SCOTUS pauses SB4 again

This time indefinitely.

The Supreme Court on Monday extended a temporary block on a new Texas immigration law that is being challenged by the Biden administration.

In an order issued by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, the court again imposed a temporary freeze on a lower court decision. The court said the law would remain on hold “pending further order” of the court.

The law was originally due to go into effect on March 10, but Alito has now stepped in on three occasions to ensure the lower court ruling remains on hold.

His most recent order was due to expire on Monday evening, meaning the law would have gone into effect absent Supreme Court action.

The ruling is now blocked indefinitely, giving all nine justices additional time to determine what next steps to take.

See here for the previous update. We’ll just have to see what happens next, and it could be weeks or months before that happens. If you’re wondering what it means that this time the stay is indefinite while the previous ones had been only for a few days, I’ll let Prof. Vladeck explain:

In other words, it was just Alito being Alito. At least now he’s done the normal thing. We’ll wait for the next move.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sure, Pornhub could verify identities and ages if they wanted to

But that’s not the point.

House Bill 1181, which was passed in June and went into effect in September, says that any entity publishing pornographic material must require a visitor to provide digital identification or use a commercial age verification system that uses a government ID or public or private transactional data to verify the age of an individual.

“Texas is not alone in this. In fact, there were 144 pieces of state legislation last year across the United States requiring age verification for one reason or another,” Age Verification Providers Association Execute Director Iain Corby said.

The Age Verification Providers Association is “a not-for-profit global trade body representing 26 (organizations) who provide age assurance solutions,” according to its website.

Corby said he didn’t know the ins and outs of the Texas legislation but did provide examples of ways people can verify their ages online.

Some ways are straightforward, such as uploading your driver’s license, to prove your age.

As for using transactional data, Corby said the most common way is by verifying your age through your bank by giving it consent to share your age with the website. He added credit reference agencies and reports as the other common ways for Americans to confirm their ages using transactional data.

He said in Europe people are working on a system where users can recycle their age verification check from one site to access others.

“The whole process is very privacy-preserving,” Corby said. “Obviously people are sometimes a little bit nervous about sharing their identity when they’re looking at that sort of site so the essence of our industry is proving your age without disclosing your identity.”

See here for the previous update. I don’t know anything about the Age Verification Providers Association or their claims; they may be legit or they may be opportunists jumping on a hot story. If they’re legit then this seems like a reasonable way forward and could be the basis for a settlement in the lawsuit filed by the state if the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is left to stand. But the point is that the original ruling followed existing precedent, and the Fifth Circuit did not, which puts this in defiance of current law. SCOTUS may of course decide that they’re fine with the Fifth Circuit monkeying with their rulings, or they may decide to revisit their previous opinions and make their own modifications. Until then, this is an encroachment on free speech, and it’s not on Pornhub to accommodate that.

Posted in Legal matters, Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Do I really need to worry about West 11th Street?

I dunno, man.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire is reevaluating several street infrastructure projects for effectiveness, including the completed 11th Street redesign despite the controversy surrounding the recent removal of pedestrian and cyclist upgrades on Houston Avenue.

Whitmire, who took office in January, has made it a priority to review city projects that the previous city administration made. His office confirmed to Houston Public Media that the overhaul includes the contentious redesign of a 1.5-mile stretch of 11th Street in The Heights. The $2.4 million project was completed in 2023, following more than four years of community engagement, and now Whitmire will decide if it should be torn up or changed.

“The mayor has been very open about his concerns with the 11th Street project. What started out as a request for a safe crossing at Nicholson and 11th Street ended up a bike lane project that makes it difficult for emergency apparatus to maneuver and has negatively impacted a business. He is reviewing this along with other projects,” said spokesperson Mary Benton.

The project involved the addition of bike lanes and safe crosswalks at various intersections, particularly at Nicholson, where the Heights hike and bike trail intersects with 11th. While cycling and pedestrian advocates welcomed the changes as they provided additional safety measures for a busy neighborhood street, the project faced some opposition from several businesses, who expressed concern about how it would impact their establishments.

The overhaul of all these infrastructure projects has some public safety advocates worried, especially as word that a temporary pause was put on all projects that include narrowing or removing vehicle lanes or adding bike lanes was confirmed by Houston Public Works in a report by the Houston Chronicle.

Joe Cutrufo, executive director at BikeHouston, whose advocacy helped get this project in place, told Adam Zuvanich of Houston Public Media that he’s concerned about the fate of 11th Street.

“If the mayor were to undo this project and revert 11th Street back to how it used to be,” Cutrufo said, “I don’t think you’d see the city winning any awards for that.”

There’s been a number of stories speculating about this, and there’s definitely some alarm in the bicycle-pedestrian community. I’m not dismissive of any of it, but I’m also not sure how much of this is normal review of a predecessor’s project list (with perhaps a few dollops of old-guy grumpiness) and how much of it is a serious threat. The Houston avenue debacle was caused in part by complaints from the police and fire departments; there are no such issues here that I’m aware of. Removing the modifications to West 11th would mean tearing up a much longer stretch of road to undo a much more expensive renovation that has been physically in place a lot longer and which had been in discussion and planning a lot longer than that. I just have a hard time wrapping my mind around the possibility that the Mayor would take such a big action based on a handful of malcontents.

But maybe I’m wrong and I’m not taking this seriously enough. I think the backlash here would be a lot bigger than the one that Houston Avenue caused, but we’ll see. I hope I’ve got the right take on this.

UPDATE: On the subject of Houston Avenue and the reasons for the dismantling of its median, late in the day yesterday we got this.

The city’s planning department has declined to release records related to the controversial installation and subsequent removal of a concrete median on Houston Avenue, citing concerns about terrorism and the candor of its employees.

The city’s legal department has cited those two exemptions in the Texas Public Information Act in a letter asking the Texas attorney general’s office to withhold some of the records requested by the Houston Landing.

[…]

Mayor Whitmire’s 2023 campaign included messaging around transparency, and wanting to be more open with the public.

Houston Landing contacted the mayor’s office last week, seeking additional comment on the rationale for requesting some of the information to be withheld.

Mary Benton, the mayor’s director of communications, said Whitmire likely would not comment about an ongoing Texas Public Information Act process, but that the mayor had been adamant about processing public records requests quickly. Benton also said she would forward the Landing’s request to City Attorney Arturo Michel, who had not responded as of Monday afternoon.

“This strikes me just on a very surface level as a governmental body that seems to be reaching for any possible exemption to avoid disclosing this information,” [James Hemphill, an Austin lawyer on the executive committee of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas] said. “I don’t know that that’s what’s going on, I don’t know enough about the situation. This does appear to be a pretty elaborate invocation of some exceptions.”

Well OK then.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Does Ted Cruz think he might lose?

Who knows what he thinks?

Not Ted Cruz

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign is warning donors this week that he’s already tied with Colin Allred and bracing for a tougher 2024 reelection campaign than GOP voters might expect.

The push comes less than a week after Allred secured the Democratic nomination in the race and six years after Democrat Beto O’Rourke emerged from relative obscurity to push Cruz to the brink of losing his seat.

While no Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since the 1990s, Cruz has been telling Republicans for weeks that they can’t take things for granted in Texas anymore, partly because of that close call to O’Rourke.

“I will say, my race here in Texas is a battleground race,” Cruz told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo last month. “My last race I won by less than three points because I’m the Democrats’ top target.”

Allred has been telling supporters he has a real shot at toppling Cruz based on limited early public polling and fundraising data. At his primary victory party in Dallas last week, the congressman acknowledged being the underdog but pointed to his history of knocking off veteran U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican, in 2018 to win his seat.

“I’m used to overcoming long odds,” Allred said, pointing not just to his races in 2018, but his upbringing as the child of a single mother and making the NFL as a linebacker despite being undrafted.

I have no insight into Ted Cruz’s thinking, nor do I want to spend any time pondering his deep thoughts. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that at this point of the campaign, it’s in both Cruz and Allred’s interests to portray this as a close race, and for the same reason – the fundraising. It’s good for Cruz to keep his funders from being complacent, and Allred needs his backers to have hope. Everything else at this point is just details – the polling is mostly meaningless, comparisons to 2018 are premature at best, and what issues or lines of attack may land are too soon to tell. The name of the game is keeping the engine running. Allred has done a very good job of that, and Cruz is trying to keep up.

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

Another Republican done dirty by Abbott speaks

Welcome to the table, Rep. Clardy.

Rep. Travis Clardy

When state representative Travis Clardy, of Nacogdoches, first heard rumblings of a potential Republican primary challenger early last summer, he was surprised. The woman who was considering challenging him, Joanne Shofner, was someone who Clardy said he knew “socially” for years. Shofner’s late father, Welcome Wilson, a longtime Houston real estate developer and a former chairman of the University of Houston System Board of Regents, had previously donated to Clardy’s campaign. Clardy figured she’d at least set up a meeting to talk before entering the race—but that never happened, he said. “Before I know it, she’s out campaigning, filing treasury paperwork, and setting up booths at our downtown events,” Clardy said.

An eleven-year veteran of the Texas House, Clardy had seen his fair share of primary challengers before—though none that ever came close to beating him. Most of them had little name recognition or money (opponent Tony Sevilla, a perennial loser to Clardy, even admitted once that he wasn’t running to win, but to prepare himself for future races). But Clardy recognized that Shofner was different. A few months after entering the race, she received the endorsement of Governor Greg Abbott, which Clardy had received ahead of his 2018 and 2020 races. More importantly, she made clear that she would support Abbott’s campaign, financed by billionaires in Texas and elsewhere, to pass a contentious education-voucher program, which would divert tax dollars from public schools to private ones. (Clardy, meanwhile, received the endorsement of Attorney General Ken Paxton after voting against the top law enforcement officer’s impeachment.)

[…]

Clardy and other antivoucher Republicans voted with the majority of their party on almost every issue. When it came to school vouchers, they chose instead to vote in the interest of their rural districts—few of which, if any, have private schools. But in today’s GOP, loyalty to one’s constituents over billionaire donors is unacceptable.

Speaking to Texas Monthly days after losing his primary election, Clardy offered his candid thoughts on the governor’s “unnecessary” and “heavy-handed” involvement in his race, the outside forces who he said worked to boost his opponent, and what he thinks is next for his colleagues in the Texas House.

You should go read the interview, it’s well worth your time. Rep. Clardy is not my cup of tea on many issues, and as he repeatedly notes he was in favor of trying some smaller pilot for vouchers for a specific subgroup of students, but he was a serious legislator who was doing what his constituents wanted, at least until they were willing to be lied to over things that had nothing to do with vouchers. He correctly notes that rural voters like his constituents have made the Texas Republican and Greg Abbott as strong and successful as they have been, and this is the thanks they get. He sure seems to have his finger on the problem. As with Rep. Glenn Rogers, it’s now a question of what, if anything, he’s going to do about it. I await your response, sir.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Texas colleges and AI

Interesting story.

When Taylor Eighmy talks to people about the growth of artificial intelligence in society, he doesn’t just see an opportunity — he feels a jolt of responsibility.

The president of The University of Texas at San Antonio said the Hispanic-serving institution on the northwest side of the Alamo City needs to make sure its students are ready for what their future employers expect them to know about this rapidly changing technology.

“It doesn’t matter if you enter the health industry, banking, oil and gas, or national security enterprises like we have here in San Antonio,” Eighmy told The Texas Tribune. “Everybody’s asking for competency around AI.”

It’s one of the reasons the public university, which serves 34,000 students, announced earlier this year that it is creating a new college dedicated to AI, cyber security, computing and data science. The new college, which is still in the planning phase, would be one of the first of its kind in the country. UTSA wants to launch the new college by fall 2025.

According to UTSA, Texas will see a nearly 27% increase in AI and data science jobs over the next decade. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects data science jobs nationally will increase by 35% over that time period. Leaders at UTSA say they don’t just want students to be competent in the field, but also prepare them to be a part of the conversation as it grows and evolves.

“We don’t want [students] to spend time early in their careers just trying to figure out AI,” said Jonathon Halbesleben, dean of UTSA’s business school who is co-chairing a task force to establish the new college. “We’d love to have them be career-ready to jump right into the ability to sort of shape AI and how it’s used in their organizations.”

Over the past year, much of the conversation around AI in higher education has centered around generative AI, applications and search engines that can create texts, images or data based on prompts. The arrival of ChatGPT, a free chatbot that provides conversational answers to users’ questions, sent universities and faculty scrambling to understand how this new technology will affect teaching and learning. It also raised concerns that students might be using the new technology as a shortcut to write papers or complete other assignments.

But many state higher education leaders are thinking beyond that. As AI becomes a part of everyday life in new, unpredictable ways, universities across Texas and the country are also starting to consider how to ensure faculty are keeping up with the new technology and students are ready to use it when they enter the workforce.

“This is a technology that’s clearly here to stay and advancing rapidly,” said Harrison Keller, commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the state agency that oversees colleges and universities in Texas. “Having institutions collaborate, share content [and] work with [the] industry so that the content really reflects the state of the art is really critical. It’s moving much faster than anyone anticipated.”

Next month, the state agency plans to start an assessment of AI activity at all community colleges and four-year universities in the state and use it to build a collaborative system that can help all schools get up to speed with AI.

“A majority of institutions are trying to identify what are the skills that are necessary for our faculty to be able to engage with this new evolving technology [and] to provide experiences for our students to get acclimated with skills that are going to be required in the global workforce,” said Michelle Singh, assistant commissioner for digital learning with the coordinating board.

See here for more on what state agencies are doing about AI. There are concerns discussed in the story about how much work is being put on faculty for this development, whether any curriculum being designed now can be fully thought through, and more. I don’t have any deep thoughts so go read the rest.

