Reactions to Allen

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

There’s nothing I can say about the weekend massacre in Allen that hasn’t been said many times by many people. My heart is broken for the victims and their families, and my rage is ever-stoked by the sheer indifference exhibited by our so-called leaders. I just have a couple of things to note here in partial response.

Uvalde families have another reason to be angry.

Democrats and relatives of Texas mass shooting victims lambasted the state’s GOP leaders over the weekend after they again rejected gun restrictions in the wake of another massacre.

A gunman wielding what appeared to be an assault-style rifle killed eight people on Saturday afternoon at Allen Premium Outlets, a mall in a suburb about 20 miles north of Dallas. He injured seven others, three of whom are in critical condition. The victims included children as young as 5.

The shooting occurred less than a week after sheriff’s deputies in San Jacinto County reported that a lone gunman armed with an AR-15-style weapon killed five people at a neighbors’ house.

Republicans expressed grief over the mall shooting, offering prayers and condolences to families who lost loved ones. They praised law enforcement for responding and killing the shooter quickly, but they did not address the weapon he used.

​​”They don’t have any answers to this,” said Manuel Rizo, who lost his 9-year-old niece, Jacklyn “Jackie” Cazares, in last year’s mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school.

The attack at Robb Elementary was also carried out by a lone gunman armed with an assault-style rifle. The shooter bought his gun days after he turned 18, prompting calls from victims’ families to raise the age for purchasing the weapons in Texas. Republican state lawmakers have declined.

“They’re just going to ignore the facts, issue their thoughts and prayers, go through their checklist and hope that this goes away,” Rizo said.

I get emails from the Dallas Morning News with daily digests and breaking news and stuff like that. Here are the contents of two of those breaking news alerts on Monday. First one:

The Houston office of the South Korean consulate confirmed Monday that Cho Kyu Song, 37, Kang Shin Young, 35, and their child were killed. The child’s age was not immediately clear.

According to a letter from New Song Church, based in Carrollton, a 5-year-old child of the couple survived. The child was injured and was being treated at a hospital, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.

And the second one:

A security guard, an engineer, 3 children among the Allen mall shooting victims

Two Cox Elementary students, fourth-grader Daniela Mendoza and second-grader Sofia Mendoza, were killed Saturday.

Their mother, Ilda, remains in critical condition, according to an email from Wylie ISD Superintendent David Vinson.

Here’s a profile of the victims from the Trib. Just so we all know who we’re talking about here. Who we’re losing every time one of these mass shootings happens.

Later in the day, we got this news.

In a surprise move days after the Allen mall shooting and hours before a key legislative deadline, a Texas House committee on Monday advanced a bill that would raise the age to purchase certain semi-automatic rifles.

The bill faces an uphill climb to becoming state law, but the vote marked a milestone for the proposal that relatives of Uvalde shooting victims have been pushing for months.

Several relatives of children who were killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting last year sobbed when the committee voted 8-5 to send it to the House floor. Republican state Reps. Sam Harless and Justin Holland joined with Democrats on the House Community Safety Select Committee to advance the bill.

Less than two hours earlier, some of the relatives of Uvalde victims had urged the committee chair, Rep. Ryan Guillen. R-Rio Grande, to give House BIll 2744 a vote before a key deadline Monday.

“One year ago today, my daughter had her communion. About a month later she was buried in that same dress,” Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter Jacklyn was killed in the Uvalde shooting, said during an emotional press conference. “Mr. Guillen, and anybody else who is stopping this bill from passing, sad to say but more blood will be on your hands.”

Monday marks the last day House bills can be voted out of committee in the lower chamber. House bills that don’t meet that deadline face increasingly difficult odds at becoming law, though there are some avenues through which measures left in committees could be revived.

HB 2744, filed by Democratic Rep. Tracy King, whose district includes Uvalde, was debated before the House select committee last month during a hearing in which relatives of Uvalde victims shared emotional accounts of lives torn asunder by gun violence.

Monday’s legislative deadline falls two days after a gunman in Allen, a Dallas suburb of about 100,000 people, killed eight shoppers at an outdoor mall with AR-15-style rifle — the same type of weapon used by the gunman in Uvalde, where killed 19 children and two teachers were killed.

Because the man identified as the gunman in Allen was 33, raising the age limit for semi-automatic rifle purchases likely wouldn’t have kept that gunman from purchasing such a weapon. But Saturday’s shooting renewed calls for tightening some gun laws in a state whose lawmakers have loosened firearm restrictions despite repeated mass shootings.

That is true. You know what else is true? None of the false promises made by Greg Abbott about “mental health”, and none of the faux-security “school hardening” bills – you know, the ones that put more restrictions on doors than on guns, those bills – would have done anything to deter this shooter, either. It’s going to take an actual commitment to address the problem, and that begins with having a government in place that sees these shootings as problems. See what I mean about there not being anything to say that hasn’t been said before?

This Twitter thread takes you through the action yesterday that led to the committee vote on HB2744. Here’s a quote for you:

Rep. Guillen, who chairs the House Select Committee on Community Safety where HB 2744 is pending, just told reporters he is now considering having a vote on the bill. When asked what changed, he said “Nothing”.

That’s turncoat Republican Ryan Guillen speaking there. I have nothing at this point, either. Even if this bill makes it out of the House, there’s no way Dan Patrick gives it a vote in the Senate. High marks for trying, but the problem is bigger than this. DAily Kos has more.

UPDATE: Received the following statement in my inbox from Asian Texans for Justice:

“Instead of supporting what we’re asking for – gun safety legislation which 83% of AAPIs support, Texas statewide leaders are blaming mental health alone. The reality is that our state’s lax gun laws allowed someone who sympathizes with Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists to easily get a gun and kill and injure over a dozen people. We need the state legislature to take immediate action on gun reform that will make our communities safer, such as passing HB 2744, which would increase the age to buy a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21.

Asian Texans for Justice calls on local law enforcement to exhaust all measures to determine whether the gunman was truly a lone actor or if he worked in concert with other individuals or organizations who aided and abetted these horrendous actions.

We urge Governor Abbott and the Texas Legislature to focus their priorities on issues that better serve Asian and Pacific Islander Texans, and keep all Texans safe.”

I agree.

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We ask again if the HISD Board should bother doing anything right now

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I think the answer is still mostly No, but there’s some nuance to that.

The Houston Independent School District board met Thursday to discuss potential cuts to the district’s $2.2 billion budget as it faces a growing a growing deficit and a looming takeover by the Texas Education Agency.

Superintendent Millard House II has already walked back plans to slash school budgets by roughly $40 million after an outcry from the Board of Trustees, which insisted against campus-level cuts. That leaves cuts of just $15.3 million to the HISD central office with the district facing a projected $118 million deficit that could rise to $258 million by the 2024-2025 school year, as enrollment drops and pandemic-related funds dry up.

Most of those $15.3 million in savings would come from closing unfilled positions. The district had previously proposed reducing small school subsidies and high school allotments, along with returning to an attendance-based school funding policy that was suspended due to COVID-19, before those suggestions were nixed by the board.

HISD expects enrollment to continue to decline by nearly 3 percent between this school year and the next, from roughly 189,000 students to 184,000. The district’s enrollment has already fallen by about 31,000 students since the 2016-2017 school year, according to HISD data.

“As enrollment declines, that’s an impact to our revenues. That’s less money coming in than we have to be able to spend,” said Jim Grady, a consultant who presented the proposed budget to the board.

[…]

It’s not clear how the impending state takeover will affect the budgeting process, but the local board is moving forward with their plan to lay out a financial plan as normal. Another, final budget workshop is scheduled for May 18.

See here for some background. I’ve spoken in favor of the Board doing as little as possible in the time it has left, so as to leave the difficult and surely unpopular decisions that will need to be made about the looming deficit and the likely need to close some schools (seriously, what are we doing about that enrollment drop?) to the unelected overlords who will soon have to run the place. But maybe that’s too simple. Maybe it’s better to do at least some of the easier and more straightforward things on their own, in part because they will be done anyway and in part to perhaps head off some weird directions that the Board of Managers could take if given full discretion over these initial conditions. Give them slightly less room to do things we wouldn’t have considered, as well as less room to build up political capital for making the “hard” choices that really aren’t that hard. The Board of Trustees exists as a decision-making entity until June 1, and the district needs to pass a budget by June 30. My position is maybe more in flux now than it was before, but I’m still comfortable saying to the Board to not overthink this. Do the easy things, and pass on the rest.

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A tale of two Propositions A

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I usually write my own sentence or two to introduce the article I’m linking to and commenting on, but honestly I can’t do any better than the lede of this story.

Proposition A, the wide-ranging police reform measure also known as the Justice Charter, went down in flames Saturday night, with a wide margin of voters casting a ballot against the measure.

Opponents began celebrating just minutes after early vote totals posted.

“The defeat of Prop A is a victory for local families, for local businesses and our quality of life,” wrote San Antonio SAFE PAC Co-Chairs Eddie Aldrete and April Ancira in a statement. “San Antonio is one of America’s unique, great cities and today our citizens professed with a loud and unequivocally clear voice we want to keep it that way.”

Ananda Tomas, executive director of ACT 4 SA, which gathered more than 38,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot, said Saturday night she thought it would be a tighter contest — early vote totals came in with more than 75% against Prop A.

With all 251 vote centers reporting, election day voters had reduced that lead to just under 72%.

But the “grassroots effort” was no match for the police union’s money and political reach, Tomas said. “It’s just big, monied interest and misinformation that’s out there.”

The Current adds on.

In addition to decriminalizing abortion and low-level pot possession, Prop A would have codified cite-and-release for Class C misdemeanors such as petty shoplifting and vandalism. Additionally, it would have codified SAPD’s current ban on police choke holds and no-knock warrants.

Prop A’s backers were outspent 10-to-one by opponents including the powerful San Antonio Police Officers Association and deep-pocketed business interests.

Indeed, Prop A’s fatal flaw may have come down to the difficulty explaining exactly what it would do amid a barrage of ads depicting it as a step toward rampant crime and violence in the streets.

“We still have to do a lot of public education. We’ve been doing it for several years and we’re going to continue,” Ananda Tomas, executive director of police reform group Act 4 SA, told reporters at the Prop A watch party. “We know when we’re at the doors and we break all of these things down, that folks are with us.

High-profile leaders including San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and most of city council also declined to back Prop A. Proponents accused the mayor of backpeddling on his prior support of cite-and-release.

“The challenge with Proposition A is that I think it mischaracterizes what cite-and-release was about,” Nirenberg previously told the Current. “Cite and release has always had officer discretion. Prop A effectively removes officer discretion, and again, theft and property damage are not victimless crimes.”

Tomas said she was disappointed with the the mayor’s decision to campaign against Prop A. However, she said that she and fellow progressives aren’t giving up in their fight for criminal justice reform.

I had mostly described San Antonio’s Prop A as being about marijuana decriminalization, but it was a lot more than that, I think to its detriment. I get the appeal of trying to address these things systematically, but this is one of the downsides of that approach (see also: Obamacare and Build Back Better), in which the more controversial and less popular aspects of the package are weaponized against it. It also may be the case that the electorally successful marijuana reform referenda from 2022 benefitted from being more under the radar, while this effort was regularly topline news. I don’t think most of the individual components of Prop A are any less popular on their own – marijuana decriminalization, not pursuing abortion-related prosecutions, banning choke holds, that sort of thing. It’s just that proponents of them will need to strategize further in advancing them. (How many of them will be to a city or county’s discretion following this legislative session is another matter.)

Meanwhile, it was a different story in Austin.

The May 6 election made it clear: Austin is ready to dramatically expand civilian oversight of police.

With about 78,000 voters turning out for the May 6 election on two police oversight propositions with the same name (Austin Police Oversight Act), the progressive Prop A got approval from a resounding 70% of voters, per unofficial voting numbers. Prop B, which copy-pasted language from Prop A and then edited it to reduce oversight powers, received support from only 20% of voters.

As we observed from early voting numbers, turnout overall was not spectacular. In 2021, when a GOP-aligned PAC Save Austin Now was able to get a measure on the ballot to increase police staffing, roughly twice as many people cast a vote (and the police association-backed measure lost). A little more than 10% of Austin voters showed up this election, which is not atypical for a May election without high profile offices on the ballot.

Still, the passage of Prop A – which seeks to grant the Office of Police Oversight a whole lot of freedoms, including greater access to Austin Police Department’s internal affairs investigations – marks a huge stride for the city, and possibly the beginning of litigation over the legality of some of the measure’s language. If a court does eventually throw certain elements of the measure out, the undisputed parts of the ordinance will still stand.

I was vaguely aware of Austin’s referenda, but saw much less news of them than I did the props in San Antonio, for whatever that’s worth. I’m not saying this is the only way forward – indeed, as I have said before, what we really need is a better state government, because even this path forward is increasingly narrow and hostile – but what was tried in San Antonio didn’t work, and seem unlikely to be viable elsewhere. Let’s learn what we can from what happened and make the best of it going forward.

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Lawsuit filed against FAA over SpaceX launch and explosion

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I can only imagine how Elno feels right now.

Conservation groups sued the Federal Aviation Administration [last] Monday, challenging its approval of expanded rocket launch operations by Elon Musk’s SpaceX next to a national wildlife refuge in South Texas without requiring greater environmental study.

The lawsuit comes 11 days after SpaceX made good on a new FAA license to send its next-generation Starship rocket on its first test flight, ending with the vehicle exploding over the Gulf of Mexico after blasting the launchpad to ruins on liftoff.

The shattering force of the launch hurled chunks of reinforced concrete and metal shrapnel thousands of feet from the site, adjacent to the Lower Rio Grand Valley National Wildlife Refuge near Boca Chica State Park and Beach.

The blast also ignited a 3.5-acre (1.4-hectare) brush fire and sent a cloud of pulverized concrete drifting 6.5 miles (10.5 km) to the northwest and raining down over tidal flats and the nearby town of Port Isabel, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

SpaceX hailed the launch as a qualified success that will yield valuable data to advance development of its Starship and Super Heavy rocket, major components in NASA’s new Artemis program for returning astronauts to the moon.

