lawmakers, but, on the latter, failed to win over the man who has the ultimate say — Gov. Greg Abbott.

Now that the governor has vetoed a bill that would have criminalized the sale and possession of hemp-derived THC, medical marijuana dispensaries fear they can’t continue to operate if Texas doesn’t agree to heavily regulate the hemp industry or at least, give the medical program the same freedom.

“I was surprised, just extremely surprised and borderline in disbelief when I heard about the veto,” said Nico Richardson, CEO of Texas Original, a Central Texas medical marijuana company. “The expansion [to the medical marijuana program] was meant to include the hemp restrictions.”

[…]

Abbott urged lawmakers in his veto to consider regulating consumable hemp similarly to alcohol by recommending barring the sale and marketing of THC products to minors, requiring testing throughout the production and manufacturing process, allowing local governments to prohibit stores from selling THC products, and providing law enforcement with additional funding to enforce the restrictions.

Medical marijuana leaders also want regulations to go a step further by banning a significant part of the smokeable hemp industry, products that contain the synthetic THC known as delta-8. The products are cheap to manufacture and have a longer shelf life because they contain a small amount of natural hemp. Delta-9 THC, like marijuana, on the other hand, is derived straight from the plant and is more time-consuming and expensive to produce since it requires a grower’s expertise.

“Our products are comparable in price to the delta-9 THC products. What we can’t compete with is these delta-8 products because we can’t manufacture chemicals, and frankly, we wouldn’t want to because it’s not responsible,” Richardson said.

The Texas Hemp Coalition, the industry’s nonprofit advocacy arm that monitors market changes, supports regulations on delta-8. Aaron Owens, a member of the hemp industry, said he supports an outright ban because it would allow hemp growers to have more control over the market, rather than laboratories.

“The number one problem is these synthetics. You take those away and 95% of the industry disappears because this stuff isn’t coming from the farmer,” said Owens, a hemp farmer and founder of Austin-based Tejas Tonic, a hemp beverage company. “A ban on synthetics would … go back to the old-fashioned hemp-and-cannabis way.”

Members of the hemp industry said they would be willing to accept many of the regulations that Abbott proposed in his veto. They would also agree with implementing an age restriction of 21 to purchase THC-containing hemp products and to bar the sale within 1,000 feet of a school or church.

“I think by bringing those standards up for hemp, I think it will help us coexist,” Singletary said. “I want to make it really clear that we are not anti-hemp, but we do feel like the hemp industry needs to follow some really clear, defined rules.”

This article was written before the expanded agenda was announced. The main effect there will be that the more time spent on those other items, which includes important things like flood alarms and disaster preparation, ridiculous things like banning local governments from hiring lobbyists, and entirely optional things like redistricting, the less that can be spent on figuring out the path forward for THC and Compassionate Use.

There are two things I will note here. One is that this story only quotes from people who basically agree with the medical marijuana position, which is pretty strict on THC. Even saying that members of the hemp industry would support “many” of Abbott’s proposed regulations leaves a lot of room for disagreement, and that’s before we hear from anyone representing the THC retailers or their customers. I kind of suspect that they would prefer a lighter touch. All of this will take some time to negotiate, and it is likely someone will come away unhappy.

And two, there’s still the Dan Patrick factor. Will Patrick play along and just try to get the best half-a-loaf he can get, or will he dig in his heels and say no, it’s a full ban or I salt the earth and let everyone stew in the current chaos until 2027 when I can try again (if I get re-elected)? I don’t know, but how he reacts will certainly have an effect. We’ll know more in a week.

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Just how intimate are those emails?

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The mind reels.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott doesn’t want to reveal months of communications with Elon Musk or representatives from the tech mogul’s companies, arguing in part that they are of a private nature, not of public interest and potentially embarrassing.

Musk had an eventful legislative session in Texas this year. In addition to his lobbyists successfully advocating for several new laws, Abbott cited the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as the inspiration for the state creating its own efficiency office and has praised him for moving the headquarters for many of his businesses to the state in recent years.

As part of an effort to track the billionaire’s influence in the state Capitol, The Texas Newsroom in April requested Abbott and his staff’s emails since last fall with Musk and other people who have an email address associated with some of his companies.

Initially, the governor’s office said it would take more than 13 hours to review the records. It provided a cost estimate of $244.64 for the work and required full payment up front. The Texas Newsroom agreed and cut a check.

After the check was cashed, the governor’s office told The Texas Newsroom it believed all of the records were confidential and asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office referees disputes over public records, to allow the documents to be kept private.

Matthew Taylor, Abbott’s public information coordinator, gave several reasons the records should not be released. He argued they include private exchanges with lawyers, details about policy-making decisions and information that would reveal how the state entices companies to invest here. Releasing them to the public, he wrote, “would have a chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”

Taylor also argued that the communications are confidential under an exception to public records laws known as “common-law privacy” because they consist of “information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public, including financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a governmental body.”

He did not provide further details about the exact content of the records.

The language Abbott’s office used appears to be fairly boilerplate. Paxton’s office, in an explanation of the common-law privacy exception on its website, mentions that “personal financial information” that doesn’t deal with government transactions “is generally highly intimate or embarrassing and must be withheld.”

But Bill Aleshire, a Texas-based attorney specializing in public records law, was appalled that the governor is claiming that months of emails between his office and one of the world’s richest people are all private.

