There was some good news from Odessa last month

Good to hear.

Craig Stoker

When Craig Stoker pulled the flyer out of the mailbox, he chuckled.

It was a political mailer, one of many deployed this fall in Odessa, the West Texas city in the heart of the oil-rich Permian Basin.

His opponent, incumbent City Council member Denise Swanner, compared her stance to his. The two were total opposites except for the fact that both were in relationships with men.

It was the latest attempt in a Republican stronghold to tie Stoker’s sexual orientation to his support of the LGBTQ+ community and, by extension, the Democratic Party.

The people behind the advertisement wanted voters to elect candidates who advanced conservative values, only this election was supposed to be nonpartisan.

While Stoker and his allies had hoped the local election would be about infrastructure and city services, his opponent attempted to shift the battlefield to national political issues. Across the country, Republicans were running countless attack ads on Democrats for their support of transgender people.

The strategy backfired — at least in Odessa. The three City Council incumbents lost, a stunning result that analysts and longtime observers say revealed voters’ desire for local elected leaders to focus on roads and garbage pick up, not national flashpoints.

Stoker, the scion of a prominent Odessa family, became the first openly gay man elected to Odessa’s City Council. He won his at-large seat with 56% of the vote at the same time President-elect Donald Trump won all of Ector County with 76% of the vote.

“At the end of all of this, we are neighbors. You’re electing the people you live with,” Stoker said. “And no matter what happens, what you say about each other, the energy you put out about each other, you still have to live together.”an

Long story short, Odessa had previously elected three wingnuts to its Council, including the Mayor. Earlier this year, they passed an anti-trans bathroom ban. And then, not much later, they all got unelected, and it wasn’t close. Turns out even Odessa was able to want local electeds that prioritized local issues over national hot-button stuff that had no positive effect on anyone’s life. Maybe there’s something we all can learn from that.

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

Somehow, the Boca Chica land swap is off

I only found out about this now because this story, dated November 14, was either never on the Houston Chronicle homepage or was missed by me when it was, until it was on Page One of the December 16 print edition.

SpaceX has backed out of a controversial land swap that would have given the commercial space company 43 acres of state parkland near its launch facilities in South Texas.

The company told the state in a September letter that it was “no longer interested in pursuing the specific arrangement.”

It did not offer an explanation but said the company first notified the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department of its decision in July.

“SpaceX appreciates the ongoing cooperation of the State of Texas and Texas Parks and Wildlife as SpaceX’s operations in South Texas continue to expand,” the Sept. 26 letter said.

The deal, which was approved by the parks department in early March, would have given SpaceX room to expand into Boca Chica State Park, which surrounds the facility where it’s building and launching the world’s most powerful rocket. In exchange, SpaceX agreed to buy 477 acres near the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge and give the land to the state to create a new state park.

Cameron County Appraisal District records show SpaceX did buy the 477 acres.

In a statement, the parks department said it will “continue to identify and develop new state parks across Texas for wildlife conservation and public recreation.” SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

[…]

The commission unanimously approved the deal. The decision drew a lawsuit filed by a coalition of Texas indigenous and environmental groups who alleged the state violated its obligations to minimize harm and consider alternatives to giving away state parkland.

In a filing Thursday in Travis County District Court, the parks department and parks commission asked that the case be dismissed.

“There is no longer a live controversy due to SpaceX’s withdrawal from the proposed land exchange authorized by the Commission resolution appealed in this case,” it said.

See here, here, and here for the background. The basic idea of this swap was always a little weird and puzzling to me, but it wasn’t clear that it was a bad deal for the state on its face. That said, I’m never surprised to see Eben Musk go back on his word, and I’m never unhappy to see him not get something that he once wanted, for whatever the reason. MySanantonio and Texas Standard have more.

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The Dustin Burrows dilemma

I have four things to say about this.

Rep. Dustin Burrows

Five years ago, Rep. Dustin Burrows’ reputation sustained a major blow among his House colleagues.

The Lubbock Republican resigned as chair of the House GOP Caucus after it was revealed that he and then-Speaker Dennis Bonnen tried to collude with a right-wing activist by providing a list of 10 GOP members they believed should be targeted by the activist’s political organization in the upcoming primary. The actions amounted to a shocking betrayal from House leaders who had previously threatened consequences for any incumbents who campaigned against fellow members in future elections. One of the would-be targets, Rep. Drew Darby of San Angelo, said it was time for the House to “begin to heal and rebuild trust” — something that could only happen if Burrows was “no longer in leadership.”

Bonnen retired. Burrows retreated from the spotlight, but steadily worked behind the scenes regaining his standing in the chamber.

Five years later, Burrows finds himself at the center of another Republican House leadership skirmish. Yet again, he got there because of his proximity to a sitting House speaker — this time Dade Phelan — who lost favor with a majority of GOP members. And once again he is at odds with many of the same political powers that contributed to his original demise.

Now, Burrows is seeking the gavel for himself, emerging as the chosen pick of establishment and moderate GOP lawmakers — including one-time critic Darby — after Phelan exited the race earlier this month.

His eleventh-hour speakership bid attracted immediate ire from the House’s rightmost faction and their allies outside the chamber. That contingent has vowed to censure and wage aggressive primary challenges against any House Republicans who do not vote for their preferred candidate, Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield. Cook became the House GOP Caucus’ speaker nominee after some of Burrows’ supporters walked out of the caucus’ meeting last weekend.

In a declaration of political war, Burrows disregarded Cook’s endorsement and quickly announced that he had enough supporters to win the speakership in January when the full chamber votes. He released a list of 76 supporters, just enough to win, made up equally of Republicans and Democrats. Immediately, a few Republicans named on Burrows’ initial list of supporters asked for their names to be removed.

To date, Burrows no longer has enough public supporters to win. But publicly he is projecting confidence that he will. His path to victory appears to be relying on a coalition made up of more Democrats than Republicans, leading to a situation where his critics on the right are characterizing him as too liberal, while Democrats opposing him complain he’s too conservative. In a blow to Burrows, Gov. Greg Abbott last week urged members to back the candidate “chosen by a majority of Republicans in accordance with the Republican Caucus Rules,” though he did not mention Cook by name.

[…]

As Phelan’s proxy, Burrows is viewed by most Democrats as the more palatable option between the two Republican speaker candidates — as evidenced by the 38 members of the minority party on Burrows’ initial list of supporters. One of those members, state Rep. Josey Garcia of San Antonio, later said she was not supporting anyone for speaker yet. (No Democrats have publicly supported Cook.)

Burrows’ backing among Democrats is far from universal. A group of more than 20 Democratic House members have withheld their support, with some citing his authorship of a sweeping new law, dubbed by opponents as the “Death Star bill,” aimed at sapping the power of local governments, particularly in Texas’ bluer urban areas.

All this has left Burrows to perform a delicate balancing act where his efforts to woo Democrats over to his side could lead to more Republican defections, and vice versa.

Cook, for his part, has vowed to end the practice of appointing Democrats to chair any House committees — a longstanding tradition continued by Phelan and previous GOP speakers, who have all granted Democrats a limited number of chairmanships. Cook has also pledged to ensure that GOP priority bills reach the floor before any Democratic measures.

Burrows said he has not made any concessions to Democrats. On the issue of appointing Democratic committee chairs, he said he would leave it to the members “to work that out amongst themselves” when they approve the House rules next session.

Rather than making specific promises, Burrows said he is courting Democrats by leveraging relationships he has developed working on bipartisan issues, and by signaling support for House rules “that allow the majority to rule but the minority to have their voice heard and respected.”

“And it doesn’t hurt that the other side has wanted significant rule changes to shut them out of the process completely,” Burrows said of his efforts to court Democrats.

1. I am not a fan of Rep. Dustin Burrows, not after his authoring of the “Death Star” bill along with his insulting comments about cities and mayors and whatnot. I empathize with Dems in the Legislature who feel similarly, and there are a few vocal ones out there.

2. That said, if some Dems think they will do better in a House with a Speaker Burrows than a Speaker Cook – not at all an unreasonable thought – then they should by all means talk to him and hear him out. Just be sure to get something in return for that support, and not just something for you but for your colleagues and your constituents.

3. By the artisanal calculations of poli sci professor Mark Jones, Dustin Burrows is somehow one of the more “moderate” Republicans in the House. We need to find a better word for this than “moderate”, because that word has no meaning anymore.

4. By making an enemy of Gollum-wannabe Michael Quinn Sullivan, Dustin Burrows does have at least one redeeming feature.

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Expanding ETHAN

Sounds like a good idea.

The city may spin off the Houston Fire Department’s emergency telemedicine program to a local government corporation in hopes of generating enough funding to support the initiative and, perhaps, even turn a profit.

The city’s chief medical officer, Dr. David Persse, and new Fire Chief Thomas Muñoz pitched the idea to a seemingly receptive City Council Public Safety Committee Tuesday.

The full council is expected to take up the proposal Oct. 28.

Should the body approve the idea, the city would create the local government corporation, and then hammer out an interlocal agreement with the board that would allow the corporation to offer Houston’s Emergency Telehealth and Navigation system, known as ETHAN, to other cities.

Persse and Muñoz told the council committee the program potentially could generate more than $9 million for city coffers in five years.

Under the existing program, which the city began in 2014, some residents who call 911 can speak with an emergency physician to determine the best way to proceed before accumulating ambulance and emergency room costs. Callers, for example, could opt to take a cab to an urgent care clinic for a minor affliction rather than use an ambulance to go to an emergency room.

ETHAN has saved the city approximately $22 million in ambulance costs since 2014 and served more than 37,000 patients, Persse said Tuesday.

As a corporation, the program eventually would be sustainable without the use of general fund tax dollars, partnering instead with insurance companies and neighboring cities, Persse said. Currently, 200 Houston Fire Department emergency vehicles have access to the program.

“This ETHAN is going to be a critical resource for us, as I said before, a force multiplier that allows us to utilize the resources that we have now to respond to those quote, unquote, true emergencies,” Muñoz told the council committee.

This was from October, I’m publishing it from the drafts. It was indeed approved by City Council on October 28 as noted. I had forgotten about ETHAN, but I did note its existence back in 2015. I’m happy to have this reminder about it. The story says that over 90% of the cases on video calls do not need an ambulance, so there’s real value here. Making it into a local government corporation means making it like Houston First, which is a familiar model. The amount of revenue this could generate is modest, but it’s a good idea on its own merits, and even a modest amount of extra revenue – plus the savings of not funding this out of the budget – would be welcome. Now that it has moved forward, I look forward to seeing it succeed.

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Uplift Harris 2.0 still on hold

Just part of the process at this point.

Harris County’s second version of a guaranteed income program has been blocked as it awaits a final appeal after a recent court order stopped the county from distributing funds under the revamped cash assistance program.

The move is the latest in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s battle against what he has called a guaranteed income “scheme,” and a struggle between Harris County leaders’ goal to support low-income households amidst the murky constitutionality of cash assistance programs and Republican leaders’ criticism of handouts.

“Harris County is not above the law and cannot ignore the Texas Constitution,” said Attorney General Paxton. “They made a blatant attempt to end-run a Texas Supreme Court ruling by duplicating their unlawful handout program, and we have successfully blocked them yet again.”

[…]

In his original petition in April, Paxton’s office called the first-version of Harris County’s guaranteed income program a ‘socialist experiment’ at the hands of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. While the litigation for the $20.5 million Uplift Harris program was still ongoing, the clock was ticking to use the necessary funding from American Rescue Plan Act, which must be allocated by the end of 2024. So,   Harris County launched a second version of the program called the “Community Prosperity Program” in August.

But despite modifications, Paxton sued Harris County over its second version of the cash assistance program in September, calling it unconstitutional. In October, a Harris County judge sided with Harris County on the program. But a request to speed up the appeals process was granted by the Fifteenth Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 6, meaning that in the following two weeks the county and state have to get their opinions filed, Harris County cannot hand out money through the second version of the program.

See here and here for the previous updates, and here for the court’s order. All of the briefing should be done by early to mid-January, with a court date (not yet set, or at least not set in this order) likely to be shortly after. After that it goes to the Supreme Court, which is where it was always headed again. I don’t have anything new to add, we’re just watching the wheels go ’round and ’round. KHOU has more.

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Starbase City

Elon Musk would like his own company town, please.

SpaceX’s goal is to colonize Mars. But first, it wants to create an official city in Texas.

Employees living on the site of SpaceX’s operations in South Texas are requesting a special election to determine whether the site can be incorporated into a city.

Current residents of Starbase, the company’s South Texas headquarters and launch site, submitted a petition to Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Thursday, according to a SpaceX spokesperson.

“We are investing billions in infrastructure and generating hundreds of millions in income and taxes for local businesses and government, all with the goal of making South Texas the Gateway to Mars,” said Starbase General Manager Kathryn Lueders in a letter to Treviño.

Lueders wrote the area is home to several hundred employees and that incorporating the site would streamline the processes of building amenities needed to make Starbase a world-class place to live. Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, announced earlier this year his intentions to move the company’s headquarters to Texas.

The spaceport — and maybe future city — sits on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico and is about 25 miles east of Brownsville, the state’s southernmost city. A single stretch of highway connects the city to the launch site.

[…]

She assured that incorporating would not impact their efforts to minimize effects on the environment that were developed with state and federal agencies. This comes after regulators cited the company for not having the proper authorization for its water deluge system. The company remains a target for local environmental groups who are skeptical the company can operate without damaging the surrounding ecosystem.

Treviño did not respond to a request for an interview.

Last month, the Cameron County commissioners denied a variance request from SpaceX that would allow them to subdivide their limited residential area into more lots.

“SpaceX is not the typical developer whose purpose is to build and to sell infrastructure,” read an October 10 letter to the county commissioners from an engineering firm representing SpaceX.

I mean, I don’t trust anything Elmo says or does, so it would take a lot of convincing to get me to support this idea, if I were a Cameron County Commissioner. Maybe they’ll see it differently – I don’t claim to have any idea what the local issues are here, or what incorporating might do to address them. I’m just saying, the idea of Elno Musk owning and operating his own company town ought to give us all at least a little pause. Texas Public Radio has more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

The leopards are going to be very busy

This is a story about how the Trump administration is targeting Medicaid for cuts, mostly to finance its future tax giveaways to the wealthy, and how states like Texas could come in behind that and make even further cuts to Medicaid in their own budgets as a result. At the very end, we get the following, which is the essence of the 2024 election in a nutshell.

William T. Smith, a 65-year-old retired construction worker who lives along the U.S.-Mexico border in Brownsville, said that he voted for Trump partly because he agrees that “there’s too much fat” and supports cutting some federal programs.

Smith has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which affects his lungs and makes it difficult to breathe. He said he also has bipolar disorder, sleep apnea and chronic pain after decades of performing manual labor.

Smith said Medicaid, which he has been trying to get since the summer, should not be where the federal government looks to reduce expenses. Instead, he said, the federal government should take savings from cutting other programs and put the money toward more people’s care.

“I don’t think they’re going to yank health care away from people,” he said. “If they do, I’d be really angry.”

I had to do some deep breathing exercises after reading this to avoid cranial combustion. The sad truth is, we are going to need to get some of the people who are now trying to reconcile the Trump they thought they were voting for with the Trump they’re gonna get on our side, whether they were ever there before or not. Among other things – and this hurts to say, believe me – it means we’re going to have to resist dunking on them. Well, mostly, anyway. Because this, I can’t resist.

We’ll be using this a lot, won’t we?

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Weekend link dump for December 15

“I don’t know how to explain to somebody what it feels like when your own military that you volunteered to fight for your country doesn’t want you.”

“It’s shark-infested waters to procure moms, to then procure their children, to then broker the baby to an adoptive parent. People are competing for women.”

“The raw milk movement didn’t start with leftist hippies. It started with cranky individualist farmers and their conservative customers, who fought against government regulators for their right to do as they pleased. From there it spread on both left and right, but even now it’s mostly a right-wing cause. The MAGA embrace of raw milk (and later RFK Jr.) is its natural end point, not a sudden embrace of crunchy hippiedom.”

Please enjoy the Royal Society Publishing Photo Competition for 2024.

“Millions of people are turning to AI for companionship. They are finding the experience surprisingly meaningful, unexpectedly heartbreaking, and profoundly confusing, leaving them to wonder, ‘Is this real? And does that matter?’”

“Normal people noted with satisfaction that all the Kennedys got together to denounce their relative for his conspiracism. For those inclined to believe in things like QAnon, that’s RFK’s best feature—not a bug. Those other Kennedys were frauds. RFK Jr., the only one with the courage to keep the faith, was Camelot’s true heir. That is his Kennedy magic: that he alone can defeat the Unspeakable.”

RIP, Merv Rettenmund, former ML player and coach who won two World Series and was an ace pinch-hitter.

Gifts for people you hate, 2024. If you are the type of person who needs this type of advice – and you know who you are – then this is the advice that you need. Also very funny regardless, and I’ve added a couple of the books it mentions to my Amazon list. There are lists from previous years as well.

“What is a boob?”

Three cheers for Armani Latimer.

“But the point is that you can’t cede the efficiency and reform brand to people whose real aim in cutting people’s Medicaid and Social Security. Because that’s pretty much where we are at the end of 2024.”

The reason why so many new shows on streamers get cancelled after one season is that the streamers have huge catalogs of older shows that perform really well for them.

“This is because conservatism isn’t Fox’s core brand. Outrage is. And the outrage isn’t just aimed liberals; it’s aimed at big government, big medicine, big banks, and anywhere else that outrage can be mined. This outrage naturally produces pessimism—why else would so many gold scammers advertise there?—and that pessimism is ultimately directed toward authority figures of all kinds.”

“Fog Data Science is a location tracking company that takes data harvested from smartphones and makes it accessible to cops. A document obtained by 404 Media shows the company explicitly says it will use doctors visits to unmask a target if needed.”

“What’s more, David Sacks’ appointment unambiguously indicates the tech vision that will win out under a Trump presidency: that we should disregard the very real dangers around crypto A.I.’s energy use and pollution and environmental plunder and copyright infringement and horrific output, for the direct benefit of the guys whose riches are fueling this dystopia—uh, sorry, for the good of the world or something.”

RIP, Rocky Colavito, former MLB player, coach, and broadcaster mostly with Cleveland, one of only 18 players to hit four home runs in a single game.

RIP, George Kresge, magician who performed as The Amazing Kreskin.

I have no idea how Bill Belichick will do as a college coach, but I’m fascinated by the idea.

“Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, is required to remove a controversial login checkbox from WordPress.org and let WP Engine back into its ecosystem after a judge granted WP Engine a preliminary injunction in its ongoing lawsuit.”

She’s full of shit and her prop of a sling is a pathetic ploy for attention.”

RIP, Janis Scott, longtime public transit advocate who was known as the “Bus Lady”. She was one of the first Black graduates of Rice University, in the class of 1974.

“The Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla, according to a document seen by Reuters, a move that could cripple the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems.” What could possibly go wrong?

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We are again speculating about Judge Hidalgo’s re-election plans

Well, Mayor Whitmire is speculating, anyway.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

County Judge Lina Hidalgo said she hasn’t decided whether to run for office in 2026 in response to a claim made Thursday by Mayor John Whitmire that she will not pursue another term as county judge.

Whitmire, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle, said he had heard that Hidalgo was “fixing to announce that she’s not going to run.” He alluded to the judge’s personal struggle with depression and the pressures that accompany the job as county judge.

“She’s not enjoying her work,” Whitmire said. “And she’s happy now. I saw on social media she got back this weekend from her wedding destination. But let me tell you what, this is a tough job at any level. You definitely lose your privacy. She’s obviously documented some of her emotional issues, which, this is a terrible profession to be in if you’re struggling with pressure.”

In a statement to the Chronicle, Hidalgo said she is “fully focused on serving the people of Harris County” but didn’t directly say whether Whitmire’s comments about her political future were accurate.

“At this time, we have no announcement to make regarding future elections,” her office said.

[…]

Hidalgo already has one potential challenger for the position, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who may run for county judge as a Democrat. Parker told the Chronicle in April she hadn’t decided any plans for the future.

“I think Annise would make a great county judge,” Whitmire said Thursday. “But I’m also smart enough to know to wait and see if Hidalgo does what supposedly is supposed to happen.”

Parker told the Chronicle Thursday she was “leaning strongly” toward entering the race.

For what it’s worth, Judge Hidalgo said in May that she was planning to run again. It’s possible she could be thinking differently today – people do change their minds – but if she is I doubt she’s shared that with Mayor Whitmire, and I doubt she’s all that interested in his views on the subject. As for former Mayor Parker, we’ll see. I will restate my position that I would prefer to avoid a big nasty primary fight. It’s out of my hands from here. Campos has more.

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The birds and the trees and the religious liberties

I really don’t know what to make of this, which is a story about an unusual religious liberties lawsuit that the city of San Antonio and the 2021 constitutional amendment that expanded religious freedom in Texas, stemming from a backlash to restrictions on church attendance during COVID.

And that’s the libertarian fuel that has reanimated a lawsuit against the City of San Antonio over its plans to fell dozens of trees and harass migratory birds to make way for a bond-funded redevelopment project in Brackenridge Park.

Religious faith takes many forms. Some encounter the sacred in a converted gymnasium with amplified guitars and drums, others at the bend of a river whose twists appear to reflect a constellation floating in the night sky. That’s the case for Gary Perez and Matilde Torres, members of the Lipan-Apache ‘Hoosh Chetzel’ Native American Church, two Indigenous area residents who have been fighting the City’s efforts to remove—at one tally—more than 100 trees from the river’s headwaters. They also oppose San Antonio’s ongoing harassment of migratory birds that have made the trees in the city park their home.

The religious liberty claim has proven to be a boon for, as Canales was quoted, protecting religious services from regulation wasn’t just a matter for Christians, but it was also “about mosques, it’s about all people of faith.”