But Monday’s lawsuit said the April 20 incident marked the latest in a series of at least nine explosive mishaps at Boca Chica, disrupting a haven for federally protected wildlife and vital habitat for migratory birds.

Noise, light pollution, construction and road traffic also degrade the area, home to endangered ocelots and jaguarundis, as well as nesting sites for endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles and critical habitat for threatened shorebirds, the suit says.

The disturbances show the FAA violated federal law by permitting expanded operations at Musk’s Starbase in Boca Chica without mandating the full environmental impact study (EIS) normally required for major projects, the lawsuit asserts.

The 31-page complaint seeks to revoke the FAA license and require an EIS.

The FAA’s chief of staff for the Office of Commercial Space Transportation had stated in a June 2020 email that the agency planned to conduct an EIS, but the FAA “subsequently deferred to SpaceX” and performed a less rigorous review instead, according to the lawsuit.

[…]

SpaceX had vigorously opposed subjecting its Starbase to an EIS review, a process that typically takes years. An EIS involves extensive analysis of the project at stake and alternatives, along with mitigation plans to curb or offset harmful impacts. It also entails public review and comment and often re-evaluation and supplemental study.

The FAA granted its license following a far less thorough environmental assessment and a finding that SpaceX activities at Boca Chica pose “no significant impact” on the environment. The lawsuit challenges that finding as a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, contending that the assessment and mitigation measures incorporated into the license fall short of the law’s requirements.

According to the Associated Press, Musk “said his company could be ready to launch the next Starship in six to eight weeks with the FAA’s OK”. Requiring an EIS would be a big kink in those plans.

The Trib adds some more detail.

The lawsuit was filed in Washington, D.C., on Monday by five plaintiffs, including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. The groups argue that the FAA, which authorizes rocket launches, should have conducted an in-depth environmental impact assessment before allowing SpaceX to proceed with its plans and claim the agency delegated that task to SpaceX.

They are asking the court to suspend SpaceX’s five-year license, granted by the FAA.

“We want to see the FAA cancel the permits until they’ve figured out how they can either minimize or at least mitigate the environmental damage the rockets are doing,” said Michael Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy.

The goal of the lawsuit is to protect wildlife and front-line communities, Parr said. Shorebirds such as piping plovers that live near the SpaceX facility are sensitive to the heat, noise and smoke from the rocket launches, he said.

The Boca Chica area is biologically diverse, the groups state in the lawsuit, and an essential habitat to many species, including federally protected wildlife such as migratory birds.

“It’s vital that we protect life on Earth even as we look to the stars in this modern era of space flight,” Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a written statement. “Federal officials should defend vulnerable wildlife and frontline communities, not give a pass to corporate interests that want to use treasured coastal landscapes as a dumping ground for space waste.”

[…]

Juan Mancias, chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, said the FAA also failed to consider that the land SpaceX chose for its launch site is sacred to his tribe, which he calls “the original people” of that land. SpaceX’s facility has made it harder for the tribe to access the beach, hold traditional ceremonies and leave offerings to their ancestors, according to the lawsuit.

“We’re humans. We have a human right to take care of our lands and our villages and all they’re doing is digging up our bones and digging up our ceremonial sites,” Mancias said.

I’ll keep an eye on this one. The Musk/SpaceX history with Boca Chica Village goes back a few years and has been a mixed bag for the area. Musk is now trying to claim another piece of Texas for himself. What could possibly go wrong? TPR, CNBC, and the Current have more.

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The sore loser election contest lawsuits have been delayed

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This obituary of local Republican activist and professional election denier/vote suppressor Alan Vera was far too kind to him – Votebeat did a better job of accurately capturing his “achievements” – but it did contain one useful piece of information, which I will note here so that when the question comes up later we’ll know the answer.

Vera was also a key witness in the upcoming trial to decide an election contest challenge brought by GOP judicial candidate Erin Lunceford, who lost her race against incumbent 189th District Judge Tamika Craft by 2,743 votes.

Lunceford’s legal team was relying on Vera to explain several types of alleged voting irregularities and asked for an extension on the trial date because of Vera’s death. Judge David Peeples said the trial would likely be postponed from mid-June to early August.

Guess they need time to find someone who can make shit up with as much flair. Anyway, it was in one of the parts of the Chron stories that I didn’t quote from in these posts that said the trial was expected to start in mid-June. Now it will be in August, barring any further delays. You would be forgiven if you had missed this update, as no normal person would bother reading a story like this, but I did and now you benefit from that sacrifice. You’re welcome.

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Weekend link dump for May 7

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

“Whatever the outcome is, the drastic step is a warning sign for what may be in store in the coming years. For decades, a series regular on a TV show has been the holy grail for rank-and-file working actors because of the guaranteed income and a chance at a career- and life-changing experience if the series is a hit. If more shows start to dramatically reduce the number of series regulars, with the majority of roles available being guest-starring and recurring, the impact will be profound, with fewer actors being able to make a living and qualify for health insurance.”

“This whole situation highlights one of the hidden benefits of recognizing corporations to have rights, that corporate rights also serve as a check on government tyranny.”

“This whole spectacle is an example of the idea that introducing payments for a good or service can change the thing we’re buying.”

“The real problem with our battles against disease is that no one is in charge. We can all name the generals who led almost every war we’ve fought: Washington, Grant, Pershing, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Westmoreland, Abrams, Schwarzkopf, Petraeus, and so on. Can you name who won or lost the war against the Spanish flu? Against polio? (Not the vaccine makers Salk and Sabin. I mean the generals.) We can’t because we have no Pentagon for disease. No one is in overall charge. War is a public calling, but American medicine is a privatized mess. When we need a huge effort for the public good from it, we can’t muster it. In fact, we get the opposite — hospitals hoard ventilators and make it hard for their staffs to go where the outbreaks are. We have a patchwork of agencies with very defined, very limited purviews: the CDC, the FDA, the NIH. Even the CDC has a small staff whose job is mostly to investigate outbreaks and make recommendations to local health departments and local hospitals. Imagine the FBI, cut to a third of its size, with no guns, handcuffs or powers of arrest, plus an inclination to publish scholarly papers instead of busting heads. That’s the CDC.”

RIP, Otis Redding III, singer and son of Otis Redding, Jr.

RIP, Larry “Gator” Rivers, longtime Harlem Globetrotter.

“Comcast Cuts the Cord: Cable TV Customers Drop Below 50% of Company’s Connectivity Clients for First Time”.

RIP, Mike Shannon, longtime broadcaster and two-time World Series champion for the St. Louis Cardinals.

RIP, Tim Bachman, co-founding guitarist and vocalist for Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

RIP, Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk music icon whose best known songs include “Sundown”, “If You Could Read My Mind”, and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.

The writers are on strike, and longtime Writers Guild member Mark Evanier explains the stakes.

A brief history of bleeping.

Republicans really don’t want young people to vote.

Tucker Carlson is an even bigger asshole than you thought.

A longtime mystery involving one of Jeopardy!‘s early champions has finally been solved.

“Nice Twitter handle you got there. Be a real shame if something happened to it.”

“Greene’s attack on Weingarten’s status as a mother is a window into what certain people really mean when they invoke parents’ rights. Let’s explore that below.”

RIP, Eileen Saki, actor best known for playing Rosie the bar owner of M*A*S*H.

RIP, Don Sebesky, prolific arranger and conductor of theatrical music, winner of three Grammy and two Tony awards.

RIP, Barbara Bryne, stage actor best known for her work in Stephen Sondheim productions.

“Harlan picked up the tab” is a phrase we keep hearing a lot. One wonders if Clarence Thomas has ever paid for anything in his adult life. “Sugar Justice”, indeed.

“The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday licensed the first-ever vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, completing an elusive quest that has been decades in the making.”

Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. Now lock them the hell up.

“No mention of Ginni, of course.”

“Republicans are not just willing to shoot their hostage. For many it’s too fun an opportunity to let slip by.”

“Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns.”

“Besides making it harder to identify (and block) people who paid $8 for Twitter Blue to get an Elon-approved blue checkmark, Musk’s new verified label gives him cover in case any celebrities decide to sue him for implying they were fans of Twitter Blue.”

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An example of how a pro-abortion rights campaign could go

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This was from last week, and I’ve been thinking about it since.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, one of the five women suing Texas for abortion access blamed the state’s Republican senators for her near-death experience when she was denied reproductive care in the state.

“I nearly died on their watch,” Amanda Zurawski said, naming U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who both sit on the committee. “And furthermore, as a result of what happened to me, I may have been robbed of the opportunity to have children in the future — and it’s because of the policies they support.”

[…]

The state’s ban allows for exceptions only when there is “substantial” risk to a mother or if a fetus has a fatal diagnosis. But many doctors and hospitals have been fearful of intervening even when there is a clear danger because of the stiff penalties for anyone who violates the ban, including potential prison sentences of up to 99 years, tens of thousands of dollars in fines and the loss of medical licenses.

Zurawski was 17 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with a condition called cervical insufficiency, which had caused her to dilate too soon for her baby to survive. The morning after her water broke, Zurawski still hadn’t gone into labor, but doctors in the emergency room told her there was nothing they could do for her because the baby still had a heartbeat.

Zurawksi later developed sepsis, a life-threatening condition, and the hospital agreed to perform the abortion. After delivering and losing her daughter, Willow, Zurawski developed a secondary infection and was entered into the intensive care unit, where she spent three days.

Zurawsi testified that she is still dealing with “paralyzing trauma” from the “preventable harm” she suffered, which she said “has already made it harder for me to get pregnant again.”

“I may have been one of the first who was affected by the overturning of Roe in Texas, but I certainly will not be the last,” she said.

“You have the power to fix this,” she said, addressing the panel of senators. “You owe it to me and to Willow and to every other person who may become pregnant in this country to protect our right to safe and accessible health care, emergency or no emergency. Your job is to protect the lives of the people who elected you, not endanger them.”

See here and here for more on the lawsuit, and here and here for more about the polling and politics stuff. Ms. Zurawski is as sympathetic and compelling a spokesperson as one could want. This was a wanted pregnancy that was derailed by medical issues – all of which happened after 15 weeks, by the way – and she suffered greatly and nearly died because doctors couldn’t treat her due to Texas’ laws; she may now be unable to get pregnant again as a result. You could argue, as the forced birthers are already doing, that the fault lies with the doctors, who just misinterpreted the laws. But when it’s your profession and a 99-year prison sentence on the line, no one is going to put themselves out on a limb. This is, again, the intent of the law, as embodied by the likes of Sen. Angela Paxton and her opposition to any exceptions for the life of the mother.

The bottom line here is that I believe that a vast majority of Texans would agree with the position that Ms. Zurawski should not have had to go through all that, she should have been able to get the care that she needed, which in this case was an abortion. There was a clear medical need, any reasonable person would have expected to receive it, and if the laws are an obstacle to her and her doctors then those laws should be changed. That’s what her lawsuit is about. If there were a way for there to be a statewide ballot proposition for this specific issue, I’d expect it to pass.

But just adding in an explicit “health of the mother” exception to our laws as they exist now, while being popular and clearly needed, would still leave Texas in a far more restricted place for abortion access than it was even two years ago. Note that we are only talking “health of the mother” exceptions; rape and incest would still not be an acceptable reason for an abortion. And, not to put too fine a point on it, there would still be absolutely no “abortion because it’s my choice and my body and this is what I want” allowance. No Democrat running against Ted Cruz or any other forced-birth Republican in 2024 is going to stop at this point in their abortion rights advocacy. They don’t believe in anything so limited, and their existing supporters would be rightly upset at such a change in their posture.

And so that’s the challenge. Plenty of people would support the Zurawski exception. Fewer, quite a bit fewer, would support – and more crucially, be willing to vote for politicians who support – the pre-Dobbs landscape. Note that Zurawski herself is not calling for just “health of the mother” exceptions – she wants “to protect our right to safe and accessible health care, emergency or no emergency”. How do we get the majority that is surely there for something narrow into a majority for something broader? Like I said, this is what we need to be working on. Daily Kos and Slate have more.

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House Investigations committee recommends expelling Rep. Slaton

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Wow.

Rep. Bryan Slaton

A House committee has recommended the expulsion of Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton after finding that he engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with a subordinate, then acted to thwart an investigation into the matter.

In a speech from the floor, Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, said Slaton’s behavior was “induced by alcohol” that the representative provided the 19-year-old woman.

“Rep. Slaton then acted systematically to influence that subordinate and multiple witnesses to obstruct the investigation,” Murr said.

Murr said expelling Slaton was necessary to protect the “dignity and integrity” of the Legislature.

After Murr’s speech, clerks distributed the investigative committee’s report on Slaton, which detailed the panel’s findings and its recommendation of expulsion. Members sat silently for about 10 minutes and read it as Slaton remained seated at his desk, occasionally peering at his phone.

Speaker Dade Phelan then resumed normal legislative business. The speaker, who typically does not participate in chamber debates as its presiding officer, said in a written statement he would stick to that role.

“I will withhold public comment until my colleagues have the opportunity to deliberate and then vote on the General Investigating Committee’s recommendations,” Phelan said.

The decision to remove Slaton will ultimately be up to the full House; the Texas Constitution allows members to be expelled with a two-thirds vote of the chamber. Murr on Saturday filed House Resolution 1542, the legislation which would remove him.

The House has not expelled members in nearly a century. Members removed Reps. F.A. Dale and H. H. Moore in 1927 on the grounds of “conduct unbecoming any member.”

See here and here for the previous updates. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting this. Obviously, this is an extremely rare situation (side note: I sure hope someone does a little reporting to find out what “conduct unbecoming any member” meant in 1927), so I doubt anyone was expecting it, least of all Slaton. QR has a copy of the report now, but it’s behind their paywall; hopefully a public copy will be made eventually. In the meantime, I invite you to watch this brief speech about the report and its recommendation by Rep. Murr:

I also want to remind you of who Rep. Slaton is:

Slaton took office in 2021 after defeating Rep. Dan Flynn, a longtime Republican state representative whom Slaton had challenged multiple times and considered too moderate.

His political campaign was largely funded by West Texas oil and gas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. The two are among the biggest donors to some of the most socially conservative lawmakers in the Legislature, including far-right opponents to lawmakers who vote against their political interests.

Slaton is known as one of the most conservative members in the chamber, frequently rankling House leaders, and this year fought a losing battle to amend House rules to prohibit Democrats from leading legislative committees. The issue has been a major concern for ultraconservative grassroots Republicans who do not want Democrats leading key legislative debates.

Last year, he called for a blanket ban on minors at drag shows, saying it was necessary to protect children from “perverted adults.” He has also proposed giving property tax cuts to straight, married couples — but not same-sex couples or those who have been divorced — based on the number of children they have.

“Perverted adults”, indeed. The response we should all make now any time a wingnut talks about “filthy” books or drag shows or whatever else we need to “protect” children from is “You mean like Bryan Slaton?” Good riddance – I hope; we’ll see on Tuesday – to a truly awful legislator and even worse human being. Oh, and remember that the biggest moneybags in Republican politics helped foist him on us.

In the meantime, it’s still not clear what if anything the committee is doing with the allegations against Rep. Jones. Maybe the session will end and we’ll just assume they took no action, or maybe we’ll find out that they reviewed written reports but took no testimony. Not a whole lot of time left to find out.

UPDATE: The committee’s report can be found here, which I got via the DMN story. It’s 16 pages long, and you really should read it. It’s worse than I thought. Slaton actively tried to cover his tracks, none of the other staffers in his office (all male) cooperated with the investigation, his lawyer tried to delay things…it’s bad. The Trib story has been updated with details from the report since I wrote the original post. If the Travis County DA reads the report, there are multiple crimes they could try to indict Slaton for.

Two other items of interest. One is that the committee’s recommendation that Slaton be expelled was unanimous. Two, the report notes that the reason there have been so few expulsions over the years is that most members caught up in serious forms of misconduct have resigned before they could be expelled. Slaton, who has denied all responsibility in this incident, doesn’t appear likely to do that.

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A ride down the West 11th bike trail

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I’ve been riding the West 11th bike trail since it opened, mostly to go to some of my favorite lunch places. It’s been great, modulo the occasional hazards like trash/recycling bins out for collection and delivery trucks or construction vehicles parked there or protruding from a driveway. I had never biked along West 11th before because the two-lanes-each-way vehicular traffic moved far too fast and too recklessly to ever feel safe enough. I’d take one of the side roads, or if I wanted to cross at a light I’d go to White Oak or 14th, depending on what my destination was. The dedicated lane on 11th is a better experience than all of those, and I appreciate being able to cross Studewood at a light as well, as that can be tricky and occasionally death-defying otherwise.

Early on in the path’s existence I set out to take a ride and pause for some pictures along the way, to document the experience. I’m finally getting around to publishing them now – it’s been a busy few weeks in the news, in case you hadn’t noticed – so while the pics themselves are a bit old, I now have more experience to speak from. So come ride along with me, and see what the fuss is about.

BikeRideMichauxAtWhiteOak

The first evidence of what was to become the trail was the painted “bike lane” indicators on Michaux, followed by the installation of a lane divider/crossing path on White Oak. You don’t see it as much now, but in the first few weeks it was common to see people approaching this intersection, from either street, and only realizing upon arriving there that they can’t turn left. When it happened to me, I made the forced right, then turned left on Norhill onto Usener, left onto Usener, and left again onto Michaux, and then finally right onto White Oak to continue on my way. I saw one person turn left into the oncoming traffic lane – fortunately, there was no oncoming traffic – and then slide over. Seems like most people in the ‘hood have figured this out now, which is good.

BikeRideMichauxAt11th

Of course, West 11th is the opposite way on Michaux. I just went that way to take the first photo. This is Michaux approaching 11th. I don’t really know what the little lane is for. I guess it’s a bit of a protection if you’re turning right (east) onto Pecore, which is what 11th becomes at Michaux. But there’s no separated bike lane that way, at least not at this time, so who knows.

BikeLaneStartingAtMichaux

You have to turn left (west) from Michaux to get into the bike lane. 11th used to be two lanes beginning or ending here, with the eastbound right lane being right turn only except for the #30 bus.

BikeLaneAtStudewood

At Studewood. The concrete lane separator comes and goes, mostly to allow access to various driveways but also for right-on-red turns. I’ve been conscious of this as a driver along 11th, which I didn’t really have to be before because there were never any bikes. I’ve not had any issues with cars wanting to turn right yet. It’s no different than on non-bike lane streets like White Oak, to be honest.

BikeLaneAtHeights

At Heights Blvd. The “wide turn” sign is there because of the bike lane on Heights, which now has a concrete separator that looks like a platform right there. I’ll have a better look at it on the way back. Note the “no left turn” sign onto Heights southbound – as with the White Oak situation, not everyone has figured this out yet. That left was a real hazard before the bike lane, but it does mean if you’re coming this way you either need to turn at Yale, or scoot over to a side street to access Heights southbound from there. Note also the bank of lights on the far end of Heights, with the one lone (and hidden by the bus stop sign) light on the sidewalk. I don’t quite understand that design decision – there were two sets of lights before this, as really there are two intersections. If you want to have only one bank of lights, I might have argued that it belonged at the first intersection, not the second one. Anyone have a theory about this?

RollingAdBikeAtYale

At Yale. I saw several other bikers while out on that initial ride, and I see regular bike traffic now. This guy was turning left onto Yale, which is why he wasn’t in the same lane as me. I can’t think of any other wrong-way biker I’ve seen since then.

BikeLaneAtHeightsBikeTrailIntersection

Here we are at the junction of the north-south Heights Bike Trail, which will connect you to the MKT Trail to the south. I turned around here because I was just out for funsies and didn’t have a destination in mind. Note the “stop for pedestrians” sign, which exists at a number (but not all) of the cross streets now. The vehicular traffic has actually been quite good about respecting this, which is very nice. Before the West 11th lane diet and the trail, people going along the Heights trail often felt like they were taking their lives into their hands crossing here, as four total lanes of cars would whip by, often at speeds over 40 MPH. People had been calling for a traffic light at this intersection, but the trail and the lane reduction, which has definitely led to lower speeds, and the “stop for pedestrians (and, implicitly, bikes)” sign have done the trick.

BikeLaneRailingDown

At a few points along the concrete lane dividers, there are some vertical visual markers of the bike lane, presumably to remind drivers of the lane’s existence. Clearly, someone needed that reminder.

BikeLaneBCycleStationAtHeights

This is the platform for what I thought was a B-Cycle location in construction, on the south side of Heights. There’s an identical thing catty-corner on the north side. Given what’s going on with B-Cycle now, I’m not sure of the purpose of the platform anymore. But there they are.

So that’s a small taste of what the ride is like on West 11th. Someday when the North Main lane has been built – here’s an April 18 update that says initial construction begins in June, so this is not far off – I’ll do a similar ride. Let me know what you think.

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Feds rebuke hospitals that didn’t do emergency abortions

Posted on May 6, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Relevant to our interests.

Two hospitals that refused to provide an emergency abortion to a pregnant woman who was experiencing premature labor put her life in jeopardy and violated federal law, a first-of-its-kind investigation by the federal government has found.

The findings, revealed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, are a warning to hospitals around the country as they struggle to reconcile dozens of new state laws that ban or severely restrict abortion with a federal mandate for doctors to provide abortions when a woman’s health is at risk. The competing edicts have been rolled out since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion last year.

But federal law, which requires doctors to treat patients in emergency situations, trumps those state laws, the nation’s top health official said in a statement.

“Fortunately, this patient survived. But she never should have gone through the terrifying ordeal she experienced in the first place,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said. “We want her, and every patient out there like her, to know that we will do everything we can to protect their lives and health, and to investigate and enforce the law to the fullest extent of our legal authority, in accordance with orders from the courts.”

The federal agency’s investigation centers on two hospitals — Freeman Health System in Joplin, Missouri, and University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas — that in August refused to provide an abortion to a Missouri woman whose water broke early at 17 weeks of pregnancy. Doctors at both hospitals told Mylissa Farmer that her fetus would not survive, that her amniotic fluid had emptied and that she was at risk for serious infection or losing her uterus, but they would not terminate the pregnancy because a fetal heartbeat was still detectable.

Ultimately, Farmer had to travel to an abortion clinic in Illinois.

“It was dehumanizing. It was terrifying. It was horrible not to get the care to save your life,” Farmer, who lives in Joplin, said of her experience. “I felt like I was responsible to do something, to say something, to not have this happen again to another woman. It was bad enough to be so powerless.”

Farmer’s complaints launched the first investigations that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, has publicly acknowledged since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year. Across the country, women have reported being turned away from hospitals for abortions, despite doctors telling them that this puts them at further risk for infection or even death.

[…]

Nationwide, doctors have reported uncertainty around how to provide care to pregnant women, especially in the nearly 20 states where new laws have banned or limited the care. Doctors face criminal and civil penalties in some states for aborting a pregnancy.

But in a letter sent Monday to hospital and doctors associations that highlights the investigations, Becerra said he hopes the investigations clarify that the organizations must follow the federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA.

As you may recall, EMTALA has been the subject of contradictory court rulings, which likely gives it an eventual date before SCOTUS. The status of that federal law, which now depends on where you are, and its inherent conflict with various draconian state laws, surely contributes to confusion over what is and is now allowed, but it’s not just about confusion. It’s also about the very understandable reluctance of doctors and hospitals to put themselves on the line for a potential murder charge and life in prison when they’re not 100% sure they’re in the clear. As we have said many times, the vagueness and broadness of many state laws is intentional. We have that lawsuit in Texas that seeks clarity on these matters, and that will be of great importance when it comes to a courtroom. In the meantime, a strong push by the CMS to ensure access where it can is appreciated. We need much more than that, but as of right now that’s about the best we can hope for.

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The I-45 project will be old enough to vote before it is finished

Posted on May 6, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Isn’t that nice?

Often called a once-in-a-generation project, the planned $9.7 billion-plus rebuild of I-45 from downtown Houston north to Beltway 8, including a total reconstruction of the downtown freeway system, is expected to take a generation to build.

A child born today would drive along the completed freeway around the time they graduate from high school in 2042, according to a new schedule released by state highway officials.

“Just kill me now,” joked Reuben Shuvalov, 42, who commutes to an accounting job in downtown Houston from his home in Spring.

Cleared for development following a two-year pause and lifting of a lawsuit by Harris County, the Texas Department of Transportation is finalizing the sequence of construction across three segments, broken into at least 10 separate projects to remake portions of I-45, key intersections and nearby local streets. Officials updated the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Transportation Policy Council on April 28, including expected start and finish years.

[…]

“That is just how the development of how the plans are coming along,” said Varnua Singh, deputy district engineer for TxDOT’s Houston office.

Work will be phased based on numerous factors, including funding, the need for some work to precede other parts of construction, and drainage in some spots prior to construction of depressed sections of the freeway on the east side of downtown.

As a result, the first project considered part of the larger rebuild is an $86.1 million project to upgrade drainage through EaDo, just east of Interstate 69 between I-45 south of downtown and Buffalo Bayou.

“The drainage is the first piece,” Singh said. “That is why we are trying to get it out the door.”

That work precedes construction south of downtown, where the first major project is the rebuilding of I-69 between Texas 288 and I-45, expected to cost $584.8 million and start in 2025. That rebuild, through the area where the two freeways converge, will take roughly five years, during which work will begin on nearby segments to Spur 527 and where I-10 and I-45 separate north of the central business district.

It is that 2027-2031 period when many of the projects will be active work zones that worries some about the effects on downtown jobs and businesses.

“Past freeway projects typically only affected one or two spokes at a time, and downtown employers just dealt with it since it only affected a portion of their employee base,” said Tory Gattis, a senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, which advocates for business-focused downtown development. “But with the normalization of remote and hybrid work, as well as this project affecting all the freeways coming into downtown, it could definitely be the tipping point to major employers following Exxon to the suburbs or just going more remote so their employees won’t have to fight their way downtown as often.”

See here for the previous update. All of the first batches of work will be on or south of I-10, so we’ve got that going for us. Hey, remember when driverless buses cruising along at 100 MPH were going to relieve us of all our traffic concerns? Those were the days. The Press has more.

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More HISD departures

Posted on May 6, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Gonna be a very different district when we get it back.

Three more senior staff members at Houston ISD are departing their high-ranking posts at the district as the Texas Education Agency prepares to appoint new leaders to govern the largest school district in Texas.

Police chief Pedro Lopez Jr., chief of schools Denise Watts and chief talent officer Jeremy Grant-Skinner will leave the district this month or next, according to public records. Watts’ last working day is June 14 and Grant-Skinner’s is May 31, according to resignation forms obtained through a public records request, which show that both submitted their resignation in April.

Lopez, meanwhile, has been selected to serve as top cop in Killeen, a city roughly 75 miles north of Austin.

Killeen city manager Kent Cagle last week selected Lopez to lead the Killeen Police Department following a nationwide search that netted 20 applicants, according to a press release from the city.

[…]

The departure of three chiefs from HISD comes as the takeover of the 186,000-student district has stirred confusion and concerns among parents, teachers and other community members.

The state agency plans to suspend the powers of Superintendent Millard House II and HISD elected trustees on or after June 1, replacing them with appointed managers to govern the district for at least two years.

One other member of the superintendent’s cabinet has already departed the district ahead of the takeover.

Max Moll, former chief engagement officer, left his position at HISD in April, noting in a Twitter thread that he was grateful for House’s steadfast leadership in challenging circumstances.

“His leadership is inspiring, focused, and selfless, and Houston will be worse-off because of his potential departure,” Moll wrote on social media. “I still believe in the power of public education and its ability to transform lives. (Houston ISD) will continue to shape the future of our city and, for that reason alone, we all must ensure its next chapter is successful. Our city, students, and families deserve nothing less.”

While all three of these people were in senior leadership positions, none of them were longtime HISD employees, all being hired between 2020 and 2022. We were between Superintendents for much of that, and some level of turnover is always going to happen. It’s still the case that their replacements will be hired by a Superintendent that will not be picked by the elected Board. The effects of this takeover will be longer-lasting and more far-reaching than just in the classroom.

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And here we go with the list of potential successors to Rep. Allred

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Right on time.

Rep. Colin Allred

Contenders are emerging to replace outgoing U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, who announced Wednesday that he’s running for Senate against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz.

Allred, a former NFL player, is in his third term representing the 32nd Congressional District, which includes northern Dallas and parts of the northeast suburbs.

Off and running to pick up the seat is Brian Williams, a Dallas trauma surgeon who has advocated for gun control on Capitol Hill. He also served as chairman of what was then the Citizens Police Review Board.

“The country is in crisis,” Williams, a Democrat, told The Dallas Morning News. “As an Air Force veteran, and as a trauma surgeon, I’ve always answered the call when there’s a crisis.”

State Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch, also is expected to join the race after the Texas legislative session ends in May. A campaign team, including potential donors, is beginning to take shape for Johnson, though she has not made an official decision.

Johnson was elected to the Legislature in 2018.

“I have truly loved serving the people of Texas in the Legislature,” Johnson said in a statement. “I won’t be making any decisions until the legislative session ends, but I am strongly considering a run for Congress so I can continue to fight for working families here in Texas.”

Dallas City Council member Adam Bazaldua, who represents the South Dallas-anchored District 7, has also been mentioned as a possible contender. Bazaldua, however, is focused on reelection to the City Council. Saturday is Election Day.

See here for the background. I’m a fan of Rep. Johnson, who has been a good legislator after knocking off a truly terrible Republican incumbent. I don’t know anything about the other two but I’m sure they’re fine. There will be plenty of time to get this all sorted. Several other Democratic State Reps from the Dallas area were also name-checked in this story, along with one – Sen. Nathan Johnson – who stated he will not be running. The July finance reports will surely tell us something, and I will be tracking it.

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House Committee on General Investigations has its hearing

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

And honestly, that’s about all we know.

Rep. Bryan Slaton

State Rep. Bryan Slaton, the Royse City Republican accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a staffer, declined Thursday to discuss his attendance at a closed-door hearing of a House investigative panel that has been looking into the matter.

Slaton did not answer questions from reporters as he left the room where a due-process hearing was taking place. He was absent from the House floor as the investigative panel was meeting in a separate part of the Capitol.

[…]

The committee has kept its investigation under wraps, declining to name the lawmaker being investigated and referring to the investigation only as “Matter B” in public hearings. The committee was also believed to be looking into allegations of an “abusive and hostile” work environment by state Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston.

The committee had scheduled the due-process hearing for 2 p.m. Around 1:30 p.m., lawmakers on the House floor announced a separate meeting of the committee in a different room at 1:45 p.m., when members voted unanimously to issue a subpoena in “Matter B” directing a man “to provide all relevant testimony and information concerning the committee’s inquiry” and to authorize the issuing of “one or more subpoenas for a part or portion of any relevant testimony or information as necessary to avoid overburdening a witness or the committee.”

The Tribune has not confirmed the identity of the man subpoenaed.

The committee also voted to authorize a sergeant-at-arms or an agent to issue the subpoena on behalf of the committee.

As the committee wrapped up that meeting, Slaton entered a nearby room, where the second committee hearing would take place, through a back entrance.

The committee members then walked across the hall for their 2 p.m. due-process hearing and almost immediately went into executive session, ordering members of the public to leave. About an hour later, Slaton was seen exiting the room through the same door he’d entered.

Around 4 p.m., the committee adjourned without making any decisions. State Rep. Andrew Murr, a Republican from Junction who leads the committee, declined comment on Slaton’s involvement in the hearing.

See here for the previous update. One might infer that the committee demonstrated more interest in Rep. Slaton than in Rep. Jones, but it may just be a reflection of the nature of the evidence or the progress of the investigations so far. It’s laudable that the committee has been able to maintain discretion so far, but it’s also frustrating. I have to assume that eventually we’ll find out more.

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City of Dallas hit by ransomware attack

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

A bad day for them.

The city of Dallas said Wednesday afternoon they found a number of their servers compromised with ransomware.

The city’s security monitoring tools notified the Security Operations Center of the ransomware attack, the city said, and it was then confirmed that a number of servers were compromised, impacting areas such as the Dallas Police Department website.

The city is actively working to isolate the ransomware and prevent it from spreading, officials said, and to remove it from infected servers and restore services.

Impact on delivery of services to citizens is limited at the moment, the city said, but officials are working to assess the complete impact.

If anyone is experiencing a problem with a particular city service, the city said they should call 311, or 911 if it is an emergency.

Dallas police said that 911 calls are not affected and that officers are continuing to be dispatched for service.

CNN adds a bit of detail.

There were reports of computer outages or connectivity issues at other Dallas government agencies on Wednesday afternoon.

A computer system that processes records for the Dallas Court and Detention Services Department has been down since 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday, according to a person who answered the phone at the department Wednesday afternoon but declined to give their full name.

“Our system went completely down so there’s not much we can see in terms of looking up people’s citations and traffic tickets,” the person said, adding they were unsure what caused the outage.

[…]

Federal officials are trying to shore up the defenses of state and local governments with federal money and a new program to warn organizations that might be vulnerable to hacking threats.

Quentin Rhoads-Herrera, a Dallas-based cybersecurity executive, told CNN that when he is hired to test the cybersecurity of state and local governments, “we commonly find their security posture to be weaker than that of the average corporate company.”

“This is not due to a lack of concern, but rather a lack of resources and manpower to address the ever-growing challenges of cybersecurity,” said Rhoads-Herrera, who is CEO of security firm Vector0.

Hold that thought for a minute. Bleeping Computer tells us more about the ransomware in question.

BleepingComputer has learned that the Royal Ransomware operation is behind the attack on the City of Dallas.

According to numerous sources, network printers on the City of Dallas’ network began printing out ransom notes this morning, with the IT department warning employees to retain any printed notes.

A photo of the ransom note shared with BleepingComputer allowed us to confirm that the Royal ransomware operation conducted the attack.

The Royal ransomware operation is believed to be an offshoot of the Conti cybercrime syndicate, rising to prominence after Conti shut down its operations.

When launched in January 2022, Royal utilized other ransomware operations’ encryptors, such as ALPHV/BlackCat, to avoid standing out. However, they later started using their own encryptor, Zeon, in attacks for the rest of the year.

Towards the end of 2022, the operation rebranded into Royal and quickly became one of the most active enterprise-targeting ransomware gangs.

While Royal is known to breach networks using vulnerabilities in Internet-exposed devices, they commonly use callback phishing attacks to gain initial access to corporate networks.

These callback phishing attacks impersonate food delivery and software providers in emails pretending to be subscription renewals.

However, instead of containing links to phishing sites, the emails contain phone numbers that the victim can contact to cancel the alleged subscription. In reality, these phone numbers connect to a service hired by the Royal threat actors.

When a victim calls the number, the threat actors use social engineering to convince the victim to install remote access software, allowing the threat actors access to the corporate network.

Like other ransomware gangs, Royal is known to steal data from networks before encrypting devices. This stolen data is then used as further leverage in extortion demands, with the threat actors warning that they will publicly leak data if a ransom is not paid.

At this time, it is unknown if data was stolen from the City of Dallas during the attack.

Does any of this sound familiar? It might, because just a few months ago the Dallas County Appraisal District was hit by the same ransomware. The wording on the ransom note – you can see an image of the one from Wednesday at the Bleeping Computer link – is basically identical. There are a variety of technical tools and strategies one can employ to defend against this sort of thing, but by far the strongest is a plan to train your staff to 1) be more aware of phishing techniques, which includes being extremely careful with links from any unexpected externally-sent email; 2) never calling numbers in emails like these, but contacting local IT/security support for assistance; and 3) never ever ever allowing any external entity to install any software on your computer. I hope every local and state government entity, which has already seen numerous similar incidents, is paying attention to this. It seems very likely we have not heard the last of the Royal Ransomware group in Texas. Also noted by Ginger in today’s Dispatches; she was the one who pointed me to that DCAD story originally.

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

Dispatches from Dallas, May 5 edition

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week in DFW-area news, some big stories: Colin Allred is running against Ted Cruz, the City of Dallas is under a ransomware attack, and of course, more Harlan Crow & Clarence Thomas news. Plus various election items, Greg Abbott’s dog-whistles about the Cleveland mass shooting, whether it’s worth it for a band to play SXSW, and an exhibit about Bass Reeves in Fort Worth.

Also: don’t forget to vote tomorrow in the May elections in your area, Texans! I voted early but if you didn’t, polls are open Saturday. Please read up on your local elections and vote, particularly in your school board elections. That’s one of the ways extremists funnel their people into politics and their cases into the legal system.

First, as you know, Colin Allred’s possible Senate run has been in the news for a while now. If you haven’t seen his opening pitch video yet, you should spend those three minutes. It’s both wholesome and a bit of a firecracker (not hard; Ted Cruz is an easy target). The announcement story in the DMN is nothing you haven’t already read, but Ted Cruz’s response is kind of funny (Archive link). We all know Cruz is full of ego, but I think most readers of this blog can think of good reasons why Allred might not spend time getting to know Cruz in person.

The Dallas Observer has a good roundup of local and state reaction. The real news from Dallas, though, will come in the reshuffle of candidates now that Allred’s seat (CD-32) is open. The DMN has some potentials on the Democratic side lined up (Archive link) and they’re collectively a good group. I hope to see a solid reshuffle upwards out of this and wish Allred and whoever wins the Dem nomination for CD-32 the best.

Note: I’m not in Allred’s district though I probably would be in a world where Dallas wasn’t gerrymandered so thoroughly. Instead I was in CD-5 (Lance Gooden of Terrell) until the recent reshuffle and now Beth Van Duyne of Denton and a bunch of other mid-DFW suburbs (CD-24) is my representative, even though I live in northeast Dallas. The only one of my electeds mentioned in the DMN’s potential shuffle is my state Senator, Nathan Johnson, who’s not running.

Next up, in Six Degrees of Clarence Thomas, ProPublica has dropped another bomb: Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition. The kid is Thomas’ grand-nephew whom he and his wife are raising. The one year we know the cost of for sure was $6,000/month. Propublica’s sources indicate that if Crow was paying for all four high school years of the young man’s education, the cost could have been more than $150,000. Thomas failed to report any of these gifts on his disclosure forms. Our only senators have weighed in (Archive link) and they just don’t care.

I’ve come to the conclusion that every time we talk about Thomas’ corruption I’m going to have to go all Cicero: Thomas must be impeached.

Related, in case you were wondering: Here’s how much Harlan Crow donated to Dallas elections this year (Archive link). My house is in council district 10 and I’m pleased to report that I knew better than to vote for the candidate Crow backed before I read this story. It’s interesting to see that in local races (District 1) Crow’s secret funding of Clarence Thomas is a campaign issue worth including on third-party attack mailers.

Also related, nationally: Graham falsely claims all nine justices signed Roberts’s letter expressing ethics hearing “concerns”. I was indignant when I initially read the news about Roberts’ letter but it turns out Lindsey Graham was just flat-out lying that the rest of the Court had signed on to the letter. Apparently there was a separate statement of the current standards of ethics. I think most of you will agree that the current standards are insufficient (as this TAP article describes), but as the linked newsletter explains, what the justices signed was a lot less upsetting than what Graham said they signed on to.

Last, but not least, in big stories, the City of Dallas is under a ransomware attack. Charles pointed me at this Bleeping Computer rundown which tells me where my tax dollars are going when they pay the ransom, and now the city has confirmed (Archive link) the identity of the ransomware.

My water bill was paid just before the attack hit, so I haven’t tried to use the billing interface (which is supposedly affected) but I can get into it. What I immediately noticed was that the library’s database was down, which probably means I don’t have to finish the book I’m reading that’s due by Saturday after all. Other areas that have seen some problems include city courts (closed) and DPD (significantly impacted per Chief Garcia), and the notes system that emergency dispatchers use with 911. Here’s the official city statement about the attack, which is updated daily but doesn’t say much. I hope next week’s dispatch includes news that the attack is over.

In other news, mostly election-related:

  • One for Charles: 8-Day Campaign Finance Reports for RISD. This comes from a new-to-me local blog that covers Richardson, the suburb nearest to my house (I’m zoned to RISD but live in Dallas city limits). I’ll be keeping an eye on Mr Steger’s work from here on in.
  • Christian activists are fighting to glorify God in a suburban Texas school district. This is Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, and the article is a good primer on the Christian nationalist push into local school districts and the Patriot Mobile funding connection. One piece of information that’s new to me in this article but doesn’t surprise me in the least is that Ted Cruz’s pastor father is involved in Patriot Mobile. One more reason to get Cruz out of the Senate.
  • Related: This first-person account of the ongoing problems in GCISD. “We’re all out here voting for Republicans and being told a leftist takeover is happening in our schools.” I found this via Frankin Strong’s substack, which I once again commend to your attention.
  • Also in education news, but not about the election: Dallas ISD Superintendent Declares ‘State of Emergency’ on School Pay. “The appeal comes from roughly a dozen districts in the North Texas area, including Mesquite, Richardson, Frisco and Plano ISDs.” These are the suburban districts that kids get out of DISD to attend, so they’re better off than DISD. All of our public schools need more money; please keep that in mind as you vote, and particularly in races where the candidates favor vouchers and other means of putting public money into private schools.
  • Nonpartisan no more? PACs and donors shift the scales on fundraising power in Fort Worth. Some interesting numbers and detail on PAC donations for folks following Tarrant County. It’s easy to be nonpartisan when most everyone is a member of the same party, but things don’t work that way in 2023 and certainly not in the last reddish urban area in Texas.
  • In stories I thought might take the lead in today’s Dispatches, the DMN had an editorial about our only governor’s recent foot-in-mouth handling of the recent mass shooting in Cleveland: Texas’ latest mass shooting is about guns, not immigration (Archive link). In addition to how bad he looks to Texans, Abbott is a national embarrassment with respect to immigration policy (WaPo) on top of his many other bad policy takes. We have to vote him out.
  • Noting here that the latest on Bryan Slaton having sex with an intern too young to drink, mentioned by Charles earlier this week, got no traction with local news in Dallas.
  • The Lege is really Charles’ beat but I wanted to note this piece from the DMN: Electric vehicle owners would pay $200 annual fees under Texas bill sent to Gov. Abbott (Archive link). We’re currently considering a new car at our house, and while an additional $200 a year will just be part of the cost consideration if we decide on an EV, it’s enough to make a difference for a lot of people.
  • The Dallas Observer asks an important question: Where Do Newer Acts Fit Into SXSW Today? The answer is that SXSW is and has always been about exposure. When we lived in Austin (2007-2018), we were regular SXSW music-goers. One year we fell in love with a band called Katzenjammer that was playing in the street (Sixth is closed to vehicle traffic during the festival). We got their list of gigs and saw them several times during the festival, the last time at the late, lamented Threadgill’s, where I was interviewed by Norwegian TV. David Byrne also saw them at SXSW and they were at Bonnaroo that summer on a stage Byrne curated. (They never hit it really big in the US, alas, and broke up in 2016.) It’s not the norm, but it does happen, so some bands feel it’s worth it to work for the exposure. I’m not a musician, so I don’t have a dog in that hunt, but I can see both sides.
  • Exhibit on legendary Black lawman Bass Reeves opens at Fort Worth museum. I didn’t know about the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth but I’m going to have to check this exhibit out.
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Allred confirms he is in for Senate

Posted on May 4, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Let’s go.

Rep. Colin Allred

U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, announced Wednesday he is challenging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for reelection.

The third-term congressman made the announcement in a three-minute video posted on social media. The video touted Allred’s life story and congressional record — and took multiple shots at Cruz, including over his role leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection and the trip to Cancun during the 2021 winter freeze.

“We deserve a senator whose team is Texas,” said Allred, a former NFL player. “Ted Cruz only cares about himself — you know that.”

Allred had been considering a campaign for months, and the launch was no surprise after it leaked out earlier this week that his announcement was imminent.

Allred’s campaign begins as an uphill battle. A Democrat hasn’t won a statewide election in Texas since 1994, and while Cruz’s 2018 reelection race against Beto O’Rourke was surprisingly tight, Democrats have not been able to replicate such a close contest since then.

“Some people say a Democrat can’t win in Texas,” Allred said in the video, which partly focused on his upbringing from the son of a single mother to NFL player. “Well, someone like me was never supposed to get this far.”

[…]

Allred is likely to face primary competition. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, is likely to run but not expected to make any announcement until after the current legislative session, which ends May 29.

Allred has to give up his U.S. House seat to run against Cruz. It was made safe for Democrats during the 2021 redistricting process, and there will be no shortage of candidates for it in the Democrat-dominated Dallas area.

Allred’s launch video drew clear battle lines against Cruz, starting with the Jan. 6 insurrection when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in protest of his reelection loss. Allred said Cruz “cheered on the mob and then hid in a supply closet when they stormed the Capitol.”

“That’s Ted for you — all hat, no cattle,” Allred said.

The video also promoted Allred’s bipartisan credentials. He said he has “worked with Republicans” on issues related to veterans, trade and semiconductor manufacturing. The video included multiple shots of Allred appearing with a GOP colleague from North Texas, Rep. Jake Ellzey. They have teamed up a bill to authorize Veterans Affairs construction projects, including in Texas.

See here for the previous update about Allred, and here for the earlier news about Sen. Gutierrez. Maybe there will be a contested primary, and maybe Sen. Gutierrez will decide that he doesn’t need to run after all. We’ll find out soon enough. I’m delighted to have Rep. Allred in the race – I will also be delighted with Sen. Gutierrez if that’s how this ends up – and I look forward to him giving a strong fight to Ted Cruz. He’s an underdog to be sure, and I hope someday to understand what his thought process was, but he can win. Go get ’em. Daily Kos has more.

(I expect we will see an article about who will run for the now-open CD32 in very short order. In all the prior reporting about Allred’s likely Senate run, that subject never came up, so offhand I don’t have any names for this. But I’m sure more than one person has been giving this matter a lot of thought. We’ll know who those folks are pretty quickly, I expect.)

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One more thing about abortion and polling

Posted on May 4, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Just wanted to add one thing to my earlier post about abortion as a political/campaign issue in Texas in 2023-24. In addition to the question of support for or opposition to abortion, most polls also ask questions about what issues voters prioritize. Sometimes they give the respondents a list, sometimes they let the respondents volunteer their answers. You can see examples in the Texas Politics Project polls and in various national polls, among others. The idea here is to try to get a handle on the issues that are actually motivating people to vote, as well as understand which way they would go.

Generally speaking, abortion is not a top-cited issue in most polls. Even in 2022, even among Democrats and the voters Democrats were trying to reach, it wasn’t the top issue. Inflation, crime, the state of democracy, climate change, and abortion were among the top issues for Dems last year, while for Republicans it was inflation, crime, and immigration. There is of course a subset of voters for whom abortion as been The One Issue, but that’s a small group and they are the hardest of the hardcore forced-birth contingent.

Abortion is absolutely becoming a more salient issue for Democrats, where it fits into a panoply of related issues that we see as being genuinely threatened by radical far-right legislators and their enablers on the courts. Voting rights, democracy in general, LGBTQ+ rights, gun control, fights against book bans and “critical race theory” and “don’t say gay” laws and drag show bans and on and on, they’re all of a piece. Dems are increasingly (though still not entirely) unified on these issues, and they both poll better overall and tend to have appeal to a class of voter that used to be on the other team. There are still disagreements – there will always be disagreements – but the Bart Stupak contingent is now vanishingly small. I’d say a fair number of more recent converts, the post-2016 crowd in particular, which includes some of our more energetic activists, came on board in part over abortion rights and the fear of the Roe reversal that was to come.

What’s clear from the polling data we have is that support for abortion rights, even in a more-limited-than-we’d-like manner, significantly exceeds the vote share that pro-choice politicians get. Here in Texas, there are three issues on which public support is totally disconnected from legislative action: Expanded gambling, marijuana decriminalization, and abortion rights. The first two can largely be explained as “Dan Patrick opposes them”, but the third is entirely due to people who say they support abortion rights – again, even in the very limited “rape/incest/health of the mother” way – voting for Republican candidates that support making abortion 100% illegal.

How do we get these Republican voters who want to have at least some access to legal abortion in Texas to stop voting for forced-birth extremists? If I knew the answer to that, I’d be pelting Colin Allred and Roland Gutierrez with my resume to be their campaign manager. I can’t say with certainty that there’s a way to reach these people and change their minds, or at least their voting behavior, even in just one or two key races. But I believe there is, and I believe we can and must try to find it. I believe we did not try to take advantage of this change in the national mood last year – we did try to persuade people about the failures of the grid and our deadly gun laws, with which I have no quarrel other than they ultimately didn’t work – and we must try it next year. I believe we can learn from what activists did in states like Kansas and Michigan and Pennsylvania. I believe there is a risk both of going too far and pushing past the comfort levels of the “I support women who need abortions, but I’m icked out by the women who want them” voters, and also of angering and enervating the activists who want the politicians they support to be as bold and courageous as they are by trying to accommodate the former. I believe we have no choice but to try, whatever the risks are.

Like I said, I don’t know the answers. I’m just trying to frame the questions. I welcome your feedback.

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No federal action to un-screw Houston on Harvey relief funds

Posted on May 4, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Not yet, anyway. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this.

The federal government is punting for now on enforcing a finding that Texas discriminated against communities of color when it stiffed Houston in distributing flood mitigation funds stemming from Hurricane Harvey.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development found last March that the state’s scoring criteria for communities that applied for an initial pot of $1 billion ran afoul of federal civil rights protections.

It said the Texas General Land Office’s criteria “caused there to be disproportionately less funding available to benefit minority residents than was available to benefit white residents.” Some communities, including Houston, Harris County and Port Arthur received no funding in the initial distribution.

After Texas officials, who have denied that allegation, rebuffed federal housing officials’ requests to adjust the plan, HUD referred the matter on April 17 to the Department of Justice.

“On June 28, 2022, HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge requested in writing that Texas Governor Greg Abbott bring GLO into compliance by executing a mutually agreed upon voluntary compliance agreement,” HUD officials wrote in the referral. “Subsequently, the Governor indicated that he was not open to taking any action to resolve HUD’s findings of discrimination. HUD has exhausted all avenues but has not been unable to voluntarily resolve this matter.”

The DOJ, though, said two days later that it would not take any action until HUD’s related investigation into whether the state also violated the Fair Housing Act is complete. It also urged HUD to continue seeking voluntary compliance from the state.

“Based on our review, we are deferring consideration of referral and returning the above-mentioned matter to HUD for further investigation,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke wrote on April 19.

[…]

Two advocacy groups, the Northeast Action Collective and Texas Housers, filed a complaint with HUD, which said the plans ran afoul of the Civil Rights Act. That finding centered on two issues with the GLO criteria.

First, the state used a metric that effectively penalized large jurisdictions, such as Houston, by measuring what percentage of an applicant’s residents would benefit from a proposed project. The City of Iola applied for a project benefiting all 379 of its residents, and received 10 points for that criteria. Houston applied for a project benefiting 8,845 people in Kashmere Gardens, and it received .37 out of 10 points, because Houston has 2.3 million residents.

Second, HUD said the state divided the competition into two uneven categories: the most impacted and distressed areas, as defined by HUD, which included Houston and Harris County; and more rural counties that also got a presidential disaster declaration. Both categories fought for pots of essentially equal money, but the first category has about eight times as many residents, and includes 90 percent of the minority residents in the entire eligible population.

Ben Martin, research director at Texas Housers, said those findings stand, despite the DOJ’s letter. He said the Fair Housing investigation also results from the complaint Texas Housers and the Northeast Action Collective filed.

“We urge HUD and DOJ to move quickly to resolve the remaining investigation and if necessary to move to enforcement in order to cure the discrimination that the state of Texas has engaged in,” Masters said. “Also, both DOJ and HUD have urged the state to participate in voluntary negotiations to resolve the matter and to get desperately needed assistance to the communities who were discriminated against. We stand ready to act to resolve this issue.”

See here, here, and here for some background. As the story notes, Harris County was also initially screwed by the GLO, but eventually received $750 million, which is still not enough but which is now mostly going towards existing flood mitigation projects originating with the 2018 flood bond referendum. I’m not sufficiently versed in bureaucratese to grok this decision by the Justice Department, but if I had to guess they want HUD to finish up its other investigation so that if and when they move to enforce something on the GLO, that won’t be a dangling thread that a federal court could point to as a reason to hold them off. I dunno, it’s all kind of arcane. Given this, I’ll join the call for HUD to get on with it, and then we’ll see what the DOJ does.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of May 1

Posted on May 4, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes you all a sturdy maypole and an inexhaustible supply of ribbons as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Countersuit in the “wrongful death” abortion saga

Posted on May 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Wild.

A man who is suing his ex-wife’s friends for allegedly helping her get an abortion may have known about her plans and done nothing to stop her, according to a new legal filing.

Marcus Silva brought a wrongful-death lawsuit in March in Galveston County, claiming three women helped his now-ex-wife obtain abortion-inducing medication and “conceal the pregnancy and murder from Marcus, the father of the unborn child.”

The lawsuit is the first of its kind since the overturn of Roe v. Wade last summer. Silva is seeking a million dollars in damages from each plaintiff.

But now, Jackie Noyola and Amy Carpenter, two of the women accused of facilitating the abortion, are countersuing Silva, claiming that he found the medication and text messages laying out their plans before his ex-wife underwent the abortion.

“Rather than talking with [his ex-wife] about what he found or disposing of the pill, Silva took photos of the texts and surreptitiously put the pill back,” the lawsuit reads. “He wasn’t interested in stopping her from terminating a possible pregnancy. Instead, he wanted to obtain evidence he could use against her if she refused to stay under his control, which is precisely what he tried to do.”

The countersuit contains a screenshot of a police report Silva allegedly made to the League City Police Department on July 17, claiming he found a pill labeled MF in his ex-wife’s purse almost a week prior. He identified the pill as mifepristone, a common abortion-inducing medication.

It’s not clear what became of the police report, but the legal filings seem to agree Silva’s ex-wife took the medication, intending to terminate her pregnancy. Silva confronted her two weeks later, the lawsuit says, and told her he knew about the abortion.

He threatened to use the screenshots and evidence he had gathered to have her sent to jail if she didn’t “give him my ‘mind body and soul’ until the end of the divorce, which he’s going to drag out,” she wrote in text messages to Noyola and Carpenter. She said Silva was asking her to sell the house, give him primary custody of the children and “basically [play] wife.”

Texas law does not allow criminal or civil charges to be brought against the pregnant patient who undergoes the abortion; Silva’s ex-wife is not a party to the lawsuit.

Noyola and Carpenter are countersuing Silva for violating their right to privacy and the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act, which makes it a crime to access a computer without the consent of the owner. They note that if there is a violation of the state’s abortion laws, Silva is as responsible as anyone, since he knew about the medication and did nothing to stop it.

“The hypocrisy of Silva seeking more than a million dollars in damages is as shocking as it is shameful,” the filing says. “It is a craven misuse and abuse of the judicial system to facilitate his ongoing harassment and abuse of his ex-wife.”

[…]

If this case proceeds, the countersuit filing raises several potentially important legal arguments about how and when Texas’ intersecting abortion laws can be enforced. One argument centers on the laws’ exemption from legal liability for the pregnant patient.

“It is not illegal or wrongful for a woman to terminate her own pregnancy,” the suit says. And thus, the lawyers argue “it is not illegal or wrongful to help a friend do something she is legally permitted to do … Nor should it be.”

See here for the background and here for a copy of the countersuit, helpfully annotated on Twitter by Mark Joseph Stern. I have no idea what the legal terrain of this one will be, but I feel reasonably confident saying that it will ultimately be about more than just whether Marcus Silva snooped on his ex-wife’s computer. I’ll wait to hear from legal experts about what all that might mean. The Chron, which notes that the two women are represented by Rusty Hardin, and the Texas Signal have more.

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A “who not to vote for” guide in Katy ISD

Posted on May 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

For your information.

The Katy ISD school board race has taken a sharp political turn as some candidates vying for the nonpartisan position accepted Republican party endorsements and appeared on flyers that attacked their opponents as “far left” supporters of “radical ideologies.”

The position of school board of trustees is non-partisan in Texas, but three candidates have accepted endorsements from the Harris County GOP and never publicly objected when mailers were sent likening their opponents to Democrat politicians President Joe Biden and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

Amy Theime, Morgan Calhoun and Mary Ellen Cuzela, candidates for Positions 3, 4 and 5 respectively accepted endorsement from the Harris County GOP. The organization on April 21 sent out a mass text message urging voters to “fight back against the radical left’s woke agenda that’s seeping into our schools.

It’s the latest escalation in a new partisan tone sweeping school board races across the country, which have become the latest battleground as coordinated blocs of candidates from both sides fight for control of local schools. The two sides have clashed over COVID precautions and what conservative say is a concern about “Critical Race Theory,” an academic concept taught in some colleges that asserts that racism is embedded in the nation’s criminal justice system.

In the last week, Katy residents have been inundated with mailers accusing the candidates’ opponents, Bruce Bradford, Cicely Taylor and Shana Peterson of being radical liberal ideologists. In the May 6 election, nine candidates are vying for three Katy ISD school board seats.

As the flyers hit mailboxes, Peterson said that she’s actually a conservative, but that she refuses to bring her personal politics into the school board.

“I’ve voted Republican in every election, but this isn’t about me,” Peterson said. “Politics have no place in school boards.”

The flyers were paid for by Texans for Educational Freedom. While the organization didn’t respond to requests for comments, according to its website, the group exists to “keep liberal politics out of the classroom.”

[…]

Dax Gonzalez, director of government relations for the Texas Association of School Boards, said school boards are supposed to be apolitical because they’re intended to serve all students from all backgrounds. TASB is a nonprofit educational association that serves and represents Texas school boards and supports local public schools.

“The reason that school boards are nonpartisan is because education is a nonpartisan issue,” Gonzalez said. “When (board members) get into that boardroom, they set aside the things that make them different, and they work towards educating all kids to make sure that they all have successful outcomes.”

I just had a post about local and school board candidates in the May elections that have been endorsed by the Texas Democratic Party, so I’m not going to criticize the Harris County GOP for endorsing candidates in these races. I am going to criticize them for endorsing a bunch of book-banning wackos, who have no business being anywhere near a school, let alone a position on a school board. The Book-Loving Texan’s Guide to the May 2023 School Board Elections, which I blogged about here, has a guide to the Katy ISD elections, and it has plenty to say about these three candidates, as well as the shameful recent history of hysteria and moral panic in that district.

If you live in Katy or know someone who does, please make sure you or they don’t vote for Theime, Calhoun, or Cuzela. The BLTG highlights Cicely Taylor (one of two candidates running against Calhoun) and Shana Peterson (opposing Cuzela) as the best options. There are two other candidates in the third race, against Thieme, and the BLTG doesn’t offer an opinion on either of them, so make your own decision. Whatever the case, Thieme is clearly the worst of the three. Please go and vote accordingly.

(For the record, the TDP did not endorse any of the candidates in the Katy ISD races.)

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How the May election is being run in Harris County

Posted on May 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

Fresh off last November’s midterm elections, Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum has implemented operational upgrades to the county’s system and vote collection process for presiding judges working at polling locations.

These changes have been in full swing as early voting for the May 6 election – which covers races for school board trustees, public infrastructure bond proposals and smaller county municipal leaders and mayors – started this Monday, April 24 and will end on Tuesday, May 2.

Tatum’s moved to alter the county’s procedures after some Republican candidates made claims of voter suppression that they said were due to paper ballot shortages at least 20 of the total 782 polling locations.

To avoid similar issues from reoccurring, the county has digitized its inventory system, moved from its old phone system to the software tracking system, ServiceNow, and designated several of its early voting polling locations as supply centers – locations where ballot paper or other election items that are needed can be picked up, according to Nadia Hakim, deputy director of communications for Harris County election administrator’s office.

Additionally, the county has designated six rally centers where presiding judges will go after they have completed their closing procedures; instead of having to drive all the way to a central downtown location as they did with NRG Arena in the last election.

Each judge will be assigned to one of the six locations; this is meant to make the unofficial results available to the public sooner, Hakim said.

Brandon Rottinghaus, University of Houston political science professor said that this election can be used as a trial run as it features local races on the ballot making it a smaller scale, lower stakes election.

“It is helpful for municipalities to start off with an election like this after they’ve made changes so it can give them a sense of where there might be some flaws and gives them an opportunity to fix them before they’ve got a groundswell of additional voters,” Rottinghaus said.

[…]

Dr. Benjamin Bannon, Manager of Training for Harris County Elections Administration, who prepares the presiding judges’ working polling locations, has been in close contact with the county to ensure that the changes implemented are processed and understood by the judges.

“We are given updates and information and what we do is make sure the training that we are delivering is accurate and communicated to everyone,” Bannon said.

He conducts four-hour long classes making sure the judges carry out procedures correctly, and also trains them to handle and interact with voters at the polls.

“We model training as to how we would like to operate at a voting center with accuracy and precision,” Bannon said. “We tell the judges that they are going to be met with individuals who know what they are doing and those who may need a few questions answered.”

Although these judges will not be traveling to a central location this time around, no other changes to how they are supposed to operate were made. The county usually updates their training curriculum ahead of every midterm election.

For small-scale elections like this one, Bannon trains around 2,000 judges, compared to larger ones, where he will train around 6,000.

I mostly note this because of the news that the Elections Office has implemented a trouble-tracking system, which had been notably absent before now and was a reason cited in the office’s post-election assessment as to why the facts were not fully established regarding the paper shortages. Both that story and this one from last November note that other large counties had implemented such systems years ago; the latter story says Dallas has had such a system in place since 2012. I note this because, of course, Stan Stanart was still running elections in Harris County in 2012. Indeed, he had another six years of running them before finally being voted out. So when certain people complain about how elections have been run in Harris County, it’s worth noting that elections were run in Harris County before 2020 as well. Maybe it’s taking awhile for the Elections office to get things all cleaned up, but there was a much longer period before that, which is what necessitated the cleanup in the first place.

UPDATE: I drafted this over the weekend, before the Senate passed bills to force Harris County to return election administration to the County Clerk and Tax Assessor and allow the SOS to order a new election in Harris County if more than two percent of voting locations run out of paper. (Which will get sued if it passes.) The weird and probably unhealthy thing is that I actually expected worse. Going back to the old two-office election management process is inefficient and just dumb, but we have a good County Clerk who used to run the elections herself, so it’ll be fine. And if there’s one thing I feel confident we’ll fix after the 2022 saga, it’s never underestimating the amount of paper ballots needed again. If this is all they do, all I can say is it could have been worse. Again, a screwed up way of thinking about it, but this is the kind of trauma that the Lege is inflicting these days.

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Allred reportedly set to announce a challenge to Cruz

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Well, well, well.

Rep. Colin Allred

Democratic Rep. Colin Allred is planning to announce a run against Sen. Ted Cruz as soon as this week, according to two people familiar with his plans.

A former NFL player-turned-civil rights attorney, Allred has been quietly prepping for a run against Cruz for months. During his two successful reelection bids since ousting an entrenched incumbent in 2018, Allred has proven a prolific fundraiser. He’s well-liked within the Democratic Caucus and has also picked up positions in leadership, now serving as a member of House Minority Whip Katherine Clark’s (D-Mass.) team and as previously part of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) expansive leadership team.

Allred won his suburban Dallas House seat in 2018, unseating Rep. Pete Sessions — a former House Rules Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee chair who later returned to the House after running in a different district.

After 2020’s redistricting, Allred’s district became safely Democratic, meaning he could likely hold his current seat for as long as he chooses. His decision to give it up to run for Senate instead, in a state where his party has struggled to win statewide, sets up a potentially high-profile general election race next fall.

Cruz, now serving his second term in the Senate, faced a tougher-than-expected challenge from then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) in 2018. Though O’Rourke lost by about 2.6 percentage points, the former House member developed a national profile that he parlayed into an unsuccessful 2020 presidential run.

Allred may well follow O’Rourke’s model. Even if he doesn’t win, he will raise his political cachet with a 2024 run against Cruz — giving himself national exposure and building a massive donor list.

It’s a short story, which does not mention the previous reporting that State Sen. Roland Gutierrez is also preparing to announce his candidacy against Cruz. As with that, one must retain some discretion until one hears it from the candidate’s mouth – Sen. Gutierrez later said that he’ll address his situation after the legislative session – but also as with the Gutierrez story, one has to assume that this didn’t get to a reporter without the full knowledge of the man in question. This could make the 2024 primary a lot more interesting in Texas.

Allred is a strong fundraiser and would start out with a significant financial advantage over Gutierrez, enough so that if he walks back that earlier story it would not shock me. He’ll need to step it up another notch or two to take on Cruz, but I feel confident he can do that. If nothing else, this may be the most realistic takeover opportunity for Dems in their bad Senate cycle year. We’ll find out soon enough. The Trib, which does note the existence of Sen. Gutierrez’s interest in the race, has more.

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House investigations committee sets a hearing

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Put it on your calendar.

Rep. Bryan Slaton

The Texas House Committee on General Investigating unanimously agreed on Monday that a lawmaker may have been involved in inappropriate workplace conduct and set a due process hearing into the matter for Thursday.

The committee did not identify the target of the investigation, which member Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, referred to only as “Matter B.”

The committee is believed to be looking into the behavior of at least two representatives, Democrat Jolanda Jones of Houston and Republican Bryan Slaton of Royse City.

[…]

The investigative committee announced the due process hearing after meeting for almost two hours privately, in executive session, Monday morning. Neither Jones nor Slaton was present. It was unclear whether the hearing would be closed to the public or not.

The committee, made up of three Republicans and two Democrats and chaired by Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, investigates alleged wrongdoing in government and potential misconduct by members. It issued four subpoenas in April but did not identify what they were for.

See here and here for more on Rep. Jones, here and here for more on Rep. Slaton, and here for more on the subpoenas. It’s fine that we don’t know yet what the committee intends to do, there should be secrecy on these matters until the committee knows enough to make information public. We’ll find out soon enough.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Spring Branch ISD versus “James and the Giant Peach”

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Note: The following is a guest post, written by my friend Diana Martinez Alexander. I occasionally run guest posts, some of which I solicit and some of which are sent to me.

Southlake. Garland. Frisco. Now Spring Branch is pushing to join the ranks of school districts in Texas who are making the news for all the wrong reasons.

“Parents’ Rights” is the newest buzzword used by conservative politicos, and that has translated into small contingents of vocal individuals with seemingly coordinated talking points on CRT, gender identity, Socio-Emotional Learning, and attacks on books and distrust of librarians and educators. The ACLU has even gotten involved in a case where a high school track team member faced consequences for running in a *gasp* sports bra.

The latest situation centers around an elementary grade field trip to the Main Street theater as a culminating activity for some students reading the book of the same name, James and the Giant Peach. Apparently, a common tactic of allowing cast members to double up on roles or play a character of another gender is a bridge too far for some community members. So after this concern was shared with district officials, the remaining schools from SBISD had their trip to the Main Street Theater canceled.

Never mind that some students read this book with the promise of seeing the play. Never mind that this theater is renowned for providing quality productions for nearly fifty years. Never mind that this may have been one of the few opportunities for these elementary school students to experience theater. Never mind all of the effort and work from staff to make the arrangements for this field trip. Never mind that parents had an opportunity to sign a permission slip for their children to attend.

Instead, a handful of chest-thumping parents have made international news as the district kowtows to their demands. However, this misplaced deference comes at great cost to SBISD. Strictly in terms of our reputation, the public widely admonishes the decision to cancel the field trip and frankly, wonders what the heck is going on in our community. Second, this results in a chilling effect on teachers and staff making any decision which could be perceived as controversial, to the detriment of students’ learning experiences. This could very well lead to a loss of experienced staff afraid of retribution, particularly those who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community. (We are already there, as just this week I heard of at least two instances of staff on leave relating to this increased hostility.) Lastly, this could have a very direct impact on the district’s theater productions, many of which have been nominated for Tommy Tune Awards. It’s a widely used practice to have students play characters of another gender, much like Shakespeare or Grecian theater.

Over and over, I’ve been hearing the same refrain: Parents should have the ability to make decisions on the books, extracurricular activities, and field trip participation for their child. But not all the children in a school community.

In response to an email on 4/27/23 I sent regarding this decision, Superintendent Blaine wrote:

“Based on the concerns we heard, the decision was made to request campuses planning to attend make [sic] alternative arrangements. My responsibility is to ensure that content students are exposed to during school hours is age appropriate. Given the information we had, the decision was made to err on the side of caution. Please understand these decisions are not always easy to make and are always done in the best interest of our students.”

You can also view a response sent by one of the SBISD principals to parents below.

I don’t see any winners here, only losers. The students definitely lose out on an opportunity to engage with their learning, build love of the arts, and experience theater in person. Again, this disproportionately impacts historically marginalized students who may not be otherwise exposed to the arts. A larger population of Title 1 schools are on the north side of the district. (Title 1 schools receive funding based on the percentage of students who qualify for free/reduced lunch.)

And in SBISD, divided by Interstate 10, it’s been a struggle to have voices heard by the board without equitable representation on the board. People are working to even the playing field, with a lawsuit filed in 2021 to change from at-large representation on the school board to single member or a hybrid model.

Speaking personally, I am ready to have someone with an authentic perspective on  the struggles of our Title 1 schools and campus communities on the north side representing us on the board, like candidates David Lopez for Position 1 and Becky Downs for Position 2.  As a graduate myself, former employee, parent of a graduate, and current SBISD community member, I see the devotion and loyalty held by many for our little corner of Harris County.  I also see the determination of those fighting against the erasure of those deemed problematic by right-wing extremists.  Good, I am glad.  

We’ll see on election day, May 6th, if #PeachGate makes a difference in the results.  Otherwise, students may learn the lesson that their families will only matter in decisions if they espouse the basest viewpoints amplified by conservative think tanks that aim to dismantle public education as we know it.  In Spring Branch, we are not willing to let that happen.

More on the demographics of SBISD:

Spring Branch District Profile

https://www.khou.com/article/news/education/spring-branch-elementary-school-tea-grade-2022/285-0fc5e54a-adfe-4fcc-83f2-a54c536231df

Diana Martinez Alexander is currently an educator in a large urban school district in Houston, serving special education students, linguistically diverse populations, and lower socio-economic communities. She is a proud daughter of immigrants, wife, mother, educator, and advocate who is devoted to working for community.

Note from Charles: The Chron story about this saga is here.

Posted in Election 2023, School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

What does abortion as a political issue really look like in Texas now?

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

In my earlier post about what the likely Biden/Trump rematch looks like in Texas, I said that abortion really wasn’t tested here as a political issue in 2022. I said I’d like to see it be a real focus for next year, if only to get an answer to that question. It was this tweet that got me thinking along those lines.

It’s great that NBC News has this deep archive of polling data, especially since they’ve asked the same question, which allows for direct comparisons. The shift over time is indeed striking. It’s important to remember, however, that believing abortion should be legal “most of the time” is likely not incompatible with a 15-week ban, as proposed by Sen. Lindsay Graham, in the minds of many voters. There are of course major issues with such a ban, beginning with the fact that most conditions that cause fetal death and serious health risks for the mother cannot be detected until several weeks after that artificial deadline. There’s also the critical question of availability, especially in states that would continue to have other restrictions like wait times and requiring multiple office visits, all of which contribute to having fewer clinics and running out the clock on many women who don’t live near them. I do not expect that anyone who is currently mad about Dobbs and the continued crusade by the zealots to expand it further would be fooled by this proposal. But it’s a reminder that not only is how a poll is worded very important, it’s also the case that however you do word it, people will interpret what it means their own way. Getting at how people understand what the wording means, and what the consequences of their preferred interpretations may be, is incredibly difficult.

A few days after that tweet, Politifact in the DMN did its own study of national opinion on abortion.

Every year, the pollster Gallup asks people about their satisfaction with aspects of American life. Respondents saying they are “very dissatisfied” with “the nation’s policies regarding the abortion issue” have spiked somewhat.

In 2021, 30% of survey respondents said they were “very dissatisfied” on abortion policy. In 2022, the share rose to 41%, and in 2023, it rose to 48%. (As recently as 2014, the share saying this was as low as 19%.)

This finding is broadly echoed in polling by Quinnipiac University that was completed at shorter intervals before and after Roe was overturned.

In May 2021, 57% of respondents told Quinnipiac that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. But Quinnipiac’s most recent survey, from February 2023, found 64% saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 29% said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.

This shift has also been seen in some state-level polling. In Arkansas, which has some of the nation’s strictest abortion laws, the percentage of respondents to the Arkansas Poll saying that it should be “more difficult” to get an abortion dropped from 50% to below 30% from 2020 to 2022, while the share saying it should be “easier” showed the reverse pattern, climbing from about 13% to 32%, said Janine Parry, director of the Arkansas Poll at the University of Arkansas.

However, polling in Wisconsin shows less dramatic shifts.

Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, said he has “not seen much change” across multiple questions his polling operation has asked in national polls.

For instance, from September 2021 to September 2022 — a period spanning the time before and after the Supreme Court’s ruling — the Marquette poll asked about overturning Roe. (Before the decision, the question was posed about a potential future decision overturning Roe; afterward, the question involved the decision itself.)

Excluding respondents who said they didn’t know anything about a potential or actual decision, the percentage of respondents who opposed it fell modestly, from 72% to 67%, while the percentage that had heard of the decision and supported it rose equally modestly, from 28% to 33%.

Still, these figures showed that respondents favored the abortion-rights position by about a 2-1 margin in a politically competitive state.

And national polling data from the Democratic firm Navigator also shows a general dissatisfaction with the Republican position on abortion, said Margie Omero, a principal with the Democratic research firm GBAO. Asked whether they “approve or disapprove of how Republicans in Congress are handling” abortion policy, 35% approved, compared to 56% who disapproved.

Different polls, different wording, but the overall trend is similar. Again, though, you have to consider what people might have understood the question to mean. Some number of those “very dissatisfied” people could be the forced birth zealots who are upset that overturning Roe didn’t mean that abortion is banned everywhere. In Arkansas, where the laws are so drastic, there’s little room for “more difficult”. Surely some of the people who used to want it to be more difficult now think it’s just right, and some of those thinking it should be easier are just thinking in terms of rape/incest/health of the mother exceptions. While clearly some people are more pro-choice than before, it’s hard to say how many, and how important it is to them.

Now again, all that said, the overall trend across multiple polls, as well as the objective evidence of the 2022 election and abortion referenda in states like Kansas and Kentucky and Montana, strongly suggest that the pro-choice position is the more popular, and the extremist stance now being touted by most Republicans is a loser, while no one buys their soggy attempts at “moderation”. It stands to reason, as we have seen in Presidential horse race polls, that the national shift implies related shifts across the states. And that brings us to Texas.

There is polling data for Texas. The Texas Politics Project has polling data that goes back to 2008. The problem is that they vary the questions from poll to poll, so direct comparisons are tricky. There are a couple of close-enough points we can look at. For example, from July 2008:

Do you believe that abortion should be:

29% generally available
15% more limited
35% illegal except in cases of rape/incest/to save the life of the mother
17% never permitted
5% Don’t know/refused/NA

Who knows what “generally available” and “more limited” mean, especially since the third choice is fairly limited. However you want to look at it, the mostly-to-all-illegal positions are a majority. Now here’s October 2018:

What is your opinion on the availability of abortion?
15% By law, abortion should never be permitted.
29% The law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest or when the woman’s life is in danger.
12% The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established.
39% By law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice.
5% Don’t know

I couldn’t begin to tell you what “only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established” means, but given the rest of that question it seems to be about abortion being somewhat more accessible than just the rape/incest/health of the mother exceptions. If we count that as a “generally available” option, then the pro-choice position is now in the majority. Note that at the time this was conducted, we were still more than three years away from the Dobbs decision.

In October 2022, we get a chart summarizing the course of one particular question:

Do you think that abortion laws in Texas should be made more strict, less strict, or left as they are now?


         Stricter  As now  Less strict  DK/NA
=============================================
Oct 2022       18      25           50      8
Aug 2022       20      21           49     10
Feb 2022       23      23           43     12
Apr 2021       33      22           33     11
Feb 2021       32      18           37     13
Feb 2019       41      20           32      8
Jun 2013       38      21           26     14

Two things to keep in mind here. One is that between April 2021 and February 2022, the Lege passed the vigilante bounty hunter law SB8, which had the effect of making surgical abortion basically illegal and almost completely unavailable. That also means that before then, the “as it is now” option was technically a pro-choice one, while after SB8 it’s an anti-abortion one. In reality, given the widespread closures of clinics after the passage of HB2 in 2013 – you remember, the omnibus anti-abortion bill that was aimed at making it extremely difficult for clinics to operate, the bill that was famously filibustered by Wendy Davis – the “as now” choice was more likely to be favored by those who preferred a strict regime, just because – as noted above – on a practical level abortions were hard to access, especially outside the big urban areas. Vibes-wise, it was mostly anti-abortion before 2021, and definitely anti-abortion after 2021.

With all that said, you can see the clear shift after the passage of SB8. The “less strict” number jumped ten points in less than a year, and was up by 17 points in a year and a half. By August 2022, which is now post-Dobbs, the “less strict” answer is a majority (okay, almost in August but there in October). The trend is there.

Still, there are reasons to be cautious about this. In October 2014 (scroll to page 15) and February 2023 (page 32), the poll gives various specific scenarios for when an abortion might be legal or illegal, which mostly break down to the rape/incest/health of the mother situations and discretionary, abortion-on-demand situations. In both years, there’s a clear distinction between the former, which generally has strong support, and the latter, where support is at best a plurality, and even then comes with limits.

The interpretation I have for this is that poll respondents are broadly sympathetic to women who “need” abortions, but less so – sometimes much less so – to women who “want” abortions. That’s going to make the messaging for this super challenging, with vagueness likely to be the best strategy. The key difference between now and, say, 2014, when Republicans gleefully clubbed Wendy Davis over the head for her pro-choice positions, is exactly that the facts on the ground have changed. People are more likely to understand that women who “need” abortions simply cannot get them in Texas, and that this is harmful to them. That opens the door, but how much that door can swing past the “rape/incest/health of the mother” milestone is a question I can’t answer. As I’ve been saying, I strongly believe we need to test this, but I fully acknowledge that it won’t be easy to do and there are downsides if we fail. I just don’t think there’s any other way forward.

Anyway, this is my manifesto for 2024. I welcome your feedback.

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

First round of cuts for Board of Managers wannabes

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

And then there were two hundred and twenty-five.

Fewer than half of the people who applied for the Houston ISD board of managers completed a weekend governance training required to move forward in the application process, according to the Texas Education Agency.

The agency said 225 people completed a mandatory two-day Lone Star Governance training that took place over the past two weekends. Those applicants are eligible to advance to the next phase of interviews, while those who did not attend the training, left early or skipped the second day have been eliminated from the process.

With a little more than a month until the agency plans to appoint the board of managers, the TEA is now moving forward with the interview phase of the selection process, which includes virtual and observational interviews, according to the agency.

[…]

Applicants included 199 men and 260 women, according to the TEA. The applicant pool was roughly 39 percent Black, 33 percent white, 11 percent Hispanic, 7.5 percent two or more races, 4.5 percent Asian and 4.3 percent another race.

Nearly 70 percent of the applicants held a master’s or doctorate degree, including 38 people with a doctorate in education, according to the agency.

Candidates were dispersed throughout the school system, according to the TEA, with 53 applicants from HISD district one, 36 from district two, 17 from district three, 73 from district four, 67 from district five, 36 from district six, 54 from district seven, 38 from district eight and 48 from district nine.

See here and here for some background. I don’t have anything new to add, but I guess I’m glad that there’s a decent number of applicants from each district, though we could have done better in District III. Not surprising, given the previous news about the demographic makeup of the applicant pool, that this is one of the more heavily Latino districts. We can and should continue to protest this entire process, but we should also want the selected Board to be as qualified and representative as it can be. No reason to make a bad problem even worse.

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Don’t hold out hope for hockey in Houston

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

In case you had been doing so.

There is what seems to be perpetual interest in bringing an NHL team to Houston.

The interest, however, isn’t mutual at this time for hockey’s premier league to grow beyond its current 32 teams, commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday.

“It’s not anything we’re looking at right now in terms of ‘OK, it’s time to expand,’ ” Bettman said at a meeting with a group of Associated Press Sports Editors in New York.

The latest round of NHL-to-Houston speculation flared up last month, with chatter from two prominent ESPN commentators and a leading hockey insider in Canadian media saying “there is definitely something with both Atlanta and Houston and the NHL.”

But Bettman on Tuesday said the league is content at 32 teams, the number it reached after adding expansion franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle in 2017 and 2021, respectively. Houston has not had a pro hockey team since the American Hockey League’s Aeros moved to Des Moines, Iowa, after the 2012-13 season.

“I don’t think it’s our manifest destiny to have 34, 36 or 38 teams,” Bettman said Tuesday. “I think we’re great at 32. We have a terrific footprint. But yeah, places like, in no particular order, Quebec City, Atlanta, Houston, Salt Lake City are all expressing interest. But it’s not something that in the moment we’re dealing with. I don’t know if we will or we won’t.”

We’ve been talking about bringing an NHL team to Houston for over a decade, even before the minor league team that was in existence at the time vamoosed to Iowa. Hasn’t been much talk lately, though Pasadena tried to lure a minor league team a few years ago. I’m not a huge hockey fan – daughter #2 has picked up an interest in the sport; I owe her a trip to Dallas to see the Stars in the fall – but it would be fun to have a team here. As has always been the case, maybe someday.

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

Weekend link dump for April 30

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

“How Gamers Eclipsed Spies as an Intelligence Threat”.

Hey, person named Kyle, what are you doing on May 21?

“While I’m not much of a believer in the idea that the young voters will save us — my own demographic, Gen X, is disturbingly favorable for MAGA candidates despite the fact we should know better — I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the Republican/conservative brand is toxic with the youth and even worse for those who haven’t hit voting age yet.”

“A top lawyer for Smartmatic, the voting technology company whose defamation lawsuit against Fox News is still pending, said Thursday that he won’t accept any settlement smaller than the $787 million Fox agreed to pay Dominion, and that his client needs a “full retraction” from the right-wing network disavowing the lies it spread about the 2020 presidential election.”

“Even if you could ignore all of that, there are still major red flags with the announcement of the Harry Potter TV reboot’s commitment to a “faithful adaptation” that didn’t just spring up out of nowhere after Rowling’s transphobia came out.”

The “forced grandma-ization exploit” that makes chatbots tell you things they’re not supposed to.

“How did the Twitter checkmark become toxic? It took multiple strokes of business failure: First by Musk making Twitter worse, second by charging more for Twitter Blue at the same time he was making the site worse, and third by making himself an unappealing person for people to associate themselves with in public. The masses are not balking at paying for Twitter Blue because they’re trying to shelter themselves within a crumbling elitist internet order, but because they think Musk is offering an unworthy product and is also a dickhead.”

RIP, Barry Humphries, comic actor best known for his Dame Edna Everage character.

“Gee, how come we don’t see liberal media outlets paying huge settlements in defamation lawsuits?”

“There was a one-of-a-kind reunion over the weekend at Arlington House — the national memorial to Robert E. Lee that sits atop a hill in Arlington National Cemetery. Descendants of the Confederate general gathered with the descendants of the people the Lee family once enslaved on the property in Virginia. Many of them are seeing one another in person for the first time after meeting virtually for the last two years in pursuit of racial understanding in what’s known as the Family Circle.”

See ya later, Tucker. Don’t let the door hit you, etc. Kind of amazing, given his long and disgusting history, all of which Fox News was fine with, but here we are. I’m posting these links on Monday and all this may become obsolete before Sunday, but at this time all the explanations for why this happened sound like BS. We’ll see if the shoe has dropped by the weekend.

“What Beck, O’Reilly and Kelly didn’t understand at the time, and what somebody should explain to Carlson this evening, is that Fox itself, which convenes the audience, is the star. And the star maker is whomever network owner Rupert Murdoch has assigned to run the joint. The nighttime hosts, as talented as they are — and Beck, O’Reilly, Kelly and Carlson are among some of the most talented broadcasters to slop the makeup on and speak into the camera — are as replaceable as the members of the bubblegum group the Archies, as interchangeable as the actors who’ve played James Bond, as expendable as the gifted musicians who played lead guitar for the Yardbirds.”

“Clarence Thomas’s Billionaire Friend Did Have Business Before the Supreme Court”.

“As a result, the Covid Crisis Group concluded that “Trump was a co-morbidity” with Covid. Comorbidity is a medical term meaning that a patient suffers from two or more chronic diseases simultaneously.”

RIP, Len Goodman, original judge on Dancing With The Stars and former judge on Strictly Come Dancing.

RIP, Harry Belafonte, legendary singer, actor, and civil rights activist.

“I don’t think I’m suggesting anything bold or controversial when I say that it’s a Good Thing that Plymouth’s town square is no longer dominated by a severed head on a pike. This is not to say that removing that spectacle absolved Plymouth of all of its sins or that it solved every other imaginable problem facing the place. No one is saying that. No one ever would say that any more than anyone has ever said that Bree Newsome magically ended all of South Carolina’s problems when she tore down the vile Klan-hankie decorating its capital.”

“The era of Nate Silver running FiveThirtyEight at ESPN/ABC News/Disney looks to be coming to a close amidst wider Disney layoffs.”

“Disney finds itself in this regrettable position because it expressed a viewpoint the Governor and his allies did not like. Disney wishes that things could have been resolved a different way. But Disney also knows that it is fortunate to have the resources to take a stand against the State’s retaliation – a stand smaller businesses and individuals might not be able to take when the State comes after them for expressing their own views. In America, the government cannot punish you for speaking your mind.”

“The College Board says changes will be made to its new AP African American studies course, after critics said the agency bowed to political pressure and removed several topics from the framework, including Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations and queer life.”

RIP, Jerry Springer, legendary talk show host, daytime TV star and and former mayor of Cincinnati.

Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman at the center of the Emmett Till murder, has died.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 2 Comments

What would that ban on drag actually look like?

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It would be a mess, to put it charitably.

Obviously a pervert

Controversy surrounding Senate Bill 12, which aims to restrict “sexually oriented performances” and drag shows to protect minors, has stirred up concerns that it could have far-reaching implications beyond its intended scope.

The Dallas Morning News asked three Texas lawyers specializing in government regulation and constitutional law to take a look at the bill. David Coale of Dallas, William X. King of Houston and University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law professor Brian Owsle, came to the conclusion that the bill is “so broad and vague that it could be interpreted to criminalize a slew of commonplace behaviors.”

Senate Bill 12 was crafted to keep minors from attending what its author, Bryan Hughes, has described as “sexually explicit” performances by drag queens. However, as the bill is drafted, adults who aren’t in drag could also be arrested or fined for anything from dirty dancing to bachelorette parties.

The attorneys argued that the bill includes vague descriptions of new crimes, specifically targets people “exhibiting” as the opposite sex, is overly broad in its definitions of “sexually oriented,” and lacks discussion of an alleged lawbreaker’s intent.

They also warn that the bill could have varying applications depending on the discretion of local prosecutors, making commonplace behaviors potentially criminal affairs depending on the county one is in.

Read on to see five normal current activities that could be threatened by this bill. As is typical with legislation like this, the broadness and vagueness are features. Making people believe that something is illegal, or fear that it might be, is in some ways even better than actually making it illegal, because it’s self-enforced. We’ll see what happens in the House, and then if need be we’ll see what happens in the courts.

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Two “Trump Train” defendants settle

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Interesting.

Two of the eight Trump supporters accused of participating in a “politically-motivated conspiracy” by closely following, honking at and slowing down a campaign bus for President Joe Biden on a Texas highway in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election have settled with former state Sen. Wendy Davis and three others on the bus.

Lawyers representing the plaintiffs announced Thursday they have filed papers to dismiss Hannah Ceh and Kyle Kruger as defendants in the lawsuit. The case against the six other defendants remains pending.

The terms of the settlement were not made public, but the two issued formal apologies for their involvement in the “Trump Train,” according to a press release from Project Democracy, the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

“Looking back, I would have done things differently. I do not feel that I was thinking things through at the time, and I apologize to the occupants of the bus for my part in actions that day that frightened or intimidated them,” Ceh wrote in her apology.

The plaintiffs, who also include a Biden campaign volunteer, a former campaign staffer and the bus driver, claimed in the lawsuit that Ceh, Kruger and six others violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and Texas law when they, along with dozens of people in trucks with Donald Trump flags, surrounded the bus as it drove up Interstate 35 from San Antonio to Austin, shouting and honking at the bus and successfully slowing it to a crawl in a deliberate attempt to intimidate supporters and disrupt the campaign.

“I knew that my driving was risky, but I wanted to express my opposition to their campaign and send them a message to leave my community,” Kruger added in his apology. “While I regret now participating in such risky activity, and apologize to the occupants of the bus for my part in the actions that day, at the time I and other Trump Train participants were happy that, after our actions, the Biden campaign canceled the rest of the bus tour.”

[…]

Two of the other defendants who have not settled, Steve and Randi Ceh, were leaders of the New Braunfels Trump Train, according to the filing. Ceh is their daughter and a member of the group.

The filing alleges that Kruger, who is engaged to Ceh according to her social media, was driving her white Toyota Tundra while she sat in the passenger seat. According to the filing, Ceh posted videos to social media that showed her license plate number, which matched the license plate of one of the cars that allegedly surrounded the bus. Screenshots of Instagram posts attached to the lawsuit show Ceh in the passenger’s seat with text on the image that says “#operationblockthebus.” The filing said the social media posts show Ceh and Kruger driving “within inches of the bus.”

At one point, the filing claims, Ceh told Kruger that she was “getting too nervous” and participating in the caravan was “stressing her out.”

“Nevertheless, Defendant Kruger continued to come close to the Biden-Harris Campaign bus and abruptly swerved next to it,” the filing read.

Davis and the other plaintiffs filed a second lawsuit against San Marcos police, alleging they turned a blind eye to the attack. 911 transcripts filed in that lawsuit revealed San Marcos police refused to send help despite repeated requests for those on the bus. That lawsuit is ongoing.

The lawsuit against the “Trump Train” participants remains ongoing against the six other plaintiffs. In March, federal judge John Pittman set a trial date for April 22, 2024.

See here for the previous update, and here for more about the San Marcos police. I have a copy of the press release from the Texas Civil Rights Project, which contains the full apology statements from the two settlers, beneath the fold. I have to say, while the one from Hannah Ceh seems fine and appropriate, the one from Kyle Kruger sounds awfully non-apologetic. It has at least as much about the objectives of the Trump Train and their satisfaction in chasing the Biden campaign buses out of town than anything contrite. Maybe the confidential part of the settlement makes up for that, and maybe the case against Kruger was the weakest, I don’t know. I’m hoping for better for the rest of the case. See below for the TCRP statement, which includes the two full apologies.

Continue reading →

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Spending even more on court-appointed attorneys

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

But maybe there’s an end in sight.

Harris County is on track to pay $95 million by the end of October to private attorneys for representing low-income people accused of crimes — about $35 million more than the county budgeted for its indigent defense system.

The unexpected increase from last year’s unprecedented $60 million bill has prompted county officials to review whether that elevated amount is the result of the cost of reducing a pandemic-induced backlog of criminal cases.

County officials said increased requests for interpreters and psychiatric evaluations may be an indicator the criminal justice system is recovering from delays in court proceedings caused by the pandemic, as well as Hurricane Harvey damage to the courthouse infrastructure.

“Our hope is that this is a sign that cases are moving,” Daniel Ramos, executive director of the county’s Office of Management and Budget, told Commissioners Court on Tuesday.

Ramos said he noticed in January a deficit of more than $9 million caused by increased court appointments and lawyers being late filing their expenses.

That number more than doubled during the second quarter, an increase Ramos said he believes was caused by the volume of cases requiring indigent representation.

Covering the growing cost of court-appointed lawyers would require an additional $27 million for the county’s felony courts and another $9 million for misdemeanor courts, Ramos said.

[…]

Alex Bunin, Harris County’s chief public defender, dismissed any link the packed jail may have to the increase in attorney costs. He noted that a change in culture in the courts has allowed defense attorneys to expense more as Democratic judges became the norm at the criminal courthouse.

Additionally, the fees for court-appointed defense attorneys increased in March, the effect of which Ramos said he had not studied.

“The judges support paying the lawyers more,” Bunin said.

Commissioners Court on Tuesday agreed to consider adding the additional spending to the county budget at a later meeting after a brief conversation on whether the indigent defense funds were being used wisely. An audit on court appointments is expected to wrap up soon. The review will include an examination of the attorneys’ billing practices, the number of court appearances and whether they are visiting clients in jail.

Critics have panned the court-appointed lawyer process as a waste of taxpayer dollars in the wake of a Houston Chronicle investigation that broke down details about the $60 million paid to outside defense attorneys last year. A third of criminal defense lawyers who submitted invoices earned more than $200,000 and reported caseloads higher than state guidelines recommend, according to the Chronicle’s findings. One attorney earned $1 million.

Expanding the Harris County Public Defender’s Office could improve defendant representation and save money, Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis said.

“We should look into whether it’s an opportunity, a way to make sure the money is used more appropriately,” Ellis said.

See here and here for the background. I would hope that this is a sign that the backlog is shrinking because that would be a good thing on many levels. We’ll see what the data says. But whatever the case, I’m fine with paying more for these attorneys if what that means is better representation. I’m also very much in favor of expanding the public defender’s office, as that will act as a hedge against some of these cost increases; certainly, it will provide some amount of cost certainty. I look forward to Commissioners Court following up on that.

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April 2023 campaign finance reports – Congress

Posted on April 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

And so we begin another Congressional campaign fundraising cycle. For obvious reasons, the opening list of who’s raising what for which office is a lot smaller than it’s been recently, though I do expect this list to grow a bit going forward. Here are the names and numbers of interest at this time:

Heli Rodriguez-Prilliman – Senate
John Love – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Pervez Agwan – CD07
Sheila Jackson Lee – CD18
Francine Ly – CD24
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Colin Allred – CD32


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   R-Prilliman      21,497     20,107   29,062      1,389
Sen   Love             44,861     45,764    6,015        352

07    Fletcher        266,678    141,909        0  1,446,476
07    Agwan           100,500     18,107        0     82,393
18    Jackson Lee      16,491     61,881        0    249,832
24    Ly               11,633        385    2,540     11,247
28    Cuellar         512,858    166,829        0    393,772
32    Allred          522,135    271,177        0  2,239,859

Starting at the top, I found the Facebook page for Heli Rodriguez-Prilliman, which had a post about a February meet and greet event for her. That’s the extent of my knowledge; if someone knows anything more, please leave a comment. We know about John Love. There were a couple of other names that popped up on the FEC site but none had reported any money raised. Neither Love nor Rodriguez-Prilliman had raised much, but it was greater than zero so they get to be on the list.

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher managed to avoid any primary challengers last year, but for 2024 Pervez Agwan has thrown his hat into the ring. He starts off with a decent amount raised, though he obviously has a ways to go to catch up.

I’m going to keep an eye on Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and CD18 here because someone may decide to not wait for the results of the Mayor’s race to declare a candidacy for this seat, and because until the July fundraising deadline comes around this is what we know about her campaign cash situation. As I said, she’s never been a moneybags, but I expect that to change at least for this election. And if an interested contender or two show up here in the next few months, they may stick around even if she ends up remaining in Congress.

Francine Ly, whose campaign URLs include the very cool moniker “FLy4Texas”, is first up in CD24, which as you know is the district I’m most interested in. I’m very interested to see how it performs in this upcoming Presidential year.

I don’t really want to have to keep up with what Rep. Henry Cuellar is doing, but as long as there’s the possibility of another big money primary race in CD28, I guess I have to. He sure did deplete his resources last time around.

As for Rep. Colin Allred, who may or may not be a Senate candidate next year, he’s a capable fundraiser and he’s got a decent piece of change in his coffers already. Ted Cruz is out there raising money, and has about a million bucks cash on hand advantage. If Allred challenges Cruz, I’d expect him to at least equal him in fundraising. I’ll keep an eye on him as we wait for that decision. (NOTE: This post was drafted before the news that Sen. Roland Gutierrez was planning to run for Senate. This doesn’t change anything now, but it may affect how Rep. Allred fundraises going forward, whether or not he gets into the Senate race.)

No one raising any money yet in CD15, but that will surely change soon. No one raising any money yet in CD23 either, which has got to be a first in a long time.

I may look at some Republican reports later, if and when it becomes clear that there are challengers who are capable of raising competitive amounts. Until then, this is what I have. Let me know what you think.

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