“Right now, it appears they’ve charged you $244 for records they have no intention of giving you,” Aleshire said. “That is shocking.”

Aleshire said it’s not unusual for government agencies to tap the common-law privacy exception in an attempt to withhold records from the public. But he’s used to it being cited in cases that involve children, medical data or other highly personal information — not for emails between an elected official and a businessman.

“You’re boxing in the dark,” Aleshire said. “You can’t even see what the target is or what’s behind their claim.”

Aleshire added that due to a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling, there is effectively no way to enforce public records laws against Abbott and other top state officials. He called the decision an “ace card” for these politicians.

Those of you who had “Greg Abbott publicly admits to sharing intimate emails with Elon Musk” on your 2025 Bingo cards, please come collect your winnings. Part of me would love to see the fanfic/Archive Of Our Own army unleash themselves on this writing prompt, just to see how unhinged it could get, while the rest of me would rather get a lobotomy than contemplate any of this more deeply. Some voids should just not be gazed into, you know?

Be that as it may, the reason Abbott may not have to release these emails, which let’s face it sure seem like basic transparency, is because of a recent SCOTx decision shielding Abbott and Ken Paxton from having to release their emails relating to Uvalde. We labor under a lot of forced ignorance in this state, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. But we’ll see in the next 45 days if that applies in this case, for which the AG’s office gets to decide. Don’t hold your breath, that’s my advice.

Oh, and by the way, the special session includes an item added by Abbott to ban cities and counties and school districts from hiring lobbyists to advocate for their interests before the Legislature. But Elon Musk can spend as much as he wants on them to make sure he gets all the goodies he wants. That’s the kind of government Greg Abbott likes. The Barbed Wire has more.

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RIP, David Adickes

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

A giant has passed.

Greg Smith/CORBIS/Getty

David Adickes, the painter and sculptor responsible for some of Texas’s most popular public art, died on Sunday at the age of 98. His eight-decade career took him from a modest childhood in Huntsville to the galleries of France and Japan before landing him back in southeast Texas, where he became a pillar of the Houston art scene. In postwar Houston, Adickes’s idiosyncratic paintings—many featuring his trademark elongated figures, known as “Adickes men”—were exhibited in museums across the state and collected by wealthy Texans. Later in life, Adickes turned to public art, creating massive statues of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, as well as a nearly complete set of two-story-high presidents’ heads.

The future artist was born in the East Texas town of Huntsville in 1927, the third of four sons. His father owned an electrical-appliance store, while his mother was a homemaker and amateur artist. Adickes felt his vocation from an early age, ruining many of his schoolbooks by drawing obsessively in the margins. His artistic dreams were interrupted by World War II. Too underweight to become a pilot like his two older brothers, Adickes joined the Air Transport Command in 1945.

The ATC was charged with ferrying soldiers and supplies to the recently liberated French capital. “Paris changed my whole life,” Adickes would later say. After the war, he returned to France and enrolled at the Atelier Fernand Léger, recognizing the renowned Cubist painter’s name from an American magazine cover he had seen. Most of the instruction was done by Léger’s assistants, with the master coming by on Fridays to critique portfolios.

In 1951, Adickes returned to Houston, where he quickly made a splash with his colorful, quasi-Cubist landscapes and still lifes. He won major competitions across the state, signed with Houston’s prestigious DuBose Gallery, and attracted a following among collectors. Over the next few years, he had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Antonio’s Witte Museum; and Austin’s Laguna Gloria Gallery.

[…]

Beginning in the 1980s, Adickes shifted his focus to public art, executing a series of increasingly ambitious commissions. He created a 36-foot-high cellist for Houston’s Arts District; a 26-foot-long trumpet for the 1984 World’s Fair, in New Orleans (it’s now on display in downtown Galveston); and an 8-foot-tall bronze statue of George H. W. Bush for Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Topping them all was a 67-foot-high statue of Sam Houston off Interstate 45, in Huntsville. “Big Sam,” billed as the country’s “tallest statue of an American hero,” can be seen by drivers as far as six miles away. During construction, David met his life partner and love of his life, Linda Wiley.

After finishing Big Sam, Adickes dreamed up an even grander project—one that would consume the next three decades of his life and a substantial part of his personal wealth. After visiting Mount Rushmore for the first time in the 1990s, Adickes decided to build his own variation on the monument. “Of course, we don’t have sixty-foot-high mountains in Houston, but I could do smaller versions,” he later explained. While Mount Rushmore depicted four presidents, Adickes resolved to build a complete set.

Constructing busts of 41 presidents took around four years, by which time Adickes was forced to build a forty-second head, for George W. Bush. He installed the set in the early 2000s in Williamsburg, Virginia, where the heads formed the centerpiece of a short-lived tourist attraction called Presidents Park. A second set of heads ended up in South Dakota, where Adickes established a similar park. Both ventures eventually went out of business, although the deteriorating Virginia heads, which now sit on private land, have become a tourist attraction in their own right.

As you know, I have been a fan of David Adickes and his Giant Presidential Heads for basically the entire run of this blog. I was a fan of Big Sam on I-45 before I’d ever heard the name David Adickes. I admire the craft and the talent it takes to pull these things off, not to mention the sheer whimsy of it all. I greatly admire Adkickes’ tirelessness – he was cranking out new statues as recently as two years ago, at the tender age of 96. He’s a legend, and if the more serious parts of the art world took him and his output lightly, it’s their loss. Go drive by Mount Rush Hour and give David Adickes his props. Our city and our state are better for his life. The Chron has more.