Posted in School days, Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for March 17

“The Dune movies routinely establish that biology doesn’t play by Earth rules, even for humans, on the sand planet Arrakis. But physics—namely, gravity—does. Even the hefty tyrant Baron Harkonnen needs a rig to get around. Could the worms really move so effortlessly, even through all that sand?”

“Insurers do not provide Rapture policies. That’s not just because calculating the risk would be difficult, but because there’s no demand for such policies.”

“There’s plenty about Trump that voters still don’t know (yet)”.

“That explains a lot of the Times’s aberrant behavior, doesn’t it?”

Meet Jean Armour Polley, the woman who helped bring computers to libraries and coined the phrase “surfing the Internet”.

RIP, U.L. Washington, former infielder mostly for the Kansas City Royals who was on their pennant-winning team in 1980 and may have been best known for playing with a toothpick in his mouth.

RIP, Ed Ott, former catcher who was on the “We Are Family” World Series-winning 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates.

A deep dive into “Tradwives” and the #FundieSnark movement that battles back against them.

“I work as a spokesperson for many victims who have no voice, and I really would like them to be empathetic: all the governors, all the senators, to be empathetic with the issue of human trafficking because there are millions of girls and boys who disappear all the time. People who are really trafficked and abused, as she [Britt] mentioned. And I think she [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude.”

“The U.S. prison population is rapidly graying. Prisons aren’t built for what’s coming”.

RIP, Deadspin 2.0. Go subscribe to Defector if you miss the original version of that site.

“According to The New York Times, the Republican Party’s finance and digital media teams are being relocated to Palm Beach, Florida. By no coincidence at all, that’s also the location of Trump’s campaign headquarters.”

RIP, Malachy McCourt, author, actor, raconteur, brother of Frank McCourt, the last of the McCourt brothers. Frank McCourt was my junior year English teacher at Stuyvesant, before he got all famous, though he and Malachy were already making a name for themselves by then. My classmate Laurie Gwen Shapiro wrote a lovely tribute to Malachy last year after he’d been kicked out of hospice for taking so long to croak. Give it a read.

Wishing Darryl Strawberry all the best.

“The bizarre video has raised questions about why Noem was making the video about the dental company, and why the governor of South Dakota — who launched a program last year to recruit people to live and work in her state — was promoting a company in Texas.”

“A decades-long forgery scheme ensnared Canada’s most famous Indigenous artist, a rock musician turned sleuth and several top museums. Here’s how investigators unraveled the incredible scam”.

“I won’t give up because I’m telling the truth. I’m out of fucks.”

That story about Formula 1 that some people didn’t want you to read.

“New data explodes myth of crime wave fueled by migrants”.

“Pop star Olivia Rodrigo, a vocal advocate for women’s reproductive rights, paired up with local organizations to distribute free emergency contraceptives and condoms during a tour stop in St. Louis.” Great stuff, but you were just here in Texas, Olivia. Wish you had done the same at those shows.

“When seasons go from one to two to three to four [seasons], three to four is where the cost really pops because most of the actors get bigger raises, and you have to really manage that. So, you have to have in your portfolio of development shows that can actually replace shows as they get into later seasons.”

JK Rowling is so monstrously terrible now that it’s actively ruining the happy memories I have of reading the Harry Potter books to my kids. Jesus Christ.

“It’s Not Just Sandy Hook. Aaron Rodgers Has Some Very Strange Thoughts About…Buildings.”

RIP, David E. Harris, first Black pilot hired by a major US airline.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 1 Comment

Now the state sues the Colony Ridge developers

Following in the footsteps of the feds.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Houston-area developers of Colony Ridge on Thursday, accusing them of deceptive sales, marketing and lending practices that allowed their sprawling housing development to flourish.

Residents of Colony Ridge filed dozens of complaints for years about the development to state agencies, but Texas had little to show for addressing those concerns, according to a Texas Tribune and Houston Landing investigation. Paxton announced his office’s investigation last fall, after right-wing media conflated the development’s growth with high levels of illegal immigration at the Texas border.

At least 11 consumer complaints were sent to the Attorney General’s Office about Colony Ridge since 2019, long before Paxton told a conservative talk radio host his office would investigate. Paxton at the time also said it was “completely insane that they can set up these villages with illegal immigrants,” but claimed the Legislature had not given his office the “authority to do anything about it.”

Thursday’s lawsuit marks the most significant state action to date against the development. It echoes many of the claims in a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit filed against Colony Ridge in December. In the state’s lawsuit, Paxton argues the developers target foreign-born, Latino consumers with a bait-and-switch sales scheme that leads to sky-high foreclosure rates.

“The development profited from targeting consumers with fraudulent claims and predatory lending practices” Paxton wrote in a statement. “Their deceptive practices have created unjust and outsized harms. Nearby communities have borne a tremendous cost for the scheme that made Colony Ridge’s developers a fortune.”

Colony Ridge developer John Harris said there was no merit to the allegations in either lawsuit, and that the legal action was prompted by the recent attention from Texas lawmakers and GOP leaders following right-wing media coverage.

“​​They’re following the same line as the Department of Justice, there’s no creativity in Paxton’s words and we’re ready to defend this suit,” Harris said in a statement.

[…]

While parts of Paxton’s lawsuit repeat similar findings brought by the federal government, it also alleges new details about Colony Ridge’s business practices.

The lawsuit claims the developers launched an aggressive marketing strategy that relied on deception to attract potential customers. It alleges employees of Colony Ridge were provided multiple cellphone SIM cards to make marketing calls from burner phone numbers and set up dozens of social media accounts to market the development.

One former employee told state investigators that the company required them to make more than 60 fake online listings every day on fake social media accounts, according to the lawsuit. That employee recounted witnessing another colleague get fired for not hitting the quota, according to the lawsuit.

Throughout the lawsuit, former Colony Ridge employees who spoke to state investigators are referred to by pseudonyms to “prevent harassment and/or retaliation.”

The lawsuit argues the developers told sales people to use misleading marketing tactics, such as misrepresenting themselves to potential buyers and falsely claiming the properties were home-ready.

See here and here for some background. I’m not inclined to give Ken Paxton any credit for this – as noted, there have been complaints for years, and his initial response to the words “Colony Ridge” was to echo the wingnut lies about crime at the site – but perhaps this will force some action before the federal lawsuit is able to. I’m sure the developers will raise the point about Paxton’s longstanding inaction prior to this as part of theie defense.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Here’s your committee to investigate the HPD dropped cases situation

I wish them luck.

Mayor John Whitmire

Mayor John Whitmire on Wednesday named the five people who will run an independent investigation into the Houston Police Department’s handling of over 264,000 suspended incident reports.

The committee will be led by a former state representative with a long history of advocacy for victims of sexual assault, a Texas Ranger, a local church leader and two city employees.

“I’ve asked them to collect the data, review HPD, look over their shoulder, make sure the process is transparent and report back to me,” Whitmire said. “I will report back to Houstonians and let them know exactly… how in the world this existed for eight years without someone having the good sense to sound the alarm.”

[…]

The committee investigating the police department will be chaired by former state Rep. Ellen Cohen, who also served as a Houston City Council member from 2012 until 2020. While on council, she championed the effort to eliminate the sexual assault kit backlog. Before becoming an elected official, she was also the president and CEO of the Houston Area Women’s Center, an organization that provides services to victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

“Victim survivors are the ones that need to be addressed,” Cohen said, before adding that part of the role of the committee would be to ensure that police “are in fact talking to these survivors.”

The committee will also include Texas Rangers Capt. Jeff Owles, a 21-year law enforcement officer who Whitmire said would bring “investigative tools” to the group, and Rev. T. Leon Preston II, pastor of Yale Street Baptist Church since 2009.

“[Preston] is an outspoken voice from the community who will assure that no one is forgotten in this review,” Whitmire said.

The two city employees on the committee are Christina Nowak, the city’s deputy inspector general of the Office of Policing Reform and Accountability, and City Attorney Arturo G. Michel.

Nowak has already begun collecting data from the police on behalf of the committee, Whitmire said. And Michel was put on the committee to give legal advice and “make sure everything is done in compliance with city laws,” Whitmire said.

“I want Houstonians to know that we are doing everything possible to reveal to them the full extent, the circumstances, and who knew what and when,” Whitmire said, standing next to Cohen and Michel in City Hall.

See here and here for some background. I have tons of respect for Ellen Cohen and I believe she will do a great job. The main question here is not what the committee will find and report on but what will be done about it afterwards. That is the big and potentially very costly question.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pornhub blocks access from Texas

I’m sure you’ve already noticed, but just in case…

One of the most-visited pornography websites, Pornhub, disabled its site in Texas on Thursday over objections to a state law that requires age verification to prevent access to minors.

People who go to the site are now greeted with a long message from the company railing against the legal change as “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.” The company calls for age verification by the makers of devices that let people on the internet, instead of individual websites.

“Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas,” the message read.

The Republican-majority state Legislature passed the age verification law, HB 1181, last year. It requires companies that distribute “sexual material harmful to minors” to confirm visitors are over 18 with an online system that verifies users’ government-issued identification or another commercially available system that uses public or private data. The sites are not permitted to retain identifying information.

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the company that owns Pornhub to force compliance with the state’s age verification law and threatened millions of dollars in civil penalties.

[…]

A representative of Pornhub confirmed the website was down, but did not elaborate on whether the takedown is permanent or temporary.

The company in its note raised concerns that the law was passed “without any means to enforce at scale” and would drive users to websites “with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply” with the law.

The “only effective solution,” the company writes, would be putting the age-verification onus on the manufacturers and operating-system providers of devices that have internet access, such as computer, tablet and cell phone makers.

That might look like a retailer verifying a person’s age at the point of sale and installing content-blocking software if they are underage, the note says. The data would be “stored on a network controlled by the device manufacturer or the supplier of the device’s operating system.”

The Pornhub representative referred Hearst to a fact sheet laying out the company’s concern that jurisdictions with site-level age verification are creating a “high risk of data theft and privacy violation” for people who will repeatedly have to input personally identifiable information.

“We call on all adult sites to comply with the law,” the note reads. By disabling the site, the company said: “We are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users.”

See here and here for some background. Not sure that Pornhub’s call for solidarity from its peers will get the result it desires, but we’ll see.

The Trib adds some useful context.

The appeals court previously reversed an injunction of a U.S. District Court judge, which had blocked the law from going into effect in August. The 5th Circuit’s temporary stay required pornography websites to impose age-verification measures and display health warnings that said pornography is proven to harm brain development.

In the most recent decision on March 7, the 5th Circuit decided the age-verification component of the law could stand, but ruled that the law’s required health warnings unconstitutionally compelled speech.

[…]

The 5th Circuit’s decision on Pornhub’s lawsuit, concerning online content, cited a 1968 ruling from the Supreme Court, which upheld a New York statute that prohibited the sale of obscene magazines to minors. In Ginsberg v. New York, the nation’s highest court decided that children could be constitutionally denied access to material that was “harmful to minors.”

The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Decades later, with the internet widely available to the public as a platform to distribute material — obscene and not — similar questions about minors’ access to “harmful material” came before the Supreme Court.

In two separate cases stemming from congressional legislation aiming to prevent the distribution of obscene material to minors, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1996 Communications Decency Act and the 1998 Child Online Protection Act were unconstitutional restrictions of free speech.

The court argued that efforts to prevent minors from accessing obscene materials, such as age verification, could impede communication between adults.

“As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the majority opinion of Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union that found the anti-indecency provisions of the Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment.

Nearly three decades after Stevens’ opinion, Texas lawmakers tried to impose age-verification measures online.

“We did all this. Everything that’s been discussed here has already been discussed and resolved,” Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law who specializes in internet law, told The Texas Tribune.

Goldman said the Supreme Court has already ruled on the regulation of online obscene materials in light of the Ginsberg case. He said the nation’s highest court determined that the internet is different from the offline world, and the two cannot be treated the same way.

He maintained Texas’ age-verification requirement is categorically unconstitutional because it forces all users to complete a mechanical process before accessing protected material, which can slow people down and act as a barrier to content. Goldman added it drags down the earning potential of publishers and adds costs to users who create content.

In drafting House Bill 1181, Goldman said, Texas legislators weren’t creative or careful to present new legal questions to longstanding concerns.

“The law hasn’t changed in between the last round of battles and today,” Goldman said. “So they’re gambling on the hope that a court might change. And to me, that’s a very dicey way of making legislation because they’re basically saying, ‘We know it was [unconstitutional], we just don’t care.’”

Using the 2023 law, Goldman said, Texas legislators are tempting the Supreme Court to “overturn its own precedent, which it has a recent history of doing.”

Thomas Leatherbury, director of the First Amendment Clinic at SMU Dedman School of Law, said he’s concerned about the trend in the courts regarding First Amendment cases. But threats to free speech have also been originating on the opposite side of the legal process, he said.

“There’s a troubling trend in the Legislature … where, despite all the lawyers that are in the Legislature, they don’t seem to care about constitutional issues as long as it’s popular with their voters,” Leatherbury said.

As an example of compelled speech that Leatherbury said violates the First Amendment is the Star Spangled Banner Protection Act. The 2021 Texas law requires professional sports teams to play the national anthem before games if they have contracts with the state government. No one has successfully sued to overturn it.

I appreciate the update on what the Fifth Circuit has actually done. I thought we were still waiting for their final ruling. Aylo, the company that owns Pornhhub, says they plan to appeal. You’d think, based on the existing precedent as described here, it would be a clear reversal by SCOTUS. I don’t have any confidence in that, but I don’t know that there’s any choice but to go forth and hope. The one prediction I will make is that at some point someone will report that the use of VPNs has greatly increased in our state. It’s wild out there, y’all.

UPDATE: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Google searches for VPNs, or virtual private networks, surged Thursday in Texas after adult-entertainment site Pornhub — one of the world’s most-visited sites — cut off access to Lone Star State web surfers.

Death, taxes, and people finding a way to get their porn. God bless America.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Price tag for firefighter back pay revealed

From the inbox:

Mayor John Whitmire and the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association announced today a historic deal to end an eight-year impasse. The $650 million settlement to finally resolve the city’s looming liability addresses longstanding pay issues dating back to 2017 while also ensuring a five-year contract moving forward.

“I told the voters I would honor their decision to put public safety first and treat our brave paramedics and firefighters in the fair and equitable manner they deserve. I am proud to deliver on that promise,” said Mayor John Whitmire. “An agreement of this nature is absolutely necessary to recruit and retain firefighters in the quality and numbers needed to serve the largest city in Texas. I want to reiterate that it helps avoid further unnecessary litigation costs, the uncertainty of multiple decisions by a court or an arbitration panel, and allows us to move forward together.

The decision ensures fiscal responsibility while prioritizing fair compensation for vital public safety personnel. Judgment bonds, issued by the City of Houston, will cover the back pay owed to firefighters for the eight years they worked without a contract. This approach rectifies past grievances and safeguards the City’s financial stability by ensuring budgetary capacity for a new five-year contract with the competitive wages essential for firefighter recruitment and retention.

Per the settlement terms, all current firefighters, retired firefighters, and the families of firefighters who have died since 2017 will receive lump sum payments for the wages owed back to 2017. In addition to the back pay, the agreement makes permanent the temporary 18% pay increases awarded to firefighters in 2021 and mandates additional raises of 10% on July 1, 2024. With the subsequent pay hikes specified through 2029, total firefighter pay will increase by up to 34% over the life of the contract.

“This agreement is like none other we have ever seen, or perhaps will ever see and the best for the City to recruit and retain the necessary numbers for the quality fire department Houstonians deserve” said HPFFA President Patrick M. “Marty” Lancton. “It shows the impact of Mayor John Whitmire’s leadership and cooperation. The victory belongs to every Houston firefighter who has sacrificed for the last eight years. Let us remember the challenges we’ve overcome and the unity that has brought us to this resolution. Today, we stand on the brink of a new chapter that honors our hard work and dedication and ensures a brighter future for all of our brothers and sisters and their families.”

Firefighters will retain all existing benefits while gaining access to new incentives, assignment bonuses, holiday pay, and increased uniform allowances. The City and HPFFA agreed to new incentives to improve recruitment and retention of firefighters that is greatly needed. The contract also includes new provisions to facilitate the transfer of firefighters from other area departments, making the Houston Fire Department an attractive destination for top talent once again.

The agreement’s design carefully avoids the potential for costly budget ramifications and legal fees and expenses, which have been reported in the media and by third parties to be in the hundreds of millions and would spiral in the future.

This coming Monday, lawyers for the City and HPFFA will outline a proposed settlement and judgment for the judge overseeing the legal dispute.

See here for some background. The Chron story adds some words of concern from a former budget director who notes that there’s no fiscal plan attached to this. I’m sure one will follow, if nothing else City Council will need to know what it is. Look, I’m happy for the firefighters, who worked a long time for this, but the budget reality is what it is. I have no idea how Mayor Whitmire is going to make the math work. That’s his problem, but the effects of those decisions will be felt by all of us.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Nate Paul to finally serve that jail time for contempt

Sometimes you forget how slowly the wheels of justice can turn. And sometimes you’re reminded.

Also associates with known criminals

A real estate investor accused of bribing the Texas attorney general is facing jail time after the Texas Supreme Court denied his appeal of an order holding him in contempt for lying in court.

The state’s highest civil court narrowly denied Nate Paul’s petition in a 5-4 decision. Paul had been sentenced to 10 days in jail by a Travis County judge.

The Austin-based investor was central to the Texas House’s impeachment case against Attorney General Ken Paxton and was accused of offering him home renovations and other favors in exchange for legal help. Paxton was impeached last fall by the majority-Republican House but acquitted by the Senate.

Paul and Paxton are the targets of an FBI investigation launched in 2020 when Paxton’s aides went to local and federal authorities, claiming the third-term Republican abused his office and took bribes from Paul. A grand jury has reportedly been convened in San Antonio and called witnesses close to Paxton. Paxton has denied all wrongdoing.

Paul is also facing federal criminal prosecution for allegedly giving false statements to lenders and committing wire fraud and will face trial in November. He has pleaded not guilty.

[…]

“We are ecstatic,” said Ray Chester, a lawyer for the Roy F. & Joann Cole Mitte Foundation, an Austin-based nonprofit suing Paul for fraud in the underlying case. “We feel like justice prevailed.”

Travis County Judge Jan Soifer found that Paul had made unauthorized financial transfers despite a court order barring him from doing so; the order was meant to prevent him from moving or getting rid of assets to hide them from the court. Paul did not report the transfers and later lied about them, even when confronted with evidence of the accounts, according to a letter from the judge’s office.

See here for the previous update. As you can tell from its headline, I had thought then that Paul was already ticketed for the pokey, but he had one more appeal in him. Even now, he could petition the court to reconsider their ruling – it was 5-4 and the split was over a civil court imposing criminal contempt instead of handing it off to a prosecutor to pursue, so who knows, they might want to give it another look-see – so I might have to write another one of these posts at some undetermined date. For now I’m just going to note this for the record, wish Nate Paul a pleasant stay in the brig, and hope for the best. Oh, and if that grand jury would pick up the pace a little as well, that would be nice.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Scandalized! | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

January 2024 campaign finance reports – City of Houston

PREVIOUSLY:
State offices
Harris County offices
Senate
Congress

I did a lot of posting before now on the city finance reports, so it’s probably best to summarize:

8 Day reports for Mayoral candidates
30 Day reports – that post was for the At Large candidates but it links to the previous posts for other candidates
July 2023 reports – that was part 4 of 4, with links to the previous parts

On to the show. I didn’t upload the reports I examined this time, so go find them yourself at the city finance reports interface.


Name          Raised      Spent       Loan     On Hand
======================================================
Whitmire     790,007  1,195,804          0   2,532,778

Hollins       96,467    146,371          0     272,229

Ramirez       23,590     41,752     30,000       3,998
Davis          7,100      3,301      2,000       3,476
Carter         2,600     71,247      4,000       4,495
Plummer
Alcorn        16,361     80,619          0     132,395

Peck           8,450     11,685          0      43,718
Jackson       13,450     19,602          0      11,649
Kamin         19,335     69,609          0     210,264
E-Shabazz     21,925     34,624      1,500         634
Flickinger
Thomas        35,150     10,645          0     182,754
Huffman        9,310     62,823          0         385
Castillo      28,541     73,229     10,000       7,712
Martinez      19,185     30,384          0      62,946
Pollard       33,350     13,575     40,000   1,002,393
C-Tatum       15,500     28,854          0     223,718

Turner        47,651    237,025          0     575,759
Jackson Lee  109,567    369,999          0      90,805
Garcia       113,705    260,696          0       5,228
Khan           1,005     66,463      5,000           0
Gallegos          25      2,509          0     127,646
Edwards            0     53,950          0      16,191

Knox               0          0          0           0
Sanchez       19,883     43,369    198,128      10,415
Robinson           0      8,533          0     241,991

One thing to keep in mind here is that these reports cover different periods for different people. It all depends on what their path was in the 2023 election. Those who were in the December runoff had filed an 8-day report for that race, so the January report covers basically just December. Those who had at least one opponent in November but who won without needing a runoff filed an 8-day report for the November election, so their January reports cover the last two months. People who were unopposed in November or who were not on the ballot either due to term limits or dropping out of a race (e.g., Amanda Edwards) last filed in July, so this report covers the last six months. Clear? Good.

I have the totals here for all of the current city of Houston elected officials, plus various others of interest, mostly but not entirely from the Mayor’s race. I did not see reports from CM Fred Flickinger, CM Letitia Plummer, or mayoral candidate Lee Kaplan. As noted before, sometimes these get lost in the system and may turn up later. But as we’re now into March, I wouldn’t expect much.

Mayor Whitmire had a crap-ton of money going into this race, and still has a crap-ton left after spending over twelve million dollars, which is my eyeball total from all his reports; I didn’t post about the 8-day runoff report, but his is here and showed $1.7 million spent. It wasn’t that long ago that $12 million would have been a respectable amount to spend in a state race. He’s operating under campaign finance limits now, but don’t expect that to be too much of a hindrance – he raised that $790K in less than thirty days, after all. He’ll be north of $5 million before you know it, maybe in a year’s time. If anyone wants to challenge him in 2027, that’s the environment they’ll be getting into.

Sylvester Turner ends his time as Mayor with a bit more than a half million dollars still in the bank. He has some time to do something with all that, including use it to run for some other office, which I don’t expect him to do. The single best thing he could do is spend it this year helping Democrats win elections. Whoever is close enough to him to put that idea into his head, please do so. I presume Sheila Jackson Lee used some of that money in her primary against Amanda Edwards, but at this point that doesn’t matter. Someone recently asked me if I thought this would be her last term in Congress and my answer was an emphatic No. She’s going to be there until she loses or she decides to leave, and I don’t expect that to be any time soon.

Mike Knox is running for Sheriff, but he didn’t bring any financial resources with him to that race. Robert Gallegos was rumored to want to run for HD145 in this year’s primary but that didn’t happen. He may turn up somewhere another time. The same is true for David Robinson, but it’s not clear to me what other office out there is a good fit for him. You too can use your excess campaign money to help Democrats win this year, David! All the cool kids are doing it!

We return once again to the question of What Is Ed Pollard Doing With All That Money? Your guess is as good as mine. I hesitate to say this for fear of speaking it into existence, but I suppose one possibility is a run for County Judge next year. If he has any plans to run for something else, he’ll need to keep them to himself for the time being because of the resign-to-run requirements that came with the four-year terms on Council. The same is true for the other members of Council with six-figure balances. Everyone on that list except for new Controller Chris Hollins is now in their second and final term, so there’s also the option of running for Mayor in 2027. Let’s just say that’s getting waaaaaaaaaay ahead of ourselves and leave it at that.

That’s it for the 2023 finance reports. I would have preferred to publish this sooner but with all the primary stuff I never could fit it in. It’ll be time for the April reports for Congressional candidates before you know it, and we have the May elections and the primary runoffs as well. We’ll just keep moving on.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fifth Circuit mostly upholds that wingnut anti-birth control ruling

A tale as old as time, the Fifth Circuit doing terrible things.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law requiring parental consent to obtain contraception for minors.

The decision from a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New Orleans largely affirms a 2022 ruling from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, that ended one of the only avenues for Texas teens to confidentially obtain birth control, through federally funded family planning clinics. Since 1970, the federal Title X program has provided free contraception to anyone regardless of age, income or immigration status.

The 5th Circuit panel, which heard the case last year, found parental consent required for minors’ medical treatment under the Texas Family Code does not conflict with federal law that allows U.S. teens to obtain contraception confidentially at federally-funded family planning clinics.

“Moreover, Title X’s goal (encouraging family participation in teens’ receiving family planning services) is not undermined by Texas’s goal (empowering parents to consent to their teen’s receiving contraceptives),” wrote Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. “To the contrary, the two laws reinforce each other.”

The decision, from Duncan and Circuit Judges Priscilla Richman and Catharina Haynes, mostly affirms the findings by Kacsmaryk, who ruled that the Title X program violates parents’ rights and state and federal law. Texas law requires minors to get parental permission before obtaining medical treatment but Title X clinics were previously exempt from that law.

The case was filed by Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general, the legal architect behind the 2021 Texas law that banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy.

Mitchell represented Alexander Deanda, an Amarillo father who said he raised his three minor daughters in accordance with his Christian beliefs to abstain from premarital sex. Although Deanda didn’t show that his daughters obtained birth control without his consent, he still argued that the program violated his rights as a parent in Texas.

Under Title X, clinics are to “encourage family participation…to the extent practical.” Federal courts have repeatedly held that clinics cannot require parental consent.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys had argued in 2022 and again last year in New Orleans that Deanda had no standing to bring the case forward. The three-judge panel ruled Deanda did have standing because the program prevents him from exercising his parental rights to consent to his child’s medical care.

The three-judge panel did reverse part of Kacsmaryk’s ruling. The district judge had struck down a regulation that barred Title X-funded groups from notifying parents or obtaining consent. The 5th Circuit said it was too soon to rule on the new regulation.

[…]

The decision could have ripple effects across the country if other states adopt similar parental consent policies, said Lucie Arvallo, executive director of Jane’s Due Process, an organization that helps young people access abortions and contraceptives.

“We know from over two decades of working with teens that young people will frequently include parents in their reproductive health care decisions, but for some, parental involvement and legal decisions like this one are insurmountable barriers,” Arvallo said. “Teens should be able to access birth control, no matter their circumstances or where they live.”

Arvallo added that abortion rights groups will likely be hesitant to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2022 revoked a constitutional right to abortion. She said a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that affirms the 5th Circuit’s decision could decimate teen access to birth control nationwide.

See here, here, and here for the background. The ruling on standing makes me want to smash things. I am famously Not A Lawyer but even I know that you have to have suffered some kind of injury, or be in a position to be injured, in order to sue over something. This guy is just mad that his daughters had an option that he didn’t like, even though they never used it. By this same logic, he could have sued, say, the Bravo channel for running those filthy Real Housewives shows that he forbids his daughters from watching, because maybe they could secretly watch them at a friend’s house. How was this not clear-cut? I mean, surely there’s some other asshole control freak whose daughter did defy him to serve as a plaintiff. I’d say I don’t understand, but I understand all too well.

This is a reminder of two things. One, as I’ve said before and will keep saying, they’re coming for birth control. Both judge and lawyer in this case were key players in the mifepristone ruling, and you know they’ll be back for more. And two, as promising as that proposed rule change to stop judge-shopping may be, it can’t do anything about a lawless group of appellate judges who don’t care about facts or precedent. Until we take a broom to the Fifth Circuit, we’re still going to get plenty of shit legal rulings out here. Maybe there’s a chance we can do something about that after this election. But only if Biden wins, and not just him. There’s a lot to do this year. Law Dork goes deep into the opinion and its many troubling aspects, and the Chron and the Texas Signal have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Texas Medical Board may issue guidance on abortion exceptions

I trust you will forgive my skepticism about this.

The Texas Medical Board will consider language to clarify what qualifies as a medical exception to the state’s abortion laws at an upcoming March 22 board meeting. The meeting agenda was published in the Texas Register Thursday morning.

According to the medical board’s agenda, it will consider and take “possible action on rules regarding exceptions to the ban on abortions” at their upcoming meeting.

This comes after Texas attorneys and lobbyists Steve and Amy Bresnen filed a petition in January that asked the board to issue “clear guidance” about when an abortion is permitted under the law.

The Bresnens filed the petition, prompted by the Texas Supreme Court’s rejection of Kate Cox’s attempt to end her nonviable pregnancy last year. The Dallas woman had an abortion in another state after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that she did not qualify for a medical emergency abortion.

“We are hopeful that there is movement, and we know that this is just the first step in a long journey to justice,” Amy Bresnen said Thursday.

Texas laws ban nearly all abortions unless, “in the exercise of a reasonable medical judgment,” a doctor determines that the patient is experiencing “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

[…]

In a March 13 letter to the Bresnen’s obtained by The Texas Tribune, the board said they will consider the draft language proposed in the petition as well as alternate language.

In their January petition, the Bresnen’s also called on the board to identify steps doctors can take to ensure that their decisions meet legal standards for medical exceptions. The petition requested that the board ban complaints against doctors that are not supported by specific evidence proving that an abortion performed in Texas was illegal.

After draft language is considered, the board could publish a rule in the Texas Register regarding medical exceptions. There would be a 30-day public comment period to follow, ahead of a final rule.

See here and here for some background. I appreciate the effort – Lord knows, we’ve got to try to do what we can to improve the situation here – but it is still the case that no one has addressed the question of whether Ken Paxton will abide by these guidelines or not. The TMB can say what they want, they can go through the entire rigamarole and scrupulously document everything and follow existing law and precedent to the letter, and Ken Paxton can and in my opinion will say “Nice try, chumps, but the law on abortion is what I say it is, and I say it’s always illegal and anyone who wants to challenge that is going to get their ass into a ton of trouble”. Does anyone seriously doubt this?

And then I will say to the Bresnens what I’ve been saying to other Republicans who have been steamrolled by the Abbott/Paxton/theocrat machine: What are you going to do about that? Are you going to roll over and take it, or are you going to try to beat them at the ballot box in 2026? Maybe you see another way forward, but I sure don’t. And don’t wait for 2026, there’s lots to be done for this year, too.

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More on HISD’s enrollment decline

Still worrisome.

HISD reported an enrollment of about 183,900 in late October, a drop of more than 6,000 students since the 2022-23 school year and more than 30,000 students since the 2016-17 school year, when the district hit a 10-year peak of 216,106 students.

While annual enrollment data counts the number of students in a district on the last Friday of October, membership data reflects the number of students enrolled in the district on a specific day who have attended at least one day of school. HISD, for example, had 183,439 students attending school Feb. 23, a nearly 3% decline from the previous year.

Families appear to be fleeing to suburban districts, private and charter schools, and even homeschooling. Coupled with lower birth rates, most urban school systems across the U.S. have seen declines, and the National Center for Education Statistics projects that 2 million fewer students will be enrolled in American public schools through 2030.

However, Duncan Klussmann, an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Houston, said the state takeover may be expediting declines in HISD.

State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles implemented the New Education System, a controversial whole-scale systemic reform, at 85 schools that largely serve Black, Hispanic and low-income students — this year to attempt to improve student outcomes. The reform model includes a standardized curriculum, timed lessons, daily quizzes in core classes, less autonomy and a zero-tolerance policy for classroom disruptions.

NES “is a very different model, and so not every parent wants their child in that model,” Klussmann said. “There are many parents who are very happy with the model, but there may be parents who do not want their children in that type of model, and I think those parents are questioning if they stay in the system or if they should seek out alternatives.”

Even parents whose children attend high-performing schools have expressed concern about the constant changes and cuts that have come during Miles’ reign. The instability has made them question whether HISD is still the right fit for their families.

Miles said he’s not that worried about the district’s enrollment decline. Instead, he said he’s concerned with making sure that the district’s schools are providing the best education possible, which he believes will eventually lead to more students enrolling in the district.

“You’re gonna see over time that we’re gonna run effective schools,” Miles said. “We’re gonna make education meaningful (by) getting ready for the year 2035. I think that’s gonna bring up enrollment.”

Well, I’m certainly glad that Mike Miles isn’t losing any sleep over this. I don’t know how much of the latest decline is part of the overall trend, which includes a declining birthrate and other demographic issues, and how much is attributable to the chaos that has been post-takeover HISD. I’m sure that the latter is greater than zero, however. And I’m also sure that the potential for long-term damage could well be greater than whatever educational gains we might get out of this. I’ve been worried from the beginning that some uncomfortably large number of people will just decide that they don’t want to deal with HISD, regardless of any improved academic performances. Nothing in this story reassures me about that.

One more thing.

According to Houston Public Media, Miles said in a statement that he was outraged by the publication of the list and that he would order “an independent investigation into the source of this information.”

“It is irresponsible and unethical, and the HISD community and the Chronicle’s readers deserve better,” Miles wrote.

He then sent an email to the principals about the leak, suggesting legal action against the Chronicle.

“We are investigating the release of the names, and we have asked the Chronicle to take the names down or face legal action from us,” Miles wrote to principals.

The Houston Chronicle took down the list, saying it had received a tip that some names may have been mistakenly included in the distribution.

The newspaper did not provide a response or comment on Miles’ criticism, and HISD did not respond to Houston Public Media’s question about what specific law the administration believes the Chronicle may have violated.

“While we are pleased the Chronicle has removed the list from its story, it does not change the fact that its publication has already adversely impacted good people,” Miles said. “The Chronicle violated these employees’ rights by publishing this information and inaccurately characterizing them as low performers.”

What a blowhard and a bully. Again, even if he does the things he says he wants to do, I fear the collateral damage. We can’t be rid of this guy quickly enough.

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There may finally be some resistance to judge-shopping in federal courts

Good news.

The Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for federal courts, announced Tuesday that it would take action against the judge-shopping that has let right-wing litigants funnel cases to friendly, often Donald Trump-appointed judges.

“The policy addresses all civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, ‘whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief,’” the conference said in a press release. “In such cases, judges would be assigned through a district-wide random selection process.”

It will apply to “cases involving state or federal laws, rules, regulations, policies, or executive branch orders.”

For the past few years, those who want to challenge Biden administration policies have often sought out divisions with one or two ideologically-aligned judges, all but guaranteeing their desired outcome. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, most infamous for his ruling against the abortion drug mifepristone, has become the poster boy for this practice.

Kacsmaryk and his ilk have worsened the problem with their willingness to hand down nationwide relief, rather than narrowing it to the plaintiffs before them. This dynamic vests one district judge with enormous power to dictate federal authority, shutting down policies irksome to right-wing plaintiffs as the cases work their way through the courts.

For experts who have been pounding the alarm on judge-shopping, Tuesday’s announcement came as a welcome surprise.

“I’m absolutely delighted that courts have recognized the importance of this issue,” Amanda Shanor, assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told TPM. “They appear to have adopted a policy that will address some of the major, most egregious and troublesome forms of judge shopping.”

But even evangelists of judge-shopping reform had some reservations about the press release, which did not link to any policy text and was devoid of details, including about how it would be enforced.

The Judicial Conference did not immediately respond to TPM’s questions about policy text. Judge Jeffrey Sutton, Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, said in a Tuesday press conference that a memo would be circulated to federal judges by the end of the week with final text expected to be published in a few months, per Courthouse News.

The Judicial Conference usually puts out recommendations for lower courts to follow; some experts were unsure whether it has the authority to enforce something more binding.

“The real question is whether the statutes authorize the Judicial Conference itself to promulgate this rule, as distinguished from recommending to the judicial councils of the circuits that they promulgate a rule,” Arthur Hellman, a professor emeritus and expert in federal courts at the University of Pittsburgh’s school of law, told TPM.

Still a lot of details to work out and it’s not clear what the timeline is, but anything that allows for fewer cases to automatically go to Ken Paxton’s favorite judges is a good thing. There’s still the huge issue of the Fifth Circuit’s lawlessness, but that’s going to have to be addressed by Congress. That’s a matter for another post. For now, let’s hope this goes as far as possible. Kevin Drum has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Could San Antonio support an MLB team?

As you may have heard, Major League Baseball is starting to talk about expansion, potentially adding two more teams in the next few years. San Antonio is on the list of possible destinations for MLB, sometimes paired with Austin, which helps them from a population perspective but seems to ignore the distance and horrible traffic between those cities.

Be that as it may, San Antonio is being talked about, and that’s always a good thing. But how realistic is it all? Maybe not so much, at least not yet.

San Antonio sports commentator Mike Jimenez drew a flurry of online criticism for saying San Antonio will have trouble landing another professional sports team because the city is “poor” and “lacks visionaries.”

The comment came during an episode of the Alamo City Sportscast, a podcast during which he and co-host Joe Garcia discussed a recent ESPN article ranking the San Antonio-Austin region among the top contenders to land an MLB expansion team.

“San Antonio does nothing big,” Jimenez said. “There’s not one visionary in San Antonio. I guess probably the biggest visionary we’ve had over the years is [former Mayor] Henry Cisneros.”

Garcia also said San Antonio remains a low-income city, adding that a MLB expansion team is far more likely to end up in Austin than here.

While Jimenez and Garcia caught flak for their blunt talk about the Alamo City, some scholars said their assessment is pretty close. Others, however, said the metro area’s brisk growth and its hunger for sports may outshine its lack of financial heft.

“Not only is San Antonio poor relative to its neighbors, especially in this case Austin, but San Antonio is the seventh-largest city by population and is still only the 31st-largest media market,” said Char Miller, a professor at California’s Pomona College who’s written extensively about the history of San Antonio.

“[San Antonio] is a big place, but it can’t generate the advertising and ratings necessary to support major league teams,” Miller added.

[…]

In 2022, 18.7% of San Antonio’s 1.4 million residents lived in poverty, according to the latest American Community Survey. The Census Bureau defines poverty as an individual earning less than $13,590 or a family of four earning less than $29,960.

For reference, Dallas’ poverty rate was 17.8%, and Austin’s was only 11%, according to the survey.

San Antonio’s residents earn considerably less than their counterparts in other Texas cities.

Workers in the San Antonio metro brought home $27.90 an hour on average last year – $3.37 less than the average hourly wage in Texas and far less than the national average of $33.22 an hour — according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

So, when Jimenez and Garcia say that San Antonio is poor, they’re not lying. And that’s a real hindrance to professional sports leagues, according to Pomona College’s Miller.

“One of the issues [of being poor] is having fewer television sets,” Miller said. “In a place like San Antonio, which is soccer-mad, there is not a Major League Soccer team. That’s pretty astonishing until you question how that team would generate off-field income, and television is the key there.”

Miller also said San Antonio’s lackluster airport with few direct non-stop flights, especially when compared to DFW International or Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport, poses another hindrance.

“That also becomes problematic in trying to think about the nature of an economy, which is both about transportation, corporate presence and television,” Miller said. “It’s hard to imagine how San Antonio pulls itself out of that hole, which is largely, but not exclusively, of its own making.”

There’s more, so go read the rest. If you’ve read this blog for awhile, you may recall that Char Miller was one of my history professors at Trinity, and he’s written extensively about San Antonio’s history. I’m not sure who Houston’s counterpart to him is. It’s not all gloom and doom for San Antonio, which is a growing city and likely to remain on the radar for major sports teams in the future. But maybe its time isn’t now. Read the rest and see what you think.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of March 11

The Spherical Armadillos is the name of the Texas Progressive Alliance’s next band, and this is the Texas Progressive Alliance’s next weekly roundup.

Continue reading

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Nikki Haley’s best counties

Both Stace and I have noted the handful of counties in which President Biden underperformed in the primary election. That led me to wonder what the analogous situation was like on the Republican side. Where did Nikki Haley overperform her 17.43% total? A little copy-and-paste into Excel, and we get some answers:


County       Haley% Uncom%  Trump%
==================================
Travis       35.82%  1.99%  58.70%
Dallas       28.86%  1.78%  66.27%
Jeff Davis   25.76%  4.77%  66.77%
Collin       24.74%  2.25%  69.75%
Tarrant      23.58%  0.76%  72.97%
Williamson   23.57%  1.81%  71.31%
Brazos       22.40%  2.66%  69.20%
Hays         22.30%  1.31%  71.08%
Denton       21.85%  2.03%  73.06%
Bexar        21.81%  1.20%  74.28%
Harris       19.73%  1.76%  75.66%
Taylor       19.55%  4.42%  72.67%
Fort Bend    19.17%  1.91%  75.15%
McLennan     18.82%  2.50%  74.88%
Rockwall     18.32%  3.08%  75.30%
Kendall      18.25%  1.64%  77.25%
Bell         17.98%  2.97%  75.68%
Llano        17.86%  2.46%  77.09%
Nacogdoches  17.38%  4.19%  74.90%
Comal        17.33%  1.52%  78.93%
Lubbock      17.24%  1.39%  78.40%

Couple things to note: One is that there were a bunch of other Republicans on the ballot, because our filing deadline was last December and basically no one had dropped out yet and those who did drop out at a later date generally did so after the statutory deadline to be removed from the ballot. So several other names, from Meatball Ron to Chris Christie to Vivek whatshisname to that guy from Arkansas, plus two other dudes I guarantee you’ve never heard of, were all on there. None of them got enough votes to bother with, but if you’re wondering why the rows don’t add to 100%, that’s the reason. Two, “Uncommitted” was also on the ballot, and it finished third overall. Yep, 1.96% of the primary voters who cast a vote in that contest said “nah, none of these jokers”.

I almost didn’t include Jeff Davis County because there were only 629 total votes there, but I figured I’d have had to footnote its exclusion if I did that, so may as well just leave it in. Every other county besides Llano (6,460 votes) and Nacogdoches (9,689) had at least 10K ballots cast, so we can call them all reasonably interesting.

In looking at this list, I don’t suppose I’m surprised that it’s the big urban and suburban counties that dominate it. We know who Trump supporters are for the most part, and we know what the dwindling base of anti-Trump Republicans look like: urban/suburban educated professionals, etc etc etc. I suppose it would have been a shock to see smaller rural counties on this list; other than those three I mentioned, they’re all either their own metro area (Taylor County is Abilene) or proximate to one. There are of course urban/suburban areas in which Haley didn’t do better than her average – Nueces County is the first big area farther down the list, followed later by Galveston and Montgomery and the rest. I’m sure one can come up with reasonable guesses as to why this one is and that one isn’t.

I have to think that this list provides some opportunity for Democrats, in that at least some Haley supporters ought to be woo-able. My eyes particularly fall on Collin and Tarrant, given the other business we have in those counties. I hope the Colin Allred campaign is thinking about this, because the Biden campaign is unlikely to spend any money here and I don’t know what other resources there may be. If you know a friendly billionaire or two I could talk to about this, please let me know.

The bottom of this list, where Haley did the worst and Trump the best, is filled with smaller counties as you’d expect. Webb County (6.75% for Haley) is the first place with 100K or more total voters, though only 4,519 there cast a ballot in this race. Liberty County (6.80% for Haley) is the first place with at least 10K votes cast, and the next with that many votes is Parker (9.08% for Haley). You have to go all the way up to Parker County (13.53% for Haley; it’s just west of Tarrant and home to Weatherford) to crack 20K votes cast. As for “Uncommitted”, the following counties had at least five percent of voters peace out like that:

Crosby – 5.22%
Deaf Smith – 5.26%
Bee – 5.45%
Refugio – 5.83%
Dawson – 7.05%
Loving – 7.45%

All small places, with Loving (94 total votes, of which 7 were Uncommitted) of course being the smallest. Hope you enjoyed this.

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SB4 remains on hold

Fine by me. No rush.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday further delayed a new Texas law empowering state authorities to arrest and deport migrants that would transform immigration enforcement long left to the federal government.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an administrative stay set to expire Wednesday until Monday at 4 p.m., giving the Supreme Court more time to consider whether to stop the law, known as Senate Bill 4, from taking effect at all as the ongoing legal battle between the Biden administration and the state plays out.

Texas argued in new filings this week that the high court should let the law take effect while the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals weighs legal arguments against it. The appeals court has a hearing scheduled next month.

“Texas is the nation’s first-line defense against transnational violence and has been forced to deal with the deadly consequences of the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the border,” the state argued.

Meanwhile, the law drew a fresh legal challenge Wednesday as immigrant rights groups sued on behalf of four Texas residents who could face arrest and removal under the law.

The lawsuit, the first filed by individuals who could be targeted under Senate Bill 4, argues the law deprives them of the rights and protections afforded by the federal immigration system, including the right to seek asylum and withholding of removal. The individual plaintiffs are unnamed, but they include a Harris County resident who is a lawful permanent resident from Honduras and was granted a visa as a victim of human trafficking.

See here and here for some background. This is just procedural, it’s SCOTUS saying they ain’t ready to do whatever they’re going to do just yet. They’ll get to this sooner or later, probably not much later.

Here’s some more info on that new lawsuit.

As the current case plays out, a separate lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Austin that also seeks to halt SB4.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, and the National Immigration Law Center said Tuesday they have filed suit on behalf of four immigrants and current Texas residents who could be subject to arrest under the law. The border-based non-profit organization, La Unión del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, is also a plaintiff.

The lawsuit alleges that the four plaintiffs and some additional members of LUPE have pathways or pending applications with the Biden administration that could grant them legal status and eventual citizenship.

“Even so, under Texas’ new law, these individuals are subject to state criminal charges and a state judge’s order that they return to the country from which they entered,” a press release announcing the new lawsuit states.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include two immigrants who have pending applications under the Violence Against Women Act, one who received Temporary Protective Status and another who was granted a specialty visa called a T visa. The T visa is given to some victims of human trafficking who have cooperated with law enforcement.

“SB 4 further prevents federal officials from making decisions that are exclusively within their authority and deprives individuals of the rights and protections afforded by the federal immigration system,” the lawsuit states. The lawsuit names Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw as defendants.

The district attorneys of Bastrop, Harris, McLennan and Hidalgo counties are also named as defendants as the four individual plaintiffs reside in those respective counties.

I don’t know enough about this to comment, but I think the original lawsuit should succeed on the merits, so I’m happy for there to be more than one argument for that. We’ll see what happens.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How about a pilotless air taxi?

Those are coming, too. Not as quickly and with fewer details now available, but it’s out there.

Advanced Air Mobility company Wisk agreed to a deal with Sugar Land last week to bring pilotless air taxis to the Houston area.

The company hasn’t finalized its first launch city, according to its website, but aims to have its first passenger taxi operational before 2030.

The partnership has Wisk setting up the foundation for a network of air taxis through the Houston area. The company and city will identify and develop land at Sugar Land Regional Airport for the landing and taking-off of the Wisk air taxis.

“The Greater Houston area is experiencing some of the highest population growth in the country, which calls for new and efficient ways to move across the region,” Wisk CEO Brian Yutko said in a statement. “Sugar Land’s strategic location within the Greater Houston region, and its forward-thinking city leadership, make it an ideal partner for us and one that is uniquely positioned as an early leader in the launch of air taxi services.”

Wisk was founded in 2010. It is a subsidiary of Boeing.

My earlier post about flying taxis in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup was for taxis that included pilots. There’s more about this innovation here, and that embedded Chron story from August, which I must have missed at the time, talks about flying taxi service to and from destinations other than the airport, like the Medical Center or the Galleria.

Which makes sense. Both of those are in demand and a nightmare to drive into. Transit is an option – I take the light rail to the Medical Center if at all possible; with the completion of the Uptown Line and the eventual construction of the Inner Katy Line, there will be BRT to the Galleria at some point – but not for everyone. I would presume that there will be room for the air taxis to take off and land in these places as well, perhaps on available rooftops. But what about at the other end of those trips? I mean, I can’t imagine having an air taxi come to your house to pick you up or drop you off. If the idea is that there will be designated locations for flying taxi boardings, then there’s still a last mile problem – you have to get there and either be dropped off/picked up in a car or park your own car there. That’s going to make this more expensive for everyone. I haven’t seen any discussion of this as yet, so maybe I’m overlooking some obvious solution. If so, I can’t wait to see what it is.

And speaking of cost, all these stories compare the price of these air taxi rides to Uber Black. (I missed that in the previous post.) The August Chron story quotes someone saying that’s about four bucks a mile; I checked the cost of an Uber Black from my house to IAH for a Monday morning and it was about $100, so that checks out. But that doesn’t factor in any costs of getting to and/or parking at the designated taxis stops. So who knows.

All of this is still kind of pie in the sky. Let’s see if this really is a thing in 2026 for the World Cup, and we’ll go from there. Does this sound more or less enticing than pilot-driven air taxis to you?

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On the Ogg loss

I have three things to say about this.

Kim Ogg

Kim Ogg’s campaign for a third term as Harris County district attorney suffered a blowout loss in the Democratic primary election on Tuesday. In the final election night tally, challenger Sean Teare had a 50 percentage point lead over the incumbent — a stunning margin backed up by several possible explanations.

Conceding the race Tuesday night and without naming names, Ogg attributed her loss to the fact she “had made some powerful enemies for all the right reasons.” In the final days of the primary, she sharply criticized her opponent for accepting over $700,000 from left-leaning billionaire George Soros, who supported her in previous election cycles.

Teare had also garnered the local support of County Judge Lina Hidalgo, County Commissioner Rodney Ellis and former Mayor Sylvester Turner ahead of the primary.

Ogg further explained that doing her job had cost her the job. She received criticism from within her party for embarking on the prosecution of three former Hidalgo employees in connection with a vaccine outreach contract.

Those cases were stuck in neutral for over a year; however, the Texas Rangers issued search warrants in November indicating they were expanding their investigation.

Ogg has maintained that she was just following the law by investigating Hidalgo’s employees.

But Teare supporters pointed to Ogg herself as the reason for the wide margin.

“She was our biggest help, honestly,” said Rebecca Shukla, a local Democratic Party precinct chair who signed a petition last fall to admonish Ogg.

[…]

Shukla said she’d watched Ogg’s support among Democrats wane since her first election in 2016, but for her, a turning point came in 2022, when she and other party organizers were fighting to get Hidalgo reelected. Shukla worried that Democrats’ local gains in recent years could all be rolled back.

“Kim Ogg contributed to the potential that it could all go back because she didn’t support Lina. She was actively fighting against her, which basically meant our whole ticket here in Harris County,” Shukla said. “Here we are knocking doors, out there in the heat and she’s just making it harder.”

Ogg had repeatedly accused Democrats on Commissioners Court of “defunding” her department. In October 2022, shortly before voting started in Hidalgo’s reelection bid, Ogg and other law enforcement officials packed Commissioners Court in a dramatic display of support for increases to their budgets.

Ogg’s lack of support for other party members was top of mind when a group of precinct chairs put forth a resolution last fall for the party to formally admonish her.

“People didn’t like how she weaponized her office to go after people within the party,” said Daniel Cohen, a precinct chair and organizer who supported the resolution, which ultimately passed by a wide margin in December.

Until that point, the grievances listed in the resolution had been open secrets, Cohen said.

“It was just a matter of the public starting to actually discuss it,” Cohen said.

Cohen rejects the idea that Ogg’s loss can be chalked up to “powerful enemies” like Soros.

“When she says ‘powerful people beat me,’ I think it’s hilarious,” Cohen said, instead attributing the outcome to the many grassroots supporters who put in the work to elect Teare. “I look at the pictures (of organizers) and I’m like, they are powerful, but they’re not what you think. It shows you that people can be powerful. People can hold their own elected officials accountable.”

The progressive political group Texas Organizing Project also claims credit for the massive win: TOP’s field organizers say they knocked on more than 94,000 doors across Harris County to support Teare.

In 2016, the group had mobilized for Ogg, working to flip the seat held by a Republican. But the group’s leaders felt she no longer represented their values and switched sides this election cycle.

“Sean Teare knows the Harris County DA’s office is in need of a course correction, and he’s a leader who will gain community input to make that happen,” TOP Board President Doshie Piper said in a statement in February when the organization endorsed Teare. “While Kim Ogg wastes county residents’ time and taxpayer dollars on petty political vendettas, Sean is ready to get to work, restore trust with the public, and implement lasting, humane legal reforms.”

Before I continue, as a matter of full disclosure, I’m a Democratic precinct chair, Rebecca and Daniel are friends of mine, I attended the meeting where the resolution to admonish Ogg was passed but did not vote on it. I’ve also had a very cordial relationship with Kim Ogg going back to her first run for DA in 2014. I have many feelings about this race and how we got here, and one of them is sadness that it came to this.

With that said…

1. I don’t think this story captured just how remarkable Ogg’s loss was. The two-term incumbent, who won without a runoff in 2020 against three opponents, got fewer votes and a lower percentage than the opponents to County Attorney Christian Menefee and Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, none of whom had any money or name ID. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of an equivalent election result. It’s mind-boggling.

2. To me, the concerns started with Ogg’s seemingly sudden opposition to the misdemeanor bail reform settlement, which was a direct result of the Democratic wave of 2018 that not only swept out all of the Republican judges that opposed the idea but also installed a Democratic majority on Commissioners Court, which then authorized the settlement as the new Democratic judges asked to drop their defense. A huge amount of Democratic energy went into the fight for that settlement, much of which was expressed in the 2018 campaign. That could have been overcome, but the criticism that Ogg subsequently made of the settlement and the Democratic judges, much of which closely echoed Republican criticism and often sounded like what Judge Hidalgo’s opponent in 2022 was saying (I refuse to name her any more if I don’t have to), really got the most stalwart party members angry. It wasn’t just about the disagreement. It was the way it was expressed, and the timing of it, and the stakes involved.

3. Again, I think all of this could have been overcome. There are plenty of policy differences within the party, and we muddle through them most of the time. The animosity between Ogg and Judge Hidalgo, who as the story notes is extremely popular among Democrats, could have been overcome – we don’t all have to like each other as long as we’re all moving in more or less the same direction. The case against the former Hidalgo employees, which are more technical violation than anything lurid and which maybe isn’t a slam dunk as a criminal case, didn’t even have to be a breaking point. But given all of the other things, it sure seems like maybe Ogg and her office shouldn’t have been the ones to pursue it. She could have handed it off to a special prosecutor, or asked another DA like Fort Bend County’s to handle the case. That would have allowed for the process to play out without the insinuation of political motives or payback or whatever.

Basically, there wasn’t any one thing that led to this result. It was a combination of a lot of things, built up over time. There were opportunities to avoid a lot of the problems and maybe turn down the heat, but they didn’t happen. And so here we are. Whatever else we get from Sean Teare, the favorite to be the next District Attorney of Harris County, I hope he has paid attention to all of that.

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Judge puts brakes on Paxton’s attack against Annunciation House

Good.

Attorney General Ken Paxton “acted without regard to due process and fair play” in seeking to shut down a leading migrant service provider, an El Paso judge said Monday in a ruling that blocks the state’s efforts for now.

“The Attorney General’s efforts to run roughshod over Annunciation House, without regard to due process or fair play, call into question the true motivation for the Attorney General’s attempt to prevent Annunciation House from providing the humanitarian and social services that it provides. There is a real and credible concern that the attempt to prevent Annunciation House from conducting business in Texas was predetermined,” 205th District Judge Francisco Dominguez said in his ruling.

Dominguez said Annunciation House’s petition for declaratory judgment means the case is governed by the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, which essentially blocks any action by Paxton until the court reviews the case.

The judge denied motions from Annunciation House to issue a temporary injunction or quash the attorney general’s request to examine its documents. But his ruling saying the case is subject to court rules has a similar effect of blocking further action in the case until Dominguez can review arguments about the constitutionality of Paxton’s request.

The Texas Rules of Civil Procedure provide a timeline on the production of documents in a civil lawsuit.

Ruben Garcia, the founder and director of Annunciation House, said he was grateful for the judge’s ruling. He said Paxton’s actions could threaten businesses across Texas.

“It kind of sends a shiver through all incorporated entities in the state of Texas, because people are going to ask, does this mean that the attorney general feels that they have the authority to arrive at any institution, any business, any entity, and just walk up and say, we are submitting a request to examine. And I think that’s a really fundamental question about whether that’s a way to function,” Garcia said.

Paxton’s office has not responded to a request for comment.

In his order, Dominguez said he would schedule a hearing on motions from the attorney general that essentially say its actions regarding Annunciation House aren’t subject to his review.

See here, here, and here for some background. The Trib explained one part of this a little more clearly to me:

Annunciation House had asked Dominguez to determine if it was obligated to release the documents Paxton’s office requested. In his ruling, Dominguez said Paxton’s office must go through the state’s court system if it wants to investigate the nonprofit.

“Both the Attorney General and Annunciation House are now obliged to litigate this matter within the guidelines set forth by the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, created to ensure fair play between litigants,” Dominguez wrote.

So Paxton can still pursue an investigation into whatever fever dream charges he may have in mind, but he can’t just demand that Annunciation House produce every document they’ve ever touched by noon tomorrow or he’ll shut them down. He has to ask and a judge gets to rule on what is in scope and what the timeline for producing it all should be, and so on. Annunciation House had already been producing documents for him, it was precisely the bull rush that had caused them to sue in the first place. I hope this will at least take some air out of whatever he’s doing, but if it does that won’t be forever. Not as long as there’s a pliant wingnut Legislature waiting in the wings to change the laws in Paxton’s favor.

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A closer look at Colony Ridge

There have been problems for awhile. Not the kind of problems that got the wingnuts all frothed up, but problems nonetheless.

When the fast-growing Colony Ridge development outside Houston became a fixation of right-wing media last year, Texas’ Republican leaders called for swift action.

The 33,000-acre development had been painted by conservative influencers, outlets and think tanks as a destination for thousands of immigrants in the country illegally and a hub for drug cartel activity. Gov. Greg Abbott publicly worried it was a “no-go zone” and directed legislators to craft new laws about “public safety, security, environmental quality, and property ownership in areas like the Colony Ridge development.”

Records obtained by Houston Landing and The Texas Tribune, however, show at least three state agencies were warned about other potential problems with the development years earlier. Residents sent state agencies more than five dozen complaints about Colony Ridge and its marketing arm, Terrenos Houston, from 2016 to 2023.

Yet, the state has few, if any, results to show.

Instead, the federal government stepped in with enforcement action, painting a different picture of the development’s problems. In a December lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department alleged the Colony Ridge’s developer duped thousands of Latino buyers with a scheme that violates federal consumer protections and fair housing practices, while ruining their dreams of homeownership.

Thousands of Colony Ridge buyers defaulted on their loans, losing their land and nascent investments, according to the federal government. The company is accused of repeating that process — often exploiting language barriers — by reselling the land to new, unsuspecting customers.

Those findings mirror a Houston Landing investigation that found Colony Ridge had reacquired 45 percent of the 35,000-plus properties it had sold since 2012. The company’s practices raised concerns of a predatory lending scheme, experts told the Landing, which published the report in December, days before the Justice Department announced its lawsuit.

At least 27 complaints sent to three Texas state agencies since 2019 previously were unreported. They raise new questions about how Texas state leaders last fall failed to publicly identify the residents of the development as potential victims of predatory lending practices instead of villains trying to take over the country.

“Gov. Abbott and the Texas GOP spent months fearmongering about the immigrants living in Colony Ridge,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio. “Their concern should have been with the developers exploiting Latino families trying to achieve the American dream of owning a home.”

[…]

Sisters SuEllen and Keilah Sanchez say they bought eight pieces of land from Colony Ridge with hopes they could help their family.

Their excitement soon crumbled.

They say Colony Ridge lied to them about flooding and utility hook-ups, gave them incorrect tax documents and took money before accusing them of missing payments and filing for foreclosure.

The federal government also has accused Colony Ridge of misrepresenting facts — such as guarantees of water, electricity and sewer hook-ups, “causing borrowers to incur substantial unanticipated expenses after closing.”

SuEllen Sanchez filed a complaint with the state’s Department of Savings and Mortgage Lending, which investigates some mortgage-related complaints. Her complaint was forwarded to the attorney general’s office, according to a letter a DSML investigator sent Sanchez in August 2021.

The sisters say they didn’t hear from the attorney general’s office until September 2023, two years later.

By then, Colony Ridge had become a talking point for state lawmakers and national right-wing media. The attorney general’s office received an average of 33,000 consumer complaints each of the last five years, according to caseload statistics from the office.

The sister’s complaints were among 69 sent to the state about Colony Ridge or its marketing arm, Terrenos Houston.

Forty-two of those complaints went to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, several of them alleging raw sewage discharges and violations of proper construction procedures. The federal government also accused Colony Ridge of causing raw sewage to run through and around some customers’ land.

The environmental agency did take some action against Colony Ridge in response to several early 2020 complaints of stormwater runoff from five sections of the development filling nearby creeks and ditches with pollutants. Colony Ridge’s leadership agreed to pay a $23,280 penalty that could rise to $29,100 if the company failed to improve its stormwater runoff monitoring, according to a TCEQ commissioners order dated Aug. 1, 2022.

See here for more on the federal lawsuit. There’s a lot more in the story, including a bit on a local official who appears to have been the source of the “illegal immigrant” hysteria, so go read the rest. You can also listen to this CityCast Houston podcast episode about the story, which gives you the flavor of it. The TCEQ was the only stat agency to be at all responsive to the residents; the fine they levied was chump change, but at least it was something. The federal lawsuit is likely to take a long time to resolve even if a settlement is reached. I’ll keep an eye on it.

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

There’s only one way forward after this primary

The worst people you know had a very good week last week. It’s likely to get better for them after the runoffs. These headlines capture the essence of it:

‘Disastrous’: A shaken Texas House prepares for rightward shift after record GOP primary upsets

Amid white supremacist scandal, far-right billionaire powerbrokers see historic election gains in Texas

A House Defeated? Abbott, Paxton, Patrick Bag Rebellious State Legislators

The Far Right in Texas Crashed Through Its Last Guardrail

Read ’em if you want, but you get the idea just from the headlines. The next legislative session is going to be worse than you can imagine, and that’s after the multiple disasters we’ve already lived through. It’s going to be so, so bad.

There is one thing we can do to mitigate this, at least a little. That’s to flip a few State House seats, to reduce the Republican advantage and to maybe send a message that there is such a thing as going too far to the right. I have no illusions about this being easy. We face a lot of obstacles, starting with the gerrymandered map, and we don’t have anything like the political machine the Republicans and their theocrat enablers have built. What we have is a mission, and more than a little desperation to fuel it. At least there will be a well-funded Senate campaign hopefully pushing things in a good direction.

There are also some legitimate targets. That gerrymandered map drew a lot of Republican-friendly districts, but a fair amount of them are more of a red-tinged purple than actually red. That includes some districts in which quasi-normie legislators were ousted in favor of true wackos. I’ve reviewed what the legislative pickup opportunities are before, and now I’m going to go back to that list and point them out for this context. The rest is up to us. Note that while I’ve included one from the Houston area, these are all outside Harris County. Our best opportunity here is HD138, and while Jared Woodfill losing in the primary is good news from the perspective of humanity and decency, it’s bad news from an electoral perspective.

Be that as it may, here are the main districts of interest. Do with them what you will.

HD14 53.8-43.5 for Trump in 2020. Open seat following the retirement of Rep. John Raney. Fred Medina is the Democrat. I found this interview he did if you want to learn more.

HD26 54.8-43.7 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Rep. Jacey Jetton was ousted in the primary for the sin of voting to impeach Ken Paxton. This is in Fort Bend, and Daniel Lee is back for another run at it.

HD37 50.6-48.4 for Biden in 2020, flipped to the Republicans in 2022 after the Dem incumbent left for a run at Eddie Lucio’s Senate seat. The Republican incumbent is Janie Lopez. There’s a Dem runoff for the primary so we don’t know who the opponent will be just yet.

HD52 51.0-46.7 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Caroline Harris Davila flipped the seat in 2022 after it was redrawn to be redder; this is Rep. James Talarico’s former district. Jennie Birkholz is the Dem challenger.

HD54 52.4-45.5 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Brad Buckley was the House Public Ed Chair in 2023, and tried to thread a needle on vouchers, with no success. I suspect the next Speaker will install a voucher minion in 2025, and who knows, maybe Buckley will revert back to being a voucher opponent as a result. Whatever the case, HD54 has been a fringe Dem pickup opportunity since at least 2016, even post-redistricting, though Dems have never seriously contested it. Dawn Richardson is this year’s candidate.

HD55 53.8-43.9 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Rep. Hugh Shine has been a wingnut target in the past though they left him alone in 2022, but this time they got him. That makes this seat, located in Central Texas, perhaps more flippable than it would be otherwise. We’ll see what Jennifer Lee can do with it.

HD61 53.0-45.8 for Trump in 2020. One-term incumbent Rep. Frederick Frazier is in the runoff after finishing second with 32% of the vote. He’s had some legal issues, so perhaps a loss here will make this seat safer for Republicans than if he wins. I’m including it anyway, as it’s still reasonably tight and it’s in Collin County, where a lot of these opportunities are and where the trends have been pretty blue in recent years. Here’s hoping they give Tony Adams a boost.

HD63 52.0-46.4 for Trump in 2020. The incumbent is Ben Bumgarner, and I only learned that in doing this post. I got nothing about him other than he’s a first-termer, but the Dem opposing him is a familiar name, former Rep. Michelle Beckley, back for another shot at the Lege after running for Lite Guv in 2022. She was a surprise (to me, at least) winner in the 2018 sweep and I do not underestimate her, though I know she’s not necessarily the most popular person among Dems after 2022. Still, this ought to be a race to watch.

HD65 53.4-45.1 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Rep. Kronda Thimesch was elected in 2018 after Drew Springer moved up to the Senate. She was ousted by the forces of evil this year, and so this one becomes another advanced opportunity. It’s also in Denton, which like Collin now has some purplish-to-purple seats. Detrick DeBurr is the challenger.

HD66 53.1-45.2 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Rep. Matt Shaheen is likely to overperform the partisan index, so this one is maybe not as high on the list, but it’s close enough to not ignore it. David Carstens, the Dem candidate, didn’t have any web presence that I could find when I drafted this, so that’s probably another indicator of where this one stands.

HD67 53.5-44.6 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Jeff Leach not only survived the revenge attempt against him for his impeachment vote, he forced me to re-evaluate him after being so frankly outspoken about Paxton’s perfidy. He used that outspokenness in a mostly jerky way for his time in the Lege before this, but he has reminded me that even bad legislators can have some good qualities. I still want to see him lose, and Makala Washington is the one who’s going to try to make that happen.

HD94 53.8-44.4 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Rep. Tony Tinderholt is one of the biggest misogynist assholes in the Lege, and as I’m sure you know, that’s saying something. He’s had some close calls before, and his seat is now a little redder after the redraw, which he needs. Still, there’s plenty of material here to work with if we want to make a difference. He’s in Tarrant County, where I hope there’s a significant overall effort to move the needle. Denise Wilkerson is his opponent.

HD97 53.9-44.4 for Trump in 2020. Open following Rep. Craig Goldman’s run for CD12. There are runoffs in both parties, so we’ll get back to this one later. Also in Tarrant County.

HD108 49.7-48.9 for Trump in 20020. Incumbent Morgan Meyer is one of two Republican legislators left in Dallas County, and he barely survived his primary in a district that’s not at all drawn to be won by a wingnut. This is Dallas County’s answer to HD134 – we’ll return to that theme in a minute – and maybe this is the year it tips over. Elizabeth Wilkerson would have had an easier path against Meyer’s opponent, but here we are.

HD112 49.4-48.9 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Angie Chen Button is the other last-standing Dallas County Republican legislator, and like Rep. Meyer she has been several points above the spread in years past. But as Democrats who remember 2010 can attest, the wave will get you sooner or later. And she has a stellar opponent in Averie Bishop, about whom I’ve written before. I’m going to reach out to her for an interview later in the year.

HD118 50.6-47.9 for Biden in 2020. Incumbent John Lujan flipped this seat in a special election following the retirement of then-Rep. Leo Pacheco and an ugly fight between Democratic factions in that race. He held on to the seat in that November, but he has a much tougher task this cycle. Kristian Carranza won her primary by a large margin and should be a top-tier candidate.

HD121 50.4-48.1 for Trump in 2020. Incumbent Rep. Steve Allison was the Sarah Davis of San Antonio, and unlike Davis was finally ousted by his increasingly unhinged party in the primary. I have to believe this makes this an easier pickup opportunity – hell, this result was the impetus for this whole post – in what was once Joe Straus’ district. Here’s hoping Laurel Jordan Swift is the right person to do it.

Hope that helps. There are other possibilities, and as noted rape- and life-of-the-mother-exception opponent Sen. Angela Paxton is also up for election this cycle, so feel free to give Rachel Mello some love as well. This should get you started.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Dallas Mayoral recall effort goes nowhere for now

It could still happen, but the same concerns exist as before.

In a press release early Wednesday morning, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson let everyone know that the effort to recall him had failed “miserably.”

Dallas activist and business owner Davante Peters launched the recall petition in January citing Johnson’s City Hall attendance record and party switch to Republican as reasons he wanted the mayor out of office. It would have taken 103,595 signatures to recall Johnson. While Peters had been collecting signatures since January, he submitted zero to the city secretary.

On his attendance record, Johnson said in the press release that his annual attendance rate has averaged 93.5% the past four years. However, KERA has reported that Johnson has missed more than 130 hours of City Council meetings since 2019.

“This was a big, fat nothing-burger cooked up by self-promoting partisan opportunists and served up by some click-hungry members of our local media whose breathless ‘reporting’ on the subject too often resembled an endorsement of this ridiculous recall effort,” Johnson said in the press release. “My attendance was never truly the issue, and my publicly available attendance record proves it. My Administration’s policies and vision for this city have remained unchanged and unwavering.”

[…]

Reached for comment, Peters said although he did collect some signatures, he didn’t want to submit any because he didn’t want to “show our hand.” This is because he plans on launching another recall effort soon. He said when he initially filed his petition to recall the mayor, he hoped Democratic organizations in Dallas would band behind him, but that didn’t happen. “We’re going to re-strategize, get a new strategy without expecting anything from those organizations,” he said.

Peters called Johnson’s press release “childlike.”

“I don’t take it personally,” Peters said. “I just feel like a more mature person would listen to the concerns and the hearts of the community, and he could have used that press release as an opportunity to allow the community and citizens to understand why he made the decision [to switch parties] as opposed to trying to taunt their efforts.”

See here for some background. I’m not at all surprised at how this played out. I think this is as much a matter of timing and priorities as anything else. Dallas Democratic organizations just have bigger fish to fry right now. Maybe the timing will be better next year. I do think the Dem orgs will be interested when they don’t have more pressing matters to deal with, and I know for sure this will take a lot of resources to pull off. Keep talking to them about when the time could be right, and we’ll see what happens from there.

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In which I learn about our use of “Dataminr”

I have three things to say about this.

The Houston Police Department will stay in the ranks of law enforcement agencies around the country using software to monitor social media for information on criminal activity following a City Council vote on Wednesday.

Council members approved without debate or dissent spending $108,000 on software from Dataminr, a company that has drawn concern from civil liberties advocates while touting its ability to alert police to breaking events.

Supporters say Dataminr’s products do not raise privacy concerns because they rely on publicly available posts from social media users. Critics, however, have raised alarms about agencies using Dataminr products to zero in on abortion and Black Lives Matter protesters.

[…]

Ángel Díaz, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Southern California School of Law, said he was not convinced by the company’s protests that it does not offer a surveillance tool.

“It’s sort of a distinction without difference to me, because ultimately what they are providing is information about specific accounts,” he said. “They are providing an ability to surveil all tweets, and to pull out specific tweets that they believe are evidence of potential criminal activity. I don’t see how that is not surveillance.”

Díaz said he was concerned, for instance, about reports that company employees were tasked to look for information about crime on the South Side of Chicago.

“The question becomes, who is setting up the kinds of alerts that they are receiving. Who is being placed under this web of suspicion, and who is being ignored?” he said. “There is a way in which we are confirming our previous beliefs about a community based on who we choose to run searches against.”

Christopher Rivera, a spokesperson for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said he was concerned the police department could use the tool to focus on protesters.

“Ultimately, what these protesters are asking for is better situations for themselves,” he said. “Yet, police will use it to deter them and surveil them and oftentimes criminalize protected speech.”

The Houston Police Department did not answer a question about whether it has placed any limitations on its use of the software.

1. I can’t believe that ShotSpotter failed to take this opportunity to call itself “ShotSpottr”.

2. A little Google searching did not find me any information about how effective Dataminr is. Like, do they make any claims about helping to reduce crime by some amount? I found one study from 2022 about the use of AI to predict where crimes would occur, but that wasn’t helpful for this purpose. My point is simply this: We are spending this money on this tool, as we are also spending money on ShotSpotter. What value are we getting for that money? Seems like a reasonable enough question to ask, and yet here we are.

3. This I think is my single biggest concern about Mayor Whitmire’s agenda for crime and policing, which is that we’re going to spend a bunch of money on the police and give them what they want but we’re not going to create any metrics or conduct any audits to determine if we’re spending that money wisely and effectively. We’re just going to throw money at it, and if crime goes down we’ll say it worked, and if crime doesn’t go down we’ll say we need to do more. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong about this.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for March 10

“How Todd Akin’s “Legitimate Rape” Debacle Previewed the Abortion Agenda of Today’s GOP”.

“What is the ideal size of the human population?”

The best summary of Mitch McConnell and his career that you’ll read.

“Researchers in the Amazon have discovered the world’s largest snake species – an enormous green anaconda – in Ecuador’s rainforest that split off from its closest relatives 10 million years ago though they still nearly look identical to this day.”

“US Cities Could Be Capturing Billions of Gallons of Rain a Day”.

“It is permissible in English for a preposition to be what you end a sentence with. The idea that it should be avoided came from writers who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there is no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong.”

The field of eDNA research has mushroomed in the last 15 years as sequencing, computing technology, and metagenomics — the study of DNA from multiple organisms — has advanced. Now, scientists around the world can sample from a cup of dirt, a vial of water, or even a puff of air, and survey the eDNA present for thousands of microbial species. And while the field at-large has faced concerns about privacy and technical limitations, many scientists see an opportunity to further early detection of emerging pathogens. Wastewater surveillance is the most advanced method for monitoring population-level virus spikes, but other realms are catching up. As a result, health officials are becoming better prepared to detect an outbreak — and quickly take steps to contain it.”

Release the Pop-Tart recipe!

Wishing Will Shortz all the best.

RIP, Joyce Slocum, President and CEO of Texas Public Radio.

RIP, W. C. Clark, known as “the Godfather of Austin Blues” and a mentor to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

RIP, Chris Mortensen, award-winning NFL reporter for ESPN.

“The courts were never going to save America from Donald Trump”.

“The 5 Most Pressing Threats To The 2024 Election”.

“In other words, the whole thing is a shabby scheme designed to extract billions of dollars from Trump’s MAGA fans, who will be left holding the bag when Truth Social collapses.”

“This case reveals originalism as practiced by the justices for the fraud it actually is: a framework for justifying the results that the jurists handpicked by the conservative legal movement wish to reach. Americans should keep that in mind the next time the justices invoke originalism to impose their austere, selective vision of liberty on a public they insist must remain gratefully silent.”

“A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a blow to the DeSantis administration by deeming one of the Republican governor’s signature laws — the “Stop Woke” Act — unconstitutional, upholding a previous ruling that prevented it from taking hold.”

“Happy birthday to Maria Branyas Morera who was born on this day 117 years ago. Morera is the oldest living human in the world.”

What a bunch of whiny little nobodies these people are.

Good damn riddance.

“Dartmouth men’s basketball players vote to unionize in landmark moment for athlete rights”.

RIP, Steve Lawrence, singer and nightclub performer who was the “Steve” half of Steve & Eydie.

Alabama’s new law protecting IVF still leaves intact the “fertilized eggs are humans” logic that underpinned the court’s ban on IVF. It’s hard to see how it would survive a lawsuit.

“Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake failed to keep Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s (R) defamation lawsuit on hold Tuesday, meaning the case move towards discovery and trial.”

“The SOTU response isn’t in the Constitution. There is no law. This is a completely made-up thing designed as an excuse to give the opposing party some free air time.”

“According to some conservative thinkers, the scourge of “wokeness” has finally been defeated: Last weekend it was smothered to death on live television by a starlet’s breasts.”

“Why is Donald Trump suddenly a TikTok fan?”

RIP, Morris Overstreet, first African American elected to a statewide office in Texas, who served as a Justice on the Court of Criminal Appeals in the 90s.

Sen. Katie Britt lied through her teeth about that sex trafficking case. Watch this video for a clear explanation. And let’s see if the media picks up on it.

“Some Kansas City Chiefs fans who braved the below-freezing temperatures to watch the Kansas City Chiefs against the Miami Dolphins during the 2023 NFL Playoffs on Jan. 13 – when it was -4 degrees Fahrenheit and wind chills measured at -20 at kickoff – could possibly need to have amputations after suffering frostbite.”

RIP, Naomi Barber King, civil rights activist who was married to the younger brother of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Annunciation House has its hearing

Seems like it might have gone well for them.

An El Paso district judge lashed out at the Texas Attorney General’s Office after a lawyer said in court Thursday that Annunciation House was “stonewalling” by refusing to negotiate over documents demanded by the office.

“Hold on. This is the part where you’re starting to offend my intelligence. You did not offer to negotiate. You did not offer to act in good faith,” 205th District Court Judge Francisco Dominguez told Ryan Baasch, chief of the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division, at a hearing on Annunciation House’s request to hold off producing some documents until a judge could review whether they were legally obligated to do so

Dominguez said Annunciation House has shown a willingness to negotiate with the Attorney General’s Office, which has said it will close the nonprofit that offers humanitarian services to migrants.

“There was no attempt whatsoever to negotiate by the attorney general, which is what gives the court rise for concern that there are ulterior political motives here taking place that go outside of what the law requires, go outside of what the law demands,” he said.

Dominguez, a Democrat and former civil rights attorney, did not immediately rule after a two-hour hearing on Annunciation House’s request for an injunction or other action to allow for a court review of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s demand for records and the immediate termination of Annunciation House’s ability to operate in Texas for failing to immediately produce the records.

A ruling likely will come in the next few days.

[…]

Three representatives from the Attorney General’s Office on Feb. 7 served Annunciation House with a request to immediately examine operational records, but agreed to give the agency a day to consult with attorneys. The next day, Dominguez granted Annunciation House’s request for a temporary restraining order against the attorney general.

Annunciation House is seeking a temporary injunction that would stay in effect until Dominguez ruled on its legal obligations in regards to the attorney general’s request.

Jerome Wesevich, the attorney for Annunciation House, told the court that the agency has turned over 212 pages of records so far to the Attorney General’s Office. He said the request was “an abuse of power to try to stop Annunciation House from doing business.”

See here and here for some background. We have not yet gotten a ruling, and I am fervently hoping that it will be an absolutely stinging rebuke of Paxton. I have a hard time expressing how much this outrages me, and I say that as someone who consumes way too much news about Ken Paxton. I grew up Catholic, I haven’t practiced it in decades but it has shaped me, culturally and morally, and I have always admired the Catholic dogma of service and doing good works as a critical part of expressing your faith. I mean, Jesus was pretty clear about that kind of thing in the gospels, and yet so many of his alleged followers live their lives in ways that (to me, at least) do as little as possible to emulate what he taught. And in our current world, that very much includes a cadre of Catholics, as this earlier story makes clear.

For the past few years, right-wing advocacy groups and Republican lawmakers have targeted non-governmental organizations that shelter migrants, many of them asylum seekers, blaming them for incentivizing illegal immigration with taxpayer money.

Those efforts come as religious figures, emboldened by the rise of Christian nationalism, continue to demonize migrants and those who aid them as part of a broader scheme to dilute the American electorate. On Sunday, Ed Young, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the longtime pastor of Houston’s massive Second Baptist Church, gave a lengthy sermon in which he reportedly called migrants “garbage” and “undesirables” who are being brought in to support a “progressive, Godless” dictatorship.

“We will not be able to stand under all the garbage and raff in which we’re now inviting to come into our shores,” said Young, whose church has been attended for years by prominent state Republicans. “And they’re already here.”

Far-right Catholics have also mobilized against organizations such as Catholic Charities, calling it the “enemy of the people” and blasting it for assisting migrants — many of whom are also Catholic, but conflict with the ethno-nationalism that experts say is highly correlated with white Christian nationalist beliefs.

Last year, right-wing Catholics launched a campaign to defund bishops who aid migrants at the border; and in an interview with the group Church Militant, self-professed Christian nationalist and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, said Catholic Charities’ work was proof of “Satan controlling the church.”

And some Texas politicians have targeted faith-based groups like Annunciation House — which has been in operation for nearly 50 years — with accusations that such shelters encourage, and profit from, illegal immigration.

When I was a student at Sacred Heart Elementary School back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, one of the hymns we’d sing included the refrain “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love/And they’ll know we are Christians by our love”. I don’t know what distinguishes these people as “Christians”, but it sure ain’t love. If you want an example of what that should look like, read this guest opinion piece at the National Catholic Reporter. As I said, I haven’t practiced Catholicism in a long time – and believe me, there are many good reasons why – but I’m firmly with the actual Catholics here. They need to win this fight.

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

Mike Miles versus the principals

I don’t even know, man.

Houston ISD’s appointed Superintendent Mike Miles put about half of the district’s principals on notice Thursday evening after receiving results of their midyear proficiency screenings, informing them that they must undergo a second assessment this spring and achieve at a higher level to remain a principal in HISD next year, according to documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

The principals who received the message include both longtime veterans and principals appointed by Miles’ administration just this year, representing Houston’s highest- and lowest-performing schools. Miles said he would make the midyear results available to principals on Friday, and met with them in the morning to discuss next steps.

“Your results demonstrate that you are working to be a proficient instructional leader and need to continue making progress toward that goal,” Miles wrote to principals on Thursday evening. “I want to make sure you clearly understand the next steps in the process to evaluate your performance and determine your eligibility for a principal position next year.”

The Houston Chronicle obtained a copy of the email, which was addressed to 117 principals.

The Chronicle initially published the names of everyone listed as a recipient on the email. The news organization then received a tip that the district may have included someone erroneously, raising questions about the accuracy of the district’s distribution list. In its editorial discretion, the Chronicle took down the list of names.

The midyear proficiency screenings, which about half of the district’s principals passed on the first go-around, focused on “quality of instruction” and “student achievement.” The former was determined by an independent review team that conducted classroom observations of core subject teachers in February, while the latter was based on midyear NWEA and interim STAAR results.

[…]

Under Miles’ targeted distribution, 40% of principals will receive a Proficient I ranking, and 20% will score a higher rating of Proficient II. Just 8% of principals will be receive the district’s highest ratings of Exemplary I or II. Principals who score in any of those four categories may remain as school leader.

The lowest-scoring principals will be rated Progressing I and Progressing II. The 10% that score in the first category will automatically be removed from their position as a principal at HISD. The 22% percent who receive a score Progressing II will be able to stay in their role at the discretion of their feeder pattern’s executive director or that of their division superintendent.

Michael McDonough, former principal at Bellaire High School, said that just one model or framework cannot effectively evaluate all the principals at HISD, given the size and diversity of the district and its 274 schools. He also said the evaluation system sends a message to principals that they are interchangeable, and worried that forcing principals out will have trickle-down effects on teacher retention and community confidence in a school.

“When a new process is rolled out to a district this size, it would seem prudent to spend a year examining the data to be sure that what you’ve designed works,” McDonough said. “Instead they are rolling it out with an unwarranted level of confidence.”

The HISD documents that detail these systems are embedded in the story. I haven’t read them yet and I’m not really interested in the inner workings of this at this time. I’m more about the big picture, which I’ll get to in a minute. First, here are a couple of reactions I saw on Twitter that I think capture the vibe:

I think we can all agree that however you wanted to define Mike Miles’ mission upon being made lord and master of HISD, it wasn’t supposed to include the many schools at HISD that are already quite successful by any measure. Because there were apparently some issues with that initial list of schools, which is where Joy Sewing and Jen Radcliffe got those names, we can’t say for sure that the head honchos at Carnegie et al are actually on any kind of notice. But I for one sure believe that Mike Miles has higher priorities than those schools, and has much more potential to harm them than improve them, and I suspect I’m not alone in that assessment.

That said, even well-rated schools can have significant populations of struggling students. I was told some years ago that Bellaire High School (which has something like 3500 students) had more kids that were failing STAAR tests and not meeting academic standards than some of the schools that were getting overall failing grades from the TEA, but because Bellaire is overall performing well those students don’t get the attention they deserve. I don’t know what the data for these schools are now, but the larger point that even good schools have students who could be doing better and that those schools should be held accountable for their performance is a sound one. One could certainly argue that schools whose populations are well above the average for household income and other markers of advantage should be held to a higher standard than schools with mostly disadvantaged students. If that’s where this is coming from, then there’s merit to it.

Like I said, I haven’t dived into the details, which at first glance look to be pretty technical. But at a high level, do I trust that Mike Miles has got the right idea and is executing it well? I think we know the answer to that. Even beyond that, the rigid formula for who gets to proceed and who gets fired or put on probation sounds an awful lot like rank and yank, which is not a good thing and will almost certainly contribute to the further decline in morale within HISD. And basing it on less than a year’s data (!!) with no intermediate steps to evaluate how things are going overall, seems like a great way to get results that don’t actually match up with performance.

There may well be some merit to this idea at a macro level, and certainly if one buys into the whole Mike Miles agenda, it could be a step in the right direction. But then we come back to that question about whether I trust what Miles is doing and how he’s doing it. So yeah, I’m not on board.

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More on the HPD dropped cases

Mayor Whitmire wants some answers.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire on Wednesday called for an independent investigation into the Houston Police Department over how and why more than 264,000 cases were declared suspended for lack of personnel.

“I trust and believe Police Chief Troy Finner is doing the best he can to manage the internal investigation, get to the bottom of it and hold people accountable,” Whitmire said in a statement. “The independent panel will be people I also trust to review and validate the outcome and help bring closure to the victims.”

Whitmire’s call for a third party to investigate the police department was acknowledged by police chief Troy Finner, who said he welcomed and supported the review in a post on X.

“The mayor and I have spoken almost daily about this matter and I appreciate his continued support of HPD and my administration,” Finner’s statment read.

Finner called the review a “vital part of the transparency and accountability” into the scandal.

Whitmire’s statement said he will release the names of people who agreed to serve on the review panel in coming days.

[…]

In previous public comments about the suspended cases, Whitmire has blamed problems on previous administrations, but called Finner a good chief who could “be better.”

“I am deeply concerned about how and why this happened. The public wants answers and accountability. This process of appointing an independent panel will validate the investigation’s integrity,” Whitmire said Wednesday.

The police department also announced it would host a news conference Thursday to provide another update on police department’s internal review of the suspended cases and its efforts to contact victims.

See here for some background. I don’t see another story on the Chron about that news conference and update, but it looks like video from it is here. I’m going to wait and see what this investigation uncovers before getting too deep into this, but two points to note. One, in this earlier story that says the use of this code actually goes all the way back to 2014 and was known about at the time, we have this:

Charles McClelland, then Houston’s police chief, said in 2014 that he wasn’t surprised at the findings and they weren’t unique to Houston. He presented the city with a plan to hire hundreds of more officers and asked for $105 million to do it.

HPD Chiefs have been calling for the hiring of more officers for more or less ever, so that this was then-Chief McClelland’s proposed answer is not a surprise. Whether it might have helped or not is something we’ll never know, but I will leave it to the reader to work out what effect an extra expenditure of at least $105 million a year (it will presumably go up as salaries and other costs rise) would have on our current budget situation.

And two, there’s this.

Gov. Greg Abbott is calling for the state to impose “consequences” for the 264,000 cases Houston police have dropped since 2016 due to a lack of personnel.

“250,000 crime victims in Houston never even had their crime investigated. That includes thousands of sexual assault victims,” Abbott wrote on X on Thursday. “The state must impose consequences for this neglect & provide solutions to prevent acts like this that allow criminals to go free.”

Not “how can we help”, just straight to “someone’s gonna pay for this”. Typical. Maybe this isn’t the threat that I’m reading it as, but that’s Mayor Whitmire’s problem. He says his ability to work with the state leadership is an asset. At this point, what we need more than anything is damage control. I hope for the best.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

City of Uvalde gets its report on police performance at Robb Elementary

It landed with a thud.

A city-commissioned independent review of Uvalde police’s response to the Robb Elementary School shooting cleared local officers of wrongdoing, infuriating parents of the 19 children killed in the massacre and at least two city council members who rebuked the report after it was released Thursday.

City officials hired private investigator Jesse Prado, a retired Austin police detective, to conduct the review into the response from the city’s police department to the May 24, 2022 mass shooting that also resulted in the deaths of two teachers and injured 17 others.

The findings of the report were presented in a question-and-response format with Prado at a city council meeting and the actual 182-page report was released later Thursday after city officials shared it with families. Prado said the review identified training, communication and leadership lapses, but he also commended some of the city’s officers and characterized their actions as in “good faith” — contradicting findings of previous audits by state and federal officials.

Those reviews have illustrated a catastrophic law enforcement failure in which children remained trapped with the gunman for more than an hour as nearly 400 law enforcement officers arrived at the school and encountered a chaotic scene without leadership.

Several people walked out of the impromptu council chambers roughly 40 minutes in when Prado said one of the issues that police encountered was crowd control. Some families tried to breach police tape to run into the school and try rescuing their children, some of whom ultimately died while others had called their parents and 911 pleading for help.

Following the presentation and right before the public hearing, Prado left.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was among the children killed, slammed a podium in the civic center and in between tears demanded that Prado return to the meeting. A crowd then began chanting, “Bring him back!” One person shouted, “Coward.”

Prado returned five minutes later and sat with an expressionless face, underneath a big white cowboy hat he did not once remove, for the following hour as relatives of those killed castigated him and dismissed his audit as “bullshit,” “a joke” and disrespectful.

“They chose their lives over the lives of children and teachers, and there’s no policy change [that] will eliminate their fear,” Mata-Rubio said in calling for the firing of three officers who remain on the city’s police force.

Brett Cross, whose son Uziyah was killed by the shooter, approached the podium with AJ Martinez, one of the children who survived the shooting.

“I want you to look at this child,” Cross said. “Good faith for 77 minutes? The true heroes are those that passed, those teachers, the survivors are heroes.”

After the public speakers, City Council members echoed the disbelief in the report’s findings and how it was unveiled. One said he wished that Prado had actually presented the report himself and just given copies to families instead of the questioning method that resembled a court hearing.

“For you to come in here and say ‘No, everything was hunky-dory, they did their job,’ I can’t accept that,” Councilmember Hector Luevano said to applause. Luevano, and several other council members, had not reviewed the report prior to the meeting. “I’m insulted by this report. The families deserve more, the community deserves more.”

Apologizing to the crowd, Councilmember Ernest “Chip” King III said Thursday’s presentation was not how the city wanted the information to be released.

[…]

Prado said the lack of cooperation from Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell hindered the investigation. In December 2022, the city sued Mitchell over her refusal to produce documents. The district attorney agreed to hand over some, but not all, of the information Prado requested.

Mitchell did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.

Prado also said the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District stopped cooperating with him after a few months into his investigation. The city reportedly paid him nearly $100,000 for his work.

See here, here, and here for some background; there’s a ton more if you want to keep reading. I genuinely don’t know what to say other than I figure there will be a lawsuit filed by someone against Prado to get his fee back. I have to wonder just how much the city vetted this guy, and whether there was a clear understanding between him and the city about what exactly they were looking for. I’m just stunned. TPR and the Current have more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

It’s budget cut proposal time

A familiar ritual.

Mayor John Whitmire

Facing a projected budget shortfall and costly settlement with the firefighters union, Mayor John Whitmire has directed most city departments to identify potential 5% budget cuts for the coming fiscal year.

Finance Director Melissa Dubowski said Wednesday that the city is set to face a budgetary gap of $160 million in the fiscal year that starts this July. This projection does not factor in any additional expenses from a tentatively reached agreement with the firefighters union aimed at settling a longstanding pay dispute.

To address the looming financial challenge, Dubowski, appointed by Whitmire in January to steer the department, said the city has set a 5% budget reduction target for all departments, excluding police and fire. The police and fire departments combined currently make up about half of the city’s operating budget.

Dubowski acknowledged that the final outcomes might differ based on the specific needs within each department.

“We sent a communication out to get a starting point, to start collaborating and working with departments, and then we’ll evaluate those ideas that the departments come back with to figure out which ones are least impactful to constituents, to services,” Dubowski said during a Wednesday report to City Council.

Whitmire told the Chronicle that implementing a blanket budget cut is far from the ideal solution. He admitted that it will likely require some departments to downsize staff and slash services already strapped for resources. The policy, however, is necessary due to the financial challenges long ignored by previous Houston mayors, he said.

“I don’t like across the board cuts. I think it rewards inefficient operations, departments that kind of ratholed some money or didn’t need all they asked for in the first place, and it punishes those responsible departments,” Whitmire told reporters on Wednesday. “But it’s a place to start a conversation, one to let the council members also know we can’t continue to come up with items that we like. We have to get back to things we’ve got to have.”

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Meanwhile, the administration is also exploring other potential measures, such as eliminating duplicate services across departments, cutting some vacant staff positions, adjusting certain fees and pushing for a voter referendum to exempt public safety operations from the city’s property revenue cap, according to Dubowski.

District C Council Member Abbie Kamin voiced support for making an exception to the revenue cap to boost public safety efforts. Houstonians approved a similar policy in 2006, allowing an additional $90 million to be collected annually for public safety spending.

Kamin also referenced a 2017 10-year plan on improving Houston’s fiscal sustainability, highlighting that many of the cost-saving recommendations were never implemented.

At-Large Council Member Sallie Alcorn, for instance, proposed then the creation of a service-sharing working group to explore how to consolidate operations with other governments, including Harris County. The initiative was estimated by the report to have a high fiscal impact, potentially saving over $10 million.

I appreciate the Mayor’s distaste for across-the-board cuts, which I share. I hope that gets refined in the actual budget, and I note that there’s no dollar amount attached to that proposal. I’m going to guess it’s a fairly modest amount. Mayor Whitmire couldn’t propose cutting the police budget even if he wanted to, as that is now verboten according to state law.

All the other stuff will need to be done as well. The main problem there is that we’ve been doing a lot of those things all along, and the big ticket items are mostly already accomplished. But there is still room for more, and there’s still the stupid revenue cap. We’re not going to cut our way out of this.

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