Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Hill Country flood update 2

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this was different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ragsdale was 68.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s one way to boost STAAR scores

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Houston First does its own Polk Street study

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

Closure of Polk between Chartres and Avenida

Closure of Jackson between Bell and Polk

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

Closure of Clay between Jackson and Hamilton

Closure of Chenevert between Bell and Polk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

Residents with People for Polk were less convinced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend link dump for July 6

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

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

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

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

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

“The controlled sexuality of American cheer”.

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

There is no such thing as being cancelled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

Hill Country flood update

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The warnings

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

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

Did budget cuts play a role?

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

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

What should we be asking about then?

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE: Oof.

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

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

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

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

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

Paxton drops his latest whistleblower appeal

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

We’ll see if this time it sticks.

Still a crook any way you look

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

California threatens retaliatory re-redistricting

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a thing they could do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hill Country floods

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Just terrible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sudden surge in potential candidates

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

Ron Nirenberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

Sen. Nathan Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dispatches from Dallas, July 4 edition

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

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

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

Let’s dive in:

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

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

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

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

It’s still a thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The tool can be viewed here.

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

And finally, on a tangential note.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twenty-nine candidates for CD18

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

Rep. Sylvester Turner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another lawsuit filed over the Ten Commandments law

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Keep ’em coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Texas blog roundup for the week of June 30

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

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

Continue reading →

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

Allred 2.0 launches

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

He’s back.

Colin Allred

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paxton’s State Fair gun ban lawsuit tossed

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

Still a crook any way you look

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

Texas State officially joins the PAC-12

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good luck, y’all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another assault on mifepristone

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Jesus Christ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SD09 special election set for November

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This could, and hopefully will, be interesting.

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

Taylor Rehmet

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

[…]

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WNBA to expand to 18 teams

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

None of which will be in Houston.

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

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

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

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

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

Both Cleveland and Detroit had WNBA teams in the past and Philadelphia was the home for an ABL team.

[…]

Engelbert said she was impressed with the number of cities that bid for expansion teams, a list that included St. Louis; Kansas City, Mo.; Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; Miami; Denver; Charlotte, N.C.; and Houston.

“There are a variety of cities that obviously bid, and one of those I wanted to shout out — because they have such a strong history in this league and their great ownership group — is Houston,” Engelbert said. “The Houston Comets were just an amazing one, the first four inaugural championships in the WNBA. So I would say that’s the one, obviously, we have our eye on. (Owner) Tilman (Feritta) has been a great supporter of the WNBA, and we’ll stay tuned on that.”

See here for the previous update. Cleveland was basically locked in, and Philly was seen as a strong frontrunner, but at that time Houston was thought to be the favorite for the 18th team. Alas, we ended up as Miss Congeniality. It seems likely there will be more expansion in a few years, so we’ll just need to be patient. The WNBA’s press release is here, and the Chron has more.

UPDATE: While an expansion team is off the table for at least the next few years, probably a decade or more, there’s another possible way to land a team, as noted in this story The Mohegan tribe, which bought the Orlando Miracle for $10 million in 2003, relocated the team and renamed it the Connecticut Sun, hired an investment bank in May to look into “all options to strategically invest in the team.” That could include selling a minority stake in the team or a complete franchise sale that could lead to relocation.

The Sun had been one of the WNBA’s most successful teams, currently on a run of eight straight postseason appearances that likely will be snapped this year with the team off to a league-worst 2-15 start after losing their entire starting lineup in the offseason. Off the court, the Sun is one of the few teams in the league without a dedicated training facility.

Relocation is never as exciting as expansion, because you’re inheriting whatever baggage the existing team had and you have the psychic guilt of their fans’ loss, but it can work. The Dynamo came to Houston via relocation and they won the league their first two years. And their former city (San Jose) now has a team again. That’s about the best case scenario. If it’s a real possibility here, we’ll know about it soon enough.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged Austin, basketball, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Houston Comets, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Texas, Tilman Fertitta, Toronto, WNBA | Leave a comment

Can we say we’re sure we know CM Plummer’s intentions by now?

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Tell me you’re running for County Judge without triggering the “resign to run” provision, somehow.

CM Letitia Plummer

For the second time in two weeks, information has inadvertently emerged hinting that Houston City Council Member Letitia Plummer intends to run for Harris County Judge in a bid to replace Lina Hidalgo.

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

In the story, Plummer allegedly said: “I’ve raised my three sons in this city. I’ve built businesses here. And now, I want to lead Harris County — because I know what it means to fight for every neighborhood, every voice, and every future.”

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

While the story cannot be found on Houston Style’s website when its link is clicked, it was picked up by news aggregate CNN Newsource and posted publicly on another website on June 17.

Reached Friday, Plummer said the Houston Style story was supposed to be about her background and that she was misquoted.

The council member, who is serving her second term as an at-large member, asserted in a text that she did not say, “I’m already serving the entire city. Now, I’m ready to serve the entire county.”

The story from Houston Style follows a since-deleted post from the Spring Branch Democrats club earlier this month that included a document with a logo that read “Dr. Letitia Plummer Democrat for Harris County Judge.” The post also included a caption that read, “Another candidate for County Judge.” Plummer said the document was leaked by someone who used to work for her.

Plummer has not filed for the seat, according to Harris County campaign finance records. She told the Houston Chronicle Friday she was still strongly considering running for the position.

See here for the background. I mean, she’s running for County Judge. I don’t know how one could reasonably conclude otherwise. The slipup with the Spring Branch Dems could plausibly be blamed on a miscommunication. It would be unlikely, but with enough benefit of the doubt to say no, we can’t be sure, or at least we can’t be sure enough to say she has effectively resigned her seat on Council. The fact that it happened twice, the second time with a journalist, removes the doubt. She’s running. She’ll tell us “officially” when she’s ready, but she’s running.

Is this enough to trigger resign-to-run? City Attorney Arturo Michel says no in the story. I doubt there’s any precedent to match this, so it would take someone filing a lawsuit to force the matter, assuming she doesn’t make her formal declaration and resignation first. This is one of the many places where certain aspects of these laws are woefully vague (*cough* *cough* residency requirements *cough* *cough*) and unsettled, and that leaves us in the lurch in these outlier situations. We can’t cover everything, but we could do a better job of clearing up some of the murkier areas. If we wanted to, anyway.

One more thing, which was recently pointed out to me, about the timing of all this. Article 11, Section 11 of the state constitution covers terms of office for municipal elected officials. It has this provision for the event of a vacancy due to death or resignation:

(c) Any vacancy or vacancies occurring on such governing body shall not be filled by appointment but must be filled by majority vote of the qualified voters at a special election called for such purpose within one hundred and twenty (120) days after such vacancy or vacancies occur except that the municipality may provide by charter or charter amendment the procedure for filling a vacancy occurring on its governing body for an unexpired term of 12 months or less.

This is why the July 8 “campaign announcement” date cited in the Spring Branch Dems item matters, because July 8 is 119 days before Election Day in November. Timing this announcement to on or after July 8 does us all the favor of having the special election to fill her then-vacant At Large #4 seat on Election Day in November, rather than on some random day in the calendar when we’ll struggle to get one percent turnout and have to spend the money on a solo election besides. This golden period only lasts up through late August or so, which is when the deadline date for finalizing the ballot occurs. So if there are to be any announcements involving Houston City Council members that would have resign-to-run implications, expect them to occur from July 8 up to about August 18. Timing is everything.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Annise Parker, At Large #4, Democratic primary, Election 2025, Election 2026, Harris County, Harris County Judge, Houston, Houston City Council, Letitia Plummer, Lina Hidalgo, resign to run, special election | 2 Comments

Flock responds

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Reporting gets results. Or at least a response.

The CEO for Flock cameras has pushed back on recent reporting, including a Chronicle investigation, about the surveillance technology used by Houston police, saying it’s up to local law enforcement to decide how they use it.

Houston police have increasingly relied on the license plate recognition cameras to track tens of thousands of vehicles, often without justifying why they are doing so.

The majority of CEO Garrett Langley’s letter was aimed at reports about Flock cameras’ use in immigration- and abortion-related searches. But Langley did say the company would soon provide local law enforcement with an updated search function that would give officers a drop-down menu of reasons.

“Agencies should prescribe, in their LPR policies, how users should populate that search field,” he wrote.

Holly Beilin, director of communications for the company, said, even without the drop-down menu, officers can’t search the system without providing some reason for the search.

A Chronicle investigation found Houston police are using the cameras more than ever, logging tens of thousands of searches just last year and justifying their work less and less.

In rare cases, Houston police have run searches specifying “immigration” or listing a federal agency such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection as the purpose of the search. It’s not clear exactly what those searches are.

And in the letter, Flock disputed another report from a Texas media organization alleging that an officer used the camera system to search for a woman who had an abortion.

See here for the background. The response from Flock is the first link in the story and the excerpt above, so click over and read it if you want. “Providing a reason” is not the same as providing a warrant, and as those initial stories made clear, very often the reason provided was meaningless. As such, saying that officers have to provide a reason isn’t actually challenging any of the stories’ allegations. You can do better than that, Flock.

Really, what this needs is federal legislation that spells out exactly what tech like this can be used for and when, and what the limitations are in the absence of a search warrant. It’s more likely that I’ll be named Vice Pope than any of this happens under the Congress and President we have now, and Lord only knows how much damage can be done in the interim, but this is the ultimate solution. I dunno, maybe now is finally the time to adopt a strong stance in favor of privacy and laws to protect it as a campaign issue. It’s sure as hell the right thing to do. 404 Media, which did the initial reporting on this story and which has an update on what is happening in some other states, has more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Austin, cameras, Congress, Customs and Border Patrol, Dallas, Donald Trump, Flock, Homeland Security, Houston, HPD, ICE, immigration, license plates, police, privacy, San Marcos, Texas, The Lege | Leave a comment

RIP, Graffiti Park

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

This is such a Houston story.

Courtesy of Robin Soslow, Special to Chron

A piece of Houston’s cultural identity and history is being erased.

This week, demolition crews began tearing down two buildings on Leeland Street as part of the Texas Department of Transportation’s I-45 North Houston Highway Improvement Project. One of those buildings is the well-known “Graffiti Park,” an ever-evolving canvas that has served as a gathering place for artists and a destination for visitors and creative’s for over a decade.

More than just a photo spot, Graffiti Park was one of the few places where artists could speak directly to their city — on their own terms. It began as a grassroots art initiative led by local artists Daniel Anguilu, Gelson Lemus “W3r3on3” and Empyre. Over the years, it became a living archive of mural work and personal expression. It didn’t belong to a museum or gallery. It belonged to the people who painted it.

“One of my favorite memories there is just painting with my friends, it was a wholesome experience,” said Gelson Lemus, who paints under the name W3r3on3. “It was one of the first buildings people could paint with permission. When people come to Houston, they go to that building. It’s not like any other place.”

Anguilu, one of the building’s original caretakers, expressed frustration over what he said was a lack of communication from TxDOT or city officials as plans for the demolition and future art initiatives continue to move forward without input from the artists who created the space.

“Graffiti Park is one of the largest and oldest art initiatives in Houston, purely run from artist to artist,” Anguilu shared. “We are the caretakers and the original artists who started this art project more than 12 years ago. It has become a site visited by thousands, and unfortunately there is no conversation with us about the future and archiving of a Houston iconic place for creativity.”

Although the site sits within Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) No. 15, which covers a substantial portion of East Downtown, it was never designated as a formal art space. Still, members of the artist community say anyone familiar with the building’s walls knew their value. To them, every layer of paint told a story, holding years of unfiltered, public dialogue, impossible to replace.

In response to the community outcry over Graffiti Park’s demolition, TxDOT is partnering with the East Downtown Redevelopment Authority, which manages TIRZ 15, in an effort to help preserve the area’s creative legacy, according to TxDOT documents. As part of this effort, TxDOT says it will provide a one-time mitigation payment of up to $500,000 to the district. These funds are intended to offset the environmental and cultural loss tied to the right-of-way acquisition and to support a new public art program within the zone.

Here’s a feature story on Graffiti Park from 2023 that gives you a good overview of the place. You might just do a Google image search on “Graffiti Park Houston” as well. I mean look, I didn’t know much about this place, so any sense of loss I feel is from having missed out. Nothing lasts forever, big infrastructure projects always result in some amount of demolition, and so on. It would have been nice if there had been some more notice about this specific demolition, maybe enough to give the place a proper farewell before it was wiped out. I don’t care for the I-45 project so this is easy for me to say, but losing places like Graffiti Park makes Houston that much less interesting. However you feel about any other part of this, that much is sad.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged construction, demolition, EaDo, Graffiti Park, Houston, I-45, TxDOT | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for June 29

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Sabrina Ionescu is a mensch.

“But this isn’t about phone numbers or navigation. It’s about how technology clearly changes our minds. And there is a risk that today’s siphoning of young brains into phones and laptops isn’t just happening with maps and digits, but with critical thinking and complex language.”

“The majority of streaming also happens in the first week — but, in further evidence that streaming has reoriented viewing habits, a good amount of a show’s five-week streaming total happens from day eight onward. The Hollywood Reporter obtained Nielsen data for the top 20 shows in seven-day, cross-platform viewing; combining that with already available 35-day data shows just how much those shows gain from streaming at each interval.”

“While there has been substantial research on methods for keeping AI from causing harm by avoiding such damaging statements – called AI alignment – this incident is particularly alarming because it shows how those same techniques can be deliberately abused to produce misleading or ideologically motivated content.”

“The WNBA’s Officiating Problem Is Bigger Than Caitlin Clark”.

“Nearly two-thirds of adults oppose President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” approved in May by the House of Representatives, according to a KFF poll released Tuesday.”

“The result isn’t just inconvenient. It’s lonely. As access shatters, rituals vanish, as do the moments that make sports communal — a bar full of strangers cheering for the same team, the generational ties passed down through the seasons. Those experiences fade under a system that dictates that the more you can pay, the more you can see — until the game disappears behind another paywall.”

RIP, Fred Smith, founder of FedEx.

“The Most Quietly Revolutionary LGBTQ+ Moments in Sitcom History”.

“The Costs of Restricting Abortion? More Than $130 Billion Per Year.”

“That’s because Trump’s interest in women’s sports is not actually in investment in the athletes who participate. Instead, it is in leveraging the issue as one of the ways to continue to politicize and push his agenda on trans issues. Another case in point: Despite the deluge of headlines about women’s sports and fairness, you were probably unaware of the regulatory machinations behind the House settlement. There’s a good reason for that.”

“Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. filed a lawsuit Monday against Big League Advance in an attempt to void the future earnings contract he signed as a 17-year-old minor leaguer that could cost him $34 million.”

“The Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has vastly reshaped the national abortion landscape. Three years on, many states have severely restricted access to abortion care. But the decision has also had a less well-recognized outcome: It is increasingly jeopardizing access to contraception.”

“What Should You Do if ICE Comes to Your Restaurant?”

“A majority of people around the world support a carbon tax — even if they’re paying it”.

“Most Americans support routine childhood vaccine requirements even as they become more politically charged, according to a new poll released Wednesday.”

“The same rule applies to this constitutional argument as applies to all of those Jesus stories. You never want to be the guy asking those loophole-seeking questions. The guy looking for loopholes is always the Bad Guy in those stories.”

“Have you heard of Vix, the Spanish-language streamer owned by TelevisaUnivision? You’re about to hear a lot more about it.”

RIP, Rick Hurst, Houston-born actor best known for playing Deputy Cletus Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard.

RIP, Bill Moyers, longtime journalist for PBS.

RIP, Lao Schifrin, composer best known for the theme to “Mission: Impossible”. That super catchy tune is one of three songs I can think of in 5/4 time that have achieved any level of fame, the others being Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and Gustav Holst’s “Mars, Bringer of War”.

“Gavin Newsom sues Fox News for $787M in defamation case over Trump call”.

Wishing Ron Washington all the best.

RIP, Dave Parker, seven-time All Star outfielder who was on two World Series winners and was elected to the Hall of Fame earlier this year.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 2 Comments

We will learn Judge Hidalgo’s election intentions soon

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Okay.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo intends to announce her decision on if she will run again in 2026 in the coming weeks.

The news came amid building uncertainty and speculation regarding the two-term judge’s electoral intentions. She poured cold water on rumors in December that she would not be seeking re-election, but a dwindling war chest and ticking clock fueled continued doubt about her electoral intentions.

“Our democracy is built on open participation, and more options for voters is a good thing,” Hidalgo said in a Thursday evening news release. “I understand the desire to know whether I will be running, and I expect to announce a decision in the coming weeks.”

Hidalgo’s current term expires in 2027, along with Commissioners Adrian Garcia and Lesley Briones, who have already begun campaigning. The planned announcement also coincides with a key campaign finance deadline that could signal her plans for the next election cycle.

The most recently-available campaign finance data indicated Hidalgo had the least money of any other member of Commissioners Court. A recent trade mission to Paris, which Hidalgo said she paid for with campaign funds, has likely further depleted her war chest.

We’ve covered this ground thoroughly. Judge Hidalgo has been coy about her plans, but her campaign finance reports strongly indicate that she is not running for the simple reason that she does not have the resources and has not spent any time or effort compiling the resources she would need. She could certainly surprise me at this point and say that she is running, but she will have put herself in a needlessly disadvantageous position if that is her decision. I like Judge Hidalgo. I respect Judge Hidalgo. I think Judge Hidalgo has done a lot of good work, and I know she is very popular among Democrats. I’m just doing my best to interpret the data that is before me. I believe she will not be running. If she does run, I believe she has not put herself in the best position to win, in March and again in November. I could be wrong about any or all of this. I will be eagerly awaiting her July report and the announcement that follows.

(She had a post about this on Instagram on Thursday that was an image of the quoted news release, but either it’s been deleted or it was actually a story, because it’s not there anymore.)

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Annise Parker, campaign finance reports, Democratic primary, Election 2026, fundraising, Harris County, Harris County Judge, Lina Hidalgo, Texas | 4 Comments

NES schools are accelerating HISD’ enrollment decline

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I’s just going to leave this here.

Most Houston ISD campuses have reported sharper enrollment declines since the controversial state takeover, with New Education System schools reporting some of the largest drops compared to previous years.

HISD, like many urban school districts nationwide, has seen a steady decline in enrollment for nearly a decade. However, a Chronicle analysis of Texas Education Agency enrollment data shows that the rate of enrollment declines in HISD has accelerated since the takeover.

The data shows that HISD’s enrollment was declining by an average of about 2% each year in the five years prior to the state takeover in June 2023. Since then, the district’s student enrollment has declined by about 4% each year, largely driven by enrollment declines at the 130 NES campuses.

Enrollment at NES schools declined by 3.7% each year in the five years before the takeover, while enrollment at non-NES schools declined by about 1.5%. In the two years since the state takeover, enrollment at NES campuses has declined by about 6% yearly, while the rate for non-NES campuses has remained the same.

HISD’s fall snapshot data shows that about 75% of its campuses reported year-over-year enrollment declines in the 2024-25 school year. The district lost nearly 7,400 students in 2024, which was the largest year-over-year overall enrollment decline in the district since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Duncan Klussmann, an assistant professor at the University of Houston, said while improving academic performance should continue to be a priority for HISD, the district’s growing enrollment declines will have “significant financial implications” if they continue.

HISD needs to find a balance between addressing student outcomes and paying more attention to its declining enrollment, he said.

“As policy makers focus much more on student achievement and the STAAR test, that’s not necessarily what parents align to or what they want their child’s experience to be,” Klussmann said. “(NES is) a very innovative approach and has been very successful in producing higher test scores. That’s what it’s designed to do, but that is not what every parent is looking for.”

This has been one of my concerns about Mike Miles all along. He may generate the better test scores that the state is demanding. In the best case scenario, that also leads to better future outcomes – higher graduation rates, more college success, better employment and salary futures, etc – which would be a huge accomplishment. We’ll have to wait some number of years to see how well those correlate. In the meantime, HISD is shrinking faster than it had been before, which will lead to less money coming in from the state and less political power as fewer people in the area have a direct stake in HISD and its success. I fear, and I am far from alone in this, that what Miles is doing is not only not sustainable on its own, it will threaten HISD’s long term ability to provide for its students as a whole. Given the lack of any oversight on Miles, that is an even bigger concern now. I am rooting for the best case outcome for the students in the NES schools, which includes a large population of students and families that have been long overlooked by HISD and the state of Texas. I continue to question how this is being done and whether it will be more than a short term phenomenon. I don’t see a way we can explore other possibilities. We’re locked in, like it or not.

Posted in School days | Tagged Board of Managers, demography, HISD, Houston, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, New Education System, schools, STAAR, Texas, Texas Education Agency | 5 Comments

Ogg will face contempt hearing

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I mean, she was warned.

A hearing next month could determine whether former district attorney Kim Ogg will be held in contempt over her communications surrounding the prosecution of two men accused of killing 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, according to court records.

The hearing is scheduled for July 28, court records show.

Judge Josh Hill in the 232nd District Court signed off on the hearing Friday, but filings related to the decision and upcoming proceedings were not immediately available.

Ogg made several comments to local and national TV news outlets about the 2024 killing that prompted concerns over their right to a fair trial. The judge, in response, signed a gag order limiting lawyers on what they can say about the capital murder proceedings.

But Ogg went on to continue discussing the case with the Log Cabin Republicans of Houston in early June. Lawyers for Franklin Peña, one of the defendants, flagged her appearance with the Kingwood TEA party, whose organizers flaunted the gag order in a flyer advertising her visit, with the judge.

See here and here for the background. Continuing to talk about this after the gag order was issued is a choice, that’s for sure. According to the story, the DA has the task of proving that she did in fact violate that court order and should be held in contempt. I suspect there will be more than the usual number of observers in the court that day. Whatever happens here, I for one look forward to a day where I can count on less Kim Ogg content in my news feeds. I have no idea how far off that day may be.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged District Attorney, Harris County, Kim Ogg, Sean Teare, State Bar of Texas | Leave a comment

SCOTUS upholds Texas’ anti-porn law

Posted on June 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Welp.

Texas’ law requiring Pornhub and other adult websites to verify users’ ages is constitutional and can remain in effect, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday.

The case stems from a 2023 law, HB 1181, that required websites to verify that a user is over the age of 18 if more than one-third of their content is considered harmful to minors. A group of adult entertainment websites sued, arguing this violated free speech and privacy protections.

Texas countered that the state had a right to protect children with what Solicitor General Aaron Nielson framed as “simple, safe and common” restrictions.

While the Supreme Court justices seemed divided on the free speech issues, a 6-3 majority of the Court ultimately sided with Texas, finding that requiring age verification “is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content.”

The 2023 law “is an exercise of Texas’s traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority’s opinion. “To the extent that it burdens adults’ rights to access such speech, it has ‘only an incidental effect on protected speech,’ making it subject to intermediate scrutiny.”

The Court’s three liberal justices dissented, arguing that the law should have been held to the higher standard of strict scrutiny, the most stringent level of legal review used in cases related to fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech. The dissenting judges also argued that while states have a “compelling interest” in protecting children from obscene speech, doing so sometimes impeded the right of adults to access that speech.

In her dissent, which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Kentanji Brown Jackson, Justice Elena Kagan said that Texas’ law might well have passed strict scrutiny and used the least restrictive means to achieve its goals.

“But what if Texas could do better — what if Texas could achieve its interest without so interfering with adults’ constitutionally protected rights in viewing the speech HB 1181 covers?” Kagan wrote. “The State should be foreclosed from restricting adults’ access to protected speech if that is not in fact necessary.”

Texas’ law requires people visiting websites “more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors” to show they are over 18 by submitting digital identification, uploading government-issued identification or by using a “commercially reasonable method,” such as their banking information. Neither the website nor the party performing the verification can retain identifying information. Sites that violate the law face fines of up to $10,000 a day.

The law was passed amid a broader push in Texas and other states to prevent children from being exposed to sexual materials, which continued this legislative session. Friday’s ruling could have implications for more than a dozen states that have passed similar laws.

It was not the first time that these Texas bills have tested the boundaries of free speech protections: In two cases, the Supreme Court has ruled that laws aimed to prevent the distribution of obscene materials to minors unconstitutionally restricted free speech.

[…]

Civil liberties groups decried the decision as a rollback of free speech protections.

“Today’s ruling limits American adults’ access to only that speech which is fit for children — unless they show their papers first,” Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said in a statement. “Data breaches are inevitable. How many will it take before we understand the threat today’s ruling presents? Americans will live to regret the day we let the government condition access to protected speech on proof of our identity.”

See here for the previous update. While this was hardly the worst decision handed down this term, it’s still bad and has the room to be a lot worse. It’s not just the data privacy concerns and the needlessly broad restrictions on legal activity, it’s the open invitation for the book banners and the drag show banners and the homophobes to claim that the content they don’t like can be just as readily restricted. That door is now wide open and it will be clear as soon as bill filing season opens in 2027 how drastic and perverse that will be.

And it’s even worse than that. As 404 Media makes clear, you can’t begin to grasp how weird this is going to get.

A metal fork drags its four prongs back and forth across the yolk of an over-easy egg. The lightly peppered fried whites that skin across the runny yolk give a little, straining under the weight of the prongs. The yolk bulges and puckers, and finally the fork flips to its sharp points, bears down on the yolk and rips it open, revealing the thick, bright cadmium-yellow liquid underneath. The fork dips into the yolk and rubs the viscous ovum all over the crispy white edges, smearing it around slowly, coating the prongs. An R&B track plays.

People in the comments on this video and others on the Popping Yolks TikTok account seem to be a mix of pleased and disgusted. “Bro seriously Edged till the very last moment,” one person commented. “It’s what we do,” the account owner replied. “Not the eggsum 😭” someone else commented on another popping video.

The sentiment in the comments on most content that floats to the top of my algorithms these days—whether it’s in the For You Page on TikTok, the infamously malleable Reels algo on Instagram, X’s obsession with sex-stunt discourse that makes it into prudish New York Times opinion essays—is confusion: How did I get here? Why does my FYP think I want to see egg edging? Why is everything slightly, uncomfortably, sexual?

If right-wing leadership in this country has its way, the person running this account could be put in prison for disseminating content that’s “intended to arouse.” There’s a nationwide effort happening right now to end pornography, and call everything “pornographic” at the same time.

Read on for more or listen to the 404 folks talk about it on a recent podcast episode. It gets weirder from there, believe me. There’s a reason why Justice Potter Stewart said he was unable to define pornography. What this ruling does is allow freakish losers like Ken Paxton define it for the rest of us. That is a big loss for all of us, no matter how prurient or G-rated our actual media consumption habits may be. The 19th and the Chron have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged data privacy, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Free Speech Coalition, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Pornhub, pornography, SCOTUS, social media, Texas, The Lege | Leave a comment

Lawsuit filed over Ten Commandments law

Posted on June 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Expect there to be a lot of litigation over bills passed this session(s).

Six parents and religious leaders have filed a lawsuit seeking to block a newly signed law set to require the Ten Commandments in Texas public school classrooms.

Leaders from both Christian and Nation of Islam faiths filed the suit Monday against defendants including the Texas Education Agency, its commissioner, Mike Morath, and three North Texas school districts. The lawsuit came two days after Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill and three days after a court blocked a similar law in Louisiana.

Sen. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford, filed Senate Bill 10 in February with the intent to encourage students to understand and appreciate the “role of the Ten Commandments in our heritage,” according to a release. Classrooms in every public, charter and post-secondary school in Texas must hang the Ten Commandments as written in the bill “in a conspicuous place” on a poster that is at least 16 by 20 inches with a legible font, according to Senate Bill 10.

[…]

Plaintiffs argued that the law violates the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution, which guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Because SB10 requires schools to display one of the hundreds of versions of the Ten Commandments, the lawsuit also alleges that it places preference for one religion and denomination over others.

“The government should govern; the Church should minister,” plaintiff Bishop Gerald Weatherall said. “Anything else is a threat to the soul of both our democracy and our faith.”

The lawsuit argued that the law does not “serve a compelling governmental interest.” In 1980, the United States Supreme Court struck down an similar Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments in public schools.

“The children who attend these schools and their families follow various faiths and religions, or do not practice any religion at all. However, under S.B. 10, every one of these students will be forcibly subjected to religious mandates, every single school day,” the lawsuit reads. “This is wholly inconsistent with the fundamental religious-freedom principles that upon which our nation was founded.”

Abbott cleared the bill less than 24 hours after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Louisiana from enforcing a similar law, labeling the mandate as “facially unconstitutional.” Texas falls under the court’s jurisdiction.

See here and here for more on the Louisiana lawsuit. There’s a motion for the entire Fifth Circuit to hear the appeal, and since two of the three Justices that ruled were appointed by Democrats, there’s a decent chance the whole court could overrule them. That said, the one Republican-appointed Justice is pretty conservative, so who knows. You can be sure this one will go to SCOTUS as well.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Greg Abbott, lawsuit, Louisiana, Mike Morath, Phil King, ten commandments, Texas, Texas Education Agency, The Lege | 4 Comments

Mayor Parker speaks about her candidacy for County Judge

Posted on June 28, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

I am once again pointing you to a recent episode of CityCast Houston, this time to hear a conversation they had with former Mayor Annise Parker about her candidacy for Harris County Judge:

See here for some background. As noted before, CityCast’s embed function puts their entire playlist, with the most recent episode at the top, in the code. This episode ran on Monday the 23rd, so as of this publication that will be the fifth one down, with the title “Why Former Mayor Parker Wants To Unseat County Judge Hidalgo”. The link above will take you directly to the episode page.

You can’t run an effective primary campaign against an incumbent without attacking that incumbent in some way, but for now I appreciate that Mayor Parker wants to talk more about what she brings to the table and why she thinks she would be a good County Judge. At this point, no one knows whether she is in fact running against an incumbent – I am counting down the days until the July campaign finance reports are up – or running for an open seat, so perhaps my concern about what kind of campaign she will have to run will be unfounded. Which is not to say there won’t be attacks, just that they wouldn’t be against Judge Lina Hidalgo. Beyond that, we’ll see.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Annise Parker, Democratic primary, Election 2026, fundraising, Harris County, Harris County Judge, Lina Hidalgo | 1 Comment

Paxton minions hurl accusations at each other

Posted on June 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

What a nest of vipers the AG’s office must be.

Still a crook any way you look

Several former and current top aides of Attorney General Ken Paxton are trading explosive accusations in legal and administrative filings, the latest of which alleges that Paxton’s right-hand deputy obstructed justice and tampered with witnesses during his 2023 impeachment.

The public feud could become a distraction for Paxton just as he’s overcome a series of legal troubles, including the impeachment charges, which he was acquitted of by the Texas Senate, and as he launches his bid to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s Republican primary.

The new allegations — detailed in a suit filed Wednesday in federal court in Austin by former Solicitor General Judd Stone and Chris Hilton, the former chief of the general litigation division — include claims that current First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster threatened to fire employees if they gave testimony during the impeachment proceedings that was unfavorable to Paxton. The claim has not previously been reported, and Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s not clear if the claims were ever raised to law enforcement; Webster has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

The first lawsuit was filed last month by Jordan Eskew, a former executive assistant for Stone and Hilton, against the two men and their private law firm. Eskew accused Stone of sexual harassment on multiple occasions in 2023 when she had taken leave from Paxton’s office to work for Stone and Hilton as private attorneys representing Paxton in the impeachment trial. She also claimed Hilton failed to protect her and that the two created a hostile work environment.

A spokesperson for Stone and Hilton’s law firm has called Eskew’s suit “a complete fabrication” and said that it was pushed by Paxton’s top deputy, First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster, who has a “personal vendetta” against Stone and Hilton. Webster and Eskew are still working at the attorney general’s office.

This week, Stone and Hilton shot back with a suit of their own against Webster and other attorney general staffers, not including Eskew, and a bar complaint against Webster.

They claim Webster tried to damage their careers by lying about them and encouraging Eskew to file her sexual harassment suit.

Stone and Hilton also claimed in the filing to the State Bar of Texas that Webster tried to tamper with potential witnesses for Paxton’s impeachment proceedings by pressuring them to give favorable testimony or “to flee the state to evade being subpoenaed to disclose information harmful to Webster.” It does not specify which people were targeted.

Webster also demanded that Stone and Hilton “disclose confidential information” during the impeachment proceedings, which would have violated their professional obligation to Paxton, according to the bar complaint.

When they refused to share the information, the complaint alleges, Webster threatened retaliation against them and the firm.

The bar complaint also alleges Webster abused the power of his office by, in part, leveraging meetings with private citizens and lawyers to try to obtain future lucrative employment and harm his enemies.

The Bar’s law office will now review the complaint and decide within the next 30 days whether the allegations amount to professional misconduct, and if so, it will conduct an investigation.

See here for more on the Jordan Eskew lawsuit. The Trib story that piggybacked off of this Chron report says that “both sides go to great lengths to stress that Paxton was not involved in any of the alleged malfeasances”, but that’s not a great look for him, either. Like, what are you as the boss of all of these people doing if all of this stuff is happening on your watch without you having any idea about it? Other than preening in front of cameras, a skill at which I will readily admit he excels. I for one will not try to predict how news like this will be received by the seething hordes of Republican primary voters. Even with everyone involved in this story being a true believer and literal Paxton crony, it’s not clear to me that any of this will be heard, understood, or accepted by them. But I will be happy to see John Cornyn spend a few million bucks trying to rub their faces in it. Reform Austin has more.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Attorney General, Brent Webster, Chris Hilton, Election 2026, impeachment, John Cornyn, Jordan Eskew, Judd Stone, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, primaries, Senate, sexual harassment, State Bar of Texas, Texas | Comments Off

ACLU and other interest groups seek to intervene in Texas Dream Act lawsuit

Posted on June 27, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, Democracy Forward, National Immigration Law Center, and the Dallas-based firm of Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann filed a motion to intervene today in ongoing federal court litigation — on behalf of La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), the Austin Community College District’s Board of Trustees (ACC), and college graduate student Oscar Silva — to defend the constitutionality of the Texas Dream Act against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

On June 4, 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the State of Texas to block the Texas Dream Act, a 24-year-old in-state college tuition law. Just hours after the DOJ filed the lawsuit — and without time for impacted individuals to express their concerns with the action — Paxton entered into a consent judgment with the federal government.

In 2001, Governor Rick Perry signed the Texas Dream Act, a law passed with bipartisan support that guarantees access to in-state tuition and financial aid for persons (including non-citizens, permanent residents, and visa holders) who graduate from and complete at least three years in Texas high schools. Dreamers must sign an affidavit stating that they will apply to become permanent residents as soon as they have the legal path to do so. The Texas Dream Act honors that Dreamers are part of our communities, invested in Texas, and that, when students are able to pursue higher education, the State continues to thrive.

In 2021, just over 20,000 students signed in-state tuition affidavits, making up 1.5% of students enrolled at Texas public colleges and universities and related institutions. These students add significantly to the overall tax revenue of the state and to the funding that institutions receive. Immigrants who hold a bachelor’s degree make more than double the salary of immigrants who do not hold bachelor’s degrees, which equates to an added $2,151 more dollars in taxes per impacted person. The Dream Act has financially benefited Texas. Without the Act, it is estimated that the state’s economy will lose over $461 million annually.

The DOJ’s order, which was agreed to without proper process, creates sweeping uncertainty for impacted students and colleges and universities as well. As students prepare to attend school in the fall, the failure of neither the DOJ nor the attorney general to defend the Texas Dream Act threatens their ability to afford tuition – and suddenly threatens their dreams of pursuing higher education.

By moving to intervene, these groups and individuals hope to challenge this abusive litigation strategy and defend the Texas Dream Act, which has enabled a generation of Texans to grow their careers and become leaders in our communities.

See here for the background. A group of undocumented students have already filed a motion to intervene, so this is adding on to that effort. I have no idea when – or, honestly, even if – there will be a hearing on these motions. It’s clear to me that these are meritorious arguments, but considering the judge involved, that may not mean much. We’ll see.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged ACLU of Texas, Austin Community College, Democracy Forward, Donald Trump, DREAM Act, DREAM.us, FIEL Houston, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, immigration, Justice Department, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, LUPE Votes, MALDEF, National Immigration Law Center, Oscar Silva, Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, The Lege | Comments Off

A look at the Tesla robotaxi rollout

Posted on June 26, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Because I have an unhealthy obsession with this cursed topic, here’s a brief roundup of news stories about how the first day of Tesla’s long-expected robotaxi rollout in Austin went.

First, you should know that only pro-Tesla influencers were invited to take a ride in one of these vehicles.

A group of social media influencers and Tesla investors were invited to participate in the Robotaxi trial, with many posting about their experiences online. Passengers were accompanied by a Tesla employee in the front passenger seat to oversee the ride and intervene if necessary.

Participants were able to request a ride in the app for a flat fee of $4.20 in a geofenced area between 6 a.m. to midnight, according to an X post of the early access invitation from Sawyer Merritt, a Tesla investor and enthusiast.

“As an Early Access rider, you will be among the first to use our new Robotaxi app and experience an autonomous ride within our geofenced area in Austin,” read the invitation.

Users said they were pleased with the Robotaxi service as they were dropped off at supermarkets, coffee shops, restaurants and other locations around Austin.

[…]

Musk has promised self-driving Teslas for nearly a decade with little to show.

Musk first announced Tesla’s aspirations in the autonomous vehicle industry in 2013, predicting Tesla would be building a self-driving car by 2016 with 90% of miles driven.

Over the next three years, the company would continue its promise to launch self-driving cars while making advancements in Autopilot and launching various car models.

In 2016, Tesla released a 4 minute video showing a Tesla driving itself to the sound of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black.” Musk promoted the demonstration on X, Twitter at the time, writing, “Tesla drives itself (no human input at all).” In 2023, Reuters reported the footage was staged with Musk’s knowledge.

Musk also promised that year, according to Business Insider, that a Tesla vehicle would be able to drive fully autonomously from Los Angeles to New York City by the end of 2017.

Over the next 7 years or so, Jalopnik reported, Musk would set deadlines for when Tesla expected to launch autonomous vehicles but when the time came would shift back the deadlines another year or so.

Gotta love the shade. This AP story gets into more of that.

Elon Musk promised in 2019 that driverless Tesla “robotaxis” would be on the road “next year,” but it didn’t happen. A year later, he promised to deliver them the next year, but that didn’t happen either.

Despite the empty pledges the promises kept coming. Last year in January, Musk said, “Next year for sure, we’ll have over a million robotaxis.”

Would you settle for 10 or 12?

Musk appears to be on the verge of making his robotaxi vision a reality with a test run of a small squad of self-driving cabs in Austin, Texas, that began Sunday. Reaching a million may take a year or more, however, although the billionaire should be able to expand the service this year if the Austin demo is a success.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, nor the challenges.

While Musk was making those “next year” promises, rival Waymo was busy deploying driverless taxis in Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin and other cities by using a different technology that allowed it to get to market faster. It just completed its 10 millionth paid ride.

[…]

The test is beginning modestly enough. Tesla is remotely monitoring the vehicles and putting a person in the passenger seat in case of trouble. The number of Teslas deployed will also be small — just 10 or 12 vehicles — and will only pick up passengers in a limited, geofenced area.

Musk has vowed that the service will quickly spread to other cities, eventually reaching hundreds of thousands if not a million vehicles next year.

Some Musk watchers on Wall Street are skeptical.

“How quickly can he expand the fleet?” asks Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA. “We’re talking maybe a dozen vehicles initially. It’s very small.”

Morningstar’s Seth Goldstein says Musk is being classic Musk: Promising too much, too quickly.

“When anyone in Austin can download the app and use a robotaxi, that will be a success, but I don’t think that will happen until 2028,” he says. “Testing is going to take a while.”

Musk’s tendency to push up the stock high with a bit of hyperbole is well known among investors.

This Slate story goes even harder on the snark. I’ll leave it to you to read since the factual recitals are now familiar.

Not all of the reaction is negative – the stock market, for one, was pretty positive – and even I will have to admit that Musk’s many companies do achieve things. I’m just enjoying the side-eye he’s getting. And there were a couple of mishaps, nothing harmful but perhaps a reminder that for all of the bravado, Tesla and Musk are very much at the start of a still-long process.

Tesla finally has a robotaxi. Now comes the hard part.

The electric-vehicle maker deployed its first-ever driverless cabs in Austin, Texas, on Sunday in a small-scale test of carefully monitored Model Y vehicles. Next, the company faces the steep challenge of executing on CEO Elon Musk’s ambition to refine the software and upload it to millions of Teslas within a year or so.

Such a rapid expansion will prove extremely difficult, about a dozen industry analysts and autonomous-vehicle technology experts told Reuters. These observers expressed a range of views about Tesla’s prospects but all cautioned against assuming a light-speed robotaxi rollout.

Some pointed to advantages Tesla might exploit to overtake rivals including Alphabet’s Waymo and a host of Chinese auto and tech companies. Tesla has mass-manufacturing capacity, and it pioneered remote software updates it can use for self-driving upgrades. The automaker also does not use sensors such as radar and lidar like Waymo and most rivals; instead, it depends solely on cameras and artificial intelligence.

“A rollout could be really quick. If the software works, Tesla robotaxi could drive any road in the world,” said Seth Goldstein, a Morningstar senior equity analyst, while cautioning that Tesla is still “testing the product.”

In Austin, Tesla launched a choreographed experiment involving maybe a dozen cars, operating in limited geography, with safety monitors in the front passenger seat; remote “teleoperators”; plans to avoid bad weather; and hand-picked pro-Tesla influencers as passengers.

For years, Musk has said Tesla would soon operate its own autonomous ride-hailing service and also turn any Tesla, new or used, into a cash-generating robotaxi for its customers. That will be “orders of magnitude” more difficult than testing in Austin, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor focused on autonomous-driving regulation.

“It’s like announcing that, ‘I’m going to Mars’ and then, you know, going to Cleveland,” Smith said.

Musk has said Tesla will reach Mars, in that metaphor, quite quickly: “I predict that there will be millions of Teslas operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year,” he said in April.

Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment. Tesla shares ended 8.2% higher at $348.68 on Monday on investor enthusiasm over the robotaxi launch.

Given Tesla’s AI-dependent approach, its challenge will be machine-training robotaxis to handle complex traffic “edge cases,” said Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University computer-engineering professor and autonomous-technology expert. That could take many years.

“Look, how long has it taken Waymo?” Koopman asked. “There’s no reason to believe Tesla will be any faster.”

It should be noted that Tesla is not only competing with Waymo. Have you heard of Zoox?

Amazon’s Zoox plans to enter the fray late this year with a custom-designed, van-like model loaded with sensors and cameras that it hopes will set it apart.

“We’re offering a unique experience for riders that we think they’ll prefer,” said cofounder and CTO Jesse Levinson, during a tour of the new Zoox robotaxi factory in Hayward, California, this week. “The ride quality, the carriage-style seating, the roomy interior–we think all of this is going to be what sets us apart.”

After 11 years of preparation and billions of investment dollars from Amazon, Zoox intends to launch its commercial robot ride service late this year in Las Vegas, with San Francisco, Austin, Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta to follow. Rather than loading up existing vehicles with sensors and computers like Waymo has, Zoox’s plan from the outset has revolved around creating a robotaxi service with an electric model unlike any on the road.

There’s no steering wheel, pedals or external mirrors; it has sliding doors reminiscent of transit trains; and it’s designed as a bidirectional vehicle, with an identical front and rear. The Zoox robotaxi has a top speed of 75 miles per hour, though for now it won’t typically exceed 45 mph on urban and suburban runs. It’s also intended to operate for up to 16 hours per charge per day and remain in service for at least five years and 100,000 miles.

The combination of that long service life and ability to provide dozens of rides per day are key to creating a profitable business, even with a vehicle that costs much more than a conventional electric car, said CEO Aicha Evans. “We’re selling rides, not vehicles,” she said, declining to discuss the cost of producing the Zoox-mobile. “We want to offer the best experience at a competitive price.”

There’s a picture of a Zoox robotaxi in that story, and I have to say it looks weird, more like one of those Metro microtransit shuttles than something one would envision when one thinks of a “taxi”. But if Zoox is being backed by Amazon, you know they’ll have plenty of resources to make this go, and to manufacture a bunch of them. Don’t underestimate them.

One more look at the rollout:

Tellingly, the service is not open to the general public, nor is it completely “unsupervised,” as Elon Musk once promised. The vehicles will include Tesla-employed “safety monitors” in the front passenger seat who can react to a dangerous situation by hitting a kill switch. Other autonomous vehicle operators would place safety monitors in the driver or passenger seats, but typically only during the testing phase. Tesla is unique in its use of safety monitors during commercial service.

The rides are limited to a geofenced area of the city that has been thoroughly mapped by the company. And in some cases, Tesla is using chase cars and remote drivers as additional backup. (Some vehicles have been spotted without chase vehicles.)

The service is invite only at launch, according to Tesla’s website. A number of pro-Tesla influencers have received invites, which should raise questions about how unbiased these first critical reactions will be. Tesla hasn’t said when the service will be available to the general public.

The limited trial includes 10-20 Model Y vehicles with “Robotaxi” branding on the side. The fully autonomous Cybercab that was first revealed last year won’t be available until 2026 at the earliest. The service operates in a small, relatively safe area of Austin from 6AM to 12AM, avoiding bad weather, highways, airports, and complex intersections.

Despite those hours, the robotaxi service seems to have gotten off to a slow start. Several invitees had yet to receive the robotaxi app by 1PM ET on Sunday. Sawyer Merritt, who posts pro-Tesla content on X, said he saw 30 Waymo vehicles go by while waiting for Tesla’s robotaxi service to start. Musk posted at 1:12PM that the service would be available later that afternoon, adding that initial customers would pay a “flat fee” of $4.20 for rides — a weed joke with which Musk has a troubled history.

[…]

And then the rides began — and they appeared to be mostly uneventful. Several invitees livestreamed themselves summoning their first cars, interacting with the UI, and then arriving at their destination. Several videos lasted hours, as the invitees would conclude a trip and then hail another car immediately after. One tester, Bearded Tesla Guy, described the app’s interface as “basically Uber.” Many had some difficulty finding the pickup location of their waiting Tesla robotaxi.

“This is like Pokemon hunting,” one person on Herbert Ong’s livestream said, “but its robotaxi hunting.”

Once inside, the Tesla-employed safety monitor would ask the riders to show their robotaxi apps to prove their identities. Otherwise the safety monitors kept silent throughout the ride, despite riders trying to get them to talk. I’m assuming that Tesla will need to come up with some other way to identify their riders if they plan on removing the safety monitors from the passenger seat. Waymo, for example, asks customers to unlock their vehicle through the ridehail app.

There’s more, so read the rest. I’ll be very interested to see what the experience is like for the non-fanboys, when the service is rolled out to a wider audience and presumably a winder array of locations and options. In the meantime, there it is, after all this time.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged ADMT, Amazon, Austin, Avride, California, Cybercab, Donald Trump, driverless cars, Elon Musk, Los Angeles, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, San Francisco, taxis, Tesla, Texas, Uber, Volkswagon, Waymo, Zoox | 5 Comments

SCOTx rules for San Antonio in the Brackenridge Park religious liberties case

Posted on June 26, 2025 by Charles Kuffner

Noted for the record.

The Texas Supreme Court has sided with the City of San Antonio in a dispute involving a Native American church that worships at Brackenridge Park.

The case centers on the Lipan- Apache Native American Church, who consider a portion of Brackenridge Park a sacred place. The city’s planned improvements to the area included removing trees and bird habitat. The city has halted work where the ceremonies are held.

It began with a bond issue San Antonio voters approved in 2017. The bond included funds to refurbish part of the park, including renovating the old pump house and the elimination of some trees.⁠

The trees are the nesting spaces of the large white cormorants in the Lambert Beach area, near the Brackenridge Conservancy’s headquarters building. Hundreds of the migratory birds nest there each year. The large, fetid mess they leave on the ground under them is considered a health hazard, particularly for children.⁠

In its ruling the Texas Supreme Court said the Texas Constitution’s provisions do not extend to governmental actions for the preservation and management of public lands.

Gary Perez, a member of the Lipan-Apache Native American Church, said that “We are going to continue to pray for the best to keep the trees there, our spiritual ecology, the trees, the birds. We’ll just continue to pray all the way through and hope that God will intervene and soften some hearts.”

See here for some background. This was a federal religious liberties case that was heard by the Fifth Circuit, which initially affirmed a ruling in favor of the city of San Antonio but granted a rehearing after the state amended its constitution in 2021 that the plaintiffs said had bearing on their claim. The Fifth Circuit granted the motion for a rehearing but first referred the case to SCOTx for a ruling on the state constitutional matter, which is typical in this kind of case. And now we have it, and we’ll see what happens next. As I said before, I didn’t really lean one way or the other, I just thought this was an interesting case and I wanted to see how it turned out. Now I have it.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Constitution, coronavirus, Election 2021, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Gary Perez, lawsuit, Lipan-Apache Native American Church, Matilde Torres, quarantine, Ron Nirenberg, San Antonio, Supreme Court, Texas, trees | Comments Off

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