By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune

Aug. 30, 2024

"State Rep. Shawn Thierry switches to GOP, says Democratic Party has “lost its way”" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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State Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Houston Democrat who was defeated in her primary earlier this year, announced Friday she is switching to the Republican Party.

Thierry was ousted by primary challenger Lauren Ashley Simmons in the May runoff after she sided with Republicans last year on a handful of bills opposed by the LGBTQ+ community, including a measure barring gender-transitioning care for minors. She delivered an emotional speech from the House floor explaining why she broke with her party, remarks that went viral.

In a statement, Thierry said she switched parties because the Democratic Party “has veered so far left, so deep into the progressive abyss, that it now champions policies that I cannot, in good conscience, support.”

“I am leaving the left because the left has abandoned Democrats who feel betrayed by a party that has lost its way, lost its commitment to hard working families,” Thierry said.

Thierry was announced earlier this month as the director of political strategy for the U.S. wing of Genspect, an international anti-trans policy group. Founded in 2021 by an Irish psychotherapist, the group is part of a broader network of organizations that oppose gender-transitioning care for minors, and its members have testified in favor of bills across the world that would ban or limit the practice.

The partisan balance in the lower chamber now stands at 87 Republicans and 63 Democrats. Thierry’s term will expire before the Legislature reconvenes in Austin for its next regular session in January, however, and Simmons is heavily favored to win the solidly Democratic seat in November.

A number of prominent Houston Democrats lined up behind Simmons for her primary challenge, including some of Thierry’s current and former colleagues in the Texas House — an unusually public show of repudiation from an incumbent’s own party. Thierry countered with her own slate of endorsements from Black church leaders and a handful of Democratic lawmakers.

Thierry also broke ranks from her party to support a GOP bill aimed at removing sexually explicit books from school libraries, a designation critics feared would be used to target LGBTQ+ literature. She also voted for a bill requiring transgender college athletes to play on teams that align with their sex assigned at birth.

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said Thierry had “chosen to continue to betray the values and priorities of her constituents” and “once again put money and title above principle.”

“If Thierry looks at a party taking away the freedom for women to control their bodies, cutting healthcare for millions, and led by a racist, petty convict and says I want in on that mess, I think that says more about Shawn Thierry than about the Democratic Party,” Martinez Fischer said in a statement. "Adios."

House Speaker Dade Phelan, responding to Thierry’s announcement on social media, wrote he was “thrilled to have you join us in championing the rights of parents, protecting the innocence of our children, and ensuring all voices are heard.”

“These are values you have always fearlessly advocated for, and your courageous decision to stand up for them when it matters most shows just how deeply you care for your community and its future,” Phelan said.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/30/shawn-thierry-texas-house-party-switch/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Kate McGee, The Texas Tribune

Aug. 23, 2024

"UT System prohibits its universities from making political or social statements" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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The University of Texas Board of Regents amended its free speech policy this week to prohibit the system and its 14 universities and health-related institutions from adopting political or social positions unrelated to campus operations.

“Institutions should not, in their official capacity, issue or express positions on issues of the day, however appealing they may be to some members of the university community,” reads the new language that was added to the system’s statement on freedom of speech and expression and approved by the board during its Thursday meeting.

The policy does not apply to individual faculty, staff or students free speech and only relates to “official university statements, functions, ceremonies, and publications.”

In a statement, Paul Corliss, associate vice chancellor for external relations and communications, said the new policy is an extension of the principles put forth in the Kalven Report from the University of Chicago, a 1967 report on the university’s role in political and social action that concluded “institutional neutrality” is necessary for the university to fulfill its core mission and create a campus environment were all students, faculty and staff have the freedom to take their own political or social views.

In 2022, the UT System adopted a version of the “Chicago Statement,” a set of principles affirming an institution’s commitment to free speech. It calls for the protection of speech even if it is considered “offensive, unwise, immoral or wrong-headed,” with restrictions on speech that is illegal, defamatory or harassment.

The UT System’s policy change comes during the first week of the fall semester at many of its campuses, the first time students are back to school after its flagship, the University of Texas at Austin, became ground zero for clashes over the Israel-Hamas war.

The Middle East conflict has tested free speech policies at universities in Texas and across the country as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel students engage in protests and heated discussions. School leaders have struggled to strike a balance between their roles as moderators and facilitators of intellectual debate on campus.

After the war began Oct. 7, UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell issued two statements to the university community related to the unfolding conflict. In his first message, he laid out safety measures in place for Jewish students on campus. In the second one, Hartzell said the university refrains from issuing statements in response to major events unless there is a connection to the campus community or a matter of public safety, but said he has zero tolerance for any antisemitism toward Jewish students or “hate-filled actions” toward Muslim communities.

During the spring semester, tensions exploded on U.S. campuses in response to the war, including UT-Austin and the University of Texas at Dallas. In April, hundreds of students walked out of class at the flagship university, leading to the arrest of 57 people after police ordered them to disperse. A few days later, nearly 80 more people were arrested after protesters tried to set up an encampment on campus. Protesters were also arrested at UT-Dallas after students set up an encampment on campus, demanding the university divest from U.S. corporations that have ties to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Other universities, including the University of North Carolina System and University of Wyoming, have previously adopted positions to remain neutral. Since the Israel-Hamas war, others have joined them, including Stanford University and Northwestern University. Harvard University said in May it would no longer make political statements at the recommendation of a faculty committee, though they stopped short of fully embracing “institutional neutrality.”

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Northwestern University - Medill School of Journalism, University of Texas - Dallas and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/23/ut-system-free-speech-policy/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune

Aug. 23, 2024

"LULAC condemns Paxton’s election fraud raids as “intimidation”" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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The League of United Latin American Citizens plans to request a federal investigation into raids Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted this week as part of what he called an “ongoing election integrity investigation.”

Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC’s state director, said in a statement that Paxton carried out the raids 11 weeks before the 2024 elections “to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.”

Agents raided the home of Cecilia Castellano — the Democrat running to succeed state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde — and confiscated her phone as part of the search, according to Rosales. Republicans see that seat, which Gov. Greg Abbott carried by nearly 6 percentage points, as their best potential state House flip in November.

Law enforcement also searched the homes of at least five other Latino individuals, all of whom were working on Castellano’s campaign and three of whom are members of Texas LULAC, Rosales added. LULAC is a non-partisan, volunteer-based Hispanic civil rights organization headquartered in Washington.

The group is in the dark about the details of any accusations, Rosales said, “but there's none that we’ve been privy to that merits an investigation like this that wastes taxpayers’ money.”

“It is disgraceful and outrageous that the state of Texas, and its highest-ranking law enforcement officer is once again using the power of his office to instill fear in the hearts of community members who volunteer their time to promote civic engagement,” Rosales said in a statement.

Paxton announced on Wednesday that his office executed “multiple” search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties the day prior as part of an investigation into allegations of “election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections.” A two-year investigation, Paxton said, provided “sufficient evidence” to obtain the search warrants.

“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said in a statement. “We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”

Paxton’s office did not reply to a request for additional information. His announcement did not detail the targets of the raids, the number of raids, or the reason specific homes were searched.

“It’s still very vague,” Rosales said in an interview. “That’s what’s really unnerving about the whole situation.”

According to one person whose home was raided, Rosales said, law enforcement suggested that he was accused of possessing “illegal voter information” — a claim that he denied and called politically motivated, saying voter information is publicly available.

“There’s no there, there,” Rosales said. “They’re using every tool in the toolbox to intimidate our people from coming out to the polls.”

Rosales said he was working with the group’s national leaders and attorneys to draft a formal complaint with the U.S. Justice Department requesting a federal investigation into Paxton’s raids.

The attorney general’s office was asked to investigate the allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting during the 2022 elections by 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Louis, a Republican whose district includes Frio and Atascosa counties.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/23/texas-ken-paxton-vote-fraud-investigation/.

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By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune

Aug. 26, 2024

"Texas Latino leaders label voter fraud investigation “nonsense,” call for federal, state reviews" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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HOUSTON — A Democratic candidate for the Texas House on Monday dismissed as “nonsense” a state vote harvesting investigation that led authorities to confiscate her phone and search the homes of a legislative aide and elderly Latino election volunteers.

Cecilia Castellano, who is running to succeed state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde, made the remarks during a news conference that featured some of the South Texans who were served search warrants last week.

Latino civil rights leaders and state lawmakers also said on Monday they will ask the federal government and Texas Senate to investigate the raids.

League of United Latin American Citizens leaders have said authorities searched the homes of elderly Latino election volunteers pre-dawn with guns drawn and scant information about their probe. They have blasted the raids executed by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office as an effort to intimidate Latino voters.

Without naming him, Castellano said the state’s top Republicans had publicly endorsed her opponent, former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin Jr.

“Do not get distracted by this nonsense,” Castellano said. “Despite the challenges, I refuse to be silenced.”

McLaughlin, in an interview with The Texas Tribune, denied that the investigation was politically motivated to help him win, adding that he did not know about the probe until Saturday when he learned about it through a press release.

"I have not had any conversation with the Attorney General's Office or the attorney general," he said. "To point fingers at me? I don't play that way. I didn't play that way when I was mayor and I won't play that way now."

McLaughlin said that Castellano is innocent until proven guilty but he doesn't believe a judge would allow a warrant to be issued haphazardly.

"Usually, where there's smoke, there's fire," he said.

[Warrants detail allegations that led to search of Democratic candidate for Texas House]

Paxton’s office has said little about its investigation aside from an announcement last week about the search warrants that his investigators executed in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar Counties.

However, affidavits for search warrants obtained by The Texas Tribune show that agents were investigating allegations that a longtime Frio County political operator had illegally harvested votes for multiple local races. They do not include the warrants for Castellano’s phone or for the home of one of her aides, Manuel Medina, a former chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party and chief of staff to state Rep. Elizabeth "Liz" Campos, D-San Antonio.

Among the races was Castellano’s, according to the documents. An investigator from Paxton’s office claimed in the sworn affidavit that Medina was recorded discussing a scheme to collect votes for Castellano with the operator during the 2024 primary.

Republicans hope to flip the South Texas seat Castellano is running for as they aim to secure enough votes to pass a school voucher bill next legislative session. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott carried the House district by 6 percentage points in 2022. King, one of the most moderate members of the House, ran unopposed.

Both Medina and Castellano have previously condemned the probe as a politically-motivated attack. At Monday’s news conference, Castellano did not directly address the allegation in the affidavits and Medina did not speak.

Paxton’s office did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment.

LULAC officials plan to file formal complaints with the U.S. Justice Department, seeking a federal review of the state’s investigation and raids, said Gabriel Rosales, LULAC’s Texas state director.

“We didn't break any law,” Rosales said. “All we did was go out there to increase the political participation of the Latino community.”

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, said he and another lawmaker planned to request a state inquiry from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Such a review is unlikely to be granted by Patrick, a staunch Republican who presides over the Senate.

James Barragán contributed.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/26/texas-latino-leaders-ken-paxton-voter-fraud/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune

Aug. 23, 2024

"Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw retiring after 15 years as state’s top law enforcement officer" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw announced Friday he will retire at the end of the year, marking an end to a 15-year tenure defined in recent years by his agency’s flawed response to the Uvalde school shooting and its role in the state’s border crackdown, Operation Lone Star.

McCraw broke the news while delivering a commencement address at a DPS trooper graduation ceremony.

“It’s rather an easy thing to do, because I know Gov. Greg Abbott will ensure that my replacement is as good and likely better than I am at this particular job,” McCraw said.

This is a developing story and will continue to be updated.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/23/texas-steve-mccraw-dps-director-retire/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Jaden Edison, The Texas Tribune

Aug. 7, 2024

"Texas schools got billions in federal pandemic relief. It is coming to an end as the school year starts." was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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The $43 million infusion the Port Arthur Independent School District received in federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds accomplished more than Phyllis Geans could have ever imagined.

The money allowed the district to upgrade antiquated heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Teachers earned retention stipends at a time when many were leaving the profession. Students received new band instruments. An ambitious summer program taught them about photography, robots and skydiving.

“We were excited, really excited, because we started thinking about things that we knew were almost impossible,” said Geans, Port Arthur ISD’s assistant superintendent of operations. “It was unreal.”

Districts like Port Arthur ISD, where roughly 85% of students are economically disadvantaged, received a level of financial support they likely wouldn’t have received otherwise — and they took advantage of it by investing in community health, learning, infrastructure and safety.

But the more than $19 billion Texas schools received in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds over the last four years will expire on Sept. 30, with a few exceptions.

The money will go away at a time when Texas schools are already struggling to keep the lights on. A number of districts are planning to enter the next school year with multimillion-dollar holes in their budgets as inflation has sent costs soaring. The Texas Legislature failed last year to approve a significant boost to the base amount of money every school receives per student — an amount that hasn’t changed since 2019 — as lawmakers fought over whether to fund private education with taxpayer dollars.

School administrators say losing the pandemic relief funds not only threatens the programs they paid for but also highlights how precarious their districts’ situation has become after years of clamoring for more state funding.

“It's not about making up ESSER, because we all knew that was one-time funding,” said La Joya ISD Superintendent Marcey Sorensen. “I just would ask, without getting political whatsoever, that everybody just look in the mirror and say, OK, if we really haven't provided additional funding since 2019, maybe it's time that we just give school districts a little bit more of what they need, knowing that kids have different needs now.”

Congress established the ESSER program in 2020 to help schools address the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Texas, districts experienced significant enrollment declines and the number of burnt-out teachers exiting the profession skyrocketed. Years of educational gains unraveled as kids, parents and teachers struggled with school closures and the hurried transition to online learning.

District leaders say the federal pandemic relief funds helped them address learning disruptions and provide additional academic support for students.

“They helped us ride out the five years of no new funding from the state,” said Ronald Wilson, Hearne ISD’s chief financial officer.

Recent studies show the relief funds helped schools across the country improve test scores. For districts where most students come from low-income households, the funds were particularly meaningful, and not just for academics.

In Port Arthur ISD, where most students are Black and Hispanic and the four-year graduation rate is well below the state average, the Brilliance Academy summer program took students on an indoor skydiving trip, where they learned about wind resistance, speed and velocity. The district created a program that paid high school seniors to provide supplemental classroom instruction to elementary kids. Geans said some of the students who participated in the program later expressed interest in pursuing a career in teaching.

Meanwhile, Paris ISD established income incentives for teachers to mentor students. Hearne ISD hired behavioral specialists and social workers to assist students and their families during the pandemic. San Elizario ISD built spaces for recreational activities like playing the piano and hosted family fitness, literacy and math events.

“I think we were more successful in growing the whole child, on the part where we're growing young ladies and young men,” said Jerrica Liggins, Paris ISD’s secondary education director and college transition coordinator. “We gave them things that they need to be successful in the next grade level or whether they were graduating and going out into the workforce. We gave them things that helped make them a better person.”

Schools across the country have faced questions about how they’ve spent federal relief funds. District officials who used them for things like hiring more staff for their central offices, purchasing pool passes or renovating sports stadiums have received the harshest criticism.

Texas schools will likely face similar spending questions next year. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Texas Senate, recently directed that chamber’s education committee to review how public schools spent the massive influx of federal COVID-19 relief money. The review will likely focus on how districts used the funds to improve student outcomes.

Standardized test scores are one of the main ways in which student achievement and growth are measured in the state, and the same is true for how the use of pandemic relief funds has been evaluated in national studies.

In Texas, the pandemic caused a dramatic decline in learning, with reading and math scores hit particularly hard. The effects were even more profound for students who participated in online classes. Math scores have yet to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.

How to hold schools accountable for Texas students’ academic performance has also been a contentious issue in recent years. School districts have fought with the Texas Education Agency over its letter grade accountability system, claiming recent changes would hurt their ratings. School officials have argued that testing scores alone are not enough to measure school systems’ effectiveness.

What ESSER spending evaluations sometimes miss is the extent to which the relief funds helped school districts stay alive, said Amanda Brownson, deputy executive director of the Texas Association of School Business Officials.

The funds “helped them keep the doors open, helped them make sure staff were in classrooms ready to greet kids when they came back; it helped them not … collapse,” Brownson said. “What we don't have is the counterfactual: What shape would school districts be in right now if they had to manage the pandemic and had not had ESSER funding available?”

Maintaining the programs Texas schools created with federal relief funds will likely be difficult without them.

A recent survey conducted by the TASBO found that out of 313 school districts across the state, nearly 80% reported deficit budgets or a lack of resources as one of their top challenges. Ninety percent of respondents said they have less than a quarter of pandemic relief funds remaining.

Gov. Greg Abbott has faced sharp criticism from public school advocates for his unwillingness to support standalone legislation to significantly boost school funding.

Since last year, Abbott has pushed for education savings accounts, which would allow families to use tax dollars to pay for their children’s private education and other school-related expenses. Opponents in the Texas House, citing worries that such a program would siphon funds away from public schools, successfully blocked the measure. But it meant public schools wouldn’t get the funding boost they wanted: Abbott had said he would veto any school funding proposal that did not include an education savings accounts program.

The governor has vowed to make a similar push when the Legislature reconvenes next year.

The uncertainty around state funding for public schools has created a situation where school districts are spending more time worrying about their financial sustainability and less about what’s best for students, said Monty Exter, governmental relations director of the Association of Texas Professional Educators.

But for low-income districts, money difficulties are not unfamiliar. And they plan to do what they’ve always done: find ways to provide for students and families with their limited resources.

Some school districts are encouraging their staff to be on the lookout for local grant opportunities. Others are thinking of asking voters to increase the tax revenue going to schools or support school bonds. Few say they are looking to the Legislature for solutions.

”We're taking as much of the funding issues on ourselves and moving forward,” said Hearne ISD Superintendent Adrian Johnson, adding that he is still hopeful that legislators will do more to fund public schools.

“But we're not waiting on that to happen,” he said.

Disclosure: Association of Texas Professional Educators and Texas Association of School Business Officials (TASBO) have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The full program is now LIVE for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Explore the program featuring more than 100 unforgettable conversations on topics covering education, the economy, Texas and national politics, criminal justice, the border, the 2024 elections and so much more. See the full program.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/07/texas-schools-covid-19-pandemic-esser/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune

Aug. 7, 2024

"Texas set to execute Arthur Lee Burton for 1997 killing of Houston jogger" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas is set to execute Arthur Lee Burton on Wednesday evening for the 1997 killing and attempted kidnapping and rape of a Houston woman.

Burton would be the third person executed in Texas this year. Four others are scheduled to die in 2024.

Burton was first sentenced to death in 1998 for killing Nancy Adleman, a mother of three who was on a summer evening jog along the bayou near her home in Houston. Police officers discovered her body the next morning in a wooded area near the jogging trail. Adleman was strangled with her own shoelace, her body badly beaten and her shorts and underwear discarded some distance away, according to court documents.

When approached by a police officer, Burton initially denied killing Adleman. But he later confessed to the crime and admitted to attacking a jogger, dragging her to the woods and choking her until she was unconscious, according to court documents. Burton has since argued that his confession was coerced.

“For every woman who has ever exercised alone, or who has walked out to her car alone at night, this case is their worst nightmare,” said Josh Reiss, chief of the Harris County District Attorney’s office division of post-conviction writs.

In a memoir published in 2019, Sarah Adleman, the victim’s daughter, explored the grief of her mother’s killing — which took place while she was a teenager — and included pieces of her mother’s poetry.

“The morning after she didn’t come home I find a baby sparrow in the garden next to the birdbath, under the pine tree,” she wrote. “If I can nurse the bird back to health my mother will be OK. I make a home for the bird in a shoebox, cut grapes for it to eat, and keep it on my bedside table for two nights.”

In another passage, she wrote of how her mother told her killer that she forgives him, and “God does too.”

“What she did do with her words was open the door to acceptance,” she wrote. “Acceptance that life, no matter how hard we try or how hard we fight it, will ever be as it was. Forgiveness comes after.”

In Burton’s latest appeal, which was still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court as of Wednesday morning, his lawyers argued that he is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.

In a petition filed just days before his scheduled execution, Burton presented “recently-developed evidence” of his intellectual disability, including an evaluation by a clinical psychologist who found that Burton meets the criteria for “mild intellectual disability,” various neuropsychological tests, school records and supporting commentary from seven people who knew him in his adolescence.

The state rejected Burton’s claim, citing a clinical neuropsychologist’s evaluation that the “qualitative and quantitative evidence are not consistent with the presence of intellectual disability.” The state’s report argued that the results of Burton’s IQ tests fell several points above the range that indicates a disability, that he appeared to have been a “very prolific reader” while on death row and that he has not required additional support to function in the prison system.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that executing someone with an intellectual disability constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.” Intellectual disability is one of two categorical bars the court has placed on the death penalty. Those who were under 18 at the age of a capital crime are also ineligible for the death penalty, the court has held.

“It’s the law of the land,” said Kate Johnson, one of Burton’s attorneys. “Mr. Burton is intellectually disabled. The state does not agree. And our view is that we should litigate the issue — and if he is intellectually disabled, he needs to be resentenced.”

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday afternoon that Burton’s petition was not timely, and should have been raised years ago. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals also rejected Burton’s intellectual disability claim.

Burton’s lawyers appealed the state criminal court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court for a second look and stay of his execution. They argued that the state’s highest criminal court acted wrongly and failed to follow the latest medical guidance for evaluating intellectual disability.

“A chasm is once again growing between the medical community’s diagnostic framework for intellectual disability and the TCCA’s idiosyncratic view about who should be deemed ineligible for execution,” his lawyers wrote to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Mr. Burton has fallen into that chasm. Thus, once again, Texas has imposed a test that flouts this Court’s precedents.”

The full program is now LIVE for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Explore the program featuring more than 100 unforgettable conversations on topics covering education, the economy, Texas and national politics, criminal justice, the border, the 2024 elections and so much more. See the full program.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/07/texas-execution-death-row-arthur-lee-burton/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune

July 30, 2024

"Texas’ floating barrier in the Rio Grande can stay for now, appeals court says" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that the floating barrier Texas deployed in the Rio Grande last year to deter illegal migration could remain. The fight over the barrier is one of many broader, hard-fought legal and political battles over the state’s authority to control the flow of migrants at the border.

The ruling by the full circuit court strikes down a lower court’s ruling and reverses a decision by a subset of the Fifth Circuit Court. The back and forth so far has been about the likelihood that the federal government will win its argument and the validity of a preliminary injunction ordering the barriers removed.

The text of the decision was released by the court Tuesday evening, but then appeared to have been taken down shortly after.

The lawsuit will soon be argued in district court, which will rule on the merits of the federal government’s claims.

Here’s what you need to know

The background: Texas began deploying chains of specially designed buoys down the middle of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass to deter migrants from crossing illegally in June 2023, sparking protests from migrant activists and from the Mexican government. The barrier was rolled out as part of Operation Lone Star, Gov. Greg Abbott’s multibillion dollar effort to counter illegal immigration along the 1,200-mile southern border.

Texas spent $850,000 on the barrier, which is made up of a 1,000-foot-long string of buoys separated by saw blades supporting a submerged mesh net.

Why the federal government sued: In July 2023, the U.S. Justice Department sued Texas in an Austin federal court, arguing that the barrier was a safety hazard that violates international treaties, harms relations with Mexico and was installed without necessary authorization from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates activities in waterways and wetlands under federal law.

Because Texas installed the barrier “without seeking the Corps’ authorization, the Corps and other relevant federal agencies were deprived of the opportunity to evaluate risks the barrier poses to public safety and the environment, mitigate those risks as necessary through the permitting process, and otherwise evaluate whether the project is in the public interest,” the federal government’s lawsuit said.

The federal government also alleged that the floating barrier obstructs navigation on the river, and demanded that the state remove the barrier.

What Texas said: Abbott defended his decision to deploy the barrier as the “commander-in-chief of our State’s militia,” and he blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policy for the conditions at the border. Texas argued that the barrier was designed to direct migrants to appropriate entry points and deter unlawful crossings and drug smuggling.

The state’s lawyers argued in court documents that the barrier is not a structure that required authorization. They also said that the state notified proper authorities by briefing the international body that regulates the Rio Grande before the barrier was installed.

What has happened in court so far: On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the barrier could remain in the Rio Grande. The decision reversed an earlier ruling in December that affirmed a lower court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction against the barrier as requested by the federal government.

In Tuesday’s decision, the court ruled that the preliminary injunction should not have been granted, finding that the federal government is not likely to prove during trial that the barrier was placed in a “navigable” stretch of the Rio Grande and thus that Texas violated federal law.

“The barrier is not within navigable water,” the court’s opinion said.

Earlier, in the December 2-1 decision, a panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Texas to remove the barrier. The panel found that the barrier was placed in a “navigable” part of the river, meaning Texas needed to receive permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before deploying the barrier.

The full program is now LIVE for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Explore the program featuring more than 100 unforgettable conversations on topics covering education, the economy, Texas and national politics, criminal justice, the border, the 2024 elections and so much more. See the full program.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/30/texas-floating-barrier-rio-grande-court-ruling/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By María Méndez, The Texas Tribune

July 19, 2024

"Democrats need to act swiftly to nominate a new presidential candidate for the Texas ballot" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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President Joe Biden withdrawing from the presidential election has raised questions about how his Democratic replacement would get on the November ballot across the country. State law suggests a new nominee wouldn't have much of a problem doing so in Texas, if the party acts soon.

The two major parties have until Aug. 26 to submit the names of their presidential candidates for the Texas ballot, giving Democrats five weeks to make changes.

The Texas election code states that the Texas secretary of state can certify a political party’s replacement nominee for president or vice president if the original nominee withdraws, dies or is declared ineligible by the 74th day before the presidential election day, which is Aug. 23 this year, if the party’s state chair submits the replacement nominee no later than 5 p.m. of the 71st day before the election day, which is Aug. 26.

This means the Democratic Party could select a new nominee during its national convention Aug. 19-22 just in time for the nominee to appear on the Texas ballot.

Biden faced mounting pressure from some fellow Democrats to exit the race after he tripped over words and seemed to lose his train of thought during the June presidential debate. Congressman Lloyd Doggett of Austin was the first member of Congress to come out publicly against Biden. On Friday, U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth and three other Congressional Democrats urged Biden to "pass the torch" to another nominee.

Biden on Friday vowed to return to the campaign trail next week, according to The New York Times, and Vice President Kamala Harris reassured donors that she and Biden would win the election. But on Sunday, he announced that he was withdrawing.

The longer Biden waited to withdraw, the harder the logistics of replacing him on the ballot would have become, according to Votebeat.

Even though Election Day isn’t until Nov. 5, election officials across the country also have to account for state election deadlines and for voters, including members of the military, who will be voting by mail and need additional time to receive and return their ballots. For example, Maricopa County in Arizona said that its ballots need to be finalized by Aug. 22, Votbeat reported.

In Texas, counties manage the printing of their own ballots, and include the names of the candidates given to them by the secretary of state, according to Votebeat.

That office sends those names in late August, after the conventions. Military ballots go out on Sept. 21, and must be printed days ahead of that. Trudy Hancock, the election administrator in Brazos County, told Votebeat that the county’s ballots are typically finished by Sept. 10 to allow for proofing and to account for any delays.

The party representatives who cast their state’s votes for president in the electoral college can now vote for the person the Democratic party nominates as his replacement in states that allow it, Votebeat reported.

To win the presidency in the Electoral College, a candidate must get at least 270 votes from the 538 electors across the country. Each state gets as many electors as it has U.S. senators and representatives in Congress. In most states, including Texas, whoever wins the most votes from voters gets all the Electoral College votes for that state.

In rare instances, some electors have cast votes for someone other than their party’s official nominee, which has stirred some concerns of “faithless electors” in recent years. In Texas, a 2023 update to the state’s election code requires electors to sign an oath that they will vote for the chosen candidate.

Natalia Contreras, Jen Fifield and Jessica Hussman of Votebeat contributed to this story.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/19/biden-texas-presidential-ballot-election-law/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune

July 2, 2024

"Judge denies Texas’ attempt to shut down El Paso migrant shelter" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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An El Paso judge Tuesday denied Texas’ request to shut down a migrant shelter network that the state claimed was violating state law by sheltering people suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

Two weeks ago lawyers for the Texas Attorney General’s office argued to state district Judge Francisco Dominguez that Annunciation House in El Paso should be shut down for violating state laws prohibiting human smuggling and the operation of a stash house.

Dominguez ruled on Tuesday that the state’s claim “even if accepted as true, does not establish a violation of those provisions,” according to the order. He ruled that the state laws are preempted by federal law and “unenforceable.”

The judge additionally ruled that the state’s claim “violates the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act by substantially burdening Annunciation House’s free exercise of religion and failing to use the ‘least restrictive means’ of securing compliance with the law.”

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. Lawyers with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid representing the shelter scheduled a press conference for later Tuesday.

Paxton’s office initially sought records from Annunciation House about the shelter’s clients in February. The office gave the shelter director, Ruben Garcia, a day to turn over the documents.

Garcia’s lawyer told the state its deadline did not give the shelter enough time and asked a judge to determine which documents shelter officials were legally allowed to release. Interpreting that as noncompliance, Paxton’s office filed a countersuit to shut down the shelter network.

Annunciation House opened its first shelter at a Catholic church nearly 50 years ago. Since then, it has helped hundreds of thousands of refugees who have traveled through El Paso, according to the shelter.

Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/texas-el-paso-annunciation-house-ruling/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Alejandra Martinez and Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune

June 21, 2024

"U.S. Supreme Court blocks the state’s Rio Grande water deal with New Mexico" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a deal struck between Texas and New Mexico on Friday over the management of water in the Rio Grande, ruling the federal government should have a say in any agreement reached.

The 5-4 opinion is the latest twist in a conflict dating back to the 1930s, when Colorado, New Mexico and Texas agreed to share water in the Rio Grande.

Most recently in 2022, Texas and New Mexico sought an agreement that side-stepped the federal government. Federal regulators objected because it would impact an international water treaty with Mexico.

In the majority opinion, the court said “we cannot now allow Texas and New Mexico to leave the United States up the river without a paddle.”

The ruling comes as Texas and other states clamor for water. The region along the Rio Grande, in particular, is still considered in a drought.

Water “is never an issue until there isn't enough. When there isn't enough, suddenly everybody starts to look at the various agreements that share this water source," said Amy Hardberger, a water law professor at Texas Tech School of Law, about the water conflicts.

The decades-long dispute centers around an 80 year-old water agreement, known as the Rio Grande Compact, which legally binds Colorado, New Mexico and Texas to share the water in the Rio Grande. The 1938 agreement ended years of water disputes between the three states and directed how the states should split surface water.

Under the compact, Colorado must deliver a proportion of water each year to New Mexico at the state line and New Mexico must deliver a certain amount of water to the Elephant Butte Reservoir, located in southern New Mexico, for Texas.

In a 2013 complaint, Texas sued New Mexico, alleging groundwater pumping by New Mexico was taking water from the Rio Grande owed to Texas, causing river levels in the state to drop and depriving Texans of the water they're obligated to.

Texas accused New Mexico of violating the interstate compact that has governed water allocations between the two states and Colorado for decades.

Water law experts say the Supreme Court's recent decision has significant implications for future interstate water disputes, which would allow the federal government to intervene in water conflicts between states moving forward.

Texas and New Mexico came up with a compromise that allowed for a higher number of water pumping from New Mexico than the original 1938 agreement stated, but not big enough to run Texas dry.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which is also responsible for delivering water to Texas and New Mexico, did not agree with their allocations and requested intervention because that same water, in the Rio Grande, impacted the international 1906 water treaty that requires the U.S. to deliver 60,000 acre-feet of water from the Elephant Butte Reservoir to Mexico. The federal government argues it cannot meet its obligation if New Mexico does not comply with their obligations.

“You’ve got all these competing responsibilities here that have never been put together in one agreement,” said Gabriel Eckstein, a legal expert on water issues at Texas A&M University. “It’s a number of different projects and agreements that now have to work together so this is why the U.S. government thought to intervene in the dispute.”

The U.S. Supreme Court decided that the U.S. needs to be in agreement with Texas and New Mexico.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the International Boundary and Water Commission, which oversees the international treaty, both declined to comment on the ruling. A spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

Gage Zobell, a water law expert and attorney with Dorsey & Whitney said today’s decision will allow for the potential increase of federal involvement in water management.

“This has turned that long held principle on its head,” Zobell said. “What we have here is Supreme Court precedent that states that there are federal interests that can actually be brought forward as claims when two states are fighting over water, and that the federal government has a seat at the table, and that has been unheard of.”

Hardberger, the water law professor at Texas Tech, said that the Texas, U.S. and New Mexico will need to go back to the drawing board to figure out how they are going to resolve this conflict. She said there's an opportunity to continue negotiating, but the court has made it clear that all parties have to be in agreement.

“There's definitely not enough water in South Texas and Southwest Texas. I think everyone knows that,” Alex Ortiz, the volunteer Water Reservoir Chair for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, adding the ruling doesn’t mean there will be more water or less water available. “It means that it's possible that there's more water than what the consent decree would have allowed for but it's up to the United States now."

The water disputes come at a time when South Texas battles severe drought conditions, tremendous water shortage issues impacting farmers, and there were these impending conflicts between the U.S. and Mexico about how that water is being shared.

While the water in dispute is not directly related to water deliveries in South Texas, one environmentalist group argues there are downstream effects.

“If there's not enough water coming into the state as a whole, that puts more pressure on the upper part of the Rio Grande,” Ortiz said. “It changes a little bit of the management strategies for reservoirs that might already be struggling."

Disclosure: Texas A&M University and Young President's Organization - Lone Star Chapter have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/21/supreme-court-rejects-texas-new-mexico-water-agreement/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Zach Despart, The Texas Tribune

June 19, 2024

"Texas court finds Kerry Max Cook innocent of 1977 murder, ending decades-long quest for exoneration" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Kerry Max Cook is innocent of the 1977 murder of Linda Jo Edwards, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found, citing stunning allegations of prosecutorial misconduct that led to Cook spending 20 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.

Cook was released from prison in 1997 and Smith County prosecutors set aside his conviction in 2016. The ruling Wednesday, by the state’s highest criminal court, formally exonerates him.

“This case is riddled with allegations of State misconduct that warrant setting aside Applicant’s conviction,” Judge Bert Richardson wrote in the majority opinion. “And when it comes to solid support for actual innocence, this case contains it all — uncontroverted Brady violations, proof of false testimony, admissions of perjury and new scientific evidence.”

Cook, now 68, became an advocate against the death penalty after his release. The ruling ends, as Richardson wrote, a “winding legal odyssey” stretching 40 years that was “marked by bookends of deception.”

Prosecutors in Smith County, in East Texas, accused Cook of the 1977 rape, murder and mutilation of 21-year-old Edwards. Cook’s first conviction in 1978 was overturned. A second trial in 1992 ended in a mistrial and a third in 1994 concluded with a new conviction and death sentence. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the second verdict in 1996, stating that misconduct by police and prosecutors had tainted the case from the start.

The Smith County district attorney intended to try Cook a fourth time in 1999 but settled for a plea deal in which Cook was released from prison but his conviction stood. Until Wednesday, he was still classified as a murderer by the Texas justice system.

Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/19/kerry-max-cook-innocent-texas-court/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Alejandro Serrano and Uriel J. García, The Texas Tribune

June 18, 2024

"Texas National Guard is shooting pepper balls to deter migrants at the border" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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CIUDAD JUÁREZ — National Guard members on the Texas-Mexico border have added pepper ball guns to their arsenal, firing at migrants who are gathering on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande or trying to break through the tangle of concertina wire strung along the border.

Migrants interviewed in Mexico say they’ve been shot by the rounds, which leave welts and bruises. It’s the latest escalation by Texas at the southern border through Gov. Greg Abbott’s multibillion-dollar initiative, Operation Lone Star.

The state has deployed thousands of National Guard members to patrol the border since the initiative began in March 2021. The pepper ball launchers, which shoot munitions containing a chemical that causes irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, are a new addition.

The weapons resemble paintball guns. They’re powered by a carbon dioxide cartridge and can hold about 180 rounds, according to a video recently posted on the official Operation Lone Star YouTube page and later shared by the governor’s office. The goal is to get all National Guard members certified in using the weapon.

"We've had some instances where we have caught migrants or members of the cartel cutting the c-wire and trying to send people through," Spc. Aiden Hogan says in the video, referring to the concertina wire the state has deployed along parts of the border. He doesn’t say how they identify the targets as members of cartels. "We've been able to send them back with deploying the pepper ball launcher." https://www.youtube.com/embed/plDWO5cnSdY?rel=0

The Texas National Guard is using pepper balls at the border in El Paso to deter migrants from trying to cross the border and request asylum. Video by: Laura Duclos for The Texas Tribune.

Having trouble viewing? Watch this video on texastribune.org.

The balls are to be shot in the general direction of migrants, not directly at them, to break up groups and deter them, according to the video. But migrants interviewed by The Texas Tribune said some people have been hit. And people who help migrants at the border say they are worried about the continued escalation of tactics by state forces.

On an early weekday morning in May, a few hundred migrants said they were sleeping on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande when National Guard soldiers on the American side fired pepper balls.

The migrants, some of whom had been camping for several days waiting to cross through concertina wire, said they fled from the riverbank, attempting not to breathe in the irritant.

A migrant woman, who declined to be identified out of fear that soldiers would retaliate against her, shared a video of the aftermath that showed her coughing while her daughter held onto her, while a boy standing nearby has red streaks on his face. The woman said one of the projectiles hit her daughter in the head.

“Look how they left the boy, with tears,” a man is heard saying. “Look how they left the little girl too, they also got her mom.”

Nicolas Gonzalez, a 46-year-old Colombian migrant in the group, pointed to small bruises near his elbow and hand, which he said were caused by the pepper balls.

“They have no respect for us, they don’t care that there’s pregnant women or children here,” he said. “They treat us worse than animals, like they are hunting us down.”

Gil Kerlikowske, former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection who oversaw the implementation of the same technology at the agency amid scrutiny over agents’ use of force, said the pepper balls can do serious damage to people.

In one high-profile incident, a young woman in Boston died when she was shot in the eye with a pepper ball by police trying to control a crowd gathered around Fenway Park to celebrate a Red Sox playoff victory.

“They’re not really non-lethal,” Kerlikowske said. “No one should just write this off as well, you know, an irritant. They can be very dangerous.”

Using the pepper ball launchers requires a lot of training and an understanding of the dangers the weapon can pose, Kerlikowske said.

Kerlikowske, who has also led police departments in Seattle, Buffalo and Florida, said police officers are “not going to use tear gas without having emergency medical personnel standing by available to help someone” if they are injured.

Asked for comment for this story, a spokesperson for Abbott defended the border mission without directly addressing the use of pepper balls.

“Texas is utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to this ongoing border crisis, as President Biden's reckless open border policies invite record high levels of illegal immigrants, criminals, and deadly drugs like fentanyl into our country,” said Andrew Mahaleris, the spokesperson.

Last week, Major General Thomas M. Suelzer, leader of the Guard, told a Texas Senate committee that soldiers are trained to “hit an inanimate object” so the pepper ball ruptures.

“We specifically train them: Do not shoot directly at an individual because if hit in the wrong place, it can cause serious bodily injury,” Suelzer testified.

The addition of the launchers comes as troops have experienced an increase in aggression from migrants, Suelzer said, including a soldier who was recently bitten and another who was elbowed repeatedly.

National Guard soldiers can use force to defend themselves or others, ​​Suelzer told lawmakers. As a situation unfolds, troops are trained to first announce themselves or clearly show there is an authority present. Following that, they are to try persuading someone with words — “saying, please stop,” Suelzer said. If the situation escalates, force enters the equation, he said.

“It is primarily used to stop a breaching of the barrier so there’s already been an illegal crossing, people are now crawling through the concertina wire field and we are saying go back and they are not doing it,” Suelzer said. “Now there’s non-compliance.”

But among advocates and people who work with migrants along the border, the use of force is alarming.

Alan Lizarraga of the Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso-based immigrant rights group, said that Abbott’s Operation Lone Star is “putting families at risk.”

“We’ve been really concerned with how this is escalating and how this is playing out on the ground,” he said.

Brian Elmore is an emergency medicine doctor in El Paso who helps coordinate medical help for migrants. In recent weeks, he said he’s treated migrants with injuries — bruises, fractures, muscle strains — that migrants said were caused by Texas National Guard members and in some instances Mexican authorities.

Elmore said he had not witnessed Guard members shooting at migrants or pushing them into the dry riverbank, as migrants have claimed over the last two months, but that the injuries he’s helped treat were consistent with those that would be caused by such use of force.

“I’ve never seen so much desperation in my life,” he said.

Adam Isacson, a regional security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, said he is concerned the National Guard is keeping out people who are seeking safety and violating the due process for asylum seekers. Under federal law, anyone who entered the country — even those who crossed the border illegally — have a right to request asylum.

“Turning away someone who is asking for refuge is called refoulment and international law regards it to be a serious human rights violation,” he said.

The new strategy is being implemented amid tensions between Texas and the federal government as Texas state troopers and National Guard have flooded areas of the border under Operation Lone Star, launched in March 2021. A new law that would let Texas police arrest people suspected of having entered the country illegally, historically the jurisdiction of federal authorities, remains tied up in courts after the Department of Justice sued Texas to stop it from going into effect.

The Justice Department also sued Texas last year over the implementation of a floating barrier on the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass.

Rodolfo Rubio Salas, an immigration professor at El Colegio de Chihuahua in Ciudad Juárez, said the Mexican government needs to investigate the Texas National Guard’s tactics. He added that Mexican journalists and advocacy groups have reported cases of migrants being injured but the Mexican government hasn’t done anything about it.

“I find the tactics used by the Texas National Guard reprehensible,” he said. “I believe that the main focus should be on reporting and raising our voice diplomatically about abuses of power, improper use of force, and violation of the rights of migrants.”

Eduardo Rojas, legal strategycoordinator forFundación para la Justicia, a human rights advocacy group in Mexico City, said Mexico’s government needs to step up and protect migrants from any force the Texas National Guard is using to deter migrants — especially if the projectiles fired by soldiers are crossing the border.

“If the [pepper ball] bullets cross into Mexican territory, it can be considered a violation of Mexico's national sovereignty,” he said.

After a Guard member shot and wounded a man who was exercising across the border last year, Mexican authorities said they contacted senior officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers to condemn the Guard member’s action.

That shooting followed another of a migrant last year, on the Texas side near McAllen, the first reported shooting by a Guard member posted at the border through Operation Lone Star. The migrant was shot in the shoulder and taken to a hospital for evaluation and treatment.

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS). It is supported through FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/18/texas-national-guard-border-migrants-pepper-ball-guns/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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by Texas Tribune, El Paso Matters
June 6, 2024

By Renzo Downey / The Texas Tribune

YouTuber Brandon Herrera will request a recount Friday in his Republican primary runoff election against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales.

Herrera told The Texas Tribune he will request recounts in Bexar, El Paso, Medina and Uvalde counties after trailing Gonzales by 407 votes in a race that drew national attention as a fight between the more moderate and more conservative wings of the Republican party.

Last week, Herrera indicated he would accept the election results, posting that the close margin despite running a campaign that was outfunded by Gonzales was itself a major accomplishment. However, the campaign reversed course in the days since.

“I don’t expect the results to change, but I feel I owe it to my volunteers, voters, and supporters to leave no stone unturned,” Herrera said in a statement.

Texas’ 23rd Congressional District is the state’s largest congressional district by land area, spanning 29 counties from West Texas to San Antonio and Eagle Pass. The recount requests target the three counties that cast the most votes in the runoff — Bexar, Medina and Uvalde counties, home to San Antonio, Hondo and Uvalde, respectively. The requests also target El Paso County, whose rural lands fall within the district.

According to unofficial election results, Gonzales carried Bexar County with 7,917 votes to Herrera’s 6,800 votes, Herrera carried Medina County with 2,215 votes to Gonzales’ 2,138 votes, Gonzales carried Uvalde County with 1,312 votes to Herrera’s 1,052 votes, and Herrera carried El Paso County with 382 votes to Gonzales’ 266 votes.

The race was Gonzales’ first since his censure by the Texas Republican Party in March last year for taking centrist stances that the more culturally conservative state party found objectionable. 

Gonzales’ censure came after his opposition to a hardline U.S.-Mexico border bill by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, and his support for bipartisan gun safety legislation after the Robb Elementary shooting.

The censure opened Gonzales to primary challenges, and Herrera was endorsed by the Bexar County GOP and the campaign arm of the U.S. House Freedom Caucus. U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, was the first high-profile name to endorse Herrera, and brought him on stage during a speech at the Texas GOP Convention days before the runoff. U.S. House Republican leadership, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick backed Gonzales.

Herrera is known for this online persona, dubbed “the AK Guy,” and his irreverent sense of humor in YouTube videos and podcast appearances. His off-color online reputation was seen by some in his party as a liability, but it ended up a significant platform, allowing him to widely spread his message and fundraise hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“This isn’t the end. I’m not done fighting. There are plenty of other great Americans who need backup, and lots of places to make a difference,” Herrera posted on social media two days after election night. “I’m not backing down, this is just the end of this particular chapter. I’m not going anywhere.”

This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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By Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune

May 22, 2024

"Families of Uvalde shooting victims sue Texas DPS officers for waiting to confront gunman" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Relatives of 17 children killed and two kids injured in Texas’ deadliest school shooting are suing Texas Department of Public Safety officers who were among hundreds of law enforcement that waited 77 minutes to confront the gunman at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary, lawyers announced Wednesday.

“Nearly 100 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety have yet to face a shred of accountability for cowering in fear while my daughter and nephew bled to death in their classroom,” Veronica Luevanos, whose daughter Jailah and nephew Jayce were killed, said in a statement.

The legal action against 92 DPS officers comes days before the two-year anniversary of the shooting in which an 18-year-old used an AR-15 to kill 19 students and two teachers in two adjoining fourth-grade classrooms.

Relatives of most of those students killed and two who were injured also announced Wednesday that they are suing Mandy Gutierrez, who was the principal at Robb at the time, and Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, who was the school district police chief, for their “inaction” that day.

In addition to the lawsuit, the families announced the city of Uvalde will pay $2 million to the families as part of a separate settlement that also includes stipulations meant to prevent another tragedy like the 2022 shooting.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers from scores of local, state and federal agencies have been heavily criticized for waiting more than an hour to confront the gunman, which conflicted with training that instructs them to confront a shooter if there is reason to believe someone is hurt. The U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of the massacre concluded that the delay likely caused some deaths and that failures in leadership and training contributed to law enforcement’s ineffective response.

“While there is nothing normal about living in a society where kids can easily get access to a military rifle, the reality is that these officers were so terrified that they chose to abandon their burden to the Uvalde community: put themselves between a very dangerous person and a child, and the families must hold them accountable,” said Josh Koskoff, attorney for the families.

Koskoff has also represented the families of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut.

In the settlement with the city of Uvalde that families’ lawyers announced Wednesday, local officials will implement a new “fitness for duty” standard for Uvalde police officers, to be developed in coordination with the Justice Department and provide enhanced training for current and future police officers.

City officials will also establish May 24 as an annual day of remembrance and work with victims’ families to design a permanent memorial at the city plaza, among other things.

“For two long years, we have languished in pain and without any accountability from the law enforcement agencies and officers who allowed our families to be destroyed that day. This settlement reflects a first good faith effort, particularly by the City of Uvalde, to begin rebuilding trust in the systems that failed to protect us,” Luevanos said.

An investigation by a Texas House committee found “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” by nearly everyone involved in the response.

That panel’s 77-page report revealed that a total of 376 law enforcement officers descended upon the school in an uncoordinated manner, disregarding their own active shooter training.

The majority of the responders were federal and state law enforcement — 149 U.S. Border Patrol and 91 state police — whose responsibilities include responding to “mass attacks in public places.” The other responders included 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff’s deputies, and five police officers with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District as well as neighboring county law enforcement, U.S. marshals and federal Drug Enforcement Administration officers.

The myriad of law enforcement mistakes stemmed from an absence of leadership and effective communications, according to the report.

A trove of recorded investigative interviews and body camera footage obtained by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE showed that officers failed to set up a clear command structure and spread incorrect information that caused them to treat the shooter as a barricaded suspect and not an active threat — even as children and teachers inside the classrooms called 911 pleading for help. No single officer engaged the shooter for more than an hour despite training that says they should do so as quickly as possible if anyone is hurt.

Following intense criticism of their response, several law enforcement officers resigned or were fired in the months following the shooting. Arredondo, the school district police chief at the time, was fired in August 2022.

About 72% of the state and local officials who arrived at Robb Elementary before the gunman was killed received some form of active shooter training throughout their law enforcement careers. But of those who received training, most had taken it only once. After the shooting, Texas mandated that officers receive 16 hours of active shooter training every two years.

DPS is fighting the release of records from its investigation into the shooting. A Uvalde County grand jury is currently considering potential criminal charges against responding officers.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/22/uvalde-shooting-texas-dps-lawsuit/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By William Melhado, The Texas Tribune

May 16, 2024

"Gov. Greg Abbott pardons Daniel Perry, veteran who killed police brutality protester in 2020" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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More than a year after a Travis County jury convicted Daniel Perry of murdering a protester in Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned the former U.S. Army sergeant on Thursday shortly after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended a full pardon.

A Texas state district court judge sentenced Perry in May 2023 to 25 years in prison for shooting and killing U.S. Air Force veteran Garrett Foster during a 2020 demonstration protesting police brutality against people of color.

One day after a jury convicted Perry, Abbott directed the parole board to review the former U.S. Army sergeant’s case.

“Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony provided at trial,” Abbott said in a statement announcing the proclamation that absolved Perry. “Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.”

Abbott approved the board’s recommendation, which included restoration of Perry’s firearm rights.

“The members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles delved into the intricacies of Perry’s case. The investigative efforts encompassed a meticulous review of pertinent documents, from police reports to court records, witness statements, and interviews with individuals linked to the case,” the pardon board wrote in a Thursday statement.

Perry was driving for Uber at the time he encountered protesters a few blocks from the Capitol in downtown Austin. He stopped his car and honked at protesters as they walked through the street. Seconds later, he drove his car into the crowd, Austin police said.

Foster was openly carrying an AK-47 rifle at the time and during the trial, each side presented conflicting accounts as to whether the protester raised the gun to Perry who was also legally armed. Perry shot Foster and then fled the area, police said. He then called police and reported what happened, claiming he shot in self-defense after Foster aimed his weapon at him.

The case caught the attention of influential conservative voices like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi, who both pressured Abbott to pardon Perry saying he acted self-defense in the face of dangerous protests.

Abbott rarely issues pardons, which the board must recommend before the governor can act. Abbott granted three pardons in 2023, two pardons in 2022 and eight in 2021 — most for lower-level offenses.

Shortly after Perry’s conviction, unsealed court documents revealed he had made a slew of racist, threatening comments about protesters in text messages and social media posts. Days after George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer prompted nationwide protests, Perry sent a text message saying, “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.” Both Perry and Foster are white.

During his trial, several colleagues in the Army testified that Perry treated everyone fairly, regardless of race. His lawyers called Perry’s social media posts and messages as “barracks humor.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/16/daniel-perry-greg-abbott-pardon/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Stephen Simpson, The Texas Tribune

April 30, 2024

"79 arrested amid second crackdown on UT-Austin campus" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Authorities arrested 79 people during the second police crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin since last week, according to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

The protesters were arrested Monday during a campus demonstration and booked into the Travis County Jail, a sheriff’s office spokesperson said Tuesday. Seventy-eight of the people arrested are charged with criminal trespassing. One of them has an additional charge of obstructing a highway or passageway, while another person has been charged with interfering with public duties.

None of those arrested had been booked before a judge as of Tuesday morning.

[Dozens more arrested at UT-Austin as police use pepper spray, flash bangs to break up protests]

The arrests came after protesters started an encampment at the university’s South Lawn on Monday morning. University officials said protesters created a barricade using tables secured by metal chains and became "physically and verbally combative" when school staff approached. University staff said encampments are prohibited on campus and requested support from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Law enforcement warned protesters they would arrest them for criminal trespassing if they didn’t disperse. Officers eventually marched down on the protesters, dragging dozens of them before deploying pepper spray and flash bang explosives to disperse hundreds of people.

On Tuesday morning, a crowd of nearly 100 people waited outside the Travis County Jail waiting for the release of protesters arrested the day before. Various people brought food and water as students sat around preparing for their finals this week. A feeling of frustration and determination permeated the gathering.

“I have finals, and I don’t know if I can go back to campus again because it feels unsafe due to the people who are supposed to protect us,” said Arwyn Heilrayne, a UT-Austin student arrested during another pro-Palestinian protest last week.

Piper Leleux, a UT-Austin sophomore who was also in the crowd outside the jail waiting for her boyfriend to be released, said they hadn’t initially planned on being at Monday’s protest.

Leleux had just gotten off work at Urban Outfitters and was planning to meet her boyfriend for dinner when she got a text about the protest. It was a hot day, so they first met up to bring some water to protesters.

When they arrived, they were greeted by a chaotic scene that ended with her getting hit in the face and her boyfriend in handcuffs.

[Gov. Greg Abbott and UT-Austin shift from championing free speech to policing protesters’ intentions]

Leleux said she found herself stuck in a crowd of people when police started to pepper-spray the area. She said she accidentally ran into a cop and was trying to apologize when the officer elbowed her in the face.

“I fell to the ground and hit my head and then I was just angry because I was being polite,” Leleux said.

She then noticed her boyfriend being arrested, and the pain disappeared.

“I just started running towards him not even realizing I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be,” Leleux said. “One of my friends grabbed me and pulled me back or I might have been arrested, too.”

Leleux said she spent the next 24 hours outside the Travis County Jail.

“Once he is released, I will go to the hospital to make sure I don’t have a concussion. It hasn’t been fun, but it’s a lot better than what he is dealing with right now,” Leleux said.

Daniella Alfonso, another UT-Austin student outside the jail, said she went to the protests Monday when she learned one of her friends had been hit by a law enforcement officer on a bicycle. She said when she arrived she saw the cops had started to circle around protesters.

“I noticed one of my friends get pepper-sprayed and the skin on her arm starting turning red and burning,” Alfonso said.

Alfonso said she felt like she was in the middle of a television scene.

“I wasn’t expecting someone we know to get arrested and charged with criminal trespassing. We pay to be there,” Alfonso said.

Monday’s arrests came days after another police crackdown on protesters at UT-Austin last week. On Wednesday, authorities arrested 57 people during a pro-Palestinian demonstration that started as a student walkout on campus. There was no indication of violence before police intervened. The Travis County District Attorney’s Office dropped all charges against them last week, saying law enforcement lacked probable cause.

UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell justified the university’s response Wednesday by saying officials had reason to believe that protesters planned to set encampments and disrupt school activities, as it has happened with demonstrations at other universities across the country.

"The University strongly supports the free speech and assembly rights of our community, and we want students and others on campus to know that protests on campus are fully permissible, provided that they do not violate Institutional Rules or threaten the safety of our campus community," a statement from university officials said Tuesday.

Some people outside the jail on Tuesday said the university’s response so far would not dissuade them from continuing to participate in the protests.

“I am still going to protest because if I stopped they win,” Leleux said. “They are using scare tactics to try and intimidate us, and we can’t let that happen.”

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/30/ut-austin-protest-arrests/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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"Gov. Greg Abbott suggests he wants to bar transgender teachers from dressing in line with their gender identity" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Gov. Greg Abbott suggested Texas public school teachers should be barred from wearing clothes that don’t conform to traditional gender norms, raising the prospect that the GOP-controlled Legislature could pursue restrictions on transgender teachers and how they dress.

Abbott, addressing the Young Conservatives of Texas convention in Dallas, made the remarks as he recounted the story of a male teacher in North Texas who wore a pink dress for his school’s spirit day earlier this year.

“This person, a man, dressing as a woman in a public high school in the state of Texas, he’s trying to normalize the concept that this type of behavior is okay,” Abbott said Friday, according to an audio recording captured by the Texas Observer. “This type of behavior is not okay, and this is the type of behavior that we want to make sure we end in the state of Texas.”

Rachmad Tjachyadi, who taught chemistry at Hebron High School in Carrollton, resigned last month after a conservative social media account posted a video of him wearing the pink dress. Though Lewisville ISD officials found that he did not run afoul of any district policies, Tjachyadi said he decided to step down because the video sparked a wave of “hateful comments” that threatened to “remove the focus from the great things our students and staff are doing.”

A student told Dallas’ KXAS-TV that Tjachyadi “never brought his sexuality or any of his political ideas into his teaching” and was “always teaching chemistry.”

Abbott did not say how he wanted teachers’ attire to be regulated, but his comments received immediate support from current and incoming lawmakers. The positive reception came in response to the Observer reporter’s post that described Abbott as suggesting “he wants to ban trans and gender nonconforming people from being public school teachers.”

State Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, responded by writing, “Perverts should not be teachers.” And Republican Brent Money, who won the GOP primary in a heavily conservative North Texas House district last month, said Abbott was “absolutely correct.” Texas Republican Party Chair Matt Rinaldi also voiced support.

Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The governor was among those who circulated the video of Tjachyadi when it was posted in February. He cited it as an example of why he is pushing for a school voucher program that would give parents taxpayer dollars to help pay for private school tuition.

“No parent should be forced by the state to send their child to this school,” Abbott wrote on social media. “I'm fighting for the right of parents to send their children elsewhere.”

If lawmakers were to pass a law banning transgender teachers or restricting their attire, it would almost certainly be challenged in court — the same fate faced by the array of recent state measures targeting transgender Texans. The Legislature last year approved new laws restricting sexually explicit drag shows and barring minors from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy, both of which are the subject of ongoing lawsuits.

An LGBTQ+ advocacy group has also gone to court to prevent Attorney General Ken Paxton from forcing them to hand over records about transgender minors accessing transition-related care. And a pair of students at West Texas A&M University have alleged that the school president violated their First Amendment rights when he canceled last year’s on-campus drag show.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University and West Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/24/greg-abbott-trans-teachers-texas/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Sneha Dey and William Melhado, The Texas Tribune

April 24, 2024

"Police arrest pro-Palestine protesters on UT-Austin campus" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Law enforcement officers on Wednesday handcuffed and removed at least 10 people participating in a student protest on the University of Texas at Austin campus in support of Palestine amid the Israel-Hamas war.

UT-Austin students demanding that the university divest from manufacturers supplying Israel weapons in its strikes on Gaza gathered outside the university’s Gregory Gym with plans to march to the South Lawn, where they said they would sit down throughout the day. More than 200 students had gathered as of noon.

Authorities detained the protesters after telling students they could face criminal trespass charges if they didn’t disperse. One of the protesters was helping organize the event. An officer singled him out and told other officers he would be the first to be arrested.

After they were taken away, officers told the shrinking crowd that more arrests could happen if the students didn’t disperse.

Dozens of Texas Department of Public Safety officers in horses and riot gear were also present at the scene. Some could be seen pushing protesters with their batons.

The arrests at UT-Austin come a day after pro-Palestine students staged a sit-in at the University of Texas at Dallas with similar demands, The Dallas Morning News reported.

In the six months since the decades-old conflict in the Middle East reignited in horrific violence, tensions have bubbled in campuses across the U.S. between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups.

Hamas militants attacked Israel in a surprise offensive in October that resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people and the abduction of about 250 hostages. In response, the Israeli military launched a campaign that so far has killed over 34,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 77,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Two-thirds of the casualties are women and children.

The devastating violence — much of which has been shared over social media — has prompted demonstrations on campuses across the country.

Last week, Columbia University called on the New York Police Department to empty a campus encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters, which resulted in the arrest of more than 100 people. According to the Columbia Spectator, the university’s student newspaper, NYPD did not report violence or injuries. Some Jewish students have reported feeling unsafe and harassed due to the protests.

In response to the arrests, Columbia’s faculty senate planned to hold a vote on a resolution to censure President Nemat Shafik. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have called for Shafik’s resignation for what they say was a failure to protect students from antisemitism.

Similar protests have been held at other universities, including New York University, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Protests on Texas campuses have already tested administrators’ handling of the fraught subject and their commitment to free speech on campuses. As pro-Palestine and pro-Israel students engage in protests and heated discussions, school leaders have struggled to strike a balance between their roles as moderators and facilitators of intellectual debate on campus.

Universities have also faced pressure from state leaders, who have been public about their support of Israel. Gov. Greg Abbott, who traveled to Israel in November to reaffirm his support, issued an executive order last month requiring schools to update their free speech policies and punish what he described as “the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses.”

“Texas supports free speech, especially on university campuses, but that freedom comes with responsibilities for both students and the institutions themselves,” Abbott wrote in the order.

Ikram Mohamed and Annie Xia contributed to this story.

This is a developing story, check back for details.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at Dallas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/24/ut-austin-israel-hamas-war-palestine-student-arrests/.

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By Vianna Davila and Lexi Churchill, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, and Davis Winkie, Military Times

April 19, 2024

"Soldiers charged with violent crimes will now face more scrutiny before they can leave the Army" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power, and with Military Times, an independent news organization reporting on issues important to the U.S. military. Sign up for newsletters from ProPublica and Military Times.

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The U.S. Army, the country’s largest military branch, will no longer allow military commanders to decide on their own whether soldiers accused of certain serious crimes can leave the service rather than go on trial.

The decision comes one year after ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Military Times published an investigation exposing how hundreds of soldiers charged with violent crimes were administratively discharged instead of facing a court martial.

Under the new rule, which goes into effect Saturday, military commanders will no longer have the sole authority to grant a soldier’s request for what is known as a discharge in lieu of court martial, or Chapter 10, in certain cases. Instead, the newly created Office of Special Trial Counsel, a group of military attorneys who specialize in handling cases involving violent crimes, must also approve the decision. Without the attorneys’ approval, charges against a soldier can’t be dismissed.

The Office of Special Trial Counsel will have the final say, the Army told the news organizations.

The new rule will apply only to cases that fall under the purview of the Office of Special Trial Counsel, including sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, kidnapping and murder. In 2021, Congress authorized creation of the new legal office — one for each military branch except the U.S. Coast Guard — in response to yearslong pressure to change how the military responds to violent crimes, specifically sexual assault, and reduce commanders’ control over that process. As of December, attorneys with this special office, and not commanders, now decide whether to prosecute cases related to those serious offenses.

[The Army increasingly allows soldiers charged with violent crimes to leave the military rather than face trial]

Army officials told the news organizations that the change in discharge authority was made in response to the creation of the Office of Special Trial Counsel.

As far back as 1978, a federal watchdog agency called for the U.S. Department of Defense to end its policy of allowing service members accused of crimes to leave the military to avoid going to court. Armed forces leaders continued the practice anyway.

Last year, ProPublica, the Tribune and Military Times found that more than half of the 900 soldiers who were allowed to leave the Army in the previous decade rather than go to trial had been accused of violent crimes, including sexual assault and domestic violence, according to an analysis of roughly 8,000 Army courts-martial cases that reached arraignment. These soldiers had to acknowledge that they committed an offense that could be punishable under military law but did not have to admit guilt to a specific crime or face any other consequences that can come with a conviction, like registering as a sex offender.

The Army did not dispute the news organizations’ findings that the discharges in lieu of trial, also known as separations, were increasingly being used for violent crimes. An Army official said separations are a good alternative if commanders believe wrongdoing occurred but don’t have the evidence for a conviction, or if a victim prefers not to pursue a case.

Military law experts contacted by the news organizations called the Army’s change a step in the right direction.

“It’s good to see the Army has closed the loophole,” said former Air Force chief prosecutor Col. Don Christensen, who is now in private practice.

However, the Office of Special Trial Counsel’s decisions are not absolute. If the attorneys want to drop a charge, the commander still has the option to impose a range of other administrative punishments, Army officials said.

Christensen said he believes commanders should be removed from the judicial process entirely, a shift he said that the military has continued to fight. Commanders often have little to no legal experience. The military has long maintained that commanders are an important part of its justice system.

“They just can’t break away from commanders making these decisions,” said Christensen, who’s been a vocal critic of commanders’ outsize role in the military justice system. “They’re too wedded to that process.”

The Army told the newsrooms that additional changes to DOD and Army policy would be required to remove commanders entirely and instead give the Office of Special Trial Counsel full authority over separations in lieu of trial.

The news organizations reached out to several military branches to determine how the creation of the Office of Special Trial Counsel will affect their discharge processes. The U.S. Navy has taken steps similar to the Army’s. In the U.S. Air Force, the Office of Special Trial Counsel now makes recommendations in cases involving officers, and the branch is in the process of changing the rules for enlisted members. The U.S. Marines confirmed to the news organizations that it has not yet changed its discharge system.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/19/us-army-soldiers-violent-crimes/.

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By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune

March 7, 2024

"Uvalde city report clears local officers of wrongdoing, outraging families" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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

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

The findings of the report were presented in a question-and-response format with Prado at a city council meeting, but the actual report was not immediately released to the public until Thursday evening. Prado said the review identified training, communication and leadership lapses, but he also commended officers and characterized one’s actions as in “good faith” — contradicting findings of previous audits by state and federal officials.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uvalde city officials said they plan to give the report to families first. Several council members on the six-member board said they had not reviewed it prior to the meeting.

The private investigator’s report arrived almost two months after the U.S. Justice Department released its analysis of law enforcement’s bungled response, in which the federal government found “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training” by responding police.

Prado declined to comment after the meeting, telling reporters who followed him to his pick-up truck that he was done with the report but not with his job and still may have to answer questions. He did not acknowledge Felicha Martinez, whose son Xavier was killed in the shooting and who had also followed Prado to the parking lot.

“I wanted to ask him, is that how he really feels that the officers did — did they do right?,” Martinez said after Prado drove away.

“How does he sleep at night knowing that this is what he had to say? And he hurt all of us today — just opened wounds, after wounds, after wounds. I wanted to ask him if that’s really how he felt.”

We can’t wait to welcome you to downtown Austin Sept. 5-7 for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival! Join us at Texas’ breakout politics and policy event as we dig into the 2024 elections, state and national politics, the state of democracy, and so much more. When tickets go on sale this spring, Tribune members will save big. Donate to join or renew today.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/07/uvalde-robb-elementary-shooting-report/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Ikram Mohamed, The Texas Tribune

March 6, 2024

"Texas places state’s largest charter school network under conservatorship" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas’ largest charter school network has been placed under conservatorship by the Texas Education Agency after a years-long investigation into improper spending within the system of 143 schools.

The arrangement, announced Wednesday, is part of a settlement agreement between IDEA Public Schools and the TEA. IDEA had been under investigation since 2021 following numerous allegations of financial and operational misconduct.

It was revealed that IDEA officials used public dollars to purchase luxury driver services as well as $15 million to lease a private jet, just two weeks after promising TEA it would be “strictly enforcing” new fiscal responsibility policies put in place in response to ongoing investigations, as reported by San Antonio Express-News.

The revelations led the district to conduct an internal investigation, resulting in the firing of JoAnn Gama, former superintendent and co-founder of IDEA. Gama later filed a lawsuit against IDEA claiming wrongful termination. IDEA came to a $475,000 settlement with Gama in January. This followed co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson’s departure in 2020; he was given a $900,000 severance package.

The charter school district serves about 80,000 students in K-12. The schools are independently run but publicly funded with state dollars, having received about $821 million in state funding in 2023-2024 school year.

Under conservatorship, the conservators will have the authority to oversee and direct any action of the district, facilitate a needs assessment, conduct onsite inspections and support the creation of a plan to address corrective action concerns. They will also report back to the agency regarding the district's progress in completing necessary corrective activities.

The conservators will not fully take over the governance of the district. But if the district doesn’t make the necessary corrective measures that the conservators outline for them, a takeover could be possible in the future.

In a statement, IDEA said that it’s “pleased to have reached a settlement agreement … to resolve compliance issues our organization self-reported to regulators after an internal investigation in 2021.”

The district also stated that it would be returning $28.7 million in grant and formula funding to the U.S. Department of Education, stating that “these funds were reserved in a prior fiscal year to ensure repayment has a negligible impact on IDEA’s students and staff.”

The news follows the TEA takeover of Houston Independent School District in June following years of poor academic performance at a single campus within the district, among other factors.

Marlin Independent School District recently began the process of resuming local governance after seven years of state oversight due to five consecutive years of failing accountability ratings.

Austin Independent School District avoided being placed under conservatorship last year after the TEA and the district agreed on an alternative plan to respond to a report that found the district had repeatedly failed to serve the needs of students receiving special education.

Disclosure: IDEA Public Schools has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

We can’t wait to welcome you to downtown Austin Sept. 5-7 for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival! Join us at Texas’ breakout politics and policy event as we dig into the 2024 elections, state and national politics, the state of democracy, and so much more. When tickets go on sale this spring, Tribune members will save big. Donate to join or renew today.

Correction, March 6, 2024 at 8:50 p.m.: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the Texas Education Agency placed the Austin Independent School District under a conservatorship. It avoided the measure after the TEA and the district agreed on an alternative plan.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/06/idea-schools-conservatorship-texas/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Uriel J. García, The Texas Tribune

Feb. 29, 2024

"Texas law allowing police to arrest migrants suspected of being in country illegally blocked by federal judge" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A federal judge in Austin on Thursday halted a new state law that would allow Texas police to arrest people suspected of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally.

The law, Senate Bill 4, was scheduled to take effect Tuesday. U.S. District Judge David Ezra issued a preliminary injunction that will keep it from being enforced while a court battle continues playing out. Texas is being sued by the federal government and several immigration advocacy organizations.

Ezra said in his order Thursday that the federal government “will suffer grave irreparable harm” if the law took effect because it could inspire other states to pass their own immigration laws, creating an inconsistent patchwork of rules about immigration, which has historically been upheld as being solely within the jurisdiction of the federal government.

“SB 4 threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice,” Ezra wrote.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 4 in December, marking Texas’ latest attempt to try to deter people from crossing the Rio Grande after several years of historic numbers of migrants arriving at the Texas-Mexico border.

The law seeks to make illegally crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor, carrying a punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.

The law also seeks to require state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted; local law enforcement would be responsible for transporting migrants to the border. A judge could drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico voluntarily.

In December, ​​the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project sued Texas on behalf of El Paso County and two immigrant rights organizations — El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Austin-based American Gateways — over the new state law. The following month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed its lawsuit against Texas. The lawsuits have since been combined.

During a court hearing on Feb. 15 in Austin, the Department of Justice argued that SB 4 is unconstitutional because courts have ruled that immigration solely falls under the federal government’s authority.

The lawyer representing Texas, Ryan Walters, argued that the high number of migrants arriving at the border — some of them smuggled by drug cartels — constitutes an invasion and Texas has a right to defend itself under Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits states from engaging in war on their own “unless actually invaded.”

Ezra said that he “is not unsympathetic to the concerns raised by Abbott,” but appeared unconvinced by Walters’ argument.

"I haven't seen, and the state of Texas can't point me to any type of military invasion in Texas," Ezra said. "I don't see evidence that Texas is at war."

As they awaited the judge’s ruling, immigrant rights advocates around the state said they are worried that SB 4 could lead to border residents’ rights being violated.

“If allowed to take effect, S.B. 4 will blatantly disregard due process and put our border communities and immigrant communities throughout the state at risk, opening the door for racial profiling, baseless arrests, and unlawful deportation of our families, friends, and neighbors,” said Aron Thorn, senior attorney for the Beyond Border Program at Texas Civil Rights Project.

Edna Yang, co-executive director at American Gateways, said that SB 4 does not fix “our broken immigration system” and it will divide communities.

“It is a law based on xenophobia and racism and it does not make our communities safer,” she said.

David Donatti, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said the law would “permanently create a separate system of mass migrant incarceration that is rife with civil rights abuses and wastes billions of taxpayer dollars.

“No state has the right to unilaterally decide who gets to be American,” he said. “Doing so violates the Constitution, undermines human rights, and damages international relations.”

We can’t wait to welcome you to downtown Austin Sept. 5-7 for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival! Join us at Texas’ breakout politics and policy event as we dig into the 2024 elections, state and national politics, the state of democracy, and so much more. When tickets go on sale this spring, Tribune members will save big. Donate to join or renew today.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/29/texas-arrest-migrant-illegal-senate-bill-4-blocked/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Uriel J. García, The Texas Tribune

Jan. 3, 2024

"U.S. Justice Department sues Texas to halt new state law targeting illegal immigration" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Texas on Wednesday over a new state law that allows Texas police to arrest migrants suspected of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally.

“Texas cannot disregard the United States Constitution and settled Supreme Court precedent,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department's Civil Division, said in a statement. “We have brought this action to ensure that Texas adheres to the framework adopted by Congress and the Constitution for regulation of immigration.”

The lawsuit was filed in an Austin federal court and names Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw. It asks the court to declare the state law unconstitutional and prevent Texas from implementing it.

The law, which is scheduled to take effect March 5, would make it a state crime to cross the Texas-Mexico border between ports of entry.

The new crime is a Class B misdemeanor carrying a punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison. The law also requires state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted; a judge could drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico.

Abbott and McCraw didn’t immediately respond to emails from The Texas Tribune seeking comment.

This is the second legal challenge to Texas’ new immigration law. In December, ​​the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of El Paso County and two immigrant rights organizations — El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Austin-based American Gateways — asking a federal judge in Austin to prevent Texas from implementing SB 4 and declare it unlawful.

Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have ruled that immigration laws can only be enforced by the federal government.

In 2010, Arizona lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1070, which made it a state crime for legal immigrants not to carry their immigration papers and required police to investigate the immigration status of any person they come into contact with. In a landmark 2012 case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local police didn’t have the authority to arrest someone solely based on their immigration status and said that responsibility falls to the federal government.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/03/texas-senate-bill-4-illegal-immigration-justice-department-lawsuit/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Kate McGee, The Texas Tribune

Dec. 13, 2023

"Elon Musk plans to open a new university in Austin" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas transplant Elon Musk is planning to start a university in Austin, according to tax filings for one of his charities first reported by Bloomberg News.

The charity, called The Foundation, plans to use a $100 million gift from Musk to create and launch a primary and secondary school in Austin focused on teaching science, technology, engineering and math. Once it is fully operational, the filing states, the school will focus on creating a university. The school intends to seek accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, a necessary first step to launch the school.

According to the filing published by Bloomberg, the university would teach students in person “as well as using distance education technologies.” It expects to start enrollment with 50 students and scale up over time. The school would fund its activities through donations and tuition fees, though the filing also states that if a student cannot pay tuition or fees, the school could provide financial aid. It is currently hiring an executive director, teachers and administrators, the filing states.

Musk’s plan to start a new university in Austin — already home to the flagship University of Texas at Austin and multiple other private universities — comes just as another new private school in the city plans to officially open to students in fall 2024.

The University of Austin was launched two years ago by a group of higher education critics in response to their belief that U.S. college campuses were no longer a place where students and faculty can openly exchange ideas.

In a conversation with The Texas Tribune on Wednesday, University of Austin President Pano Kanelos said he hopes the school can be a champion for free speech and open inquiry.

“We're just living in a moment where things seem to be coming apart, where people seem to be pulled away from each other, where institutions seem to be shaking in their foundations,” Kanelos said. “The best response is to build new things.”

Musk’s new university does not yet have a name. The Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Foundation’s trustees include Jared Birchall, head of Musk’s family office; Steven Chidester, a tax attorney at Withersworldwide; and Ronald Gong and Teresa Holland, who work at Catalyst Family Office in California, according to Bloomberg.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/13/elon-musk-austin-texas-university/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Alejandro Serrano and Stephen Simpson, The Texas Tribune

Dec. 12, 2023

"As suicide rate increases, gun safety advocates call for more firearm regulations" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

For 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s free help line at 800-662-4357. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

The number of Texans who used a gun to take their life last year was the highest since at least 1999, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC researchers say multiple factors likely contributed to a similar increase nationally, including the COVID-19 pandemic that might have exacerbated risk factors for suicide like social isolation, relationship stressors and substance use.

In Texas, gun safety and mental health advocates point to another factor: Easy access to guns.

“We’re still lacking critical legislation,” said Bobby Watson, human rights fellow at Texas Impact, an interfaith group that supports laws aimed at reducing gun violence. “This is the fruit of us not doing anything.”

At least 2,644 people in Texas who killed themself last year used a firearm — approximately a rate of 9 per 100,000 Texans, CDC figures show. The total number of such deaths and the rate at which they occur in Texas are much higher than in 1999, when 1,224 people died such deaths at a rate of approximately 6 per 100,000.

Nationally, the rate of people using a gun in their suicide reached a record high last year when there were approximately 27,000 such deaths, according to a CDC report this month.

Overall, the rate across the country increased to 8.1 per 100,000 Americans — the highest level since at least 1968, when the CDC began tracking the statistic. Data for Texas between 1968 and 1999 was not immediately available.

The increase in deaths nationally was greater among American Indian and Alaska Native individuals, which researchers said “might reflect systematic inequities, such as in mental health care access or unemployment.”

Gun safety advocates say the CDC’s report highlighted a need for policies that disarm individuals experiencing a crisis and offered an opportunity to raise awareness about safe gun storage. The National Rifle Association, Texas Gun Rights and the Texas State Rifle Association did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Texas has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation. The state does not require a person to obtain a permit before carrying a weapon in public, nor does it have any “waiting period” laws that create a buffer between the time someone purchases a firearm and when they receive it — a window that could be crucial for a person experiencing a mental health crisis.

“With Texas now permitting permitless carry with no background [check], it can have an adverse effect on those who are contemplating suicide,” said Lyssette Galvan, public policy director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Texas.

CDC data shows that the number of suicides involving a firearm in Texas has increased for years. In 2018, 2,263 people died by gun suicide compared to the roughly 2,600 last year, according to provisional numbers. To June of this year, 1,057 individuals had died of gun suicide in Texas.

Military veterans have been identified as a particularly vulnerable group. More than 1.5 million veterans call Texas home, the largest population in one state.

While the state does not lead the nation in suicides by firearms it could certainly do more, said Sarah Burd-Sharps, senior director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety.

She said lawmakers could pass a law that would allow relatives to petition a civil court to at least temporarily stop someone experiencing a mental health crisis from accessing a gun. Lawmakers could also pass a “waiting period” law like ones that exist in 11 other states, Burd-Sharps said.

“It’s not a hardship to ask someone to wait a few days,” she said. “And to have the time to reconsider a very spontaneous and tragic act.”

Texas lawmakers have long resisted new restrictions on gun storage or access, but Texas Gun Sense, a group that is trying to prevent gun injuries and deaths, counted at least one victory during this year’s regular legislative session. A new school safety law includes a provision that provides schools with safe gun storage information that is meant to be sent home to parents and guardians.

Nicole Golden, executive director of Texas Gun Sense, said she’s already seen school districts distributing such materials.

“It’s really a huge measure honestly. … To have been able to establish this policy and ensure that Texas parents are receiving safe gun storage information is really significant,” Golden said. “It’s hard to measure prevention. You don’t know. Will it save a life? Will someone make the smart choice to secure their firearm? We don’t know that but we really hope and believe that it’s possible.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/12/cdc-suicide-rate-guns-texas-laws/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Julia Guilbeau, The Texas Tribune

Dec. 11, 2023

"How Texans can prepare for natural disasters" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Natural disasters like winter storms and hurricanes can create life-threatening situations for Texans. These types of disasters can be devastating and can hit at any time.

As climate change continues to affect weather patterns across the world, scientists and forecasters say extreme weather is becoming more severe, ushering in stronger hurricanes, extreme droughts, wildfires and other weather events in Texas.

The state is already experiencing more days of dangerous heat, rising sea levels along the Texas Gulf Coast and water scarcity.

Here’s a guide on how to prepare for a disaster — including winter storms, hurricanes, extreme heat, wildfires and droughts.

This guide was compiled with information from the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Texas Division of Emergency Management and more. For additional information, visit their websites.

Building a disaster kit

Preparation is key to staying safe during an emergency. Following a natural disaster, you may be without access to electricity, gas, roads, grocery stores and more. Building a disaster supplies kit can ensure you have the necessities.

A basic disaster kit should include enough food, water and first aid supplies to last several days. During emergencies like winter storms or hurricanes, it may be necessary to have enough supplies to last up to two weeks.

The American Red Cross recommends you have the following basic supplies in your kit:

• Water: one gallon per person, per day
• Non-perishable food like canned or dry foods
• A flashlight
• A battery-powered or hand-crank radio
• Extra batteries
• First aid kit
• Prescription medications and medical items
• A multi-purpose tool that includes a screwdriver, a knife and pliers
• Sanitation and personal hygiene items such as wet wipes
• Copies of personal documents like medication lists, medical information, proof of address, deed/lease to home, passports, birth certificates and insurance policies
• Cellphone with chargers and/ or a portable battery bank
• Family and emergency contact information
• Extra cash
• Sleeping bag or warm blanket
• Maps of your area

You should also consider whether you need to include supplies for children, pets or those who may have additional medical needs.

Some additional items you may think about including in your disaster kit are:

• A whistle to signal for help
• Duct tape
• Baby supplies such as bottles, formula and diapers
• Dust mask or face mask
• Manual can opener
• Soap and hand sanitizer
• Over-the-counter medications
• Contact solution
• Matches in a waterproof container
• Rain gear
• Towels
• Pet food
• Gel chafing fuel or a bunsen burner to heat food
• Bug spray
• Cash in case of power outages

Each year, Texas offers a tax-free weekend for emergency supplies. In 2024, the emergency preparation supplies sales tax holiday will take place April 27-29.

Texas residents can also apply for the state’s Weatherization Assistance Program, which is designed to help low-income families insulate their homes and reduce energy cost burdens. Weather stripping your home and updating cooling and heating systems can help prepare you for extreme heat or winter weather.

Signing up for disaster notifications

To know when a weather emergency is expected or to stay updated during a disaster, sign up for emergency alerts from your city or county. Residents can look up their county emergency management office online to sign up for emergency emails and texts.

Texans who rely on electricity for medical reasons can apply for chronic condition or critical care status which can provide extra notifications ahead of interruptions or suspensions of service. Applications have to be approved by a physician and submitted to the transmission and deliver utility that is responsible for your address. The status doesn’t guarantee uninterrupted power, so if electricity is a necessity, make other arrangements ahead of a storm if possible.

Texans with disabilities or people who would require additional medical assistance during an emergency can also sign up for the State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry, a free system run by the state that gives emergency responders additional information about the communities they are helping in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

Major phone providers participate in the federal wireless emergency alert system, which enables federal, state and local authorities to broadcast alerts to mobile devices. Checking the settings on your phone can ensure you have these alerts turned on. They are often labeled “Government Alerts” or “Emergency Alert Messages.”

If you need to find community resources during a disaster, dial 2-1-1 or 877-541-7905 for information about resources including food, health, housing and more.

Winter storm preparation

A winter storm in 2021 left millions of Texans without power in subfreezing temperatures for days, killing hundreds.

High winds, freezing rain or sleet, heavy snowfall and dangerously cold temperatures are the main hazards associated with winter storms, according to the National Weather Service.

These storms can cause an increased risk of car accidents, hypothermia and frostbite. They can also increase the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by generators or other gas-powered heaters.

Winter weather often puts a strain on Texas’ electric grid. When energy demand outpaces supply, regulators at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas are forced to take emergency measures, which can include temporarily shutting off power to customers to maintain grid stability.

How to prepare your home ahead of freezing weather

• Insulate your pipes.
• Place covers on water hoses outside.
• Turn off and drain outside faucets before temperatures hit extremely low levels.
• Locate your main water valve so you can cut off your water in case of an emergency, like a burst pipe.
• Open up cabinets, particularly in the kitchen and bathroom, to make sure heat is properly circulating to your pipes.
• Fill up bathtubs with water as a backup supply for flushing toilets.
• Cut down any weak branches or trees to prevent them from falling on power lines or your home and cars.

Additional winter-related emergency supplies

• Blankets
• Extra warm clothes
• A shovel for digging out of snow
• Booster cables
• Something to create traction on your tires, such as sand or kitty litter

If your home or car is damaged in a winter storm by falling branches, power lines or hail, take photos of the damages to submit to your insurance.

Hurricane preparation

Texas’ Gulf Coast is at risk of hurricanes during a major portion of the year.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30, with the months of August, September and October being the most active.

Hurricanes can produce storm surge flooding, inland flooding from heavy rains, destructive winds, tornadoes, and high surf and rip currents.

The National Hurricane Center tracks systems in the tropics throughout hurricane season and issues advisories on storms and hurricanes.

If a hurricane or tropical storm impacts your area, strong winds could knock out your power for days or weeks, and flood waters could rise into homes or streets. If your area is in the direct path of a storm, officials may issue an evacuation notice. If you choose to stay despite a notice, flooded roads and downed trees could make it hard for first responders to reach you if there’s an emergency.

How to prepare for a hurricane

• Make an evacuation plan and know your evacuation routes.
• If you have pets, plan ahead of time how to take care of them during a storm.
• Make sure your insurance policies and personal documents, like your IDs, are up to date.
• Take photos of your home or other property to provide to insurance providers if your items are damaged in a storm.
• Consider purchasing a generator to use if electricity goes out.
• Install and check carbon monoxide alarms.
• Seal any openings in walls or roofs.
• Cut down weak branches and trees regularly.
• Install storm shutters.

What to do when a hurricane is approaching

• Follow evacuation instructions from local officials if you are in an area expected to see life-threatening conditions. If you choose not to evacuate, keep in mind that hurricanes can cut off power supplies and water as well as block roads for extended periods of time.
• Make sure your car is ready if you have to evacuate in an emergency by filling your tank with gas and moving your car under a cover or garage if possible.
• Clear your yard and cover up windows and doors.
• Use storm shutters or protect your windows with plywood.
• Fill clean water containers with drinking water in case you lose your water supply during the storm. Fill up your sinks and bathtubs with water for washing.
• If you evacuate, unplug your appliances and turn off gas, electricity and water if time allows.
• Take photos of your home before a storm hits for insurance in case you suffer damages.

What to do after a hurricane hits

• Stay out of flood waters.
• Stay away from damaged power lines.
• Don’t enter damaged buildings.
• Take photos and document damages to your home or property.

Extreme heat preparation

As climate change steadily warms the planet and increases the range of typical temperatures, record-breaking heat and heat waves are becoming more common and more frequent in Texas.

Extreme heat causes more deaths per year than any other weather-related hazard, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Excess exposure to extreme heat can cause weakness, dizziness, heat-related illness and in severe cases, heat stroke.

Heat stroke requires emergency medical treatment. Heat stroke can cause extremely high body temperatures of 104 degrees or above; red, hot and dry skin without sweat; rapid pulse; throbbing headache; confusion; loss of consciousness and even death.

Children, older adults, people experiencing homelessness, people with preexisting medical conditions, outdoor workers, emergency responders, incarcerated people, low-income communities, pregnant people and athletes all have a greater risk of heat-related illness.

Texans can find a list of cooling centers on local government websites and on the Texas Health And Human Services Commission’s website. The National Integrated Heat Health Information System also provides heat and health information for the nation.

How to prepare for a heat-related event

• Weather strip doors and sills to keep cool air in.
• Cover windows that let in lots of sun.
• Build a disaster kit with food, water, first aid supplies and medications in case of outages.
• Hydrate with water throughout the day.
• Take frequent breaks when working outside.
• Minimize sun exposure and wear loose-fitting, light-colored clothes.

What to avoid during excessive heat

• Never leave adults, children or pets alone in a hot vehicle for any amount of time.
• Avoid exercising outside between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., the hottest time of the day.
• Don’t wear heavy or dark-colored clothing.
• Avoid sugary drinks, caffeine and alcohol.
• Don’t forget to wear and reapply sunscreen.

Wildfire preparation

More than 90% of wildfires in Texas are caused by people, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service, and careless debris burning is what starts most human-caused fires.

Weather forecasters issue a fire weather watch when potentially dangerous fire weather conditions are possible over the next 12 to 72 hours.

A fire weather warning or red flag is issued when dangerous fire weather conditions are either occurring or expected to occur within 24 hours. If the danger is imminent, local authorities may issue an evacuation notice to alert residents.

Smoke from wildfires can pose a serious health threat, especially for kids, older adults and those with chronic heart or lung disease and asthma.

Exposure to wildfire smoke can trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes. It can cause eye and respiratory irritation, coughing, wheezing and difficulty breathing.

Smoke from wildfires can also create a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. Inhaling carbon monoxide can cause headaches, nausea, dizziness and, in high concentrations, premature death.

Texans can find information about local wildfires through their local fire departments or online using the Texas A&M Forest Service’s Incident Viewer.

How to prepare for a wildfire

• Keep your lawn hydrated and maintained.
• Clear leaves and debris from gutters, porches and decks.
• Replace or repair shingles or roof tiles, which can be either fully or partially fire resistant.
• Install smoke alarms on each level of your home and change the batteries at least once a year.
• Create an evacuation plan and know your local evacuation routes.

What to do during a wildfire

• Close all windows, vents, doors and
fireplace screens.
• Disconnect automatic garage door openers so doors can be opened by hand if you lose power.
• Close and protect all of your home’s openings to prevent hot ash from penetrating your home.
• Place valuable documents and family mementos inside the car for quick departure if necessary.
• Connect garden hoses and fill any pools, hot tubs, garbage cans, tubs or other large containers with water. Firefighters have been known to use the hoses to put out fires on rooftops.
• Evacuate immediately if authorities tell you to do so and leave the lights on in your home so that firefighters can see it through dense smoke.

What to do after a wildfire

• Wait for officials to say it’s safe before returning home or using water.
• Avoid ash, charred trees, smoldering debris and live embers.
• Avoid damaged or fallen power lines,
poles and downed wires.
• Follow public health rules and wear
safety equipment.
• Protect your skin with long-sleeved clothing
and wear goggles to protect your eyes.
• Wear an N95 respirator and minimize time outdoors breathing in smoke.
• Wash off ash that gets on your skin or in your eyes or mouth as soon as you can.
• Document property damage with photographs and contact your insurance company.

Drought preparation

Texas often experiences prolonged periods of drought, and in 2022 the state experienced one of its worst droughts on record.

A drought is generally defined as an extended period with little to no rainfall that leads to a water shortage, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center.

As climate change both strengthens and lengthens heat waves, hotter temperatures make droughts more intense than they would be otherwise.

Droughts can hurt agriculture in Texas, harming crops and livestock. They can also affect water supply and reservoir levels across the state.

When drought conditions become serious, officials may issue notices asking residents to conserve water. Check to see if your city or public water system has issued water restrictions or requested water conservation on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s list.

How to conserve water

• Cut back on water use for landscaping and/or limit watering to before sunrise or after sunset.
• Check for leaks in your home.
• Turn off the faucet when you aren’t actively using water like when you brush your teeth, shave or shower.
• Change your lawn to include plants and grasses that require less water.
• Set up a rainwater collection system.

Recovering after a natural disaster

If you are impacted by a natural disaster, government services and community resources are available to help you with recovery.

Organizations like the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and local volunteer organizations can help you find food, shelter and supplies, as well as even assist you with clean-up efforts. Texas Health and Human Services is also responsible for coordinating efforts to help Texans in need immediately after a widespread emergency.

After a disaster, a state’s governor can issue a disaster declaration, asking the president to declare an emergency or major disaster, which then frees up federal funds to help those affected. The Federal Emergency Management Agency provides disaster assistance in these situations.

Before applying for assistance from FEMA, insured Texans should first file claims through their existing policies. People cannot receive disaster and insurance assistance for the same damages. Doing so would be considered insurance fraud, according to FEMA.

If you need to file an insurance claim because your home or property was damaged, call your insurance company to report the damages and be ready to answer questions about how you were impacted. Be sure to take photos and videos to submit to insurance or FEMA and document damages for your records.

If you need help quickly, you can ask your insurance company about an advanced payment. If you aren’t able to live in your home after the disaster because of extensive damage, most policies will cover some housing costs, according to the Texas Department of Insurance, so be sure to keep your receipts.

If you need help filing a claim, TDI has a help line that operates Monday to Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time. Texans can call 800-252-3439 to find out contact information for their insurance company and ask any questions about claims.

The State Bar of Texas also offers a toll-free legal hotline to assist low-income Texans with issues like replacing lost documents, insurance questions, landlord-tenant problems, price-gouging or avoiding contractor scams following a natural disaster. Residents can call 800-504-7030, which is answered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. Those who qualify for assistance are matched with Texas lawyers who can provide free, limited legal help, according to the state bar’s website.

It’s also common to feel increased anxiety or mental health concerns following a natural disaster. The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration runs the Disaster Distress Helpline to provide support to people experiencing emotional distress related to disasters, including severe storms, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, disease outbreaks, incidents of mass violence, community unrest and anniversaries of traumatic events or triggering events. Read more in our natural disaster and climate anxiety mental health guide.

The helpline operates year-round, 24 hours a day and is free and confidential. You can call or text 800-985-5990 to be connected with a trained crisis counselor who can provide counseling, healthy coping tips and more information on signs of emotional distress.

SAMHSA also administers grants after disasters to help provide crisis counseling services. Those services are free for people if they reside within a disaster-declared county.

You can check federal disaster declarations and resources through FEMA’s website.

Allyson Waller, María Méndez and Bryan Mena contributed to this story.

Disclosure: State Bar of Texas has been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/11/texas-disaster-preparedness/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News

Dec. 6, 2023

"Judge overrules Texas, strikes down air pollution permit for Gulf Coast oil terminal" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.

For the second time in three weeks, a court struck down an air pollution permit issued by Texas’ environmental regulator.

In a one-page ruling posted Tuesday, Travis County District Court Judge Amy Clark Meachum reversed a 2022 decision by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to deny local shrimpers’ request for a permit hearing and authorize an expansion of Max Midstream’s Seahawk Oil Terminal on Lavaca Bay, on the Gulf Coast between Houston and Corpus Christi.

Meachum sent the case back to the TCEQ for a hearing “on all relevant and material disputed issues of fact.”

The shrimpers, led by Diane Wilson, head of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper, had argued before the TCEQ that Max Midstream underrepresented expected emissions from its expanded terminal to avoid a more rigorous review process for larger pollution sources.

But TCEQ denied Wilson’s challenge to Max Midstream’s air pollution permit after the oil company’s lawyers argued that Wilson and the other shrimpers lacked standing because they lived more than one mile from the new and expanded terminal.

“Based on the quintessential one-mile test relied upon by the Commission for decades, none of the Hearing Requests can be granted,” Max Midstream’s lawyers wrote in March 2022. “Only a property owner with an interest within one mile or slightly farther could possibly qualify for a contested case hearing.”

An Inside Climate News investigation found in July that TCEQ has consistently invoked the “one-mile rule” to deny permit hearings for at least the past 13 years, even though no such rule exists in either Texas law or TCEQ rules.

While a TCEQ spokesperson denied the existence of the one-mile rule when asked about the practice, Inside Climate News compiled a list of 15 cases that centered on the one-mile standard using data assembled by the nonprofit law firms Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and Earthjustice, which reviewed 460 permit review requests from 2016 to 2021. They found that virtually all of the cases TCEQ accepted for review were filed by those who lived within about a mile of the point of dispute.

Wilson said she was “astonished” by Meachum’s ruling. “In 35 years I don’t think I have ever had a case like this where the air permit was remanded back,” she said.

Courts have rarely intervened on pollution permits in Texas. But prior to Meachum’s order, the federal 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans last month struck down a permit for an East Texas gas terminal, ruling that the TCEQ failed to apply adequate pollution control standards.

In its ruling, a three-judge panel at the 5th Circuit found the TCEQ had “acted arbitrarily and capriciously under Texas law” when it “declined to impose certain emissions limits on a new natural gas facility.”

“It’s definitely sending a message to TCEQ that it’s not following the law,” said Erin Gaines, an Earthjustice lawyer representing Wilson in the Max Midstream case before Meachum.

She recalled just a few cases over decades when courts have reversed Texas permits.

The TCEQ declined to comment. Max Midstream did not respond to a query.

In October 2020, Max Midstream applied for an expedited permit to authorize construction of eight new storage tanks, seven marine loading docks and 18 vapor combustors that would emit an additional 91 tons per year of nitrogen oxides, 89 tons per year of carbon monoxide and 82 tons per year of volatile organic compounds.

One month later, Wilson and her attorneys with the Environmental Integrity Project and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid filed official comments alleging Max Midstream underrepresented expected emissions in its application in order to avoid a more rigorous permitting process and stricter pollution control requirements. Wilson and several other bay shrimpers requested a hearing before a state administrative law judge.

In its response, Max Midstream did not answer the allegation that its application was flawed. Instead it argued that the shrimpers involved had no right to bring forth a challenge to the permit, citing the TCEQ’s controversial “one-mile rule.”

Toby Baker, TCEQ's executive director at the time, agreed with Max Midstream and recommended denial of all hearing requests based on the requesters’ distance from the proposed terminal. On April 12, 2022, the TCEQ’s three commissioners, appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, voted to issue the permit.

In June 2022, Wilson sued the TCEQ, asking a district court in Travis County to reverse the agency’s decision and send the permit to a hearing.

Wilson said Meachum’s ruling was significant because it could also help in her fight against plans to dredge a bigger shipping canal to the Max Midstream terminal through a superfund site in Lavaca Bay.

Wilson, a fourth generation fisherwoman on the rugged middle coast of Texas, has fought petrochemical development on Lavaca Bay since the 1990s. She published a book on her struggle in 2005, won a $50 million settlement from Formosa Plastics Company in 2019 and received the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2023.

At 76, she hasn’t slowed down. On Monday she completed a 30-day hunger strike—one of many in her life—outside Formosa’s chemical plant on Lavaca Bay to protest alleged human rights abuses in Vietnam. She promised to fight as long as she’s alive.

“I have spent my entire life on the water,” Wilson said. “I value those bays and I consider them like family. So I feel like I’m fighting for my home, I’m fighting for my family, And you don’t give up on that.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/06/texas-tceq-permit-oil-terminal-max-midstream-shrimpers/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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State officials have apparently found a legal tactic to prevent a slew of election contest lawsuits from derailing the constitutional amendments that voters overwhelmingly approved in November.

The state argued in court filings Tuesday that the lawsuits were improperly served and because Gov. Greg Abbott canvassed the results a day earlier, the lawsuits are now effectively invalid. The law requires such lawsuits to be filed and served before the canvass.

Right-wing activists filed the election contests in Travis County district courts days after the November election. The lawsuits are based on false claims that the state’s voting equipment is not certified and that voting machines are connected to the internet.

The issue took on new urgency in recent days as some Republicans at the Capitol rang the alarm that the contests could jeopardize the implementation of the constitutional amendments, which include property tax cuts that were a hard-fought priority of the GOP. The Texas Senate scrambled to pass a legislative fix, but the House declined to consider it and both chambers gaveled out for the fourth special legislative session Tuesday.

Now, the state is trying to remedy the situation in the courts, but there is no guarantee it could work. Even Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the presiding officer of the Senate, appeared to expressed uncertainty Tuesday that the legal strategy would be successful.

In one of the Tuesday filings, the secretary of state’s office argued that the plaintiffs in the election contests “never served a citation” properly. The election code says a contestant’s petition “must be filed and service of citation on the Secretary of State must be obtained before the final official canvass is completed.”

“Since the Governor has declared the official results of the election in a proclamation, Plaintiffs’ purported effort to void the election on a constitutional amendment that is now ‘a part of th[e] Constitution’ is moot,” the filing said.

Patrick seemed to allude to the new legal strategy during a news conference Tuesday where he blasted the House for declining to consider the Senate’s legislative solution, Senate Bill 6. The bill would have sped up the timeline for judges to consider such lawsuits, a proposal that Patrick called an “insurance policy.”

“Now I hope that the governor’s plan and his response … works in the court,” Patrick said. “I have faith in the governor and his legal expertise, but we don’t know what the judge is going to rule.”

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By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 29, 2023

"Federal appeals court questions Texas’ new school library regulations" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Federal appellate judges Wednesday questioned a new Texas law requiring book sellers to rate the explicitness and relevance of sexual references in materials they sell to schools, though it was not clear if the court would allow the regulations to stand.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges’ inquiries centered on House Bill 900’s definitions of sexual content and community standards. They came during a hearing in a legal challenge brought by book vendors who argue the law is unconstitutionally broad and vague.

The law seeks to keep so-called sexually explicit books off library shelves in the state’s more than 1,200 school systems by calling for the creation of new library standards. It requires school library vendors to assign ratings to books and materials based on the presence of sex depictions or references. And it compels vendors to recall materials already in circulation that are now deemed sexually explicit.

A federal judge barred Texas from enforcing the law in late August. But a panel of 5th Circuit judges blocked that order and the full appellate court, one of the most conservative in the nation, is now considering the overall legal challenge. It is not clear when the appellate court will issue a ruling after Wednesday’s hearing.

“Texas’ new law simply protects parents’ rights to decide what materials their children will read in a public school library,” said Kateland R. Jackson, a lawyer for Texas. “It promotes the state’s interest in preventing those very same schoolchildren from being exposed to harmful, sexually explicit material at taxpayer expense.”

The law is being challenged by bookshops in Houston and Austin, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild. They argue that HB 900 violates their constitutional rights for a myriad of reasons and that it is logistically impossible and cost prohibitive to comply with.

Laura Lee Prather, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told judges Wednesday that the law would compel book sellers to “apply imprecise standards to promote the state’s preferred message.”

Vendors who participate will be cornered into conforming with the state’s view, plaintiffs argue.

“The book sellers here are not asserting the right to have books reach library shelves — they’re asserting the right to be free from compelled speech and the right to offer and distribute books without being forced to decipher incomprehensible and vague standards,” Prather said. “Unless the injunction is continued and the administrative stay is lifted, irreparable injury in the form of lost First Amendment rights will ensue. … Even if HB 900 is ultimately overturned, this bell cannot be unrung.”

The Texas Legislature passed HB 900 earlier this year during a wave of efforts to restrict library materials that some parents and critics say explore themes that parents — and not publicly funded books — are better suited to address. Book bans have gained steam across the state since the law was passed, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found.

“I fought for and passed landmark legislation eliminating sexually explicit content from public school libraries,” bill author Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, wrote on social media ahead of the hearing. “Please join me in prayer for victory tomorrow for Texas families who oppose the radical sexualization of our children.”

Librarians, literacy advocates and other parents say the recent challenges often target books and materials that explore sexuality and race — topics that, while uncomfortable to some, are important for youth who may not see their lived experiences in other literature.

Texas’ new book law leans on criminal definitions of sexual conduct to outline what amounts to sexually explicit and relevant library content. As the law was being crafted earlier this year, critics said it was too general and vague. On Wednesday, judges joined in questioning the definitions.

“Both sexually explicit, sexually relevant — they talk about material that describes, depicts or portrays sexual conduct. How explicit must a reference be in order to qualify as sexual conduct?” a judge asked the state.

“Your honor, that is something that is likely going to be developed,” Jackson responded. “Again, this law has not had a chance to be developed or implemented yet.”

But vendors face “irreversible” financial, reputational and constitutional damage even as the case shuffles through the courts, Prather said.

The new law will require vendors — some of whom are based in other states — to “somehow opine about what the current community standards are in this state,” Prather said.

Referencing those remarks, a judge asked the state before the end of Wednesday’s hearing “which community’s standards are supposed to govern how a vendor categorizes books?”

“We’re talking about a bill with border-to-border applications, statewide impact. So how do you define the appropriate community?” the judge asked. “Might it be the case ever that what passes community standards muster in El Paso might fail it in Beaumont?”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/29/texas-hb-900-book-rating-lawsuit-appeal/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Stephen Simpson, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 27, 2023

"Texas fire departments are fighting stigma and pushing to provide firefighters mental health help" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

For more than a decade, Sam Buser watched the lights of fire trucks bounce off the city streets of Houston, heard the roars of burning blazes and stood before the caskets of too many firefighters.

He never held a hose or kicked in a door, but, as senior psychologist for the Houston Fire Department, he spent many sleepless nights at fire stations.

His job was to convince those who run toward the fire that it's okay to help themselves. But for much of his career, he was something of a rarity in Texas. Even as resources have been poured into law enforcement agencies for decades to solve well-publicized mental health issues, the same can’t be said for fire departments.

The reasons are simple: There isn’t enough money to go around at many cities or volunteer jurisdictions, and many fire departments have not been ready to drop their stigma around mental health.

“With the primary focus placed on law enforcement, there must also be a recognition that the needs of the fire service are different, and the programming and training should reflect that,” said Leonard Chan, a contributing author of First Responder Mental Health: A Clinician’s Guide. “The taboo for seeking mental health services has been tempered, but this really depends on the department and individual firefighter.”

But lately, advocates say, more departments are seeing the need for that kind of work. And in some big city and suburban departments, along with in the Texas Legislature, small steps are being taken to address firefighters' mental health needs.

The problem

The danger — and fear — brought by rushing into a fire is well-known. But firefighters spend the majority of their time responding to emergency medical service calls that can involve suicides, abuse, shootings, fatal car accidents, major weather events, and other distressing incidents that can also take a toll on someone’s mental health.

Data suggests that those mental tolls are some of the biggest dangers of the job. According to the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance, more firefighters die from suicide each year than in the line of duty, and many additional suicides are likely unreported.

A Dallas Fire-Rescue Safety Division resiliency survey found that 8% of that big-city department’s firefighters thought about committing suicide at some point in their careers. The national average for suicidal ideation is 4.9%, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Still, studies show many firefighters will mask their mental health challenges until it’s too late.

The Texas Commission on Fire Protection, the primary regulatory body over the state’s fire service, reported this year in their annual injury report only 1% of firefighters reported a psychological injury.

Dr. Sara Jahnke, the director and a senior scientist with the Center for Fire, Rescue & EMS Health Research, a nonprofit research firm, said the awareness of mental health needs came into focus about a decade ago and only became a central talking point in the last five years.

“I think we have underestimated the mental health impact of being on the job for firefighters,” she said. “9/11, in particular, put the stress of the tasks firefighters have to do on center stage.”

But, she added, the bravado around firefighters still discourages some from seeking help. Firefighters, who are 95% male, say there’s an intense feeling of team among departments, and nobody wants to be considered the “weak link” of the group.

Many fear that if anyone finds out about a mental health need, they might get reassigned or fired altogether because they are deemed no longer reliable.

“So when a firefighter says, gee, I’m depressed, or I have post-traumatic stress disorder, what happens is their fellow firefighters start to wonder, maybe I can’t count on this one,” Buser said. “Maybe if we go into a fire, this person is going to freak out, and they’re not going to be able to help.”

When Dallas firefighters were surveyed, they reported concern that the creation of a counseling center in or around a fire station and would focus more on checking a box than helping members.

“While there is progress, there remains a bravado around being a firefighter that discourages some from reaching out for help,” Jahnke said.

But Hutto Fire Chief Scott Kerwood, who has been fighting fires for 45 years, said fire departments have begun to get serious about mental health this past decade.

“When I started, you didn’t talk about anything like this,” he said. “It’s just like, ‘Suck it up, kid, and just do your job.’”

Kerwood said he remembers a push in the 1980s to get mental health services into fire departments, but there was a strong distrust of that notion back then.

“We see some pretty nasty stuff. But we tend to internalize that and say, well, it’s just part of the job,” he said. “You’re not a macho firefighter if you’re having trouble dealing with what you’re seeing on the job.

First: Firefighters and other first responders pause for a moment of silence for the victims of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building car bomb explosion, in Oklahoma City on April 26, 1995. Last: Firefighters fight the fires that sprout up from within the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept 19, 2001, days after the 9/11 attack. Credit: Jim Argo/The Oklahoman-USA TODAY NETWORK via REUTERS | REUTERS/PA2 Tom Sperduto/U.S. Coast Guard

“But then the suicides started happening, and everybody went ok, let's figure out what is going on.”

The departments are beginning to get outside help, too. Lawmakers unanimously passed House Bill 2143 in 2019, which allows first responders to receive workers' compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder caused by one or more instances at work.

But smaller departments, including many volunteer departments, lack the financial resources to provide the same offerings.

“Unfortunately, it all comes down to money and support,” Jahke said. “Strong mental health programs require funds and effort.”

Changing the culture

The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was the start of a broader recognition of the mental health tolls on the job. A study done 34 months after the disaster showed the rising alcohol disorders among the rescue workers.

The Houston Fire Department was one of the first departments in the country to hire a full-time psychologist in 1999. Buser’s friend, who worked at the Baylor College of Medicine, created the position after studying how people cope after a major disaster.

Buser took over the position 13 years ago when his friend died.

“When he died, they provided him a firefighter funeral, which is rarely ever given to a civilian, but they were there with their fire trucks and hundreds of firefighters in uniform. He had done a tremendous job of gaining acceptance within the department,” he said.

Tania Glen, who runs a mental health clinic specializing in treating first responders and veterans in Central Texas, said when she started 30 years ago, she met a lot of resistance from the entire public safety community.

“I was poked fun at quite a bit just for choosing this line of work. You know, it was an uphill battle, but what I saw underneath all the skepticism is all the trauma,” Glen said. “I saw all the angst, and I saw the divorces and dysfunction.”

Changing the culture is a significant undertaking, but progress is happening in places like the Cedar Hill, which created the First Responder Resiliency Coalition to help firefighters get mental health assistance. The program was designed seven years ago as a grant-funded initiative to provide mental health resiliency education to firefighters and inform them how to form peer support in their fire departments.

Story said he has already seen the culture change in their fire department.

“We’re at a point now where if something does get missed, we have people asking why,” he said. “Why did somebody not check on this person? Why did somebody not make a referral? Did anyone see any signs? So we’ve done a lot of things to really kind of put notifications in place.”

The program has now expanded into providing free advocacy, grant writing assistance, quarterly resiliency meetings and critical incident response guidance to cities nationwide.

Concepts like peer-to-peer support groups have also found success in fire departments across the state, allowing firefighters to convince each other to get help.

“It has been exciting to watch because I think the new wave is affecting the older generation and inspiring them to get help,” said Leah Belsches, current staff psychologist for the Houston Fire Department. “I love seeing people who have been with the department for 20 to 30 years come in for the first time asking for help.”

For 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s free help line at 800-662-4357. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/27/firefighters-mental-health-texas/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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The Supreme Court of Texas heard arguments Tuesday in a landmark case that could impact how the state’s abortion laws apply to medically complicated pregnancies.

In August, state District Judge Jessica Mangrum ruled that the near-total abortion ban cannot be enforced in cases involving complicated pregnancies, including lethal fetal diagnoses. The state immediately appealed that ruling, putting it on hold.

Texas law allows abortions only when it is necessary to save the life of the pregnant patient. But this lawsuit, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights in March, claims that doctors are unsure when the medical exception applies, resulting in delayed or denied care.

“No one knows what [the exception] means and the state won’t tell us,” Molly Duane, senior attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the justices Tuesday.

The state argues the judge went too far in her injunction by reading exceptions into the law beyond what the Legislature intended.

“What the legislature has done is chosen to value unborn life and prohibit abortion in all circumstances, unless that life is going to conflict with the life of the mother,” said assistant attorney general Beth Klusmann. “The legislature has set the bar high, but there is nothing unconstitutional in their decision to do so.”

Justice Jimmy Blacklock questioned Duane on the “capaciousness” of the injunction, asking whether this might allow abortions as a result of common pregnancy complications like high blood pressure.

“It seems to me, looking at the case you presented and the injunction that was granted, that this very well could open the door far more widely than you’re acknowledging,” he said.

Duane said the injunction would only apply to emergent medical conditions that could become critical or life-threatening if not treated. But she acknowledged that Mangrum’s ruling is “doing more work than normal,” because “legislators don’t usually write laws that people who are regulated by those laws simply do not understand.”

This case represents the first time since before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 that women affected by state abortion bans have directly challenged those laws in court. Twenty women and two doctors have signed onto the case.

Most of the women were carrying wanted pregnancies that endangered their health or had limited chance of viability outside of the womb. Many had to travel to abortion clinics out-of-state. Some continued their pregnancies, delivering babies that survived only minutes or hours. Others were told to wait until they were closer to death before the hospital was willing to terminate the pregnancy.

At the center of Tuesday’s hearing was the question of standing, or whether the plaintiffs have the legal right to bring this suit. The state has argued that because these women are not actively seeking abortions at the moment, clarifying the law would not address their claims.

Justice Jeff Boyd seemed aghast at that argument.

“Your position is that, in order to seek the kind of clarity that these plaintiffs are seeking, you have to have a woman who is pregnant, who has some health condition that she believes places her life at risk or impairment to a major bodily function, but her doctor says, ‘I don't think it does,’” he said. “And she has to then sue the doctor, and maybe the attorney general, at that point, and then she would have standing and sovereign immunity would be waived?”

Klusmann said that wasn’t the only situation that would generate standing, but “you would at least then know that the law is the problem, and not the doctor.”

“Some of these women appear to have fallen within these exceptions but their doctors still said no,” she said. “That’s not the fault of the law.”

“That’s what gives rise to the need for clarity,” Boyd said, exasperated.

Several of the justices asked Duane why the Center for Reproductive Rights did not bring a wider suit, challenging the law on the grounds that it is too vague to be properly enforced.

“Generally, a vagueness challenge is a facial challenge to the statute, to take down the entire statute,” Duane said after the hearing. “So if that’s what the court wants us to do, we’re happy to do it.”

The justices did not indicate when they expected to rule. Duane said they anticipated a ruling by June.

The number of plaintiffs in the lawsuit has more than tripled since it was originally filed in March, and the center has filed similar suits in Tennessee, Idaho and Oklahoma.

While she was sitting in the courtroom today, Duane said, she got a call on her cell phone. It was another woman in Texas, interested in joining the case.

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By Brian Lopez and Patrick Svitek, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 17, 2023

"“Our public school system is our town”: Why this rural Republican is voting against school vouchers" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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NEW BOSTON — Gary VanDeaver is a hard no on school vouchers.

Among his Republican peers in the Texas Legislature, it's an awkward position to take. He and a couple dozen other House Republicans representing rural districts are under intense political pressure within their party as they consider whether to join with Democrats to block the latest attempt to pass a voucher bill. Their opposition could lead to yet another special session by Gov. Greg Abbott who is hell-bent on passing such a program.

VanDeaver and the other Republican holdouts will be attacked in their primaries for reelection over the issue.

[Watch live: Texas House poised to remove vouchers from massive education bill]

Regardless, it's a clear choice for VanDeaver. Because, as he and many education leaders in his district see it, vouchers pose a serious threat to the long-term financial health of his district’s school systems without providing a meaningful benefit to his constituents.

Take, for example, the fact that there's only five accredited private schools in his district, which spans from Texarkana to Paris, and all but one are concentrated on the district’s eastern edge. At least one of those schools said they’re already at capacity.

On Friday, the House is expected to take up House Bill 1, a school finance bill that also authorizes education savings accounts, a voucher proposal that would allocate $10,500 per year per student to be used for private school education and up to $1,000 for homeschoolers. It would become the first time in recent memory that the House, which has historically been against vouchers, will take a vote on the issue. Earlier this week, the bill was advanced out of committee with VanDeaver’s support. He said he believed the issue deserved to be debated by the entire House.

But ultimately, VanDeaver told The Texas Tribune he wouldn’t support the bill as currently written because of the voucher provision.

“I'm just philosophically not in favor of vouchers primarily because of the district I represent,” VanDeaver said.

“How do you sustain it?”

VanDeaver’s hometown is New Boston, about 150 miles northeast of Dallas, where the independent school district of about 1,200 students is the bedrock of employment and community.

He used to be the superintendent of the school district between 2005 and 2014.

Today, Superintendent Brian Bobbitt said his teachers haven’t gotten a raise since 2019 and the schools’ operating costs are up. Yet he’s adamant that VanDeaver vote no on the House voucher bill, even though it would also increase school funding.

“Do we need more money? Absolutely, we do,” Bobbitt said. “But will that short-term solution open up a long-term problem that is going to have a huge impact on public education in Texas in the future?”

Both Bobbitt and VanDeaver cite other voucher states, such as Arizona, that started with a small voucher program of about ​​150 students that has ballooned to over 60,000 and has Arizona officials estimating it could cost a billion dollars to keep operating.

“One of the bigger questions that we have is how do you sustain it?” Bobbitt said. “That money is going to be coming from a pot of money that is now not going to be used for public education.”

If HB 1 were to pass as proposed, and 1% of students in VanDeaver’s school districts were awarded vouchers, his school districts would lose a combined $3.5 million, as Texas schools are funded per student attendance, according to an analysis from Every Texan, a left-leaning nonprofit think tank. Those losses increase to $17.5 million if 5% of students take the vouchers in his district, which is unlikely in the near-term given lack of private school capacity.

VanDeaver’s district includes 32 school districts with about 44,250 students enrolled in public schools.

But, under the funding increases in HB 1, VanDeaver’s district could gain up to $49 million for the public school districts.

Brandon Dennard, Red Lick Independent School District superintendent, said despite that promise of a cash infusion, last month he and about 20 other superintendents in VanDeaver’s district told the representative that he should vote against vouchers.

“If you've had to go into a fourth special session, the people have already answered,” Dennard said, noting that two previous voucher proposals failed to pass in the regular and third special session. “But Abbott just keeps trying to push it.”

One of VanDeaver’s biggest concerns is if the program continues to grow and Texas finds itself in an economic downturn like in 2008, lawmakers may have to choose between maintaining a voucher program or cutting school funding.

“It would be extremely difficult to cut a student's [education savings accounts],” he said. “It would be much easier to lower the basic allotment because that way you’re not affecting an individual student. That's probably one of the few ways that you can really make a significant impact on the state budget.”

“Lifeblood of the community”

New Boston’s school district employs over 50% of the community’s workforce, Bobbitt said. It’s a place for education, but it also hosts some of the biggest community events such as football games, the annual fall festival and family events for Veterans Day.

So a threat to the public school system amounts to a threat to their way of life.

“We are the lifeblood of the community,” Bobbitt said.

Niecy Vargas was born and raised in New Boston, where she attended school and now has a daughter in the district. Her parents attended the same schools. For her, it’s a sense of pride that she gets to see her daughter walk the same halls that she and her parents used to walk.

Vargas said she is against school vouchers because it takes aim at the sense of community that is integral to the fabric of rural Texas. During the good and the bad times, New Boston residents and the school district take care of one another. She believes that without the long-term success of the school district, there might not be a New Boston.

“Our public school system is our town,” she said. “[Vouchers] would create all types of division — a racial divide, a social status divide, monetary divide as well as academic and extracurricular division.”

While some Republicans in the House and Senate champion school vouchers as parental empowerment and choice, Bobbitt said he doesn’t expect more private schools to pop up in the New Boston area because the public schools have such a strong grip on the community.

Similarly, VanDeaver said there is a multi-generational stronghold among districts like his, which isn’t necessarily the case in Texas’ more suburban and urban communities.

“When I was in New Boston, I was the superintendent of students of whom I taught their parents; and their grandparents went to that school as well,” he said. “That's something that it's hard to really quantify and somebody who doesn't live that, I think it's hard for them to understand.”

But voting against vouchers could come at a cost. The House legislation is currently tied to increases in school funding and teacher pay raises, and Abbott has signaled he would oppose any public school funding measure that didn’t include vouchers.

Dennard and Bobbit said it’s been years since their staff had raises and the only reason they’ve been able to combat inflation in their budgets is because of the federal government’s COVID-19-era funding that is drying up.

Despite their increasing costs, they say they still want VanDeaver to stand against the voucher bill.

“If you're going to tie funding to school vouchers, then you can keep your money,” Dennard said. “And this is coming from a superintendent that almost had to pass a deficit budget.”

Private schools

House District 1, with a population of roughly 195,000 people, has just five private schools across its five counties, according to the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission. Four are in Texarkana on the district’s eastern edge and the remaining one, Trinity Christian Academy, is over 90 miles away in Paris.

Carey Malone, the director of Trinity Christian Academy, expressed support for school vouchers in an interview but said he is “not sure [the legislation] would have much impact on us.” With 208 students in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten through 12th grade, the school limits class sizes to 12 students through second grade, 15 for third through sixth grades, and 20 for the rest.

“We get a significant number of inquiries every month, but we’re pretty much at capacity in our elementary schools,” Malone said.

He said the school is not currently interested in expanding to accommodate more students because most of its buildings are relatively new and it could be hard to find more teachers. The school already faces competition for its teachers, who are mostly retired public school educators using the job to supplement their state retirement system payments. Public schools, facing their own teacher shortages, are trying to lure them back with more pay, Malone said.

Tuition at Trinity Christian Academy is $5,250 a year for a family’s first student — well below the $10,500 that HB 1 would give parents annually for private school costs.

Darbie Safford is the superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Tyler, which includes the five counties in VanDeaver’s district. She said the diocese does not have any schools in the district, but it has “quite a few parishes” there that could consider opening schools if HB 1 passes.

“Right now a lot of parishes are really reluctant to start Catholic schools because of the finances,” Safford said. “Whereas if they knew they had a source of income,” she added, they would be more interested.”

She noted the diocese recently opened a school in Canton — midway between Dallas and Tyler — and the school, Holy Family Academy, is “hoping this bill will pass and they’ll be able to serve a broader part of the population.”

“The fact that [the legislation] was on the horizon made it more feasible to consider opening,” Safford said.

Both Malone and Safford were well-versed in the school voucher debate unfolding in Austin. Malone noted he previously worked in public education for 30 years and felt there was “a lot of fear mongering going on” about the impact vouchers could have on public schools.

Safford disputed the idea that vouchers would just further benefit families that are already wealthy enough to send their kids to private schools. She noted that at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Longview, a majority of students qualify for free and reduced lunch. K-12 tuition there ranges from $7,600 to $9,400, but Safford said there is a financial aid program that allows parents to apply to receive up to 40% off.

“We’re not talking about parents who just want a break on their taxes,” she said. “We’re talking about people who are really struggling to get by who are coming to us, asking for help because they want to be able to provide the best for their kids.”

As for VanDeaver, Malone acknowledged they do not see eye-to-eye on school vouchers and so “we kind of look further down the road” for elected officials to work with.

A primary threat

VanDeaver’s district is blood-red. President Donald Trump would have won it by 50 percentage points in 2020 — it was redrawn in 2021 — and Abbott carried it by 60 points last year.

Abbott has promised to get involved in the primaries targeting Republican holdouts. VanDeaver said he is not worried about the threats by Abbott and pro-voucher groups to target his reelection because he does not hear his voters asking for vouchers.

But in the 2022 Republican primary, 87% of voters approved a pro-voucher ballot proposition in VanDeaver’s district, similar to its support among Republican primary voters statewide. The proposition said “Texas parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, whether public or private, for their children, and the funding should follow the student.”

VanDeaver has not had a close primary since he first won the seat in 2014, defeating then-incumbent George Lavender in the primary. Lavender sought to reclaim the seat in 2016 and 2022, but VanDeaver beat him by double digits each time.

VanDeaver already has two primary challengers for next year: Dale Huls and Scott Hommel. Huls is a longtime GOP activist from De Kalb who says he “strongly advocate[s] for parental rights and educational freedom.” Hommel is the chair of the Lamar County GOP, and his website says he supports “school choice and the protection of public school teachers.”

A third Republican, Chris Spencer, is considering whether to run against VanDeaver. Spencer is the chairman of the Sulphur River Basin Authority — an appointee of Abbott — who has a newspaper column that he has used to rebut arguments that vouchers hurt rural Texas.

Spencer declined to comment for this story, but in a Facebook post Tuesday, he said he was “pleasantly surprised” to see VanDeaver vote for HB 1 in committee.

“I hope he continues to demonstrate his support” for the bill on the floor, Spencer said. “The people of House District 1 and Northeast Texas will be watching closely.”

Disclosure: Every Texan and Facebook have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/17/texas-school-vouchers-rural-republicans-gary-vandeaver/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The post “Our public school system is our town”: Why this rural Republican is voting against school vouchers appeared first on KVIA.

Update: The House voted Friday to remove the school voucher measure from the bill.

By Zach Despart and Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 16, 2023

"Watch live: Texas House poised to remove vouchers from massive education bill" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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An amendment filed Friday morning to remove school vouchers from the Texas House’s massive education bill, House Bill 1, has enough support from Republicans to pass — which would effectively gut the bill of its signature provision.

At least a dozen Republicans signed the amendment filed by Rep. John Raney of College Station, including Reps. Glenn Rogers, Ernest Bailes, Justin Holland, Hugh Shine, Stan Lambert, Steve Allison, Drew Darby, Ed Thompson, DeWayne Burns, Charlie Geren and Andrew Murr.

If all 65 Democrats in the chamber support the amendment, only 10 Republican votes would be needed to pass it.

A coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans has historically blocked attempts to create a voucher system in Texas, which would allow parents to use tax dollars to send their children to private schools.

That alliance appears to have held, despite efforts by Gov. Greg Abbott and his negotiating team to woo about two dozen Republican holdouts who signaled disapproval of vouchers during the regular legislative session this spring.

HB 1 is an omnibus bill that would also boost spending for public schools. It would increase the basic allotment — the base amount allocated to districts per student — from $6,160 to $6,700 and would be adjusted for inflation starting in the 2026-27 school year. It also includes a one-time $4,000 bonus for full-time teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians.

But its key provision is vouchers. The bill would create education savings accounts, a voucher-like program that would allow about 40,000 students who exit the state’s public education system to receive $10,500 annually to attend the private or religious school selected by their parents.

Abbott has said he will not sign an education bill that does not include vouchers, his top legislative priority this year.

This story will be updated.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/16/texas-house-school-vouchers/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The post Texas House removes vouchers from massive education bill appeared first on KVIA.

By Uriel J. García, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 15, 2023

"Mexico “rejects” Texas’ proposal to allow state police to deport undocumented immigrants" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

The Mexican government on Wednesday responded to the state Legislature’s passage of Senate Bill 4 — which creates a state crime for entering the state illegally from Mexico and allows the state to deport undocumented immigrants — saying it “categorically rejects” Texas’ latest proposal to arrest and deport immigrants to Mexico.

“The Government of Mexico reiterates its rejection of any measure that contemplates the involuntary return of migrants without respect for due process,” says the statement from Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Relations.

It added that Mexico, “recognizes the sovereign right of any country to decide the public policies that should be implemented in its territory,” but Mexico also has a right to defend the estimated 10 million people of Mexican origin in Texas and “establish its own immigration policies in its territory.”

“The Government of Mexico categorically rejects any measure that allows state or local authorities to detain and return nationals or foreigners to Mexican territory,” the statement says.

The statement did not explicitly say that Mexico would refuse to accept migrants removed from Texas under SB 4, which has passed both chambers of the Legislature and will become law if Gov. Greg Abbott signs the bill or allows it to become law without his signature.

On Wednesday morning, Abbott said on social media that he looks “forward to signing Senate Bill 4.”

In its statement, Mexico said it has ordered its consulates in Texas to provide information to Mexican citizens about their rights and the details of SB 4. The statement added that Mexico will continue to work with the U.S. federal government regarding immigration matters.

On Tuesday evening, the Texas House approved SB 4, which would make it a state misdemeanor to illegally cross the border from Mexico into Texas, empower Texas peace officers to arrest undocumented immigrants and require that a state judge order the person to leave the U.S. to Mexico in lieu of prosecution.

The charge could be enhanced to a felony if the migrant is accused of other crimes or refuses to comply with a judge’s order to return to Mexico. The bill also allows immigrants to present evidence that they are in the country legally during the prosecution. The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor charge is a year in jail; for a felony the penalty is two to 20 years in prison.

The Texas Tribune previously interviewed lawyers, professors and a former chief of the National Immigration Institute, the Mexico’s immigration regulatory office, who said Mexico is under no obligation to accept non-Mexican nationals from Texas.

Mexico has agreements in place with the U.S. government to accept Mexican citizens and migrants from certain other countries when they are deported, and the sources said it would be unprecedented for Mexico to create a diplomatic relationship with a U.S. state over immigration matters.

Many of the immigrants entering the U.S. are not from Mexico, according to government data.

In fiscal year 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, about 83% of the 1 million immigrants encountered by Border Patrol on the Texas-Mexico border were not Mexican citizens. Many are coming from Central and South America, Asia or Eastern European countries. Some are also from Canada.

It’s already illegal under federal law to cross the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry. Immigrants who violate the law can be criminally charged and put into deportation proceedings. A person who enters the country, regardless of whether they did it legally or illegally, has up to a year to apply for asylum.

In Texas, a majority of Democratic lawmakers, at least one Republican senator and civil rights organizations say that SB 4 is unconstitutional because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled immigration laws can only be enforced by the federal government. During debate over the bill, Democrats warned that it could lead to civil rights violations against both immigrants and U.S. citizens, who may not have their papers handy when stopped by the police.

In a landmark 2012 case, Arizona v U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local police didn’t have the authority to arrest someone solely based on their immigration status and that responsibility falls to the federal government.

During a debate in the state Senate last week, Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury — who sponsored a similar proposal during a previous special session that would have required the state to turn arrested migrants over to federal immigration officials rather than deporting them — criticized SB 4.

“We are setting a terrible precedent for the future by invalidating our obedience and faithfulness to our Constitution,” Birdwell said, before referring to a frequent Republican criticism that President Joe Biden has failed to secure the southern border. “President Biden’s failure to obey his oath does not compel us to violate ours.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/15/texas-border-bill-immigrants-crime-mexico-response/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The post Mexico “rejects” Texas’ proposal to allow state police to deport undocumented immigrants appeared first on KVIA.

By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 14, 2023

"More women join lawsuit challenging Texas’ abortion laws" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

When Kimberly Manzano’s doctor first noticed some irregularities with her pregnancy, she turned to God, praying constantly for good news. When the diagnosis worsened, she and her husband sought comfort in the Bible’s Book of Hebrews — the book of hope.

And when her doctor finally determined her baby could not survive outside the womb, she asked her pastor for advice.

“He said, ‘if you believe your doctor to be a godly man, take what the doctor says as clarity from God in your decision,’” she recalls.

Manzano and her husband, both devout Christians, decided the most loving thing they could do for their son was terminate the pregnancy. It was a difficult decision for the couple, who both considered themselves anti-abortion before this.

But that decision, between the Manzanos, their doctor and God, would now have to involve another party — the state of Texas.

Although continuing the pregnancy put her at greater risk for infection and illness, Manzano’s life was not currently in danger, so her doctor would not terminate her pregnancy. Texas’ abortion laws have no explicit exceptions lethal fetal anomalies.

So she and her husband bought last minute flights to New Mexico. Her doctor refused to send her medical records to the clinic, instead requiring her to serve as the go-between.

“I was grieving, I was processing all of this, and then I was also feeling like a criminal,” she recalled recently. “It’s dehumanizing … and it shouldn't be like this for health care.”

On Tuesday, Manzano and six other women joined an ongoing court challenge to Texas’ abortion laws, bringing the total number of plaintiffs in the lawsuit to 22, including two doctors. The new plaintiffs, like the other patients on the lawsuit, allege they were denied abortion care in Texas for their medically complex pregnancies, including cases where the fetus was not expected to survive after birth. The suit, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, claims the state’s near-total ban on abortion violates their rights under the Texas Constitution.

After an emotional hearing in July, a Travis County judge granted a temporary injunction that protected doctors who, acting in their “good faith judgment,” terminate complicated pregnancies. The Texas Office of the Attorney General immediately appealed that ruling, putting it on hold until the Texas Supreme Court hears the case later this month.

“The harms to pregnant women in Texas is continuing every single day,” said Molly Duane, senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights. “As more people learn about the lawsuit, they continue to tell us the same things are happening to them.”

Manzano’s experience changed her mind about abortion, and she said she’s sharing her story in hopes of educating people who don’t realize how restrictive the state’s abortion ban is.