For Perez and Torres, and those who join them at a bend of the San Antonio River known by the City of San Antonio as Lambert Beach, the headwaters, and this spot in particular, is a sacred site.

The waters, the trees, the birds, and stars above all organize a “sacred ecology” the group has sought to defend against the City of San Antonio’s redevelopment plans.

Their federal lawsuit that dropped the day after Mayor Ron Nirenberg pushed through a City Council vote in spite of warnings from a Council colleague that he was risking potentially permanently spoiling relations with the broader community that has mobilized to protect the site.

Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery ruled that the City of San Antonio, which had fenced off the sacred area, ostensibly to protect the public from what they described as a hanging branch, must allow access for groups of 20 or fewer members of the Lipan-Apache Native American Church—but for no more than an hour and only on “specified astronomical dates.”

He rejected, however, the need to change plans to destroy the trees or stop aggressive bird deterrence in the park.

An appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit was initially rejected. But the change to the Texas Constitution—Article I, Section 6-a—was later considered reason to consider the matter again through the lens of religious liberty.

On Wednesday, December 5, 2024, the Supreme Court of Texas heard oral arguments in “Perez v. City of San Antonio.”

“Like their ancestors before them, Gary Perez and Matilde Torres perform religious ceremonies at a bend in the San Antonio River,” said the couple’s legal representative, John Greil of the University of the University of Texas Law and Religion Clinic, during introductory oral arguments before the court.

“They believe that bend is sacred and that the cormorants that nest in the trees, and the trees themselves, form the central components of those religious ceremonies. The City of San Antonio has chosen a construction that will remove all but 14 of the 80 trees at that bank.”

Article I, Section 6-a of the Texas Constitution bars the state of Texas and any subdivisions within it (like cities and counties) from limiting or prohibiting the practice of religious activities. Though originally aimed at reopening churches which may have had their activities limited over pandemic-related health concerns, the amendment is broadly written. On Wednesday, the justices of the the Supreme Court of Texas met to attempt to figure out where the boundaries of that amendment lie. It is the first court case in the state’s history based around the religious freedom amendment, according to Greil.

“We’re moving the needle forward with this case,” Perez told Deceleration after the hearing. “We’re moving justice in the direction it needs to go.”

However, Perez stressed that the hearing was not about the validity of his group’s spiritual beliefs or practices in San Antonio. Instead, the court was debating what is necessary for a city to meet the requirements of the state constitution in regards to freedom of religion. “The state of Texas and its laws make it very clear that they protect the freedom of religion under just about any circumstance,” Perez said.

This is back in the State Supreme Court because of the change to the state constitution – the Fifth Circuit will use the ruling from this case, expected in August, to guide their action. We could get something sweeping or narrow, it’s too soon to say. For obvious reasons, I’m leery of expansions of religious liberty in this climate, but these are not the typical plaintiffs and I have sympathy for their claims. I had no idea about any of this, and I was drawn in by the story, so I’m noting it here and we’ll see what happens. Go read the rest.

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One more eVTOL in Houston

I missed this story when it ran in September, but here it is now. It answered a few questions about how these things operate, which I liked.

Lilium, a German aerospace company, debuted its electric vertical takeoff and landing jet Thursday at Hobby Airport in the U.S. for the first time as it hopes the aircraft will be flying over Houston as soon as 2026.

The Lilium Jet is an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOL, that can seat four to six people. Matt Broffman, Lilium’s commercial vice president in North America, said the range for the plane in 2026 will be 110 miles with the goal of expanding that range to connect the entire Texas Triangle by 2035.

“With ground-based EVs, we saw lower maintenance. The same is the case for aircraft electric vehicles. The maintenance costs being low and there being no fuel cost, which is one of the most expensive parts of any flight, means that this aircraft is incredibly efficient to operate, which means that price point for the end consumer can be way more affordable long term,” said Broffman, who called the aircraft the world’s first eVTOL jet.

Lilium Jets lift vertically like helicopters with their engines rotating down to push the aircraft up. Once in the air, the engines rotate back into a traditional position for the craft to head to its destination.

[…]

Lilium will start crewed flight tests next year to get approval from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the Federal Aviation Administration.

The jet’s debut did not include a flight demonstration but invitees could climb inside and walk around the craft.

Thursday’s event, coordinated with the Greater Houston Partnership, came after Lilium announced an infrastructure partnership with Galaxy FBO. Galaxy FBO is a fixed-base operator with locations at Conroe North Houston Regional Airport, Addison Airport and The Woodlands Heliport in addition to Hobby.

Jimmy Spence, Houston Airports business development manager, said he and others are trying to figure out what locations at Bush Intercontinental Airport might be the best spot for a vertiport. He said their considerations include how the jets will approach the airport, and how will passengers be secured after landing and be able to enter and exit the airport.

“It’s a jigsaw puzzle,” Spence said. “It’s challenging, but it’s fun.”

The length of the Lilium Jet is about 50 feet, Broffman said, and a landing strip needs to be about two or 2.5 times that length.

That means landing in downtown areas could be possible for the jet. He said parking garages have the potential to be good landing locations for the jet.

“We’re seeing people who are building parking garages begin to think about how do I incorporate landing facilities?” Broffman said. “Again, that’s one of the good things about being here in Houston is that we’ve talked to a lot of developers who are planning future projects. We’re saying you might want to consider having a landing location.”

That story was from September 27, and I found it when I read the recent Wisk story. Linguists will note the earlier appearance of the word “vertiport”, which I appreciate. This sounds less like a flying taxi service and more like a regional airline, perhaps as a charter since the jets are so small. That at least makes their business model clearer to me. If they can offer rides from more places than just airports, so much the better for them. As with Wisk and its ilk, I am genuinely curious to see how these businesses fare. I could possibly imagine taking one of these things to Galveston for a day trip instead of driving. What do you think?

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Paxton sues out of state abortion provider

The thing about rot is that it has a tendency to spread.

Still a crook any way you look

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit accusing a New York doctor of prescribing abortion drugs to a Texas resident in violation of state law.

This lawsuit is the first attempt to test what happens when state abortion laws are at odds with each other. New York has a shield law that protects providers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions, which has served as implicit permission for a network of doctors to mail abortion pills into states that have banned the procedure.

Texas has vowed to pursue these cases regardless of those laws, and legal experts are divided on where the courts may land on this issue, which involves extraterritoriality, interstate commerce and other thorny legal questions last meaningfully addressed before the Civil War.

“Regardless of what the courts in Texas do, the real question is whether the courts in New York recognize it,” said Greer Donley, University of Pittsburgh professor who studies these kinds of laws.

In this case, Paxton accuses Dr. Margaret Carpenter of mailing pills from New York to a 20-year-old woman in Collin County. The woman allegedly took the medication when she was nine weeks pregnant. When she began experiencing severe bleeding, the lawsuit says, she asked the man who impregnated her to take her to the hospital. He had not been aware she was pregnant or seeking an abortion, according to the filing.

The lawsuit does not say whether the woman successfully terminated her pregnancy or experienced any long-term medical complications. Mifepristone and misoprostol, the medications Carpenter is accused of sending, are more than 95% effective if taken before 10 weeks of pregnancy. Texas’ abortion laws prohibit criminalizing or otherwise going after the person who undergoes the abortion.

Paxton is asking a Collin County court to block Carpenter from violating Texas law, and order her to pay $100,000 for every violation of the state’s near-total abortion ban. Violating Texas’ near-total abortion ban comes with up to life in prison, fines of at least $100,000 and the loss of a provider’s Texas medical license. Donley stressed that, based on the complaint, Carpenter did nothing illegal based on her home state’s laws.

Carpenter is not licensed to practice in Texas, according to the complaint. She is the founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, a national group that helps doctors in states with shield laws provide telemedicine consultations and abortion pills to patients in states that have banned abortions.

The group was founded after the overturn of Roe v. Wade by Carpenter, Dr. Linda Prine, and Julie Kay, a former ACLU lawyer who successfully argued the case that overturned Ireland’s abortion ban. They support doctors who want to become “shield providers” by advising them on licensure, data security, pharmacy contacts and legality.

Carpenter also works with AidAccess, an international medication abortion provider, and helped found Hey Jane, a telehealth abortion provider. Neither Carpenter nor Kay immediately responded to a request for comment.

[…]

Now that this case is here, lawyers who closely study these laws say this is exactly the type of situation New York’s shield law is designed to combat.

“The New York shield law exists to prevent Texas from having any ability to get someone in New York who is following New York law into Texas court in any way,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University.

Cohen said New York’s law requires the state to refuse to order Carpenter to comply with Texas’ court orders, which effectively will leave Texas no defendant to bring this suit against.

“He might go forward to try and get a default judgment, and then they’ll have to try to enforce it,” Cohen said. “But really, we don’t know what he’ll do then.”

Oh, I think we know exactly what he’ll do, win or lose: Go to the federal courts with the intent of eventually getting this before SCOTUS, after first getting a room-service ruling from a wingnut judge here and the Fifth Circuit. I’m quite sure Paxton knows his case is a loser as things are now. The idea is to change that by whatever means he can, and these are the means he knows best. It’s also a clear part of the forced-birth lobby’s strategy, as is made clear elsewhere in the story. They’ve been waiting for a case like this, and now here it is. The Chron, the Dallas Observer, and Law Dork, who notices that the lawsuit was prepared for filing in October and has some parallels to litigation previously filed by Jonathan Mitchell, have more.

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The plea deals no one wants

Things are going great in the waning days of Kim Ogg’s time as Harris County DA.

Sean Teare

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has ordered prosecutors to make a plea recommendation of life without the possibility of parole in every pending capital murder case that’s more than a year old, the Houston Landing has learned.

Ogg’s instruction, delivered last week and detailed in internal communications obtained by the Landing, upends years of office precedent, could complicate prosecutions in more than 60 of the county’s most serious cases and creates uncertainty for victims’ loved ones.

“Kim asked us to place a case note in each pending capital murder in your division that read ‘Ogg administration recommendation is life without parole,’” wrote John Jordan, the agency’s most senior felony prosecutor, to the members of the office’s homicide division, in an email Monday. “We did not discuss the facts of any of your cases during that meeting, nor did we discuss the legal issues, theories or mitigation on any of your cases.”

Jordan declined to comment for this story.

Ogg’s decision, which current and former prosecutors called “unprecedented” and “offensive,” comes less than a month before the two-term incumbent is due to leave office and upsets standard procedures around capital plea recommendations.

Sean Teare, who defeated Ogg in March’s Democratic primary and will take office Jan. 1 after his victory in November’s general election, blasted the blanket recommendation as an “unbelievable” deviation from the norm that could complicate cases ultimately unsuitable for life without parole.

“In my 14 years inside that office, I’ve never ever heard of putting a life without parole (recommendation) on a capital murder before all the evidence and mitigation and everything is in, let alone not talking to the line prosecutor handling the case,” Teare said. “It’s not realistic for a variety of reasons… There’s a potential that there are some innocent people in that group and we’re going to dismiss the case as evidence comes in.”

In a statement to the Landing, Ogg painted a different picture, saying an offer of life without parole on non-death capital cases is typical in Harris County — at least until the office’s Capital Committee, a specialized group of prosecutors, decides otherwise.

“The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has historically recommended a sentence of life without parole on all capital cases in which we have not elected to seek the death penalty,” Ogg said. “Any lesser plea offer must be passed through the Capital Committee and always occurs late in the process of resolving the case.”

Current and former prosecutors and defense lawyers, however, disputed that statement.

“That’s just not true,” said one current prosecutor, who asked that their name be withheld out of concern for repercussions. “We do not make recommendations of life without parole routinely…. Until a case goes to the Capital Committee, there is no offer.”

A spokesperson for Ogg did not reply to a request for further comment.

Teare said the families and loved ones of homicide victims will suffer the impact of Ogg’s decision when some cases inevitably resolve with lesser punishments.

“I don’t understand the benefit (of the change) for anyone, but I certainly know what the negative is — retraumatizing these families that have gone through the most unimaginable tragedy to begin with,” he said. “We’re going to have all these families… feeling like their loved one’s case is just a political ping pong (ball).”

[…]

Murray Newman, a former Harris County prosecutor and defense lawyer who currently is representing “four or five” capital murder defendants, said prosecutors only make plea recommendations after an extensive review of the evidence and consultation with the Capital Committee — and, except in rare cases where the death penalty is an option, those recommendations are never so onerous as life without parole.

“Who would sign up for that?” Newman said. “There’s no reason to accept it. The only incentive that any defendant has to take life without parole is if the alternative is the death penalty.”

In practice, Newman said, the blanket recommendation of life without parole is unlikely to derail any prosecutions — but it could “create a headache” for Teare’s incoming administration when the plea recommendations inevitably change.

“What (Ogg) has basically done is set an atmosphere in which she can express some level of mock outrage (about) any plea negotiations done during the Teare administration,” said Newman, a longtime critic of Ogg. “The fact that she did it as a blanket move shows you what her intent was — to set up the incoming administration to look soft on crime for (modifying) plea negotiations that she had already entered into.”

I don’t know what’s going on here, and I’ll leave the speculation to those closer to the situation. I have faith that Sean Teare can deal with this and avoid the messes that other recent DAs have found themselves in. I was bolstered in that opinion after listening to his recent interview on CityCast Houston – he really comes across well and has some clear ideas about what he wants to do. Give it a listen for yourself.

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Dispatches from Dallas, December 14 edition

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

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: elections news; Dallas HERO’s connection with the incoming presidential administration; the State of the City in Dallas; City Manager picks and issues in Dallas and Fort Worth; the first Prop S suit against the City of Dallas is coming; quick hits from the suburbs and local districts; more from the UNT Health Science Center body-selling scandal; the Dallas Black Dance Theater saga comes to an end for now; Christmas Sweater Day at Dallas City Hall. And more!

Not in this week’s post: everything going on with David Cook (R-Mansfield) and his bid to become speaker of the Texas House, because that situation is moving so quickly and unpleasantly that anything I write will be wrong by the time it’s published. What a mess!

This week’s post was brought to you by NPR’s best songs of 2024, which is a mixed bag but is introducing me to a lot of new artists. I still like Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter best.

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Will Cornyn get MAGAed in the 2026 primary?

From The Downballot (scroll to the bottom of the “Senate” section).

Big John Cornyn

Republican Sen. John Cornyn has long been a loud and proud supporter of Donald Trump, but his occasional apostasies have drawn the ire of MAGA purists and could land him a primary challenge in 2026.

Cornyn’s most prominent would-be rival is Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said last year that a campaign against the incumbent was “on the table.” The two engaged in trash talk earlier this year when Paxton knocked Cornyn’s chances of succeeding Mitch McConnell as the GOP’s Senate leader by calling him “anti-Trump” and “anti-gun” and saying he’d be preoccupied with “a highly competitive primary campaign in 2026.”

Cornyn fired back by snarking, “Hard to run from prison, Ken,” a retort that lost its bite a few weeks later when federal prosecutors reached an agreement with Paxton on long-simmering fraud charges that did not include jail time. Cornyn also lost his bid to replace McConnell last month, though Paxton, once praised by Trump as a possible choice for U.S. attorney general, seems to have been passed over for a Cabinet post himself.

Even if Paxton, who’s also up for reelection in two years, decides to stay put, there are others who might give it a go. Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French recently issued a statement attacking Cornyn for expressing some mild hesitation about some of Trump’s nominees, saying he was “not ruling anything out.” (Tarrant is home to Fort Worth and is the third-largest county in Texas.)

Two years ago, Patrick Svitek, then at the Texas Tribune, reported that Rep. Ronny Jackson was considering a bid as well. At the time, Jackson didn’t rule anything out, but he doesn’t appear to have spoken publicly about the race since then.

It’s hard being in a position of having to sympathize with John Cornyn, but here we are. Cornyn’s bad, but he at least occasionally tries to do govern-y things that are intended to benefit society as a whole. Those other three…yeah, no. But that’s the March of 2026 we might have in store for us.

There was a time when I’d have openly cheered for the worst candidate to win in a race like this, on the theory that they’d be easier to beat. I do think Cornyn would be the strongest candidate of the four, but that’s not the same as saying the others would be vulnerable in the general election. I’d like for that to be true, and maybe by then things will have gone sufficiently off the rails to make it plausible, but we’ve all been burned way too many times to put any faith in the proposition. Let’s wait and see if any of them, or any other equally ridiculous but dangerous loonies take concrete steps towards a primary challenge.

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RIP, Cruise robotaxis

Didn’t see that coming.

A driverless Cruise car sits in traffic on Austin Street in downtown Houston on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo: Jay R. Jordan/Axios

General Motors said Tuesday it will retreat from the robotaxi business and stop funding its money-losing Cruise autonomous vehicle unit.

Instead, the Detroit automaker will focus on development of partially automated driver-assist systems for personal vehicles like its Super Cruise, which allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel.

GM said it would get out of robotaxis “given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.”

The company said it will combine Cruise’s technical team with its own to work on advanced systems to assist drivers.

[…]

GM’s brushoff of Cruise represents a dramatic about-face from years of full-blown support that left a huge financial dent in the automaker. The company invested $2.4 billion in Cruise only to sustain years of uninterrupted losses, with little in return. Since GM bought a controlling stake in Cruise for $581 million in 2016, the robotaxi service piled up more than $10 billion in operating losses while bringing in less than $500 million in revenue, according to GM shareholder reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The automaker even announced plans for Cruise to generate $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025, but it scaled back spending on the company after one of its autonomous Chevrolet Bolts dragged a San Francisco pedestrian who was hit by another vehicle in 2023.

The California Public Utilities Commission alleged Cruise then covered up details of the crash for more than two weeks.

The embarrassing incident resulted in Cruise’s license to operate its driverless fleet in California being suspended by regulators and triggered a purge of its leadership — in addition to layoffs that jettisoned about a quarter of its workforce.

GM CEO Mary Barra told analysts on a conference call Tuesday the the new unit will focus on personal vehicles and developing systems that can drive by themselves in certain circumstances.

The company has agreements to buy another 7% of Cruise and intends to buy the remaining shares so it owns the whole company.

GM’s statement is here. It was just six months ago that Cruise made its return to Houston, though as far as I can tell they never got past the testing stage. (More recently, Cruise announced a pilot program for wheelchair-accessible vehicles; I have no idea what may happen with that.) Now if you want to ride in a robotaxi in Texas for some reason, you’ll need to go to Austin and sign up for a Waymo account. Let us know if you do. Business Insider, Car and Driver, TechCrunch, The Verge, and Jalopnik have more.

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Trying to improve on ShotSpotter

Meet Wytec, a new type of AI-powered gunshot-detection system.

Wytec International Inc., a builder of 5G wireless networks, is working on artificial intelligence software to deploy on networks of sensors to pinpoint the location of gunshots or other campus problems and immediately notify school district officials.

Founder and CEO William “Bill” Gray launched the company in 2011 to provide in-building cellular networks to schools. But that goal changed after the May 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde.

“Now there’s a big focus on gunshot detection on campuses,” he said. “So we now are more and more focused towards that.”

Since then, the firm has added five provisional patents for its AI software and methods. It expects to roll out a pilot program to test the system at some Texas schools sometime in the next year. Judson, North East and Southside ISDs in San Antonio are among the 46 Texas school districts that have expressed interest in participating, according to Wytec.

[…]

Rather than manufacturing its own sensors and hardware, the company plans to integrate its AI software with other vendors’ equipment. Wytec’s software is compatible with various types of cameras and sensors that monitor motion, temperature, light, sound and pressure.

Sanchez said the system communicates via a private, secured wireless network.

Its centerpiece is Wytec’s LPN-16, a patented, small cellular base station that quickly processes the data coming from the sensors and cameras and provides information about unfolding events to school and security staff via a mobile app.

A company presentation showed the mobile app interface, which displays the event’s location and provides real-time video and communication.

In addition to gunshots, the sensors can detect smoke, fire, drugs and even chemical and biological agents.

One difference between Wytec’s system and others on the market is that it does not immediately call 911. Others, he said, immediately dial 911.

“If you’re very familiar with some of our competitive technologies, they get too many false positives,” Sanchez said.

By putting teachers or administrators in the loop, Wytec says its system can help limit unwarranted lockdowns or first responder callouts.

The company says it’s performed 500,000 lab tests of its software, logging “better than 90 percent accuracy” in identifying gunshots.

The system also will be able to pick up preprogrammed key words that could be used to trigger an alert.

That means that “teachers aren’t the only one with the ability to trigger things. Students can too,” Sanchez said. “If a student sees an incident, they call out, for example, ‘Code Red,’ you’ll be able to detect that on our system.”

There’s an Express News story that was in a print edition of the Chronicle that gets into how Wytec is supposedly better than ShotSpotter, which had been tried in San Antonio and later rejected for generating so many false positives and no true positives. It sounds to me like Wytec is basically requiring a human review on its alerts before the cops get called. That should cut down on the false positives, but it would also increase response times. The addition of a “Code Red” trigger means that there’s room for student shenanigans, too. Let’s just say I’m skeptical and leave it at that.

It also struck me in reading this that we’re preparing to spend a lot of money on better response to school shootings – in the Chron/EN article, the CEO of Wytec talked openly about the millions of dollars in contracts they’re seeking – but nothing was said about trying to prevent any of those shootings from happening in the first place. Yes, I know, the Lege passed a big school security bill in the last session, much of which unfunded and which came with significant logistical challenges. Perhaps that will help keep some shooters who don’t have a connection to the school in question from gaining entry. I’m just saying, by the time there’s gunfire it’s already a very bad situation. Putting my cybersecurity hat on for a minute, detection is important but prevention is preferred where possible. We’re more than a little out of balance on that here.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The HISD Board doesn’t want to hear it

Curious move.

Houston ISD’s board of managers signaled early support Tuesday for limiting the public’s ability to speak freely about any topic during its monthly board meetings.

Board members voted 8-1 to advance a policy proposal that would eliminate a portion of the meetings called “hearing of the community,” when members of the public could address the board about any district-related matter. The policy cannot become official until the board holds a second vote, likely in early 2025.

The vote follows months of friction between HISD’s state-appointed leadership, which took power in June 2023 as part of sanctions against the district, and many members of the public opposed to Superintendent Mike Miles’ overhaul of HISD. Some community members have argued the board hasn’t engaged the community enough, and board members gave themselves a 1 out of 10 rating on community engagement in its annual self-evaluation in November.

HISD Board President Audrey Momanaee said the proposed changes to community involvement at public meetings are meant to make the gatherings more efficient. She argued a board meeting “is not the best way” for meaningful engagement with the public.

[…]

Under Texas’ Open Meetings Act, school boards are required to provide the public an opportunity to speak about items listed on the meeting agenda. However, they don’t legally have to give people the opportunity to address the board about any topic.

HISD has hosted “hearing of the community” for many years, allowing residents to address everything from principal changes to safety concerns to issues with getting special education services. While board members typically can’t respond directly to speakers, the public comments can bring issues to the attention of district administrators.

All of the Houston area’s largest school districts — including Cy-Fair, Katy, Fort Bend, Conroe and Aldine ISDs — offer the public an opportunity to speak about non-agenda items during monthly board meetings, though their public comment periods are often quieter and shorter than HISDs.

HISD’s lengthy and often raucous board meetings have frustrated some board members, prompting the proposal. Tuesday’s meeting lasted eight and a half hours, ending at 1:30 a.m., with public comment stretching for roughly two hours and the board going into closed session for about three hours.

Longtime HISD watcher Margaret Downing was not impressed.

It’s hard to imagine how much more of a misstep the Houston ISD Board of Managers is prepared to make than its proposal floated Tuesday night that would severely curtail what members of the public could address the board about at meetings and would end Zoom calls into the monthly public meeting.

This from a board whose president Audrey Momanaee promised all sorts of increased communication from its nine members with the public after its $4.4 billion bond issue went down in flames in the November elections. Unless, of course, you consider communication a one-way street.

What were they thinking? Whose bright idea is this? Superintendent Mike Miles who often gets shelled at these meetings? Board Vice President Ric Campo who’s made public statements about his dislike of long meetings. Board members Janette Garza Lindner and Michelle Cruz Arnold who’ve pushed for more “decorum” at meetings?

[…]

So, for instance, if members of the public wanted to bring up their continuing concerns about HISD students and rail lines by schools given this week’s death of a 15-year-old attempting to cross the tracks, well that wouldn’t be allowed.

Perhaps unnecessarily (if they do away with it), the revisions to board procedure also call for an end to the stipulation that the Hearing From the Community should begin no later than 7 p.m. Why is that important? Because previous boards had a handy policy of putting public comment last, filling the meeting with all sorts of things first, so by the time the community got a chance to speak, most of them had gone home.

The proposed changes remove the present policy of allowing students to go first in addressing the board, no matter what the subject matter. Instead their turn would be decided by whomever the board president is. Get a board president who really doesn’t want to hear from students, and you have another move that discourages input. Few, on a school night, can stay the course, only getting a chance to speak late into the night.

You have to wonder why these people even wanted to be on the board. Success in business is fine on a resume but in a public position, you have to be willing to hear from people and at least give the appearance of listening to them. Even if it is, at times, tedious as all get out and repetitive.

As anyone who has attended a Houston City Council meeting can attest, if you give the public an open microphone, you will get some unhinged commentary. That’s the price of admission. As both of these stories note, the Tuesday meeting included some bad actors trying to rile people up about library books (you know, from all those libraries HISD schools now have). There are some reasonable limits that can be put on speakers, in terms of time and decorum, but this is going too far. And for a Board that had taken some baby steps in the direction of being more self-aware. This is a bad idea and they should reconsider when they take that final vote next year.

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Paxton versus 404Media

Of interest.

Still a crook any way you look

In October, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton subpoenaed 404 Media, demanding that we hand over confidential information about our reporting and an anonymous source to help the state of Texas in a wholly unrelated case it is pursuing against Google. This subpoena undermines the free and independent press. It also highlights the fact that the alarm bells that have been raised about legal attacks on journalists in a second Trump administration are not theoretical; politicians already feel emboldened to use the legal system to target journalists.

Paxton’s subpoena seeks to turn 404 Media into an arm of law enforcement, which is not our role and which we have no interest in doing or becoming. And so Friday, our lawyers vociferously objected to Paxton’s subpoena.

Paxton is seeking 404 Media reporting materials and documents related to an internal Google privacy incident database that 404 Media reported on in June. He has demanded these documents as part of a broader lawsuit against Google that claims the company has violated a Texas biometric privacy law that has nothing to do with 404 Media. Specifically, the subpoena demands the following:

“Any and all documents and communications relied on in the ‘Google Leak Reveals Thousands of Privacy Incidents’ article authored by Joseph Cox.

Any and all documents and communications considered when drafting the [article]

All unpublished drafts of the [article]

A copy of the ‘internal Google database which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues obtained by 404 Media.’”

At the time, we did not publish the full database because it contains the personal information of potentially thousands of Google customers and employees, and cannot be reasonably redacted. The subpoena threatens to hold us in contempt of court if we do not comply with its subpoena.

Friday, our lawyers objected to the subpoena on the grounds that it is “oppressive” and because our confidential reporting is protected under the California Shield Law (404 Media is incorporated as Dark Mode LLC in the state of California). “The information and materials sought by the Subpoena are absolutely protected from compelled disclosure by the California Shield Law,” our attorneys wrote. “Dark Mode further objects to the Subpoena on the grounds that it calls for the disclosure of unpublished information that is independently protected from compelled disclosure under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 2(a) of the California Constitution.”

Simply put: If Ken Paxton wants Google’s privacy incident database, he should get it directly from Google, not from us.

[…]

Paxton’s subpoena highlights the urgency of passing the PRESS Act, a federal shield law that has already passed the House and which has bipartisan support but which Democrats in the Senate have dragged their feet on for inexplicable and indefensible reasons. The PRESS Act would prevent the type of frivolous and inappropriate legal action Paxton is pursuing from the federal government, which is particularly important considering that FBI Director nominee Kash Patel has promised to “come after” journalists “criminally or civilly.” Attacking press freedom doesn’t always mean the government will directly sue journalists and news organizations. It can also, as Paxton has chosen to do here, demand information from them in an attempt to embroil them in wholly unrelated and costly legal proceedings, and to hold them in contempt of court when they choose not to commit professional and ethical suicide.

I was aware of the lawsuit, which may have merit, but my operating assumption is that everything Ken Paxton does is bad unless proven otherwise. For obvious reasons, I would like to see him get denied on this motion. 404Media is a subscriber-based investigative site that focuses on tech, AI, the Internet, that sort of thing, and they do some really fascinating work. Check them out, and read the rest of the post.

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Houston to get a pro volleyball team

Pretty cool.

As far as professional volleyball goes, there isn’t much two-time Olympic medalist Micha Hancock hasn’t done.

Hancock won gold with Team USA at the Tokyo Games and a silver medal at the Paris Games. She played professionally in Italy for the last seven years. Before that, in Poland for two years.

This winter, though, she’s preparing to do something she’s never done before: play a season of professional volleyball in the United States, on a Houston team in a first-of-its-kind league debuting in January.

Whereas most sports leagues launch pro franchises and then develop academy and youth programs, League One Volleyball (abbreviated to LOVB and pronounced “Love”) did the opposite. It started with a network of established youth clubs all over the country, then branched upward to pro teams in six cities: Houston; Austin; Atlanta; Omaha, Neb.; Madison, Wis.; and Salt Lake City.

Until a few years ago, top American volleyball players had to go overseas to play professionally. LOVB Pro is one of three professional indoor volleyball leagues that have launched in the U.S. since 2021, but the only one that started at the grassroots level.

Hancock and U.S. Olympic teammate Jordan Thompson were the first two athletes to commit to LOVB Houston. Hancock said the new league gave her the opportunity not only to come home, but to help grow professional volleyball in what is hopefully a lasting way.

“I think it wasn’t the most important thing for this league to be first. It was like, we want to make sure we have time to do the things how we want to do them,” Hancock said. “In 10 years, I just want there to be one really good option for young women, and young men eventually, to stay home and play if that’s what they choose to do.”

LOVB started in 2020 and now has 58 junior clubs across the country. The six pro franchises each share a practice gym with a local affiliated youth club. LOVB Houston practices at Houston Skyline’s gym and will play home matches at the Fort Bend County Epicenter, with the first home match scheduled Jan. 9 against Austin.

LOVB Pro owns and operates each of its teams, a single-entity model also used by Major League Soccer and the Professional Women’s Hockey League. But LOVB Pro president Rosie Spaulding said she is unaware of a professional sports league anywhere in the world with the same community up structure.

“I think what’s been missing for a long time in the U.S. for volleyball has been the highest level of the game and this sort of North Star and halo effect that a pro league can bring,” Spaulding said. “And in doing it this way, we’re really forging this really strong connection from the very beginning so that kids playing in our clubs can see and actually train in the same gyms as our pro teams and see firsthand.”

[…]

The league will debut just sixth months after the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where Team USA took home the women’s volleyball silver medal.

The timing was intentional, Spaulding said. So was picking Houston as one of the base cities.

Houston Skyline was ranked the No. 1 youth club in the country this year, as the number of girls playing volleyball in Texas and nationwide continued to skyrocket. A record-high 479,125 girls participated in high school volleyball in 2023-24, second only to track and field, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Texas led the way with 52,608 girls volleyball participants.

At the college level, the Texas Longhorns are defending their national championship this month in the NCAA Tournament. In total, nine of the 64 teams in the field are from the Lone Star State, including Texas A&M, Baylor, SMU and Texas State.

When it came time to launch pro teams, Spaulding said LOVB started with a list of 28 cities. Houston easily rose to the top.

“We looked at everything from affinity for volleyball, USA Volleyball membership, where women’s sports where popular, cities that were easy to get to from a transport perspective for logistics, the existing pro teams and leagues that were already in cities — and of course, importantly, our clubs,” Spaulding said. “Houston Skyline continues to be one of the top clubs in the country, and it was a no-brainer for us.”

Rice also has a strong volleyball program, though they fell short of the NCAA tournament this year. I have no idea how big the audience will be for LOVB, but the league appears to be pretty well-capitalized and they have a broadcast deal with ESPN, as does the forthcoming Athletes United Softball League. If this is your jam you should buy a ticket and go see a game – if this is going to work, sufficient support out of the gate is a big deal. You can learn more about the league here and its apparently not-yet-named Houston team here. The schedule runs into the first week of April. I wish them well.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of December 9

The Texas Progressive Alliance is holding space for its weekly roundup right here, where you can see it.

Continue reading

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We’re still talking about “Enron”

I’m still trying to figure out who the joke is supposed to be on.

The newly-revived Enron Corporation revealed its CEO Monday, along with a promise to unveil the “most revolutionary technology” the energy sector has ever seen, according to an announcement posted to its website.

Connor Gaydos, the 28-year-old who helped pen the satirical “Birds Aren’t Real,” a conspiracy theory, in June alongside co-author Peter Mcindoe, will lead the reformed Enron Corporation in its apparent revival. Now the self-proclaimed “world’s leading company,” Enron Corporation announced it will host a power summit in early January during which company leadership will debut an unspecified technology that will transform the energy sector.

“When tomorrow comes, today will vanish into a sea of yesterdays,” the company said in the announcement. “In one month, we will unveil the most revolutionary technology the energy sector has ever seen.”

According to its website, the content of Enron’s website is “protected parody” and intended as performance art. While this could be a simple blurb added to Enron’s privacy policy in a bid to stave off potential litigation, the dramatic, tongue-in-cheek, nature of the videos shared Monday carry a tone of levity that could indicate genuine parody.

The Enron Power Summit is scheduled for Jan. 6. While Enron Corporation has made lofty promises in the days following its return, little in the way of concrete details have been shared with the public. The company did not indicate whether it would be hosting its power summit in-person or virtually, and did not share any details regarding location, time or the nature of the technology it said it plans to debut.

The company also shared a video introducing Gaydos as the CEO of the company. Gaydos previously identified himself as the co-founder of the College Company, which holds the trademark rights to both Birds Aren’t Real and the “Enron E” logo seen on the recent billboard erected in Houston and the advertisements the company purchased in the New York Times and Houston Chronicle print editions.

“So often you find yourself on the front page of a future history book,” Gaydos said in the video. “It’s true. We’ve had poor leadership in the past, but thankfully, the past is prologue, and now we’re turning the page … what we’re doing behind the scenes and what we’re about to release is truly groundbreaking. It’s truly revolutionary.”

See here for the background. It’s clear that we’re firmly in parody territory, though that doesn’t preclude the appearance of another dumb crypto coin at some point (*). I’m sure no one believes, and we are clearly not meant to believe, that “most revolutionary technology the energy sector has ever seen” baloney. What puzzles me is that someone spent probably in excess of $100K running at least a week’s worth of full-page ads for this “new” “Enron” in the Chronicle and the NY Times, plus the billboard. So either this is just someone with enough money to do that getting their jollies or there is a real moneymaking scheme at the heart of all this; if it’s the latter, my congratulations on the success of your rollout, you have definitely earned the eyeballs. I don’t think a web shop selling T-shirts and coffee mugs is likely to succeed in this venture, but if it’s not that then what is it? Again, I come back to the crypto idea. I guess we’ll find out on January 6, which by the way is a terrible date for this. I’m sure we’ll all appreciate some distraction then, but seriously, y’all should have picked literally any other date.

(*) I mean, the Hawk Tuah girl has a memecoin. And the fact that I know about this is the best illustration of brain rot I’ve personally encountered.

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Jay-Z added to Buzbee’s lawsuit against Sean Combs

Wow.

After Houston attorney Tony Buzbee vowed to bring more than 100 lawsuits in multiple states on behalf of alleged sexual assault victims claiming they were sexually abused or exploited by media mogul Sean Combs, a federal lawsuit was refiled Sunday — this time including allegations against New York rapper and businessman Jay-Z, according to a report by NBC News.

In the lawsuit, the anonymous accuser identified only as “Jane Doe” claimed Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, and Combs had raped the 13-year-old girl in 2000, the report reads.

In a statement issued through Roc Nation, Carter’s entertainment company, he called the allegations “heinous in nature.”

“I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one,” Carter said in his written response. “Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree? These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case. This lawyer, who I have done a bit of research on, seems to have a pattern of these type of theatrics!”

In November, Buzbee himself was sued in California on suspicion of extorting “high profile” individuals, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles County Court.

The lawsuit, which was filed in L.A. Monday by an unnamed individual identified only as “John Doe,” accused Buzbee and his firm of threatening to publicize “entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault — including multiple instances of rape of a minor, both male and female.” The suit claimed Buzbee weaponized purportedly baseless accusations in a bid to extort money from the unidentified plaintiff.

See here for some background. It’s not clear in this story but it is in the original NBC News article, that Jay-Z is the celebrity that sued Buzbee last month, alleging that Buzbee was extorting him over this allegation. All I can say is that they both can’t be right. The actual story about the 13-year-old alleged victim is too horrible for me to contemplate at this time, so I’ll leave this at that. I am certain we will be hearing more. Texas Public Radio, Jezebel, and the DMN have more.

UPDATE: Slate has a good overview of the case and what we know so far.

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621 set to roll out

Our newest area code will soon debut.

Houston’s newest area code, 621, will officially launch on Jan. 23, 2025.

The 621 will be the fifth area code associated with the Houston region, joining the quartet of 281, 346, 713, and 832.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved a fifth area code back in Oct. 2023. The commission had previously said it was set to run out of phone numbers by the end of 2025.

All five area codes will service the same locations. The area includes Houston, Baytown, League City, Missouri City, Pasadena, Pearland, Sugar Land, The Woodlands and other communities. In total, the area codes stretch into 10 counties and include nearly all of Harris County.

The commission believes the new area code will be able to sustain additional phone numbers in the region for the next nine years.

Adding a new area code to the region won’t result in any major changes. Current phone numbers won’t be changed. AT&T also said in a release that what currently constitutes a local call will remain a local call and prices won’t rise.

See here and here for the background. I had totally forgotten about this, since the original news was from more than a year ago, and was first reminded of it via a text message from AT&T (my cellphone provider) that this new area code was coming in January. It probably won’t affect your life unless you get a new cellphone or the like, but there it is anyway. For those of you who may be skeptical about the claim that we’ll be good for the next nine years before needing another area code, I will note that the 346 code debuted in 2014 – it will be ten and a half years between that and the introduction of 621. You can stop worrying about this until 2033 or so.

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A different perspective on turnout

From the December 3 New York Times daily newsletter:

If you’ve been reading post-election coverage, you’ve probably seen one of the big takeaways from the returns so far: In counties across the country, Kamala Harris won many fewer votes than President Biden did four years ago.

With nearly all votes counted, she has about 74 million; Biden received 81 million four years ago. Donald Trump, in contrast, has 77 million votes, up from 74 million four years ago.

The drop-off in the Democratic vote was largest in the big blue cities. In places like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Trump gained vote share but didn’t necessarily earn many more votes than he did four years ago. Instead, Democratic tallies plunged.

As such, it’s tempting to conclude that Democrats simply didn’t turn out this year — and that Harris might have won if they had voted in the numbers they did four years ago.

This interpretation would be a mistake.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain.

For one, the story doesn’t apply to the battlegrounds, where turnout was much higher. In all seven battleground states, Trump won more votes than Biden did in 2020.

More important, it is wrong to assume that the voters who stayed home would have backed Harris. Even if they had been dragged to the polls, it might not have meaningfully helped her.

How is that possible? The low turnout among traditionally Democratic-leaning groups — especially nonwhite voters — was a reflection of lower support for Harris: Millions of Democrats soured on their party and stayed home, reluctantly backed Harris or even made the leap to Trump.

During the campaign, The New York Times and Siena College polled many of these voters. After the election, we analyzed election records to see who did and didn’t vote. The results suggest that higher turnout wouldn’t have been an enormous help to Harris.

That may be surprising. It’s not usually how people think about turnout. Typically, turnout and party-switching are imagined as independent. After all, millions of voters are all but sure to vote for one party, and the only question is whether they’ll vote. In lower-turnout midterms and special elections, turnout can be the whole ballgame.

But in a presidential election, turnout and persuasion often go hand in hand. The voters who may or may not show up are different from the rest of the electorate. They’re less ideological. They’re less likely to be partisans, even if they’re registered with a party. They’re less likely to have deep views on the issues. They don’t get their news from traditional media.

Throughout the race, polls found that Trump’s strength was concentrated among these voters. Many were registered Democrats or Biden voters four years ago. But they weren’t acting like Democrats in 2024. They were more concerned by pocketbook issues than democracy or abortion rights. If they decided to vote, many said they would back Trump.

It will be many months until the story is clear nationwide, but the data we have so far suggests that the decline in Democratic turnout doesn’t explain Harris’s loss.

Clark County, Nev., which contains Las Vegas, is an example. There, 64.8 percent of registered Democrats turned out, down from 67.7 percent in 2020; turnout among registered Republicans stayed roughly the same.

But this lower Democratic turnout would explain only about one-third of the decline in Democratic support in Clark County, even if one assumed that all Democrats were Harris voters. The remaining two-thirds of the shift toward Trump was because voters flipped his way.

Even that back-of-the-envelope calculation probably overestimates the role of turnout. Our polling data suggests that many of these nonvoting Democrats were no lock for Harris. In Times/Siena data for Clark County, Harris led registered Democrats who voted in 2024, 88 percent to 8 percent. But she had a much narrower lead, 71 percent to 23 percent, among the registered Democrats who stayed home.

There’s no equivalent pattern of a drop in support for Trump among Republicans who stayed home. Indeed, many high-turnout Republicans are highly engaged, college-educated “Never Trump” voters who have helped Democrats in special and midterm elections.

In Las Vegas and elsewhere, our data suggests that most voters who turned out in 2020 but stayed home in 2024 voted for Biden in 2020 — but about half of them, and maybe even a slight majority, appear to have backed Trump this year. Regardless, there’s no reason to believe that they would have backed Harris by a wide margin, let alone the kind of margin that would have made a difference in the election.

This is in contrast to my thesis about the 100K missing voters that made Harris County so much closer; there were missing voters like that all over the country. Nate’s point is that per the polling data he has, had they bothered to show up, they wouldn’t have been that much of a boon for Dems anyway. Perhaps so, I don’t have any data to counter that, but it still fits my contention that we need to talk to these folks and hear what they have to say. If nothing else, that’s the starting point to try to win them back. ProPublica has talked to some Latino voters who did show up and voted for Trump, and it’s bracing but necessary to hear.

I’m working through the precinct data now, and will talk about that next week. There’s definitely reason for concern, but plenty of reason to keep fighting and moving forward. It’s not like there’s a better option than that anyway. I wanted to present this to keep me honest and hopefully on the right track.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Metro to help fund HPD traffic enforcement

A modest revision to an originally large plan.

Metro Police Department will spend almost $50 million of its budget to partially fund the city’s traffic enforcement and street light operations in 2025, but that extra funding won’t have much impact on the transportation agency.

In the first major move since Ban Tien left the Houston Police Department for the transportation police, the city will pull $25.4 million from Metro to fund the police department’s traffic enforcement division and another $21.8 million for traffic and street lights, according to Meredith Johnson, a spokeswoman for Metro.

“This is around $50 million in additional revenue that won’t have to come from the general fund,” said Melissa Dubowski, the city of Houston’s finance director, of the additional funding from Metro. “There’s more to come, but this is definitely a big first step in the things we’ve been working on.”

The combined costs will take around 3.5% of Metro’s total revenues, according to budget documents. The funds are coming from a source of revenue inside Metro that the city hadn’t previously used.

Johnson said Metro dedicates around 25% of sales tax revenues – which amount to around $217 million – to fund interlocal agreements with partner entities. The funds can be used for street improvements, mobility projects and other services.

Dubowski said the intention is for this plan for funding traffic enforcement to become a recurring source for the city.

See here for some background. This was scaled down quite a bit from the original idea of folding Metro’s police department into HPD, which in retrospect is not that surprising. I had to read this story a couple of times to be clear on what is being proposed, and having done that I don’t see anything obviously weird. This is a reasonable use of the funding source in question, it’s not taking anything away from the non-Houston parts of Metro, and while this kind of off-book accounting is an invitation to future shenanigans, it’s also how we roll in this state.

I guess the main question I have at this point is whether this is intended as a way to let HPD shift some funds to other departments and thus beef them up, or is it intended to make traffic enforcement bigger and more impactful? Mayor Whitmire’s non-linear view of Vision Zero suggests the latter, but as it’s not clear in the story I’ll wait and see. If six months from now everyone is complaining about the number of speed traps out there, I guess we’ll know.

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

Classic Era Committee adds Dave Parker and Dick Allen to the MLB Hall of Fame

Congratulations to them.

Sluggers Dick Allen and Dave Parker earned election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday in voting from the Classic Baseball Era Committee. The announcement was made from the Winter Meetings in Dallas.

Needing at least 12 votes of the 16 committee members (75% required), Allen received 13 votes and Parker 14.

The pair were part of an eight-player ballot, which focused on candidates who contributed to the game prior to 1980, including Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues stars. Others on the ballot were Ken Boyer, John Donaldson, Steve Garvey, Vic Harris, Tommy John and Luis Tiant.

Allen and Parker will be a part of the Class of 2025, joining any potential inductees from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America Hall of Fame ballot, which will be announced on Jan. 21, live on MLB Network. The Induction Ceremony will take place on July 27 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Allen played 15 years (1963-77) in Major League Baseball, mostly with the Phillies and White Sox, made seven All-Star appearances and won the American League Most Valuable Player Award in ’72. Allen’s FanGraphs OPS+ (156) is the highest in Phillies history, ahead of Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, matching Willie Mays and Frank Thomas and tied for 14th among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances.

[…]

Allen will share the Hall of Fame honor with the man known as “The Cobra.” Parker was an intimidating force when he wielded a 37-ounce bat during the 1970s and ’80s for six Major League teams, including the Pirates, Reds and Athletics. Besides winning two batting titles, an NL MVP Award, three NL Gold Glove Awards and three NL Silver Slugger Awards, Parker played 19 years in the big leagues, hitting .290 with 339 home runs and 1,493 RBIs. He was the Designated Hitter of the Year in 1989 and ’90.

Dick Allen’s induction was long overdue, and I’m just sad it happened after his passing in 2020. I’m happy for Dave Parker, who was a very bright star for a relatively short time, but I’ll be honest, I would have voted for Luis Tiant and the two Negro League/pre-Negro League stars, John Donaldson and Vic Harris, over him. But at least Parker is still with us to bask in the glory of being inducted, which as Jay Jaffe says is a worthwhile consideration. Congrats to the Allen and Parker families, and we’ll see what happens in January when the writers’ votes are counted.

Posted in Baseball | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Interview with Sandie Haverlah of the Texas Consumer Association

You might have noticed that CenterPoint has been in the news a lot lately. There’s the various audits of its performance during Beryl and the derecho, proposed legislation to make it refund the money it spent (and charged to customers) for its unused generators, a consumer complaint about those same generators, a rate case review that is still working its way through the system, and more. Wouldn’t you like to have someone who knows all this stuff way better than you explain it to you, so you can follow along more easily? Well, I did, and so I reached out to Sandie Haverlah of the Texas Consumer Association to see if she’d let me ask her a bunch of questions about it all, and she graciously agreed. Here’s our conversation, which helped me get a better grasp on all these moving pieces. I hope it does the same for you.

We’re in kind of a weird place for political news right now, unless you’re really into the unwanted Trump sequel. If there’s a story I’ve been following for which you think an interview with someone who Really Knows This Stuff would be welcome, let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.

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Gina Ortiz Jones joins the crowded field for San Antonio Mayor

Noted for the record.

Gina Ortiz Jones

Former U.S. Air Force Under Secretary Gina Ortiz Jones, who has long been rumored as a potential 2025 mayoral contender, launched a campaign website this week.

Jones served as Under Secretary of the U.S. Air Force under the Biden Administration, and twice ran for Congress as a Democrat in Texas 23rd Congressional District — back when the district was considered a top battleground on the House map.

Most recently, she’s been focused on a political action committee that sought to unseat three Texas Supreme Court justices who helped pave the way for the state’s abortion restrictions.

That effort garnered some attention from national Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), but all three Republican judges were reelected in November.

Jones would be joining a field of more than a dozen potential candidates, including three sitting council members.

Candidates can’t formally file to run in the May 3 municipal election until Jan. 16, but many have filed treasurer’s reports to allow them to start raising money.

The Find Out PAC didn’t succeed but I appreciated the effort, which frankly was more than quite a few incumbents did. That it didn’t work this times doesn’t mean it would never work. There’s no reason not to keep at it.

I don’t have a dog in this fight but Ortiz Jones is a familiar name and there’s not much else of interest on the election calendar for 2025 – no city of Houston elections, and sadly Dallas doesn’t get to correct its Mayoral error until 2027. If they want to take another shot at a recall petition, I’ll be up for that. Mostly what I want out of SA’s Mayoral race is for them to avoid this kind of screwup. I hope that’s an achievable goal. The Current has more.

(Yes, there might be another effort to pass an HISD bond, possibly in May. I will of course watch for that. There’s also the whiny sore loser judicial election contest do-over, also in May, if an appellate court doesn’t step in. That would be genuinely substantive, if it does happen.)

Posted in Election 2025 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Look for driverless cars to get fast-tracked

Something to keep an eye on.

A driverless Cruise car sits in traffic on Austin Street in downtown Houston on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo: Jay R. Jordan/Axios

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team plans to create a federal framework for fully self-driving vehicles, Bloomberg reported citing sources.

Should new regulations permit vehicles without human controls, it could provide a significant benefit to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and a major donor to President-elect Trump, who has emerged as a key figure in his inner circle.

Current federal rules pose challenges for deploying vehicles without human controls, which Tesla aims to address.

The Trump team is seeking policy leaders to develop regulations for self-driving vehicles, the report said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) can issue rules to facilitate autonomous vehicle operations, but Congress must pass legislation for mass adoption of self-driving cars.

A bipartisan legislative measure is in early discussions to create federal rules around autonomous vehicles, people familiar with the development told Bloomberg.

[…]

Efforts to legislate autonomous vehicle regulations is a challenge. The NHTSA currently allows the deployment of 2,500 self-driving vehicles per year under an exemption. Legislative attempts to increase this number to 100,000 have repeatedly failed.

A bill passed the House during Trump’s first term but stalled in the Senate. An attempt to merge it with other legislation during the Biden administration also faltered.

The Bloomberg News story this is based on is here but it’s subscriber only. It was in the business section of the Chron’s print edition recently, which is what made me look for it.

As with all things Trump and Musk, there are complicating factors.

The Trump team has not commented on its plans. But on the campaign trail, Trump said self-driving cars are a “little concerning to me,” and pledged to “stop [autonomous cars] from operating on American roads.” His comments were a little disjointed, however, and may have been referencing self-driving cars from China rather than US-made autonomous vehicles.

Has Elon Musk, now a key advisor to the president-elect, eased Trump’s concerns? Musk has bet Tesla’s future on the company’s ability to “solve self-driving.” In October, he debuted two robotaxi prototypes and reiterated during a recent earnings call that “the future is autonomous.”

“It should be blindingly obvious” that that’s the direction Tesla is taking, Musk added.

However, Tesla has not yet gained legal clearance to operate its robotaxis in the US, falling behind Waymo and others that are testing in several states. At the Cybercab launch, Musk suggested Tesla could get clearance to operate driverless systems in California and Texas in 2025 and start production in 2026 or 2027.

Individual states have their own testing and safety standards for self-driving cars, which is why we often hear of self-driving car software operating in specific cities and states (usually CaliforniaNevada, and Texas). If testing goes well, they move to the next state, and so on.

On the federal level, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) sets the rules for testing and safety. In 2021, it issued a Standing General Order that requires companies with Level 2 self-driving systems and above to report crashes to the agency. It is currently investigating four crashes involving self-driving Teslas and whether system design was a factor.

“Vehicle safety promises to be one of automation’s biggest benefits,” the NHTSA says. “While these systems are not available to consumers today, the advantages of this developing technology could be far-reaching.”

Most of what comes out of Trump’s mouth is nonsense and garbage, little of which he likely remembers he said, so don’t read too much into any random burblings he made on the trail. Also, never believe any claim by Elon Musk about when he’ll deliver a fully functional autonomous vehicle. Beyond that, it is safe to assume that as long as Musk hasn’t completely worn out his welcome, he will do anything and everything he can to benefit himself and his businesses, so assume that any actions taken by NHTSA or the Department of Transportation in the direction of more autonomous vehicles were at least noted by him. Texas as noted is already pretty open to these things, so in the short term at least there may not be that much effect here.

Anyway, see here, here, and here for a bit of background. I will note that driverless trucks are out there as well, and we mustn’t forget about flying taxis, some of which are also intended to be autonomous, as well. And on and on. Like it or not, ready or not, we’re probably going to be much farther down this road in four years’ time than we are right now.

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Weekend link dump for December 8

“It’s not like we were designing it to reflect reality, but we happen to be making a show about violent authoritarians who present as celebrities. Then suddenly, the world changed to reflect the show, not just in the States – all over the world. Suddenly we found ourselves making one of the most current shows on television.”

“The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution“.

How to talk to kids in a way that actually engages them.

What not to eat at a buffet.

RIP, Marshall Brickman, Oscar-winning screenwriter who co-wrote a lot of Woody Allen’s movies.

RIP, Rico Carty, longtime outfielder and 1970 batting champion for the Atlanta Braves.

What happened to Marc Andreessen?”

“Although poverty and ruralness have been with us forever, food deserts arrived only around the late 1980s. Prior to that, small towns and poor neighborhoods could generally count on having a grocery store, perhaps even several. (The term food desert was coined in 1995 by a task force studying what was then a relatively new phenomenon.)”

““I swear to God he said, ‘Hi Laraine.’ Not ‘Hi,’ but ‘Hi, Laraine.’ And I was like Lou Costello seeing Frankenstein. Here he was, with Yoko Ono, walking through 30 Rock. I have no idea why they were there. They just walked past me, and John said hello to me. That gave me some idea of the reach of the show.””

“C.S. Lewis and the Sex/Gender Distinction”.

“The world’s biggest climate case begins at The Hague in the Netherlands today. Oral arguments will be heard by the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, which will consider what obligations United Nations member states have under international law to protect the planet from greenhouse gas emissions for future generations.”

“Ilona Maher, the world’s most-followed rugby player on social media, has joined Premiership Women’s Rugby club Bristol Bears on a three-month contract.”

“It’s hard to transform baseball into the black-and-white, extensively defined scenarios where return and variance are easy to measure. My point is merely this: Teams and players are applying this lesson every day. If you’re looking for a broad story of baseball in the 21st century, it’s a relentless pursuit of increased expected returns.”

“Corporate social media is designed to keep you on corporate social media. Their algorithms are not your friend. One good way to liberate yourself from their force-feeding is to get an RSS reader. This is an ancient tool of the free internet — a way of subscribing to the stuff you want to read rather than relying on the agenda set by corporate algorithms.” I use Feedly for this and love it. It’s $45 a year for their Feedly Pro, which I’m happy to pay so they keep it updated and working and don’t go Google Reader on me.

“I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need.”

“The First Corruption Scandal of Trump’s Second Term Is Already Here”. It involves the crypto bro who bought that multi-million dollar banana art piece a couple of weeks ago. More here about that.

“It doesn’t actually matter anymore if you are a party girl or a non–party girl, if you want to be a mother or not—in Trump’s second presidency, all women are disposable.”

“Trump propagandist finally admits election conspiracy movie is a fraud”.

“Why Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz”.

“Beyond navigating the immediate tariff issue, standing up to Trump and containing his most destructive impulses would serve Canada’s long-term interests, not to mention those of America and the rest of the world. Trudeau is already in a huge political hole at home. Why not forcefully defend Canada from Trump’s bullying to resurrect his own reputation? Bowing to Trump is only giving his opponents more fodder.”

“A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled on Friday that an upcoming ban on TikTok can proceed unless parent company ByteDance divests from Chinese government ownership.”

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | Comments Off on Weekend link dump for December 8

Dan Patrick wants to ban all THC products

No hemp for you!

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Wednesday that lawmakers in the state Senate would move to ban all forms of consumable tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in Texas.

Patrick, who presides over the Senate and largely controls the flow of legislation in the chamber, said the THC ban would be designated as Senate Bill 3 — a low bill number that signals it is among his top priorities for the upcoming legislative session.

The Republican-controlled Legislature was widely expected to take aim at Texas’ booming hemp market, which has proliferated with thousands of cannabis dispensaries since lawmakers authorized the sale of consumable hemp in 2019.

That law, passed one year after hemp was legalized nationwide, was intended to boost Texas agriculture by permitting the commercialization of hemp containing trace amounts of non-intoxicating delta-9 THC. But Patrick contends the law has been abused by retailers using loopholes to market products with unsafe levels of THC, including to minors.

“Dangerously, retailers exploited the agriculture law to sell life-threatening, unregulated forms of THC to the public and made them easily accessible,” Patrick said in a statement announcing the measure late Wednesday. “Since 2023, thousands of stores selling hazardous THC products have popped up in communities across the state, and many sell products, including beverages, that have three to four times the THC content which might be found in marijuana purchased from a drug dealer.”

Texas has not legalized marijuana in any form for broad use.

Critics of the current hemp market point to a lack of testing requirements, age restrictions, and regulation, arguing that the proliferation of products — ranging from gummies and beverages to vapes and flower buds — has posed health risks and disrupted access for medical cannabis patients. Consumable hemp products are required by law to contain no more than 0.3% THC — the intoxicating part of the cannabis plant that comes in forms known as delta-8, delta-9 and THCA — but Patrick asserts that some items sold in Texas far exceed this limit.

Seems to me it should be possible to deal with the issues cited above without a blanket ban, but what do I know. I’m not a cannabis user, just a guy who thinks marijuana should be decriminalized, which is a thing that will never happen as long as Dan Patrick is in power. I think this will generate a significant fight, since all those retailers are not going to want to be put out of business. I also always expect the Senate to do what Dan Patrick wants, but perhaps the House will be less inclined. CultureMap and the Chron have more.

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

Reviving Texas’ uranium mines

Wow.

In the old ranchlands of South Texas, dormant uranium mines are coming back online. A collection of new ones hope to start production soon, extracting radioactive fuel from the region’s shallow aquifers. Many more may follow.

These mines are the leading edge of what government and industry leaders in Texas hope will be a nuclear renaissance, as America’s latent nuclear sector begins to stir again.

Texas is currently developing a host of high-tech industries that require enormous amounts of electricity, from crypto-currency mines and artificial intelligence to hydrogen production and seawater desalination. Now, powerful interests in the state are pushing to power it with next-generation nuclear reactors.

“We can make Texas the nuclear capital of the world,” said Reed Clay, president of the Texas Nuclear Association, former chief operating officer for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and former senior counsel to the Texas Office of Attorney General. “There’s a huge opportunity.”

Clay owns a lobbying firm with heavyweight clients that include SpaceX, Dow Chemical and the Texas Blockchain Council, among many others. He launched the Texas Nuclear Association in 2022 and formed the Texas Nuclear Caucus during the 2023 state legislative session to advance bills supportive of the nuclear industry.

The efforts come amid a national resurgence of interest in nuclear power, which can provide large amounts of energy without the carbon emissions that warm the planet. And it can do so with reliable consistency that wind and solar power generation lack. But it carries a small risk of catastrophic failure and requires uranium from mines that can threaten rural aquifers.

In South Texas, groundwater management officials have fought for almost 15 years against a planned uranium mine. Administrative law judges have ruled in their favor twice, finding potential for groundwater contamination. But in both cases those judges were overruled by the state’s main environmental regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Now local leaders fear mining at the site appears poised to begin soon as momentum gathers behind America’s nuclear resurgence.

In October, Google announced the purchase of six small nuclear reactors to power its data centers by 2035. Amazon did the same shortly thereafter, and Microsoft has said it will pay to restart the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania to power its facilities. Last month, President Joe Biden announced a goal to triple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050. American companies are racing to license and manufacture new models of nuclear reactors.

“It’s kind of an unprecedented time in nuclear,” said James Walker, a nuclear physicist and co-founder of New York-based NANO Nuclear Energy Inc., a startup developing small-scale “microreactors” for commercial deployment around 2031.

[…]

The Goliad mine is the smallest of five sites in South Texas held by UEC, which is based in Corpus Christi. Another company, enCore Energy, started uranium production at two South Texas sites in 2023 and 2024, and hopes to bring four more online by 2027.

Uranium mining goes back decades in South Texas, but lately it’s been dormant. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, a cluster of open pit mines harvested shallow uranium deposits at the surface. Many of those sites left a legacy of aquifer pollution.

TCEQ records show active cases of groundwater contaminated with uranium, radium, arsenic and other pollutants from defunct uranium mines and tailing impoundment sites in Live Oak County at ExxonMobil’s Ray Point site, and in Karnes County at Conoco-Phillips Co.’s Conquista Project and at Rio Grande Resources’ Panna Maria Uranium Recovery Facility.

All known shallow deposits of uranium in Texas have been mined. The deeper deposits aren’t accessed by traditional surface mining, but rather a process called in-situ mining, in which solvents are pumped underground into uranium-bearing aquifer formations. Adjacent wells suck back up the resulting slurry, from which uranium dust will be extracted.

Industry describes in-situ mining as safer and more environmentally friendly than surface mining. But some South Texas water managers and landowners are concerned.

”We’re talking about mining at the same elevation as people get their groundwater,” said Terrell Graham, a board member of the Goliad County Groundwater Conservation District, which has been fighting a proposed uranium mine for almost 15 years. “There isn’t another source of water for these residents.”

There’s more, so read the rest. I had no idea that we had uranium mines, and no idea that the war in Ukraine provides a catalyst for reopening them. I have said before that I generally support the expansion of nuclear energy as a further means towards decarbonization, and I stand by that, though as this article shows there are plenty of concerns to deal with. It seems likely to me that the Lege will help clear any obstacles to uranium mining or nuclear plant construction. The Biden administration had already created incentives for more nukes, and that’s one initiative of theirs I figure will not be messed with. Lots to keep an eye on going forward.

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Where to go to hail a flying taxi

To the vertiport, of course.

Wisk Aero, an Advanced Air Mobility company and Boeing subsidiary aiming to bring self-flying air taxis to Southeast Texas by the end of the decade, has designed its potential initial routes for its service.

A preliminary map of proposed routes, provided exclusively to the Houston Chronicle, features six vertiport locations in the Houston area and nine routes.

“Texas has definitely a big role to play in Advanced Air Mobility,” said Emilien Marchand, Wisk’s director of ecosystem partnerships.

[…]

An average flight time will be 15 minutes, Marchand said. Wisk aims for its prices to be comparable per mile to an Uber Black.

Marchand said one of the potential options for a downtown Houston location for the vertiport is the George R. Brown Convention Center. Multiple factors make the conversion center an enticing place for a landing pad, including its location on the east side of downtown and it being a close walking distance to other major entertainment venues in the area.

Nothing is finalized, however, and Marchand noted that Wisk will not choose the location for the downtown Houston hub.

“The FAA has a big say in this,” Marchand said. “But then when you’re on the ground level, and when you think about permitting of infrastructure, the city and the various management districts are going to be a final say.”

Marchand said Houston is a priority market for Wisk for a few reasons, including the decentralization locations of businesses across the region and the history of aerospace innovation in the city.

But Wisk also believes their product can have a greater impact in Houston than other areas where public transportation is far more robust.

“It’s not like in New York, where you have a really well distributed subway system where you could go from one end of the city to the next,” Marchand said. “We don’t see it as a solution for everything; it’s part of the solution. It’s going to be a complementary mode of transport for city planners and regional transportation planners to have in their quiver.”

See here, here, here, and here for some background. It was always clear that this was a niche service, which the Wisk spokesperson implicitly acknowledges, but seeing this map really makes me wonder who it’s for. I mean, I’ve lived in Houston since 1988, and I’ve only ever needed to travel between IAH and Hobby once. I was driving my roomie Matt to the airport, and as we entered IAH, we had this conversation:

Me: Okay, so what terminal are you going to?
Matt: Well, I’m flying Southwest, so…
Me: Don’t they fly from Hobby?
Matt: Oh, shit.

Fortunately, we had left the house early enough to get him to Hobby on time. All I’m saying is, there are people who need to make this kind of trip. I don’t know who they are – I’m sure Wisk does, but I don’t – and I have no idea how many of them there are. I would love to know more about them.

The downtown and Energy Corridor vertiports (new vocabulary word alert!) intrigue me more. Geographically they make sense, but as I’ve discussed before, if you want to take one of these nifty flying taxis you have to get yourself to where they are first. That adds time and possibly expense to your trip, which would seem to upset the case for Wisking it in the first place. Why not just take that Uber Black straight to the airport, instead of Ubering or driving yourself to the vertiport first (and paying for parking in the latter instance)? Again, I’m sure Wisk knows who their target audience is. I’m just saying I’d like to know who they are as well, because it’s not something I can intuit.

Anyway. I remain fascinated by this subject and will keep an eye on it. Now that you know where you could hail (okay, probably reserve ahead of time) one of these, would you do it?

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment