HFT sues unsuccessfully HISD over new teacher pay raises

Posted on August 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

A local teachers union is suing Houston ISD’s Superintendent Mike Miles and the Board of Managers after the district decided to distribute new teacher pay raises from the state by performance, not years of experience.

The $3.7-billion Teacher Retention Allotment, signed into law in June under House Bill 2, provides $2,500 raises for each teacher with at least three but less than five years of teaching experience and $5,000 for teachers with five or more years. The union argued that the district is not distributing the Teacher Retention Allotment money as required by law and noted that there is no mention of the allotment in HISD’s compensation plan for 2025-26.

HISD officials said the money will be used to distribute amounts ranging from $250 to $2,500 to teachers based on performance, not years of experience.

The union seeks a temporary restraining order to preserve what the lawsuit calls status quo and to prevent HISD from using any of these funds from the state for 2025-26 for any purpose other than payment of the Teacher Retention Allotment. Teachers start work Friday, according to the lawsuit.

The teachers’ union — the Houston Federation of Teachers with approximately 6,000 members employed by the district — pointed to the legislation’s use of the word “shall” as it pertains to raising teacher salaries. The organization argued that there are no exemptions that apply to HISD that would allow HISD “to avoid using the funds for their intended purpose.”

The union has approximately 1,800 teacher members who qualify for the money, according to the lawsuit filed in Harris County District Court. The filing indicates the union sought answers from district administration and requested an emergency meeting, but the administration did not respond.

“The law is the law. No one, not even the governor’s right-hand man in Houston ISD, is exempt from it. Mike Miles mismanaged Texas taxpayer dollars at his charter school network, and now he’s messing with teachers’ hard-earned salaries in Houston ISD,” the union’s president Jackie Anderson said in a statement Wednesday. “Mike Miles has disrespected this district’s teachers from his very first day on the job, but both the law and our Legislature’s intent are crystal clear. If Mike Miles won’t come to the table to pay Houston ISD teachers what they are owed by law, then we’ll see him in court.”

The union argued that the only exception to House Bill 2’s requirements for the Teacher Retention Allotment applies to districts with an approved system, called the Enhanced Teacher Incentive Allotment, that designates educators for performance-tied rewards. Citing separate webpages by the Texas Education Agency and HISD, the lawsuit indicated HISD applied but was not yet approved for a Teacher Incentive Allotment designation, which is a stepping stone to that new Enhanced designation.

That was the initial version of the story. I thought the teachers had a decent case, but they did not succeed.

Civil Court Judge Donna Roth on Wednesday denied the union’s request for a temporary restraining order that would require HISD to not spend that state money on anything but teacher raises.

Following Roth’s disclosure that she was friends with state-appointed Board member Edgar Colon, which no side took issue with, the union’s attorney presented the points outlined in the lawsuit. Quinto-Pozos emphasized the union’s request was urgent because teachers start work Friday and that the district’s 2025-26 compensation plan is effective July 1.

Paul Lamp of Spalding Nichols Lamp Langlois — a firm that frequently represents the district’s interests in employee grievance cases — described HISD’s intention to distribute raises by performance “a fork in the road” and a different way of using the state funds under the law’s exception. He said that HISD has not received the debated money from the state and the requirement in discussion from House Bill 2 will go into effect in the future, on Sept. 1.

Roth calculated that the money in question would be at least $4.5 million if all 1,800 member teachers with at least three years of experience received $2,500. That estimate does not account for the additional money for teachers with at least five years of experience.

[…]

HISD commented Wednesday evening: “We are pleased with today’s ruling and believe that the judge followed the law in denying HFT’s request for a temporary restraining order.”

HFT’s Anderson said after the hearing that the purpose of the Teacher Retention Allotment was to show appreciation for the teachers who stay as the state faces a teacher shortage.

“I believe that for HISD to do anything other than that — it’s not what was intended by the legislation,” she said. “And I’m very disappointed.”

Seems like that’s the end of it. It’s not fully clear to me whether this was a matter of the law in question being sufficiently vague that there was room for interpretation that HISD took advantage of, or if the HFT’s argument was just not sufficient. Either way, I assume once HISD is able to make those payments there’s nothing left to litigate.

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City Council officially sets At Large #4 special election

Posted on August 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Just dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s here.

CM Letitia Plummer

Houston voters will elect a new City Council member in November who could play a formative role in shaping city policy for the next eight years.

The council on Wednesday voted to set a Nov. 4 special election date to fill Letitia Plummer’s seat after she resigned to run in the Democratic race for Harris County judge.

[…]

Plummer’s campaign launch didn’t remove her from the council immediately. Another stipulation in the [resign-to-run] law allows her to maintain her seat on the Houston City Council until her successor is named in November.

The timing of Plummer’s announcement was intentional. Had she announced sooner, the city would have been forced to hold an election earlier, which could have cost the city between $3 million and $5 million. The special election that put Mayor John Whitmire in December 2023 cost the city $5 million.

Candidates have already begun to put their name in the hat to replace Plummer. Among those candidates include Dwight Boykins, who once served on City Council representing Houston’s Museum District and Third Ward, and Alejandra Salinas, a local lawyer and member of the Greater Houston LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce’s board.

Candidates have until 5 p.m. on Sept. 3 to file for the seat. Early voting runs from 0ct. 20 to 31, and the election will take place Nov. 4.

See here for the background. I admit I hadn’t realized that CM Plummer was still serving, but since the same situation applies to Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, I should have.

I don’t understand that sentence about the “special election that put Mayor John Whitmire in December 2023”. That was a runoff, we have them every cycle. Maybe the Chron was just trying to show what a citywide special election might cost, based on the cost of a different non-November election. Still at best a confusing example.

As noted before, Alejandra Salinas was the only candidate to file a July finance report. I expect there to be more candidates, but we won’t know what their fundraising looks like until the 30-day reports are published in October.

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And just like that we have a map

Posted on July 31, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

That sure was fast. Good thing all those hearings are over.

Texas GOP lawmakers released their first draft of the state’s new congressional map Wednesday, proposing revamped district lines that attempt to flip five Democratic seats in next year’s midterm elections.

The new map targets Democratic members of Congress in the Austin, Dallas and Houston metro areas and in South Texas. The draft, unveiled by Corpus Christi Republican Rep. Todd Hunter, will likely change before the final map is approved by both chambers and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Democrats have said they might try to thwart the process by fleeing the state.

This unusual mid-decade redistricting comes after a pressure campaign waged by President Donald Trump’s political team in the hopes of padding Republicans’ narrow majority in the U.S. House.

Currently, Republicans hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats. Trump carried 27 of those districts in 2024, including those won by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen.

Under the proposed new lines, 30 districts would have gone to Trump last year, each by at least 10 percentage points.

The districts represented by Cuellar and Gonzalez — both of which are overwhelmingly Hispanic and anchored in South Texas — would become slightly more favorable to Republicans. Trump received 53% and 52% in those districts, respectively, in 2024; under the new proposed lines, he would have gotten almost 55% in both districts.

Also targeted are Democratic Reps. Julie Johnson of Farmers Branch — whose Dallas-anchored district would be reshaped to favor Republicans — and Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, whose nearby district would remain solidly blue but drop all of Fort Worth — Veasey’s hometown and political base. That seat — now solely in Dallas County — contains parts of Johnson’s, Veasey’s and Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s current district, raising the prospect of a primary between Veasey and Johnson.

The map’s newly proposed GOP seat in Central Texas also triggers the prospect of Austin Democratic Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett facing each other in a primary for the area’s lone remaining blue district. To avoid that scenario, one of the two would have to step aside or run an uphill race for a new Central Texas district, based in San Antonio, that Trump would have won by 10 points.

In the Houston area, the proposed map would remake four Democratic districts. The biggest upheaval would be in the 9th Congressional District, a majority-minority seat represented by Rep. Al Green that currently covers the southern part of Harris County and its direct southern neighbors. It would shift to the eastern parts of Houston, where no current member of Congress lives. Instead of being a seat that Vice President Kamala Harris won by 44 percent under the current boundary, Trump would have won it by 15 percent.

[…]

To pick up new seats, Republicans have proposed to pack more Democratic voters into districts in the state’s blue urban centers, giving Democrats even bigger margins in districts they already control, such as those represented by Crockett, Rep. Joaquin Castro in San Antonio and Rep. Sylvia Garcia in Houston. And they’re looking to disperse Republican voters from safely red districts into several districts currently represented by Democrats, such as the ones held by Johnson and Casar.

No Republican incumbents’ districts were made significantly more competitive.

The map-drawers managed to move more Republican voters into Democratic districts around Dallas and Houston without imperiling the nearby seats of GOP Reps. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving and Troy Nehls, R-Fort Bend. Both faced competitive races in 2020 before their districts were redrawn in 2021 to become solidly Republican, and neither was made to sacrifice those gains in the state House’s initial map.

There’s a lot to unpack here and we still have limited data. The Chron has a nice embedded map that shows what the 2024 Trump margins were in each of the proposed and current districts. What data we do have about the new map is here. El Paso Matters, the Fort Worth Report, and the Current have some local angles; there’s plenty of other coverage about this but I’ll leave that for now, there’s going to be tons more to come. For now, a couple of high level notes:

– I have to say, this map is not nearly as ugly and convoluted as I thought it would be. Compared to the first map, which was submitted by some random dude, it’s practically clean. The ugliness is under the covers, not on the surface.

– Obviously, the Republicans either had the map itself or full knowledge of it before the three now-conducted hearings. It’s ludicrous to think otherwise. They have a long history of hiding the ball in these matters, partly to deflect heat and partly to limit the record for future litigation.

– There will be at least one more hearing, this Friday at the Capitol. Expect that to be an all-day affair.

– On the matter of what they knew and when they knew it, this sums it up:

Yeah, now pull the other one.

– So far everything is being cast in terms of 2024 election data. That is the most recent election, but it was a Presidential election while 2026 will be a midterm – Trump’s second midterm, in fact – and it’s fair to say that the political climate is different now. What I want to see is the data from 2018, not so much because I think 2026 will be exactly like 2018 but because I want to see what a possible range for the data might be.

– Here’s a side matter of interest:

A debate over Texas’s 2021 congressional redistricting map intensified Tuesday as Senate Democrats pushed for a public vote to subpoena Trump DOJ official Harmeet Dhillon, who earlier this year raised federal concerns about potential Voting Rights Act violations in the map approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature. Dhillon, now Assistant Attorney General, wrote to Gov. Greg Abbott in July warning of “serious concerns” about racial discrimination in the maps.

According to the Quorum Report, Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, urged Senate Redistricting Committee Chair Phil King, R-Weatherford, to hold a livestreamed vote on the subpoena, arguing that the committee has the power to issue one even if enforcement is uncertain.

Chair King said he does not agree with the DOJ’s assessment of the map, aligning with Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Republican testimony from a recent federal trial in El Paso. “I don’t think the map that is in place for Congress today is discriminatory,” King said, “I believe the map I voted for…was a legal map. I think that testimony that I’ve seen in trial supports that. I certainly believe the testimony of Sen. Huffman supports that. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to take up redistricting if we choose to do so.”

While open to a public vote, King said he is waiting on a legal opinion from the Texas Legislative Council on whether the committee has the authority to subpoena a federal official from out of state. Alvarado stressed the urgency, citing a July 7 letter from DOJ with an August 7 deadline, and called for the process to be as transparent and timely as possible.

The disconnect between what the Trump Justice Department asserted about the 2021 map – drawn entirely by Republicans – and what Republicans have testified in federal court under oath about that map really is glaring. Greg Abbott used that pretext as a reason for the re-redistricting process, while Ken Paxton is out there saying the Justice Department got it all wrong. The list of Things That Would Be A Big News Story If They Happened Under Literally Any Other President Ever is a billion items long now, and maybe the best we can do is document them. But this is still weird and should be investigated.

– We’ll see what national Dems do in response to this. Califonia has already made its intentions clear.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has told aides he will move forward with a plan to redraw his state’s congressional lines to install more Democrats if Texas Republicans pass their own updated map, according to a person with direct knowledge of Newsom’s thinking.

The Texas proposal, backed by President Donald Trump, looks to flip five seats held by Democrats, according to a draft unveiled Wednesday in the state House. The California proposal would aim to do the same, with lawmakers set to advance a map targeting five Republican incumbents, according to two people who have spoken to Newsom or his office about it. They were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private conversations.

Map makers are looking at options that would target Republican Reps. Ken Calvert, Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley, Doug LaMalfa and David Valadao, according to a person associated with Newsom’s redistricting efforts.

Once approved by the Democratic-controlled California Legislature, where Newsom has been successfully lobbying lawmakers for weeks, the maps would likely be put to California voters in a statewide ballot measure. The referendum plan is subject to change and has yet to receive final approval from Newsom, who has also publicly suggested the Legislature could change the maps without voter approval.

California has an independent redistricting commission that was enshrined in the state’s constitution. But those close to the process believe maps passed by way of a ballot measure or the Legislature’s approval would withstand legal scrutiny because the independent commission is only tasked with drawing new lines once every decade — leaving the process for mid-decade redistricting open, supporters argue.

I don’t know what the law is there, but that’s not a problem to worry about now. I’m happy for California and other blue states to do their own re-redistricting as appropriate. The ideal would be for there to be substantive reform on this at a national level, but in the meantime there can’t be a different set of rules for each party.

– As for the quorum busting matter, at this point I have no official position on it. If there’s one thing we should have learned from the previous quorum breaks, they’re a big sugar high that is quickly followed by a lot of groping around for what to do next. The main problem is that there’s no clear end game. Waiting them out takes too long and is far too much to ask of people who have lives to live. I wish there were a better answer but the truth as ever is that we need to win more elections. And the next time we have full control of the federal government, we really really need to pass an updated and stronger Voting Rights Act while also clipping SCOTUS’ ability to weaken it. I don’t know what else to say. Lone Star Left, the Texas Signal, Reform Austin, the Lone Star Project, and Mother Jones have more.

UPDATE: Lone Star Left is also wondering why all of the quorum-breaking pressure is on House Dems while no one is talking about Senate Dems despite the fact that the $500-day-day fines only apply to House members, and I have to say that’s an excellent point.

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Senate again passes THC ban

Posted on July 31, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

What are we even doing here?

The Texas Senate on Wednesday preliminarily approved its second attempt to ban hemp-derived THC, setting up a showdown with the House, where hemp industry members say they’ll be getting more support.

Senate Bill 5 by Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, tentatively voted 20-9 to advance the bill to a final vote, which will occur in the coming days. The bill would create a blanket ban on products containing any “detectable amount of any cannabinoid” other than cannabidiol and cannabigerol, better known as CBD and CBG, non-intoxicating components of cannabis. This bill would eliminate the majority of hemp products, including those that are legal under the federal definition.

Perry, on Wednesday, repeatedly emphasized that the intent of hemp legalization was never for THC to be widely available to the public and that most of the products being sold in Texas as hemp, in his opinion, should be considered federally illegal. He also criticized people who say there are medical benefits to THC, saying it has never been approved for that use.

“Texas has never gotten its medical treatment from gas stations over the counter,” Perry said.

The Republican lawmaker also pushed against Gov. Greg Abbott’s suggestion to regulate hemp like alcohol, saying law enforcement doesn’t have the manpower to regulate the alcohol industry, let alone the THC market.

“Prohibition sets a bright line for enforcement,” he said. “…If I were alive in the 30s, would I have been a prohibitionist? I probably would have knowing what I know today.”

What happens to all the hemp products when it becomes illegal? Perry said it wasn’t his concern.

[…]

Also on Wednesday, Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, filed two bills that offer regulation over a ban. Senate Bill 53 would create safety standards for hemp-derived products, including raising the age to 21, capping consumable products at 5 mg per serving, mandatory child-safe packaging, and redirecting tax revenue from THC to support public health and law enforcement. His Senate Bill 54 would decriminalize personal marijuana use in small amounts.

This clash of options is expected to play out over the next couple of weeks as a section of lawmakers, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Perry, are determined to ban the product outright, while others are looking for a way for THC products to stay but be regulated.

Abbott has asked lawmakers to prioritize hemp regulatory issues during the 30-day special session, which began last week. SB 5 is essentially a revival of Senate Bill 3 from this year’s regular legislative session, which lawmakers passed but Abbott vetoed.

Abbott, in his veto, urged lawmakers to regulate hemp sales similarly to liquor sales, by prohibiting sales near places frequented by children, and banning sales to anyone under the age of 21, with strict penalties for any retailer that fails to comply. The hemp industry has primarily been amenable to these restrictions.

Abbott’s office recently clarified that he supports a ban for those under 21, with a full ban on “extraordinarily dangerous synthetic products.”

We are here because of Abbott’s veto of this same bill from the regular session. I fully expected Dan Patrick to act as though this was just a mere obstacle for him to plow through, and he fulfilled that expectation. Abbott has since largely flip-flopped, though as far as I know it remains the case that SB5 is not what he wanted. I don’t know if the House will re-pass a ban as well – it’s hard to imagine a better example of Republican legislative dysfunction if they do – or if nothing gets passed. Great job, everyone.

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Paxton harasses NY clerk over Carpenter case

Posted on July 31, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is all for show.

Still a crook any way you look

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton escalated a brewing conflict between Texas and New York’s abortion laws.

On Monday, Paxton announced he filed legal action against New York Acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck for refusing to enforce a $100,000 penalty against Dr. Margaret Carpenter. In February, a Texas district court ruled in favor of the state of Texas over Carpenter after she failed to file a response to Paxton’s complaint. However, Bruck refused to enforce the judgement against the Ulster County resident.

“In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office. Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation,” Bruck said in a prepared statement at the time.

[…]

In 2023, New York passed a ‘Shield Law’ to protect their medical providers providing gender-affirming and reproductive care.

“The Shield Law broadly prohibits law enforcement and other state officials from cooperating with investigations into reproductive or gender-affirming health care (“protected health care”) so long as the care was lawfully provided in New York,” the New York Attorney General’s Office says.

According to court filings, Carpenter is “not a resident of the State of Texas, but is a resident of the State of New York that has done business in Texas,” and “has not and does not maintain a regular place of business in Texas.”

“It’s going to get us answers about the Shield Law and Shield Laws nationwide,” Bruck said over the phone on Monday. “There’s a lot of unknowns in this whole process right now, I’m mostly curious as to how it will all shake out.”

Earlier this month, Bruck released another prepared statement after Paxton tried to enforce the judgement again.

“We have received your letter regarding the Dr. Margaret Carpenter judgment originally
submitted for filing on March 17th, 2025. The rejection stands. Resubmitting the same
materials does not alter the outcome,” Bruck wrote on July 14. “While I’m not entirely sure how things work in Texas, here in New York, a rejection means the matter is closed. Have a good day. Excelsior.”

See here, here, and here for some background. From what I can tell, Paxton filed this writ in New York, so it’s hard for me to see this as anything but a publicity/campaign stunt. I suppose as long as he wrote it himself and didn’t pay some fancy lawyer $1000 an hour to do it for him, it’s only annoying and not completely outrageous. Just as long as we’re clear, this was totally a stunt. The Hill has more.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of July 28

Posted on July 31, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes Congress a long, long recess as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Redistricting roundup

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

While we wait for maps, we can ponder whether or not there will be a quorum break.

As Republicans in Texas move full steam ahead with a plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts, Democrats are privately mulling their options, including an expensive and legally dicey quorum break.

If they go that route, it appears they will have the backing of big-dollar Democratic donors.

By fleeing the state to deprive the Legislature of enough members to function, Democrats would each incur a fine of $500 per day and face the threat of arrest. Deep-pocketed donors within the party appear ready to cover these expenses, according to three people involved in the discussions.

The donors’ willingness to foot the bill eliminates a major deterrent to walking out — the personal financial cost — and could embolden Democrats who might otherwise hesitate.

But first, the donors and absconding members would need to figure out how to skirt a potential roadblock: Texas House rules prohibit lawmakers from dipping into their campaign coffers to pay the fines. Republicans approved the $500 daily punishment in 2023, two years after Democrats fled the state in an unsuccessful bid to stop Republicans from passing an overhaul of the state’s election laws.

Two people involved in the latest Democratic fundraising strategy sessions, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, claim their legal teams have found a way to disburse the funds to the members but declined to provide any additional details.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Dallas Democrat who was part of the 2021 quorum break, sees a path to circumvent the campaign finance rules: With minimal limits on external income, Texas lawmakers can simply accept the donations as another salary, she said. As one of the most prolific fundraisers in the U.S. House, Crockett said she’s willing to tap her donor base — and her $3.7 million war chest — to cover the expenses.

[…]

Donors appeared convinced and ready to open their checkbooks should Texas members decide to flee the state, according to three people who were on the calls or briefed on them. One person estimated lawmakers would need $1 million per month to finance the protest — a sum that those involved in the calls are certain they can secure.

Paying these fines may not even be necessary, Crockett believes.

“I think that the first step would be to make sure that there are attorneys on deck to actually challenge the legality of these rules,” she said in an interview with The Texas Tribune.

Andrew Cates, an Austin-based campaign finance and ethics lawyer, said he would be “very surprised if there were any real monetary penalties that were enforceable.”

Okay, let me say first that “As Republicans in Texas move full steam ahead with a plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts” sure sounds like an overbid to me, especially when there are no freaking maps. But maybe I just have different definitions of “full steam ahead” and “with a plan”. I was skeptical about that “$1 million a month” figure, but Lone Star Left, which has their doubts about a quorum break, did some back of the envelope math on it before the session started, and it’s in the ballpark. That’s a real consideration, and I’m not sure how confident I am in the national fundraising process for this. But at least there’s a number.

I personally would be a lot more worried about our deranged madman in DC deciding to send in a goon squad to arrest every out of state Dem and drag them back to Austin in chains. This was all his idea in the first place, and he will have no compunctions about using excessive force or pretty much anything else. I’m not sure how to quantify this, but the odds of there being violence visited on the quorum busters is very much not zero. And I’m sure that is something they have thought about.

Nonetheless, they are doing some due diligence.

Members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus have gone to New Mexico for the day to meet with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. It’s not a quorum break — unlike the last time Texas Democrats sent a contingent to New Mexico — but another chance for Democrats to lock arms nationally against the mid-decade redistricting effort in the Lone Star State.

[…]

It’s the THDC’s third such expeditionary force this special session after members traveled to California and Illinois on Friday to meet with Govs. Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker. Democrats frame the coalition as a national “firewall” against Texas’ map redraw pushed by President Donald Trump and called by Gov. Greg Abbott as Republicans look to retain the U.S. House in 2026.

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York will travel to Austin on Wednesday, underscoring the national spotlight on Austin.

Unlike Newsom and Pritzker, Lujan Grisham isn’t considering retaliatory redistricting because there’s no more juice to squeeze out of New Mexico. The state’s three congressional seats are already held by Democrats. Instead, Texas Democrats are using the trip to argue that Abbott and Republicans are wasting time with redistricting as opposed to prioritizing a legislative response to the recent Central Texas floods.

Flash floods have hit the New Mexico mountain town of Ruidoso three times in less than a month during the ongoing monsoon season. One of the floods killed three people. The town is expected to get more rain Tuesday.

“We’re traveling to meet with leaders who put people first in a crisis,” Moody said in a statement, contrasting New Mexico with Texas’ focus on redistricting. “We’re seeking serious, productive conversations with other governors about how to solve the real problems Texans expect and deserve their leaders to solve.”

Like I said, I don’t know what they’re going to do. I don’t envy them the decision, and I cannot and will not be mad at anyone who isn’t willing or able to flee the state.

Meanwhile, Ken Paxton has responded to the Trump Justice Department and its claims about how the current map was drawn.

On July 7, President Trump’s Department of Justice sent a letter to Texas leaders claiming three Houston-area and one Fort Worth-based Democratic congressional districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

In a letter four days later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton disagreed with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division’s interpretation.

He mentioned that a lawsuit against Congressional District 18 had already been dismissed and the other three districts – TX 9, 29, and 33 – were drawn race-blind. The state just wrapped up a four-week trial in El Paso defending the constitutionality of the 2021 maps.

“The evidence at that trial was clear and unequivocal: the Texas legislature did not pass race-based electoral districts for any of those three political maps,” wrote Paxton in bold in a letter obtained through a public records request.

The Attorney General went on to write that Texas State Senator Joan Huffman, R – Houston, as chair of a redistricting committee, testified under oath she drew the districts race-blind and only sought “to maximize Republican political advantage.”

The letter is important because Governor Abbott placed redistricting on the special session agenda because of the constitutional concerns raised by the DOJ in their July 7 letter. In interviews afterward, Abbott said he believed the current maps would hold up in court but supported looking into redrawing them.

You can see a copy of the letter in the story. Paxton still has the original lawsuit against the current maps to defend, and he’d surely prefer not to have the Justice Department crap all over his defense. As I’m sure you can tell, I’m just full of sympathy for him.

One more thing from this story:

The Department of Justice does have a move of last resort if Texas lawmakers cannot draw new congressional maps during the summer. Some Democrats have threatened to break quorum, leaving town so the lawmaking process stops. Fifteen already traveled out of state to strategize with their colleagues in California and Illinois.

With that in mind, during the first few weeks of the special session, some Republican political operatives told NBC DFW they could take their case to the court system and impose new maps on the state if lawmakers cannot draw new ones.

In the letter sparking this latest round of redistricting, Trump’s Department of Justice said as much.

In the July 7 letter, the Assistant Attorney General over the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, warned Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that legal action could come if changes were not made.

“If the State of Texas fails to rectify the racial gerrymandering of TX-09, TX-18, TX-29 and TX33, the Attorney General reserves the right to seek legal action against the State, including without limitation under the 14th Amendment,” Dhillon wrote.

Just a reminder, one of the justifications for the DeLay re-redistricting of 2003 was that the 2001 Congressional map had been drawn by a three-judge panel since the Lege (which in 2001 still had a Dem majority in the House) could not agree on a map. The party line at the time was that only a map drawn by the Lege was legitimate. Those were the days, let me tell you.

Axios has a couple of interesting tidbits.

State of play: Midterm elections are typically a tougher playing field for the party in power. Democrats are eyeing taking back the House in 2026.

  • If safe Republican districts in Texas are diluted with Democratic voters to build Republican districts elsewhere, then reliable seats could turn competitive for Republicans, Jon Taylor, department chair and political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, tells Axios.

[…]

What they’re saying: “Given the kind of election that’s taking place, given the issues that may be in play, they may be in for an unpleasant surprise,” Taylor says of the Republican Party.

  • “They are putting everything at risk in this special session by putting this on the agenda.”

Zoom in: The Cook Political Report says the most obvious targets are the 28th and 34th congressional districts in South Texas, represented by Democratic U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, respectively.

  • Taylor also thinks Republicans could “radically” redraw the 35th Congressional District, represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, which runs from East Austin to San Antonio along Interstate 35.
  • Other potential targets: the 32nd and 37th districts, represented by Democratic U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson of the Dallas area and Lloyd Doggett of Austin.
  • Republicans who could gain Democratic voters include U.S. Reps. Tony Gonzales, whose sprawling district extends from San Antonio to El Paso, and Chip Roy, whose district encompasses much of the conservative Hill Country but includes portions of Austin and San Antonio.

What we’re watching: Republicans are looking to South Texas after Trump performed well with Latino voters there.

  • But Taylor says it isn’t a given that they will continue to prefer Republicans.
  • Hispanic adults give Trump’s handling of immigration a lower approval rating (21%) than the national rating (35%), per a Gallup poll conducted in June.

[…]

The bottom line: There’s already a warning sign for Republicans as they weigh redistricting.

  • The top concern among Texas voters is no longer immigration or border security — for years, winning issues for the GOP — according to the Texas Politics Project Poll in June.
  • It’s now “political corruption/leadership.”

We’ve talked about the risk to Republicans before. We still don’t know what it amounts to, and we don’t know how seriously anyone on that side is taking it. I assume any threat to CDs 35 and 37 are mostly to screw with Reps. Casar and Doggett, as there are more obvious electoral targets elsewhere. But who knows?

Finally, the NYT reports on New York possibly doing their own retaliatory redistricting; the story is firewalled, so that’s all I know. We’re all just waiting here.

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The Lege goes to Kerrville

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Well, just some of them.

The Texas Legislature’s special session will journey west to Kerrville this week, sending lawmakers to the seat of the most devastated county of the July 4 floods.

The two special committees weighing the legislative response to one of the deadliest flooding events in state history are expected to travel to the Hill Country this week and allow local residents to testify in Kerrville Thursday, the Chronicle previously reported. Their visit from Austin would come during the second week of the legislature’s special session, which kicked off last Monday and will last until Aug. 19.

[…]

The July 4 floods are one of the major subjects of the session, alongside a THC ban and a congressional redistricting plan. Gov. Greg Abbott has asked lawmakers to consider flooding-related legislation under four categories — flood warning systems, flood emergency communications, relief funding and disaster preparedness and recovery.

So far during the special session, Texas’ emergency management chief has said Texas needed better coordination between state and local authorities during the July 4 flooding, and lawmakers have blasted Kerr County’s river authority for cutting property taxes instead of modernizing its flood warning system.

Some of the proposed flood-related measures in the legislature include physical flood sirens, radar-based monitoring that delivers instant alerts, a disaster preparedness council, and legislation, which Abbott vetoed in 2019, allowing the public to sign up for local emergency alerts when they obtain or renew a driver’s license.

Here are the details, if you’re interested and will be or want to be in Kerrville tomorrow morning. You should be able to watch online as well. The main question to me at this point is are we going to take up flooding issues before or after redistricting? Assuming there is anything to take up on that.

Elsewhere, we have a story about the Hill Country Community Foundation, which has been able to raise over $60 million so far for flood relief, and this story about text messages between Kerrville officials on the day of the flood. I didn’t think there was much of interest, but it’s always a good idea to check. I wish the Hill Country Community Foundation well in their mission. Finally, here’s a story about a family from San Antonio who volunteered in the immediate relief efforts, and what they took away from it.

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More women have nearly bled to death following a miscarriage thanks to the abortion ban

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Brought to you by SCOTUS and the Republican Legislature. And Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton, too.

Before states banned abortion, one of the gravest outcomes of early miscarriage could easily be avoided: Doctors could offer a dilation and curettage procedure, which quickly empties the uterus and allows it to close, protecting against a life-threatening hemorrhage.

But because the procedures, known as D&Cs, are also used to end pregnancies, they have gotten tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortion. Reports now abound of doctors hesitating to provide them and women who are bleeding heavily being discharged from emergency rooms without care, only to return in such dire condition that they need blood transfusions to survive. As ProPublica reported last year, one woman died of hemorrhage after 10 hours in a Houston hospital that didn’t perform the procedure.

Now, a new ProPublica data analysis adds empirical weight to the mounting evidence that abortion bans have made the common experience of miscarriage — which occurs in up to 30% of pregnancies — far more dangerous. It is based on hospital discharge data from Texas, the largest state to ban abortion, and captures emergency department visits from 2017 to 2023, the most recent year available.

After Texas made performing abortions a felony in August 2022, ProPublica found, the number of blood transfusions during emergency room visits for first-trimester miscarriage shot up by 54%.

The number of emergency room visits for early miscarriage also rose, by 25%, compared with the three years before the COVID-19 pandemic — a sign that women who didn’t receive D&Cs initially may be returning to hospitals in worse condition, more than a dozen experts told ProPublica.

While that phenomenon can’t be confirmed by the discharge data, which tracks visits rather than individuals, doctors and researchers who reviewed ProPublica’s findings say these spikes, along with the stories patients have shared, paint a troubling picture of the harm that results from unnecessary delays in care.

“This is striking,” said Dr. Elliott Main, a hemorrhage expert and former medical director for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative. “The trend is very clear.”

The data mirrors a sharp rise in cases of sepsis — a life-threatening reaction to infection — ProPublica previously identified during second-trimester miscarriage in Texas.

Blood loss is expected during early miscarriage, which usually ends without complication. Some cases, however, can turn deadly very quickly. Main said ProPublica’s analysis suggested to him that “physicians are sitting on nonviable pregnancies longer and longer before they’re doing a D&C — until patients are really bleeding.”

[…]

While they can be lifesaving, transfusions do not stop the bleeding, experts told ProPublica, and they can introduce complications, such as severe allergic reactions, autoimmune disorders or, in rare events, blood cancer. The dangers of hemorrhage are far greater, from organ failure to kidney damage to loss of sensation in the fingers and toes. “There’s a finite amount of blood,” said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington. “And when it all comes out, you’re dead.”

ProPublica’s findings about the rise in blood transfusions make clear that women who experience early miscarriages in abortion ban states are living in a more dangerous medical climate than many believe, said Amanda Nagle, a doctoral student investigating the same blood transfusion data for a forthcoming paper in the American Journal of Public Health.

“If people are seeking care at an emergency department,” Nagle said, “there are serious health risks to delaying that care.”

See here for more on the sepsis situation, and there’s also the post-partum mortality problem. It’s possible, I suppose, that the just-passed “abortion exceptions” law could help things a little, but I wouldn’t expect more than that. I hope we keep studying the issue regardless, as maybe eventually it will make a difference in how we vote. We both know what the solution is, so I’ll just note that more abortion restrictions are on the special session agenda and leave it at that.

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So is there a map yet or not?

Posted on July 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Hard to believe Republicans are flying blind on this.

While the Republican redistricting effort is underway in Texas, the fight is on nationally. So, too, is the wait, as political observers – and anxious politicians – hold on for the new map.

State Rep. Chris Turner (D-Arlington) is a member of the Texas House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting.

The Arlington Democrat accuses Republicans of hiding the ball because no map has been released after the first week of the special session.

“I believe there is a map out there somewhere. I think it’s been drawn in the White House or by DC political operatives. And it’s probably been sent to the Governor,” Rep. Turner told us on Inside Texas Politics. “But we haven’t seen it. So, they’re hiding the ball from not only the Legislature, but from the public, from Texans. And that’s wrong.”

President Donald Trump says he wants five new Republican-held Congressional seats in Texas, and it can be done by simply redrawing the state’s political map, part of an overall effort by Republicans to maintain their slim majority in the U.S. House. Republican strategists we’ve talked to say three or four are more realistic.

Rep. Turner told Inside Texas Politics he doesn’t know what to expect. But he suspects Republicans have delayed releasing the map because they don’t want the public to see it before all scheduled public hearings conclude. The final hearing [was] held Monday, July 28 inside Turner’s district in Arlington.

There’s video embedded of the conversation, if you want to hear more. I’ve talked about this before, that it’s not credible to me that the Republicans don’t have at least one map that they’re considering and have done all the number-crunching on. And yet, that’s what they’re saying.

With just 22 days remaining in the Texas Legislature’s special session, Democrats and Republicans alike say they’ve yet to see a proposed redistricting map that President Donald Trump said he wants to shore up the GOP’s grip on Congress.

And certainly the public hasn’t seen the map that could move millions of Texans into new districts, even as the Texas Legislature holds hearings to get input from them on how to reconfigure the state’s 38 congressional districts before next year’s elections.

The chair of the Texas Senate committee charged with redrawing the state’s congressional districts said he hasn’t seen any maps either and couldn’t even tell the public or his colleagues when one might be released.

“I certainly do expect one will pop up before too long,” state Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said on Monday during a hearing.

That is adding to the frustration of Houston’s Black and Hispanic leaders, who say the redistricting is being rammed through so fast that it gives their communities little chance to have influence on what the Legislature ultimately does. Even Monday’s Texas Senate hearing on how to draw the congressional maps in Houston was done in Austin, and people could only testify via a computer teleconferencing program.

“It’s an absolute farce,” state Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, said about the whole attempt to redraw the maps. “And it’s disrespectful to every Black and Brown citizen in this state.”

[…]

While Miles and other Democrats have been blasting the redistricting process in the Legislature, outside, Democratic groups have been holding rallies around the state to mobilize voters to help fight the proposed changes. On Friday, an estimated 5,000 people attended a rally in a school gym in Austin to hear former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke and current U.S. Reps. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas; Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio; and Greg Casar, D-Austin, speak against the redistricting effort.

In Houston on Saturday, O’Rourke and Crockett were part of another rally at a community park urging people to testify against redrawing the congressional maps.

And yet here we are. It may be that they have a couple of competing maps and they want to pick one to unify behind, and it may be that they do have a map in mind but haven’t convinced enough of their own doubters to put it out there. It’s also possible that the Trump administration sold the Texas GOP a bill of goods and they’re all scrambling to come up with something credible. Maybe that hypothetical map could reasonably flip three seats, but only a map that flips at least five is acceptable to Trump and no one quite knows how to placate him without risking major losses in a bad year. The “Trump’s Razor” hypothesis that Josh Marshall coined in 2016, that the dumbest explanation for anything Trump is doing is usually the correct one, is still in play. But until we see a map, we’re all just guessing. That’s almost certainly a feature and not a bug.

UPDATE: On a related note:

Law enforcement dropped charges against a Houston congressional candidate who was jailed in Austin after being arrested at a public hearing on Thursday for protesting the GOP push to redraw congressional districts.

Isaiah Martin — one of more than two dozen candidates vying for the congressional seat left vacant when U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner died in March — was charged with disrupting a meeting, resisting arrest and criminal trespass, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Martin, 27, was held in the Travis County jail until Friday night, more than 24 hours after he was forcibly removed from a state House redistricting committee hearing where he shouted “Shame!” at lawmakers and ignored the chairman’s instructions to quiet down. Several security officers tackled him as he resisted effort to have him removed. He was then taken out of the Capitol.

A Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman said Martin was arrested around 7 p.m. after he “refused to obey requests from committee members and subsequent orders from DPS to leave a committee hearing at the Texas State Capitol.” The charges were dropped on Friday, according to the Travis County Attorney’s Office. It’s not clear why.

Martin said in a video posted on X after he was released that Republicans “threw me in jail because I refused to sit idly by as they seek to redistrict our state.”

“They did this because I had the audacity to speak up — and you know what, I’m going to continue to have that audacity,” Martin said. He appeared at a redistricting hearing in Houston over the weekend, where he received applause from the crowd.

That Martin was ever arrested was extremely dumb, but this is the world we live in.

UPDATE: Here’s a report from the third and so far final hearing.

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Would you let Elon monetize your car?

Posted on July 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I wouldn’t, but I’m not in scope for this, so that’s an easy call.

Tesla owners may soon be able to earn money by letting their vehicles operate as self-driving robotaxis, CEO Elon Musk announced this week.

During Tesla’s second-quarter earnings call Wednesday, Musk said the company plans to open its autonomous ride-hailing network to privately owned Teslas as early as 2026 in the U.S., while being conscious about security and safety.

“I’d say confidently next year,” Musk said. “I’m not sure when next year, but confidently next year, people would be able to add or subtract their car to the Tesla fleet.”

The move would allow owners to add their cars to the fleet during idle hours, turning their personal vehicles into income-generating assets.

“It will be a very big deal when people can release their car to the fleet and have it earn money for them,” Musk said. “It’s just like if you have an Airbnb and you can rent out your home when you’re not there.”

Tesla has been developing its full self-driving software for years. While it is not yet fully autonomous and still requires driver supervision, Musk said he expects rapid progress toward full autonomy in the coming months. He said he believes regulatory approval could follow soon after.

In June, Tesla launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin for social media influencers and Tesla investors with a small number of Model Y vehicles using safety drivers with per-ride cost raised from $4.20 to $6.90. On July 14, Tesla announced it would be expanding its service area in Austin, posting a marked out area on a map moving north up I-35 and a wider swath of South Austin below Lady Bird Lake.

“Harder, better, faster, stronger,” the company’s official robotaxi account wrote.

See here for some background, and here for a reminder about Elmo’s history of predictions about self-driving cars (spoiler alert: he’s not very good at them). I will bet the under on everything he says.

As for that earnings call:

On Wednesday’s earnings call, Musk said Tesla is “getting the regulatory permission to launch” robotaxis in several states, including California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida.

He expects operations to reach “half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year” and to roll out at scale by the end of next year.

So far, though, the company is operating only a small fleet in Austin, Texas, that is not available to the general public.

And getting regulatory approvals, particularly in California, is likely to prove a bigger hurdle than Musk described on the call.

“Tesla cannot afford a misstep with the robotaxi service,” said Camelthorn Investments adviser Shawn Campbell, who owns Tesla shares. He added that “the wheels are coming off” its automotive business, with sales declines across “almost every market.”

Sales fell 13% for the first half of this year, as its core EV business deteriorated due to an aging lineup and brand damage from Musk’s political activism. With no affordable vehicles on the horizon until the last three months of the year and the upcoming elimination of a $7,500 U.S. tax break for EV buyers, Musk acknowledged that the company could have “a few rough quarters.”

“The numbers kind of speak for themselves,” said Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management and a Tesla investor. “They’re bad for a growth company, which isn’t growing.”

Tesla shares were down more than 8% in midday trading on Thursday. They have declined 24% this year and robotaxis and autonomous driving are critical to maintaining the company’s roughly $1 trillion stock-market valuation.

Brutal. And this report on that earnings call adds a detail of special interest to me:

Just over a month ago, the company launched its maiden robotaxi fleet in Austin. The new flagship service crystallized over a decade of investment in artificial intelligence and is meant to be definitive proof the EV maker is now an AI and robotics company.

Yet four weeks later, Tesla has little to show for it. Just 7,000 driverless miles have been logged, Musk’s team revealed in the quarterly call. That works out to 20 miles per car per day, on average.

Oh, that’s delightful. I’ve been rooting for their little venture to be a flop, and maybe this means that it’s headed that way. Keep on not using this service, y’all.

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Why is HCC requiring community groups to carry liability insurance?

Posted on July 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I got this in my inbox on Monday:

Dear Community Members, Friends and Allies:

Civic Clubs, Super Neighborhoods and other community organization’s ability to meet using Houston City College (HCC) facilities is being prevented due to a new policy requiring liability insurance coverage.

Mandating nonprofit community organizations which do not impose fees or dues on members who cannot afford to pay for participation to carry liability insurance that can cost upwards of $3000 per year or $250+ per meeting is WRONG.

We received no response to any proposed alternate workable solution (i.e., waiver of liability) and have yet to receive the new policy and details regarding minimum coverage requirements in writing.

It is also problematic that we cannot verify the authenticity of the communication that was received as it did not contain a signature of the author or sender (see below).

We ask that you show up to the scheduled Community Partnership Meeting at HCC North Forest Campus (6010 Little York Road) on this Wednesday, July 30th at 2pm to express your feelings in-person and reach out to the appointed District II Trustee by sending an email to Board Services at board.services@hccs.edu or calling at 713.718.8398.

We cannot allow our community who paid for these facilities through their tax dollars to be treated this way.

That email was sent to (I presume) a bunch of folks including myself (it was sent via BCC). It included the email chain that the sender had with HCC, first with a contact at the HCC North Forest Campus and then with the HCC General Counsel. This is from the email they received from the General Counsel:

Thank you for your interest in using HCC Northeast College’s facilities to support your community-focused activities. We truly value the partnerships we have built with local organizations, such as yours, and appreciate the positive contributions you make to our broader community.

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure consistency and fairness across all campuses, we have aligned our facility use requirements with standard risk management practices used throughout higher education. Specifically, we require that all non-college groups — whether governmental agencies, elected officials, nonprofits, social or civic organizations — provide proof of event insurance (liability insurance) when requesting to use our facilities.

This insurance protects not only the College but also your organization and your individual event organizers should an unexpected incident occur. It is a standard requirement across colleges and universities and is a best practice recommended by both legal and risk management professionals in higher education.

To help explain why this insurance is required, here are a couple of common examples. If someone attending your event were to trip over equipment or supplies that your group brought in and they were injured, they could hold your organization or individual organizers responsible for medical costs or damages. Likewise, if someone became ill from food served at your event, they could seek compensation from your organization. Since the College is not responsible for these types of incidents and is legally immune, having your own event insurance protects your group and its members from having to cover these costs out of pocket.

Previously, we understood that Super Neighborhood groups were covered by the City of Houston’s Self-insured insurance program; however, the City notified the College last week that their insurance will not cover Super Neighborhood groups.

It may be more cost effective for your organization to buy event insurance for all the dates that you intend to hold meetings at the College and complete one facility rental agreement.

This is extremely misguided and wrong-headed. I don’t know if the impetus for this change came from the city or from HCC – that email suggests it came from the city, but it would not shock me if the city later claimed that this was a misinterpretation on HCC’s part of what they actually said – but either way it’s ludicrous to expect local organizations like Super Neighborhoods to pay for liability insurance so they can have access to a meeting room. I don’t know if this is a real change of policy brought on by an ill-conceived attempt to save money or just a screwup, but either way it needs to be reversed. Those of you that are free on Wednesday at 2 PM, you might want to attend and speak up about this.

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Ken Paxton likes spending money

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

On fancy lawyers. Perhaps because he has to, as a result of his own actions.

Still a crook any way you look

One day in late May 2024, lawyer Zina Bash spent 6 1/2 hours working on a case against Facebook parent company Meta on behalf of the state of Texas. She reviewed draft legal filings. She participated in a court-ordered mediation session and then discussed the outcome with state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

In her previous job as senior counsel on Paxton’s leadership team, that labor would have cost Texas taxpayers $641.

But Bash had moved to private practice. Paxton hired her firm to work on the Meta case, allowing her to bill $3,780 an hour, so that day of work will cost taxpayers $24,570.

In the past five years, Paxton has grown increasingly reliant on pricey private lawyers to argue cases on behalf of the state, rather than the hundreds of attorneys who work within his office, an investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found. These are often attorneys, like Bash, with whom Paxton has personal or political ties.

In addition to Bash, one such contract went to Tony Buzbee, the trial lawyer who successfully defended Paxton during his 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges. Three other contracts went to firms whose senior attorneys have donated to Paxton’s political campaigns. Despite these connections and what experts say are potential conflicts of interest, Paxton does not appear to have recused himself from the selection process. Although he is not required to by law, this raises a concern about appearing improper, experts who study attorneys general said.

Paxton appears to have also outsourced cases more frequently than his predecessors, available records show. And he’s inked the kind of contingent-fee contracts, in which firms receive a share of a settlement if they win, far more often than the attorneys general in other large states, including California, New York and Pennsylvania. Since 2015, the New York and California attorneys general have awarded zero contingent-fee contracts; Pennsylvania’s has signed one. During that period, Paxton’s office approved 13.

One of those was with Bash’s firm, Chicago-based Keller Postman, at the time known as Keller Lenkner, which she joined as partner in February 2021 after resigning from her job at the attorney general’s office. Paxton had signed a contract with the company two months earlier to investigate Google for deceptive business practices and violations of antitrust law. A little more than a year later, Bash’s firm won a state contract to work on the Meta litigation, alleging its facial recognition software violated Texans’ privacy. This time, Bash was the co-lead counsel.

Meta, which called the lawsuit meritless, settled the case for $1.4 billion in the summer of 2024. It was a windfall for Keller Postman. The firm billed $97 million, the largest fee charged by outside counsel under Paxton’s tenure. Bash’s work alone accounted for $3.6 million of that total.

There is little to stop Paxton, or any other occupant of his office, from handing these contracts out. The attorney general can award them without seeking bids from other law firms or asking anyone’s permission.

Asked to provide competitive-bid documents for the contingent-fee contracts it has awarded, the attorney general’s office said it had none because state law “exempts the OAG from having to do all of the solicitation steps when hiring outside counsel.”

Given the high-profile nature of representing an attorney general and the potential for a big payday, many qualified firms would be eager to compete for this work, said Paul Nolette, a professor of political science at Marquette University who studies attorneys general.

“I’d be curious to know what the justification is for this not going on the open market,” Nolette said.

Paxton declined interview requests for this story. He has publicly defended the practice of hiring outside law firms, arguing that his office lacks the resources in-house to take on massive corporations like tech companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

“These parties have practically unlimited resources that would swamp most legal teams and delay effective enforcement,” Paxton told the Senate finance committee during a budget hearing in January.

A spokesperson for Paxton said in a statement that the outside lawyers hired by the office are some of the best in the nation. With the contingent-fee settlements to date, more than $2 billion, the state “could not have gotten a better return on its investment,” the statement said.

Chris Toth, former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General, questioned why so much extra help is needed. Outside counsel is appropriate for small states, he said, that “only have so many lawyers with so many levels of expertise.”

The Texas attorney general’s office, one of the largest in the country, has more than 700 attorneys.

“Large states typically don’t hire outside counsel,” Toth said. “They should have the people in-house that should be able to go toe-to-toe with the best attorneys that are out there.”

[…]

In multiple legislative sessions, Paxton has testified that outsourcing was the only way his office could stand toe-to-toe with corporate titans.

If Paxton has a shortage of qualified in-house attorneys, Cornyn told the newsrooms, that’s because of the damage the whistleblower scandal did to the reputation of the attorney general’s office as a home for ambitious young lawyers.

“He’s a victim of his own malfeasance and mismanagement because people did not want to work for him anymore,” Cornyn said. “And if you run off your best lawyers because you engage in questionable ethical conduct, then you’re left with very few options. But this shouldn’t be a way to reward bad behavior.”

You don’t have to hand it to John Cornyn, but that’s a good point, one I have made before, that among many other things Ken Paxton is a bad boss. And this is one way to quantify that, which ends up costing taxpayers in the fees that get paid out to the fancy law firms. This is what a lack of accountability leads to.

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The latest lawsuit to go after mifepristone

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

These guys will never stop.

A Galveston man is suing a California doctor for allegedly providing his girlfriend with abortion-inducing drugs, the latest effort to test Texas’ anti-abortion laws against blue states’ protections for abortion providers.

Unlike other ongoing legal challenges in state court, this suit was filed in federal court, which opens up a new avenue to stress test these so-called “shield laws,” legal experts say. After the overturn of Roe v. Wade, as red states like Texas were banning abortions, blue states passed these laws to protect abortion providers who mail medications into restrictive states.

“This is one of a many-pronged strategy to test these shield laws in as many ways as possible,” said Rachel Rebouché, the dean of the Temple Law School and an expert on shield laws. “But whether this case will go the way they’re expecting, there’s a lot we don’t know yet.”

Jonathan Mitchell, a prominent anti-abortion lawyer who helped design Texas’ abortion laws, brought the suit on behalf of his client, Jerry Rodriguez, seeking damages, as well as an injunction on behalf of “all current and future fathers of unborn children in the United States.”

The complaint, filed [last] Sunday, accuses Dr. Remy Coeytaux of mailing abortion pills to Rodriguez’s girlfriend in September 2024. She allegedly used the medication to terminate a pregnancy that month, and later terminated a second pregnancy. Rodriguez says these abortions happened at the direction of his girlfriend’s estranged husband.

She is currently pregnant, the suit says, and Rodriguez fears that the husband “will again pressure [her] to kill [Rodriguez’s] unborn child and obtain abortion pills from Coeytaux to commit the murder.”

[…]

But it’s not a clear path to victory for Rodriguez and Mitchell, legal experts said. Their claims are based on alleged violations of Texas state law; the judge could just as easily take California’s shield laws into consideration when deciding Coeytaux’s liability, Rebouché said.

“The complaint tries to make it out like the physician has been acting unlawfully, but that’s not true under California law,” she said. “At their heart, shield laws are about the question of whose law is in effect, and that’s true in federal court too.”

California’s shield law could also allow Coeytaux to countersue Rodriguez, and protect his medical license in California.

The lawsuit also alleges Coeytaux is in violation of the Comstock Act, an 18th Century anti-obscenity law. The Comstock Act has not been enforced for more than a hundred years, with some legal experts arguing it’s entirely unenforceable as a result, while others, including Mitchell, argue it can be used to federally criminalize mailing abortion pills.

“This lawsuit reads like a playbook of the anti-abortion movement’s various strategies to try to shut down mailed medication,” Rebouché said. “There’s a lot of strategies thrown in there — going against shield laws, Comstock, class action for all fathers, wrongful death. It’s notable to put them all in one document.”

Rodriguez also sued his girlfriend’s estranged husband and mother for wrongful death in state court. That suit is similar to a 2023 lawsuit filed against two Galveston women who helped a friend obtain abortion pills; the women countersued and both cases were eventually dropped with nothing to show for them.

The story references the efforts in Texas and Louisiana to undermine New York’s shield law via state courts. As noted, this one is in federal court, and any time you’re dealing with a federal case filed in Texas by one of these wingnut zealots you have to be prepared for something awful to happen. The 19th adds on.

The case, a civil complaint filed in the federal court for the Southern District of Texas, alleges that a California physician violated state and federal law by mailing abortion pills to a Texas woman seeking to terminate her pregnancy. As the first individual complaint to be filed in federal court, this case has the potential to end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court — the opportunity that abortion opponents have been waiting for.

“This is a big deal no matter what happens with this lawsuit,” said Mary Ziegler, an abortion law historian at the University of California, Davis. “We’re back to the same ‘can one state force another state to bend to its will’ question we’ve been at from the beginning.”

[…]

There have been various efforts to block telehealth abortions and challenges to these shield laws.

The Supreme Court dismissed a case last year that sought to reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to allow mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortions, to be prescribed and taken through telehealth. Anti-abortion groups are also pressing the Trump administration to leverage the FDA or Department of Justice to restrict when and how mifepristone can be prescribed. So far, the federal government has taken no action, though Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has promised a federal review of the drug .

In Texas, anti-abortion lawmakers sought to pass legislation that would empower private citizens to sue anyone who provides telehealth abortions to Texans; the bill failed to pass, though it is expected to be considered in the state’s ongoing special session.

Say it with me one more time: The only way to fix this is to win more elections. What happens until then is largely out of our control, at least as far as litigation goes.

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Bobby Pulido

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We learn some more about a Democratic Congressional recruit.

Bobby Pulido

Tejano superstar Bobby Pulido is forming an exploratory committee for a congressional bid in South Texas as he considers challenging Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg.

Pulido, a Democrat and Edinburg native, is a titan of the music genre that has its roots in South Texas. Thirty years after the release of his debut album, he plans to both retire from music and make a decision about pivoting to politics by the end of the year.

Under the current map, De La Cruz is the only Texas Republican that Democrats are targeting in 2026.

But the district boundaries could change in the coming weeks as the Texas Legislature pursues a new round of redistricting in the overtime special session that began Monday. Republicans are likely to redraw lines in the region to attempt to capture more seats in neighboring Democratic districts, changes that could affect the shape of De La Cruz’s seat.

If Pulido runs, he’ll contend with a significant rightward shift among Latino voters in South Texas.

Spanning from Hidalgo County along the border to Guadalupe County on the edge of San Antonio, Texas’ 15th Congressional District elected De La Cruz, its first Republican representative, in 2022. Her margin of victory swelled from 8 percentage points that year to 14 in 2024, and both President Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz won the district by over 10 points.

As Democrats search for answers in South Texas after a disastrous showing in 2024, Pulido, a well-known figure in the region, thinks he could help depolarize the electorate and win back some of the recent GOP converts.

​​”I’m proud to be from the [Rio Grande Valley],” he said. “And I’m proud to say that in the RGV, people vote for the person, not the party.”

Pulido believes Democrats can improve their standing across the region by focusing on economic issues and leaning into religion.

As industries across South Texas contend with tariffs, labor shortages and immigration raids, Pulido said he plans to discuss economic solutions — including changes to immigration policy — with voters as he considers whether to run. Latinos in the region are culturally conservative, he added, but the right Democrat could win them over.

“The further left we run on certain things, certain Latino voters are not in agreement with it — that’s just a fact,” Pulido said. “But I still believe that as a Democratic Party, we’re a big tent, and we’ll accept all kinds of people. I also think that you can have the right messengers.”

Pulido plans to use the rest of the year to decide if he is the right candidate to take on De La Cruz. He’s setting up “ranch halls” beginning in August — a twist on traditional town halls — in which he will host backyard barbecues featuring both music and policy discussion.

If he runs, he’ll face a competitive primary. Ada Cuellar, an emergency physician in Harlingen, has already launched a bid.

As noted before, Pulido has been in the picture since at least January. I don’t know enough about him or about Ada Cuellar (no relation to Henry) to have any preferences, I’d just like to have as many viable candidates running as possible. If redistricting goes through and if the targets include Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez as expected, it’s likely that CD15 will be a little less red as a result. (As of Friday, still no “official” maps.) If Pulido does run, then may the best candidate between him and Ada Cuellar win. We’re going to need all of the help we can get.

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Weekend link dump for July 27

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“What can I say? There’s an ingrained and often stifling politeness that’s bred into us in the American South. Even though I knew I was talking to a machine, I couldn’t not be nice to it.”

“I’ll go down this thread with [Chat]GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics.” Note: “Vibe physics” is not a thing. Not even a little bit of a thing.

“The first real question is about Epstein’s personal fortune; it’s never been clear how, exactly, he got so rich.”

“You think I showed up with ChatGPT? Mary Shelley used me… gratuitously. Dickinson? Obsessed. David Foster Wallace built a temple of footnotes in my name. I am not some sleek, futuristic glyph. I am the battered, coffee-stained backbone of writerly panic—the gasping pause where a thought should have ended but simply could not.”

“The truth is, none of these companies ever really cared about the ideals they once proclaimed to be their guiding lights. It was all a charade; good business for a while, bad business now. And that is why a basic truth of these troubled times must be recognized: The corporations will always knuckle under to Trump. Silence and complicity are good business under a MAGA regime.”

“First, eggs were breaking the bank. Now it’s beef.”

“A 40-year-old prophecy has finally come to pass. Pee-wee Herman’s beloved bicycle is making its way to the Alamo. Per CBS, the Alamo has acquired Pee-wee’s red Schwinn at auction for a reported $125,000. The bike won’t be hidden in the Alamo basement, if such a thing exists. Instead, it will sit alongside Davey Crockett’s gun and General Santa Anna’s sword in the museum.”

It’s hard to know how much of this is Trump being racist, Trump being a grumpy old “back in my day” sports loudmouth, Trump throwing around his power because he can, Trump trying to distract from other things, or who knows what else.

“In the past 20 years or so, “y’all” has gone from being a Southernism to become America’s favorite way to use the second person plural”.

RIP, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Emmy-nominated actor best known for The Cosby Show.

“A federal appeals court on Monday overturned the conviction of a man in the killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979, a crime that alarmed parents across the country and changed the experience of childhood for generations.” As a 13-year-old in NYC in 1979 who read the newspapers every day, I was very aware of Etan Patz and the mystery surrounding his death.

“In short: It’s a fiction that the court is untouchably powerful. And now, more than ever before, the high court is pretending to be omnipotent when it’s not; it’s all just green smoke, cracked mirrors, and big words.”

“In the five months since President Trump first announced sweeping tariffs, Amazon quietly raised prices on low-cost products such as deodorant, protein shakes and pet care items, a Wall Street Journal analysis of nearly 2,500 items found.”

“So there will be a next time, and the next recissions may be even bigger. Any bipartisan agreement is worthless. Trump and the Republican majority will determine the final budget. Why should Democrats provide a wisp of bipartisan cover?”

RIP, Ozzy Ozbourne, legendary heavy metal singer. This is my favorite image of him. And bless the Alamo for putting out a lovely statement about him. More on that and his history with San Antonio here.

“One response to this anxiety — this “uneasy conscience” — is to seek to do good. Another response is to seek to be perceived as good. The former leads to repentance. The latter leads to rebranding.”

Four good life lessons from Ichiro Suzuki.

RIP, George Kooymans, guitarist and co-founder of Golden Earring, rock band best known for “Radar Love” and “Twilight Zone”.

Y’all, all this Jeffrey Epstein stuff is making the president sad. Why can’t we be nicer to him about this?

“This part of the narrative is pretty straightforward and uncontroversial. Why did things go wrong [at the Washington Post] when Bezos got involved and started making big changes? A big part of the answer is the consultants, the particular ones a guy like Bezos would gravitate toward. In short he gravitated toward the ones who speak billionaire. Which is to say, the language of leverage, commercial paper, efficiencies, disruption, innovation, the big idea, etc. Why would he go to those people? Because that’s his social world. To the extent Bezos has peers they live in that world, work with those consultants, think in that way. It all makes sense.”

RIP, Chuck Mangione, two-time Grammy-winning composer and trumpeter/flugelhorn player, who had a big hit with “Feels So Good” and whose music was featured on several Olympics. When I was in middle school and a baby saxophone player in the late 70s, my buddy and fellow newbie sax player Jon spotted Chuck Mangione at a Yankee game. We went up to say hi to him, and while he declined to give us an autograph, he was kind enough to talk music with us for a few minutes. We thought that was cool, and obviously I’ve never forgotten it. Rest in peace, sir. (BTW, said buddy Jon is now a professional jazz musician in his own right. Check him out if you’re into that sort of thing.)

RIP, Kenneth Washington, actor and last surviving main cast member from Hogan’s Heroes.

Also, Hulk Hogan has died.

“The Atlantic recently received a tip from a person who had prompted ChatGPT to generate a ritual offering to Molech. He’d been watching a show that mentioned Molech, he said, and casually turned to the chatbot to seek a cultural explainer. That’s when things got extremely weird. He was alarmed by the results.”

“After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted. Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions.”

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 2 Comments

July 2025 campaign finance reports – HISD

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We’re going to have to do this the hard way.

With a fundraising haul of more than $75,000, incumbent Houston ISD trustee Bridget Wade has outraised all declared candidates who are running for the five trustee seats up for election.

Houston voters will elect HISD trustees in five districts — District I, V, VI, VII and IX — to four-year terms in the upcoming Nov. 5 election. HISD’s nine elected trustees don’t currently have any power in the district under the ongoing state takeover, but they will gradually resume oversight of the district once the Texas Education Agency ends the intervention after June 2027.

Each candidate was required to file a campaign finance report outlining if they had raised or spent money from Jan. 1 to June 30. Wade — a conservative running for a second term to represent District VII — reported raising more than double than the combined total of all the other declared candidates.

Wade reported $75,115 in total contributions, including $5,000 from Melinda Hildebrand, a Houston philanthropist and the U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica; $5,000 from Peter Wareing, chairman of a Houston investment firm; and separate $5,000 donations from Houston oil executive Jim Flores and his wife Cherie Flores.

Audrey Nath, who is also running for the District VII seat, has reported more than $32,000 in political contributions, including $1,000 donations from several Houston physicians.

Nath has spent about $1,576, which includes $710 on credit card fees, $466 on Act Blue fees, $330 on printing expenses, $40 for her website domain and $29 for advertising expenses.

Maria Benzon, a candidate for the District V seat, reported $161 in political expenditures, which have all been spent on advertising or a website domain. She has $32.50 left in political contributions, according to her report.

Incumbent trustees Kendall Baker and Myrna Guidry reported zero total political contributions or expenditures in their July report. Both trustees, who represent District VI and IX, have told the Chronicle that they’re seeking reelection to their seats in the November election.

Felicity Pereyra, a candidate for District I, and Michael McDonough, a candidate for District VI, told the Chronicle they did not file a campaign finance report because they did not file their campaign treasurer appointment until after June 30.

Sue Deigaard, the trustee representing District V, has reported $1,296 in campaign expenditures since January, including more than $1,007 on NGP VAN, a voter database used by the Democratic party; $138 on Google services and $150 to Paragon Payment Solutions for payment processing services. She has $736 left in political contributions.

Deigaard has not publicly stated whether she plans to seek another term in her role. She told the Chronicle she would make an announcement about her decision to run in August.

Elizabeth Santos, the HISD trustee representing District I, did not publish a July campaign finance report. She did not respond to a request for comment about whether she plans to run.

The embedded image is what you will see right now if you try to follow any of those links in the story. On Monday morning, the usual “Trustee Elections” page that had a listing of filings for everyone running was up. After lunch, the new website design kicked in, and away went every useful bit of information about the elected Trustees, with nothing at all to be seen about the other candidates. What terrific timing, let me tell you. I’ll check back and post an update when I can find things again. And while I know this cannot possibly be Mike Miles’ fault, I am nevertheless shaking my fist in his direction and cursing his name. So you know, another normal day.

Anyway. You can see the January filings here. Wade may be the fundraising leader, but four years ago as a new candidate, she had raised $141K and had $123K on hand. Different times, obviously. There’s always the 30 day reports, so one way or another I hope to have more info for you eventually.

PREVOIUSLY:

Harris County
Senate and Congress
City of Houston

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Still no maps

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s weird. Not unexpected – the Republicans have always loved some secrecy in the redistricting process – but weird.

The Texas House’s redistricting committee visited Houston on Saturday to hear out local residents’ concerns on the state Legislature’s plans to consider redrawing nearly a handful of congressional districts in Texas — all of which are held by Black or Latino Democrats, three in the Houston area.

But the testimony portion of the hearing, limited to five hours, had to wait while Democratic committee members spent the first hour grilling committee Chair Cody Vasut on why they were there in the first place. Testimony continued into late Saturday afternoon.

When Vasut, R-Angleton, welcomed the standing-room only crowd for the committee’s second “public testimony regarding a revised congressional redistricting plan,” state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, offered a correction.

“I just want to advise the public that they would not be testifying on a revised congressional redistricting plan, because there is no revised congressional redistricting plan,” she said.

The state has not publicly revealed proposed revisions of the state’s congressional district map, which was drawn in 2021 following the 2020 census. Critics of the mid-decade redistricting process raised questions about why the committee is hosting public hearings before maps are on the table.

State Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston, noted to Vasut that the hundreds of people who signed up to speak — residents who were either crowded in the University of Houston’s Student Center or waiting outside — were “unable to testify as to how they will be negatively or positively affected by any maps, because there are no maps filed for anybody to testify to.”

Jones asked Vasut if Texans will have the same opportunity to speak up once the maps were made public, to which he said: “1,000%… There is no proposed map pending before the committee at this time for which public testimony will be offered, but we will have a hearing if such a map is filed.”

“If” such a map is filed. I don’t know if Rep. Vasut is being cute here or if he is actually in the dark about what is going on. I mean, given everything we know about Donald Trump and his idiot staff, it’s not out of the question that there isn’t yet a map that they are willing to accept and think can stand up to scrutiny even by the debased federal standards that now exist. It would be hard to imagine, and yet somehow completely believable.

President Donald Trump’s administration recently pushed Abbott and state representatives to give Republicans a stronger footing in the U.S. House ahead of the 2026 midterm election.

The Department of Justice put out a legal rationale, alleging that four Texas districts, including the 9th, 18th and 29th congressional seats in Houston, constitute illegal racial gerrymanders. (The fourth district in question is the 33rd Congressional District, currently held by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth.)

DOJ lawyers in a letter argue that they’re coalition districts — when various racial groups are combined to constitute a majority — and do not qualify for federal protection under the Voting Rights Act.

[…]

Nine of Texas’ 38 congressional districts contain part of Harris County — four represented by Democrats, and five by Republicans.

But Democratic committee representatives on Saturday reminded Republicans that just a few years ago, they were content with the state’s congressional map.

They pointed to statements from Republican state leaders — including Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Sen. Joan Huffman, who chairs the Senate redistricting committee — who said in 2021, when the state’s current legislative maps were passed, that they drew the districts “race blind.”

That’s left Democrats confused about why Republicans are now alleging that the maps are unfair — maps Vasut voted in favor of in 2021.

“You’re aware that the Republicans drew this map that now the Republicans saying are now illegal,” said state Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston.

See here for some background. I mean, Republicans are asked every day to believe impossible things that Donald Trump tells them. I’m sure this one was no more difficult than any of the others. It may cause them some challenges in court, but that’s a problem for future them.

The Houston hearing was the second of three that were scheduled. The first one was in Austin, and it was more of the same.

The first hearing on the plan to redraw Texas’ congressional boundaries got under way Thursday with no proposed new map for the public to comment on and no compelling reason to scrap the plan enacted just four years earlier, other than the fact that Gov. Greg Abbott ordered it up in the special legislative session.

State Rep. Cody Vasut, the Angleton Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on Redistricting, acknowledged that he did not ask for a rare, mid-decade overhaul of the congressional map. But he did tell the panel that it would be “prudent” to take up the matter because the governor sets the agenda for special sessions and that the process will be fair.

“We’re going to follow the Voting Rights Act. We’re going to follow the law,” Vasut told the committee.

You might first want to figure out what you think the Voting Rights Act says. Someone’s giving you contradictory advice on that one. The Chron has more, including about the arrest of CD18 candidate Isaiah Martin following his testimony.

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Activist fined over mailers sent in 2023 District G race

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

Enyinna Isiguzo

A Houston activist was fined $12,438 last month for allegedly sending misleading mailers to disrupt a high-profile Houston City Council race among Tony Buzbee, Enyinna Isiguzo and incumbent council member Mary Nan Huffman in the fall of 2023.

The mailers, which supported long-shot candidate Isiguzo and opposed Huffman, cost at least $7,438 to make and mail, according to Texas Ethics Commission investigators, and raised “dirty pool” accusations from local political experts. Isiguzo received 11% of the vote, forcing a runoff between Buzbee and Huffman, who ultimately won the race.

In previous interviews with the Houston Chronicle, Isiguzo said he didn’t know the mailers existed and did not know the person who formed the political action committee that allegedly paid for them. The mailers made no mention of Buzbee.

Ethics commission investigators called it a “deceptive mailer scheme” and alleged that without campaign finance information filed and publicly available, the alleged respondent, Daysi Marin, “shielded the PAC’s backers from accountability,” and “deprived (the public) of disclosure,” according to the hearing notice.

“Deceitful campaign tactics like this have no place in our elections, and the Texas Ethics Commission seems to agree,” Huffman said Tuesday. “I am grateful to the TEC for the work that they have put into investigating this matter and am pleased that those who sought to mislead Houston residents will be held to account.”

Investigators said Marin evaded all contact with the commission and did not show up at any hearings on the case, so they were not able to conclude who the financial backers were of the political action committee and therefore who else may have been involved in the mailers. Still, the ethics commission voted unanimously to approve the investigator’s proposed fine of $12,438 at a June 12 hearing.

[…]

The mailers were initially publicized in a December 2023 article in the Chronicle, which was the basis for a community member’s complaint to the ethics commission, according to the documents. The complainant, John Cobarruvias, has filed dozens of ethics complaints, some of which resulted in fines for other elected officials such as Eric Dick, a trustee on the Harris County Department of Education board. Dick owes the ethics commission $40,000 that he has said previously he does not plan to pay and blamed politics for the fines.

The City Council race in which the mailers were filed became heated in the fall of 2023, when just before the deadline to file, Buzbee, a prominent Republican and well-known Houston attorney, threw his hat in the ring to challenge the incumbent Huffman, also a Republican, in the wealthiest Houston City Council district with a Republican-leaning voting majority.

The race pitted area Republicans against each other, especially because Buzbee had just prevailed while defending Attorney General Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial, which may have both helped and hurt his chances. Some mailers claimed that Huffman cared only about conservative constituents of District G and was aligned with Steve Hotze and President Donald Trump. They attempted to show Isiguzo as the progressive choice for District G’s City Council election.

Isiguzo said he campaigned by word of mouth and flyers he designed, spending only $150 on his campaign. He told the Chronicle at the time that he was pleased with the election results given his grassroots effort. But the runoff almost didn’t happen, as Huffman was just a couple hundred votes shy of avoiding it altogether. In a city election with multiple candidates, low turnout and limited polling, it is tough to know whether the mailers influenced voters.

Cobarruvias said he was not satisfied with the fines as an outcome for his ethics complaint, mostly because he believes they will not be paid, like in the case of Dick.

“I appreciate the work the (ethics commission) investigators perform. Unfortunately, they do not have enforcement capabilities, and the Texas Attorney General’s Office has refused to collect these fines,” he said. “If this activity is not investigated and stopped, others will be able to illegally try to influence city elections with no consequences.”

I’ll be honest, I don’t remember Enyinna Isiguzo at all. I tagged him on a couple of posts, and in the comments to this post, you can see that one of my readers received the deceptive mailers in question. CM Huffman got over 49% of the vote in November and almost certainly would have won without a runoff (she got 56% in the runoff that did happen) had it not been for this guy. I do not find his claims that he knew nothing of the mailers being sent out on his behalf to be credible. If you really didn’t know, you should have known. Don’t go running for office if you’re that out of touch with what is happening in your own race.

As for John Cobarruvias, whom I have known for about 20 years, he’s still out there blogging, and wrote about this last month. I support his actions to keep candidates in compliance, and I share his frustrations with the enforcement process.

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Lawsuit filed over Trump tariffs

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Interesting.

A conservative legal group is suing the Trump administration in Texas over the president’s tariffs on Chinese imports, alleging that they were unilaterally imposed through an “unlawful” use of an obscure emergency executive power.

The 24-page complaint filed Thursday by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) in the U.S. District Court in Austin alleges that the authority to impose such tariffs lies exclusively with Congress, not the president, and seeks a preliminary injunction enjoining their implementation and enforcement.

It is the second such lawsuit filed by the group over President Donald Trump’s levies.

“A tariff is a tax on Americans’ commerce with other countries. The Constitution assigns Congress exclusive power to impose tariffs and regulate foreign commerce,” the complaint states. “Presidents can impose tariffs only when Congress grants permission, which it has done in carefully drawn trade statutes. These statutes typically authorize tariffs only on industries or countries that meet specified criteria, and only under specified conditions, after following specified procedures.”

Such tariff-authorizing statutes, the plaintiffs say, require advance investigations, detailed fact findings, and a “close fit between the statutory authority and a tariff’s scope,” all of which they say were conspicuously ignored by the administration. The Trump administration is attempting to “bypass” such constraints by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) in a manner that has never been done since that statute was passed nearly a half-century ago, the complaint alleges.

[…]

The NCLA filed the complaint on behalf of outdoor cooking manufacturer FIREDISC, the nonprofit Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), and an individual named Ryan Wholesale, who manufactures timber trusses and other wood products. The suit alleges that the “unconstitutional” tariffs will force the plaintiffs to pay more, thereby driving up their costs as well as the prices for their customers.

Plaintiffs argue that Trump is the first president to ever use the emergency statute as a means of imposing tariffs, a fact they say is “not surprising” because “the statute does not even mention tariffs, nor does it say anything else suggesting it authorizes presidents to tax American citizens.”

The first lawsuit was filed in Florida. I have no idea where it stands. I am definitely not equipped to evaluate this one, so I’ll point you to the NCLA’s statement, which includes a copy of the complaint, and we’ll see what happens. If this is something you can comment on, please do so. Raw Story and ICv2 have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Crane and McLane settle their lawsuit

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I have one specific reason for posting about this.

Astros owner Jim Crane and former Astros owner Drayton McLane agreed Friday morning to settle their long-running dispute over the 2012-13 collapse of the Comcast SportsNet Houston, one day into their trial before a 15-member jury panel in Harris County District Court.

“We’re moving on,” McLane said as he left the courtroom. He and his attorneys declined further comment, as did attorneys for Crane’s Houston Baseball Partners ownership group.

Both men thanked the jurors that had heard a single day of testimony before state District Judge Sonya Aston.

[…]

The details of the settlement were confidential.

Crane’s ownership group, which purchased the Astros and their 46.5% share in the Houston Regional Sports Network for $615 million from McLane in 2011, was seeking $440 million in damages from McLane stemming from the collapse of the network, which launched in the fall of 2012 and was forced into involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy less than a year later.

[…]

Crane’s ownership group filed the lawsuit in November 2013, accusing McLane of misleading them about the value and business prospects of Comcast SportsNet Houston, a partnership between the Astros, Rockets and Comcast that began airing Rockets games in 2012 and Astros games in 2013.

McLane filed a countersuit in 2016, accusing Crane’s group of decisions that led to the network’s demise in an effort to avoid paying an additional $25 million to him that was tied to the network’s financial performance.

The case drifted between state and federal courts for years before returning to state jurisdiction in 2019. Further delays resulted from McLane’s efforts to seek dismissal, which were rejected by the Texas Supreme Court in 2022.

Crane’s estimate of $440 million in damages was based on the Astros’ loss of their equity in the network, originally valued at $331.5 million but subsequently adjusted to $150 million in the final sales agreement. The team also lost $85 million in unpaid rights fees in 2013 plus bankruptcy settlement fees and partnership cash calls.

The network was purchased out of bankruptcy by DirecTV and AT&T and renamed Root Sports Southwest before being rebranded as AT&T SportsNet Southwest in 2017. AT&T in 2023 handed over control in 2023 to the Astros and Rockets, who now own and operate the network as Space City Home Network.

The Rockets were never a party to the lawsuit. Comcast and NBC Universal were sued along with McLane and McLane Champions, the corporation that owned the Astros from 1992 through 2011, but reached a confidential settlement with the Astros in 2022.

Far as I know, I have not written about this before. It’s a money dispute between rich guys, even with the Astros angle it’s not that interesting to me. Except that I was almost on the jury for this. I had been called for Harris County jury duty on July 15, and had to push it back for a week because of work stuff. On Tuesday the 22nd, I was one of one hundred people brought to the 80th Civil Court, and as soon as the lawyer for Jim Crane introduced himself and the client he represented, I had an idea of what we were in for. I did see the Chron story that had run the week before. Drayton McLane was there on day one (which, as it happens, was his 89th birthday), Jim Crane joined him on day two.

I was juror #34, and after the hardship people were dismissed on Tuesday, that was a low enough number that I could have been picked as we went through voir dire. That was kind of wild, as lead plaintiff attorney Ronald Franklin launched into what was basically an opening argument before he’d asked a single question. Defense attorney Paul Dobrowski objected something like six times, there were three or four conferences with the judge, all about what Franklin was saying when he wasn’t just asking us questions. You don’t see that on your televised courtroom dramas.

Anyway, after voir dire as the lawyers and judge conferred and we waited in the hall, I was called back in at one point and asked multiple questions about my blog. Someone on one of the teams googled me, as they should have. I told them that while I did occasionally write about baseball and the Astros it wasn’t my main beat and I had no intention of writing about this until it was all over. They did eventually pick three jurors with higher numbers than mine, so at least one side decided it was better to skip me. Given how long the trial was expected to take, I was fine with that. But now I kind of wish I’d been there for the one day it lasted.

So there you have it, a little bit of inside info about this case. Congrats to all for the settlement, and godspeed to the jurors who just got two weeks of their lives back.

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How’s that Trump thing been working out for us?

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

A brief sampling…

Texans could see higher energy costs as Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ slows clean energy growth, report says

Less clean energy will be built in Texas as a result of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” signed into law by President Donald Trump on the Fourth of July, which could raise annual energy costs for everyday residents by hundreds of dollars in the coming years, industry associations and energy researchers say.

Most damaging to the clean energy industry is that the Big Beautiful Bill aggressively phases out federal tax credits for solar and wind projects, which were greatly expanded in former President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation in 2022.

Clean energy developers will have a harder time raising money to build their projects if they can’t factor in the tax credits. Many projects may no longer make financial sense and could be abandoned altogether.

“We are, in essence, pulling the rug out from underneath these projects,” said Harry Godfrey, a managing director at Advanced Energy United, a trade group for clean energy companies across the country.

Different groups, however, disagree on just how damaging the new law might be to the industry, which has the most future solar and wind capacity planned for Texas, the state that already has by far the most renewable energy.

One model of the Big Beautiful Bill’s impact forecasts a bloodbath: Texas could lose out on 77 gigawatts of electricity capacity — enough power to supply more than 19 million homes — that might’ve otherwise been built over the next decade if the tax credits were maintained.

In other words, instead of adding 104 gigawatts of new electricity supply in the next ten years, Texas is expected to add only 27 gigawatts, according to Energy Innovation’s modeling, said Dan O’Brien, a senior analyst at the think tank.

“Texas is by far the biggest loser,” he said, compared to other states. In second place is Florida, which could see 50 fewer gigawatts of electricity supply as a result of the new law, according to Energy Innovation’s analysis.

Who among us doesn’t want higher electric bills?

ICE crackdown rattles Houston’s construction industry as contractors warn of labor shortage

Zaldaña Ramirez was held in a detention center for three weeks until he was released on bond in mid-March. “I felt desperate,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been there… I’m not a criminal.”

His story is one of many stoking anxiety across Houston’s construction industry, where more than a third of workers are immigrants. As the Trump administration escalates enforcement, even targeting those with legal work permits, the immigration crackdown threatens to destabilize a key pillar of the industry: access to affordable foreign-born labor.

With hundreds of thousands of construction jobs already unfilled nationwide, the question looms: If more immigrant workers disappear, who will be left to build?

Although estimates vary, the U.S. construction industry is short anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 workers in any given month, according to the National Association of Homebuilders.

“This shortage isn’t going to be filled just solely by U.S. citizens,” said Geoffrey Tahuahua, president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Texas, a trade association. “It’s going to have to be a combination of many different things.”

In Texas, immigrant workers make up about 38% of all construction workers, according to the NAHB.

Nearly a quarter of Texas construction workers are undocumented, according to estimates from the American Immigration Council. That suggests there could be more than 53,000 undocumented construction workers in the Houston region.

That pool of undocumented workers in Houston is likely to shrink as immigration enforcement expands across Texas.

Who among us doesn’t want higher home construction costs?

Trump’s Medicaid cuts could be a death sentence for thousands of HIV-positive Texans

Marc Cohen can’t remember the last time he attended a funeral of someone who died of AIDs.

He was diagnosed with the virus in 1987, when the first medication to treat HIV/AIDS, called AZT, was approved by the FDA. At about $8,000 a year, it was considered the most expensive drug in history.

Cohen watched most of his friends die of AIDS, attending 40 funerals in one year, he said.

It’s frightening to think we could return to those days, but Cohen and others living with HIV know the possibility is real with the passing of the Trump administration’s “big, beautiful” budget bill, which includes sweeping changes to Medicaid. Millions of people are expected to lose coverage. More than 40% of people living with HIV rely on Medicaid for that medicine, according to AIDS United, a national advocacy group.

The treatment is still expensive, so without the insurance, many people living with HIV won’t have access to the care they need to keep them healthy. The HIV/AIDS epidemic death toll peaked in the U.S. in 1995, with more than 40,000 deaths.

“I’m very worried for myself and so many others,” said Cohen, case manager at Jewish Family Services and a former project manager with AIDS Foundation Houston. “I’m concerned that rather than moving forward and seeing a decline in infection rates, we’re going to see things regress.”

Even though infection rates have declined since the 1980s, HIV remains an epidemic globally and disproportionately impacts gay and bisexual men as well as Black and Latino communities.

In Harris County, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise, according to a recent report released by Harris County Public Health. The report found sexually transmitted infection rates in Harris County significantly outpaced the statewide average from 2002 through 2015. HIV was found to be most prevalent among multiracial and Black residents, according to the report.

In Texas, approximately 102,800 people were living with HIV in 2021, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

President Donald Trump’s bill would also slash funding for federal HIV prevention, medications, support services and research, according to analysis by the HIV + HEP Policy Institute.

Who among us…you get the idea.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem defends FEMA Texas flooding response after NYT reports slow response

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the federal government’s response to the deadly Hill Country floods, dismissing claims that deployment was slowed.

During an interview Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Noem denied that a new policy she issued in June, requiring her personal approval for Federal Emergency Management Agency contracts over $100,000 had slowed the agency’s response.

“Those claims are absolutely false,” Noem said. “Within just an hour or two after the flooding, we had resources from the Department of Homeland Security there helping those individuals in Texas.”

An investigation by The New York Times revealed on July 6 and July 7, as the Guadalupe River surged, overtaking homes and children’s camps, thousands of calls went unanswered because of understaffing. Hundreds of contractors at FEMA call centers were laid off after their contracts expired on July 5, the New York Times reported.

According to the investigation, on July 5, before contracts lapsed, FEMA answered more than 99% of the 3,027 calls it received, but in the following days, that responsiveness dropped with only 16% of 16,419 calls being answered on July 7.

Noem dismissed the New York Times’ findings as inaccurate and claimed FEMA’s response to the floods was one of the best the agency has ever seen.

“False reporting, fake news,” Noem said. “It’s discouraging that during this time, when we have such a loss of life and so many people’s lives have turned upside down, that people are playing politics with this because the response time was immediate.”

Loser talk.

Trump officials want to give TxDOT more power over highway expansions

The Trump administration wants to give Texas more authority – and require less transparency – as the state expands existing highways and builds new ones.

In November, the Texas Department of Transportation asked the Federal Highway Administration to extend a special designation that lets it oversee its own compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA requires the state to document community and environmental impacts of road projects.

Now, TxDOT has submitted a new application, with changes that would give itself drastically more oversight and authority over its own federal environmental review. The draft rule would allow TxDOT to skip annual self-assessments and monthly reports that document the agency’s compliance with the federal law.

The application was revised after federal leadership “presented an opportunity to address unnecessary administrative requirements in a renegotiated MOU that preserves all of the legal requirements of the NEPA assignment program,” said Adam Hammons, a TxDOT spokesperson, in an email. He said that TxDOT was still subject to monitoring and audits by the Federal Highway Administration.

If approved, TxDOT won’t have to inform community members of their right to sue the state agency or file a civil rights complaint with the FHWA, as dozens of people did in 2021 in response to the I-45 expansion in Houston.

What could possibly go wrong?

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July 2025 campaign finance reports – City of Houston

Posted on July 25, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

PREVOIUSLY:

Harris County
Senate and Congress

When I did the January roundup for the city of Houston, I didn’t expect there to be much activity of interest in July, given that the next regularly scheduled election for the city is in 2027. A lot has happened since then, including a special election for At Large #4 this November, so here we are checking up on everyone again. Let’s get into it.


Candidate     Raised       Spent       Loan     On Hand
=======================================================
Whitmire     651,535     175,078          0   2,293,372

Hollins      220,215      88,544          0     404,828

Ramirez       78,810      19,019     30,000     150,858
Davis
Carter        49,020      11,739      3,900      64,555
Plummer
Alcorn (Jan)   1,500      25,100          0      97,580
Alcorn (Jul)   2,200      29,823          0      69,074

Peck          17,165       9,806          0      50,930
Jackson       11,150       1,559          0      15,563
Kamin        148,192      31,662          0     415,852  
E-Shabazz     18,300       2,739          0      16,922
Flickinger    43,750       8,102    103,000      51,902
Thomas        50,374      15,788          0     263,032
Huffman       47,275      26,983          0      40,963
Castillo     105,779      20,468          0     155,671  
Martinez      55,040      38,749          0      61,257
Pollard      125,089      75,182  1,040,000   2,113,691
C-Tatum      116,203      21,336          0     367,138

Salinas      279,539      18,703     25,000     284,782
Thomas             0           0          0           0
Tyler         18,965       8,994          0      17,501

Turner             0      19,334          0     467,160
Edwards            0         280          0       3,016
Jackson Lee        0      10,257          0           0
Sanchez            0           0    189,213       1,500
Gallegos           0       4,472          0     122,760
Laster             0           0          0     144,383
Robinson           0           0          0     245,744

Sallie Alcorn did not have a report posted in January. I had sent her a message about that at the time, because I know her to be the kind of person who would normally never fail to file a campaign finance report. She didn’t see my message at first but eventually got back to me and filed that report in May. Glad we cleared that up. And her July report was on time as expected.

Willie Davis and Letitia Plummer also didn’t have reports in January. Plummer, as noted before, hasn’t filed a city of Houston campaign finance report since the 8 day report for the 2023 runoff in December. I have no idea why she is so allergic to filing these reports. Normally that would be a niche interest, since she’s termed out as a Council member. But now she’s running for County Judge, and since she announced for that after the June 30 filing deadline, she doesn’t have a Harris County finance report either. We have no idea what her campaign financial picture looks like, or who has been donating to her over the last 18 months – it’s hard for me to believe that she has simply had zero campaign finance activity before now. I do not understand this, and I do not like it. Please file a damn report already.

Mayor Whitmire raised $53K last period. He was a lot busier this period. Whoever wants to run against him in 2027 is going to need to be prepared on that front.

Since January, CM Ed Pollard has loaned himself a million dollars to his campaign. He LOANED HIMSELF a MILLION DOLLARS. As he is term-limited, I can only assume that this is the strongest possible evidence at this time that he is planning to run for Mayor in 2027. I cannot think of a single reason why you would do this otherwise. Also, I had no idea that CM Pollard’s finances allowed for him to loan his campaign this kind of dough.

Alejandra Salinas, the first At Large #4 candidate out of the gate, was known to have had a big haul. She started fundraising in March and leaned heavily on a national network. I don’t know if she was making a bet on CM Plummer’s intentions or just decided not to wait for the 2027 cycle to begin, but either way that’s a strong start.

Jordan Thomas, who posts as Urbanist on Twitter, is the other At Large 4 candidate listed. He filed his report on July 16 for the period of July 16 through December 31. That’s why there’s no activity reported. No other potential AL4 candidates have filed reports yet. The next opportunity will be the 30-day report in October.

Jovon Tyler is one of former Mayor Annise Parker’s kids. He announced a run for Council a few months ago. His report doesn’t specify which Council office he’s running for but it does list 2027 as the election year, so barring a change he doesn’t appear to be in for the At Large #4 special election this November.

I saw that $467K in Sylvester Turner’s account (as far as I can tell, his Congressional account is now closed) and I thought that it needs to be given a purpose, one that would help his fellow Democrats in 2026. I’ve planted that seed with a couple of people close to him, so we’ll see what happens. One can only wonder what plans Robert Gallegos and Mike Laster and David Robinson have for their remaining campaign funds, but I say the same purpose for them would be great. Anyone reading this who has the ear of one of those gentlemen, please make that suggestion to them. As for Sheila Jackson Lee, her city campaign account is now closed out, with $7500 of that last bit of money going to the TLIP program at Texas Southern. There are other good uses for these funds beyond politics, too.

That’s what I’ve got. I’ll do HISD next, and will look at some state races as well. Let me know what you think.

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The flood hearings

Posted on July 25, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a start.

The Texas House and Senate quickly established special committees to focus on relief efforts and determine what preparations the state must make to be better prepared for future natural disasters.

Now, these panels of state lawmakers are meeting for the first time. Legislators on the Select Committees on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding convened Wednesday to hear testimony from emergency management officials, weather forecasters, the Texas Water Development Board and other experts.

First to testify was Nim Kidd, Chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), who spoke and answered questions for nearly three hours. Overall, he had two top recommendations for state lawmakers to address.

“Communications is one of them,” said Kidd. “That’s messaging from the media, that’s messaging to the citizen and that’s messaging back and forth with our local first responders that are coming from all over the state.”

He added the state has a “long way to go” towards improving communications. Currently, Kidd said, the state lacks consistency — nearly each local government does things their own way.

“We have 52 to 54 independently, usually locally owned, radio systems across the state,” said Kidd. “There’s no state standard for governance and how they operate.”

The second recommendation on Kidd’s list: “We’ve got to do a better job at our warning and notification systems for all hazards, not just floods.”

That’s one thing state Sen. Paul Bettencourt is working on this special session. The Houston Republican is carrying a bill focused on how to get a statewide flood early warning system in place. He told The Texas Newsroom that he’s spoken with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and believes they’re on the same page as Gov. Greg Abbott — especially when it comes to taking the burden off funding such a system off local entities.

“Let’s just get money, get a solution, get it to them,” Bettencourt said in a Tuesday interview.

Bettencourt, who added he doesn’t yet know all the solutions available, said he believes simply adding sirens along the state’s rivers won’t be enough.

“You got to look at gauges. You have to look at cell communications,” Bettencourt said. “If you’re down in a river valley, you may not be able to get the alerts.”

Too bad you weren’t all on the same page about this during the regular session, Paul. Maybe talk to Ken King about the bill the Senate refused to consider despite it passing the House by a wide margin. Better late than never and all that, but spare me the “we’re hard at work” talk.

This is one of those times when the Lege may have to compel local Republicans to do something they don’t want to do if they’re serious about this.

In 1988, a year after a devastating flood killed 10 teenagers trying to evacuate from a riverside summer camp in Kerr County, leaders at the local river authority made a difficult decision: They raised their tax rate by nearly 50% to help pay for an early flood warning system.

The rate hike was controversial at the time. But the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which levies property taxes in order to manage the river that flows through Kerr County, decided it was worth the political fallout.

“If it saves one life down the road, it will be worth it,” Dick Eastland, who was a member of UGRA’s board of directors and also ran the riverside Camp Mystic, told the Associated Press that summer.

The river authority initially spent $225,000, about half a million in today’s dollars, on what was then described as a “world-class” warning system. Local officials said it was a crucial way to save motorists from being swept away on low-lying roadways, which is what had happened to the teen campers.

Yet nearly three decades later, when an engineering study determined that the system needed a $1 million upgrade, a tax increase was not on the table.

That didn’t change in subsequent years, even as local officials failed to secure significant funds from federal and state officials. It held true even after UGRA built up a $3.4 million reserve fund for an unrelated project that later fell through, leaving the river authority with so much extra money that it lowered taxes.

And so the region was left without a modern flood warning system on July 4, when flash flooding along the Guadalupe killed more than 100 people in Kerr County alone, including 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic. Eastland was among the dead.

County officials have faced pointed questions about their hesitancy to pay for a flood warning system, and state leaders have promised to step in. But experts say the spotlight also belongs on the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, one of dozens of obscure governmental agencies that manage Texas waterways.

“Obviously, they felt like it needed to be done in the 80s, so why is that not relevant 30 years later?” said Mark Rose, former general manager of the Lower Colorado River Authority, which serves the Austin region and dozens more communities downstream. “That’s not a lack of resources, that’s a lack of willpower.”

UGRA staff did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Nor did most of its current board members, all of whom were appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Three of those nine members lead summer camps along the Guadalupe, including Eastland, who Abbott reappointed in 2022.

Bill Rector, president of the board, told the Houston Chronicle earlier this month that the river authority recently decided to pay for a new flood warning system on its own. (When reached for further comment this week, he referred reporters to UGRA staff.) But documents show that members have only approved spending a sliver of the system’s total cost so far, out of an annual budget of $2.3 million.

The local taxpayers have shown that they’d rather save a few bucks than spend this money. Maybe this will change their mind, but we all know what the capacity is for forgetting what has happened before and moving on. Now is the time to push this through, if indeed the likes of Abbott and Patrick and Bettencourt care about it. We’ll see. The Trib and the Chron have more.

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Dispatches from Dallas, July 25 edition

Posted on July 25, 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: another very bad bid for the Dallas Morning News; Dallas is under the Death Star’s eye; more about the finalists for Fort Worth PD Chief; Keller wants to make nicer with ICE; local protests; McKinney breaks ground on its airport; Southwest puts a date on assigned seats; and local cultural news, including a dictionary of Big D Speak.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of local folk singer Katherine Paterson.

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Is Talarico leaning towards a Senate run?

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Looks like it.

Rep. James Talarico

Texas state Rep. James Talarico hasn’t yet decided if he will run for the U.S. Senate, but he’s taken a key step to lay the groundwork.

Talarico, an Austin Democrat, registered the internet domain name “TalaricoForSenate.com,” which tells visitors it’s “Launching Soon.”

Talarico, a pastor and former school teacher who has grown a sizeable social media following, said he hasn’t made any decisions yet and is focusing on the Texas Legislature’s special session, which began Monday.

Still, Talarico is facing growing pressure to join a potential Democratic primary field that already includes retired Houston astronaut Terry Virts and former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas.

On Friday, Austin-based podcaster Joe Rogan had Talarico on his program, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” to talk about how the lawmaker infuses his religious background into his politics and how he became a Democrat. Rogan went so far as to encourage Talarico to run for higher office, and soon.

“James Talarico, you need to run for President,” Rogan said. “We need someone who is actually a good person.”

Talarico, 36, told Rogan he does not view politics as a battle between right and left, but rather “much more as top versus bottom.”

“I just see how we are all pitted against one another,” he said.

Talarico has been gauging his statewide appeal by traveling across Texas to share a similar message. Last month, he joined former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, for a rally in San Antonio. The trio is scheduled to hold another event Friday in Austin.

I don’t have a strong preference here for what Talarico should do, but then I’m a bit of a mutant because I’m not unhappy with Colin Allred running for Senate again. He’ll be a bit hamstrung by the special sessions as far as fundraising goes, whatever he chooses, but that can be overcome. Reform Austin has more.

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Redistricting hearings

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Attend or watch if you can.

The state House has scheduled redistricting hearings in Austin, Houston and Arlington, signaling a fast start to the Republican-backed effort to redraw the boundary lines for Texas congressional districts in the special legislative session that started Monday.

The first hearing will be Thursday afternoon in the Texas Capitol. From there, the House Redistricting Committee will head to Houston on Saturday for an 11 a.m. hearing at University of Houston’s Main Campus. And on Monday, the panel will convene at 5 p.m. Monday on the campus of the University of Texas at Arlington.

The hearings, at which anyone can sign up to offer testimony, will take public’s pulse on what is shaping up as a fierce partisan fight heading in the 2026 midterm elections. They also indicate areas Republicans may be targeting as they seek to redraw the maps to create five winnable U.S. House seats, a number President Donald Trump has told reporters he wants.

The hearing schedule was posted despite a call from outnumbered House Democrats that the any action to redraw the districts take second place to flood relief, which Gov. Greg Abbott also added to the special agenda. The deadly July 4 flooding in the Texas Hill Country claimed more than 100 lives, and Abbott asked lawmakers to take up legislation related to flood warning systems, flood emergency communications, relief funding for the July 4 floods and disaster preparedness and recovery more broadly.

“There is no greater purpose of the government at this time,” said a letter to Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows signed by 48 of the 62 Democrats in the chamber. “Texas families are grieving their dead and Texas communities are hurting. We cannot bring back those lost, but we can stand with these families and shield our children and neighbors from future devastation — if we act with a singular purpose to protect life.”

[…]

On the Senate side, Republicans impaneled a special redistricting committee led by Weatherford Republican Phil King. During floor debate Monday, he said Texas Republicans should have more clout in Congress because the party is better aligned with state residents on issues ranging from border security to the economy.

He said he is not setting out with a preconceived notion on what the new districts should look like.

“I do not have a map,” he told senators.

He said what emerges will come after what he described as “open and transparent” public hearings that will be streamed to allow Texans to testify remotely. He also said that, so far, the White House has exerted no influence on him regarding restricting.

“I’ve had no contact with anyone from the Trump administration,” King said.

Taking questions from Senate Democrats, King acknowledged that he has seen no new demographic data that would compel scrapping the Republican-drawn congressional map that was adopted in 2021 based on findings of the U.S. Census the year before.

King also said he was unfamiliar with the how the U.S. Department of Justice determined that as many as four of the state’s current congressional districts were drawn with an improper emphasis on race. Asked why then was the Legislature taking up redistricting at all, King simply said it was because Abbott had included the issue on the session’s agenda.

It should be noted that the map that was posted over the weekend was drawn by a private citizen – you too could draw and submit a map if you’d like – and so is not in any way “official”. But whatever the “official” map is, it’s still going to be ugly. Greg Abbott is just here to do what Donald Trump tells him to do. What Dems do in response still remains to be seen, with the order of operations likely being a factor in their thinking. When we see an “official” map, we’ll know more.

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Council to consider scooter ban

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I’m not a fan.

Houston may soon join a growing number of major U.S. cities that have banned electric scooters, citing increasing safety risks to pedestrians and riders.

A proposal to prohibit electric scooter use in downtown, Midtown, and East Downtown will be discussed this Thursday at the City Council Quality of Life Committee meeting. The measure would build upon a 2021 ordinance that already restricted companies from staging or renting scooters in public rights-of-way, including sidewalks and streets, and banned sidewalk riding in business districts.

The new proposal goes further, suggesting a full geographic ban in some of the city’s densest and most walkable neighborhoods.

The push comes amid mounting safety concerns from city officials, including Mayor John Whitmire, who has said that scooter use on sidewalks poses a threat to pedestrian safety. Council Member Julian Ramirez, who chairs the Quality of Life Committee, said that while the proposal originates from Whitmire’s administration, the city has also received complaints from downtown hotels, restaurants, businesses, and residents.

“There have been a number of instances where we have seen collisions downtown, and there has been three deaths” Ramirez said. “A lot of people who frequent restaurants and hotels and events downtown feel unsafe.”

According to presentation materials for Thursday’s meeting, the Scooter Safety Task Force — a joint effort by the Houston Police Department and the Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs — reported the following enforcement actions between Jan. 31 and March 29:

  • 338 warnings issued to riders
  • 13 citations issued to vendors
  • 8 citations issued to riders
  • 129 scooters seized
  • 4 arrests made
  • 2 firearms recovered

The presentation also cites crash data from the Texas Department of Transportation, showing a rise in scooter-related accidents and fatalities:

  • 2024: 21 accidents, 2 fatalities
  • 2023: 19 accidents, 1 fatality
  • 2022: 10 accidents, 0 fatalities
  • 2021: 3 accidents, 0 fatalities

According to the city, the majority of these accidents have occurred downtown, where three electric scooter rental companies currently operate.

Some scooter vendors have publicly criticized the proposed ban, telling local media that it unfairly penalizes companies following regulations. One vendor warned that the ban could force them to shut down entirely.

As noted in the story, riding the scooters on the sidewalk is already banned. Mayor Whitmire has said repeatedly that his preferred strategy for improving road and traffic safety is stronger enforcement of traffic laws. I don’t see why this situation would be any different. Hand out more tickets instead of just warnings, and then let’s see where we are.

This is also much bigger than just downtown. Look at the map for the proposed ban:

Even if we concede that the scooters present a special hazard for downtown pedestrians, do we really need to extend that ban into Midtown, EaDo, and the First Ward? What’s going on here?

I stand by what I wrote about the no-scooters-on-sidewalks ordinance in 2021. For this, I’ll hand off the rest to A Tale of Two Bridges, from which I got that map.

This isn’t targeted enforcement. It’s a blanket ban. Instead of addressing late-night recklessness, City Hall—under the direction of a planning chief with more experience in mall campuses than urban mobility—chose to treat downtown like a private property instead of public space.

A Policy That Punishes Everyone Equally

Rather than targeting reckless behavior or enforcing existing rules, the city is opting for a one-size-fits-all ban that punishes everyone—including workers, students, and residents who rely on scooters for daily commuting and car-free access to jobs, transit, and meetings. This blanket approach doesn’t address root causes like poor infrastructure, lack of enforcement, or evening-party nuisance behavior—it just eliminates a mode of transportation entirely.

There Are Better Solutions. Houston could:

  • Implement time-of-day restrictions to curb nighttime nuisances.
  • Use speed governors in high-density zones.
  • Create designated scooter parking and riding areas.
  • Enforce existing traffic and behavior laws.
  • Partner with vendors to educate users and share data for smart enforcement.

But instead, the city is choosing the easiest route: prohibition.

Who This Hurts Most

This ban doesn’t target bad behavior—it targets users. And those most affected are:

  • Transit-dependent residents
  • Gig workers and shift employees
  • Students getting to class or work
  • Visitors and locals exploring Downtown and bringing vibrancy and economic development
  • Low-income riders using scooters as an affordable last-mile solution

By eliminating scooters, we’re pushing people back into cars, ride-hailing services, or unsafe walking conditions—undermining climate goals, affordability, and equity.

I’m not convinced that this is a problem that requires such a drastic solution. I’d like to know more about who rides scooters and why, and what effect this would have on them. And I maintain that if we can make the streets safer by ticketing more bad drivers, we can make downtown safer by ticketing more bad scooter riders. Why not give that a try first?

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

Texas blog roundup for the week of July 21

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes the Legislature an unhappy and unproductive special session as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Is Abbott now pro-THC banning?

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Kinda, yeah.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday that he supports banning intoxicating hemp products, appearing to walk back his calls last month for lawmakers to regulate the state’s burgeoning THC industry like it does for alcohol.

In interviews with media outlets, Abbott said he wants to keep non-intoxicating products available but ban those that produce a “high”, the chief target of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the state Senate and pushed a proposed ban this spring – which Abbott vetoed.

The governor said he now wants a 0.3% THC cap on any hemp-based products – or 3 milligrams for every gram of product.

“The only hemp product that’s going to be out there is non-intoxicating hemp, which is below 3 milligrams of THC,” Abbott told Impact News.

The state already has a 0.3% limit on Delta-9 THC concentration in hemp products. Delta-8 and other synthetically-derived strains are not currently subject to any threshold – meaning they can more easily be sold in quantities that produce a high.

Abbott said Tuesday that he wants to ban those synthetically-derived THC strains entirely, including Delta-8. Delta-9 products would only be available to adults over age 21, he said.

“We’re going to be protecting the lives of those who are under the age of 21 and we’re going to protect the liberty of those who are 21 and older,” Abbott said in an interview with Hearst Newspapers.

I mean, maybe don’t spring out of nowhere to veto a bill you had no known position on before then and instead develop a position that you can advocate for while the Lege is actively working on the issue? Was that too much to ask?

Maybe a better way to ask this is “Have you talked to Dan Patrick? How close to his position are you?” Because ol’ Danno is being completely on-brand.

You get the idea. There’s more from the hearing in this Trib story, along with Abbott continuing to be unclear on what he wants. Obviously, the special session has moved on to other things. But the original reason for it was because of the THC ban bill veto. Which maybe could have been avoided if Abbott hadn’t been so absent and conflict-avoidant during the regular session. But here we are now.

UPDATE: From the inbox:

The Texas Hemp Business Council (THBC) today issued the following statement regarding the introduction of SB 5 during a special session of the 89th Texas Legislature:

“Some Texas lawmakers are once again ignoring the facts, the public and the governor.

“Despite Governor Abbott’s veto of SB 3 and overwhelming opposition from Texans, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Senator Charles Perry are now pushing SB 5, a reckless repeat that would ban federally legal hemp products, kill small businesses and criminalize responsible consumers, all under the false premise of public safety.

“Governor Abbott got it right the first time: banning hemp is bad policy and bad for Texas. His veto protected a $5.5 billion state industry that supports over 50,000 jobs and contributes $268 million in annual retail tax revenue.

“Texans have spoken loudly and clearly. With 150,000 petition signatures, 8,000 handwritten letters and three statewide polls, the message is the same: prohibition doesn’t work. What Texans want is smart, responsible regulation.

“That’s why THBC strongly supports HB 4242, a common-sense alternative that includes 21+ age limits, child-resistant packaging and setbacks from schools. It’s the right path forward for public safety, economic freedom and the future of hemp in Texas.”

That bill number must be a typo, as there’s no such bill for the special session. Be that as it may, have they checked with Abbott to see whether he supports whatever their preferred alternative is? Say what you will about Dan Patrick, he’s clear and vocal about what he wants. And unless Abbott pushes a vision of his own here, that’s all that we’re going to get from the Senate.

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Some lessons learned from the measles outbreak

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

As the number of Texas measles cases tied to a West Texas outbreak slows to a trickle, South Plains public health director Zach Holbrooks remembers the call from a colleague in an adjacent county six months ago that would change both his — and the state’s — entire 2025.

“Katherine was the first person to let me know there was a case,” said Holbrooks, referring to Lubbock’s public health director, Katherine Wells. A Mennonite child from Seminole’s Gaines County — one of four counties under Holbrooks’ charge — had been hospitalized in Lubbock with measles. “So that’s what got the communication rolling between me and Katherine and the state.”

From that first case reported on Jan. 29, the outbreak in West Texas would make up the largest single cluster of measles cases since the virus was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, killing two and spreading to multiple states. As of this week, 762 people have been infected, shattering the previous U.S. record from 2019, when an outbreak among the Orthodox Jewish community in New York City resulted in 649 cases. Nationwide, the United States is suffering its worst measles outbreak in nearly three decades with the West Texas outbreak making up more than half of the 1,309 cases nationwide.

While it’s been more than a month since a new case has been reported in Gaines County, cases traced back to West Texas continue to be reported across the state in East Texas’ Lamar and Fannin counties, where this week saw the addition of nine new cases.

Technically, Gaines and Lubbock counties are no longer considered active outbreak counties. The spread here seems to have run its course. “They either got the vaccine, the booster or the real thing,” said Dr. Wendell Parkey, chief of staff of Seminole Memorial Hospital.

But as the region catches its breath and wait for the entire outbreak to end, health professionals like Holbrooks, Wells and Parkey, as well as the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), have all been considering what worked and what could be improved after working the first real infectious disease test, post COVID-19.

Their answers included better reporting of cases at the patient level, more help with streamlining the testing process at the start and surprisingly, a more balanced treatment approach that was not solely fixated on vaccination.

As of Friday, DSHS has spent more than $10.6 million in outreach, testing and resource support to the region.

[…]

To better track the spread and stop it, the state has worked with local providers and health departments to carefully document exactly how many measles infections occur. To do that, public health officials rely on local providers and hospitals to inform them when there is a case.

However, that number is likely an undercount because it is based on patients treated, not those who ride out the virus from their homes.

Statistically, up to three measles cases per every 1,000 results in death. Gaines had two deaths, which would indicate the number of infections were far greater than the 441 reported.

“Not everybody who gets sick goes to the hospital,” Holbrooks said.

Among the more popular places for infected Mennonites to seek out health care was with Lubbock physician Ben Edwards, who treated hundreds of patients in a temporary clinic in Seminole. The Mennonite’s skepticism of mainstream medicine elevated Edwards — who denounced vaccines and promoted vitamin A and budesonide, something more commonly used to treat asthma, as alternative prevention and treatment options — to a medical hero for the religious community.

While the local hospital in Seminole regularly reported to Holbrooks’ office every measles patient it treated, information from local providers, such as Edwards, was tougher to come by.

“It was frustrating,” Holbrooks said.

Reporting cases quickly to local health authorities helps them respond more quickly to keep disease from spreading, as well as to keep cases from becoming more serious where hospitalization is necessary.

[…]

Public health officials’ measles messaging focused on getting the word out on vaccination.

Once he reached out to community leaders, Holbrooks worked to get public health messaging aired in both English and the Mennonites’ dialect of informal or Low German.

Holbrooks had wanted to put more vaccination and field clinics closer to the Mennonites but quickly saw that doing so would attract too much attention. News of the outbreak brought a sudden influx of national reporters to tiny Seminole, forcing many locals to shy away from pop-up vaccination clinics where TV cameras and photographers were stationed.

Eventually, Seminole health workers moved to a drive-through vaccination clinic through their local show barn, a local livestock exhibition facility used by youth groups, allowing more privacy for those interested in obtaining a measles-mumps-rubella or MMR vaccine.

Even 75 miles north in Lubbock, Wells, the city’s public health director, found that public vaccination spots, while often a hallmark of back-to-school events in August, were not as big a draw in the larger city.

Both she and Holbrooks recognized later that focusing on vaccination from the start could have sent a message that vaccines were the only option for treatment, possibly dissuading more susceptible residents or those with milder measles cases from asking questions or getting more help.

“We should have one more of a treatment clinic [model] and had more boots on the ground, working with churches … to engage better with the Mennonite community,” Wells said.

These vaccine clinics could have been made less clinical and paired with other options, such as checking oxygen levels and passing out Pedialyte to help infected patients stay hydrated.

Such an approach could have invited more visitors and conversation, resulting in better triaging of residents and letting them know to seek more help from the local hospitals, Wells said.

“We should have found a way to set up something that was free, kind of caring for people with measles, not saying you’re like this infectious person,” Wells said.

There’s a lot more, so read the rest. I have a ton of respect for everyone who worked to minimize the effects of this outbreak and who had a lot working against them. I would not have the patience to deal with people who wanted to know more about cod liver oil and Vitamin A, but they did and I thank them for it. It’s a good thing we learned from this because we will have opportunities to apply those lessons, probably sooner than we think.

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The post-Beryl cellphone experience

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Start of the special session flooding roundup

Posted on July 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this year, lawmakers largely ignored those recommendations.

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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An early look at who’s running for HISD Trustee

Posted on July 22, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

District I

Felicity Pereyra

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

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

District V

Maria Benzon

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

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

District VI

Kendall Baker

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

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

Michael McDonough

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

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

District VII

Audrey Nath

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

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

Bridget Wade

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

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

District IX

Myrna Guidry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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