Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Hill Country flood roundup

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Just some articles of interest, no real thread.

Climate Change Helped Fuel Heavy Rains That Led to Devastating Texas Flood

Climate scientists said the torrential downpours on July 4 exemplify the devastating outcomes of weather intensified by a warming atmosphere. These disasters, they said, will become more frequent as people around the world continue to burn fossil fuels and heat the planet.

“This is not a one-off anymore,” said Claudia Benitez-Nelson, a climate scientist at the University of South Carolina. Extreme rainfall events are increasing across the U.S. as temperatures rise, she said.

Warmer temperatures allow for the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, producing heavier rainfalls, she and other climate scientists said. This coupled with old infrastructure and ineffective warning systems can be disastrous.

“It is an established fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes since pre-industrial time, in particular for temperature extremes,” the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2021. “At the global scale, the intensification of heavy precipitation will follow the rate of increase in the maximum amount of moisture that the atmosphere can hold as it warms about 7% per 1°C of global warming.”

The U.S. government’s fifth National Climate Assessment, released in November 2023, says that “the number of days with extreme precipitation will continue to increase as the climate warms” and that “these changes in precipitation patterns can lead to increased flood hazards, impacting infrastructure, ecosystems, and communities.”

Central Texas is infamous for its flash flooding and arid soil, hard-packed ground into which water does not easily infiltrate. So when rain hits the ground, it runs off the region’s hilly terrain and canyons and accumulates into creeks and rivers rapidly, overwhelming them, causing them to rise quickly.

The flash flooding wasn’t a result of a full-strength storm, Benitez-Nelson said, but a remnant of a tropical storm. “That, to me, is really sad and deeply alarming,” Benitez-Nelson said. “Climate change is turning ordinary weather into these disasters.”

Damp remnants of Tropical Storm Barry moved up from eastern Mexico as humid air also moved north from Mexico’s southwestern coast, stalling over Texas’ Hill Country. The warm air in both the low and high levels of the atmosphere is a recipe for intense rainfall, said John Nielsen-Gammon, the state’s appointed climatologist for more than 20 years.

He and his colleagues compiled a list of all the rainfall events in Texas that produced more than 20 inches of rain a few years ago. One common feature the climatologists found was when wind blew from south to north, or when moisture was brought northward from the tropics, he said. “That sets up the possibility of very heavy rainfall,” Nielsen-Gammon said. He concluded in a report last year that extreme rain in Texas could increase 10 percent by 2036.

None of that will be on the special session agenda, of course.

The Texas Flash Flood Is a Preview of the Chaos to Come

Climate change doesn’t chart a linear path where each day is warmer than the last. Rather, science suggests that we’re now in an age of discontinuity, with heat one day and hail the next and with more dramatic extremes. Across the planet, dry places are getting drier while wet places are getting wetter. The jet stream — the band of air that circulates through the Northern Hemisphere — is slowing to a near stall at times, weaving off its tracks, causing unprecedented events like polar vortexes drawing arctic air far south. Meanwhile the heat is sucking moisture from the drought-plagued plains of Kansas only to dump it over Spain, contributing to last year’s cataclysmic floods.

We saw something similar when Hurricane Harvey dumped as much as 60 inches of rain on parts of Texas in 2017 and when Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina last year — and countless times in between. We witnessed it again in Texas this past weekend. Warmer oceans evaporate faster, and warmer air holds more water, transporting it in the form of humidity across the atmosphere, until it can’t hold it any longer and it falls. Meteorologists estimate that the atmosphere had reached its capacity for moisture before the storm struck.

The disaster comes during a week in which extreme heat and extreme weather have battered the planet. Parts of northern Spain and southern France are burning out of control, as are parts of California. In the past 72 hours, storms have torn the roofs off of five-story apartment buildings in Slovakia, while intense rainfall has turned streets into rivers in southern Italy. Same story in Lombok, Indonesia, where cars floated like buoys, and in eastern China, where an inland typhoon-like storm sent furniture blowing down the streets like so many sheafs of paper. Léon, Mexico, was battered by hail so thick on Monday it covered the city in white. And North Carolina is, again, enduring 10 inches of rainfall.

[…]

That the United States once again is reeling from familiar but alarming headlines and body counts should not be a surprise by now. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the number of extreme weather disasters has jumped fivefold worldwide over the past 50 years, and the number of deaths has nearly tripled. In the United States, which prefers to measure its losses in dollars, the damage from major storms was more than $180 billion last year, nearly 10 times the average annual toll during the 1980s, after accounting for inflation. These storms have now cost Americans nearly $3 trillion. Meanwhile, the number of annual major disasters has grown sevenfold. Fatalities in billion-dollar storms last year alone were nearly equal to the number of such deaths counted by the federal government in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000.

The most worrisome fact, though, may be that the warming of the planet has scarcely begun. Just as each step up on the Richter scale represents a massive increase in the force of an earthquake, the damage caused by the next 1 or 2 degrees Celsius of warming stands to be far greater than that caused by the 1.5 degrees we have so far endured. The world’s leading scientists, the United Nations panel on climate change and even many global energy experts warn that we face something akin to our last chance before it is too late to curtail a runaway crisis. It’s one reason our predictions and modeling capabilities are becoming an essential, lifesaving mechanism of national defense.

“No one could have seen this coming,” they said.

Greg Abbott’s Bizarre Postflood Football Analogy

In response to a question about who was to blame for the mistakes that led a disaster to become a massive tragedy, Abbott decried the term “blame” as “the word choice of losers” before going into his analogy. “Every football team makes mistakes,” Abbott declared into his microphone. “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, ‘Don’t worry about it, man, we got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again, that we’re going to win this game.’ ”

The statement attracted a lot of attention. It was, frankly, nonsensical on several levels. There are no “winners” in a devastating storm; suggesting that all of us asking that reporter’s question, including Texans who lost loved ones, are “losers” is wildly belligerent and tone-deaf. But also, Abbott seems to misunderstand how successful football teams operate.

Casting blame can be helpful or harmful after a team loses a game. If the person doing it is trying to deflect from their own mistakes and shortcomings by passing the buck to someone else, it’s harmful—it hurts morale, avoids accountability, and makes it harder to improve by refusing to acknowledge an individual’s mistakes in the first place. If it’s being done critically—say, by watching every play made during a film session to see what mistakes were made and by whom, which every football team, from the smallest high school operation to the most robust NFL club, does—then it’s the key to getting better.

Great football coaches do the same thing with their successes, looking for even the slightest opportunities to develop their players or their game plans for the future. Win or lose, they examine every detail in order to get better. When Davis exploded at his players, he was furious that they were failing to treat the situation with the seriousness he felt it deserved. You could play his rant in response to Abbott’s press conference, and you wouldn’t need to change a single word.

But this isn’t a game. Abbott, and the officials he’s deflecting blame from, are tasked with protecting lives. More than a hundred of our neighbors and loved ones have died. Even more than that remain missing. Many of those are children. Throughout the region, countless Texans are feeling the effects of the tragedy, either because they know someone among the lost or because they have personal connections to the place.

This is not the first time on Abbott’s watch that Texans have endured weather-related tragedies. We’ve boiled snow when the water was unsafe to drink; we’ve waited days for the power to come back on; we’ve been promised that next time, things would be different; and we’ve learned that when disaster strikes, we’re on our own.

Abbott could have met the moment. He could have displayed the kind of passionate intensity that coaches who actually have won championships do. He could have insisted that he’d be going through the choices of every individual and entity tasked with safeguarding the public to look at what they did wrong, what they did right, and how he could have made better decisions. He could have focused not on casting blame elsewhere, but on soberly seeking accountability at every level. He could have displayed the kind of leadership that Texans need in a moment of tragedy. He could even have kept the damn football analogy.

But then he wouldn’t be Greg Abbott. As you know, I work in cybersecurity. We care a lot about why security incidents occur, what went well and what went badly in our response to them, what we can learn from them so we can do better the next time, and so on. And we do this in an environment of not assigning blame but of taking responsibility. It works pretty well for us. Maybe Greg Abbott would do well to spend some time in an environment like that, because he sure isn’t fostering one around himself.

FEMA’s response to Texas flood slowed by Noem’s cost controls

As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, like they have in countless past disasters.

But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN.

As CNN has previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.

For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.

In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.

“We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”

For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.

In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.

But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.

Does Greg Abbott have a football coach analogy for this? Josh Marshall and Mother Jones have other examples of Noem making things worse. I dunno, maybe someone in a position of power could complain about this. Like Ted Cruz, maybe? [checks notes] OK, maybe not.

Kerrville mayor says he wasn’t aware of state resources that Gov. Abbott said were in place ahead of flooding

Kerrville’s mayor said he was unaware of any help sent by the state to his community ahead of the flood, a day after Gov. Greg Abbott said the state had “assets, resources and personnel” in place two days before a flood tore through the Hill Country.

“The state was aware that there was a possible serious flooding event days in advance and pre-positioned assets and resources and personnel,” Abbott said at a Tuesday press conference. “We originally pre-positioned those assets, personnel and resources on Wednesday. Then, when greater clarity was discerned on Wednesday, we moved them closer and made sure we had adequate supplies going into Friday. We were ready.”

The Texas Division of Emergency Management “activated” state emergency response resources across West Texas and the Hill Country on July 2, according to a TDEM press release. TDEM cited “heavy rainfall with the potential to cause flash flooding” and encouraged Texans to prepare for flooded roads and monitor weather forecasts.

The state agency listed a number of state agencies and Texas A&M services “available to support local flood response operations,” such as rescue boat teams, helicopters, and personnel to monitor road conditions.

Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring said during a press conference on Wednesday that he wasn’t aware of any resources or personnel sent to his area, although the TDEM had people in Kerrville after the floods struck his city.

“I haven’t seen the governor’s remarks … I don’t know what resources TDEM had in place at that time,” Herring said.

The National Weather Service sent out its first flash flood warning to residents at 1:14 a.m. Friday, about three hours and 21 minutes before they received the first reports of flooding along the Guadalupe River, which runs through Kerrville.

NWS officials said they communicated directly with local officials the night of the flood, but Herring said he wasn’t aware of the flooding until around 5:30 a.m. when the city manager called him. By that time, floodwaters were already meters high and parts of Highway 39 were flooded, limiting evacuation efforts.

I mean, it sure would be nice to have a better understanding of why Mayor Herring was unaware of what was happening at the time. Maybe the failures are all his, maybe this is evidence that the alerting system has shortcomings, maybe it’s at least partly the failure of the state’s emergency management processes. Maybe some of each, maybe other factors as well. Who knows? A Governor who cared about these things would sure want to find out.

“Disasters are a human choice”: Texas counties have little power to stop building in flood-prone areas

Camp Mystic, the private summer camp that now symbolizes the deadly Central Texas floods, sat on a tract of land known to be at high risk for a devastating flood.

Nearly 1.3 million Texas homes are similarly situated in parts of the state susceptible to dangerous floodwaters, according to a state estimate. A quarter of the state’s land carries some degree of severe flood risk, leaving an estimated 5 million Texans in possible jeopardy.

Yet, local governments — especially counties — have limited policy tools to regulate building in areas most prone to flooding. The state’s explosive growth, a yearning for inexpensive land, and a state far behind in planning for extreme weather compound the problem, experts said.

While cities can largely decide what is built within their limits, counties have no jurisdiction to implement comprehensive zoning rules that could limit people from living close to the water’s edge.

Camp Mystic and many of the other camps along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, where the disaster’s wreckage has been concentrated, were far outside city limits and any regulatory authority of the Kerrville City Council.

Some guardrails exist when it comes to building on flood plains. For property owners in flood-prone areas to tap federal flood insurance, localities have to enact minimum building standards set by the federal government. And counties can use a limited supply of federal dollars to relocate residents out of flood zones. However, those programs have had mixed success. Other programs to fortify infrastructure are tied to federally required hazard mitigation plans, which most rural counties in Texas do not have on file.

Also not on the special session agenda. It’s not too late, you know. Maybe ditch some of the needless wingnut stuff to make it happen.

Once again, I will close on a positive note:

H-E-B, James Avery embrace their Kerrville roots with support for flood victims

Two of the state’s best-known brands, both born in Kerrville, are showing their support for Hill Country flood victims in a big way.

Grocery giant H-E-B started as a tiny family-owned store in Kerrville in 1905. H-E-B, a household name to most Texans and headquartered in San Antonio, now has 435 stores in Texas and Mexico.

Volunteers from H-E-B have been on the ground serving up meals, distributing gift cards, handing out bottled water and clean-up products, and pitching in with the clean-up themselves.

H-E-B and the H.E. Butt Foundation have also committed $5 million in funding to nonprofits providing aid and recovery support to communities most in need.

“For 120 years, the Butt family has proudly called Kerrville home,” said Howard Butt III, H-E-B CEO. “Our hearts ache for the children, families, and communities facing tremendous loss throughout Texas in the wake of these floods. Our Partners have big hearts, and we will continue to support our neighbors. H-E-B and our dedicated Partners are here to help.”

Two million dollars will be gifted to the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country to support its Kerr County Flood Relief Fund.

The fund backs rescue, relief, and recovery efforts and flood assistance to Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort.

H-E-B is also supporting nonprofits that are providing direct support including the American Red Cross, Texas Search and Rescue (TEXSAR), and the Salvation Army.

[…]

What is now James Avery Artisan jewelry was started in 1954 by James Avery in his mothers-in-law’s garage in Kerrville, according to the company’s website. The self-taught jewelry-maker fell in love with Kerrville as he underwent training at Lackland Air Force to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corp.

Avery died in 2018, and his son Chris has served as CEO and chairs the company’s board.

The company’s manufacturing facility is based in Kerrville on property purchased by James Avery. It temporarily closed this week due to the flood. The company today has 1,000 associates and 30 retail stores and is selling its famous charms to raise money for flood victims.

The company took to social media to say that 100% of the proceeds from the sale of their “Deep in the Heart of Texas” charm would go directly to supporting victims of the flood and relief efforts in the Kerrville community and the surrounding areas.

Supporters responded, and over the next couple of days, the charm sold out.

“We’re humbled by the support you’ve shown our friends and family in the Texas Hill Country and surrounding areas. The Deep in the Heart of Texas Charm sold out faster than we could have imagined,” a company statement said.

“We’re now taking backorders and remain committed to donating proceeds from both the sterling silver and 14K gold charms ordered through August 4.”

There’s a reason people are fanatically loyal to HEB. Thanks to them and to James Avery for taking care of business at home.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Camp Mystic, climate change, CodeRED, Dan Patrick, DOGE, DPS, FEMA, Flood Information & Response System, flooding, Greg Abbott, Guadalupe River, HEB, Homeland Security, James Avery, John Nielsen-Gammon, Kerr County, Kerrville, Kristi Noem, National Emergency Management Association, National Weather Service, NOAA, San Angelo, San Antonio, Senate, special session, Ted Cruz, Texas, Texas Department of Emergency Management, Texas Water Development Board, The Lege, Tropical Storm Barry, Upper Guadalupe River Authority | 1 Comment

Measles update: There’s good news and there’s bad news

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The good news.

Texas health officials on Tuesday said the county at the center of the state’s measles outbreak is no longer classified as an outbreak county.

The Texas Department of State Health Services reported no new cases of measles tied to the West Texas outbreak in their weekly update.

The state has been tracking case numbers since the outbreak began in late January.

Only Lamar County is listed as an outbreak county in the latest update.

Since late January, 753 measles cases have been confirmed by state officials.

Gaines County, the center of the outbreak, has reported 414 cases since the outbreak began in January. The county accounts for more than half of the state’s cases.

Only Lamar County has been designated as an “outbreak county” by DSHS.

There have been 98 patients hospitalized since the outbreak started. The state says these hospitalizations are from earlier in the outbreak.

Since January, 21 cases have been reported in people who were considered fully vaccinated and 22 cases in people who only had one dose of the vaccine. 710 of the 753 people who tested positive were unvaccinated.

In Texas, two school-aged children have died from complications with the measles. Both were not vaccinated and had no known underlying conditions, state health officials said.

We may finally be at the tail end of this thing. Given how grim some of the earlier projections were, this could have been a lot worse. I’m not ready to hoist the “Mission Accomplished” banner yet – let’s give it at least one more no-new-cases week, please – but we’re getting close.

Well, in Texas we are. Because here’s the bad news.

This year’s measles outbreak is the worst since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. Halfway through 2025, reported cases have already surpassed 1,274 − the peak for all of 2019.

According to data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation, it reported a total of 1,277 confirmed cases, as of July 5. The majority of cases are linked to a large outbreak that originated in west Texas. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said other cases arose from community transmission or during travel.

The outbreak has led to at least 155 hospitalizations, including 431 adults and 824 children. There have been three confirmed deaths.

[…]

Confirmed measles cases have been reported by 39 states and jurisdictions as of July 5. Most of the cases have been reported in Texas, New Mexico and Kansas, according to the Center for Outbreak Response Innovation and the CDC.

TPR has the national count at 1,281 as of July 8, up from 1,267 the week before. That’s slow growth, but it’s still growth. And every new case is a new high.

And as a reminder, we have a lunatic in charge of our public health.

It’s difficult to keep track of all the ways in which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is undermining public health. When it comes to the Food and Drug Administration, his assault ranges from firing the administrative staff who support drug safety inspectors to deciding that artificial intelligence will fix everything.

One of the Trump administration’s myriad purges of federal workers took out the staff that coordinates travel for inspectors of foreign drug factories. While those eliminations might sound like small potatoes in the face of the terminations of top scientists and officials at the FDA, they make it much more difficult for those inspections to occur.

Most people who have ever had a normal job understand this. You can’t fire support staff without compromising the work of the staff they support. But since Kennedy, President Donald Trump, and former co-President Elon Musk have no idea how real jobs work, they’re probably unfamiliar with the concept. Still, these support staff cuts mean that managers, rather than support staff, are now forced to handle travel, budgets, visas, translators for FDA inspectors, and other tasks.

Guess what happens if FDA inspectors aren’t inspecting foreign drug factories that manufacture products for the United States market? You guessed it: Safety violations will go unnoticed and unaddressed. ProPublica documented that when FDA inspectors visited a Sun Pharma factory in India in 2022, they found metal shavings on equipment, contaminated drug vials, and unknown matter being mixed into drugs. Around the same time, a visit to an Intas Pharmaceuticals factory in India found manipulated testing records covering up the fact that things like glass were making their way into the drugs manufactured there.

So it appears Americans are going to experience the joy of taking drugs tainted by ground glass and god knows what else. Seems bad! But maybe things are better stateside?

Nope. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are planning to use artificial intelligence in the drug approval process. How? Well, Kennedy isn’t so clear on that part. He says AI will be used to “look at the mega data that we have and be able to make really good decisions about interventions”—which is a word salad.

It goes on from there. But here there is also some potentially good news. As with so many things these days, it comes via lawsuit.

A pregnant physician is at the center of a new lawsuit against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and doctors say her concerns about whether she’ll have access to a COVID-19 vaccine reflect a growing confusion about vaccine policy across the country.

The pregnant person — identified in court filings as “Jane Doe” — is one of several plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed this week in Massachusetts that features a coalition of medical societies, including those focused on children and pregnant people such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM). Doe herself is a physician.

According to the lawsuit, Doe is more than 20 weeks pregnant and works in a hospital “where she puts herself at risk of infectious diseases every day to care for patients and save lives.”

She was vaccinated against COVID-19 before becoming pregnant, but her doctors advised her to get another dose later in pregnancy for better protection against the disease, according to the lawsuit. While Doe has not yet tried to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine, she intends to while pregnant. She fears she will be unable to because of Kennedy’s recent changes to COVID-19 vaccine policy for pregnant people, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.

“Her worries are not just for herself, but also for the health and safety of her unborn child,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit focuses on Kennedy’s announcement in May on social media, which plaintiffs describe as a directive, that COVID-19 vaccination would be removed from the recommended vaccine schedule for healthy pregnant people and healthy children. The change was made without consulting vaccine experts or staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the lawsuit.

Richard Hughes, an attorney with Epstein Becker Green who represents the plaintiffs, said the lawsuit seeks to show Kennedy’s directive was “arbitrary and capricious,” in part because it did not follow the longstanding process for vaccine recommendation changes and it did not include a detailed explanation on the decision. Kennedy also did not cite an emergency or change in circumstances to justify the move. An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the secretary.

I for one will be rooting for Dr. Doe et al to succeed. If they do, that may have beneficial effects beyond just the COVID shots. But keep getting your shots, and vote for the people who will support you in that. We must all do our part.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Centers for Disease Control, coronavirus, El Paso, FDA, Gaines County, Kansas, Lamar County, lawsuit, measles, Mexico, New Mexico, Oklahoma, RFK Jr, Texas, Texas Department of State Health Services, vaccinations | Leave a comment

Paxtons getting divorced

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Whoa.

Still a crook any way you look

State Sen. Angela Paxton announced Thursday she has filed for divorce from her husband, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation,” Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said in a post on X. “But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”

In his own statement, Attorney General Paxton cited the “pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny” as the reason the couple had “decided to start a new chapter.”

[…]

Paxton’s record of aggressively suing the Biden administration is matched only by his penchant for scandal, culminating in his impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023. The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him after a nearly two-week trial.

Angela Paxton attended her husband’s trial but was not allowed to vote on any issues or participate on deliberations over whether to convict or acquit.

The impeachment claims focused on benefits Paxton provided to Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, as well as an alleged extramarital affair the attorney general had with a former Senate aide. According to investigators, the affair ended briefly in 2019 after Angela Paxton learned of it, then resumed in 2020. The woman he allegedly had an affair with was called to testify before the Senate and came to the chamber, but left without speaking.

Yes, tell us more about how all the political attacks and public scrutiny led to your inability to keep it in your pants, Ken. Actually, please don’t. I’d like to eat again sometime this week. I have no love for Angela Paxton, but she’s the one who was done wrong here. Anything you’d like to tell us about all this, Angela, you go right ahead. The Dallas Observer, KUT, and CBS News have more, and if you want to better understand the Biblical aspect of “biblical grounds for divorce”, read The Slacktivist.

UPDATE: NOTUS notes that this divorce is already a thing in the Republican primary for Senate next year.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Angela Paxton, Attorney General, divorce, impeachment, Ken Paxton, Senate, Texas | 4 Comments

So now the Lege will get involved

Posted on July 10, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

As I said yesterday, I don’t know if Greg Abbott would have called a special session to address the great tragedy happening in the Hill Country if one hadn’t already been on the calendar for other reasons. He didn’t call one following Hurricane Harvey. But here we are, and now we can talk about things the Lege could do to help mitigate the next flash flood in this part of the state.

It was still too early for several lawmakers to say what long-term policy changes and investments should look like. But a few critical improvements were emerging as potential priorities:

‘Old-tech’ sirens in flood-prone areas

The lack of sirens along the Guadalupe River has piqued lawmakers’ interest, with some saying they trust their efficacy more than even some modern systems.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said Monday he would file a bill “at the earliest opportunity” to assist counties in installing physical sirens, as opposed to newer alerts sent to cell phones, which he said many people may miss at nighttime.

“It’s time to go back to what worked and still does in Tornado Alley, Civil Defense Sirens,” Bettencourt posted.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also says he supports buying more sirens, telling Fox & Friends on Monday that he and the governor had spoken and were in agreement about investing state dollars in support for local governments, though some jurisdictions including Kerr County, which was hardest hit by the flooding, have opted against siren systems in the past.

“It’s clear those sirens need to blast,” Patrick said. “If the cities can’t afford it, then we’ll step in, and if the cities don’t want to do it, we’ll step in.”

State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, a Democrat from Austin and former Travis County Judge, echoed that sentiment.

“I think it is a fairly obvious thing that our advanced warning systems in our rural areas are insufficient, and they don’t have the tax base to build the infrastructure without state assistance,” Eckhardt said.

Better, modern monitoring systems

House Speaker Dustin Burrows praised an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle Tuesday morning that called for more flood gauges and a modern radar-based flood assessment system that could provide officials with more real-time information.

“The Texas House will work with leading experts like @RiceUniversity’s SSPEED Center to identify and help fund solutions like those outlined,” Burrows said of the op-ed, written by Phil Bedient of Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education, & Evacuation from Disasters Center.

Modern assessment systems installed in Houston in 2020 could benefit other flood-prone areas like the Hill County and San Antonio, Bedient wrote.

Nick Fang, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, said cost was typically the biggest hurdle for more widespread use of the systems, especially in rural, cash-strapped counties. Fang led a research group contracted by the state in 2021 to study early flood warning systems.

The cost of projects that Fang reviewed varied widely, from $26,000 to $1.5 million. Hearst Newspapers reported Monday that in 2016, Kerr County officials estimated they would need $1 million to implement an early warning system but failed to secure the funding locally or convince the state to assist with the investment, despite at least three separate requests.

One option could be newer, low-cost sensors, Fang said. These are cheaper to build, work using battery or solar power rather than plugging into the electrical grid, and transmit data using existing wireless networks. They also require less personnel to operate.

The Texas Water Development Board is currently contracting with AtkinsRealis, Inc. & WEST Consultants, Inc. to produce a report on best practices for using such systems; that report is due in August. An American Society of Civil Engineers study in 2022 found that the systems are likely to replace older, higher-cost systems when those wear out because of their affordability.

The most advanced early warning systems will work in conjunction with hydrological models that take in rain and stream gauge data and forecast how much water will accumulate within a certain time period, Fang said. But even the most rudimentary siren system is “better than nothing,” he said.

“Given what happened this last weekend, the loss of so many people, and especially those young kids, that’s the future of our country. There should be designated money,” Fang said about the possibility of the state assisting local governments with warning system funding.

[…]

Emergency response council and disaster preparedness plans

Lawmakers may look to revive legislation that failed to pass this spring, during the Legislature’s regular session, as starting points for negotiation.

Several of the bill’s co-sponsors, including state Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, have called for the Legislature to reconsider the bill or parts of its language.

“I joint authored HB 13 because this is an area of public safety that needs significant and immediate attention,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, in a statement to KXAN. “The absolute last thing we can afford is to do nothing. We should be exploring all avenues and turning that into concrete policy now.”

The bill passed the House, with only a dozen lawmakers opposed, but later died in the Senate. The Texas Tribune reported Monday that state Rep. Wes Virdell, a Republican who represents Kerr County, was reconsidering his previous opposition to the legislation.

A spokesperson for Patrick said HB 13 would only have covered the cost of running the council and did not appropriate funds to purchase warning systems. He also noted the Legislature made “unprecedented” investments this year in aircraft and regional response facilities, among other emergency resources.

State Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, who also filed a disaster preparedness bill this session, said lawmakers needed to take a more proactive approach. Though shoring up infrastructure now is necessary, the Legislature has limited ability on its own to predict and recommend systems that could prevent future disasters.

Anchía’s House Bill 2618, which would have required state agencies including TDEM to create severe weather adaptation plans, passed the House on a bipartisan vote but failed in the Senate. He said he is prepared to refile the bill, if it fits the parameters of Abbott’s call.

“We as a Legislature seem to always be reactive,” Anchía said. “It’s the Boy Scouts’ motto: be prepared. We need to make sure the state government is in the same position.”

Slate’s Henry Grabar touched on some of this as well. The risks are known, but the solutions are as well. I’ll be happy for the Lege to adopt these ideas, and not just for Kerr County but for everyplace in the state that is at risk of flash floods. Throw in HB13 to address other matters like wildfires and everything else as well. But let’s not praise ourselves too vigorously if that happens, and let’s definitely not let Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick take any bows either. All of these risks have been known for years, all of these solutions have been available for years, and all this time Abbott and Patrick and the Republicans in the Lege have sat on their thumbs. (That’s a gift link, be sure to read it.) Better late than never, sure, but we’re very late and much more than a dollar short at this point.

One thing not specified above is what if anything to do about the camps themselves.

Camp Mystic, Heart O’ the Hills and several other Kerr County camps hit by last weekend’s deadly floods sit partially in areas deemed “extremely hazardous” by officials, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis.

The catastrophic flooding that tore through a number of historic summer camps along the Guadalupe River has led to the confirmed deaths of more than two dozen children. Though the disaster sent shockwaves across the nation, experts said it merely laid bare risks that have been known for years.

A Chronicle review of property records and federal flood maps found that many of these camps sit amid a patchwork of special hazard flood areas. Some even have parts of their grounds in a designated floodway – the channel where water flows most forcefully during a flood, posing the greatest danger to anything in its path.

“In Texas, we have been very irresponsible about the way we treat floodways and floodplains,” said Jim Blackburn, a Rice University professor who specializes in environmental law and flooding issues. “We have always treated them as a kind of environmental red tape rather than a true danger area, and I think that has dis-served us across the board.”

Notably, while nearly all these camps touch floodways or floodplains, most of their grounds lie outside federally designated flood zones, which are usually drawn narrowly along the water. Blackburn said this is yet another example of how the Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps fail to account for changing weather patterns and underestimate the true risks.

“Those maps you’re looking at are outdated,” he said. “We’re seeing storms that are increasingly larger and larger. The predictions need to be updated from a statistical standpoint in ways that we haven’t even begun to do.”

Summer camps having “excellent flood escape plans” was an item on Phil Bedient’s list, and that seems to have gotten Speaker Burrows’ attention, so we’ll see about this. I like the idea that was bandied about in earlier comments here about mandating evacuation drills at all these camps. We were just on a cruise, and one of the first things we did, even before we left the port, was an all-ship evacuation drill, in which we had to go to our designated muster points and see how to find and put on the life jackets. Schools and office buildings do fire drills, make the camps do evacuation drills. Make them have up-to-date evacuation plans. Make them prove they do both of these things on a regular basis. Seems like not too much to ask.

Well, it turns out they do have to do this sort of thing.

It is far too early to assign blame — or to declare such uncommon and fast-moving tragedies unavoidable. Local officials are still conducting recovery operations. Nearly a dozen people remain missing. Families have only begun to grieve.

But questions of whether it could have been mitigated are coming. Among other topics, they will almost certainly include an examination of how camp leaders prepared for floods in an area known for them, received and heeded warnings and — if possible under the conditions — followed their own emergency plans.

Social media has multiple accounts of Camp Mystic leaders acting heroically, directing girls to safety as the waters rapidly rose. The beloved longtime owner and director, Dick Eastland, perished in the flood, reportedly trying to save his campers.

But it also remains unclear how and when the camp was alerted, and how much time leaders and campers could have had to implement their evacuation plan and move out of harm’s way.

The National Weather Service’s first flash flood warning was broadcast at 1:14 a.m. Friday morning.

“At 3:11 am was woken up to help evacuate campers from their cabins,” a Camp Mystic program director recently posted on social media. “By 4 am I was on a roof with the water right up to me.”

[…]

Mystic is just one of many youth camps situated along the Guadalupe River, some of which have been in business for nearly a century. The possibility of flash flooding in the area is well-known. A 1987 flood killed 10 campers.

“As with all adventures, Campers will be exposed to certain risks,” Camp Mystic’s liability waiver states. Among others, they include “uncertain terrain, the river and river frontage, heat, cold, rain, floods and lightning.”

Three of nine board members for the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which promotes flood safety and warnings, are local camp directors. Kerr County meeting transcripts include past discussions among county officials about the informal system camps along the river have deployed to help each other stay aware of water levels.

“If there’s a rise, they’re phoning their competitors or colleagues downriver and letting them know what happened,” a commissioner explained in 2017, as the county was contemplating adding to the system of river monitors. “It’s informal, but it’s been a very good system to let them know over time.”

Youth camps are required to be licensed and inspected annually by the Texas Department of State Health Services. As part of the process, each must have an emergency plan “to be implemented in case of a disaster, serious accident, epidemic, or fatality [and] shall include procedures for emergency shelter and for evacuation of each occupied building and the facility.”

The plans must be posted in every building, the code states. “Campers shall be instructed as to their actions in the event of fire, disaster, or the need to evacuate. These procedures shall be reviewed by the staff with specific assignments made to each staff member and counselor. All camp staff and volunteers shall be made aware of this plan during the staff-training program or volunteer briefing.”

A spokeswoman for the health services department said each camp is responsible for developing its own emergency plan, although all must address a list of basics. State inspectors use a checklist to verify the general criteria are met, she said.

Several parents and camp workers at Guadalupe River youth camps said it is common for the plans to be reviewed at orientation. In case of flooding, campers are told which buildings are on higher ground and the paths to take to get there.

Although some camps along the Guadalupe River also are accredited by the American Camp Association, a process that focuses on a facility’s “health, safety, and risk management practices,” according to the organization, Camp Mystic was not.

This also gets into the notification systems in Kerr County, which I’m comfortable saying fell short. If nothing else, the Lege needs to take a hard look at both of these things, and mandate suitable improvements. If they don’t, we all know what will happen next, and we’ll know who is to blame.

Let me end this on a positive note.

Several Kerrville Independent School District teachers and staff members drove school buses full of hundreds of campers from Camp La Junta and Camp Mystic to reunification sites on July 4.

Catastrophic Guadalupe River floods swept people and structures away early that morning as it rose nearly 30 feet in under an hour. Both camps, located along the river, reported the campers that were accounted for were safe but had no electricity or running water available due to the flooding.

On the evening of July 4, KISD Superintendent Brent Ringo said he received a call from Katie Fineske, one of the owners of Camp La Junta, asking for the district’s help to get campers to safety before the sun went down.

“I look at my own kids, and if my kids were stranded somewhere at a camp, or wherever that may be … I would hope somebody would say ‘Yeah, we’re going to be right there,’” Ringo said. “We were humbled to be asked to help and honored to be asked to help.”

Within ten minutes of the call, Ringo said the district gathered about a dozen people who said they were willing to help.

Ringo said all KISD coaches are required to have a Commercial Driver’s License. One driver who volunteered to help —Aubrey Pruitt— had earned her bus license only a week ago and had never transported students on a bus until that evening.

Ringo said while he didn’t have a Commercial Driver’s License of his own, he used his pickup truck to transport campers.

“When we arrived, and you see kids just in t-shirts and shorts, the clothes they slept in, and no shoes, and hundreds of them, it is very heart wrenching,” Ringo said.

After transporting campers from Camp La Junta, about 300 campers were also transported from Camp Mystic at about 7 p.m. after being brought to the buses by the National Guard, Ringo said. Assistant Superintendent Shelby Balser, Tivy High School Principal Rick Sralla and other KISD coaches and bus drivers were among those who stepped up to get the campers to safety.

Prior to the emergency bus rescues, Ringo said that on July 4, KISD designated campus sites for first responders and state agencies to assist with rescue and recovery efforts. He said the district wanted to make sure first responders had privacy and a place to rest and shower.

“Those are the people coming in to support our city and save lives, so we wanted to make sure we get our first responders taken care of,” Ringo said.

Thank you, Kerrville ISD, Superintendent Ringo, and everyone who pitched in to help.

Posted in That's our Lege, The great state of Texas | Tagged Camp Mystic, CodeRED, Dan Patrick, DOGE, DPS, Dustin Burrows, FEMA, Flood Information & Response System, flooding, Greg Abbott, Guadalupe River, Heart O' the Hills, Joe Moody, Kerr County, Kerrville, National Emergency Management Association, National Weather Service, NOAA, Paul Bettencourt, Phil Bedient, Rafael Anchia, San Angelo, San Antonio, Sarah Eckhardt, Senate, special session, SSPEED, Texas, Texas Department of Emergency Management, Texas Water Development Board, The Lege, Tropical Storm Barry, Upper Guadalupe River Authority, Wes Virdell | 2 Comments

Abbott adds redistricting and wingnut priorities to special session agenda

Posted on July 10, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

And also some flooding stuff, which was clearly top of mind for him.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday unveiled a jam-packed agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, calling on lawmakers to redraw Texas’ congressional maps and address several unfinished conservative priorities from earlier this year.

The governor, who controls the agenda for overtime legislative sessions, also included four items related to the deadly Hill Country floods over the July Fourth weekend, directing legislators to look at flood warning systems, emergency communications, natural disaster preparation and relief funding for impacted areas.

The flooding has killed more than 100 people, with more than 160 still missing in Kerr County alone.

Abbott’s call also includes redrawing the state’s congressional districts — following through on a demand from President Donald Trump’s advisers, who want to fortify Republicans’ slim majority in the U.S. House by carving out more GOP seats in Texas. Republicans in Texas’ congressional delegation have expressed unease about the idea, worrying it could jeopardize control of their current districts.

More than 40 Republican lawmakers, including Patrick, signed onto a letter to Abbott in June asking him to include the abortion pill proposal on the special session agenda. Senate Bill 2880, considered the most wide-ranging legislation to crack down on abortion pills in the U.S., passed the Senate earlier this year but stalled in a House committee.

The so-called “bathroom bill” similarly failed to reach the House floor. An earlier bathroom measure also made it onto Abbott’s agenda for the 2017 special session, where it died under opposition from business interests.

The governor’s call to bar local governments from spending public money on lobbyists — a practice dubbed by critics as “taxpayer-funded lobbying” — has also failed to gain traction through multiple sessions, despite long-running support from conservative activists and a vocal contingent of GOP lawmakers.

Abbott is also directing lawmakers to reconsider a proposal to allow the attorney general to prosecute state election crimes. Texas’ attorney general does not have authority to independently prosecute criminal offenses unless invited to do so by a local district attorney, which the state’s highest criminal court has repeatedly upheld.

But after successfully unseating three members of the Court of Criminal Appeals in November, Attorney General Ken Paxton pushed the Legislature to carve out an exception for allegations of election fraud. The Senate passed one such proposal, but it didn’t clear the House. Abbott is asking lawmakers to reconsider the idea in the form of a constitutional amendment, which requires support from two-thirds of both chambers and voter approval in a statewide referendum.

[…]

The agenda sparked immediate condemnation from some Democratic state lawmakers. Houston Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, blasted Abbott for pairing flood-related items with an agenda otherwise dominated by GOP priorities.

“Governor Abbott listed flood preparedness at the top of his special session call, but then buried it under a pile of cynical, political distractions,” Wu said in a statement, calling Abbott’s agenda a “stunning betrayal.”

I mean, yeah, it’s hard to argue that this was about flooding and emergency preparedness when there’s all this other red meat on there. And it’s not stuff that was narrowly defeated by Democratic trickery, it’s stuff that the Republicans haven’t been able to pass on their own. I know Abbott can call as many sessions as he wants, but I don’t know what exactly he thinks he’s going to get. I also know he thinks he’s invincible, but boy this sure has the potential to be a really bad look. We’ll see how it plays out. Oh, and California really needs to follow through if the Lege does indeed pass a new map. To do nothing would be total chump behavior. Don’t let us down, Gavin. The Chron has more.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged abortion, California, Constitution, Court of Criminal Appeals, flooding, Gavin Newsom, Gene Wu, Guadalupe River, Ken Paxton, Kerr County, lobbyists, mifepristone, redistricting, special session, Texas, The Lege | 3 Comments

The opening lineup in At Large #4

Posted on July 10, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Three and counting, with more surely to come.

CM Letitia Plummer

Letitia Plummer’s bid for Harris County judge means her at-large seat on Houston City Council is now open.

The Houston City Council will soon decide when to hold an election to fill the slot, but it will likely take place this Nov. 4.

Here are the candidates who say they plan to run.

[…]

Dwight Boykins

Boykins, who formerly served on City Council representing neighborhoods like the Museum District and Third Ward, told the Chronicle Tuesday he too would be entering the race for Plummer’s position.

Boykins was elected to the council initially in 2013. He also ran for mayor in 2019 and floated a run for Texas governor in 2018.

If elected to council, Boykins said he wants to tackle the city’s finances, enhance public safety and ensure infrastructure improvements are sustainable and equitable across Houston’s neighborhoods.

“Serving the people of Houston has been the greatest honor of my life,” Boykins said in a Tuesday news release. “I’m running for At-Large Position #4 because our city needs leadership that’s bold, experienced, and ready to act on the challenges we face — from public safety and food deserts to caring for our seniors and neighborhood revitalization.”

He continued: “I am the only candidate that will enter this race that can hit the ground running on day one. I just couldn’t continue to sit on the sidelines while our city faces so many pressing issues.”

Boykins has so far received endorsements from Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex-Tatum, Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and Houston City Council Member Willie Davis.

Al Lloyd

Lloyd, a native Houstonian, got involved in politics when Ada Edwards ran for Houston City Council. He has since worked with Harris County Flood Control and on infrastructure projects in the area, but only as a community leader and civic club president at South MacGregor.

Through his service in the community, he told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday he found getting resources diverted to what you need when you’re not working from the city is hard, which ultimately steered him toward running for the position.

“Our city deserves leaders who show up, follow through, and deliver,” Lloyd said in a Tuesday statement. “I’m not running to talk, I’m running to do. Houstonians are ready for a fresh, accountable voice at City Hall who will fight for jobs, infrastructure, and quality of life across every zip code.”

Lloyd’s campaign will focus on workforce development, small business support, enhancing public safety, improving drainage and expanding access to city services, he said.

See here for the background. The article led off with Alejandra Salinas, but I wrote about her yesterday so I’m skipping her here.

You may be thinking, as I did at first, “wait a minute, isn’t Dwight Boykins term limited from Council?” And the answer is no, because he was an incumbent when the updated term limits law was passed, which changed the limits from three two-year terms to two four-year terms. Incumbent Council members who were in their first (two-year) term when this passed were allowed to run for two four-year terms. Boykins, who was elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2015, did not run for that second four-year Council term and thus may run for one more. Confusing, I know, but there it is.

As was the case with Alejandra Salinas before, this is my introduction to Al Lloyd (*), who also seems like a solid candidate. You have to raise some real money to break through in an At Large race, because the voters tend not to know who many of the candidates are unless they were already a recognizable name going in. It might be a little different this November, as the electorate will be smaller and thus more hardcore, but you still have to get your name out to them. I’ll see who might have been raising money in anticipation of this before the June 30 deadline – as noted, this was The Worst Kept Secret in Houston politics – but the next reporting period won’t be until October, for the 30-day reports. So we may not know very much about some of these folks before then.

(*) – There was an Al Lloyd who ran for Pearland ISD in 2018. I can’t tell if this is the same person or not.

UPDATE: The count is now four:

Obes Nwabara

Nwabara, who works at power company Calpine and serves as the president of Art Colony Association, Inc., previously ran for the council’s at-large 2 seat. The race was ultimately won by Council Member Willie Davis.

Nwabara said his campaign will focus on affordable housing, water infrastructure and food insecurity.

I know Obes from his previous candidacy and from his Democratic activism. Again, I expect there to be more candidates in this race.

Posted in Election 2025 | Tagged Al Lloyd, Alejandra Salinas, At Large #4, Dwight Boykins, Election 2025, Harris County, Harris County Judge, Houston, Houston City Council, Letitia Plummer, Obes Nwabara, special election, term limits | Leave a comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of July 7

Posted on July 10, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Leave a comment

The flood warning history of Kerr County

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

They’ve tried for awhile to get some funding for a flood warning system. They’ve failed every time.

Nearly a decade before catastrophic flash flooding killed at least 75 people in Kerr County, including 27 children, several local officials were hard at work convincing their peers to buy into a new early flood warning system.

The once “state of the art” program installed along the Guadalupe River back in the 1980s was in desperate need of an upgrade, they argued. It wasn’t good enough for Kerr County, which sits at the heart of “flash flood alley,” a portion of the Texas Hill Country whose climate and terrain make it uniquely susceptible to sudden and catastrophic floods.

“I’m not trying to put a dollar on a life or a flood, but the fact of the matter [is] floods do happen, and we need to be prepared for them,” then-Kerr County Commissioner Bob Reeves noted during a series of public meetings that began in 2016. And, his former colleague Tom Moser pointed out, “We also have more summer camps than anybody else along the Guadalupe River.”

The wide-ranging discussions back then — captured in transcripts archived online — proved to be a chilling precursor to the disaster that unfolded early on July 4. That’s when a slow-moving, massive rainstorm caused the Guadalupe River to rise by 22 feet in just three hours, catching those living and camping on its banks off-guard in the middle of the night.

But the new warning system never became reality. Though local officials agreed to spend $50,000 on an engineering study, which made specific recommendations for such a project in 2016, they never secured the $1 million they estimated would be needed to implement it – despite asking for help from state officials at least three separate times.

“We never were successful in getting that funding, or putting the matching funding with it to do anything,” said Moser, who retired in 2021, in a phone interview. He said he hopes the county can “go back to the drawing board on this, and hopefully it’ll be a model that could be used all over the United States.”

In 2017, Kerr County and the Upper Guadalupe River Authority asked the state to give them federal disaster relief dollars, but their application was denied. They tried a second time after Hurricane Harvey, when more federal funds became available and Gov. Greg Abbott encouraged local entities to submit applications. They were rejected again.

Both applications would have been handled by the Texas Department of Emergency Management, whose spokesman, Wes Rapaport, said the agency could not immediately respond to specific questions because “we are in the middle of ongoing response operations.”

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Abbott said in a news conference that flood response will be handled during the state’s upcoming legislative session, which starts on Monday, July 21.

The river authority, UGRA, also applied for state funding through the Texas Water Development Board. But the agency only agreed to chip in 5% of the estimated $1 million cost, according to documents from the river authority and the water board. The remaining price tag was too steep for Kerr County, whose annual budget in 2016 was about $30 million. UGRA has far fewer resources; last fall, the authority approved spending about $2.3 million.

“At that point we sort of dropped it,” said William Rector, president of the board of UGRA, which has supported the effort for years and paid for a portion of the 2016 study. Abbott appointed Rector to the board in 2016 and named him president two years ago.

[…]

In recent days, other local officials have bristled at the suggestion that a warning system could have made a difference, pointing out that even national weather forecasters underestimated how much rain could fall in such a short period of time. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s highest-ranking elected official, told reporters over the weekend that “nobody saw this coming.”

Phil Bedient, who has spent decades designing flood protection and prediction systems as director of Rice University’s SSPEED Center, disagreed.

“We have radar, and we have cell phones, and we have sirens, and those three things together can be used to create a pretty good system,” he said. “It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what’s that versus 80 or 100 people dying in a flash flood?”

Rector said UGRA is continuing to move forward with a flood warning system plan. Documents show the river authority agreed to pay an environmental firm about $73,000 to once again assess what new infrastructure Kerr County might need to implement an early flood warning system – though that’s likely a tiny fraction of the total cost of putting one in place.

“This storm has told us we just can’t wait anymore,” he said.

I agree with the decision for them to not get Hurricane Harvey relief funds. Let’s just say that remains an extremely sore subject and move on. Why all the other attempts failed I couldn’t say. The area around the Guadalupe River is called “Flash Flood Alley” and its history is long and well known. I don’t know why Kerr County never found the money for this.

Now compare that experience to that of nearby Comfort, Texas.

As heavy rain triggered flash flood warnings along the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country early Friday, the small unincorporated town of Comfort had something its neighbors upriver in Kerr County didn’t: wailing sirens urging residents to flee before the water could swallow them.

Comfort had recently updated its disaster alert system, installing a new siren in the volunteer fire department’s headquarters and moving the old one to a low-lying area of town along Cypress Creek, a tributary of the Guadalupe that is prone to flooding. Friday was the first time the new two-siren system had been used outside of tests, providing a last-minute alarm for anyone who hadn’t responded to previous warnings on their cellphones or evacuation announcements from firefighters driving around town.

“People knew that if they heard the siren, they gotta get out,” said Danny Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department.

Morales said that no one died in Comfort, a town of about 2,300 people in Kendall County. But in Kerr County about 20 miles away, dozens of people, including young girls staying at Camp Mystic, a riverside Christian summer camp, were washed away when the Guadalupe surged over its banks and swamped the surrounding countryside. As of Monday evening, officials said, 104 people had been confirmed dead, 84 of them in Kerr County, including dozens of children. Kerr County has no siren system despite years of debate, in part because some local officials felt it was too expensive to install.

[…]

It is impossible to know whether a siren system in Kerr County would have saved lives; they are meant to alert people who are outdoors, not in bed indoors, as many of Kerr County’s victims were when the river rose overnight — at one point by 26 feet in just 45 minutes.

The weather service issued a flood watch for the area Thursday afternoon and an urgent flash flood warning for Kerr County at 1:14 a.m. Friday, a move that triggers the wireless emergency alerts on cellphones.

By the time flooding inundated low-lying parts of Kendall County, where Comfort is located, it was later Friday morning. The first weather service flash flood alert for Kendall came at 7:24 a.m. When the sirens went off, many residents were already awake and aware of the dangerous flooding. A Facebook video recorded by Jeff Flinn, the managing editor of The Boerne Star, shows the emergency sirens in Comfort sounding at 10:52 a.m.; he said the alert lasted for about 30 seconds.

Kerr County was relying on the emergency alerts that blare on cellphones. Those alerts may not get through, particularly in rural areas with bad service or in the night when phones are off or when there are no phones around; the girls at the summer camp weren’t allowed to bring them. And some may choose to ignore them, because they’re bombarded by phone alerts.

[…]

Cruz Newberry, who owns Table Rock Alerting Systems, a Missouri company, installed Comfort’s new computer-backed system last year at a cost of about $60,000. Morales said a local nonprofit group provided most of the money, with Kendall County kicking in a smaller amount.

The system, linked to the National Weather Service by a satellite dish that can withstand violent weather, can be set up to automatically trigger sirens when the agency declares flash flood emergencies for the area. But Comfort opts to trigger its sirens manually, when officials notice flood waters have risen past a certain point.

Newberry stressed that sirens are a piece of a broader warning apparatus that also includes the news media, social media and cellphone alerts. Sirens, he said, are a measure of last resort.

“The nice thing with an outdoor warning system is it’s one of the few methods that local officials have at their disposal where they can literally press a button and warn citizens themselves,” Newberry said. “It’s difficult to ignore a siren blaring for three minutes straight.”

The story also touches on Kerr County’s experience trying to get funds for an alert system there, as well as the failed legislative effort from this year. Sixty grand doesn’t sound like a lot of money to me, but Kerrville has ten times the population of Comfort, so that may not be a good comparison. At this point, the bigger issue is trying to learn all we can about what the options are.

That first article mentioned Phil Bedient, of Ike Dike and SSPEED fame, and here he is expanding on his assertion about a proper flood warning system.

The Guadalupe River needs more flood gauges. The Guadalupe River is 230 miles long. Its river basin is 6,700 square miles — meaning that the rain that falls on all that land drains toward the river.

Right now, there are only about five rain gauges on the Guadalupe River, and not all of those worked. That leaves far too much of the river unmonitored.

The Rice University SPEED Center recommends that 20 or more gauges be installed and maintained, and that a radar rainfall system be implemented for the region.

The State of Texas needs an alert system along the Guadalupe River. There were no warning sirens in those vulnerable towns along the Guadalupe or at certain critical river sections. We need a comprehensive alert system that would protect not just the towns, but also rural and remote sections of the river.

Summer camps must have excellent flood escape plans. For the summer camps along the Guadalupe’s banks, there are few established escape routes. Each camp must work with local authorities to establish robust escape routes and develop flood risk responses.

We need a modern flood warning system. Finally, the Guadalupe River requires a modern computer model such as the FIRST model (Flood Information & Response System), developed by the SSPEED Center, that the city of Houston has used since 2020. FIRST is an advanced, radar-based flood assessment, mapping and early-warning system that provides emergency managers with near-instantaneous flood predictions — showing, for instance, whether a hospital or nursing home is likely to be inundated.

We need to address San Antonio too. Flooding in this part of Texas isn’t isolated to rural areas. Less than one month earlier, San Antonio experienced severe floods in which 13 people died in cars swept off of roadways. That city, too, needs alerts, escape plans and an improved flood warning system.

Those all seem like good ideas, and things that the Lege could address in a special session, if Greg Abbott wants to include that. Which he seems inclined to do at this point. One can certainly wonder why some of this stuff had never been addressed before, and one can certainly wonder if Abbott would have actually called a special session – which as we know he did not do after Harvey – if one to deal with his THC ban veto wasn’t already on the calendar.

Back to Kerr County and its emergency alerts:

In his first press conference after the deadly floods last weekend, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said unequivocally that the area did not have an emergency alert system.

“We have no warning system,” he said on the morning of July 4, just hours after the Guadalupe River topped its banks. When pushed about why evacuations did not occur earlier, Kelly doubled down. “We didn’t know this flood was coming. Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming. …This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.”

And when asked Tuesday at what time warnings were issued, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said he was focused on search and rescue.

“It’s not that easy, and you just push a button. Okay? There’s a lot more to that, and we’ve told you several times,” he said. A reporter then asked, “Did it happen?” to which Leitha responded, “I can’t tell you at this time.”

But The Texas Newsroom has learned that not only does the county have a mass-alert system for public emergencies, first responders asked that it be triggered early Friday morning.

The Guadalupe River rose as much as 26 feet in 45 minutes around 4 a.m., said Lt Gov. Dan Patrick.

According to emergency radio transmissions The Texas Newsroom reviewed, volunteer firefighters asked for what’s called a “CodeRED” alert to be sent as early as 4:22 a.m. Dispatchers delayed, saying they needed special authorization.

Some residents received flood warnings from CodeRED within an hour. Others told The Texas Newsroom they did not receive their first alert until after 10 a.m., raising questions about why the messages that residents received were sporadic and inconsistent.

[…]

According to information on the Kerr County website, CodeRED “has the ability to notify the entire county or only the affected areas of the county about emergency situations in a matter of minutes.” The system was approved by county commissioners in 2009 for $25,000 a year.

“The system delivers pre-recorded emergency telephone messages, such as during instances of severe weather,” the site adds, “and other emergency situations where rapid and accurate notification is essential for life safety.”

Historically, the Kerr County sheriff has had the ultimate authority on sending an alert out to the public. The department did not respond to questions about whether this authority has changed under the current sheriff or why the CodeRED alerts appeared to be inconsistent.

But CodeRED has some drawbacks.

It uses publicly available phone numbers and voluntary sign ups to send text messages, voicemails, and emails to people in the area specified by government officials sending the alert.

This means its warnings may not go out to all residents or visitors in a disaster area.

Seems like there’s more than just technology and funding to address. Kerr County voters ought to be asking their elected officials some pointed questions.

Sadly, the death toll keeps rising.

The death toll in Kerr County due to deadly floods is now at 94 people, with 161 people still missing in that county, Gov. Greg Abbott said in a Tuesday news conference.

The number of known fatalities in Kerr County as a result of the Hill Country flooding on July 4, increased by seven since Tuesday morning, when the death toll was at 87. Gov. Greg Abbott and state officials held a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Hunt on the continued response to severe flooding in Hill Country.

Abbott said at least 161 people are still missing after the state’s catastrophic floods, with a total death toll of 109 across the state.

Abbott said state lawmakers will consider better allocating resources for those impacted in Central Texas, including Kerr and Kendall County during a pre-planned special session in Austin later this month.

“We want to make sure that when we end that session, we end it making sure these communities are better, more resilient and have the resources they need for the next chapter of their lives,” House Speaker Dustin Burrows said.

Abbott said lawmakers will also consider legislation during that special session that will prevent flooding disasters in the future.

As noted above, we’ll see what that means.

Throughout the day yesterday, the deaths of several of the previously missing Camp Mystic girls were confirmed by their families. Five of them still remain among the 161 people named above. This is going to get so much worse. I wish them all peace and comfort.

Finally, a tale of heroism.

It was his first rescue operation.

Scott Ruskan, a 26-year-old Coast Guard rescue swimmer based in Corpus Christi, Texas, woke up to banging on his door in the early hours of July 4. There was flooding around San Antonio and he was being deployed, he was told. Did he have a chain saw?

Mr. Ruskan was part of a crew that was tasked with evacuating hundreds of people at Camp Mystic, an all-girls’ Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River that has become a hub of loss in the catastrophic floods that killed more than 80 people across Central Texas. About 750 girls were at the camp this session, officials said.

Mr. Ruskan and his team took off on a helicopter around 7 a.m. Central on Friday to the camp, near Hunt, Texas. It took them nearly six hours to reach San Antonio because of poor visibility and challenging weather conditions. “A white-knuckle experience,” he said.

By the end of their operations, Mr. Ruskan was credited with saving 165 people from Camp Mystic.

Thank you, Scott Ruskan. Thank you very much.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Camp Mystic, CodeRED, Comfort, Dan Patrick, DOGE, DPS, FEMA, Flood Information & Response System, flooding, Greg Abbott, Guadalupe River, Gulf of Mexico, Homeland Security, Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Harvey, Ken King, Kendall County, Kerr County, Kerrville, National Emergency Management Association, National Weather Service, NOAA, Phil Bedient, San Angelo, San Antonio, Senate, special session, SSPEED, Texas, Texas Department of Emergency Management, Texas Water Development Board, The Lege, Tropical Storm Barry, Upper Guadalupe River Authority | 10 Comments

CM Plummer formally announces for Harris County Judge

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Houston’s worst-kept secret is a secret no more.

CM Letitia Plummer

Houston City Council member Letitia Plummer plans to resign her position to run in the Democratic primary for Harris County judge, she told the Houston Chronicle in an exclusive interview.

The seat was one Plummer said she never thought would open. While there hasn’t been an official announcement, Plummer said she based her decision on extensive conversations with County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Plummer said her understanding is that Hidalgo won’t seek re-election.

“I’m going to run for the county judge seat. I believe I’ve made the commitment to people, people have asked,” Plummer said. “But, let me be very clear, I’m doing and making that decision on the auspice of having multiple conversations with her. It would never be a situation to where I jumped out saying that I was running against Judge Hidalgo. I made my decision based on hundreds of community conversations, sit downs with her.”

Plummer’s move follows a similar maneuver by former U.S. Rep. Erica Lee Carter, who announced on Monday she would run for county judge should Hidalgo not seek re-election.

Hidalgo has yet to announce a decision on whether or not she will run again, but said she will soon.

[…]

“All of the good work that I’ve done at City Hall, I can now do on a larger stage, really focusing on my priorities,” Plummer said.

Plummer said she’s helped residents through seven natural disasters and focused on quality of life issues across the city.

She said that she believes sometimes people lose track of what exactly the county judge does. Another reason why she thinks she is apt for the job is because she’s been the CEO of her own company. The county judge, Plummer said, is the CEO of the county.

“We can bring Harris County back, because we’ve got some financial challenges we’ve got to deal with,” Plummer said. “We can bring it back, and we can put enough pressure on the federal government and the state to give them what’s duly ours; disaster recovery support No. 1, infrastructure dollars and ensuring that the city of Houston and the county and all of the municipalities that are part of the county can continue to thrive.”

Should Plummer cinch the position, she said her top priorities would be infrastructure, namely increasing the number of resiliency projects the same way she helped Kashmere Gardens Multi-Service Center get a generator so it could be operational in storms; spurring economic development; and healthcare.

See here and here for the background. As the story notes, former Mayor Annise Parker is in the race, as will be former HCDE Trustee and CD18 Congress member Erica Lee Carter, if indeed Judge Hidalgo does not run again. I expect we’ll get an answer to that soon. I also expect this will not be the last candidate announcement for this office.

And yes, this means there will now be a special election in November for City Council At Large #4.

Weeks ahead of Plummer’s formal announcement, information about her candidacy had been inadvertently released twice. Both times called into question whether she would have to resign her council seat early.

Last month, the Spring Branch Democrats Club posted then deleted an image of a document on their Facebook page that read “Dr. Letitia Plummer Democrat for Harris County Judge” with a caption that read “Another candidate for County Judge.”

Then, Houston Style Magazine posted then deleted a news story with the headline “Letitia Plummer: A Bold New Chapter in Harris County’s Leadership Legacy” that said Plummer was “preparing to launch her candidacy for Harris County judge.”

In the story, Plummer was quoted as saying, “The County Judge is the only official elected by all of Harris County. I’m already serving the entire city. Now, I’m ready to serve the entire county. I’ve been there for our seniors, our veterans, our women- and minority-owned businesses. I’ve stood up for police and I’ve stood up for our children. It’s time we build a county government that does the same.”

Plummer said the first information leak by the Spring Branch Democrats Club happened as a result of someone who used to work for her. She says she was misquoted in the Houston Style story and said she did not say, “I’m already serving the entire city. Now, I’m ready to serve the entire county.”

Had Plummer been forced to resign early before her Tuesday announcement, the city would have had to spend its own limited funds to hold a special election for her seat on council.

And just like that, this announcement hit my inbox yesterday morning:

Alejandra Salinas

Nationally recognized attorney Alejandra Salinas announced her candidacy today for Houston City Council, At-Large Position 4.

The incumbent, Council Member Letitia Plummer, has resigned to run for a different office. A special election will be held to fill Plummer’s unexpired term. The special election is anticipated to be held on Tuesday, November 4.

Salinas said: “Houston is a strong and resilient city with hard-working families and individuals. I am fighting for what my neighbors want and every Houstonian deserves: safer neighborhoods, affordable and reliable city services, and a strong infrastructure that keeps the lights on and keeps flood waters out of our homes and cars.”

Salinas enters the race with a powerful list of early endorsers, including Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, County Commissioner Adrian Garcia, District Attorney Sean Teare, At-Large City Council Member Sallie Alcorn, and more. (A full list is available at www.AlejandraSalinas.com.) She also starts off with nearly $300,000 in her campaign account.

Salinas is a partner at Houston-based Susman Godfrey, the leading law firm that stood up to Donald Trump and won a sweeping injunction nullifying Trump’s illegal executive order and protecting the rule of law.

She has protected Harris County elections from partisan interference and reversed discriminatory school policies, and served as a surrogate for President Barack Obama.

Outside of the courtroom, Salinas devotes time to mentorship and community organizations. She serves on the board of Greater Houston LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce, Second Mile Haiti, a non-profit that works to provide prenatal and family care to mothers and families in Haiti and C. 60, a non-profit dedicated to the restoration of LULAC’s first clubhouse in Houston. Salinas and her wife Elizabeth live in Montrose and are members of St. Philip Presbyterian Church.

Sounds like a pretty good candidate to me, but we’ll see who else gets in. I would expect this to be a pretty big field as well, maybe not CD18-sized but still substantial. I can’t wait to see what this finance report looks like, as having $300K already on hand is impressive no matter when she started raising it. And yes, I will do interviews with the AL4 candidates. I’m old enough to remember when this was supposed to be a quiet election year for us. The Press has more.

Posted in Election 2025, Election 2026 | Tagged Alejandra Salinas, Annise Parker, At Large #4, Democratic primary, Election 2025, Election 2026, Erica Lee, Harris County, Harris County Judge, Houston, Houston City Council, Letitia Plummer, Lina Hidalgo, special election | 5 Comments

Fifth Circuit keeps SB4 block in place

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

A bit of good news.

A Texas law that would deputize state and local police to question and arrest people they suspect of being in the country illegally was blocked once again. The law would also authorize local judges to order immigrants returned to the border.

The three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion late Thursday that kept the law, Senate Bill 4, from going into effect.

“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has recognized that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of aliens — is exclusively a federal power,” the ruling said.

[…]

The ruling is a flashpoint in a two-year legal drama that began when Texas enacted the law in 2023, testing the limits of a state’s immigration enforcement powers.

The Biden administration immediately sued. The law was blocked by a federal judge in Austin, keeping it on hold as the Fifth Circuit weighed whether to allow the law to go into effect.

During that time, Donald Trump was re-elected as president. His administration dropped the lawsuit, seeking to work with Texas on immigration enforcement. But immigrant rights groups and El Paso County kept the lawsuit going.

For the plaintiffs, the ruling from the conservative Fifth Circuit was a surprise given the climate of immigration politics. The Fifth Circuit has handed down some of the most conservative rulings that have been appealed to the Supreme Court in recent years on issues like voting rights, abortion, and immigration.

“We’re very surprised and glad that the Fifth Circuit has long recognized what has long been a longstanding legal principle,” said El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez.

El Paso County argued the law, known as SB4, would be a burden on local governments.

“We would have had to divert law enforcement resources to handling this. How and what were we going to do to figure out who is here on legal status or not? Where were we going to put these individuals if they became arrested?” Sanchez said. “Does this bring racial profiling concerns or other civil rights concerns once these individuals are detained by our local law enforcement?”

El Paso County is one of the plaintiffs in the suit, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights project on behalf of El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Austin-based American Gateways.

See here for the previous update – the hearing for this was last April, so this has been a typically slow process – and here for a copy of the opinion. Of the two judges that ruled for the plaintiffs, one is a George W. Bush appointee and the other is a Biden appointee, so at least this wasn’t the result of an unexpected 2-1 Democrat-appointed panel. That may matter if there’s an en banc appeal – Ken Paxton has already said he will appeal – and who knows, it may even matter when this finally gets to SCOTUS. I’m not holding my breath on that one, but a win is a win so let’s celebrate it for now. Here’s the ACLU’s press release, and Reform Austin has more.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged ACLU of Texas, American Gateways, Bastrop County, Congress, Donald Trump, DPS, El Paso, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Greg Abbott, Harris County, Hidalgo County, immigration, Joe Biden, Justice Department, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, lawsuit, MALDEF, McLennan County, Mexico, SCOTUS, Senate, Steve McCraw, Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, The Lege | Leave a comment

On the value of disaster warnings

Posted on July 8, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s hard to know where to start with this.

Rep. Wes Virdell

For the last three days, state Rep. Wes Virdell has been out with first responders in Kerr County as they searched for victims and survivors from the devastating floods that swept through Central Texas early Friday morning.

“All the focus right now is let’s save all the lives we can,” Virdell, who was still on the scene in Kerrville, told The Texas Tribune on Sunday.

Virdell’s closeup view of the havoc wreaked on his district has made a lasting impression, he said, and left him reconsidering a vote he made just a few months ago against a bill that would have established a statewide plan to improve Texas’ disaster response, including better alert systems, along with a grant program for counties to buy new emergency communication equipment and build new infrastructure like radio towers.

“I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now,” said Virdell, a freshman GOP lawmaker from Brady.

The measure, House Bill 13, would have created a new government council to establish the emergency response plan and administer the grant program, both of which would have been aimed at facilitating better communication between first responders. The bill also called for the plan to include “the use of outdoor warning sirens,” like those used in tornado-prone Texas counties, and develop new “emergency alert systems.”

Authored by Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, the legislation was inspired by last year’s devastating wildfires in the Panhandle, where more than 1 million acres burned — including part of King’s property — and three people died. The bill failed in the Texas Senate, prompting newfound questions about whether lawmakers should have done more to help rural, cash-strapped counties stave off the deadly effects of future natural disasters.

As of Sunday evening, at least 79 people had died in the floods. Of those, 68 were in Kerr County, many of them camping or attending a private summer camp along the Guadalupe River.

Virdell, a Hill Country native who lives about 100 miles away, made his way to Kerrville early Friday after seeing news that rains raised the Guadalupe more than two feet, swamping its banks in Hunt and other river communities that host thousands of holiday vacationers.

He stressed an alarm system may not have helped much in this instance because the floodwaters came so quickly. Between 2 and 7 a.m., the Guadalupe River in Kerrville rose from 1 to more than 34 feet in height, according to a flood gauge in the area.

“I don’t think there was enough evidence to even suspect something like this was going to happen,” he said. ”I think even if you had a warning system there, this came in so fast and early in the morning it’s very unlikely the warning system would have had much effect.”

Virdell said he doesn’t recall the specifics of the bill or why he opposed it, though he guessed “it had to do with how much funding” was tied to the measure.

Even if it had passed, it would not have gone into effect until Sept. 1, after the Hill Country flooding.

The bill’s initial $500 million cost drew heavy criticism from fellow Republicans including state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington.

“This shouldn’t be about anything other than the fact that it’s a half a billion dollars,” Tinderholt, a hardline conservative and budget hawk, said during the April 1 House floor debate. “This is probably one of the most simple votes we should be able to take today. It’s that this interoperability council is going to spend money to try and get these departments to be able to talk together.”

Steven Aranyi, a spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, noted that lawmakers — including the Texas Senate, which Patrick oversees — made several “unprecedented” investments in disaster response during this year’s legislative session, totaling $547 million. That included:

$257 million for disaster response aircraft,

$135 million for regional operation facilities,

$90 million to provide ambulances to rural counties,

$65 million for emergency response drone technology.

The flaw with HB 13, Aranyi said, was that it proposed rolling out the local grant money over an estimated timeline of up to 10 years.

“By the time any system was developed, it would be outdated due to advances in technology,” Aranyi said. “The grants in the bill were limited to planning purposes only; they did not support disaster response.”

I’m just going to bullet point this, because my thoughts are falling all over each other…

– How many times do we have to have an emergency in this state before the Republicans in the Legislature, not to mention Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, do something to try to mitigate against it happening again? They failed us on Beryl, they failed us on Winter Storm Uri, they failed on the Panhandle fires, and now they’ve failed on disaster alert systems. The pattern here is stark.

– I don’t know if HB13 was the best possible way to increase our disaster preparedness capabilities, but it was a reasonable attempt by a legislator with a good reputation, and it passed the House by a vote of 129-18. Surely it had some merit, and even if it was flawed it had passed on April 2, meaning that there was ample time for the Senate to hold a hearing, make some amendments, and at least send a version of it back. But HB13 never even got assigned to a committee – its Senate companion bill did get assigned to the Finance committee, the day after HB13 passed in the House, and then was left to die. That’s on Dan Patrick.

– Spending some money on disaster response is nice, but that’s primarily reactive. It does nothing to help prevent or mitigate disasters before they happen. Now again, there are legitimate questions about how this could be done effectively – we must acknowledge that the floods happened very quickly, in the middle of the night, and many people had become accustomed to the risk of more normal levels of flooding. It’s entirely possible that even with the best alert systems available, many lives would still have been lost. But we’ll never know that.

– It’s also true that even if HB13 had passed, that law wouldn’t have been in effect until September 1, and there would be a significant lag between then and the counties doing something with the funding they would have been able to apply for. But not passing HB13 means that we would have been waiting another two years to try again (modulo whatever Abbott does with the special session call). If your argument is “we wouldn’t have been able to move fast enough to do anything”, then waiting another two years seems like an odd way to approach that.

– Then there’s the money complaint, as put forth by the lowlife Tony Tinderholt. Obviously, there’s a risk/reward tradeoff to consider, and there is a limit to how much money we should spend on any security system, especially when we can only speculate about the value of said system. But that’s not the issue for Tinderholt or his nihilist crew. They just don’t want to spend money on anything other than border security or various corporate giveaways. And so here we are.

– I don’t know enough about Rep. Virdell to know how comfortably he fits in that camp, or if maybe he just balked at the price tag and/or got bad advice. I will say, maybe next time have a staffer who is able to brief you on a bill like this before you vote on it. There are thousands of bills filed each session, and 80% or so never see the light of day, so I’m not saying “read them all”, as that would be ridiculous and pointless. But do read the ones that matter, and have a staff in place that can tell which ones they are. This is why electing people who care about these things is important.

I really don’t know what could have been different if we had better emergency alert systems in place, or if local officials had done more to warn their residents of this threat, or if the people who did know of the threat had acted more quickly. There is as I’ve said a lot we will need to learn from this, and to pass laws and get into a different mindset for the next time. Because I do know that the death toll is now 84, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, which still does not include the ten campers and one counselor who remain unaccounted for. I would like to think that this time, at least, we’ll take what happened seriously and try our best to prevent it, or at least lessen its impact, in the future. I’ll turn this over to the Chron editorial board:

As families grieve, Gov. Greg Abbott can act by adding a formal investigation and policy response to the agenda for his upcoming special session, which begins on July 21. Texas is too vulnerable to sudden, catastrophic flooding for our leaders in Austin to let this tragedy become just another unheeded warning. To his credit, Abbott has hinted that something is in the works.

“We have a special session coming up and the way to respond to this is something the special session will address,” he said at a Sunday press conference.

This time it was the Guadalupe River. Next time it could be the Brazos. Or the Trinity. Or Buffalo Bayou. Whether driven by climate change or upstream development or nature’s sheer unpredictability, these sorts of unprecedented floods are no longer once-in-a-generation events. They are a grim routine — and our state is unprepared.

Could campers have been saved if local officials had acted more urgently? Hours passed between when the National Weather Service issued a flood warning and a wall of water hit Camp Mystic.

AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said in a statement Saturday that had camp organizers and local officials heeded warnings they could have saved lives. And when asked why the camps weren’t evacuated, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly had no answer.

Where did communication break down? Were late-night cell phone warnings ignored after years of overuse for far-away Amber Alerts? Does Texas need to step in to mandate flood sirens in flood-prone areas or invest in stronger resiliency infrastructure for our state’s Flash Flood Alley?

We don’t yet know what actions could have saved lives from the tragic Hill Country flood. But we do know the Legislature has the power to find out — and to help prevent the next one.

“When Texans face a challenge, we come together,” Abbott said at a press conference on Saturday. “We unite.”

Houstonians know that unity fades not long after the skies clear.

No special session followed Hurricane Harvey. Sixty inches of precipitation wasn’t enough to tap the state’s Rainy Day Fund. After Hurricane Beryl, lawmakers promised they would hold CenterPoint accountable for blackouts and corporate opacity. Yet the strongest reforms quietly died in the Legislature.

The Panhandle knows this struggle, too, as Suzanne Bellsnyder has documented at the Texas Rural Reporter. After the devastating 2023 wildfires, state Rep. Ken King led an investigation that called for better emergency communications infrastructure in rural Texas. House Bill 13 could have funded those upgrades — but it died in the Senate. That bill, too, deserves another chance in the special session.

Sadly, disaster investigations and infrastructure funding often cannot compete with political priorities such as securing the border or banning THC.

Too often, natural disasters are treated as a distraction from the Austin agenda — or worse, a stage for political theater. Some have already tried to twist this moment into a partisan spectacle. State Rep. Biscoe Cain bizarrely warned of a growing government. Too many progressives leapt at any opportunity to blame this tragedy on President Trump and his federal staffing cuts.

“In this particular case, we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all in this event,” Houston meteorologist Matt Lanza wrote on The Eyewall. “Anyone using this event to claim that is being dishonest.”

In a moment of mourning, partisan posturing only deepens the pain.

Texans deserve better. Families deserve real answers. Flooding deserves to be treated with the seriousness it demands.

Yes it does. It also demands that people not act like assholes, or get in the way of rescue efforts. (I mean, Jesus H. Christ on a goddamn pogo stick.) Stop pointing fingers and spreading conspiracy theories, and start working to figure out how to do better. Go take a vacation if you can’t commit to any of that.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged Camp Mystic, Dan Patrick, DOGE, DPS, FEMA, flooding, Guadalupe River, Gulf of Mexico, Homeland Security, Hurricane Beryl, Ken King, Kerr County, Kerrville, National Emergency Management Association, National Weather Service, NOAA, San Angelo, San Antonio, Senate, Texas, Texas Department of Emergency Management, The Lege, Tony Tinderholt, Tropical Storm Barry, Wes Virdell | 9 Comments

Erica Lee Carter to run for Harris County Judge if Judge Hidalgo does not

Posted on July 8, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Things are getting more interesting.

Erica Lee Carter

As Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo waits to announce her plans on seeking reelection, former Congressman Erica Lee Carter announced Monday she may run for the seat.

“I want to make it clear, if Judge Lina Hidalgo chooses not to run for re-election, I, Erica Lee Carter, will be running for Harris County Judge,” she wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “This community means everything to me and I’m ready to step up and lead on the issues that matter most to Harris County.”

Lee Carter, the daughter of former Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, entered the political arena following her mother’s passing last year.

The 74-year-old served in Congress for decades, representing the 18th Congressional District. Lee Carter finished out her mother’s term after winning against her opponent with nearly 70% of the votes. She served for two months.

“As a progressive voice, Democrat and dedicated public servant, I remain committed to providing the kind of forward-looking leadership that addresses the real needs of all Harris County residents,” she said in a statement. “I thank the community leaders and supporters who have encouraged me to consider serving our county.”

See here for some background, and here for a copy of her announcement. I would quibble with the statement that she “entered the political arena following her mother’s passing last year”, since she was elected to the HCDE Board of Trustees in 2012. She served one term and hadn’t been particularly visible since then, until her candidacy in the special election to fill out her mother’s term, but she did so as a previously-elected official. This all puts her a little behind Annise Parker on the fundraising front, but I expect that she will be able to keep up. Assuming she does get in the race, which as you know I would expect given my belief that Judge Hidalgo will not be running.

I mentioned back when the first leak about CM Letitia Plummer’s possible intentions to run came out that I was aware of “another prominent person who was supposedly thinking about running for Judge in the Dem primary”. I will now confirm that it was Erica Lee Carter whose name had been bandied about. Good to know the ol’ rumor mill still works. As for CM Plummer and her poorly kept secret, I got an email in the box yesterday from her campaign email address saying she “will be making a major announcement about her political future” on July 8, which is to say today. You never know until you know, but I think we all know what she will be announcing. (Whether Erica Lee Carter, who has no resign to run considerations to ponder, jumped in with her announcement because of that, I couldn’t say.) And that will mean another special election this November. I’ll have more on that tomorrow.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Annise Parker, At Large #4, Democratic primary, Election 2025, Election 2026, fundraising, Harris County, Harris County Judge, Houston, Houston City Council, Letitia Plummer, Lina Hidalgo, resign to run, special election | Leave a comment

Houston environmentalists join legal fight to get EPA funds restored

Posted on July 8, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Go get ’em.

Houston environmental advocates joined a class-action lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency last week to recover billions in federal grant funding cut by the Trump administration.

The nonprofit Air Alliance Houston hopes to restart the work it was leading to engage residents in a 10-county area and alert them when companies apply for pollution permits in their community. The program expected to use over $3 million in grant money from an Inflation Reduction Act program that funded “environmental and climate justice community change grants.”

“Our grant would have helped people who live day-to-day with air pollution to have a meaningful say in the environmental decisions that affect their lives,” said Jennifer Hadayia, the group’s executive director. “We joined this suit because we believe everyone has the right to breathe clean air.”

Air Alliance was not alone: at least 10 Houston-area grants, and hundreds more across the country lost funding when new EPA leadership culled programs listed under climate or environmental justice. Other canceled grants paid for everything from disaster preparedness and flood damage mitigation to workforce development in the renewable energy sector.

“EPA’s termination of the program is unlawful,” the class-action suit says. “It violates bedrock separation-of-powers principles by effectively repealing a congressional enactment and impounding funds based on nothing more than the President’s disagreement with policies Congress duly enacted.”

Earthjustice, Southern Environmental Law Center, Public Rights Project and Lawyers for Good Government, which spearheaded the litigation, argued that the EPA could not legally claw back congressionally-appropriated grant funds based on the new administration’s policy differences, especially not “en masse” without individual review.

Their lawsuit seeks to restart programs led by the 350 grant recipients across the U.S., which included local governments, tribes, universities and nonprofit organizations.

I don’t have a post about the initial action, so this is what I know about this. I also know that Houston and Harris County have been pretty successful in similar actions over grant cuts, so I feel good about their chances here. I wish them all the best. See Air Alliance Houston’s statement for more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Air Alliance Houston, DOGE, Donald Trump, Earthjustice, Elon Musk, Environmental Protection Agency, Harris County, Houston, lawsuit, Lawyers for Good Government, pollution, Public Rights Project, Southern Environmental Law Center | Leave a comment

Hill Country flood update 2

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

A brief overview of the situation, written on Sunday at noon.

The death toll rose to 68 as a result of the Fourth of July floods along the Guadalupe River, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said. That includes 28 children.

There were 10 Camp Mystic campers and one counselor still missing Sunday evening, officials said, with hundreds already rescued.

Reporters and photographers from the Houston Chronicle and other Hearst newsrooms remain in the Texas Hill Country as crews search for around 27 children missing from Camp Mystic and others lost in the floods. Here’s a recap of Saturday’s coverage.

Here’s that story about the missing Camp Mystic girls. Earlier coverage had spoken of as many as 27 missing. I didn’t see anything to indicate that some number of them had been found, alive or dead, so my assumption at this point is that perhaps the initial reporting had overestimated the number. This is obviously a fast moving story and there will be many revisions along the way. Also, if you do click on that story, you are going to see pictures of these young girls whose families don’t know where the are or what has happened to them, and it will shatter your heart into a million pieces. So click carefully.

On that note, The Barbed Wire has a long story about Camp Mystic and what it has meant to the many girls who spent a few summer weeks there.

Thirty-nine-year-old Jordan Macha spent more than ten summers at Camp Mystic, as both a camper and a counselor.

She can imagine in precise detail how the youngest girls, age 8, were tucked into their beds on Thursday in their cabins overlooking the Guadalupe River — hours before it swelled a reported 26 feet in just 45 minutes in a violent flash flood before dawn on July Fourth.

“I keep thinking of what those girls heard the night before: ‘Good night, Camp Mystic. We love you,’” she told The Barbed Wire. “Said in unison every night.”

The private Christian all-girls camp — nestled among cypress, live oak, and pecan trees in the Texas Hill Country on the banks of the Guadalupe — would’ve celebrated its centennial anniversary next April.

Instead, it is the scene of our latest national tragedy.

[…]

Mystic has been a popular rite of passage for many girls in Texas and across the country since its inception in 1926. About 750 girls were at the camp this week, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick reportedly said at a news conference on Friday. In an email to parents that morning, the camp said it had sustained “catastrophic level floods,” per The New York Times. Photos circulated online of little girls clinging to tree branches or riding in rescue helicopters.

“The camp was completely destroyed,” Elinor Lester, 13, a camper at Mystic, told The Associated Press, after she was evacuated with her cabinmates by helicopter. “It was really scary.”

Elinor was reportedly holding a small teddy bear and a book when she reunited with her family through sobs, her mother Elizabeth Lester told the news agency. “My kids are safe, but knowing others are still missing is just eating me alive,” she said.

Elinor’s cabin was on Senior Hill, where older girls are housed. The youngest campers, age 8, are located along the riverbanks and were the first to flood, she told reporters.

After news of the missing campers spread, former counselors, campers, and other community members shared their fear, their grief, and their memories of the beloved Texas Hill Country institution.

“Parents put their daughters on a waitlist when their daughters were born… hoping that they’d get to attend the same camp their moms did years prior,” said Sunday Crider, who worked at Camp Mystic in the summer of 1989, in a Facebook post. As Texas Monthly reported in 1975, Mystic has also long been a favorite of the Texas political aristocracy — with Lyndon Johnson and former governors Dan Moody, Price Daniel, and John Connally all sending their daughters (and sometimes granddaughters) to the Hunt-based camp.

Mystic prides itself on giving young girls “a wholesome Christian atmosphere in which they can develop outstanding personal qualities and self-esteem,” according to its website.

“I left a piece of my heart in those cabins,” the former camper, Jordan Macha, wrote on Facebook. “Today, that heart is breaking.”

“I’m holding onto the love and light that Mystic gave us, even in the darkest night,” she said.

Macha told The Barbed Wire she credits Mystic for much. “The most rewarding summers” of her life; fostering joy and forging lifelong friendships; for shaping the person she is today. “Each year, I was in the same cabin group,” Macha said. “We grew up together, creating an unshakable sisterhood that extended far beyond camp. That’s part of the ‘special sauce’ of Mystic.” She remembers dance parties on their trunks before bed, whispers and giggles during rest hour, competitions full of laughter and fierce friendship.

Macha’s heart “sank,” she said, when she caught news of the floods on Friday. Having lived through hurricanes in Houston and New Orleans, she was no stranger to flood devastation.

But this was different.

“I could picture every part of the camp and the cabins that were impacted,” she told The Barbed Wire. “I’ve been sitting with the fear those young girls and young women must have felt,” she continued, “and the bravery and courage they all showed.”

There are more pictures of missing campers in that story, too. They’re all over my Facebook timeline, too. We’re going to be living with this for a long time.

There are other camps in that area, and they have suffered losses, too.

Cynthie “Jane” Ragsdale grew up with a love for summer camps near the Guadalupe River in Kerr County.

In the 1960s, Ragsdale’s parents bought Camp Stewart, a summer camp for boys near Hunt, when she was a child. Ragsdale, who lived briefly in Denton then, spent her summers at Camp Mystic, a private summer Christian camp, where her aunt and cousin had also gone, and at Heart O’ the Hills, an all-girls summer camp, a special place where she would become co-owner and camp director.

“I loved every minute of camp from the first time I stepped foot in one,” Ragsdale recalled in a 2015 oral history interview with the Kerr County Historical Commission, archived on the Portal to Texas History.

That love would lead Ragsdale to become a camp counselor, assistant program director and program director — a summer job that Ragsdale said allowed her to focus on her studies in Spanish and journalism at Texas Woman’s University.

At Heart O’ the Hills near Hunt, Ragsdale served as program director from 1978 until 1987 and camp director from 1988 until her death on Friday.

Ragsdale, considered the “heart and soul” of the all-girls camp, was among the dozens of people so far confirmed dead from the catastrophic flooding that hit the Texas Hill Country on Friday, according to a July 4 post to the Heart O’ the Hills Official Fan Page on Facebook.

“There has been catastrophic flooding in the area overnight and we remain under flood watch until at least 5 PM today. Thankfully, camp was not in session, and most of those who were on camp at the time have been accounted for and are on high ground. However, we have received word that Jane Ragsdale did not make it. We are mourning the loss of a woman who influenced countless lives and was the definition of strong and powerful.

“Rescue efforts are ongoing throughout the county as many people have been impacted by this devastation. We know all of you want to help, but roads are not open, and an official report of the camp destruction is not available. We will update as we have news to share. Please continue to pray for Kerr County and the surrounding areas as there have been multiple fatalities and still many missing.”

Ragsdale was 68.

The story returned to that 2015 oral history to quote Ragsdale saying that she loved what she did and never thought of it as work. Rest in peace, Jane Ragsdale.

Here’s another post from The Eyewall that expands on what they said before about cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service and the effect on the response to the flood.

There remains a lot to unpack still after yesterday. The reaction to our post covered a rather broad spectrum, and I just want to emphasize a couple points.

1.) We have been on record as saying the proposed budget cuts to NOAA would be disastrous. We’ve had people throwing that back at us and saying “Wait a minute…” The reality is that there are a handful of key ways the budget cuts will impact offices, alerts, and warnings. First, the primary current cuts have led to understaffing in many offices. Relative to other offices, the NWS office in San Antonio/Austin is fairly well off. For example, they currently have seven more full-time staff members than the neighboring Houston office.

They are missing the warning coordination meteorologist, who primarily focuses on building understanding of warnings on what we call “blue sky” days. That work gets done before tragedies occur. That position has only been vacant for a couple months, so it likely did not play a role here. But it will if it is not filled in the coming weeks.

But the office has most of their meteorologist positions filled, as well as most of their hydrologists. From the warning perspective in real time, this plus the timeliness of issued warnings is why I don’t believe staffing was an issue here.

2.) Weather balloon launch cuts probably had little to no impact on this specific forecast. Again, I want to emphasize that the launch of the evening balloon at Del Rio was crucial to understanding the potential severity of the event, and this emphasizes that fully funding and staffing NWS offices to be able to launch balloons is critically important. The takeaway here is that funding NOAA leads to better understanding of unfolding weather, forecast weather, and real-time decision-making.

3.) Weather model forecasts were imperfect ahead of time, but as the event closed in, they performed as designed and did better. Why is this? Because of NOAA-led research. The HRRR and HREF models have been instrumental in improving our understanding of localized (or mesoscale) forecasts like this. We have a long way to go to perfect those forecasts, but they more often than not do their job in guiding the horses (meteorologists) to water. How will we improve those guidance tools more? By fully funding NOAA research. How will we reduce false alarms during potential high impact weather? By fully funding NOAA research. It comes back to that in the end.

4.) We need to understand the limits of predictability in these scenarios. Models often tell us about the potential for a high-end event. But in Texas in particular the specific placement of a high-end event is extremely tough to pin down. A few miles makes a world of difference, and I think it’s evident that we need to build some pad into rainfall forecasts beyond what we’re currently doing. These are works that are accomplished by having NWS meteorologists working together with local emergency managers to help improve knowledge and refine trigger points for warnings. Again, this points back to fully funding and staffing NOAA and NWS offices to accomplish this critical work. The private sector cannot fill this gap at all.

For the families dealing with unimaginable tragedy right now, none of this matters. They deserve time, privacy, and space to grieve. But for those not directly impacted, it’s important for us to push this dialogue to try to play a small part in our broader understanding of the problems and realities. And it’s important to do it immediately because those on the outside have short memories. But I again want to share our condolences to all those affected in some way.

Here’s a timeline of events as put together by Texas Public Radio. There will be a lot to think about and try to learn from, and we’ll have to do that with a federal administration filled with liars and sociopaths, who will want to deflect and blame others as their first instinct. And while I hope what Matt Lanza is saying will add some context to what we know, there’s still more we’re learning.

But according to a new report in the New York Times, there were serious inadequacies in both preparation for and the emergency response to the natural disaster. In part, apparently because of staffing shortages at the National Weather Service (NWS) prompted by Trump’s and Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government. Housed within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the Department of Commerce, the NWS provides forecasts, weather warnings, and climate data that are used to help local and state officials protect communities in the face of weather disasters. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) invaded NOAA earlier this year, and hundreds of forecasters were reportedly fired; another 1,000 reportedly took buyout offers.

According to the Times, the San Angelo office of the NWS was lacking a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and top meteorologist. The nearby San Antonio office also had vacancies for a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, roles that are designed to work with local officials to plan for floods. The Times reports that the warning coordination meteorologist left after taking the early retirement offer that the Trump administration has used across agencies to try to shed staff, citing a person with knowledge of that worker’s departure. The Times also reports that while some of the open roles may predate the current administration, the current vacancy rates at both the San Antonio and San Angelo NWS offices are roughly double what they were in January, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents NWS employees.

John Sokich, former director of congressional affairs for NWS, told the Times the reduced staffing made it harder for the NWS to successfully coordinate with local officials.

On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said the vacancies should be investigated, adding, “I don’t think it’s helpful to have missing key personnel from the [NWS] not in place to help prevent these tragedies.”

Several factors, however, contributed to the scale of devastation in Texas, including some that may not have been able to have been anticipated, much less controlled.

Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said at a news conference on Friday that the NWS underestimated the amount of rain expected to fall in its forecasts, but several meteorologists told Wired in a report published on Saturday that the meteorologists could not have predicted the severity of this storm, and that their forecasts were accurate at the time they issued them. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly also told reporters, “We deal with floods on a regular basis…we had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here.” And as my colleague Henry Carnell points out on Bluesky, other factors that were at play included national reductions in FEMA funding and, in some cases, lags in communication by local agencies to the public advising evacuation.

A spokesperson for NWS said in a statement provided to Mother Jones on Sunday that the agency is “heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County,” adding that the agency’s local offices in Austin and San Antonio had conducted forecast briefings for emergency management personnel on Thursday, and issued flash floods warnings both Thursday night and Friday morning.

Still, the vacancies in the local Texas offices, coupled with the devastation of the floods, point to what experts have said is an urgent need for the Trump administration to bolster resources for emergency responses to natural disasters. Just this week, emergency officials from across the country told CNN that FEMA was ghosting them despite the arrival of hurricane season. Also this week, the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA), a nonpartisan group of emergency management directors, sent Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem a letter demanding she make congressionally-mandated emergency management grants available immediately, given that they should have been available in May. Spokespeople for DHS and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday afternoon.

Acting FEMA Director David Richardson reportedly told staff last month he was not aware that hurricane season had started, which the White House dismissed as a joke, and a May internal review of FEMA concluded that the agency was not ready for hurricane season despite the June 1 deadline. NOAA is also seeking to cut another 2,000 employees in its proposed budget for the next fiscal year.

Note that this is consistent with what Lanza wrote. I guess I’m just making a plea to listen to what the professional meteorologists are saying before you speak for them. And please consider finding a way to help if you can. Thanks.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Camp Mystic, DOGE, DPS, FEMA, flooding, Guadalupe River, Gulf of Mexico, Heart O' the Hills, HFD, Homeland Security, Hurricane Beryl, Kerr County, Kerrville, National Emergency Management Association, National Weather Service, NOAA, San Angelo, San Antonio, Texas, Texas Department of Emergency Management, Tropical Storm Barry | 4 Comments

That’s one way to boost STAAR scores

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

You may recall earlier stories about STAAR improvements at HISD, which Mike Miles has touted as proof that his plans are working and all of us malcontents should just shut up already. That’s all well and good, but as is always the case with Mike Miles there’s more to the story than what they have to say. Texas Monthly fills in the gaps.

In his enthusiasm, though, Miles glossed over a crucial fact: The two-year jump in algebra and biology scores was, at least in part, a result of systematically pushing students at NES schools into less rigorous math and science classes. These moves, some of which were previously reported by the Houston Chronicle, inflated test scores by forcing thousands of students at struggling schools to take STAAR exams a year later than their peers at higher-performing campuses.

In interviews, district representatives acknowledged these changes but told me they were intended to benefit students rather than inflate STAAR scores. Chief academic officer Kristen Hole explained that NES students need extra preparation before taking algebra and biology classes. “We have a lot of English-language learners in the district,” she said. “One additional year of English acquisition for students can always be particularly helpful, especially in a topic like biology, where you have a lot of heavy vocabulary.” (Miles declined an interview request.)

Until the state takeover, most students took both Algebra I and biology in ninth grade, while higher-performing students could take algebra in eighth or even seventh grade. That’s still true at non-NES schools, such as Lanier Middle School and Bellaire High School, which tend to have wealthier, whiter populations. But at NES schools, the course sequence has become much more rigid.

Since the state takeover, access to eighth-grade algebra has declined at many NES schools. Two middle schools that joined NES in 2023 (Cullen and Fondren) did not offer an algebra course that year; three schools that joined in 2024 (Deady, Fonville, and Gregory-Lincoln) also did not offer algebra their first year in the program. At many other schools, eighth-grade enrollment in Algebra I dropped by more than half from its pre-NES figure. Hole wouldn’t answer a question about why the course is no longer offered but said the district is in the process of implementing an accelerated math curriculum for lower grades so that future students will be prepared for eighth-grade algebra. (Cullen resumed offering Algebra I in 2024–25; seven students took the exam this spring.)

But NES schools likely already have students ready for advanced math. At Deady, which enrolls approximately 165 students per grade, 22 students took eighth-grade algebra in the 2023–24 school year. Ninety-one percent of those students scored “Meets and Above” on the STAAR exam, with 77 percent also scoring “Masters.” The following year, Deady joined NES and dropped algebra. Students who might have enrolled in the more challenging course were forced into regular eighth-grade math. Perhaps not coincidentally, the percentage of HISD students demonstrating proficiency in eighth-grade math jumped nine points over the past year, more than the change in any other grade.

A math teacher at Deady told me that his advanced students are frustrated by their inability to take more challenging courses. “If you keep them on the same plane as everyone else, you are going to see higher scores, because those higher-level students are bringing those scores up,” he said. “But over time, if those students don’t stay motivated, it will be like, ‘Okay, well, if I don’t need to try to be better, why try to be better?’ ” (I interviewed seven NES math and science teachers for this story. All but one asked to remain anonymous for fear of being fired.)

An HISD spokesperson told me that the district plans to offer eighth-grade algebra at all middle schools by the 2026–27 school year. For many students, though, that will be too late. A recent study conducted by Good Reason Houston, a nonprofit that supports Miles, found that taking Algebra I in eighth grade leads to significantly higher rates of college completion, even after taking into account race, income, and language.

As the Houston Chronicle has reported, the science-course sequence at NES schools is even stricter. Instead of biology, most NES ninth graders now take Integrated Physics and Chemistry, which teachers described to me as a remedial course. “By not taking biology until tenth grade, you’re limiting their access to other advanced science courses,” said a testing coordinator at one NES high school. “You’re going to increase your scores, but at the cost of advanced academics.”

The HISD spokesperson denied holding NES students back, pointing out that some high schools now offer ninth-grade physics. But physics requires more math skills, which is why it’s usually taught later in high school.

Anna Eastman, a former HISD trustee who initially supported the state takeover before becoming disillusioned by Miles’s actions, told me it was unfair to force NES students to take biology a year later than their peers. “It seems to be that they’re trying to make everyone [at NES schools] do the same thing at the same time, even if you’re holding them back. And I don’t think that’s equitable.”

The bigger problem, however, may be Miles’s intense focus on quickly bringing up test scores. “None of these changes are illegal,” said Dan Dawer, an education PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin working on a dissertation about the HISD takeover. “[Miles] has the flexibility to change which students take which tests. And if that helps get his test scores up, that’s fine. The problem is that students’ interests are not being served by that policy.”

The Mike Miles experience for you in a nutshell, right there. I sure do miss having oversight of my school district.

Posted in School days | Tagged Anna Eastman, Board of Managers, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, New Education System, STAAR, Texas Education Agency | 1 Comment

Houston First does its own Polk Street study

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Everything will be fine, don’t worry about it.

As Houston residents continue to push for Polk Street to remain open through the planned $2 billion George R. Brown Convention Center expansion, Houston First has released a traffic study it says shows the closure will not significantly impact area traffic.

Released to the public on June 27, the traffic study analyzed 48 intersections surrounding Polk Street. It considered the impact of converting Leeland Street into a two-way road between Chartres and Austin and also accounted for the Texas Department of Transportation’s North Houston Highway Improvement Program, which will reconstruct Interstate 45 North between downtown and Beltway 8.

Houston First [presented] the traffic study to the public [on July 1 at] the George R. Brown Convention Center.

[…]

A representative for People for Polk, a community-led group advocating to keep Polk Street open, said Houston First’s traffic study is, “inadequate for determining the impact of this further degradation of our critical east-west connectivity.”

The group said the study only focuses on intersection in and immediately around Downtown, but leaves out any intersections in the Greater East End, which they say will be the most impacted by Polk Street’s closure.

“There is no consideration for the length and quality of detours for pedestrian, bicyclists, or transit riders. There is also no consideration for the additional overall travel time for any road users, including drivers, or for vehicular emissions that will result. We are hoping to get clarity on these questions and many more at the July 1 meeting,” the group wrote in a statement.

According to the study, the convention center expansion will result in the following closures and changes:

Closure of Polk between Chartres and Avenida

Closure of Jackson between Bell and Polk

Closure of Hamilton between Bell and Polk, with a conversion to two-way between Bell and Leeland

Closure of Clay between Jackson and Hamilton

Closure of Chenevert between Bell and Polk

Conversion of Leeland to a two-way between Chartres and Austin, potentially extending to Louisiana

Conversion of Bell to a two-way between Chenevert and Hamilton

The study evaluated traffic conditions before and after the expansion and the I-45 reconstruction. It concluded that most intersections would continue to operate at acceptable levels, even with added traffic and modified routes. Some pedestrian crosswalks may experience congestion, but the study suggests those impacts can be mitigated with signal timing adjustments and sidewalk improvements.

See here, here, and here for some background. That public meeting did not assuage concerns about the forthcoming closure of Polk Street or of the process the city has followed to get to this point.

The event, held at the convention center, was led by a professional facilitator who framed the meeting as an informational session. Attendees were asked to submit written questions on index cards, which were then posed to a panel that included representatives from Houston First, Metro, Houston Public Works, and other project partners.

In the audience, members of the advocacy group People for Polk quietly held signs and passed around bingo cards labeled “Traffic Impact Bingo,” encouraging attendees to check off boxes when their concerns were substantively addressed.

By the end of the meeting, few if any attendees had completed a row.

Houston First CEO Michael Heckman opened the evening by recounting the history of the expansion and reiterating that the Polk Street closure had been extensively studied. He acknowledged community concerns and emphasized that the organization had met with neighborhood leaders and East End business owners.

“We committed to coming back to share the results of the traffic study,” Heckman said. “We’re following through on that.”

[…]

Residents with People for Polk were less convinced.

Kyle Rogers, who wore a “People for Polk” button and holding a sign called the town hall “a farce.”

“They told us what they’re doing,” Rogers said. “Michael Heckman, the CEO, said he reached out to the business community. I don’t believe that. Show me. He said he reached out to neighborhood constituents, to the super neighborhoods. That’s not true.”

Rogers said that even if outreach had occurred, it didn’t amount to a conversation.

The frustration wasn’t limited to community members. State Rep. Jolanda Jones, who represents House District 147, which includes most of downtown and the area surrounding the George R. Brown Convention Center, said she had not been contacted by Houston First or any other agency involved in the project.

“Let me be clear. I represent this area,” Jones said after the meeting. “They didn’t invite me. They literally haven’t spoken to me one time about any of this stuff. The way I found out was People for Polk told me about this meeting and asked me to be here.”

Jones described the meeting as more of a performance than a dialogue.

“I am very disappointed in this meeting. It really was not a public meeting. I would call it a dog and pony show,” she said. “They said what they wanted to say and had a narrative they wanted to portray.”

Peter Eccles, LINK Houston’s Director of Policy and Planning, said the traffic study did not look at how bus riders would see their mobility degraded as a result of this project.

“Polk Street is incredibly essential,” Eccles said. “It’s the only protected bike lane between downtown and East End and it carries two bus routes that in total carry 5,300 rides per day. Right now you can take the bus to the front door of the convention center. When this goes through, the closest stop will be over 1500 feet away.”

I’ve said before, there’s value in maintaining and modernizing the George R. Brown Convention Center. There’s value in attracting big events to Houston, and I want us to be in contention for anything we want to compete for. But we have to take into account the people who already live here, and that seems to be lacking in the way this project has moved forward. Again, it’s wild to me that a Mayor who is otherwise so obsessed with the unfettered mobility of cars on the streets would be so unconcerned about what this will do to people driving into downtown. (And also to bus riders and bicyclists, but we know where they stand.) I just don’t get it.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged bicycles, buses, construction, downtown, George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston, Houston First, I-45, John Whitmire, Jolanda Jones, Metro, People for Polk | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for July 6

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

“If Jake Paul is boxing’s biggest draw, what does that say about the sport?”

“It’s a paradox that sports can’t seem to escape: We celebrate women’s achievements, yet still contextualize them against male standards. When we anchor greatness to male physiology—and then come up with contrived ways to help women break through these barriers, we don’t elevate women’s sports—we undermine them.”

“Firefighting foams contain toxic PFAS. Could soybeans be the answer?”

“As programs recognizing LGBTQ+ people are cut, an Ohio archive is doing what queer Americans always have: preserving their own history.”

“The suite of perks is reminiscent of the “Cornhusker Kickback,” an increase to Nebraska’s federal Medicaid funding in the Affordable Care Act designed to influence then-Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat. But Murkowski is winning not only a Medicaid boost for her state, but a half-dozen other things. It’s not one but several kickbacks in the bill, none of which will definitively stay in, as the parliamentarian will have to scrub the text. (Nelson gave up the kickback and still voted for the ACA, incidentally.)”

“The controlled sexuality of American cheer”.

Jimmy Swaggart has died. No, I didn’t know he was still alive, either. Yes, that is the fate he deserved.

There is no such thing as being cancelled.

“In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.” Grifters all the way down.

RIP, Betty Bob Buckley, Fort Worth pioneer in women’s journalism, mother of Tony Award-winning actress Betty Lynn Buckley and television director Norman Buckley.

You’ll be able to smell them coming, probably from a mile away.

“Tesla sales plunge again as anti-Musk boycott shows staying power and rivals pounce”.

“This instruction reflects the reality of rising levels of violence directed at firefighters. There are the instances when we have to respond to active shooter incidents, but also, there are the times people shoot at or assault us, as happened in Coeur d’Alene. In 2023 Drexel University’s Center for Firefighter Injury Research and Safety Trends noted a 69 percent increase in assaults on firefighters from 2021 to 2022 (from 350 to 593). Many of these incidents occur during medical calls, rather than fire responses.”

“The Writers Guild of America East stands behind the exemplary work of our members at ’60 Minutes’ and CBS News. We wish their bosses at Paramount Global had the courage to do the same. This settlement is a transparent attempt to curry favors with an administration in the hopes it will allow Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger to be cleared for approval.”

“Wisconsin Supreme Court Just Killed the “Zombie” Abortion Law”.

RIP, Michael Madsen, actor best known for his roles in multiple Tarantino films.

“A funky farewell to Lalo Schifrin and Dave Parker”.

RIP, Bill Hunter, last surviving member of the St. Louis Browns, who won a World Series with the Yankees in 1956 and was a coach on Earl Weaver’s Orioles for many years.

RIP, Julian McMahon, actor best known for Nip/Tuck and Charmed.

RIP, Bobby Jenks, two-time All Star pitcher for the Chicago White Sox who was the closer on their 2005 World Series champion team.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

Hill Country flood update

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The situation remains very bad, with a significant potential to get much worse.

The official death toll from the catastrophic floods that hit the Texas Hill Country rose to 27 as of Saturday morning, according to the Kerr County sheriff’s office, as local and federal authorities continue the desperate search for survivors.

Among the 27 dead were 18 adults and nine children. Six of those adults and one of the children remain unidentified.

Twenty-seven girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp for young girls, were also still missing as friends and families posted desperate messages online seeking help locating them. Many more people could still be unaccounted for, officials warned.

“The unknown is how many people were here locally visiting, on vacation, doing other things in the community that we just do not have numbers (for),” Dalton Rice, Kerrville city manager, said during a news conference Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, the threat of flooding around Texas remained, and local, state and federal officials urged caution. More rain is expected Saturday in south Central Texas, with the possibility of an additional two to four inches over the area. Some isolated pockets could see as much as 10 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

[…]

About 10 inches of rain fell within a few hours, causing flooding along the Guadalupe River which rose 26 feet in 45 minutes.

The death toll in an area historically prone to major flooding has raised questions about whether people near the river, including many vacationers in town for the Fourth of July weekend, received sufficient warning.

The private forecasting company AccuWeather and the National Weather Service sent warnings about potential flash flooding hours before the devastation.

“These warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said in a statement that called the Texas Hill Country one of the most flash-flood-prone areas of the U.S. because of its terrain and many water crossings.

Local officials defended their actions Friday while saying they had not expected such an intense downpour that was the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.

One National Weather Service forecast earlier in the week had called for up to six inches of rain, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. “It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” he said.

However, Porter emphasized that people and officials should always take safety precautions when there is a potential for flooding.

“People, businesses, and governments should take action based on Flash Flood Warnings that are issued, regardless of the rainfall amounts that have occurred or are forecast,” Porter said. “Flash Flood Warnings indicate an immediate risk to life and property in the warned area.”

See here for the background. I’m writing this on Saturday afternoon, so we may know more by the time you read this. I’ll get back to the questions about what happened with the flood and what should have happened with the response shortly. All I can think about right now is the missing campers.

Right along one of the Guadalupe River’s bends, the Christian camp Camp Mystic has been a summertime haven for generations of Texas girls.

But after a sudden flood came crashing through in the early hours of July Fourth, it’s become the site of a tragedy pulling on the hearts of Texans across the state.

Green-roofed cabins housing hundreds of campers and staff dotted the area, which is lush with cypress and live oak trees. This summer, Camp Mystic hosted 750 girls between 7 and 17 years old — that’s more than half of Hunt’s population of around 1,300.

Campgrounds span over 700 acres in the heart of Texas’ Hill Country, making it a peaceful place for girls to spend weeks singing campfire songs and making ceramics. Since they’re right by the river, in between church services, they also learn how to kayak and fish for bass.

That river reached catastrophic levels in less than an hour overnight with little warning, rising 26 feet in just 45 minutes. Fast-moving flood waters swept homes and cars away, and for Camp Mystic, made it difficult for staff to move hundreds of girls to safer ground.

By Saturday morning, more than two dozen were still missing. Since the flood, city and state officials have been tirelessly searching for the unaccounted campers, using boats, drones and helicopters. Social media sites have been full of posts with photos of the missing girls, asking people to keep eyes out for survivors. Former campers are also sharing beloved memories and expressing heartache for mourning families.

“We will do anything humanly possible to find your daughter,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said to parents on Friday, adding that search and rescue teams are looking for survivors. A total of 14 state helicopters, 12 drones and 400 to 500 people on the ground helping with the search.

On Friday, the camp office sent a desperate message to families saying they sustained “catastrophic floods” and were working with rescuers. All power, wifi and water had been shut off at the facilities. The message stressed that parents of all children who were missing had been contacted.

“The highway was washed away so we are struggling to get more help,” the message said. “Please continue to pray and send help if you have contacts to do so.”

A brief glance at my Facebook feed tells me that I know a lot of Camp Mystic alumnae. That community is in a lot of pain right now, and my heart goes out to them. We sent our girls to Camp Allen a few times, and they loved it. I cannot fathom being in the position of these parents right now. All I can do is hope with all my heart that these girls are found safe.

The Chron has a look at the weather forecast in advance of the flood and the factors that led to it being as bad as it was.

On Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for parts of the Hill Country and Edwards Plateau, which included Kerrville. The watch warned the public about widespread rainfall amounts of an inch to 3 inches but forecasters said they “can’t rule out isolated 5 to 7 inches” of rain possible for a few spots.

A similar flood watch was issued around San Angelo, which warned of “the potential for a lower probability but much higher impact flood event overnight.”

What unfolded early Friday morning exceeded those expectations by a wide margin. Thunderstorms developed in connection with a weak, slow-moving system of low atmospheric pressure. This system tapped into deep moisture from both the Gulf of Mexico and the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which had made landfall earlier in the week on Mexico’s east coast.

The high moisture levels fueled the formation of a mesoscale convective complex over the Hill Country overnight. This type of storm system is often long-lasting and can cause extremely high rainfall rates of more than 3 inches an hour.

Typically, storms that form in this part of Texas move rather quickly over the region, thanks to an active upper-level weather pattern and upper-atmospheric winds. This type of weather pattern leads to quick downpours that often end after 30 minutes or so.

However, in this case, the upper-level pattern was stagnant. With little movement in the atmosphere above, storms at the surface also stalled, dumping enormous volumes of rain over the same area for hours.

The slow movement is what caused rainfall totals to be so large. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency just after 4 a.m. Friday morning, as storms had already dropped 5 to 10 inches of rain over south-central Kerr County over just a few hours.

More rain fell in the hours that followed, with radar-indicated rainfall totals reaching up to 15 inches across south-central Kerr County.

Weather forecasting has come a long way, as the improvement in numerical weather models has caused daily forecasts to become much more accurate over the past few decades.

However, as any meteorologist will tell you, forecasting for flooding events is extremely challenging. It’s easy to tell when there will be a chance of flooding over a wide area — hence why flood watches were issued Thursday afternoon, well ahead of Friday morning’s storms. However, it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint exactly where a catastrophic flooding event like this will happen.

Simply put, weather models often struggle with slow-moving mesoscale convective complexes. They’re often relatively disorganized, lack upper-atmospheric support and lack a clear center. These factors make it harder for a weather model to lock in on how a system is moving and evolving.

It’s also near impossible for weather models to predict exactly where the heaviest rainfall bands will set up within a complex of thunderstorms. A few miles can make a huge difference about whether a town gets light rain or a life-threatening flood. On Friday, the bull’s-eye happened to be over south-central Kerr County, causing the Guadalupe River to flood its banks.

It sounds like this was a bit of a Hurricane Harvey situation, in that it was the combination of an extremely wet storm that stuck around in one place rather than moving through the region, which in turn caused most of that water to end up in a smaller region. I’m sure we will learn more about the specifics of the storm as we proceed. There’s clearly a lot to learn so we can be better prepared for the next one.

As far as the preparations for this one are concerned, Matt Lanza from Space City Weather and The Eyewall has some answers.

The warnings

Flash flood warnings were issued for areas before midnight as radar rain totals began to inflate up and over 3 to 4 inches. A flash flood emergency was issued at 4 AM for the Kerrville storms and 4:15 AM for storms near San Angelo. Rain totals were estimated to be encroaching on 10 inches at that point. So there was warning. This NWS office is acutely aware of the threats to the area from flooding, and the history is there. So I am assuming they were timely warnings unless I hear otherwise.

Issuing the warning is half the process. Were the warnings received and acted on? That’s another story. And that will also come out in the days ahead. More on that below.

Did budget cuts play a role?

No. In this particular case, we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all in this event. Anyone using this event to claim that is being dishonest. There are many places you can go with expressing thoughts on the current and proposed cuts. We’ve been very vocal about them here. But this is not the right event for those takes.

In fact, weather balloon launches played a vital role in forecast messaging on Thursday night as the event was beginning to unfold. If you want to go that route, use this event as a symbol of the value NOAA and NWS bring to society, understanding that as horrific as this is, yes, it could always have been even worse.

What should we be asking about then?

Beyond the fact that this was truly a tragedy that is extremely difficult to disseminate warnings on, I think we need to focus our attention on how people in these types of locations receive warnings. This seems to be where the breakdown occurred.

It’s not as if catastrophic flash flooding is new in interior Texas. There are literal books written about the history. The region is actually referred to as “Flash Flood Alley.” But how we manage that risk is crucially important context here. Are there sirens in place? Do there need to be sirens in place? Would people even hear sirens in the middle of the night in cabins or RVs or wherever they were? Tornado sirens have traditionally been used in parts of the country for people outdoors to get warnings. Is that an appropriate method in this region for the middle of the night and indoors?

Do we need to start thinking of every risk of flooding in Texas as a potential high-end event we should pre-evacuate the highest risk people (like children and elderly in floodways) for? Is that even practical? We can critique the answer given by the Kerr County judge here all day, but he’s correct in that the reality is they deal with flooding a lot. What is actually practical? I don’t know the answers to these questions. But it’s been a little over 10 years since Wimberley, which was a wake up call in some ways too. It’s time for another, and we need to think much bigger than just the areas impacted this time and more about Flash Flood Alley as a whole. Flooding risk is high in Texas. People learn to live with it in some ways. But something like this absolutely cannot happen again. The Texas legislature meets for a special session beginning on July 21st. This may be an important topic to add to the agenda.

I’ve seen plenty of people connect the DOGE cuts to NOAA and the NWS to this tragedy. That was my initial inclination as well, but it seems that there’s more nuance to it, so please take that into account. I have to wonder what kind of reception from certain corners of our government and the Internet the Kerr County Judge would be getting if he were something other than a white male Republican. Be that as it may, I would not expect there to be anything on the special session call to address any of this. They didn’t do anything about CenterPoint and Hurricane Beryl. Why would you expect anything different this time?

Here’s a link for the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, if you are looking to make a donation.

UPDATE: Oof.

Dick Eastland, the director of Camp Mystic, was among the dead from Friday’s historic Guadalupe River flood.

Eastland’s nephew, Gardner Eastland, confirmed the death in a Facebook post on Saturday.

His wife, Tweety, was found safe at their home.

May he rest in peace. And may this be as bad as it gets for the camp.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Camp Mystic, DOGE, DPS, FEMA, flooding, Guadalupe River, Gulf of Mexico, HFD, Hurricane Beryl, Kerr County, Kerrville, National Weather Service, NOAA, Texas, Texas Department of Emergency Management, Tropical Storm Barry | 6 Comments

Paxton drops his latest whistleblower appeal

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We’ll see if this time it sticks.

Still a crook any way you look

Texas will pay $6.6 million to four former top deputies to Attorney General Ken Paxton who say they were fired after reporting their boss to the FBI. This years-long legal saga reached its conclusion on Wednesday, when Paxton dropped his appeal of the April judgement.

The Legislature will still have to appropriate the funds to pay the judgment, either during the upcoming special session or during the next regular session. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a statement the judgment will accrue $1.2 million in interest if it goes unpaid until 2027.

“To avoid answering questions under oath about his corruption, Ken Paxton surrendered to the whistleblowers in the trial court and consented to judgment,” TJ Turner and Tom Nesbitt, lawyers for two of the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement. “But he appealed the judgment anyway, preventing the legislature from funding it during the recent session.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the agency said Paxton “closed the case,” but reiterated his position that it was a “bogus judgement in support of baseless claims by rogue employees.”

[…]

In dropping the appeal, Paxton resolves one of the last remaining legal inquiries into his actions as attorney general, after he evaded impeachment and eluded federal inquiries. In the Senate campaign, Cornyn continues to try to hammer Paxton on his alleged ethical violations, but Republican voters, at least, don’t seem particularly concerned. Most polls have Paxton ahead of Cornyn by a good margin.

See here, here, and here for some background. As with everything Ken Paxton, the lore is deep and there’s just too much to explain. The two main points to remember are:

1) Paxton spent all of his energy on this case trying to avoid being deposed. He did not, under any circumstances, want to be put in a position of having to tell the truth under penalty of perjury. He even went so far as to stipulate to all of the plaintiffs’ allegations as a way to avoid being deposed. This is why his protestations that the charges against him were made up by “rogue employees” – who had once been his most trusted lieutenants, by the way – ring so false. He refused at every opportunity to answer questions about the charges and to tell us, in his own words, why they were false. I’m hard pressed to think of a better illustration of sheer cowardice.

2) Paxton originally agreed to a $3.3 million settlement, which he then asked the Lege to fund via a separate appropriation – that is, to not just take that money out of his office’s existing funds. The Lege decided instead that they needed to take a closer look at this whole thing, which in turn led to the impeachment debacle. Lots of Republicans in the House thought Paxton had committed offenses that possibly merited him being thrown out of office. And then the Senate came in and cleaned up his mess, and we all shoved it all down the memory hole.

And now the House is being asked to cover an even bigger tab that Paxton has run up. My answer is the same as it was before, that they should take it out of his office’s budget. If he wants to get some sugar daddies to help him pay it off – I don’t know how that would work, legally speaking, but come on, who is going to stop him? – I suppose he can try. It shouldn’t be on the taxpayers, that’s all I’m saying. Good luck to John Cornyn to try to make that stick to him.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Attorney General, Blake Brickman, bribery, David Maxwell, Election 2026, FBI, impeachment, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Mark Penley, Nate Paul, primaries, Ryan Vassar, Senate, Supreme Court, Texas, Texas Whistleblower Act, The Lege, Travis County | Leave a comment

California threatens retaliatory re-redistricting

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a thing they could do.

House Democratic leadership, rank-and-file members and aides to at least one blue state governor have been meeting to decide how to retaliate if Texas Republicans follow through on the White House’s push to reshape the state’s congressional map, according to four Democratic members of Congress familiar with the discussions.

In these talks, staffers to California Gov. Gavin Newsom have signaled their boss’s willingness to counter any redistricting in Texas with a similar move to redraw the maps in his own state, in an attempt to offset potential GOP gains, according to the lawmakers who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Democratic meetings are a response to recent calls from President Donald Trump’s political orbit for Republicans in Austin to draw new district lines that would shift GOP voters from safely red districts into neighboring blue ones, in a bid to flip the seats and protect the GOP’s slim House majority in 2026.

The lawmakers said multiple blue state leaders in addition to Newsom were involved in similar talks, though it was not immediately clear which states beyond California were in the mix.

A Newsom spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

These dynamics, which have not been previously reported, could make the Trump team’s already-risky gambit more perilous.

Any attempt to scoop up additional GOP seats in Texas would require spreading Republican voters across additional districts. The prospect has drawn opposition from much of Texas’ GOP congressional delegation over fears that mapmakers could overextend and endanger currently safe incumbents.

One Republican member of Congress from Texas who is unhappy about the White House’s redistricting plan told The Texas Tribune that a push from blue states could help the state’s GOP delegation make the case for calling off the redistricting scheme.

Democrats see the fight as an essential offensive posture that could make the difference in reclaiming the House, where Republicans narrowly control 220 seats to the Democrats’ 213. One of the Democratic members familiar with the deliberations said the party needs to “fight fire with fire.”

“I’m not going to fight with one hand tied behind my ass,” another one of the Democratic lawmakers said. “We shouldn’t be so nice if Texas decides to do this.”

See here, here, and here for the background. I don’t know how seriously to take this, but I’m happy to see the fight being shown. As the story notes, California has a redistricting commission, so doing a redraw there is not as straightforward as it would be in Texas, where Greg Abbott can force it onto a special session agenda. I assume there are ways around that, but I know nothing about California politics, so I don’t have any idea how messy or time-consuming it could get. The first move remains with Texas, so it could all come to nothing anyway.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged California, CD07, CD15, CD16, CD23, CD28, CD32, CD34, Congress, Donald Trump, Election 2026, Gavin Newsom, Greg Abbott, Julie Johnson, Lizzie FLetcher, redistricting, special session, Texas, Veronica Escobar | 1 Comment

The Hill Country floods

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Just terrible.

At least 13 people are dead and dozens more are missing — including more than 20 children who were staying in area summer camps — as heavy rains caused “catastrophic” flooding along the Guadalupe River, with parts of Kerr County particularly hard-hit by the natural disaster.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha Jr. said the remains of 13 victims had been found.

“I think there will be more when this is over,” he said at an afternoon news briefing.

Emergency crews continue to search for people feared swept away by the floodwaters, which were spurred when heavy rains soaked the Hill Country overnight.

In an afternoon news briefing, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said about 23 children who were attending Camp Mystic, a local Christian summer camp, are still missing.

“We’re praying for them to be found,” Patrick said.

He said state game wardens were searching the flood zone on foot, looking for survivors. Patrick said the Texas Division of Emergency Management and other agencies had deployed 14 helicopters, 12 drones and 9 rescue teams — 400 to 500 personnel in all — to assist with recovery operations in the Hill Country.

More than 12 inches of rain fell over a 12-hour period, sending the Guadalupe River near Hunt to its second-highest level on record at 29.45 feet, the National Weather Service said. Near Comfort, the river crested at 34.76 feet, more than 6 feet above flood stage and the fifth-highest level on record for that area.

As of 1:30 p.m. Friday, a flash flood emergency remained in effect in South-Central Kerr County, including the Guadalupe River and areas like Hunt, Center Point, Kerrville and Comfort.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said the storms created “a very devastating and deadly flood,” and urged all Kerr County residents who live near the Guadalupe River to evacuate and move to higher ground.

State officials were “surging all available resources” to respond to the “devastating flooding,” Gov. Greg Abbott said.

“That includes water rescue teams, sheltering centers, the National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety,” Abbott said in a written statement. “The immediate priority is saving lives.”

[…]

On Friday morning, Kelly told Hearst Newspapers that at least six people were confirmed dead in the current flooding, and the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office also said the floods had resulted in fatalities.

But at a news conference later in the day, Kelly declined to give an estimate on the number of people who were dead or missing.

He said there had been dozens of water rescues, but declined to provide updated casualty numbers, saying officials had been advised not to do so. He did not say by whom.

Kelly, who lives along the Guadalupe River, said floodwaters had reached his home office.

As of when I write this there’s still a lot of people missing, including those camp children, and so by the time you read this there may be good news, really bad news, or both. The Houston Fire Department has sent two teams to assist in rescue operations. Live updates to this story can be found here. I fervently hope for the safety of everyone involved.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged DPS, flooding, Guadalupe River, HFD, Kerr County, Kerrville, Texas, Texas Department of Emergency Management | 14 Comments

A sudden surge in potential candidates

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg may be running for Governor.

Ron Nirenberg

Sources say former Mayor Ron Nirenberg has been telling fellow Democrats he’s considering a run for governor in 2026 — a potentially grueling race against the formidable Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

In recent months Nirenberg, 48, has repeatedly teased the idea he could run for another office — in speeches at the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s gala and other public events.

Last week Nirenberg returned from a family vacation in Spain and immediately appeared alongside Beto O’Rourke, state Rep. James Talarico (D-Round Rock) and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) — all viewed as potential statewide candidates in 2026 — at an event at San Antonio’s Stable Hall.

Sources familiar with the conversations say Nirenberg had been discussing the possibility of running for governor even before he’d left the mayor’s office — and returned from vacation telling the other Democrats he was interested in the race.

Nirenberg did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday through his longtime campaign hand James Aldetere.

“2026 is a very important election,” he told a packed house Friday evening at Stable Hall. “This is more than just about Democrats and Republicans, this is about right and wrong.”

He went on: “[It’s about] building a community that bolsters and embraces democratic values, and democracy, or slips further and further behind, as we have seen in the last 150 days the Trump administration, or frankly, the last 35 years the Republicans controlled the state of Texas.”

[…]

Broadly, Democrats want to avoid messy primaries in the statewide races, but the major candidates are still in conversation with one another about who best fits each position.

O’Rourke planned the event at Stable Hall and invited Talarico and Castro, as well as local Democratic officials. Upon invitation, Nirenberg offered to give a welcome address, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

Another event with O’Rourke, Castro and Talarico is in the works, likely to be held in Austin later this month. It has yet to be determined whether Nirenberg will also be a speaker.

We were talking about Nirenberg’s possible future in politics shortly after he left the Mayor’s office at the end of his term. I admit I didn’t think it would be this soon. I for one would be perfectly happy with a Nirenberg for Governor campaign, but as this story notes and as we have discussed there are plenty of other names floating around, as well as one already-declared gubernatorial candidate. The situation remains highly fluid.

That already-declared candidate got a short story in the Chron.

While better-known Democrats are jockeying to see who might run for governor in 2026 against Gov. Greg Abbott, a farmer in Northeast Texas is already jumping into the race, saying the party needs an outsider to win the contest.

Bobby Cole, a former firefighter and a farmer from Wood County, has hired campaign staffers and launched a website, and is vowing to take back the government for working people of the state.

“Republicans have spent 30 years in office, and working men and women have been having to pay the cost,” Cole, 55, said during an interview. “It has to stop.”

He said rising property taxes, underfunded public schools and tariffs hurting farmers and consumers are just some of the reasons he’s taking a shot at running for office.

“We need more people like us — working people — in the government,” Cole said.

Cole was a firefighter in Texarkana and later in Plano. He also maintains his family’s farm in Quitman, where they have 300 head of cattle and raise chickens. He retired from firefighting as a lieutenant in 2017.

[…]

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, of San Antonio, and state Rep. James Talarico, of Austin, are among the Democrats looking at the race.

“I’ll make a decision soon,” Castro said when asked on a gubernatorial run in an interview after a political rally in San Antonio on Friday with Talarico and O’Rourke.

Cole’s website is here. He would be greatly eclipsed by any of the other names mentioned so far, but until one of them says the magic words he remains the frontrunner, and I hope we can all learn a bit more about him.

Elsewhere, State Sen. Nathan Johnson appears to be set to run for Attorney General.

Sen. Nathan Johnson

Texas State Senator Nathan Johnson is expected to formally announce his candidacy for Attorney General on July 15, entering a race for one of the state’s most influential positions, as first reported by The Quorum Report.

Representing Dallas County’s Senate District 16, Johnson has gained bipartisan respect since his election in 2018, building a legislative portfolio centered on healthcare expansion, energy infrastructure, and government accountability. With a background in physics and law, Johnson combines policy depth with legal experience, currently practicing litigation at Thompson Coburn LLP.

His announcement comes as the Attorney General’s office faces deep internal unrest. Current AG Ken Paxton is stepping down to run against Sen. John Cornyn, but leaves behind a trail of controversy. A recent lawsuit from a former executive assistant has surfaced allegations of sexual harassment and inaction by Paxton’s former top aides, igniting bar complaints and countersuits that have further damaged the office’s credibility. While Paxton is not named in the suit, the scandal underscores long-standing concerns about the culture and leadership at the state’s top law enforcement agency.

For Johnson, the moment presents both opportunity and contrast. According to The Texas Tribune, he has indicated that his decision to run is based on where he can be “most useful,” weighing public service against electoral potential.

I suspect that Sen. Johnson, who is not up for election next year and thus can keep his current office while campaigning, will not have much competition in the primary. If he can get out there and raise some money – he had $503K on hand as of January – he’ll be in a strong position regardless. He won’t be running against Paxton directly but he can run against him and his mismanagement of that office regardless of who his eventual opponent is.

What about some of those other big names? Jeremy Wallace reports:

Democrats Colin Allred and Terry Virts are already running for the U.S. Senate in Texas in 2026.

But what about other potential Democratic candidates? U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, state Rep. James Talarico and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke are among those who have said they are also looking at the race, as well as other statewide contests.

After a rally in San Antonio last week, I caught up with all three and pushed them on what their timetables look like for declaring.

O’Rourke, 52, couldn’t say for sure when he or any of the others, whom he has been in contact with, would make decisions on the Senate race.

“I think it will probably get worked through by the end of this summer if not sooner,” said O’Rourke, who ran for the Senate in 2018 and for governor in 2022.

Candidates have until the first week of December to get into the race.

Castro acknowledged that other Democrats might be interested in running for the 20th Congressional District seat he holds now, if he runs for another seat. He said he knows people will be looking to see what he decides because it also affects their political futures.

“I’ll make a decision soon,” said Castro, a 50-year-old attorney who has been in Congress since 2013.

Talarico, Castro and O’Rourke could technically all end up in the same Senate primary against each other, but Talarico said that doesn’t mean he considers the other two rivals.

“We are not rivals,” he said. “We are on the same team. We are all trying to change the state for the better and bring power back to the people. We’re going to coordinate and work together and see what that looks like over the next few months.

While Talarico has talked about running for the Senate, he said he is looking at other races too, like for governor.

“Everything is on the table right now,” the 36-year-old said. “I’m trying to figure out how best I can serve.”

I’ll be happy for these decisions to be sooner rather than later. Lone Star Left has an open letter to Talarico and Castro asking them to run for Senate and Governor – they did not specify who should run for which, just asking for one of each – that is signed by a bunch of activists. I have no idea what might influence either of their decisions, but to the extent that anyone can do so, there you have it.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Beto O'Rourke, Bobby Cole, Colin Allred, Democratic primary, Donald Trump, Election 2026, Governor, Greg Abbott, James Talarico, Joaquin Castro, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, Lite Gov, Nathan Johnson, polls, primaries, Roland Gutierrez, Ron Nirenberg, Senate, Terry Virts, Texas, Vikki Goodwin | Leave a comment

Dispatches from Dallas, July 4 edition

Posted on July 4, 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, it’s time to catch up on all the things that have been happening since I took the accidental month off here. (Some of it was planned holiday, some of it was accidental and medical, but we’re all OK here.) So let’s talk about the latest on: DEI in our cities and what it would cost them to keep it when the administration is against it; the State Fair and guns; what’s going on with the management of Fair Park; the changing of the guard at Dallas City Council after the May election; the latest from Dallas PD; news from the jails in Dallas and Tarrant counties; Tarrant GOP Chair Bo French and the foot he put in his mouth, or at least his Xitter account; Tarrant County Commissioner’s court issues, including redistricting; State Senator Kelly Hancock’s move to the Comptroller’s office and the people running to replace him (awful); various explainers and catch-ups including the Sands’ casino push, EPIC City and the Marvin Nichols Reservoir; the latest on the Dallas-Houston bullet train that’s not happening; Dr. Phil files for bankruptcy; and the longlist entries for the State Fair’s Big Tex Choice food contest. And more!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of the Neave Trio, a piano trio whose most recent album caught my attention. I know very little about them but two of them are women, so they got the nod as part of my 2025 project for listening to women’s music. I enjoyed the two albums I listened to while writing this post very much.

Let’s dive in:

Both Dallas and Fort Worth are weighing whether to ditch their DEI programs based on threats to withhold federal money. I think the decision is easy but I’m not the one who has to deal with a city budget.
As noted by our host, Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against the State Fair’s gun ban was dismissed. Also in the news here in Dallas recently, the man who shot and injured three people at the Fair in 2023 was sentenced to twelve years after a plea bargain.
The city of Dallas has finally given Fair Park First and the Oak View Group the heave-ho as managers of Fair Park. The story is also at WFAA. Fair Park First is moving to “conservancy mode” and plans to build a park in South Dallas for now but some city officials want to use them for fundraising anyway. Meanwhile, the Dallas Free Press has some unanswered questions about the long-term plan for Fair Park and nearby areas.
The DMN notes the changing of the guard in City Council: Oak Cliff and parts of South Dallas got new council members after the May election to replace folks who were term-limited out.
News from Dallas PD: New Chief Daniel Comeaux met with the police oversight board in late June but wasn’t allowed to answer policy questions. The big one is about cooperation with ICE, which is a subject that I’m sure I’ll come back to down the road. Also, City Council approved new entry level hiring standards to help get us to the 4000 police officers required by Prop U. The DMN notes that three years of work experience and no college requirement is modeled after Houston PD’s requirements. I’m not a huge fan of the credentialism involved in everybody needing a college degree for everything, but I also understand that police get less training than the stylist who cuts my hair got for her cosmetology license, so there is a question of standards here.
I report a lot of negative stuff about the Tarrant County Jail so it’s only fair I note the negative stories about the Dallas County Jail. And this week’s stories are both pretty bad. First: the family of Spencer Swearnger, who died of water intoxication in 2023, are suing the county for a violation of his civil rights. Apparently this is the third such death in the jail since 2020. In case you’re not clear on what water intoxication means, Swearnger, who was mentally unstable and suicidal, drank enough toilet water from his cell toilet that he died. Unrelated, Dallas County is still having problems releasing inmates whose time has been served, resulting in inmates staying in jail for weeks longer than they should be. This problem is a knock-on result of the change in case management software in May 2023, which we’ve been talking about the whole time. Now former inmates are suing the county, which is more than reasonable. Dallas County needs to get its ducks in a row where the case management software is concerned.
Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French has finally pissed off the wrong peoples. His crime? Posting a poll on Xitter about whether Muslims or Jews are the biggest threat to America. Now Lite Guv Dan Patrick and and other local Republican officials including Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker have called on him to resign. French is clearly going to fight it out, but Patrick gave a lot of Republicans cover to push French to quit. But, as the Dallas Observer notes, the GOP isn’t calling out the Islamophobia. And in related news, Fort Worth PD is investigating an obscene note taped to the door of the GOP HQ. In response to a xeet of French’s that suggested snipers would end anti-ICE protests, the culprit printed the xeet and wrote “Read the First Amendment, you fascist [expletive]”.
As you may recall, the Chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party quit recently. There’s a special election on July 7 to fill that post and the Star-Telegram has the details about the two candidates. I wish them and Tarrant County Democrats good luck.
In other Tarrant County news, Commissioner’s Court is fighting about Tim O’Hare spiking a historical marker at the Rainbow Lounge, a queer historical site in Fort Worth. O’Hare claims it’s a technical problem with the application. Unsurprisingly, O’Hare’s foil, Commissioner Alisa Simmons, thinks he’s just mad because it’s queer history.
Speaking of Commissioner Simmons, one target of the recent redistricting efforts in Tarrant County, the court voted along party lines to approve a $250K contract with a conservative law firm to fight the gerrymandering lawsuits against said redistricting.
We thought there was going to be some moving and shaking going on in the Tarrant County statehouse delegation now that State Senator Kelly Hancock has taken the position of State Comptroller. The special election for his seat will be held with the November general election. The good news is that the odious Rep. Nate Schatzline of Mercy Culture Church has already pulled his hat from the ring. The bad news is it’s in favor of Leigh Wambsganss of Patriot Mobile, who has Dan Patrick’s endorsement. This already-outdated explainer mentions one Democratic candidate. I wish him luck because as much as I want Schatzline out of the statehouse, I want Wambsganss in it even less.
Another week, another story about the string of deaths in the Tarrant County jail. This time a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the medical director of the jail. The family of Chasity Congious, who gave birth unsupervised in the jail in 2020 and who died along with her daughter soon afterwards, received $1.2 million in a lawsuit against Tarrant County. The follow-up lawsuit was dismissed after the medical director proved that the only notification he received about the matter was an email on a Sunday.
The DMN has a background explainer about the Sands empire that wants to put a casino in North Texas. I had no idea the Sands folks currently have no casinos in the US. The political side of the story, including the Sands attempt to get local zoning approval and their lobbying in Austin, is all details interested parties will know, but it’s a good entry point for anyone just dipping into this topic. And of course we all know they own the majority stake in the Mavericks, if only because their GM keeps screwing things up (not included in this article).
The BBC has a story about a young British woman who was shot to death in Prosper. No charges will be brought. I was reading about this story on Reddit, where some commenters suggested that the records were sealed because a minor shot the victim unintentionally. That’s tragic if it’s true and all the more reason to control access to guns. I wish the victim’s family peace.
The DMN has the latest update on the Frisco track meet stabbing from earlier this year. Most recently, Karmelo Anthony was indicted on murder charge over the death of Austin Metcalf; this piece has the outline of the story as it’s happened, including some of the harassment of Anthony’s family.
And some more news on EPIC City, the Plano mosque’s development on the edge of Collin County: First, the Department of Justice has ended its investigation of Epic City, which Senator John Cornyn called for back in May. Second, just because the Feds are done harassing EPIC City doesn’t mean the state is. Governor Abbott signed HB 4211, which requires business entities entering into a residential arrangement to disclose to anyone buying a piece of land that they are investing into the interest of the business rather than the property. Abbott has confirmed this law is aimed at EPIC City, but his real beef against them is clearly that they’re Muslim. Other state probes into EPIC City as described in the article are continuing.
Water everywhere but not a drop for Dallas to drink: The Texas Water Development Board has officially declared a conflict between two regions over the Marvin Nichols Reservoir. The conflict will go to mandatory mediation that will be scheduled by mid-July.
This is technically an East Texas story, but I feel like it’s connected to Collin County’s favorite, Ken Paxton, so I’m reporting it: State Senator Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, the senior Republican in the Senate, won’t run for re-election. He’s been voting his conscience instead of the party line for the last few years, most notably on the Paxton impeachment, so this is not a surprise.
One more nail in the coffin of the bullet train between Dallas and Houston: Spanish media reports that the Spanish railway company Renfe has closed down its U.S. subsidiary. The subsidiary was supposed to be part of the coalition led by Texas Central. Read the whole thing for the details of how long and hard the wheels have been falling off this project.
Department of “It couldn’t happen to a nicer”: Dr. Phil’s Fort Worth-based Merit Street Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is suing Trinity Broadcasting Network. Local coverage comes from the Star-Telegram and the DMN.
The Star-Telegram Editorial Board has some thoughts about the $172K legal bill for the failed attempt to split the district earlier this year. Specifically, they don’t like that the details of the work are blacked out so nobody can read them, even though the time is billed in six-minute increments. They also take a shot at that quarter-million dollars Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court just allotted to defend their mid-decade redistricting.
And the DMN Editorial Board condemned Attorney General Ken Paxton’s call for a new execution date for Robert Roberson, the defendant in a shaken baby case in 2003 where the conviction is based on now-discredited science and the judge’s impartiality has been questioned. You may remember the parliamentary maneuvers that kept Roberson out of the death chamber last October. This is the kind of case that demonstrates why we need to ditch the death penalty: Roberson deserves a new trial, but Paxton would rather execute him. If Roberson were sent to jail for life, at least we could continue the fight for his release.
SMU broke with the Methodist Church in 2019, amending their articles of incorporation to remove the South Central Jurisdictional Conference. The church and the university have been going at it in court ever since. The most recent ruling comes from the Texas Supreme Court: the church can sue SMU for breach of contract. KERA also has the story.
The DMN has a new executive editor: Colleen McCain Nelson, currently editor of the Sacramento Bee, and a former DMN journalist with a Pulitzer under her belt.
I am neither a football person nor a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader person, but I knew they didn’t get paid nearly enough for the demands put on them, as in less than a fast food employee. So I was pleased to learn they got a big pay raise after the first season of the Netflix show.
Local museum news: there was a break-in at the Perot, our local science museum. There was no damage to the exhibits. And the African American Museum of Dallas has a new CEO, Lisa Brown Ross. She’s taking over after the 50 years of service in that role by the museum’s founder, Harry Robinson Jr.
Last but not least, while I have no cute critter pictures for you, I do have the State Fair Big Tex Choice semifinalists. The Dallas Observer and Eater Dallas have you covered. Sadly, there are no photos. I say yes to the Brisket and Brew Stuffed Pretzels and the Bacon Jam Cannoli and more for the rest of you to the Pop Rocks Margarita and the Coconut Quadruple.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged Dallas, guest post, linkdump, Texas | 1 Comment

Measles update: Yes, there are still new cases being reported

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s still a thing.

The Texas Department of State Health Services says three new measles cases have been detected in the last week in connection to an outbreak in West Texas.

The state has been tracking case numbers since the outbreak began in late January.

Three new cases not believed to be connected to the West Texas outbreak were reported in Lamar County.

Since late January, 753 measles cases have been confirmed by state officials.

Gaines County, the center of the outbreak, has reported 414 cases since the outbreak began in January. The county accounts for more than half of the state’s cases.

Only Gaines and Lamar counties have been designated as “outbreak counties” by DSHS.

The new cases for the past week are from Bexar, El Paso, and Gaines counties, with one each.

There have been 99 patients hospitalized since the outbreak started, an increase of two over last week’s update. The state says these hospitalizations are from earlier in the outbreak.

Since January, 21 cases have been reported in people who were considered fully vaccinated and 22 cases in people who only had one dose of the vaccine. 710 of the 753 people who tested positive were unvaccinated.

I think Bexar County was the last big urban county to report a case. Here’s a bit more on that.

The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) added Bexar County to the list of counties with a case of measles linked to the West Texas outbreak on Tuesday. This is the first measles infection in Bexar County since 2019, when there were two measles cases.

The case confirmed this week in Bexar County is an isolated infection, according to San Antonio Metropolitan Health District Director Dr. Claude Jacob. It was reported on June 15 and investigated by Metro Health’s epidemiology team, which found no additional public exposure. That was followed by a state investigation, which confirmed a link to the simmering measles outbreak that originated in Gaines County in January.

As with all the others, one hopes that this remains an isolated incident. In the meantime, more measles cases from this outbreak continue to appear in New Mexico. There are more cases from other outbreaks around the country.

Michigan has its second measles outbreak of the year, Utah has seven cases and health workers in New Mexico are rushing to contain an outbreak in a county jail.

But for the first time in months, Texas confirmed no additional measles cases this week tied to a major outbreak that raged through the late winter and spring.

There have been 1,227 confirmed measles cases this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.

There are three other major outbreaks in North America. The longest, in Ontario, Canada, has resulted in 2,212 cases from mid-October through June 24. The province logged its first death June 5 in a baby who got congenital measles but also had other preexisting conditions.

Another outbreak in Alberta, Canada, has sickened 1,122 as of Friday. And the Mexican state of Chihuahua had 2,485 measles cases and eight deaths as of Thursday, according to data from the state health ministry.

Other U.S. states with active outbreaks — which the CDC defines as three or more related cases — include Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Oklahoma.

That story is from June 27, so the “no new cases” status didn’t last long. Here’s a map of where the cases are around the country – as you can see, it’s easier to name the states that have not seen any measles infections than those that have. If you want to keep a closer eye on things, here you go.

A new online tool developed by Austin Public Health is now being used by major cities and states across the country.

The measles outbreak calculator, created with the Texas Advanced Computing Center, shows the potential consequences of outbreaks in communities with declining vaccination rates. The tool launched in March and is being used by New York City, Houston, Dallas, and the states of Texas and Massachusetts. Illinois has also replicated the model for local use.

“In communities where vaccination rates dip even slightly, the risk of measles outbreaks rises dramatically,” said Dr. Desmar Walkes, Austin-Travis County Health Authority. “This new measles calculator puts that reality into stark relief, showing how fast measles can spread and making the invisible visible. It’s a vital tool that empowers schools, healthcare providers and families to act now, keep students safe and strengthen our collective immunity.”

School superintendents, emergency medical services and regional health departments are using the calculator to make informed decisions about outbreak prevention.

The project involved collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin, Dell Medical School and other institutions, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The calculator uses a model to estimate outbreak potential based on community vaccination rates, predicting outcomes from 200 simulations and defining outbreaks as 20 or more new infections.

The tool can be viewed here.

Very cool, and kudos to all involved. It’s nice to know that science can still march onward, despite all the obstacles now in its path.

And finally, on a tangential note.

A new, more contagious COVID-19 variant — and the particularly painful sore throat it causes — is spreading this summer.

NB.1.8.1, or Nimbus, is more contagious because it is better able to bind to cell receptors in the body as compared to recent past variants, said Erin Carlson, a clinical professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and an infectious disease expert with a doctorate in public health.

“It’s just like the difference between — for those of us originally from snowy, cold places — if you’re slipping and sliding in your regular athletic shoes on the ice, versus if you put crampon spikes on your shoes, how that’s going to dig into the ice,” Carlson said.

Those infected with this variant have reported a very painful sore throat, which has earned the nickname “razor blade throat,” and more are experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea, bloating and diarrhea than did with past variants, Carlson said.

Otherwise, the symptoms are the same as past iterations of the virus — including fever, cough, congestion and fatigue.

Like other variants, some individuals face a higher risk of getting seriously ill, such as those who are diabetic, immunocompromised or immunosuppressed. Carlson said those infected should keep their distance from others while contagious.

“It’s still very important that if we think we’re sick to stay at home, to wear a mask, those kinds of things, so we don’t infect somebody who could potentially get very sick from this,” Carlson said.

Although Nimbus is more contagious, Carlson said, it is not more dangerous or deadly for those who catch it.

“It’s not actually causing more damage to the host, it just has the weird symptom of this sore throat,” she said.

From a risk assessment perspective, it’s a tossup whether getting a booster shot would make a material difference. The COVID vaxx does an excellent job of keeping you out of the hospital, but only does so much to keep you from getting sick in the first place. You could get a booster, if you wanted to and one were available for you, but it may or may not keep you from getting the “razor blade throat”. But if you want to drag RFK Jr through the mud for his anti-vaxx idiocy and the way we’re feeling a lot more exposed with COVID anyway, by all means be my guest.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Arizona, Austin Public Health, Bexar County, Canada, Centers for Disease Control, Colorado, coronavirus, El Paso, Gaines County, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Lamar County, measles, Mexico, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, RFK Jr, Texas, Texas Advanced Computing Center, Texas Department of State Health Services, UT, vaccinations | Leave a comment

Twenty-nine candidates for CD18

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

So far. That’s what I learned from this story.

Rep. Sylvester Turner

George Foreman IV, the son of the legendary Houston boxer, is running for Congress.

Foreman said he will run as an independent in the crowded race to replace the late U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, who died in March. A special election to determine who will finish Turner’s term for the 18th Congressional District will be held on Nov. 4.

“I want to make life better for working families, for small business owners, for students trying to find their path, and for people who feel unseen,” Foreman said on his campaign website.

Foreman, who grew up in Humble, is an educator who has degrees in journalism and public administration from Texas Southern University. On his website, he emphasized wanting to help prepare young people for the workforce and supporting law enforcement.

Foreman is one of 12 children of George Foreman Sr., a former heavyweight boxing champion, businessman and minister who died in March at the age of 76.

There are 29 candidates who have announced they are running for the seat. Nineteen are Democrats, four are Republicans, and the rest are independent or minor party candidates. The district, previously represented by the late Sheila Jackson Lee, heavily favors Democrats. It includes downtown Houston, the Fifth Ward and stretches north into Humble.

Other notable candidates in the race include Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, former Houston city councilwoman Amanda Edwards and State Rep. Jolanda Jones.

I currently count seventeen Democrats, four Republicans, and five independents, for a total of 26. That latter search also included Greens and Libertarians but there were no such candidates, at least as of when I looked. Most likely, the difference is with those who haven’t yet filed any campaign finance documents – the story references people who have announced, which is much more nebulous. (Foreman was not listed when I looked, so count him in that latter group.) How many of these people actually file to run remains to be seen. There could be more as well. I’ll bring you the July finance report info later this month.

Posted in Election 2025 | Tagged Amanda Edwards, campaign finance reports, CD18, Christian Menefee, Congress, Election 2025, George Foreman, Jolanda Jones, Sheila Jackson Lee, special election, Sylvester Turner, Texas | Leave a comment

Another lawsuit filed over the Ten Commandments law

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Keep ’em coming.

Sixteen Texas families of different religious and nonreligious backgrounds filed suit in federal court today to block a new state law requiring all public elementary and secondary schools to display a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The plaintiffs in Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel.

In their complaint, filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, the plaintiffs, who are Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist, Hindu, or nonreligious, assert that Texas Senate Bill 10 violates the First Amendment’s protections for the separation of church and state and the right to free religious exercise.

The plaintiffs also plan to file a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to prevent the defendants from implementing the law pending the resolution of the litigation.

“As a rabbi and public school parent, I am deeply concerned that S.B. 10 will impose another faith’s scripture on students for nearly every hour of the school day,” said plaintiff Rabbi Mara Nathan (she/her). “While our Jewish faith treats the Ten Commandments as sacred, the version mandated under this law does not match the text followed by our family, and the school displays will conflict with the religious beliefs and values we seek to instill in our child.”

“Posting the Ten Commandments in public schools is un-American and un-Baptist,” said plaintiff Pastor Griff Martin (he/him). “S.B. 10 undermines the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle of my family’s Baptist heritage. Baptists have long held that the government has no role in religion — so that our faith may remain free and authentic. My children’s faith should be shaped by family and our religious community, not by a Christian nationalist movement that confuses God with power.”

“S.B. 10 imposes a specific, rules-based set of norms that is at odds with my Hindu faith,” said plaintiff Arvind Chandrakantan (he/him). “Displaying the Ten Commandments in my children’s classrooms sends the message that certain aspects of Hinduism — like believing in multiple paths to God (pluralism) or venerating murthis (statues) as the living, breathing, physical representations of God — are wrong. Public schools — and the state of Texas — have no place pushing their preferred religious beliefs on my children, let alone denigrating my faith, which is about as un-American and un-Texan as one can be.”

“We are nonreligious and don’t follow the explicitly religious commandments, such as ‘remember the Sabbath.’ Every day that the posters are up in classrooms will signal to my children that they are violating school rules,” said plaintiff Allison Fitzpatrick (she/her).

Signed into law last month, S.B. 10 requires the scriptural postings to be a minimum of 16 x 20 inches in size and hung in a “conspicuous place” in each classroom. The commandments must be printed “in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the room.” The law also mandates that a specific version of the commandments, associated with Protestant faiths and selected by lawmakers, be used for every display.

“In a state as diverse as Texas, families from both religious and nonreligious backgrounds are coming together to challenge this unconstitutional law. Their message is clear: Our public schools are not Sunday schools,” said Adriana Piñon (she/her), legal director of the ACLU of Texas. “Politicians do not get to dictate how or whether students should practice religion. We’re bringing this lawsuit to ensure that all students, regardless of their faith or nonreligious beliefs, feel accepted and free to be themselves in Texas public schools.”

“S.B. 10 is catastrophically unconstitutional,” said Heather L. Weaver (she/her), senior counsel for the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “States may not require children to attend school and then abuse their access to those children by imposing scripture on them everywhere they go.”

“Our Constitution’s guarantee of church-state separation means that families — not politicians — get to decide when and how public school children engage with religion,” said Rachel Laser (she/her), president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “This law is part of the nationwide Christian nationalist scheme to win favor for one set of religious views over all others and over nonreligion — in a country that promises religious freedom. Not on our watch. We’re proud to defend the religious freedom of Texas schoolchildren and their families.”

“One need only read the First Commandment (‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’) to see how this state-imposed injunction is the antithesis of the First Amendment and its protections of religious liberty,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor (she/her), co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “The state of Texas has no right to dictate to children how many gods to worship, which gods to worship, or whether to worship any gods at all.”

“The right to be free from government establishment of religion enshrined in the First Amendment is a bedrock principle of our republic,” said Jonathan Youngwood (he/him), global co-chair of Simpson Thacher’s Litigation Department. “This law — in requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom throughout a child’s entire public school education — violates both the ban on establishment of religion as well as the protections the First Amendment gives to free exercise of religion.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has long prohibited displays of the Ten Commandments in public schools. Forty-five years ago, in Stone v. Graham, the court struck down a similar Kentucky law. More recently, in Roake v. Brumley, a federal district court reached the same conclusion regarding a similar law in Louisiana. That ruling was unanimously affirmed last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. And just last week, in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court held that a public school “burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses a very real threat of undermining the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.”

A copy of the complaint can be found here. This suit joins one filed last week by a different group of parents and religious leaders. Citing the majority opinion in the terrible Mahmoud v. Taylor case as evidence for their side is clever, but I do not doubt this corrupt and dishonest Republican majority’s ability to reverse engineer a justification for why those parents deserve protection but these parents do not. Still, we’ll see. WFAA and the Chron have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged ACLU of Texas, Alamo Heights ISD, Americans United, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Greg Abbott, HISD, lawsuit, Louisiana, Mara Nathan, Phil King, SCOTUS, ten commandments, Texas, The Lege | 3 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of June 30

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is ready to put SCOTUS out with the trash as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Leave a comment

Allred 2.0 launches

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

He’s back.

Colin Allred

Democrat Colin Allred launched his campaign for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, making a second run at the upper chamber after failing to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz last year.

“Texans are working harder than ever, not getting as much time with their kids, missing those special moments, all to be able to afford less,” Allred, a former Dallas congressman who gave up his seat to run against Cruz, said in his announcement video. “And the people that we elected to help — politicians like John Cornyn and Ken Paxton — are too corrupt to care about us and too weak to fight for us.”

Allred is the first major Democrat to announce his candidacy for the seat currently held by Cornyn, but several others have indicated their interest, including Beto O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman and statewide campaign veteran; U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a longtime San Antonio legislator; and state Rep. James Talarico, a four-term lawmaker from Austin who is seen as a rising star in the party.

Former astronaut Terry Virts and former flight attendant Mike Swanson are already running in the Democratic primary.

Driving Democratic hopes of winning statewide for the first time since 1994 is the potential to run against the embattled hardline Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is challenging Cornyn for the Republican nomination. Texas Democrats also hope 2026, a midterm election year, will bring a wave of backlash to the Trump administration that can help surge a Democrat to statewide office.

Whether other major Democrats will challenge Allred for the nomination remains to be seen.

Allred first appeared on the radar in March, while Virts formally launched his candidacy last week. With all due apologies, I had not heard of Mike Swanson before reading this story.

A May poll by Texas Southern University found that 45% of voters had a favorable opinion of Allred, the highest proportion of six potential Senate candidates surveyed. A matchup between Allred and Paxton showed the Republican attorney general winning by just two percentage points. (The same poll found Paxton leading Cornyn by nine points.)

Allred’s campaign against Cruz last year — in which he pitched himself as a more effective and bipartisan alternative to the conservative firebrand — was criticized by some Democrats for its buttoned-up approach, a sharp contrast to the electrifying style O’Rourke brought in 2018, when he came within 3 points of toppling Cruz. Allred lost by 8.5 points, a wider margin than polls had shown going into Election Day, and despite having outraised Cruz throughout his campaign.

Still, he outpaced then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the state to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by nearly 14 percentage points. In a June interview on the Dallas-based Lone Star Politics show, Allred said he would run “differently” this time around, now that he’s out of Congress.

I have seen quite a few reactions of the “ugh, not this guy again” variety since Allred first spoke of his interest in running again. You can vote for Terry Virts or possibly some other high-profile hopeful if that list includes you. My view is that Allred drew a fair number of crossover votes last year, which is how he ended up as the top Democratic performer in 2024. In a better year, which 2026 ought to be, that could be the difference in a sufficiently close race between eking out a victory and falling just short. No guarantees he can do that again, of course, but he has at least done it once. I would advise him to acknowledge the criticisms of his 2024 campaign and act accordingly. Pledging to be a fighter who will take specific actions as Senator to check Trump’s power and hold him accountable would also help. As an early entrant into the race, he has the opportunity to do that before everyone’s attention is divided.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Beto O'Rourke, Colin Allred, Democratic primary, Donald Trump, Election 2024, Election 2026, James Talarico, Joaquin Castro, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, Mike Swanson, primaries, Republican Party, Senate, Ted Cruz, Terry Virts, Texas | 6 Comments

Paxton’s State Fair gun ban lawsuit tossed

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

Still a crook any way you look

A Dallas County district judge dismissed state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s suit against the State Fair of Texas and the City of Dallas, for gun restrictions that were enacted following a 2023 shooting that injured three people at the fairgrounds.

Judge Emily Tobolowsky granted the city and Texas state fair summary judgment and dismissed the case at a June 24 hearing before it could go to trial. The judge had previously denied Paxton’s request for a stay on the fair’s ability to enact its gun policy in 2024.

The ruling came a day after the 23-year-old gunman, Cameron Turner, pleaded guilty on June 23 to two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and for carrying a weapon in a prohibited space. He will serve a 12- and 10-year sentence concurrently.

An appeals court and the Supreme Court of Texas had also denied Paxton’s appeal to stop the gun restrictions from going into effect. The fair previously allowed attendees with valid handgun licenses to carry their weapon as long as it was concealed.

[…]

The court’s ruling comes after the state Legislature considered Senate Bill 1065, which targeted the State Fair’s ability to enact gun restrictions as a contractor with the government. The bill failed to reach the House floor for a vote.

See here for the previous update, and here for more on SCTOx denying Paxton’s emergency motion to them and basically calling him a bad lawyer for the way he went about it. Given this outcome and the failure of the Lege to address the issue (and assuming it doesn’t get onto the special session agenda), I’d say you’re safe to attend the State Fair for at least the next two years.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Dallas, gun control, guns, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, State Fair of Texas, Supreme Court, Texas, The Lege | Leave a comment

Texas State officially joins the PAC-12

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good luck, y’all.

Texas State University is joining the Pac-12 Conference in 2026.

The decision follows a vote by the university’s board of regents on Monday to leave the Sun Belt Conference after a dozen years of competition.

University President Kelly Damphousse said in a statement Monday that the move to a new conference goes beyond athletics, calling it “a declaration of our rising national profile, our commitment to excellence, and our readiness to compete and collaborate with some of the most respected institutions in the country.”

The move is just the latest realignment in college athletic conferences. The University of Texas and University of Oklahoma are coming off their first year competing in the Southeastern Conference.

After a mass exodus to the Big 12, the Big 10 and the ACC, the Pac-12 was down to just two teams (Oregon State and Washington State) for the 2024-2025 season. The conference expects to expand to eight football-playing programs, the minimum number required to compete in the College Football Playoff, ahead of the 2026-2027 season.

“Texas State has shown a commitment to competing and winning at the highest level as well as to providing student-athletes with a well-rounded college experience academically, athletically and socially,” Commissioner Teresa Gould said in a statement today from the Pac-12. “We look forward to seeing the Bobcats’ future trajectory continue to shine big and bright.”

See here for the background. Still kind of boggles my mind that Texas State went from FCS to even a diminished PAC-12 in little more than a decade, but that’s college sports (mostly football) for you these days. The wheel is ever spinning, and it continues at smaller conferences and brand new ones as well. ESPN and The Athletic have more.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged football, Gonzaga, MWC, NCAA, Oregon State, PAC 10, Sun Belt, Texas State University, Washington State, West Coast Conference | Leave a comment

Another assault on mifepristone

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Jesus Christ.

A North Texas man charged with capital murder this month after he allegedly slipped his girlfriend abortion-inducing medication and caused a miscarriage marks the first time a murder charge has been brought in an abortion-related case in Texas.

The case tests a new method for reining in abortion pills — by threatening to prosecute individuals who provide them with the most severe criminal charge — while advancing the longstanding legal provision that defines an embryo as a person, legal experts say. The latter could raise serious implications about the legality of fertility treatments and in other legal realms such as criminal and immigration issues.

“It is shocking to people that the law can be used this way… that this is the extent and result of the more than 20 year old fetal personhood laws,” said Blake Rocap, a Texas attorney who works in abortion rights advocacy and studies pregnancy criminalization. Legal experts say the case will not change Texas laws that prevent women who receive abortions from being prosecuted.

According to an affidavit filed in Tarrant County by the Texas Rangers, 39-year-old Justin Anthony Banta put mifepristone, an abortion-inducing medication, into cookies and a beverage that he then gave to his pregnant girlfriend. Banta had previously asked her to get an abortion, but she said she had wanted to keep the child, according to the affidavit. A day after drinking the beverage, the woman miscarried.

The Texas Rangers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, which must decide whether and how to prosecute the case, has not yet brought its own charges, according to a spokesperson.

Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, a fetus was not considered a person constitutionally. However, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, the whole opinion was overruled, including the idea that a fetus does not have the same rights as a person. That did not immediately mean that fetus personhood is established. But, Grossman and other experts see Banta’s case as an attempt to move further in that direction.

“The purpose of this has nothing to do with caring whether this woman was victimized, but it’s about trying to establish fetal personhood in a more direct way than they’ve been able to,” said Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.

If Banta is convicted and fetal personhood is established in the case, it could complicate a variety of issues, including whether IVF is still legal because it involves destroying unused frozen embryos. Last year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are considered children.

“It has implications for all kinds of fertility medicine and it has potential implications for criminal and immigration law,” Grossman said. “If you detain a pregnant woman, are you illegally detaining the fetus who did not commit a crime? If you deport a pregnant woman, are you deporting a U.S. citizen because if we have birthright citizenship, when does that begin?”

[…]

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, pregnant women and their health care providers have faced new forms of criminalization across the country. Texas created a “illegal performance of an abortion” crime and charged a Houston midwife with it in March.

Over the last year, state leaders have focused on trying to block the flow of abortion-inducing medication into Texas. The demand for the medication spiked 1000% after the state outlawed abortion.

The Texas Legislature tried and failed to pass a bill that would have imposed civil penalties on those who distribute abortion inducing medication. Additionally, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor for shipping abortion-inducing medication into Texas. That lawsuit will likely test New York state’s “shield law,” which protects providers from out-of-state prosecutions.

However, the Banta case represents a new strategy from a statewide law enforcement authority in chilling the use and provision of abortion-inducing medication in Texas.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a person in Texas who helps a woman obtain an abortion has been liable not only for specific abortion charges, but now more serious charges like capital murder for their role in ending a pregnancy.

“The door has been open, [prosecutors] just walked through it,” said Rocap.

Even if this case is successfully prosecuted, it may not lead to the establishment of fetal personhood statewide or nationwide. It is likely for this case to end in a jury verdict which is not the equivalent of a Supreme Court decision setting a legally binding precedent.

If a jury finds Banta guilty, Grossman said he could also appeal the decision by claiming that he cannot be convicted of capital murder of a fetus. The appellate court decision, then, could potentially be binding in a way that a jury verdict is not.

However, Grossman believes the significance of Banta’s case does not necessarily lie in whether it’s successfully prosecuted. The way in which prosecutors have charged him for this crime is significant on its own.

She sees Banta’s case as a “trial balloon” for the anti-abortion movement. Banta is a naturally unsympathetic character, Grossman explained, so public sympathies will likely side with the anti-abortion side.

Since the charges were brought against Banta, local outlets across Texas and the nation have reported on the severity of the charges. Grossman believes that this has a “chilling effect” and is “sending a message” of fear to the general public regarding abortions. In that case, she is concerned that the damage has been done.

I must have missed the original announcement of this arrest, because this story was the first I’d heard of the case. Naturally, Jessica Valenti was on it.

In the first case of its kind, a Texas man accused of slipping his girlfriend abortion medication has been charged with capital murder. Police say Justin Banta’s then-girlfriend lost her pregnancy at 6 weeks, just days after the 38-year-old gave her a spiked drink. Banta, who is also accused of tampering with evidence, faces no charges for harming his girlfriend—only for what he did to her embryo.

In Texas, this woman wasn’t the victim of a crime—her pregnancy was.

By charging Banta with capital murder, Republicans are setting a precedent that says embryos, fetuses—even fertilized eggs—deserve equal protection under the law. Sound familiar? That’s because when fetuses have personhood and ‘equal protection’, abortion patients can be charged with murder.

And that’s what this case is actually about: Conservatives want to make broad abortion-related arrests—targeting providers, activists, patients, and their support systems. But they can’t do that without sparking massive legal and cultural backlash.

Banta’s case gives them the unsympathetic villain they need to convince Americans that fetal personhood and ‘equal protection’ laws are good things—laying the groundwork for the sweeping arrests they’re so desperate for.

How do I know? Well, some anti-abortion leaders love to hear themselves talk more than they do keeping strategy close to the vest.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, admitted on a recent podcast that she and other movement leaders are “working to change culture” so that states can start prosecuting women. She said the “vast majority” of anti-abortion groups believe patients should face criminal charges—as soon as they can ensure the public is ready for it.

Once you start to look anti-abortion political moves through that framework—understanding that they’re trying to get Americans on board with arresting patients—everything they do becomes a lot clearer.

That’s why I see Banta’s arrest as just the latest move in a much bigger anti-abortion plan. Over the last few months, I’ve tracked a notable uptick in criminalization efforts: an increase in pregnancy-related arrests, bills and ‘studies’ designed to make more of those arrests possible, and a constant stream of messaging trial balloons to test just how outraged—or apathetic—Americans will be.

The hard truth? I believe we’re on the verge of a major criminalization push.

Conservatives are furious that bans haven’t reduced the number of abortions. (In fact, since the end of Roe, abortions have increased.) In spite of the legal restrictions and threats, many, many people are still getting the care they need.

And while the anti-abortion movement always intended to expand criminalization beyond providers, they knew they’d need to soften up the public first. The plan was to work on American culture, seeding a years-long shift that would make it easier for them to arrest patients without serious backlash.

Now, with abortion numbers rising—and anti-abortion organizations and legislators desperate to stop what they see as mass disobedience—I believe they’re fast-tracking that plan.

Here’s the good news: even an accelerated culture war takes time. None of what I lay out below is going to happen tomorrow. That means we’ve still got a window to intervene—and to fuck their shit up.

This overall push is not limited to Texas – read the rest of Valenti’s post for those details – but of course Texas is charting its own course. It’s interesting that the Tarrant County DA hasn’t filed any charges yet, but I wouldn’t read too much into that. I’m sure they’re being extremely deliberate. I’m also sure that if they get cold feet, the Attorney General’s office will be there to either browbeat them or take the case away from them. We’re a long way from a resolution here – we’re barely at the starting line – but there’s a lot already happening. I’ll keep an eye on this.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged abortion, Attorney General, fetal personhood, IVF, Justin Banta, Ken Paxton, mifepristone, SCOTUS, Tarrant County, Texas, Texas Rangers, The Lege | 3 Comments

SD09 special election set for November

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This could, and hopefully will, be interesting.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday set a special election for Nov. 4 to fill the Texas Senate seat vacated by Republican Kelly Hancock, who resigned from the Legislature earlier this month to become the acting state comptroller.

The contest coincides with the state’s November uniform election, when voters across Texas will already be at the polls to elect representation for local offices and vote on numerous ballot measures, including 17 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution.

The candidate filing deadline for the Senate District 9 special election is Sept. 3, with early voting to start Oct. 20.

Earlier Friday, conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss announced her candidacy to fill the vacant seat. Shortly after her announcement, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the president of the Senate, endorsed Wambsganss, saying she would be a “great addition to our conservative Texas Senate.”

[…]

Soon after Wambsganss’s announcement, Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, withdrew his own bid for the seat and endorsed her.

A Democratic candidate, veteran and union president Taylor Rehmet, is also running for the seat.

See here for the background. Schatzline, who is terrible, got a lot of coverage for his initial announcement. Wambsganss, who is also terrible, got a lot of coverage for hers as well. Most of what I could find from a Google news search on Taylor Rehmet came from the Fort Worth Report.

Taylor Rehmet

Taylor Rehmet, a union machinist and Air Force veteran who describes himself as “a working-class fighter,” is seeking the office as a Democrat.

[…]

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, described District 9 as a “pretty conservative district” dominated by Republicans, but said recent demographic and political changes in Tarrant County could provide an opening for Democrats.

[…]

Rehmet, 32, who announced his candidacy June 23, said his campaign will center on a five-point platform including veterans’ rights and services, workers’ rights and union power, affordable housing and tenant protections, fully funded education with vocational pathways, and land and water for future generations.

Rehmet is president of the Texas State Council of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. A campaign launch event will be next month in Austin, coinciding with a statewide labor convention, according to a news release.

He was in the Air Force from 2012 to 2016 as a mechanic on B-52 bombers.

Rehmet told the Report he’s been active in running large organizations but said this is his first political undertaking.

“This is just the next step in being able to serve others,” he told the Report. “I’ve never run before because I wanted to make sure I’m ready. I take serving others seriously.”

In 2022, Hancock won his last four-year term with more than 60% of the vote to Democrat Gwenn Burud’s almost 40%.

Rehmet’s website is here, and you can find a lot more about him at Lone Star Left. SD09 has been on the outer fringes of competitiveness in recent years. Hancock won it by a scant eight points in 2018, also against Gwenn Burud, who as far as I can tell has never raised much money or gotten much attention. If Rehmet can do better on those things, if Donald Trump’s approval and favorability can decline a bit more, if Tarrant County’s wretched Republican Party Chair can keep on alienating everyone, well, who knows. This will never not be a longshot, but it could be the kind of longshot that has a chance. I’ll be on the lookout for his finance reports.

Posted in Election 2025 | Tagged Comptroller, Election 2018, Election 2025, Election 2026, Glenn Hegar, Greg Abbott, Gwenn Burud, Kelly Hancock, Leigh Wambsganss, Nate Schatzline, SD09, Senate, special election, Taylor Rehmet, Texas | Comments Off

WNBA to expand to 18 teams

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

None of which will be in Houston.

The WNBA is expanding to 18 teams over the next five years, with Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia all set to join the league by 2030.

Cleveland will begin play in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia the season after, assuming they get approval from the NBA and WNBA Board of Governors. Toronto and Portland will enter the league next year.

“The demand for women’s basketball has never been higher, and we are thrilled to welcome Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia to the WNBA family,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said. “This historic expansion is a powerful reflection of our league’s extraordinary momentum, the depth of talent across the game, and the surging demand for investment in women’s professional basketball.”

All three new teams announced Monday have NBA ownership groups. Each paid a $250 million expansion fee, which is about five times as much as Golden State dished out for a team a few years ago. All three teams will also be investing more money through building practice facilities and other such amenities.

“It’s such a natural fit that when you already have this basketball-related infrastructure, these strategies, cultures that you find to be successful, combinations of personnel that you find to be successful,” said Nic Barlage, CEO of Rock Entertainment Group and the Cavaliers. “Extending that into the WNBA, is just a natural next progression, especially if you have a desire to grow like we do.”

Both Cleveland and Detroit had WNBA teams in the past and Philadelphia was the home for an ABL team.

[…]

Engelbert said she was impressed with the number of cities that bid for expansion teams, a list that included St. Louis; Kansas City, Mo.; Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; Miami; Denver; Charlotte, N.C.; and Houston.

“There are a variety of cities that obviously bid, and one of those I wanted to shout out — because they have such a strong history in this league and their great ownership group — is Houston,” Engelbert said. “The Houston Comets were just an amazing one, the first four inaugural championships in the WNBA. So I would say that’s the one, obviously, we have our eye on. (Owner) Tilman (Feritta) has been a great supporter of the WNBA, and we’ll stay tuned on that.”

See here for the previous update. Cleveland was basically locked in, and Philly was seen as a strong frontrunner, but at that time Houston was thought to be the favorite for the 18th team. Alas, we ended up as Miss Congeniality. It seems likely there will be more expansion in a few years, so we’ll just need to be patient. The WNBA’s press release is here, and the Chron has more.

UPDATE: While an expansion team is off the table for at least the next few years, probably a decade or more, there’s another possible way to land a team, as noted in this story The Mohegan tribe, which bought the Orlando Miracle for $10 million in 2003, relocated the team and renamed it the Connecticut Sun, hired an investment bank in May to look into “all options to strategically invest in the team.” That could include selling a minority stake in the team or a complete franchise sale that could lead to relocation.

The Sun had been one of the WNBA’s most successful teams, currently on a run of eight straight postseason appearances that likely will be snapped this year with the team off to a league-worst 2-15 start after losing their entire starting lineup in the offseason. Off the court, the Sun is one of the few teams in the league without a dedicated training facility.

Relocation is never as exciting as expansion, because you’re inheriting whatever baggage the existing team had and you have the psychic guilt of their fans’ loss, but it can work. The Dynamo came to Houston via relocation and they won the league their first two years. And their former city (San Jose) now has a team again. That’s about the best case scenario. If it’s a real possibility here, we’ll know about it soon enough.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged Austin, basketball, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Houston Comets, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Texas, Tilman Fertitta, Toronto, WNBA | Comments Off

Can we say we’re sure we know CM Plummer’s intentions by now?

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Tell me you’re running for County Judge without triggering the “resign to run” provision, somehow.

CM Letitia Plummer

For the second time in two weeks, information has inadvertently emerged hinting that Houston City Council Member Letitia Plummer intends to run for Harris County Judge in a bid to replace Lina Hidalgo.

Houston Style Magazine posted then deleted a story with a headline “Letitia Plummer: A Bold New Chapter in Harris County’s Leadership Legacy” saying Plummer was “preparing to launch her candidacy for Harris County judge.”

In the story, Plummer allegedly said: “I’ve raised my three sons in this city. I’ve built businesses here. And now, I want to lead Harris County — because I know what it means to fight for every neighborhood, every voice, and every future.”

She allegedly continued: “The County Judge is the only official elected by all of Harris County. I’m already serving the entire city. Now, I’m ready to serve the entire county. I’ve been there for our seniors, our veterans, our women- and minority-owned businesses. I’ve stood up for police and I’ve stood up for our children. It’s time we build a county government that does the same.”

While the story cannot be found on Houston Style’s website when its link is clicked, it was picked up by news aggregate CNN Newsource and posted publicly on another website on June 17.

Reached Friday, Plummer said the Houston Style story was supposed to be about her background and that she was misquoted.

The council member, who is serving her second term as an at-large member, asserted in a text that she did not say, “I’m already serving the entire city. Now, I’m ready to serve the entire county.”

The story from Houston Style follows a since-deleted post from the Spring Branch Democrats club earlier this month that included a document with a logo that read “Dr. Letitia Plummer Democrat for Harris County Judge.” The post also included a caption that read, “Another candidate for County Judge.” Plummer said the document was leaked by someone who used to work for her.

Plummer has not filed for the seat, according to Harris County campaign finance records. She told the Houston Chronicle Friday she was still strongly considering running for the position.

See here for the background. I mean, she’s running for County Judge. I don’t know how one could reasonably conclude otherwise. The slipup with the Spring Branch Dems could plausibly be blamed on a miscommunication. It would be unlikely, but with enough benefit of the doubt to say no, we can’t be sure, or at least we can’t be sure enough to say she has effectively resigned her seat on Council. The fact that it happened twice, the second time with a journalist, removes the doubt. She’s running. She’ll tell us “officially” when she’s ready, but she’s running.

Is this enough to trigger resign-to-run? City Attorney Arturo Michel says no in the story. I doubt there’s any precedent to match this, so it would take someone filing a lawsuit to force the matter, assuming she doesn’t make her formal declaration and resignation first. This is one of the many places where certain aspects of these laws are woefully vague (*cough* *cough* residency requirements *cough* *cough*) and unsettled, and that leaves us in the lurch in these outlier situations. We can’t cover everything, but we could do a better job of clearing up some of the murkier areas. If we wanted to, anyway.

One more thing, which was recently pointed out to me, about the timing of all this. Article 11, Section 11 of the state constitution covers terms of office for municipal elected officials. It has this provision for the event of a vacancy due to death or resignation:

(c) Any vacancy or vacancies occurring on such governing body shall not be filled by appointment but must be filled by majority vote of the qualified voters at a special election called for such purpose within one hundred and twenty (120) days after such vacancy or vacancies occur except that the municipality may provide by charter or charter amendment the procedure for filling a vacancy occurring on its governing body for an unexpired term of 12 months or less.

This is why the July 8 “campaign announcement” date cited in the Spring Branch Dems item matters, because July 8 is 119 days before Election Day in November. Timing this announcement to on or after July 8 does us all the favor of having the special election to fill her then-vacant At Large #4 seat on Election Day in November, rather than on some random day in the calendar when we’ll struggle to get one percent turnout and have to spend the money on a solo election besides. This golden period only lasts up through late August or so, which is when the deadline date for finalizing the ballot occurs. So if there are to be any announcements involving Houston City Council members that would have resign-to-run implications, expect them to occur from July 8 up to about August 18. Timing is everything.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Annise Parker, At Large #4, Democratic primary, Election 2025, Election 2026, Harris County, Harris County Judge, Houston, Houston City Council, Letitia Plummer, Lina Hidalgo, resign to run, special election | 2 Comments

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