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

There’s still flooding in the Hill Country

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It keeps raining.

Emergency crews suspended their search for victims of catastrophic flooding in Central Texas on Sunday morning amid new warnings that additional rain would again cause waterways to surge.

It was the first time a new round of severe weather has paused the search since the flooding earlier this month.

Ingram Fire Department officials ordered search crews to immediately evacuate the Guadalupe River corridor in Kerr County until further notice, warning the potential for a flash flood is high. On a Facebook post, the department warned area residents to stay away from river beds and roads.

“NOW IS NOT THE TIME to be out trying to watch rising water, take videos, or capture pictures of the devastation. We are seeing the same weather pattern today that we experienced on July 4th—and we know how quickly that turned deadly,” the post read.

Search-and-rescue teams have been searching for missing victims of the July 4 weekend flooding.

Search and rescue efforts were expected to resume on Monday, depending on river flow, Fire Department spokesperson Brian Lochte said.

“We’re working with a few crews and airboats and SAR (search-and-rescue) boats just in case,” Lochte said.

As heavy rain fell Sunday, National Weather Service forecasters warned that the Guadalupe River could rise to nearly 15 feet by Sunday afternoon, about five feet above flood stage and enough to put the Highway 39 bridge near Hunt under water. The NWS issued a flood watch — meaning flooding can occur — until 7 p.m.

“Numerous secondary roads and bridges are flooded and very dangerous,” a weather service warning said.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly on Sunday issued an emergency order restricting access to Texas State Highway 39, The Kerr County Lead reported. A candlelight vigil for flood victims scheduled for Sunday night was also postponed, according to a post in Kerr County’s Facebook page.

There’s still a lot of people missing as of today. If all of those who are missing are in fact dead, then the total number of dead from this flood will be around 300. A hundred years from now, we’re still going to be talking about the July 4 floods on the Guadalupe River in Kerr County.

Perhaps that will change the conversation about flooding and local response and preparedness capabilities going forward.

In the week after the tragic July 4 flooding in Kerr County, several officials have blamed taxpayer pressure as the reason flood warning sirens were never installed along the Guadalupe River.

“The public reeled at the cost,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters one day after the rain pushed Guadalupe River levels more than 32 feet, resulting in nearly 100 deaths in the county, as of Thursday.

A community that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, Kerr County constructed an economic engine on the allure of the Guadalupe River. Government leaders acknowledged the need for more disaster mitigation, including a $1 million flood warning system that would better alert the public to emergencies, to sustain that growth, but they were hamstrung by a small and tightfisted tax base.

An examination of transcripts since 2016 from Kerr County’s governing body, the commissioners court, offers a peek into a small Texas county paralyzed by two competing interests: to make one of the country’s most dangerous region for flash flooding safer and to heed to near constant calls from constituents to reduce property taxes and government waste.

“This is a pretty conservative county,” said former Kerr County Judge Tom Pollard, 86. “Politically, of course, and financially as well.”

[…]

By the time the 1987 flood hit, the county had grown to about 35,000 people. Today, there are about 53,000 people living in Kerr County.

In 2016, Kerr County commissioners already knew they were getting outpaced by neighboring, rapidly growing counties on installing better flood warning systems and were looking for ways to pull ahead.

During a March 28 meeting that year, they said as much.

“Even though this is probably one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state where a lot of people are involved, their systems are state of the art,” Commissioner Tom Moser said then. He discussed how other counties like Comal had moved to sirens and more modern flood warning systems.

“And the current one that we have, it will give – all it does is flashing light,” explained W.B. “Dub” Thomas, the county’s emergency management coordinator. “I mean all – that’s all you get at river crossings or wherever they’re located at.”

Kerr County already had signed on with a company that allowed its residents to opt in and get a CodeRED alert about dangerous weather conditions. But Thomas urged the commissioners court to strive for something more. Cell service along the headwaters of the Guadalupe near Hunt was spotty in the western half of Kerr County, making a redundant system of alerts even more necessary.

“I think we need a system that can be operated or controlled by a centralized location where – whether it’s the Sheriff’s communication personnel, myself or whatever, and it’s just a redundant system that will complement what we currently have,” Thomas said that year.

By the next year, officials had sent off its application for a $731,413 grant to FEMA to help bring $976,000 worth of flood warning upgrades, including 10 high water detection systems without flashers, 20 gauges, possible outdoor sirens, and more.

“The purpose of this project is to provide Kerr County with a flood warning system,” the county wrote in its application. “The System will be utilized for mass notification to citizens about high water levels and flooding conditions throughout Kerr County.”

But the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which oversees billions of FEMA dollars designed to prevent disasters, denied the application because they didn’t have a current hazard mitigation plan. They resubmitted it, news outlets reported, but by then, priority was given to counties that had suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey.

All that concern about warning systems seemed to fade over the next five years, as the political atmosphere throughout the county became more polarized and COVID fatigue frayed local residents’ nerves.

There are some quotes that follow that are the sort of thing that people on my side of the aisle, especially from other states, will point to as examples of how Kerr County deserved what it got. I don’t endorse any of that, but I do think the stakes are a lot clearer now than they have ever been. Comal County is about as red as Kerr is, and they managed to come up with the funds for a more robust warning system. I don’t know how anyone could look at those 300 fatalities and claim that something similar for Kerr County could be considered wasteful. But then, I wouldn’t have called it that before July 4.

There is another point that needs to be considered.

The story is here but it’s paywalled. You can get an overview from the thread.

There’s more.

Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.

That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood — one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.

Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors and longtime owner Dick Eastland when historic floodwaters tore through its property before dawn on July 4.

The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by FEMA, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.

But Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA’s flood map determinations, said it was “particularly disturbing” that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.

“It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,” she said.

[…]

In response to an appeal, FEMA in 2013 amended the county’s flood map to remove 15 of the camp’s buildings from the hazard area. Records show that those buildings were part of the 99-year-old Camp Mystic Guadalupe, which was devastated by last week’s flood.

After further appeals, FEMA removed 15 more Camp Mystic structures in 2019 and 2020 from the designation. Those buildings were located on nearby Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a sister site that opened to campers in 2020 as part of a major expansion and suffered less damage in the flood.

Campers have said the cabins at Cypress Lake withstood significant damage, but those nicknamed “the flats” at the Guadalupe River camp were inundated.

Experts say Camp Mystic’s requests to amend the FEMA map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, to lower the camp’s insurance premiums or to pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations.

Pralle said the appeals were not surprising because communities and property owners have used them successfully to shield specific properties from regulation.

There’s more, so read the rest. The point here is that as Houston and Harris County have tried to deal with its flood risk post-Harvey by adding more restrictions on where new construction can occur and buying out some properties that were in high-risk areas, the same kind of approach needs to be taken in Flash Flood Alley. The 100- and 500-year flood plains, whose official maps still need to be updated, ain’t what they used to be. We can accept that reality and adjust accordingly, or we can accept that another disaster like this is just a matter of time, and we don’t mean centuries. Maybe the Lege will deal with this in the special session, and maybe (much more likely) they won’t. But it’s the reality we face.

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Paxton divorce filings sealed

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Noted for the record.

Still a crook any way you look

A state district court judge in Collin County agreed Friday to seal all records relating to divorce proceedings between Attorney General Ken Paxton and Sen. Angela Paxton, according to reports by The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times.

That will likely keep details of the high-profile divorce from becoming public as Ken Paxton runs to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s Republican primary. That race is expected to be one of the most-watched 2026 Senate race.

Angela Paxton requested the proceedings be sealed, according to the news outlets. The order to seal this case was not immediately available Saturday. It was granted one day after Angela Paxton filed to divorce her longtime husband. In Texas, divorce cases are generally public record but can be sealed if it includes highly sensitive information.

[…]

Before the case was sealed, records obtained by The Texas Tribune showed that the couple had not lived together for more than a year and Angela Paxton had accused her husband of adultery.

See here for the background. It is always possible that some details will get leaked, one way or another. To say the least, there will be interest in knowing more about what happened. For a guy who truly does not deserve it, Ken Paxton has gotten a lot of loyalty and protection from a lot of people.

And he will continue to get it from his rabid fans.

With conservative Christian ideology shaping much of the duo’s political platforms, Angela Paxton’s announcement sparked questions about what the divorce would mean for the attorney general’s U.S. Senate bid and his religious base. But hours later, Ken Paxton announced that he had raised nearly $3 million last quarter as he gears up for a March primary against Sen. John Cornyn.

“The grassroots movement to fire John Cornyn continues to grow stronger ever(y) single day,” Ken Paxton said in a statement early Friday. “And this is only just the beginning.”

The Paxtons are members of the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The grounds for divorce among Baptists is generally limited to cases of infidelity, or if someone is married to “an unbeliever” who has abandoned them, said Michael Emerson, director of the religion and public policy program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial in 2023 highlighted accusations of his infidelity as Angela Paxton listened to the proceedings. The attorney general was initially impeached by the Texas House, but was later acquitted by the state senate.

While the news of the divorce came this week, the impeachment trial made Texas voters aware of the couple’s marital problems long before Ken Paxton announced his bid for Senate. It didn’t stop him from leaping ahead of Cornyn in multiple polls.

The trial and Paxton’s legal troubles are challenges the Senate-hopeful has embraced during his campaign, following the lead of President Donald Trump. Paxton has called himself a victim of a politicized “witch hunt,” like the president has done. The primary next year won’t just be a test of Paxton’s popularity, but also the strategy of pulling from Trump’s playbook.

Trump has often identified protecting Christian rights and values as major goals of his presidency, but has also faced allegations that critics say contradict biblical teachings, including claims of extramarital affairs. Still, much of his voting base has stood by him and, just by doing so, reshaped religious values for the Republican Party, Emerson said.

“Since Trump, there seems to be ways for some people to maneuver (around infidelity allegations),” Emerson said. “To explain it away, to say, ‘What I do personally and what I actually fight for and advocate for are different things.’”

I’m old enough to remember when these people would insist that we judge political candidates by their moral character. By which they meant “were of the same religious beliefs as us”. I always knew they were full of shit, so at least it’s good to see them admit it as well.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ogg’s contempt hearing delayed by special session

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

You can run, but you can’t hide.

A hearing to determine whether former district attorney Kim Ogg should be held in contempt of a court order is likely to be on hold until after Gov. Greg Abbott’s special legislative session is over.

Ogg’s attorney for the contempt hearing, Mitch Little, is a Texas state representative who will attend the special session with topics ranging from improving early warning systems in the wake of the deadly Hill Country floods, potential redistricting and the end of STAAR testing. He has since asked Judge Josh Hill to postpone the July 28 hearing, according to court records.

The hearing will determine whether Ogg violated a court order limiting extrajudicial remarks about the two men accused of killing 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray.

[…]

Little requested the delay Wednesday in order to participate in the special session, which begins July 21 and is expected to last 30 days. A judge had not signed off on his request as of Thursday.

“It will be difficult for me to be available to respond to discovery, attend hearings, and prepare for trial without interfering with my legislative obligations,” Little wrote.

State law allows the court to put a civil or criminal case on hold until 30 days after the legislative session ends if one of the attorneys is an elected lawmaker participating in those proceedings, meaning the hearing could happen in late August or later.

See here for the previous update. This is a routine request so I expect it will be granted. I will note that Mitch Little is not just a Republican State Rep, he’s one of the bigger wingnuts among them. Just some idea of who Kim Ogg is palling around with these days. And while this is a routine request, it is one that some attorneys who are not state legislators have complained about in the past, on the grounds that they and their clients have been jerked around by these delays. I don’t expect that to be a big deal in this case. It may get pushed back a month or two, but this hearing will happen.

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Weekend link dump for July 13

Posted on July 13, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“So on July 4, 2025, we can celebrate the imperfect start of our national enterprise, despite the dark turn it has taken. As we do so—and as we contend with the discouraging and disturbing developments of the moment—we ought to keep in mind a fundamental fact: There are more of us than them. More Americans reject the cruelty of Trump’s mass deportation crusade than accept it. More Americans oppose the profoundly unfair billionaires-enriching-Medicaid-slashing-deficit-busting tax-and-spending mega-bill than embrace it. More Americans disdain the Trump presidency than hail it.”

“If the Supreme Court’s near-ban on nationwide injunctions was the earth-shattering victory President Donald Trump claimed, no one seems to have told his courtroom opponents.”

“So how exactly is ICE — which has a brief addressed to non-citizens and especially non-citizens without legal permission to be in the United States — supposed to exercise policing powers more generally or compromise state and local governments? We can see the pattern and trajectory in front of us already.”

“If Epstein’s death has become the JFK assassination of this generation, this memo stands to be its version of the Warren Commission report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.”

“Do hackers have your email address? Here’s how to check — and what to do about it”.

“What Does it Take To Get a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?”

RIP, Mark Snow, TV composer who wrote the theme to The X Files and was nominated for 15 Emmy awards.

“It’s almost dystopian. And when I think of people wrapping themselves in the Constitution while they are simultaneously doing violence to it … it is really scary stuff.”

“Thanks to the GOP Megabill, You’ll Pay Higher Utility Bills“.

“The former Librarian of Congress abruptly fired by President Donald Trump has found a new position with the country’s largest philanthropic supporter of the arts.”

“The only possible out here would be a series of fake deals, in which countries pretend to have offered significant concessions and Trump claims to have won big victories. Some people still think that will happen — the new tariffs aren’t supposed to take effect until Aug. 1. But the tone of those letters and Trump’s clear obsession with tariffs make me doubt that he’ll call the tariffs off, in part because of my last observation: Attempts to mollify Trump always end up emboldening him to demand more.”

“If these animals made good, easy pets, we would have had these things domesticated 1,000 years ago—we would have all grown up with foxes and skunks, and not just dogs and cats. The No. 1 problem is that people never want to change their lifestyle to fit the pet or the animal. They want the animal to change to their lifestyle.”

“In 2025, why are men still afraid to come out in professional sports?”

“Tesla’s stock is now down about 25% this year, badly underperforming U.S. indexes and by far the worst performance among tech’s megacaps.”

I have no idea why we are talking about Gary Coleman’s ex-wife taking a lie detector test in the Year of Our Lord 2025, but here we are.

“It is to say that there is something wrong with an entire culture of venerating ripping off others’ creativity and research, and there is definitely something wrong with a culture that wants more ripped-off disposable stuff, that collectively says who cares if it’s quality or not because we’re going to throw it away anyway, and who cares that ripping off others’ research and development means we all get crappier stuff at every price point.”

The streaming service formerly known as HBO Max is back to being HBO Max again. Our long national nightmare is finally over.

“A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the FTC‘s “click to cancel” rule, which would’ve required companies to provide users with simple cancellation mechanisms to immediately halt all recurring charges and get their consent to convert auto-renewals and free trials to paid enrollments. Under the measure, businesses would’ve been barred from making it more difficult to cancel than it is to sign up. It was intended to eliminate drawn-out cancellation processes aimed at trapping users in unwanted subscriptions.” You can thank Donald Trump for that.

“Cars Hit Millions of Monarch Butterflies Each Year. Nets Might Help.”

“Sen. Ted Cruz Stripped Weather Forecasting Funds From Trump’s Megabill. Then the Floods Came.”

“Freedom of the Press Foundation Weighing Legal Options Against Paramount Over Trump Settlement”.

“A staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, recently got high-level access to view and change the contents of a payments system that controls tens of billions of dollars in government payments and loans to farmers and ranchers across the United States, according to internal access logs reviewed by NPR.”

RIP, Paulette Jiles, journalist and bestselling author who wrote most of her books while living in San Antonio and the Hill Country.

RIP, Lee Elia, former MLB player, coach, and manager best known for a hilariously profane postgame rant while he was managing the Cubs, which went viral the old-school way.

I for one endorse Hannah Keyser’s take on how to do the Home Run Derby.

RIP, Frank Layden, legendary coach and general manager of the Utah Jazz.

RIP, David Gergen, political insider and Presidential advisor.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | Comments Off on Weekend link dump for July 13

Why does Greg Abbott hate FEMA?

Posted on July 13, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I mean, FEMA loves Texas, so…

Gov. Greg Abbott was quick to request federal assistance last week after devastating floods hit the Texas Hill Country.

But the Republican governor is simultaneously helping the Trump administration find ways to “wean off” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has sent more than $7 billion to Texas over the last decade for natural disasters like the flooding that had left 120 people dead and dozens more missing as of Thursday.

Abbott is on a Trump-appointed panel drafting recommendations for reforming the agency. He has criticized FEMA as ineffective, even as Texas has been one of the biggest recipients of the agency’s largesse.

“FEMA is slow and clunky and doesn’t solve the needs of those who need it the most,” Abbott said during the panel’s first meeting in May. “States have proven that we can move more nimbly, more swiftly, more effectively.”

Disaster response experts and former FEMA officials say states like Texas, with robust emergency response agencies of their own, are only able to act so effectively because they are bolstered by the federal agency — and billions in federal funding that flows to the state after each disaster.

Texas, on average, has received nearly $900 million from FEMA alone after each disaster that has struck the state in the last decade, according to research by Sarah Labowitz at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The agency has sent more than $7.2 billion to Texas in that time, making it the third-largest recipient of FEMA aid behind Florida and Louisiana.

“If you’re thinking right now that Texas can handle its own disasters because it has a track record — it’s doing that with huge investments from the federal government,” Labowitz said. “When we get $7 billion over the last 10 years for disaster recovery, that underwrites a lot of capacity at the state level. If that money goes away, then what is our capacity?”

How many special sessions would Abbott have had to call in the last decade to appropriate disaster relief funds if there were no FEMA? How slow and inefficient and politicized would that have been? Of course, Abbott would probably prefer that all of those funds come straight from a fund that his office controlled, which is what Trump wants to do with FEMA. If you can’t see the potential for graft and enemy-punishing in that, I don’t know what to tell you.

I wasn’t going to do another Hill Country flood roundup post, but there were a couple of stories I saw that I wanted to mention, so I decided to include them here.

The Texas Floods Amped Up the Battle Between MAHA and the Tech Right

One longstanding fight that has divided the political right has been over whether or not humans should be allowed to modify the weather, with religious conservatives saying absolutely not, while the tech visionaries are all for it. These debates were often theoretical, but then the catastrophic floods in Texas took place.

On July 2, two days before floods devastated communities in West Texas, a California-based company called Rainmaker was conducting operations in the area. Rainmaker was working on behalf of the South Texas Weather Modification Association, a coalition of water conservation districts and county commissions; the project is overseen by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Through a geoengineering technology called cloud-seeding, the company uses drones to disperse silver iodide into clouds to encourage rainfall. The company is relatively new—it was launched in 2023—but the technology has been around since 1947, when the first cloud-seeding experiment took place.

After news of the floods broke, it didn’t take long for internet observers to make a connection and point to Rainmaker’s cloud-seeding efforts as the cause of the catastrophe. “This isn’t just ‘climate change,’ posted Georgia Republican congressional candidate Kandiss Taylor to her 65,000 followers on X. “It’s cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation. If fake weather causes real tragedy, that’s murder.” Gabrielle Yoder, a right-wing influencer, posted on Instagram to her 151,000 followers, “I could visibly see them spraying prior to the storm that has now claimed over 40 lives.”

Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser and election denier, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Russia, told his 2.1 million followers on X that he’d “love to see the response” from the company to the accusations that it was responsible for the inundation.

Augustus Doricko, Rainmaker’s 25-year-old CEO, took Flynn up on his request. “Rainmaker did not operate in the affected area on the 3rd or 4th,” he posted on X, “or contribute to the floods that occurred over the region.”

Meteorologists resoundingly agree with Doricko, saying that the technology simply isn’t capable of causing that volume of precipitation, in which parts of Kerr County experienced an estimated 100 billion gallons of rain in just a few hours. But the scientific evidence didn’t dissuade those who had already made up their minds that geoengineering was to blame. On July 5, the day after the floods, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced that she planned to introduce a bill that would make it a felony offense for humans to deliberately alter the weather. “We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering,” she tweeted.

Lawmakers in both Florida and Tennessee appear to feel similarly; they have recently passed laws that outlaw weather modification. But other states have embraced the technology: Rainmaker currently has contracts in several states that struggle with drought: Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, and Texas, as well as with municipalities in Utah and Idaho.

The debate over cloud-seeding is yet another flashpoint in a simmering standoff between two powerful MAGA forces: on one side are the techno-optimists—think Peter Thiel, or Elon Musk (who has fallen from grace, of course), or even Vice President JD Vance—who believe that technological advancement is an expression of patriotism. This is the move-fast-and-break-things crowd that generally supports projects they consider to be cutting edge—for example, building deregulated zones to encourage innovation, extending the human lifespan with experimental medical procedures, and using genetic engineering to enhance crops. And to ensure those crops are sufficiently watered, cloud-seeding.

The opposing side, team “natural,” is broadly opposed to anything they consider artificial, be it tampering with the weather, adding chemicals to food, or administering vaccines, which many of them see as disruptive to a perfectly self-sufficient human immune system. The “Make America Healthy Again” movement started by US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., lies firmly in this camp.

Indeed, Kennedy himself has spoken out against weather modification. “Geoengineering schemes could make floods & heatwaves worse,” he tweeted last June. “We must subject big, untested policy ideas to intense scrutiny.” In March, he tweeted that he considered states’ efforts to ban geoengineering “a movement every MAHA needs to support” and vowed that “HHS will do its part.”

You can file this under “Let them fight” and “I hope both sides lose”. I mean, Sid freaking Miller is out here trying to talk some sense into the MAHA lunatics. How am I supposed to cheer for that?

Can sirens help save lives in the next flood? Yes, but there’s more to it.

The National Weather Service issued cellphone alerts repeatedly in Kerr County as the Guadalupe River rose early Friday morning. Around the north and south forks that feed the river, forecasters triggered one push alert after another, according to PBS data.

The first went out at 1:14 a.m., then another at 3:35 a.m., then a third at 4:03 a.m. Then a handful more. “Move to higher ground now,” some of the alerts said. “Act quickly to protect your life.” At 5:34 a.m. and 7:24 a.m., more messages went to those along and down the river.

But the series of notifications was not enough to save more than 250 people who died or are counted as missing after the July 4 flood. A week after the tragedy, rescue crews continue scouring miles of riverbank and searching huge debris piles for victims.

For warnings to work, people not only have to receive the alerts but they also need to understand how the warnings apply to where they are and know what to do about it — which is especially hard when it comes to flooding, said Kim Klockow McClain, a senior social scientist supporting the National Weather Service.

“We left way too much up to individuals to receive those warnings, know what to do and know where to even go,” McClain said, adding, “You need to tell people a little bit more.”

State legislators are searching for solutions to improve warning systems in places such as the Hill Country ahead of a special session later this month. The Texas House and Senate announced Thursday that they had formed committees to consider that and other disaster-related topics, starting with a hearing in Austin on July 23.

Lawmakers such as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the state Senate, have suggested the state should support the installation of warning sirens, a technology used decades ago to warn of air raids.

Researchers say there will be no single, simple fix.

Sirens can help in rural places where cell service is unreliable and phone alerts might not go off, according to researchers, but they are no silver bullet.

“Flash Flood Alley, from what I’ve read, that sounds like the perfect place to put sirens,” said Jeannette Sutton, a leading expert on warning systems and associate professor at the University of Albany. “It’s kind of remote. They know that there’s a high risk in that area.”

But, she added, “They can’t let it just be one solution.”

How sirens can help: They can be set up to trigger automatically if water reaches a certain height, which could require additional investment in flood gauges. This can be effective because it doesn’t require someone to be awake or rely on a judgment call on when to trigger them. There are also sirens that blare voice messages about impending danger.

But researchers emphasized that people may not hear sirens if they’re indoors during a heavy thunderstorm, and they need to be taught what the sirens mean when they go off, perhaps with signs in public places or pamphlets passed out to visitors when they check into a hotel or RV park.

A visitor from a tornado-prone area, for example, might run inside instead of fleeing to higher ground before a flood strikes.

Other states have already found ways to educate out-of-town guests about local hazards. McClain, the researcher who supports the Weather Service, pointed to the coasts of Oregon and Washington as places that have worked to prepare visitors for a tsunami with signage along evacuation routes and in hotels.

“Is it going to be perfect? Probably not,” McClain said. “But is it going to be better than doing nothing? Absolutely.”

I am once again putting on my cybersecurity hat to say that this is why we take an approach called defense in depth. No one strategy for cybersecurity is close to being sufficient, but each individual aspect of it plays an important role and they all come together to be a robust strategy. (There’s a close analogy to gun control that I have made more than once and no doubt will make again.) Sirens, education, cellphone alerts with their own distinct ringtones, radios, being careful to not overdo anything so people don’t tune it all out, and more. I think the Lege could handle this, even in a short 30-day special session, if they focus on this as a priority and not get distracted by redistricting and red meat. Good luck with that.

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

This session’s fight over casinos was mostly billionaire-on-billionaire violence

Posted on July 13, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

A good read from Texas Monthly about how Miriam Adelson tried to throw a bunch of money around and hire every lobbyist in the state to get casino gambling on the ballot, only to run into a different billionaire throwing his own pile of money around to stop her.

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

Sands is not the first to try to strong-arm legislators and citizens into legalizing casino gambling. Native American tribes, horse-track owners, and other gambling interests have tried for decades, only to get repeatedly tripped up by their mutually destructive avarice and the enduring power of religious conservatives. But no company has played hardball like Sands.

In Austin, the business has 104 lobbyists—43 more than AT&T, the company with the second most. The Sands team includes at least eight former legislators, Karl Rove’s wife, and chiefs of staff to the two previous Speakers of the House, at a cost of between $5 and $10.4 million, according to ethics disclosures. Since January 2024, Adelson has pumped $13.2 million into two political action committees, Texas Sands PAC and Texas Defense PAC, which in turn spent lavishly in recent election cycles.

Texas’s political system runs on cash. But the Vegas money seemed less about well-placed bets than about a show of force—a slot machine spewing money all over the casino floor. When state Representative Matt Shaheen, a right-wing Republican from Plano, publicly swore to kill gambling legislation and linked casinos to sex trafficking, one of Adelson’s PACs began running ads in his district accusing him of being a “moderate” who “voted against 18,000 good jobs.” The aggressive move provoked a behind-the-scenes rebuke from Republicans.

But Abboud is hardly chastened. “If they don’t like what happened to Shaheen, you better get used to it,” he said. “If you cross the line and you continually lie about the company and the family, then we’re going to hold you accountable. And if they don’t like that, too bad—it’s not going to change, and it’s only going to amplify over time.”

There is little doubt about what Sands wants. It sold its last U.S. property in 2022. Its six casinos are all in Asia. Texas is the company’s path back home. In 2020, Abboud told a conference that the state was “the biggest plum still waiting” to be plucked “in the history of hospitality and gaming.” Worth an estimated $32 billion, Adelson is betting that limitless cash can overcome any opposition. It’s a long game, with immense profits as the reward, one that her most ardent enemies admit may pay off someday.

And yet, though Texas lawmakers may be for sale, there are other buyers, other billionaires—many of them homegrown. As ever, there’s Tim Dunn, the Midland oilman who presides over an empire of pressure groups, PACs, and propaganda outlets pushing the Texas GOP to the right. It was the Dunn-affiliated Texans for Fiscal Responsibility that provided the organizing muscle for the Irving protesters, while his news outlet, Texas Scorecard, poured on with articles attacking Sands. Dunn’s PACs pumped money into candidates with anti-gambling bona fides.

Politicians are torn, then—between a Vegas sin merchant who promises to share some of her fortune with those willing to play her game and a Texas-born Christian nationalist with his own long-term vision for the state and the funds to make it a reality. Irving was a live experiment: Were Texans ready for legal gambling? How would a local community react to a casino proposed in its backyard rather than the abstraction of a “destination resort” somewhere in the state? In forcing the issue, Sands reignited one of the oldest struggles in Texas, the battle between vice and virtue, licentiousness and conformity, high rollers and holy rollers.

“I think [Abboud] came in, he stomped around, and thought this is like anywhere else,” said Mike Lavigne, a bald, fast-talking poker fanatic who has mainly worked for horse-track owners who want to expand legal gambling. “I’m not some kind of Texas exceptionalist, except for when I realize it isn’t like any other f—ing place.”

It’s a long story, with a lot of information about the history of gambling and people’s attempts to legalize it and keep it illegal. It will never cease to amaze me that Adelson thought that the problem was that no one had spent enough money or hired enough lobbyists to make it happen. Though to be fair, a bill did pass the House in 2023, and she shoved enough money in Greg Abbott’s pockets to get him to mumble something vaguely supportive about the effort. As I’ve been saying for the last 47 years or so, none of that will get you past Dan Patrick. Maybe one of these days someone with that kind of juice will get the bright idea to try to un-elect Patrick. But as long as it’s one asshole wingnut billionaire versus another asshole wingnut billionaire fighting over exclusive control of the Republican Party and the Legislature it enables, leave me out of it.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Still more microtransit

Posted on July 13, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Now in the Near Northside.

METRO’s free, on-demand electric shuttle service has expanded to Houston’s Near Northside neighborhood, with service there launching Monday.

The “Community Connector” initiative launched as a pilot program in the Third Ward in 2023. It has since expanded to the Second Ward and the Heights along with the downtown area.

The micro-transit service allows residents to request short-distance rides in low-speed electric vehicles by using an app on their phones to get to places such as grocery stores, doctor’s appointments and other public transit options.

Chelsey Trahan, a spokesperson for METRO, said it has 18 vehicles across all service zones with the goal in mind to improve quality of life and provide greater access to resources.

“We’re trying to connect our community,” Trahan said. “We understand that the city is growing rapidly. We have to find innovative ways to grow, and this has been a way to help people to not only get to our services but to travel throughout the community.”

Since the service launched, the Community Connector program has had more than 36,000 riders, according to METRO. The electric shuttles operate from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Users can request rides through the Ride Circuit app.

METRO, the Houston region’s public transit provider, said it’s investing $10 million in micro-transit options for the 2025 fiscal year. The Community Connector program is a partnership with nonprofit Evolve Houston to provide a way for people to get around their communities and connect with other transit services.

That story is from June 23, I was travelling when it came out and meant to circle back to it sooner, and now here we are. You know how I feel about all this. I don’t know how much of that $10 million (!) we are spending on this micro-initiative, but the original allocation made to Evolve a year ago was $216K, so we sure have ramped it up. And all for 36,000 riders – not sure if we’re measuring that from the date of the $216K grant to Evolve or to a year before that when the Third Ward pilot started, but either way it’s a laughably small number when compared to Metro bus routes. How many of those 36K people are using this to actually get to Metro services? We don’t know, they don’t say. The “micro” in “microtransit”, that does say a lot.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments