New legal challenge filed against redistricting map

Posted on August 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Fron the inbox:

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

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

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

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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West Texas A&M drag ban blocked

Posted on August 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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The Alvarado filibuster

Posted on August 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Bring it on.

Sen. Carol Alvarado

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE: And they’re done.

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

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

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

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

Well, we can’t have that, obviously.

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Doggett will not challenge Casar if new map passes

Posted on August 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

For the best.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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California passes its redistricting plan

Posted on August 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Game on.

California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature passed bills Thursday setting up a high-profile special election this fall, when voters will decide whether to approve the party’s plan to gerrymander California’s congressional map.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who signed the legislation shortly after it passed, has championed the plan as a political counterweight to Texas’ recent move to create more Republican seats there as both parties get ready for a 2026 election in which control of Congress will be up for grabs.

Both the state Assembly and the state Senate passed the redistricting legislation Thursday, each with the two-thirds vote needed to enact “urgent” measures in the state. With Newsom’s signature, now it’s up to the voters to decide whether to temporarily sidestep the state’s independent redistricting commission, which voters put in place to handle the issue once every decade.

The new Democratic-drawn maps, proposed in the Legislature less than one week ago, serve a transparent political purpose: countering Texas Republicans’ new map, which could net the party five more congressional seats amid the fierce battle for control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.

California Democrats have criticized Republicans, particularly President Donald Trump, who told CNBC amid Texas’ push to redraw its maps that his party was “entitled to five more seats” from Texas.

If voters approve their plan, California’s new map could serve as a counterweight to Texas’ changes, as analysis from the University of Virginia Center for Politics shows “the proposed California map could allow Democrats to win up to five more seats in 2026,” potentially endangering GOP Reps. Doug LaMalfa, Darrell Issa, Ken Calvert and David Valadao.

Newsom and Democratic allies have been trumpeting a need to redraw the lines to cancel out the move by Texas, arguing Republicans there are trying to insulate Trump from the political repercussions of his policies. Also Thursday, a political committee to support the Newsom-backed ballot measure disclosed $2 million in donations from the governor’s political committee, as well as $3 million from national Democrats’ super PAC focused on House races.

As promised, and the managed to pass this before the Texas Lege finished passing theirs. It should be noted that this will only apply if the Texas map passes, so there’s still a (highly unlikely) off ramp. And California voters will have to approve the initiative, which should pass but will require some convincing of skeptics. The battle is far from over, and other states are going to join in as well. Whatever else you can say, Dems did not take this lying down.

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Judge blocks Ten Commandments law

Posted on August 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

A federal judge in San Antonio temporarily halted a Texas law that would require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom by siding with a group of families who claimed the requirement harmed their children’s religious development.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, an appointee of former president Bill Clinton, issued the decision two days after the case’s first hearing concluded. Biery’s ruling found that children could be treated negatively by peers if perceived as “the other,” and that the law passes the line into coercion.

“Ultimately, in matters of conscience, faith, beliefs and the soul, most people are Garbo-esque,” Biery wrote, referencing a line from actress Greta Garbo in a 1932 movie. “They just want to be left alone, neither proselytized nor ostracized, including what occurs to their children in government-run schools.”

The court determined the defendants — which are Texas school districts  — and “their officers, agents, affiliates, subsidiaries, servants, employees, successors, and all other persons or entities in active concert or privity or participation with them” are preliminarily enjoined from displaying the Ten Commandments.

[…]

The injunction issued in San Antonio technically covers the 11 defendants in the case. Those districts are Alamo Heights ISD, North East ISD, Lackland ISD, Northside ISD, Austin ISD, Lake Travis ISD, Dripping Springs ISD, Houston ISD, Fort Bend ISD, Cypress Fairbanks ISD and Plano ISD.

Weaver said all school districts have an “independent obligation” to respect students’ and families’ constitutional rights, and Biery’s decision makes it clear that SB10 is unconstitutional.

“With regard to the Free Exercise Clause, S.B. 10 is not neutral with respect to religion,” Biery wrote. “By design, and on its face, the statute mandates the display of expressly religious scripture in every public school classroom. The Act also requires that a Judeo-Christian version of that scripture be used, that is exclusionary of other faiths.”

In his 55-page ruling, Biery offered a fictional scenario: What would happen if excerpts from the Quran regarding honoring parents and not taking “a human life, except with legal right,” were displayed in public buildings and schools in a majority Muslim community?

“Imagine the consternation and legal firestorm were the following fictional story to become reality,” Biery wrote.

See here and here for the background. There’s still the North Texas case, which I presume will cover some if not all of the remaining districts. I still don’t know when that will be heard. Ken Paxton will of course appeal this, and we’ll see what happens from there. This one I think the state is more likely to lose than win based on previous experiences and the obvious overreach of this law, but you can never be too sure with the judiciary we have. But we’ll take the win for now. The 19th and the Press have more.

UPDATE: Paxton has appealed as expected.

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Fewer crime reports being made

Posted on August 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Interesting.

Fewer people called Houston police each year since 2023, a trend that experts say could have multiple causes and is worth keeping an eye on.

Slightly more than 1.1 million calls were made to HPD’s patrol divisions in 2023, a six-year high, according to internal data gathered through an open records request. But since then, the number of calls decreased to around 1.08 million in 2024 and was on pace to finish 7% lower than that in 2025, according to the internal data from June.

“There’s been some studies showing that people’s willingness to report minor crimes reflects confidence in police in a city,” said Jay Coons, an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University who retired as a captain at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in 2018. “If you don’t know or like your police, you’re not going to report minor things. You think they’ll make it worse. But if you do have that relationship, then you’re more likely to report.”

[…]

Without deeper study of what sort of calls are coming in to the patrol divisions, which beats are seeing the biggest declines and data that won’t be available for some time, it’s hard to say exactly why calls for service are down, Coons cautioned.

But the relationship between calls for service and overall crime numbers is an interesting one, he said.

Coons recalled comparisons made decades ago of crime rates in Philadelphia and New York City, with considerably more crimes reported in New York. But researchers found minor crimes constituted a significant portion of the difference between the two cities — a sign that crime might not really be worse in New York, but rather people trusted police more there.

With Houston police now calling ICE agents on people with outstanding administrative warrants, some immigration advocates have said they worry it might make some residents more reticent to call police to report crime.

That could play a factor in 2025’s decline, Coons said. But it wouldn’t explain why calls for service were already on the decline in 2024, the last year of President Joe Biden’s presidency.

I mean, one obvious possibility is that there are fewer reportable crimes occurring. The way we judge how many crimes are occurring is to a large extent determined by how many reports are made. (Homicide is the main exception to that, for the obvious reason that there’s a dead person involved.) There are other ways to approach the data that can offer concurrence or dissent to the thesis, but usually those sorts of studies occur later on, so whatever ancillary findings we’ll get we’ll have to wait for. In the meantime, I will once again say that we’d all be better off if HPD did a better job of publicizing its data about their solve rates for different types of crimes. I have to think one reason why someone may or may not choose to call the cops for something is their belief that the bad guy will get caught.

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House passes redistricting bill

Posted on August 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I was going to put this as the last item in the earlier post, but I didn’t want to change that post’s title and I also didn’t want to gloss over that this happened. We knew it was going to happen, and despite a clever amendment from Rep. Gene Wu that “would only allow the congressional maps to be implemented once the Jeffrey Epstein files were released by the Trump administration”, opposition and delay were swatted aside, as one would expect. It is what it is.

The Senate will pass this soon enough, and then the Lege will move on to other matters. The Senate did have a hearing about flood matters, which of course came after they passed the map bill out of committee, because priorities, but you know they’ll be on this like JD Vance on a nice couch. From there we wait to see what happens in California, where Republicans have sued to stop that process from going forward, and with the federal court in El Paso. But redistricting and placating Donald Trump are why we are here, everything else is an afterthought. The Trib has more.

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Beto scores a win against Paxton

Posted on August 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Nice.

An El Paso judge this week temporarily stopped Attorney General Ken Paxton from prosecuting former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s political group, Powered by People, after Paxton moved to block the organization from financially supporting Texas Democrats who left the state.

Judge Annabell Perez of the 41st Judicial District Court issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday barring Paxton from prosecuting O’Rourke’s nonprofit or otherwise initiating or filing legal proceedings aimed at revoking Powered by People’s charter.

The group has been fundraising for Texas Democrats who decamped to Illinois and other states in protest of a proposed GOP congressional map that would net Republicans up to five more seats in the U.S. House.

Powered by People already donated $1 million to the Democrats, whose two-week absence denied the Texas House the minimum number of present members needed to conduct business. Many of those Democrats have since returned to the state, and Gov. Greg Abbott called a subsequent overtime legislative session after the first one ended last week.

Paxton previously secured a temporary injunction blocking O’Rourke from fundraising for the Democrats or spending money to cover their expenses. He then sought to jail O’Rourke, arguing that the El Paso Democrat had violated the court order, which O’Rourke’s attorneys have disputed.

O’Rourke responded by filing his own lawsuit alleging that Paxton was engaging in a “fishing expedition, constitutional rights be damned,” by targeting Powered by People.

[…]

In her order, Perez said it was imperative to “prevent imminent, irreparable injury” but that it was not a ruling on the merits of the case. The order expires in two weeks.

See here and here for some background. I have no idea how this knot will get untangled, but I’m happy to see this result. In fact, one could argue, as Jeremy Wallace outlined, that Beto had already won, at least in the big picture.

Paxton was right that he got a court order stopping O’Rourke’s Powered by People PAC from sending donations directly to state representatives who left the state and covering their potential fines in the Texas House for leaving. But Powered By People said they didn’t do either. Instead of sending money to any individual members, the group sent the money to the caucuses that can then use it as they please, just like any other donation from the public. Those donations are essentially helping Democrats who both fled the state and those who didn’t.

“Powered by People did not make any offers to fundraise or help pay for legislative fines, hotel, and travel expenses in exchange for any political action or restraint,” a court filing from David Mills Wysong of Powered by People stated.

The irony of this, an effect of Texas’s weird campaign finance laws that are routinely exploited by the billionaire wingnut class, is rich. I doubt this will stop Paxton, and I suppose he could eventually wrangle some kind of Moebius strip ruling that makes this activity illegal when Beto does it but not when Tim Dunn does it, but in the short term the money was delivered. Suck on that, Ken.

On a different legal front:

Rep. Nicole Collier, the Democratic state lawmaker who spent Monday night inside the Texas Capitol, is asking a court to let her exit the building, alleging she’s facing “illegal restraint by the government” after she was told she needs a police escort to leave.

The Fort Worth lawmaker and dozens of other Democrats left Texas earlier this month to delay a vote on a GOP-led plan to redraw the state’s congressional map. The Democrats returned to Texas in recent days and they were given state police escorts to ensure they will show up when the state House convenes Wednesday, but Collier refused to sign a “permission slip” to be under escort by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Collier says she slept on the House floor overnight.

Collier told CBS News’ “The Takeout” on Tuesday that several other Democrats “tore up their permission slips” and will join her on the House floor Tuesday night.

“I refuse to comply with this unreasonable, un-American and unnecessary request,” Collier said.

Meanwhile, in a habeas corpus application filed in Austin state court on Monday, lawyers for Collier alleged “illegal confinement.”

The petition says state Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican who chairs the House Administration Committee, told Collier: “If you leave the Capitol you are subject to arrest.” Collier’s petition does not mention the state police escorts.

Collier’s attorneys argue that’s illegal. They acknowledged that Texas law allows lawmakers who are absent from the Capitol to face civil arrest, but they say state officials have no legal right to detain legislators who are already present at the Capitol to ensure they don’t leave.

“The plain language is clear: a member may be compelled by the Sergeant-at-Arms to attend a legislative session if he or she is physically absent, but no such power is conferred on the Legislature to arrest or otherwise compel a member who is currently present (and not absent) to stay,” the Democrat’s court petition read.

Collier, a seven-term lawmaker and former chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, is asking a judge to order the House Sergeant-at-Arms to “immediately release” her, and to bar the Sergeant-at-Arms from “restraining Representative Collier in any respect.”

See here for the background. Again, I have no idea what will happen – the word “unprecedented” is permanently stamped on my brain these days – but I am excited by the effort. Reform Austin, The 19th, the Trib, and Slate have more.

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CD18 forum and fundraiser

Posted on August 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Item one:

I don’t have a link to share, but I think you can see all the details. There will be five candidates for the forum, we precinct chairs will vote on who will be invited. As someone who has moderated debates as well as been in the audience for them, there’s just a limit on how many participants you can have before it becomes unwieldy. And let’s be honest, not every candidate in this race is worth taking seriously. I will be there for this and I look forward to seeing how everyone does.

And as a pregame event for this:

Monday, August 25, 2025 • 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM East River 9 • 65 Hirsch Rd, Houston, TX 77020

Join us for an exciting kick-off event ahead of The Official CD-18 Candidate Forum on August 28th! Connect with fellow activists, meet the candidates, and fuel our Get Out the Vote drive for the November and mid-term elections.

Event Highlights • Pre-Forum Kick-Off: Be among the first to hear from CD-18 candidates before the big debate on August 28th. • Meet & Mingle: Mix and mingle with candidates, community leaders, and fellow precinct chairs. • GOTV Support: Help power our grassroots effort to turn out every Democratic vote in CD-18.

Admission • General Public: $20 donation • CD-18 Precinct Chairs: Free

I unfortunately can’t make this one but I’ll be there in spirit. If you want to get to know some of the candidates before you see them speak on stage, this is a great opportunity to do so.

UPDATE: Here’s the Mobilize link for the candidate forum.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of August 18

Posted on August 21, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance stands with the quorum breakers as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Motion for expedited review of proposed Congressional map filed

Posted on August 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox, on Monday night.

Today, the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) filed a motion in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to ask the court to quickly set a hearing for a preliminary injunction that will be filed in order to block the enactment of a new gerrymandered congressional map that is making its way through the Texas Legislature.

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

“Despite bipartisan opposition among Texans, the Texas Legislature is pushing forward a congressional map that includes even fewer minority opportunity districts than the current discriminatory map, which is already being challenged in court for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In other words, the legislature is grafting a new, more extreme gerrymander onto an existing gerrymander that adds even more insult to injury for communities of color in the Lone Star State, despite the fact that they make up 60 percent of the state population. Should Governor Abbott sign the new gerrymander into law, the NRF will quickly challenge that map in federal court, and the court must be prepared to act swiftly to intervene and protect the rights of Texans.”

I got a second press release on Tuesday morning, from the Lone Star Project, that at first made me think there were two separate motions, but both releases referred to the same filing. The key to understanding this is to read the opening paragraphs of that filing:

The Brooks Plaintiffs, LULAC Plaintiffs, and Gonzales Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court set aside dates for an expedited September hearing to adjudicate forthcoming motions for preliminary injunctions raising claims against the soon-to-be-enacted 2025 congressional redistricting plan. Moreover, Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court vacate, as to the state legislative challenges, its August 11, 2025, order suspending the deadline for submitting proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law.

Plaintiffs conferred with State Defendants, who report that they are not opposed to a preliminary injunction hearing generally, believe a hearing in “early” September is “too soon, especially if [they] are briefing FOFCOL concurrent with hearing prep,” and oppose the lifting of the suspension on the briefing deadline.

I don’t know what all of those words mean, but this boils down to two things that the plaintiffs are asking for. First, just to clarify, the plaintiffs in question are the ones that are challenging the current map. The hearings are done with that case, though there were some post-trial briefs still to be filed, after which a ruling would be made. In the interim, during the first special session, the three-judge panel in that case put everything on hold pending the outcome of the legislative process as well as a couple of other cases that are on SCOTUS’ docket. So basically, this is a new filing by the existing plaintiffs of the in-progress litigation over the 2021 redistricting maps asking for those judges to take action on what is happening now.

Specifically, they want two things. One is for there to be an initial hearing on the proposed map, to get that process started now so we can perhaps have some kind of rulings in place before the 2026 elections. The defendant, which is to say the state of Texas, is more or less open to that idea, for the same reason. The other thing they want is for the panel to go ahead and continue with the process of the existing litigation so as to get to a final ruling in that case. They argue that there was no reason to put the remaining steps in that case on hold (the panel issued its ruling on its own and not in response to a motion), that the existing case isn’t affected by the outstanding SCOTUS cases, and that the plaintiffs deserve a final ruling. You can read all that for yourself in the motion, which is only six pages long and is easy enough to understand.

I don’t know what the court might do and what the effect of a favorable (or unfavorable) ruling for the plaintiffs might be. We’ll have to see if they set a briefing schedule and go from there. The promise made by the quorum busters was that they would fight the new maps in court, and while there will certainly be more litigation once a map is passed, the existing lawsuit is another avenue that is being pursued as well.

One last note:

I looked at the 2018 and 2024 data for this new map and it doesn’t appear to be noticeably different for the most part. Just noting this for the record. The Chron has more.

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

West Texas measles outbreak declared to be over

Posted on August 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good news.

The West Texas measles outbreak, the nation’s largest in 30 years, is now over, state health officials announced on Monday.

The Texas Department of State Health Services announced the outbreak was over after no new cases had been reported in 42 days.

“We arrived at this point through a comprehensive outbreak response that included testing, vaccination, disease monitoring and educating the public about measles through awareness campaigns,” DSHS Commissioner Dr. Jennifer A. Shuford said in a statement. “I also want to recognize the many health care professionals who identified and treated cases of a virus that most providers had never seen in person before this outbreak.”

The outbreak began in late January in Seminole and eventually spread to more than 10 Texas counties and to three other states — Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma — as well as Mexico.

As of Aug. 18, 762 Texas cases of measles were detected and more than two-thirds of the cases involved children. Ninety-six people were hospitalized and two Seminole children died from the disease. Most of those infected were unvaccinated.

See here for the last case count update I had, and here for the most recent post on the subject. The full press release is here, and while this is unqualified good news for Texas, it comes with two provisos. One is that this is just the end of the outbreak that began in Gaines County. Elsewhere in the country and the larger region, second proviso:

Texas school districts are coming back from summer with a rising number of parents asking for vaccine exemption forms and a new law that will make those documents even easier to obtain.

Combined with funding cuts to public vaccination programs, chilling effects of immigration policies on health care, and the wearying battle by school nurses to balance parental consent and overall student body health, Texas schools are on track to have the lowest vaccination rates in decades if exemption rates continue to climb.

“I do think that there is a problem — period — that is worse than we have known about previously,” said Terri Burke, executive director of The Immunization Partnership, which advocates for public policies that support increased access to vaccines.

Since 2018, the requests to the Texas Department of State Health Services for a vaccine exemption form have doubled from 45,900 to more than 93,000 in 2024.

In July, ahead of the new school year, the state received 17,197 requests for a vaccine exemption form, 36% higher than the number reported in July 2023. Because each requestor can have forms for up to eight individuals, the number of children those forms covered also soared — 23,231 in July 2023 compared to 30,596 in July 2025.

Now, as some public health departments indicate there are drops in the number of poorer children coming to them to get vaccinated during the summer months, and a new Sept. 1 law that will make the vaccination exemption form downloadable instead of it being mailed, vaccine experts fear herd immunity will be tougher to achieve.

There will be more of these outbreaks in the future. Maybe not next year, and maybe not as bad as this one. Or maybe worse, who knows. But there will be more. Everything we’re doing is making conditions more hospitable for the viruses.

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Leave the “Be Someone” artists alone

Posted on August 20, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

How is this a good use of HPD’s time?

Photo by Monica Kressman

Investigators are searching for the people who repainted Houston’s popular “Be Someone” graffiti mural in June after a video of the act was posted on Instagram.

Three people participated in repainting the slogan on the Union Pacific-owned railroad bridge over Interstate 45 near downtown, as shown in the video posted on June 8, according to the search warrants. The Houston Police Department assisted the Union Pacific Railroad Police Department in its investigation of the incident.

The “Be Someone” mural, created in 2012 by an artist who goes by the same name, struck a chord with Houstonians. The mural has been painted over with other messages several times, but the changes were always temporary.  Most recently, the mural was painted over with the words “Mog Coin” — which is a meme coin. So, unidentified people came together to bring back the iconic artwork, “Be Someone.”

The video showed two people walking down the railroad tracks while carrying paint rollers toward the rail bridge crossing over Interstate 45, according to an Instagram account @lurkinghouston that a Union Pacific peace officer had been following.

The two people were seen painting over the mural with black paint. The Union Pacific peace officer found comments made by the same account revealed that the “Be Someone” graffiti was allegedly restored with help from Instagram users known as @luc.xplore and @dodge.my.ram. The officer found another video on @luc.xplore’s page showcasing the finished “Be Someone” graffiti, but with blue paint.

The officer searched the area after the mural was finished and found paint trays and rollers, as well as a paint lid from a can of blue Glidden latex paint.

“The people responsible for painting the I-45 bridge with paint buckets and rollers are putting their lives and the lives of motorists passing underneath at risk,” Union Pacific officials said in a statement. The railroad transport company called the incident a “threat to public safety” and is taking the issue seriously.

The manager responsible for maintaining the bridge said that repairing it would cost $9,700, according to the documents.

[…]

This isn’t the first time that authorities have taken action against people in connection with graffiti at the site. In 2023, felony charges against graffiti artist Chandrika Metivier were dismissed after Metivier was accused of painting over the sign with “Woman, Life, Freedom,” and “No War Know Peace.”

See here for some background. I agree that this is a risky activity and the potential damage from a screwup is non-trivial. But so far this has been painted and repainted multiple times with no mishaps. I’m not here to tell the Union Pacific Railroad Police Department how to do their business, but I do think that HPD should have higher priorities than this. What exactly was the assistance HPD provided, and how many person-hours did it take up? That might be nice to know.

Really, I question the validity of pursuing this as a crime, at least when the “Be Someone” mural is being restored. This little bit of graffiti, which many people love, is a featured work on the Arts District Houston website and has its own Wikipedia page. Why can’t we just leave it be? Not only is it not hurting anything, it’s a public good at this point. Leave it be and let us enjoy it.

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And they’re back

Posted on August 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Quorum time again.

Texas House Democrats announced they would return to Austin Monday, ending a two-week walkout over a GOP mid-decade redistricting plan and paving the way for the map’s passage.

“We killed the corrupt special session, withstood unprecedented surveillance and intimidation and rallied Democrats nationwide to join this existential fight for fair representation — reshaping the entire 2026 landscape,” Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement.

Over 50 Democratic lawmakers left Texas earlier this month for Illinois and elsewhere in a bid to stall passage of a congressional map that was demanded by President Donald Trump just four years after Republicans last redrew the state’s lines, and that is designed to give the GOP five additional U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm election.

In an unprecedented response, Republican state leaders issued civil arrest warrants, sought to extradite absent members from Illinois, launched investigations and sought to declare at least one Democrat’s seat vacant. The Legislature ended the first special session early on Friday because of the walkout, with Gov. Greg Abbott promptly calling a second overtime session with virtually the same agenda as the first one.

Though Democrats won’t have the votes to defeat the map on the floor, they framed their protest as a victory for sinking the first special session and building a national appetite among blue state leaders for their own partisan redistricting efforts in retaliation to Texas’ plan. And they said that the end of the walkout only marked the next phase of their plan to fight the map in court.

“We’re returning to Texas more dangerous to Republicans’ plans than when we left,” Wu said. “Our return allows us to build the legal record necessary to defeat this racist map in court, take our message to communities across the state and country and inspire legislators across the country how to fight these undemocratic redistricting schemes in their own statehouses.”

I started writing this post early in the day yesterday, before the Lege gaveled in, so there may be subsequent news about some extra punishment or who knows what else for the Dems when they actually arrive. And now I hope I haven’t just manifested this into existence.

Anyway. Republicans just can’t wait to get to redistricting again – the Senate committee on redistricting approved the map on Sunday, when normal people were thinking about baseball or going to the beach or the new season of Love is Blind UK. (UPDATE: The House committee passed the map bill on Monday, literally the first action in that chamber for Session II.) It’s clear that this will be the top priority again, and that any action related to the Kerr County floods will be “whenever we get to it” issues. This is the message to drone on about over and over again. It’s one of the reasons for the quorum break in the first place. Now that the Dems are back and the session will happen, make this session be about their warped priorities first and foremost.

And over in California:

California Democrats unveiled a new congressional map on Friday, aiming to counter a planned Republican gerrymander in Texas by making several GOP-held districts in the Golden State bluer while also shoring up a number of Democratic seats.

The plan was rolled out haphazardly on Friday evening, leaking to the public several hours before a committee in the state Assembly published an official version on its site.

For unclear reasons, the map was not drawn by California lawmakers. Rather, it was prepared by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats’ official campaign arm based in Washington, D.C., according to a letter submitted to the legislature along with a presentation explaining the map.

That letter chastised Republicans in Texas and elsewhere for “doing the bidding of their DC party bosses.” In a statement, the DCCC said its map was created “with collaborative input from stakeholders and legislators” but did not offer further details about its provenance. When asked for comment about why the plan originated with the committee, a spokesperson referred The Downballot back to that statement.

Lawmakers are set to take up the proposal this week, according to a schedule released by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. Committees in both chambers are set to hold hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, with final votes to put the plan before voters in a November special election expected on Thursday.

Voters will be asked whether they want to temporarily replace California’s current map, which was crafted by the state’s independent redistricting commission in 2021, with this new plan. According to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the proposal will include a provision requiring California to stand down if Republican-run states like Texas back off their plans for mid-decade redistricting.

Just below, we outline the most important changes to the five Republican districts that Democrats are targeting. In each case, we’ve also included figures showing how each current district voted in the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections, as well as how the proposed new districts would have voted in those same elections.

There’s plenty of data, as is the way of The Downballot, so check it out. There’s also now a move to do re-redistricting in Colorado, and maybe Maryland, while Trump is putting more pressure on Indiana to cave to his wishes for re-redistricting there.

And some more on how the Texas map was drawn.

In their bid for five more congressional seats, Texas Republicans are turning to an unlikely source to help spread out their gains: noncitizens.

Four of the five districts that are drawn to be newly winnable for the GOP include pockets of current Democratic-held congressional districts with low rates of citizenship. In other words, Republicans appear to be padding the new districts with people who are counted in the census, but who can’t actually vote.

“If you are Republicans, and you are seeking to maximize your seats, you have to collapse Democratic districts, and that means giving their constituents to Republican seats somewhere else,” Dave Wasserman, a political analyst with the Cook Political Report, told the Houston Chronicle. “What are the precincts that can accomplish that goal? They’re precincts with high numbers of residents but low numbers of voters.”

This is one of those interactive stories that shows you via map highlights what is going on. I had not seen this particular angle before, but it makes sense and it echoes a strategy from the 2003 Tom DeLay effort that involved low-turnout versus high-turnout Latino areas in constructing a Republican-leaning CD23.

That’s it for now. The plan, per Speaker Burrows, is to speed through all of the agenda items by Labor Day. I have my doubts about that, but that’s what they’re saying.

UPDATE Of course the Republicans made it weird.

Texas Democrats who returned to the House floor Monday are being required to sign “permission slips” and seek a personal Department of Public Safety escort just to leave the chambers, NBC News correspondent Ryan Chandler tweeted Monday afternoon.

One democrat, State Rep. Nicole Collier of District 95 in Fort Worth, refused to sign the permission slip. As of press time, she is still locked in the chamber, alone, according to Chandler.

The correspondent tweeted a photo of Collier alone in the chamber, adding, “Members are really not happy with the individual DPS escorts. Say they are not free to move on their own.”

“In my heart I don’t feel compelled to sign it,” Collier told Chandler of being forced to sign the permission slip to leave.

When asked what her plan is, Collier said, “I’ll just sit here, I don’t know… I guess I’ll wait til Wednesday.”

More on Rep. Collier’s protest here. It’s going to be a long however many days.

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Judge rejects land ownership ban lawsuit for lack of standing

Posted on August 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Hmph.

Two Chinese citizens who sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over a new law banning people from China and three other countries from buying property in the state do not have standing to bring a class-action lawsuit over the legislation, a federal judge said Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Charles Eskridge agreed with attorneys from Paxton’s office who said the two plaintiffs — Peng Wang and Qinlin Li — were not among the people who would be affected by Senate Bill 17.

Eskridge, from the bench, said he would deny class certification to Wang and Li, dealing a potentially fatal early blow to the lawsuit. However, Eskridge said he anticipated that his ruling would be appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, leaving open the chance that the new law could be blocked by the court.

[…]

Brian Ingram, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office, said the law isn’t meant to apply to people like Wang and Li who have permission to be in the U.S. The law is meant to apply only to “adverse governments and their agents.”

“It prohibits individuals who are domiciled in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea from purchasing property in Texas,” Ingram said. “It does not apply to persons from those countries who are domiciled in Texas.”

Ingram said there were carve outs in the law that allow people in Wang and Li’s position to buy and rent property.

Justin Sadowsky, the lead counsel for the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance, the group backing the lawsuit, said Ingram’s argument didn’t match what was written in the law.

“The disclaimer he was basically trying to make was that they’re not going to enforce this law against ordinary people,” Sadowsky said. “The problem is the statute applies to different groups of people.”

One of those groups is specifically foreign agents, Sadowsky said. But the law also specifies it applies to foreign nationals who aren’t domiciled in Texas.

The alliance argues that Texas laws prohibit people on nonimmigrant visas from being considered domiciled in the U.S. because the nature of their visa means they intend to return to their home country.

See here for the background. My interpretation of this – insert standard I Am Not A Lawyer disclaimer here – is that if Ken Paxton says he isn’t going to enforce this law against people like the plaintiffs, then they have suffered no injury and thus can’t sue. I can see the logic in that, but given that there’s a dispute over what the law actually says and that we’re going to have a new AG in less than a year and a half, I find it lacking as a justification. Even if you fully buy into Paxton’s promise, we don’t know how that will play out in practice, and the threat of being caught up by mistake or design seems to me to be enough to put the law on hold pending the outcome of the litigation. Not how the judge saw it, though. Maybe the Fifth Circuit will see it differently. Yeah, right.

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The “Faux Faculty Senate”

Posted on August 19, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I love this bit of resistance, as I deplore the reason for it.

In response to Texas’ crackdown on faculty governance, two University of Houston professors are pushing back by creating their own “Faux Faculty Senate” to give faculty a real voice.

Dr. Maria C. Gonzalez and Dr. David Mazella, both associate professors of English at UH, are forming a faculty-led entity to replace UH’s Faculty Senate, which the university dismantled due to its implementation of Senate Bill 37 in late July.

“With the dismantling of the official University of Houston Faculty Senate on July 31, 2025, and since I had been elected by my colleagues this past spring to represent them on the Faculty Senate with my term beginning on August 1, 2025, I felt I owed my colleagues their voice in a body representing the faculty,” Gonzalez said in a statement announcing the group.

Mazella noted that the body would hold meetings and gather faculty and “unheard voices” despite their “official nonexistence.” The two professors invited their fellow faculty members to join them.

“Since we cannot use any state resources and since we will only be drawing upon our own personal resources for meetings, the [group] will hold monthly gatherings at designated Happy Hours around the Houston area for fact-finding and conversation,” Mazella added.

Mazella said beverages “may very well be involved,” but was serious when referring to the business of the covert collective’s operations, saying attendees could expect “serious discussions about issues that concern higher education.”

Gonzalez will serve as the “self-proclaimed” president, and Mazella will serve as the president-elect of the group. The statement announcing the formation of the organization did not include a date for the group’s first meeting but said it would be announced soon.

Senate Bill 37 removes the traditional role of faculty governance and designates any faculty representative body as strictly advisory at all state higher education institutions.

I didn’t write about SB37, which is another regrettable and deeply stupid attack on higher education, but you’ve probably seen stories of the public universities in Texas shutting down their faculty Senates in response to it. That doesn’t mean the spirit of them can’t live on and be ready to snap back into place when we finally get to a better place politically. It’s also got some “you’re not the boss of me” energy we could all use. I hope other schools look at what UH is doing here and find their own way to take action.

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

July 2025 campaign finance reports – HCC

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

PREVOIUSLY:

Harris County
Senate and Congress
City of Houston
HISD

And we wrap up our look at July campaign finance reports with a check-in on the HCC Board of Trustees, whose reports can be found here. At the time of this writing, there weren’t any opposing candidates for the three positions on the ballot – Districts I, II, and VII – so all I have is the incumbents’ reports. It’s possible there won’t be any multi-candidate races, which is what happened in 2023. If that happens, these elections may be called off to save the expense of having them. We’ll know at the filing deadline. The January reports are here.

Monica Flores Richart – District I
Renee Jefferson Patterson – District II
Adriana Tamez – District III
Lalou Davies-Yemitan – District IV
Sean Cheben – District V
Dave Wilson – District VI
Cynthia Lenton-Gary – District VII
Eva Loredo – District VIII
Pretta VanDible Stallworth – District IX


Candidate     Raised       Spent       Loan     On Hand
=======================================================
Richart
Patterson      8,400       4,764          0       3,636
Tamez              0         128          0       9,340
Davies             0         777      1,000       3,956
Cheben
Wilson             0           0          0           0
L-Gary             0           0          0           0
Loredo             0         500      4,500         699
Stallworth

As was the case in January, not everyone had a report. You can click over to that post to see what was the most recent information we had for those incumbents.

Renee Jefferson Patterson is the new kid in town, being appointed on January 29 to replace Charlene Ward Johnson, who is now the State Rep in HD139. She’s the only one to have any real activity to report. I feel reasonably confident she is running for what would be her first full term. The others, who can say. Both Sean Cheben and Lalou Davies-Yemitan came onboard two years with no opposition, and this was only apparent after the deadline. Maybe something like that will happen this time, maybe not. If there are races to run, I’ll do interviews. If not, given how much busier this November will be than I had expected, I won’t. I’ll let you know when I know more.

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On HPD and overtime

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Lots to think about here.

Mayor John Whitmire

Houston senior police officer Matthew Davis’ annual salary was about $90,000 this past fiscal year. He made nearly $170,000 more in overtime.

It was not an anomaly. Davis has collected more in overtime than his base salary every year since at least 2020, and was previously disciplined for participating in an overtime scheme involving fabricated witness claims on traffic tickets. He is part of a growing pattern among the city’s highest-paid traffic enforcement officers who routinely collect overtime earnings that match or exceed their base salaries, a Houston Chronicle analysis found.

Houston police’s overtime spending, which has been growing for years, reached a new high of $74 million this fiscal year, which ran from May 2024 to April 2025. That’s up 26% from the previous fiscal year and eclipses the city’s police overtime budget of about $45 million.

The overtime surge is largely driven by the department’s traffic enforcement division and stems, in part, from a basic scheduling conflict: traffic officers tend to work afternoon and evening shifts when traffic – and traffic violations – peak, then must appear in court in the mornings to testify about the tickets they issued.

Over the past five fiscal years, seven out of the 10 highest police overtime earners worked in traffic enforcement and, together, banked a whopping $3.5 million in overtime alone. Citation records obtained by the Chronicle for Davis, one of the seven, show he devoted a large part of two workdays every week to court activities.

In what could compound the issue, a new contract approved by Houston City Council for the department’s more than 5,200 officers doubled the minimum overtime pay for court appearances from two to four hours. That means police that show up to court will earn at least four hours of overtime even if they only spend 10 minutes at the courthouse.

Officials with the Houston Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment about their use of overtime funds. The agency declined to make Davis available for an interview.

“We won’t protect public safety by compromising financial safety,” City Controller Chris Hollins said of the police department’s overtime woes.

The police department’s overtime spending consistently surpasses budget projections and underestimates those costs again in the upcoming fiscal year, Hollins said.

“It’s time to invest in smarter workforce planning, more accurate forecasting and better fiscal discipline across the board,” he said.

Houston police leaders can control some aspects of overtime spending, by managing schedules and hiring more officers full-time, but some budget issues are outside of their direct control, said Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers Union. And the 2026 fiscal year, which will include major events like the 2026 FIFA World Cup, looks to be an expensive year for overtime spending.

“Just wait until next year with FIFA and it being 21 days,” Griffith said. “If you don’t think there’s going to be a ton of overtime spending during that event, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Traffic enforcement and staffing for major events are inherently expensive types of policing, Griffith said. And it’s hard to budget for them, because so much of it comes via state and federal initiatives and at the request of the mayor and individual councilmembers.

Mayor John Whitmire, for instance, has talked publicly about how more traffic enforcement will be a priority moving forward. And traffic officers have already written more than 1,000 citations as part of highly-publicized one- and two-day operations on the city’s roadways.

It’s a long story and that’s a gift link, so read the rest. Just a couple of high-level thoughts:

– One way or another, we have to get this cost under control. I’d take the Mayor’s entire “root out waste” schtick more seriously if he put a higher priority on stuff like this. His answer is to hire more cops, in part by paying them a lot more, but that neither addresses the scheduling issues for traffic patrol cops nor fixes things in the short term. Given that 2026 is going to be a big year for this kind of spending, what are we going to do about that?

– One thing we could do is crack down on cops who abuse the overtime system, as documented in the story. That sort of thing should not only be a firable offense, it should be potentially a criminal offense. I feel like that would go a long way, but I doubt there’s anything in the collective bargaining agreement or in this Mayor’s DNA that would allow for that. Demanding that HPD be more efficient just isn’t in the cards.

– We absolutely do need traffic enforcement, as anyone who has marveled at the lunacy of too many drivers in this town can attest. But much of what we get are speed traps that to my mind have limited usefulness. And in the meantime, we’re prioritizing vehicular speed in our road designs over safety, which just makes no sense at all.

– What most of this comes down to for me is the concern that there’s no mechanism in place to enforce reasonable spending controls at HPD, ones that put a premium on high-value work like clearing cases. And we’re not getting something like that anytime soon.

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First Ten Commandments lawsuit heard

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We are promised a ruling before September 1, the date the law would go into effect.

The debate surrounding a state law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools intensified Friday as attorneys representing 16 Texas families argued to block it before a federal district judge in San Antonio.

The lawsuit against multiple school districts across the state comes as the law is set to take effect Sept. 1. It was passed in the main legislative session earlier this year as Senate Bill 10, sparking concern from students and parents about religious exclusion and, consequently, lawsuits.

The law instructs public schools to hang the commandments on a poster or framed copy in classrooms that are legible and without any content added on. The case made against the requirement in Friday’s nearly six-hour hearing claimed the bill violated the First Amendment’s religious clauses by putting forth “coercive” displays of religious text.

The law’s proponents have claimed the Ten Commandments include essential and basic moral teachings, like “thou shalt not steal.” Its adversaries see it as more complicated than that — worrying it’s making a statement that one sect of religion is more favorable over others.

“The displays usurp the parental authority of the parents who have stood up to file this case,” said one of the families’ attorneys Jonathan K. Youngwood. “These parents have the authority to dictate their children’s religious upbringing.”

[…]

Friday’s hearing comes as another federal case in the Northern District of Texas against the law is ongoing. A hearing has not yet been set for the other case.

The parties will reconvene Monday morning for closing arguments. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, an appointee of former president Bill Clinton, said the court’s decision would come before Sept. 1.

See here for the background on this case, and here for the background on the North Texas case. If we are valuing parental choice, as we claim to be doing with various other laws, then of course you find for the plaintiffs. Unless what we’re really saying is that the choice of some parents is more valid than the choice of some others. Which many parents of LGBTQ kids, especially trans kids, would say is exactly what we’re doing. Be that as it may, I do think there will be a favorable ruling for the plaintiffs here. After that, as is always the case with the Fifth Circuit and SCOTUS, who knows.

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Weekend link dump for August 17

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care.”

“A string of previously undisclosed break-ins at Tennessee National Guard armories last fall marks the latest in a growing series of security breaches at military facilities across the United States, raising fresh concerns about the vulnerability of US armories to theft and intrusion.”

“Why Evangelicals Couldn’t Care Less About Trump’s Epstein Scandal”.

“In other words, the Egg McMuffin might be the answer to the question that has bedeviled economists since Donald Trump launched a global trade war on “Liberation Day”: When will the U.S. economy respond to these big new taxes?”

“The unlikely coalition fighting to keep Energy Star labels on your appliances”.

“It’s the end of an online era: AOL will end its dial-up internet service next month after decades in use.” Yeah, I had no idea it was still a thing either.

“In short, what we are witnessing is the FBI morphing, 117 years later, into the kind of nightmare national police force that Congress and the public feared the Bureau could turn into when it was first created in 1908, and which Director Webster and every other director made their mission not to let happen.”

“The President’s Policy is working as designed. Even as federal judges have ruled over and over that the Law Firm Orders are plainly unconstitutional, law firms that once proudly contributed thousands of hours of pro bono work to a host of causes — including causes championed by the ABA — have withdrawn from such work because it is disfavored by the Administration.”

RIP, Marina, 21-year-old white Bengal tiger who had been in Houston’s Downtown Aquarium.

“Judging Tesla Robotaxi On What It Does, Rather Than What Musk Says”.

“What alternative designs for the Senate might we consider, assuming that changes could be made possible? The most obvious tweak, of course, would be allocating senators proportionally to each state’s population. But some reformers, arguing we’ve outgrown the need for an empowered upper house, have suggested that the Senate could be transformed by amendment into a mostly ceremonial body, like the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, which itself was gradually disempowered in favor of the House of Commons. In 2018, Michigan Congressman John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, backed a much simpler idea: The Senate, he argued, should simply be abolished.”

“If we’re serious about confronting the threats facing American democracy, then it’s time to fully embrace blue state power. Not as a fallback, not to punish in retaliation against the people of red states, but as the confident exercise of power in the public interest, to make people’s lives better.”

“I’m 56 now, and if you’re recommending the same science fiction books to a ten-year-old today that would have been recommended to me when I was a ten-year-old — and were old and kinda dated even then — I think you should seriously reconsider recommending science fiction books to young readers.”

“‘I’m sitting behind the bench’: Inside sports’ escalating stalking problem“. A harrowing read. See also the story on NFL star Aaron Donald and his stalker, and why tennis is at the epicenter of the larger story.

RIP, Christophe de Menil, fashion designer and daughter of John and Dominique de Menil, founders of the Menil Collection.

RIP, Dorothy Caram, trailblazing educator, patroness of the arts, longtime advocate for Houston’s Hispanic communities.

RIP, Danielle Spencer, former child actor best known for What’s Happening!! who went on to become a veterinarian.

A book checked out from the San Antonio Public Library (SAPL) has been returned nearly 82 years after its original due date.

“I have been reading Loomer’s deposition for more than seven hours now — hey I finally finished! — and I have many, many, many thoughts, which I will share with you because I love and hate you very much.”

“Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers whose jobs have been reinstated after dizzying Trump administration disruptions say they remain stuck in a budgetary, political, and professional limbo.”

“A couple of sitting justices would likely leap at the opportunity to cast Obergefell into the dustbin of history. But it is pretty clear that they haven’t yet secured a majority for their mission. And in the unlikely event that they do, Kim Davis’ case will not be the vehicle they use to eradicate the equal dignity of same-sex couples.”

“Anna Delvey’s Bunny Dumping Controversy Explained”. Yeah, I can’t believe I just wrote those words either.

“Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could soon be forced to stop airing his Infowars show and give up the company’s property, including everything from desks and microphones to the Infowars brand name.”

“I fell down the fake food rabbit hole“.

Go read this interview with Weird Al. We are lucky to be alive at the same time as he is.

“I go back to a point I’ve made repeatedly over the last six-plus months. We are fundamentally in a battle over public opinion. If a decisive majority of the public opposes Trump his rule and criminality won’t stand.”

“4 out of 5 US troops surveyed understand the duty to disobey illegal orders”.

This is exactly the kind of evasion that anti-abortion zealots used to hide behind whenever one of theirs killed a doctor or firebombed a clinic. It was BS then and it’s BS now that it’s anti-vaxxers doing the same.

Happy 20th birthday, Fangraphs! May you have many more.

RIP, Takè 16-year-old red panda at the Houston Zoo.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 2 Comments

And the At Large #4 race gets underway

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Bring it on.

Alejandra Salinas

Two candidates for Houston City Council for are waging a war over who used AI to create their list of campaign priorities.

Alejandra Salinas’ campaign website lists a series of priorities she would champion if elected to fill the council seat of Letitia Plummer, who is running for Harris County judge. Those priorities include quelching violent crime, honing in on everyday city services like on-time trash pickup and readying the city for potential floods.

Salinas, though, thinks her priority list is a little too similar to her opponent Dwight Boykin’s list.

Boykins’ website similarly lists the same priorities and solutions in the same order, prompting Salinas’ campaign to suspect AI-generated plagiarism, the campaign said in Wednesday news release.

“The last thing we need representing us on Houston City Council is an AI bot,” Salinas said in a statement.

Dwight Boykins

Boykins’ campaign wrote in a statement that Salinas’ campaign did not “hold propriety rights to A.I., which they clearly also used to draft their priority list.”

“This is simply an attempt to get name identification with voters, and distract from the momentum and overwhelming support Councilman Boykins continues to receive from all corners of Houston,” Boykins’ campaign said.

A representative for Salinas’ campaign said her priorities were published July 7. A represenative for Boykins’ campaign didn’t immediately say when his list went up.

It isn’t uncommon for candidates to have similar campaign priorities as they run for the same office. For example, both Mayor John Whitmire and the late Sheila Jackson Lee made addressing public safety a priority if elected, as well as creating more infrastructure to address flooding.

“Campaign concepts and ideologies are so hard to differentiate,” said Nancy Sims, a politics lecturer at the University of Houston.

While Sims acknowledged the two candidates’ priority lists were “unusually similar,” she said “everyone wants to fight crime and pick up the trash so it’s one of the harder areas, in my opinion, to challenge as stolen or copied.”

We agree that Salinas was first out of the gate – she was fundraising well ahead of CM Plummer’s announcement. Boykins was not far behind as a candidate, though that doesn’t mean his website was up in a similar time frame. That said, he has run and served before, so one presumes he has a list of campaign priorities set aside somewhere. If the accusation is that he copied her content then I’m not sure what AI has to do with it, but I’m happy to make it a villain anyway. The story goes into an issue-by-issue comparison, so read the rest and judge for yourself.

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Second lawsuit filed against Tarrant County over its mid-decade redistricting

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This one has an interesting twist.

The League of Women Voters of Tarrant County and the League of United Latin American Citizens are suing Tarrant County, the county’s commissioners court and County Judge Tim O’Hare over its mid-decade districting.

The two groups claim in a lawsuit filed Thursday the “secretive, rushed process” violates the Texas Open Meetings Act, purposely discriminates against Black and Latino voters and O’Hare as well as most of the commissioners violated the state constitution.

“In Tarrant County, a county with more residents of color than white residents, the Tarrant County Commissioners adopted a precinct map that dilutes the power of those residents of color, over the objections of the community,” said Janet Mattern, president of the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County. “This is illegal and is something the League will not stand for.”

[…]

The suit says in 2021, the Commissioners Court conducted a redistricting review of its commissioners’ precincts by “explicitly adopted criteria.’ The criteria, among several rules, required any new map to “avoid racial gerrymandering” and “have compact and contiguous precincts,” according to the suit.

The precincts at the time were “evenly distributed” amid recent population growth, according to the suit, and says the Commissioners Court voted 4-1 to keep that electoral map in place until the 2030 Census.

It claims the commissioners, led by O’Hare, ignored the criteria with its proposed redistricting efforts in April.

“There was no new census data or apparent triggering event to justify this abrupt decision,” the suit read.

O’Hare hired the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm to redraw the lines of the four commissioners court precincts. Each Tarrant County commissioner represents one geographic precinct, except for the county judge, who represents the whole county.

The suit claims PILF’s aid helped quicken the process behind closed doors by not providing publicly adopted redistricting criteria or public drawing sessions. Five proposed maps were submitted to commissioners in May and then released to the public by Democratic Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, who previously said are an attempt to draw her out of her seat. Two more proposed maps were submitted at the end of May.

This is the second such lawsuit filed over Tarrant’s extracurricular redistricting effort – see here, here, and here for the background. The main difference here is the inclusion of the Open Meeting Act allegations. Those are illuminating, but I don’t know how useful they are in getting an injunction against this map. The rest of it sounds familiar, and based on past experience I’d expect these two suits to be combined at some point.

And just to reiterate what I said before, yes I know that Harris County was similarly aggressive in turning its Commissioners Court precincts into a 3-1 advantage for Democrats. Assuming that Tarrant County Commissioners Court didn’t violate the Voting Rights Act in its redraw – and assuming that SCOTUS hasn’t turned the VRA into toilet paper by the time this gets to a courtroom – then that is a thing they can do. But Harris County did its business at the normal time, following the 2020 Census, while Tarrant County decided it didn’t need to redistrict since the precinct populations were sufficiently in balance. As the 2020 Census would still be in use now, they have no justification beyond “we felt like it” to do this now. Make of that what you will.

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The private school grift is gearing up

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

What happens when you spend a billion taxpayer dollars with no oversight and no accountability? We’re about to find out.

For about eight years, a Houston private school has followed a unique pattern when appointing members to its governing board: It has selected only married couples.

Over 200 miles away, two private schools in Dallas have awarded more than $7 million in combined contracts to their board members.

And at least seven private schools across Texas have issued personal loans, often reaching $100,000 or more, to their school leaders under terms that are often hidden from public view.

Such practices would typically violate laws governing public and charter schools. But private schools operate largely outside those rules because they haven’t historically received direct taxpayer dollars. Now, as the state moves to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years on private education, lawmakers have imposed almost none of the accountability measures required of the public school system.

If held to the same standards, 27 private schools identified by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune through tax filings likely would have violated state law. The news organizations found, and three education law experts confirmed, more than 60 business transactions, board appointments and hiring decisions by those schools that would have run afoul of the state rules meant to prevent self-dealing and conflicts of interest if they were public.

“It’s frankly astonishing to me that anyone would propose the massive sort of spending that we’re talking about in these school voucher programs with, at best, minimal accountability,” said Mark Weber, a public school finance lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University who opposes vouchers. “If I were a taxpayer in Texas, I’d be asking, who’s going to be looking out for me?”

Texas has long stood as a holdout in the national push for voucher programs, even as other conservative states embraced them. Gov. Greg Abbott gave school voucher proponents a major win this year, signing into law one of the largest and costliest programs in the country. In doing so, Abbott’s office has argued that the state has “strict financial requirements,” saying that “Texas taxpayers expect their money to be spent efficiently and effectively on their behalf, both in private and traditional public schools.”

The law, however, imposes no restrictions to prevent the kinds of entanglements that the newsrooms found.

The contrast is sharp. Public or charter school officials who violate these rules could be subject to removal from office, fines or even state jail felony charges.

Private schools face none of those consequences.

Supporters of the voucher program argue that oversight of private schools should come not from the state, but from their boards and the marketplace.

“If you transform the private schools into public schools by applying the same rules and regulations and procedural requirements on them, then you take the private out of the private school,” said Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor at the University of Arkansas. Wolf, who supports vouchers, said that if parents are unhappy with the schools, they will hold them accountable by leaving and taking their tuition dollars with them.

Typically, neither parents nor the state’s taxpayers have access to information that shows precisely how private schools spend money. Only those that are organized as nonprofits are required to file public tax forms that offer limited information. Of the state’s more than 1,000 accredited private schools, many are exempt from submitting such filings because they are religious or for-profit institutions, leaving their business conduct opaque. It is unclear if private schools that participate in Texas’ voucher-like program will have to detail publicly how they use taxpayer dollars.

“The public system is not always perfect, but when it’s not perfect, we see it,” said Joy Baskin, associate executive director for policy and legal services at the Texas Association of School Boards, which represents public districts across the state. “That kind of transparency doesn’t exist in private schools.”

There’s a particular blind spot that free market zealots inevitably have and which Patrick Wolf demonstrates here. One of the basic tenets of capitalism, as I was taught in econ classes lo those many years ago, was that buyers and sellers all needed to have full access to information about products and prices and whatever else in order for the market to work as God and Adam Smith intended. If you don’t know about a lower price here or a superior product there or some shady practices that you would disapprove of if you did know about it somewhere else, you can’t “hold them accountable” for those actions. The ability of many businesses to hide key information from their customers is one of the biggest flaws of our economic system today. The solution to that has always been robust regulation and enforcement, and it’s hardly a coincidence that those things have been under sustained attack for decades. The applicability of this tenet to vouchers and the complete lack of public scrutiny that private schools face is left as an exercise for the reader.

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

Special Session 2: [Insert dumb sequel name here]

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

As promised/threatened.

With the Texas House still frozen by Democrats’ absence from the state, Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday called a second special session to begin less than two hours after the Legislature gaveled out the first overtime round.

The second session is set to consider virtually the same agenda that stalled in the first, with redistricting and disaster response at the top of the governor’s priorities. As in the first session, Abbott called on lawmakers to also tackle stricter regulations on consumable hemp products, property tax relief and eliminating the STAAR test, along with a host of socially conservative measures.

“Delinquent House Democrats ran away from their responsibility to pass crucial legislation to benefit the lives of Texans,” Abbott said in a statement. “We will not back down from this fight. That’s why I am calling them back today to finish the job. I will continue to use all necessary tools to ensure Texas delivers results for Texans.”

Democrats had not yet returned to Austin on Friday, again denying the House the quorum needed to conduct business on the first day of the second session.

But Democrats indicated that they were likely to return soon, saying in a Thursday statement that they would come back to the state after the first special session adjourned and California introduced a new congressional map designed to offset the GOP gains built into Texas’ draft map.

[…]

The governor, who controls the agenda for overtime legislative sessions, again directed lawmakers to take up legislation on flood warning systems, emergency communications, natural disaster preparation and relief funding for impacted areas. He added a new item — “legislation to ensure and enhance youth camp safety” — after lawmakers filed a number of bills during the first special session that touched on camper disaster drills, improving camp emergency plans and providing life jackets in cabins, among other measures. The victims of the July 4 floods included 27 campers and counselors at storied Camp Mystic along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

On Friday, Democrats continued to call on Abbott to send the remaining $70 million in the state’s disaster fund to areas of the Hill Country and beyond affected by the floods.

“It’s past time the Governor focused on flood relief for families in need,” Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, posted on social media. “He can sign the check today. He doesn’t need the legislature. Get it done.”

See here for the background. Not being there yesterday is fine, no one on the Republican side would have wanted to be there for anything more than a check-in so they could go home for the weekend. There will be enough of them there for Monday or Tuesday, whenever the actual start of the session will be – they don’t all need to be there for what will likely be a mostly ceremonial day, they just need to have enough of them there for a quorum. And then we move on.

To me, the main focus at this point is to hammer Abbott and the Republicans at every opportunity for prioritizing redistricting over flood issues. Remind everyone, especially our new pals around the country who have a platform, that we broke quorum in Session 1 in part because they were going to do redistricting before they ever even had a committee hearing on a flooding bill. If they do put flooding first in this session, say it’s because we shamed them into it. If they don’t, say they haven’t changed and still care more about placating Trump and rigging the 2026 election than they do about everyone who was harmed by the flooding.

They’re going to pass a new map eventually, one way or another. They have the numbers; they can do it. The goal of the quorum busting was to raise the political price for doing it. That was a success, but it doesn’t end here. The mantra about redistricting from here through next November is that they cared about doing that more than they cared about anything else, and their actions showed it. There are plenty of other things to hit them on, but they’re all of a piece about fealty to Trump and not doing what the people actually want. Do not let up for a minute about that. KUT has more.

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

How’s that economy doing?

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Not great!

All signs point to a slowdown of the Texas economy as job growth slows, construction declines and inflation ticks up, according to a Monday report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

The report on the Fed’s recent Texas Business Outlook Surveys — recurring surveys of Texas business executives across industries — was published as President Donald Trump attempts to reshape the U.S. economy through aggressive immigration and trade policies through the first six months of his second term in office.

Texas industries rely heavily on immigrants to fill jobs and international trade to sell their goods. Uncertainty surrounding Trump’s tariffs is giving investors pause and increasing costs for consumers while tough immigration enforcement is affecting the ability of businesses to recruit and retain employees, according to the report.

“Certainly from the private sector, this volatility obviously creates uncertainty,” said Ed Hirs, an economist and energy fellow at the University of Houston. “I would delay any investments, and really anything I’m doing. It’s pretty clear the economy is on a path to recession. It’s pretty clear the economy is on a path to inflation. The numbers are there.”

[…]

While the report said the inflation level is low, it called the lack of significant tariff-driven price increases “concerning and puzzling.” The nation’s effective tariff rate has risen to 17.5% from 2.4% at the beginning of the year. While businesses may decide not to pass on the entire cost of tariffs to consumers, “they will likely pass on some,” according to the report.

The report speculated that consumers simply are not buying as much, causing businesses to avoid hiking prices over fears of losing customers. Companies stockpiling goods throughout the winter and spring ahead of expected tariff increases may also be allowing business to absorb some of the increased costs in the short term, according to the report.

You’re probably already feeling this at your favorite restaurant or coffee shop. That Trump has done, is doing, and will continue to do things that harm all of us is beyond question. That the lickspittles of the Texas GOP will cheer him on every step of the way is equally certain. It’s on all of us to make sure that the people who sat out 2024 and the people who rolled the dice on Trump because they believed his lies about the economy and what he would do to fix it know these things as well as we do.

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

First Kerrville flooding lawsuit filed

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Sure to be joined by many others.

In the weeks since devastating floods hit Central Texas, killing 119 people in Kerr County — including 39 children — much has been made of various investigations, legislative proposals, and potential lawsuits over what went wrong in the early morning hours of July 4. Questions remain over where exactly to place blame for the high death toll, and to what extent.

A new lawsuit, filed in Kerr County on Tuesday, appeared to be the first to make a direct claim.

The eight-page complaint was filed on behalf of the family of Jayda Christeel Floyd, a 22-year-old from Odessa, Texas, who died after floodwaters swept through a luxury RV park — or “glamping resort” — and campground on the Guadalupe River in Kerrville. The suit was first reported by KSAT and KENS5 and seeks at least $1 million in damages, claiming gross negligence against the investors, owners, operators, and general manager of the HTR TX Hill Country Resort.

Floyd was staying at the resort with her fiancé, 23-year-old Bailey Martin, a City of Odessa police officer, and his family when the river swelled 26 feet in 45 minutes before dawn that Friday morning.

Entire homes and RVs full of families were carried off all along the river, where the extraordinary “once in a century” event also swept through cabins full of eight-year-olds at a private all-girls camp. The youngest victims were 1 year old.

Like dozens of other Texans spending the holiday weekend on the river, Floyd and Martin were awoken suddenly by the sound of rising waters, then helped Martin’s teenage step-siblings climb onto the roof of the RV, saving their lives, according to a press release issued by attorneys on Tuesday. The couple were swept away with their RV, according to the lawsuit.

[…]

A spokesperson for HTR TX Hill Country responded to the lawsuit in a statement to Fox 7 Austin by saying that the company had not yet been served with the complaint but had reviewed a copy, rejected its “fundamental thrust,” and “will be prepared to vigorously defend ourselves in court.”

“Our hearts go out to Ms. Floyd’s family, her fiancé, and other loved ones — and to all of those who were impacted by the flooding that devastated the Kerrville community,” the statement said. “As has been widely acknowledged by state and local authorities, meteorologists, and other experts, no one could have anticipated the unprecedented severity and rapid onset of the flooding that occurred and that exposed serious failures in public warning systems and emergency response protocols.”

A press release from the plaintiff’s law firm is here, and a copy of the lawsuit is linked in the story. The basic allegation is that businesses like HTR TX Hill Country knew the risks of flooding – remember there was a flood in 1987 that killed ten campers – but lacked monitoring or alerting capabilities and had no evacuation plan. You know, like there has never been any mandate for them to have. One way or another, I think that aspect of this tragedy will come to an end. Spectrum News has more.

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The end (of the quorum break) is near

Posted on August 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

And getting nearer.

The House Democrats who fled Texas to block GOP redistricting appear likely to return in the coming days, according to a press release they issued Thursday.

The caucus said its members will return if Republicans follow through on their word to end the special session on Friday and California releases its own redistricting map meant to wipe out any GOP gains in Texas, which is expected Friday.

“Now, as Democrats across the nation join our fight to cause these maps to fail their political purpose, we’re prepared to bring this battle back to Texas under the right conditions and to take this fight to the courts,” said Caucus Chair Gene Wu of Houston in a statement.

At a campaign-style rally in Los Angeles, California Gov. Gavin Newsom did not produce an actual map that would yield California Democrats as many as five additional winnable seats in the U.S. House. Instead, the governor said the question allowing lawmakers to engage in mid-decade redistricting would be put to the voters on Nov. 4. Then, after the 2030 census, California would resume assigning districts through its independent commission.

“It’s not complicated. We’re doing this in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, ‘find me five more seats,'” Newsom said. “We’re doing it in reaction to that act.

“I know they say, Don’t Mess With Texas. Well, don’t mess with the great Golden State.”

You can see a copy of the statement here. I’m going to assume that the House adjourns sine die today, and then we’ll see what happens. California has done its part, at least as far as it can.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday his state will hold a Nov. 4 special election to seek voter approval of new congressional map drawn to try to win Democrats five more U.S. House seats in 2026.

[…]

“We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country,” Newsom said, joined by prominent labor leaders and Democratic politicians.

California lawmakers must officially declare the special election, which they plan to do next week after voting on the new maps. Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers, and Newsom said he’s not worried about winning the required support from two-thirds of lawmakers to advance the maps.

Democrats signaled that they plan to make the campaign about more than maps, tying it explicitly to the fate of American democracy and as an opportunity for voters to reject Trump’s policies.

“Donald Trump, you have poked the bear and we will punch back,” Newsom, who is seen as a possible 2028 presidential contender, said at a news conference with other Democrats.

[…]

The California map would take effect only a Republican state moves forward, and it would remain through the 2030 elections. After that, Democrats say they would return mapmaking power to the commission approved by voters more than a decade ago.

Based on that reporting, it may be that the Dems make their return after this vote takes place. Or maybe they show up on the first day of the second session, so as to not rack up more fines that they may or may not ever pay. I’m curious if their appearance back at the Capitol will moot the ridiculous “abandonment” lawsuit. Hard to make the case for “abandonment” if they’re right there, and I’m sure SCOTx would rather not have to make a decision if they don’t have to, but who knows. I doubt Abbott or Paxton will make the motion to dismiss themselves.

As to whether the Republicans now decide to go bigger on redistricting, including the legislative maps, who knows. I don’t expect them to be cordial in any way, but they may also just be happy to get this over with and take the win. And hey, maybe they will actually take up flooding and THC this time.

One last thing:

President Donald Trump’s aggressive redistricting push is sparking public concern from an unusual mix of Republicans.

Resistance to mid-decade redraws is running the ideological gamut and cutting across levels of government. While many are backing Trump’s gambit to protect the GOP’s House majority in the midterms, a growing number of Republican lawmakers are airing concerns — a list that spans lawmakers from swing districts in blue states to safe territory in ruby-red Florida.

Trump and his team have convinced once-wary Texas Republicans to draw a new House map and lobbied the GOP governors of Missouri and Indiana to at least “seriously” consider following suit, but the Republican governor of New Hampshire has ruled out pursuing any changes because “the timing is off.” And GOP state lawmakers across the country — who hold the power to redraw lines in several of the states at the forefront of what’s becoming a nationwide redistricting arms race — are finding themselves similarly split.

These strange divisions underscore the complex political dynamics of the president’s latest power play. It’s become a loyalty test that could boost Republicans’ chances of keeping their trifecta in Washington, but one that also carries significant electoral risk for several of their own members in Congress and potential for broader voter backlash.

I’m not in the business of trying to suss out what Republicans will do. Redistricting is a weird thing, there are always complicated and self-interested dynamics involved, and not every state makes it as easy to do mid-decade redistricting as Texas does. While one should never underestimate the Republican capacity to cave in to Trump, it makes sense to me that there’s no clear consensus on this from their end. Life is like that. The Trib, CBS News, KUT, and KXAN have more.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

From the “Abortions for me but not for thee” department

Posted on August 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Wild, wild stuff.

Three years after Starr County prosecutors charged 26-year-old Lizelle Gonzalez with murder for inducing her own abortion, District Attorney Gocha Ramirez swore under oath that when his office brought the case in early 2022 he didn’t know about the section of state law that forbids charging a woman with homicide for ending her own pregnancy.

It wasn’t until another local attorney sent him a screenshot of that snippet of penal code that Ramirez spotted the problem and moved to dismiss the case.

But new court filings in Gonzalez’s lawsuit against the county officials who prosecuted her argue that Ramirez must have known much earlier that Gonzalez inducing her own abortion was not a crime — in part because he allegedly paid for one in the mid-1990s while having extramarital affairs with a pair of sisters, before he became the D.A.

“It was Gocha’s child,” one of the women said in a sworn deposition reviewed by the Houston Chronicle, adding that Ramirez asked her sister “not to have the child” and allegedly paid for the abortion, then took them both out to eat at Red Lobster.

The startling deposition was one of several Gonzalez’s legal team filed in federal court on Tuesday, along with a 70-page brief arguing that Ramirez, another prosecutor in his office and the county sheriff should all be held personally liable for “maliciously abusing their power to concoct charges” against the South Texas mother of two.

It’s tough to sue police and prosecutors for bad behavior because they’re usually shielded by controversial doctrines known as qualified immunity and prosecutorial immunity, legal rules that protect them from personal liability. Lawyers for the three county officials have repeatedly argued that those rules apply, so the case should be tossed out.

But immunity has its limits. Prosecutors aren’t immune when they take on certain roles outside the courtroom, such as giving legal advice to police or acting as investigators. And police don’t get qualified immunity if their conduct is so egregious it violates a constitutional right that’s been “clearly established,” usually by a past court decision.

In this week’s court filings, attorneys for Gonzalez said evidence showed that Ramirez and his first assistant prosecutor, Alexandria Barrera, had been involved in the investigation more deeply than they’d previously admitted. At times, Barrera allegedly gave specific direction to sheriff’s office investigators about what evidence to collect and offered legal advice on how to move forward.

And Ramirez, they alleged, received updates on the case and ultimately made the decision to send it to a grand jury – one of the actions the State Bar of Texas took the rare step of disciplining him for last year, saying he “failed to refrain from prosecuting a charge that was known not to be supported by probable cause.”

And all three county officials — Ramirez, Barrera and Sheriff Rene Fuentes — violated “clearly established” constitutional rights when they pushed forward a murder charge and arrest for something the law explicitly said wasn’t murder, this week’s filing alleges.

“This was intentional,” Cecilia Garza, a South Texas attorney representing Gonzalez, told the Houston Chronicle. “It was brazen. They really do feel that they are above the law.”

See here, here, and here for some background. It’s a long story and that’s a gift link, so read the whole thing. All I can say is that I hope very much that Lizelle Herrera wins her lawsuit. She deserves it, and so do all the people she has sued. Texas Public Radio has more.

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Dispatches from Dallas, August 15 edition

Posted on August 15, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: more about redistricting; the good, bad, and indifferent about the first draft of Dallas’ budget; trouble in Deep Ellum (and not the Deep Ellum Blues kind); the departure of Dallas’ election chief; news from area schools; the latest awfulness from the mouth and keyboard of Bo French; transportation news, including the it-ain’t-dead-yet-honest bullet train; news from the suburbs; the latest on Dr. Phil and his media empire; wildlife gone wild; and the newest smoothie from Coppell-based Smoothie King. And more!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Annie-Claude Deschênes, whose French new wave music I found, again, through the algorithm, and Empress Of, whom I knew of and had actually seen at SXSW back when we regularly attended, but hadn’t gone back to in a while.

Let’s start this week with redistricting. Our host has been keeping us all up to date on the statewide issues, but there are always local angles here in the Metroplex. Here are a few stories you might be interested in, mostly from local news outlets:

  • The Fort Worth Report talked to State Rep. Chris Turner (D-Arlington) about Ken Paxton’s threats to get him and his colleagues removed from office.
  • WFAA talked to State Rep. Shelly Luther (R-Sherman) who told us the Dems who broke quorum might lose seniority, chairmanships, and even their parking spaces! If you’re remembering her name and don’t know why, Luther parlayed her quarantine-breaking haircut for Ted Cruz a few years ago into a term at the statehouse.
  • The Dallas Observer talks about the 2003 quorum break and how it compares to the current quorum break. If that’s not enough history for you, Texas Monthly, the Texas Tribune, and even the Atlantic are in on the quorum break discussion.
  • And taking the history back even further, KERA tells us about quorum breaking in the wild session of 1870 and how it allegedly got one senator removed from office.
  • Beto O’Rourke held a rally in Fort Worth over the weekend. I was unfortunately unable to attend, but KERA and the Star-Telegram both covered it.
  • And of course Ken Paxton came to Tarrant County to shop for a favorable judge in his efforts to stop Beto’s Powered by People from supporting the quorum-breakers. He managed to get a TRO from an Abbott-appointed judge in the 348th District Court and after the rally, took some out-of-context quotes from Beto’s remarks to try to get the judge to jail Beto.

Meanwhile, in more local news, we also have some stories for you:

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So when might the quorum busters return?

Posted on August 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Before I address that question, here’s an important bit of business to resolve.

Illinois courts will not force Texas Democrats back to the state, a judge ruled Wednesday, dealing a blow to Attorney General Ken Paxton and House Speaker Dustin Burrows’ efforts to restore the headcount necessary to pass the GOP’s new congressional map.

Burrows issued civil arrest warrants Aug. 4 for the dozens of House Democrats who left the state to deny quorum, the minimum number of people required for the House to take up legislation. Those warrants can only be enforced within state lines, making them largely symbolic for the lawmakers who had absconded to Illinois, Massachusetts and New York.

But Burrows and Paxton took the unusual step of asking courts in those states to carry out the warrants and bring the lawmakers back to Texas.

On Wednesday, Illinois Judge Scott Larson rejected the petition, ruling that Paxton and Burrows had “failed to present a legal basis for the court” to take up the issue.

Illinois courts’ cannot consider whether “foreign legislators” were willfully evading their duties, and they cannot direct Illinois law enforcement to execute civil quorum warrants upon “nonresidents temporarily located in the State of Illinois,” Larson said, noting that the warrants specifically say they are to be enforced within Texas. Even if the court were to take up the case, which Larson ruled it lacks the ability to do, the response would be a ruling on whether the lawmakers are willfully disobeying a court order — not an order returning them to Texas as Paxton and Burrows demanded, Larson said.

See here for the background. I’m not sure if the proper reaction to this is “womp womp” or “neener neener”, but either way it’s always a delight to see Ken Paxton get beclowned. Remember, these jokers venue-shopped their lawsuit, filing it in a county that “voted for Trump by 47 percentage points in 2024” even though the Dems were nowhere near it. And yet, the judge they got told them to GTFO with this malarkey. Whatever else is going on in the current hellscape, that made yesterday a good day.

Back to the headline question. There was a report from KTRK on Tuesday night that seemed to be well sourced claiming that Dems would return after the first session ended. Not so fast, it seems.

With Texas expected to end its first special legislative session Friday and immediately begin a new one, the dozens of Democratic legislators who fled the state to block Republicans’ redistricting proposal are hammering out a plan for their return home.

Texas Democrats met late into the night Tuesday then again Wednesday, including breaking into smaller groups, to discuss their next steps and what their ultimate exit strategy looked like after spending the last 10 days out of the state, according to four sources close to the talks.

But those sources said the lawmakers do not yet have full consensus on an exit plan. “It’s hard to get folks on the same page,” said one of the sources, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal party strategy.

Still, there does appear to be agreement on one point: The Democrats won’t come back to Austin until Republicans officially bring the first special session to a close. They’re beginning to describe their ability to block Republicans from passing their new map that could net the party as many as five seats in the U.S. House during the first special session as proof of victory.

[…]

So while it appears likely that Democrats will succeed in delaying the process enough to force a second special session, there is an acknowledgement among the caucus that their protest will need to come to an end some point soon.

“From the get-go, they knew they were never going to stay out of Texas forever. People didn’t expect them to. The goal that the smartest among them set was: We need to bring national attention to this issue so other states are ready to counter if Republicans really do this,” one aide to a Texas House Democrat breaking quorum told NBC News.

“They’ve done that. That’s as much as anyone could expect — they are a minority in a legislature, but the entire country turned their attention to this issue. And the fact that California and New York are now considering redrawing their maps [in response to Texas] is a win,” the aide continued.

The aide added that while it’s “hard” to strike a victorious message if Republicans ultimately enact the new maps, as expected, it’s incumbent on Democrats across the country to drive the point home.

“This is a communications battle. When you’re in the minority, what you have is a bullhorn and an ability to draw attention to issues. Eventually, the majority will vote. That’s democracy,” the aide said.

My take on this is that while they probably won’t be boarding planes on Saturday, the end of the walkout is in sight. As it was always going to be, for reasons we have discussed before. Daily Kos adds a bit of detail:

Despite earlier speculation that Democrats might return this weekend, Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu made clear on Wednesday that his colleagues are prepared to again deny the quorum needed to pass the GOP maps.

“What happens next is entirely up to Greg Abbott. After deliberation among our caucus, we have reached a consensus: Texas House Democrats refuse to give him a quorum to pass his racist maps that silence more than 2 million Black and Latino Texans,” Wu’s statement read. “Texas House Democrats will issue our demands for a second special session on Friday. Abbott can choose to govern for Texas families, or he can keep serving Trump and face the consequences we’ve unleashed nationwide.”

We should know more tomorrow, but do bear in mind that this is a situation where even a couple of outliers can force the issue by simply returning home themselves. That’s basically how the 2021 quorum break ended. If there’s one lesson I hope everyone learned from that, it’s that it’s much better to return together, as they had left together, rather than have a few stragglers come in on their own. If that means the group comes back earlier than some might like, so be it. Acting as one maintains the show of strength fueled by unity. Anything else undermines it. Here’s hoping they get that right.

On a subject we touched on yesterday, we have another poll about how people have viewed this standoff.

A recent YouGov poll found that large majorities of Americans see gerrymandering as a major problem, think it is unfair, and say it should be illegal. But what do Americans think about the specific situation in Texas? In another survey, we found that few Americans approve of Texas’ redistricting proposal. Americans are divided over whether to approve or disapprove of state legislators leaving Texas to prevent a vote, but are more likely to disapprove than to approve of expelling absent members from the state legislature.

About one-third (30%) of Americans strongly or somewhat approve of Texas state legislators’ plan to create five new Republican-leaning districts. About half (48%) disapprove of the proposal.

The vast majority of Democrats (85%) and about half of Independents (51%) disapprove of the plan, compared to only 6% of Democrats and 18% of Independents who approve. Republicans are far more likely to approve (66%) than to disapprove (11%) of the proposal. Republicans express less-passionate attitudes about the proposal than Democrats do: Only 38% of Republicans strongly approve of the plan, while 73% of Democrats strongly disapprove of it.

While few Americans approve of Texas’ redistricting plan, there is less consensus over whether legislators in the opposition are right to delay the vote by leaving the state. Americans are slightly more likely to disapprove than to approve of legislators leaving the state (41% vs. 37%). That difference is within the margin of error for this survey.

Democrats are much more likely to approve (62%) than to disapprove (25%) of the attempt to prevent a vote. Republicans are much more likely to disapprove (64%) than to approve (16%). Like with Americans overall, Independents are about evenly split: 34% approve and 34% disapprove.

About as good as you could ask for. The keys are the stronger numbers for Dems than for Republicans, as I’d take that as a measure of intensity, and a good majority of indies on our side. I still doubt this swings anyone’s vote, but if it gets Dems more fired up than Republicans while not alienating indies, that’s a win. Olivia Julianna and Lone Star Left have more.

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What the finally released Uvalde records tell us

Posted on August 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It shouldn’t have taken this long. And there’s still a lot of stuff we haven’t seen because it’s still tied up in the courts.

New Uvalde school district records released late Monday provide more details about campus safety concerns raised before the deadly 2022 Robb Elementary school shooting — and reveal in a few teachers’ own words how traumatized they remained after the massacre.

The documents also indicate that the 18-year-old shooter had exhibited inappropriate school behavior, struggled academically and was often absent when he was an Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District student.

The materials — more than 200 megabytes — are part of the latest document disclosure by a government agency involved in the flawed response to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. The release was part of a settlement agreement in a yearslong lawsuit news organizations, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, brought against state and local governments.

The records include messages from school district officers who responded to the shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed. The documents reveal little new information about several law enforcement agencies’ failure to more quickly confront the gunman. ProPublica and The Tribune previously found that officers wrongly treated the shooter as a barricaded subject, rather than an active threat, and waited 77 minutes to confront him. No officer took control of the response, which prevented coordination and communication between agencies.

None of the school district police officers were wearing body cameras that day because the district had not issued them the equipment, so no new video or audio was released Monday.

In one email released Monday, a fourth-grade Robb teacher wrote to the district superintendent about how terrified she was during the shooting, as she tried to keep her students safe while bullets ricocheted around her.

According to a Texas House committee’s investigation into the shooting, the teacher was in a classroom across the hall from the adjoining classrooms where the gunaman killed all of his victims and was barricaded.

“I fell on the floor and began knocking desks over onto my legs so I wouldn’t make noise, but I couldn’t block the students from bullets,” she emailed the former district superintendent, who retired after the shooting. “I told my students I loved them. I told them to stay quiet, and I told them to pray.”

[…]

The Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office has also agreed to release body camera footage and other records, but had not done so by late Monday.

The Texas Department of Public Safety, which dispatched more than 90 officers to the school, has appealed a judge’s order to release hundreds of videos and investigative files. Prather said the media coalition continues fighting for the release of the state law enforcement agency’s records.

“Three years is already too long to wait for truth and transparency that could prevent future tragedies,” [Laura Prather, a media law chair for Haynes Boone who represented the news organizations in the legal fight for records] said.

ProPublica and The Tribune previously published 911 calls that showed the increasing desperation of children and teachers pleading to be saved and revealed how officers’ fear of the shooter’s AR-15 prevented them from acting more quickly. In a collaboration with FRONTLINE that included a documentary, the newsrooms showed that while the children in Uvalde were prepared, following what they had learned in their active shooter drills, many of the more than 300 officers who responded were not.

DPS spokesperson Sheridan Nolen wrote in an email Monday that the agency followed “its standard protocol in which it does not release records that will impact pending prosecutions.” Two former Uvalde schools police officers were indicted on child endangerment charges last summer over how they responded to the shooting. That includes Pete Arredondo, who was the district’s police chief during the shooting and has been widely faulted for the delay in confronting the gunman.

Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who is leading the criminal investigation, did not return requests for comment. Spokespeople for the school district and county also did not immediately respond.

Former Uvalde mayor Don McLaughlin, now a Republican member of the Texas House, called it “ludicrous” that the news organizations had to launch a legal fight to obtain records. He added that DPS should also release its information so that the victims’ families could get much-needed answers.

“Maybe there’s something in there that we can keep this from happening again,” he said. “This was a costly mistake, and so I believe everybody should just release their records and give these families not closure, but at least another piece of what went on that day.”

McLaughlin said he repeatedly asked DPS about releasing the information since starting his term in Austin this year.

“I basically was told it was up to the lawyers what they could and couldn’t do,” he said. “I don’t know what could be top secret in these reports that could hinder them being released.”

See here for the previous update. There’s a lot more to this article, and there’s also the Pro Publica version, so read it all. And screw DPS, the useless Steve McCraw, and Christina Mitchell for everything they have done to prolong the pain and suffering that these survivors feel.

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Let Sarah smoke

Posted on August 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I admire a well-done political stunt.

Sarah Stogner

A West Texas district attorney may qualify for prison time after smoking a joint on TikTok this month in a legal gamble protesting a proposed state ban on THC.

On a TikTok live stream, Sarah Stogner — the district attorney of the state’s 143rd judicial district — said she traveled to New Mexico to buy cannabis before rolling it back in Texas. She challenged Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, head of the Texas Senate who has backed the ban, before making the likely illegal trip across state lines.

“You might want to guard the New Mexico border on Saturday,” Stogner wrote on X. “I’m going to a dispensary to buy a joint. And then I’m going to smoke it in my backyard at 4:20 pm. Come and take it.”

Stogner, who lives west of Odessa, later posted a selfie, captioned “Free the plant Dan,” with the joint between her lips. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While cannabis is legal in New Mexico, Texas outlaws its possession as a Class B misdemeanor, which can lead to as many as 180 days in jail and up to a $2,000 fine. On the federal level, marijuana remains illegal. And though a legal expert — Dallas-based defense attorney Alison Grinter Allen — told the Chronicle it could be difficult to prove in court in this case, transporting marijuana across state lines is subject to federal prosecution with a potential five-year prison sentence or $250,000 fine, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Penalties get harsher as the amount of transported marijuana increases in size, according to federal law.

While it’s unclear if Stogner will be prosecuted for apparently breaking the cannabis laws, she has told the New York Times she lined up a defense lawyer and notified the local judge.

Putting yourself at risk like that for the purpose of making a statement is worth admiring, especially at a time like this. Stogner is not a newbie when it comes to getting attention, so good for her. And as committed to that THC ban as Dan Patrick is, he can’t get anywhere as long as the House lacks a quorum.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of August 11

Posted on August 14, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance stands with the quorum breakers as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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