“I think I was really naive, thinking the world was one way and going through this and seeing it’s not like that,” she said. “But in the end, God knows my heart. He knows why I’ve been through this and I’ll have to stand before him one day, and no one else.”

A doctor’s dilemma

From the first time Danielle Mathisen delivered a baby in medical school, she knew she wanted to be an OB/GYN.

She also knew she wanted to be a mother. Mathisen and her husband met playing volleyball in high school in the Fort Worth area and got married in 2019. They tried to time her pregnancy around the intensive medical school schedule, and were thrilled when she got pregnant right on schedule during her fourth year.

So thrilled, in fact, that her husband passed out at the first ultrasound appointment.

“He just heard the heartbeat and the passions of fatherhood overtook him,” she said, only half kidding.

Mathisen went in for her anatomy scan at 18 weeks. She’d just finished learning how to perform pregnancy ultrasounds, so immediately, she knew something was wrong. Nothing was where it was supposed to be.

“It felt like an out of body experience,” she said. “I thought the wires got crossed and it was the girl next door’s ultrasound, because surely nothing could be wrong with my own pregnancy.”

Mathisen comes from a family of doctors. Her aunt was her OB/GYN, and Mathisen texted her from the exam room, asking if something was wrong. Her aunt sent back one word: Yes.

Mathisen’s daughter had a “laundry list” of diagnoses — a malformed brain, something wrong with the heart, a hole at the bottom of her spine, only one kidney. She was barely in the first percentile for weight.

“It just kept getting worse, which made the decision easier,” Mathisen said.

But this appointment was in September 2021, just a few weeks after Texas banned abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. The new law allowed private citizens to sue anyone who “aided or abetted” in a prohibited lawsuit.

Mathisen had been on the other side of these conversations as a medical student, so she knew the fear her aunt was experiencing at that moment.

“We had the most legal conversation that we could have had,” she said. “And that conversation was, ‘I'm sorry, I can't help you here. But maybe someone in another state could.’ And I knew exactly what she meant.”

Mathisen and her husband went home shattered. Her mom, also a doctor, started calling clinics until she found one in New Mexico that was holding spots open for Texans. They bought first class tickets, the only ones left, and less than 24 hours after learning this heartbreaking news, were on their way to Albuquerque. Several people on the flight assumed they were going to Albuquerque for their honeymoon, a fiction they leaned into even after they returned to Texas.

The abortion clinic was still operating under COVID-19 protocols, so Mathisen went in alone. In the exam room, there were journals where other patients had written messages of support — “you’re making the right decision,” and “you're doing the best you can with the information that you have,” sentiments Mathisen has relied on in the days since.

On the plane ride back, Mathisen submitted her OB/GYN residency applications. She’s always wanted to practice medicine in Texas like the rest of her family, but part of her was relieved when she was accepted to a program in Hawaii.

“I felt really let down by Texas. I still feel really let down by Texas,” she said. “It just makes me mad and sad and angry and guilty because I know there are people in Texas that need the care that I know how to provide. But I cannot give it to them there.”

In Hawaii, when she encounters patients facing similar diagnoses, she can offer them the option she was denied — to terminate the pregnancy in a doctor’s office or hospital at whatever point they feel ready to make that decision.

“I say to them, your heart can want one thing and your brain can know that this is still the right thing to do,” she said. “Your mama heart wants to hold your baby. I want to hold my daughter, I still do. But my brain knows this was the right thing to do.”

Mathisen is pregnant again, with another little girl. She hopes to one day be able to return to Texas, work as an OB/GYN and raise her daughter surrounded by all the strong female doctors who made her who she is. That’s part of why she joined this lawsuit, she said.

“If I can provide a voice or a perspective or a story that resonates with one lawmaker that gets them to change their mind, then I want that to happen,” she said. “I want this to happen to one less Texan.”

Legal challenge continues

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, abortion clinics across Texas immediately closed their doors. This marked the culmination of a decades-long effort to stop Texans from terminating unwanted pregnancies within state lines.

But immediately, the ruling opened a new question about how the law’s narrow exceptions should be applied to medically complex pregnancies. The law allows abortions only when the patient “has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

Doctors who perform a prohibited abortion face up to life in prison, leading some to delay or deny care because they were unsure if the patient qualified. Some hospitals, fearing legal liability, have increased restrictions on when they allow a doctor to terminate a pregnancy.

As more and more women came forward with stories of wanted pregnancies derailed by medical complications, Gov. Greg Abbott said the Legislature should “clarify what it means to protect the life of the mother." The Texas Legislature went so far as to affirm doctors’ ability to treat ectopic pregnancies, a nonviable pregnancy where the embryo implants outside the uterus, and preterm premature rupture of the membrane, when a patient’s water breaks before viability.

But the lawsuit from the Center for Reproductive Rights says these protections are not enough to ensure doctors feel safe acting on their best judgment in individual cases.

At the court hearing in July, Dr. Ingrid Skopp, a prominent anti-abortion doctor, agreed patients had received “suboptimal care” since the law went into effect, but said nonetheless, the “law is quite clear.”

“The fault lies with the physicians [who] are not being given guidance by the organizations that usually will give them guidance, the medical societies and the hospital societies,” she said.

The Texas Medical Board, which is a defendant in this case, has not offered clear guidance to doctors on how and when they can terminate pregnancies.

“What is universal in all of the states where abortion is prohibited, and I include in that states that have 6- or 12- or 15-week abortion bans, is that medical exemptions all look pretty similar to Texas’ and in every state, no doctor knows how to interpret them,” said Duane.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has argued that, under the law’s medical exception, women carrying nonviable pregnancies should be able to access abortions in Texas. But as the plaintiffs’ experiences make clear, that’s rarely how doctors and hospitals interpret the law. This has led some women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, as The Texas Tribune documented in a story last month. Others, like Manzano and Mathisen, have traveled to abortion clinics out of state.

State District Court Judge Jessica Mangrum of Austin ruled in August that the attorney general cannot prosecute doctors who terminate a complicated pregnancy, including a fetal condition in which the fetus will not survive after birth.

The Texas Office of the Attorney General said this was tantamount to having a court rewrite the law.

“Under the guise of seeking clarity in the law, Plaintiffs ask the courts to broaden the statutory description of medical conditions that will allow a woman to obtain an abortion and to enshrine their preferred language in the Texas Constitution,” the state wrote in its appeal.

Manzano said she was disappointed when she learned the state had appealed the ruling, effectively putting it on hold until the Texas Supreme Court hears arguments Nov. 28.

“When I'm sick, I don't call the attorney general for my antibiotics,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to call the attorney general for my basic health care. Unless he wants to pay the bill, he shouldn’t get a say.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights has filed similar challenges in Tennessee, Idaho and Oklahoma. Duane said they added the additional plaintiffs to show these cases are not as uncommon as people think.

“And then, for however many plaintiffs have decided to join the lawsuit, and put their names and their lives out there, think about how many people didn't join,” Duane said.

Jacob Lopez’s wife was pregnant when Roe v. Wade was overturned and while they were upset by the ruling, he said it never occurred to them that it would impact their pregnancy.

“You don't know until the world hits you in the face,” he said.

Lopez’s wife, who is identified only by her first initial in the lawsuit due to privacy concerns, had a normal pregnancy in the beginning. But then, at 19 weeks, they learned their daughter had anencephaly — she was developing without parts of her brain and skull.

“In our minds, we were already a family,” Lopez said. “We were buying clothes. We bought a baby crib. We had a vision of what her life was going to be. And then the doctor says this is not a viable pregnancy.”

The doctor gave them a pamphlet for an abortion clinic in New Mexico, but it was booked weeks out. Lopez called clinics in New Mexico, Colorado and other surrounding states until they found one in San Diego.

“Ideally, we would have sought care at home in Texas, gone home and just cried at home,” he said. “Instead, we had to focus on plane tickets, lodging, rental cars.”

Lopez tried to keep his own grief at bay long enough to get his wife out of the state and through the difficult, two-day procedure. But when they returned home and saw the baby crib waiting for them, he broke down. The panic, fear and logistics of last-minute travel compounded an already tragic circumstance, he said.

“At that moment, I hated Texas,” he said. “It made me question, why did we come here?”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/14/texas-abortion-laws-lawsuit/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The post More women join lawsuit challenging Texas’ abortion laws appeared first on KVIA.

The Texas House of Representatives approved immigration bills Tuesday that would appropriate more than $1.5 billion for additional border barriers and make illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border a state crime.

Senate Bill 3 would allocate $1.54 billion for border barriers and to pay for state troopers to patrol Colony Ridge, a housing development near Houston that far-right publications claim is a magnet for undocumented immigrants.

During Tuesday’s debate in the House, lawmakers adopted an amendment to SB 3 introduced by state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde, that would allow some of the money to be used to help local police and governments enforce the new state crime proposed in Senate Bill 4.

SB 4 would make it a state misdemeanor to illegally cross the border from Mexico into Texas, empower Texas peace officers to arrest undocumented immigrants and require that a state judge order the person to leave the U.S. to Mexico in lieu of prosecution.

“If we're going to make them do this, then we need to help them pay for it,” King said.

SB 3, which passed on a 84-59 vote, goes back to the Senate, which previously approved the bill, so it can vote on the amended version.

SB 4 passed on an 83-61 vote. The Senate already passed the bill last week so it now heads to the governor’s desk.

Under SB 4, the charge could be enhanced to a felony if the migrant is accused of other crimes or refuses to comply with a judge’s order to return to Mexico. The bill also allows immigrants to present any evidence that they are in the country legally during the prosecution. The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor charge is a year in jail; for a felony the penalty is two to 20 years in prison.

Democrats introduced dozens of amendements to the bill, including language that would exclude immigrant children from prosecution, along with victims of trafficking and sexual assault. Other amendments said that if Mexico doesn’t accept a person from a particular country, the immigrant could use that as a defense from prosecution.

None of the amendments were adopted.

Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, sponsor of SB 4, urged lawmakers to vote against the amendments because his goal was “to get this bill passed, and get it passed cleanly, and get it on the governor's desk” as soon as possible.

Republicans adopted a motion to end the debate after eight hours on Tuesday, over objections from Democrats.

State Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, D-Dallas, asked why Republicans silenced Democrats during debate on a bill that would affect Texans statewide.

“Why are we elected if you don’t even have the cojones” to defend this piece of legislation, Criado said in Spanglish.

Republican lawmakers are attempting to pass the proposals in a fourth special session of the year after they failed to approve similar bills in previous special sessions.

During the debate on SB 3, Democrats raised concerns about the amount of money being spent on the border when the state could be funding things such as hospitals, health care access or updating state prison infrastructure. State Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas, said that with the money proposed for border barriers and Colony Ridge, the state could build 15 hospitals, at $100 million each, in rural parts of Texas.

“I could go down a list of things that [money] can be spent on, we’re $2 billion dollars currently short of the money we need just to pay for the current level of special education being borne by our independent school districts,” Bryant said. “This is a huge amount of money. We shouldn't spend it unless we know that there is data that indicates it will impede illegal entries into Texas.”

State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, asked the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jacey Jetton, R-Richmond, why the proposal sets aside $40 million for more law enforcement presence in Colony Ridge, a rural development in Liberty County.

“Can you state what that concern is that merits this appropriation?” Turner said.

Jetton declined.

“I'm not I'm not going to try to debate or litigate whether or not Colony Ridge is safe or unsafe,” Jetton said.

As the House debated SB 4, Spiller said the proposal is meant to target immigrants who recently crossed the Rio Grande into Texas rather than people who have been in the state a long time. He said because misdemeanors have a two-year statute of limitations, undocumented immigrants who crossed the border more than two years ago wouldn’t be affected if the bill passes.

“When the representation to the general public is, the Texas House is about to pass something that's going to round up someone's grandmother that’s been here all their life, that is completely false,” Spiller said.

State Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, introduced two amendments to the bill that would require police and prosecutors to find out if an immigrant arrested under the new law is in the country legally before the case is prosecuted. Both failed.

“I would suggest to you that the individual who has followed the rules, who has been arrested, who has been jailed, they would say one minute of their liberty being taken when they have followed the rules is too much,” Moody said.

In a landmark 2012 case, Arizona v U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local police didn’t have the authority to arrest someone solely based on their immigration status and that responsibility falls to the federal government. That case stemmed from a 2010 Arizona law known as SB 1070, which made it a state crime for legal immigrants not to carry their immigration papers and required police officers to investigate the immigration status of any person they come into contact with.

Democrats said during Tuesday’s debate that regardless of how Republicans attempt to make SB 4 constitutional, the Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot enforce immigration laws on their own.

“We all know why we're here,” Neave Criado said. “SB 4 intends to challenge the decade-long holding of Arizona versus United States, given the new makeup of the United States Supreme Court, which we have seen has already overturned [the] 50-year long precedent of Roe v. Wade.”

Spiller denied that’s his intent.

“People have asked me that: Are you trying to overturn Arizona v. U.S.? And my answer is no,” Spiller said.

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By Alejandra Martinez, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 13, 2023

"Bison return to Texas Indigenous lands, reconnecting tribes to their roots" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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SULPHUR SPRINGS — Silence falls over a crowd of 40 people on a windy afternoon in early November, each breath held in anticipation as two 800-pound bison slowly approach.

Among the spectators are Native Americans from various tribes, some who traveled two to three hours to experience the awe of seeing bison up close for the first time.

A female bison less than 100 feet from the crowd bellows, signaling the others with a nod of her head that the coast is clear. The rest follow, advancing toward the mesmerized onlookers. Phones rise as spectators eagerly capture the intimate moment.

The bisons’ new home is the 60-acre GP Ranch in Hopkins County, about 90 miles northeast of Dallas, owned by Muscogee (Creek) Nation member Theda Pogue.

Pogue, 45, received the four cows and one bull earlier that week from the Medano-Zapata Ranch Preserve, a nature conservancy ranch in Colorado. It’s part of an effort by the Tanka Fund, a native-led nonprofit based in South Dakota, and The Nature Conservancy to restore more than 700 bison — also known as American buffalo — to Indigenous lands across the country this fall in partnership with tribal nonprofits and nations.

Pogue invited people to her ranch on National Bison Day, Nov. 4, to celebrate.

The arrival at Pogue’s ranch marks the second bison transfer to Texas through the program; the first one was a transfer of five bison to a Lipan Apache ranch in Waelder, an hour east of San Antonio. These new bison bring Pogue’s herd to 12 — one bull and 11 cows.

As the ceremony begins, the people form an arc around four Native American men whose voices intertwine in a song as birds circle above.

When they conclude, Pogue tells the crowd that the day feels like a gift. She wears a silver necklace with a black buffalo pendant surrounded by turquoise beads.

“This herd is for us to share with our younger generations who will know what our ancestors have gone through,” Pogue says between pauses as she tries to control her happy tears.

“Their strength, that honor and that dignity flows through my veins,” she continues. “We are strong. We are still standing here today and we will still be standing here tomorrow just like the buffalo.”

Later, the Rev. Eric Thlocco of Tokvbvche Methodist Church blesses Theda, her two kids and her husband, anointing their hands with holy water. Theda, with wet hands, tenderly pats the holy water over her body.

Then Thlocco, a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, sprinkles the land with holy water “to watch over these buffalo, take care of them and bless the family that is going to watch over them.”

Bison nearly died out 

Earlier that morning, Ronnie Thomas, 61, affiliated with the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, helped Pogue set up a tipi, opening the flaps to let air in during the day. Thomas was one of the first guests to arrive at Pogue's ranch. He drove three hours from Livingston.

Struggling for words, Thomas said, “it’s hard to describe the meaning of the animal.”

“Buffalo, bison is considered sacred,” he said as he pointed to a table holding a bison skull, a bison horn — which is blown four times at the start of a Native American service or ceremony — and other regalia made from parts of the animal.

Millions of bison once roamed the plains, including parts of Texas. Early Spanish explorers in North America reported that bison were as numerous as “fish in the sea.” Native Americans relied on the massive herds for food, clothing, medicine and spiritual practices.

In the 1800s, the bison population suffered a catastrophic decline after the arrival of new settlers and bison hunters.

The "Great Slaughter" of bison between 1820 and 1880 was driven by the U.S. government promoting the mass hunting of bison in an effort to subdue Native American tribes, along with construction of the transcontinental railroad, which disrupted migratory patterns. By the 1890s the bison population dwindled to near extinction, with fewer than 1,000 remaining.

Indigenous communities whose way of life depended on the bison were forced onto reservations.

Efforts to save the bison from extinction began in the early 1900s when Yellowstone National Park managers purchased 21 animals from private owners to preserve one of the last free-roaming bison herds.

Today, there are more than 400,000 bison in commercial herds around the country; about 20,000 more roam free in conservation herds. One of the biggest herds in Texas is the official state herd at Caprock Canyons State Park, which numbers more than 240 bison, according to Jamie Killian, a regional natural resources coordinator for state parks for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Bison preservation 

For decades, government agencies and nonprofits have helped to restore bison herds on Native American reservations through transfers. The Tanka Fund, the nonprofit out of South Dakota, is trying to make that possible for Native Americans who do not live on a reservation.

In Texas, only three federally-recognized tribes have reservations: the Alabama-Coushatta, Tigua, and Kickapoo.

“We are supporting native-run projects, because there’s no other outlets or other places for them to get assistance,” said Trudy Ecoffey, executive director of the Tanka Fund.

Pogue remembers first hearing about the bison's cultural connection to Native Americans at school in Oklahoma, where she was born and raised. When she was in elementary school, her class took a field trip to a bison farm in Wewoka.

She later joined the U.S. Navy, where she met and married her husband Chris. They moved to California, where Chris worked at a ranch that raised bison. That experience inspired them to buy their own ranch and raise bison.

In 2017, after they retired from the Navy, the couple invested their full retirement into a Texas property that they named GP Ranch and dove into bison ranching. They began a business selling bison meat to five brick-and-mortar stores.

Theda Pogue said they had second thoughts about the business and sold their herd.

"We decided that [selling bison meat was] not where we wanted to be,” she said. “It's not where we felt like we were being called to be at."

As she learned about other tribes’ bison education and conservation projects, she and her husband decided to give raising bison another go, this time as conservationists.

When a rancher called her and said he needed help raising and grazing his bison, the Pogues offered their land for two of his animals. They also bought three bison — two of them were pregnant — from a rancher in East Texas.

Later, the Tanka Fund approached them about applying for a grant to receive five more bison.

Pogue applied for the transfer in September and said she received a call from the Tanka Fund in late October telling her the news that they received a $14,000 grant to raise the bison and build a hay barn for them. She quickly booked the first flight to Colorado, loaded them onto trailers and drove 13 hours back to her ranch in Sulphur Springs.

The bison came from one of The Nature Conservancy’s 11 preserves with bison herds, the Medano-Zapata Ranch Preserve, a 100,000-acre grassland home to a herd of approximately 2,000 bison. Since the Nature Conservancy joined the InterTribal Buffalo Council and Tanka Fund in 2020, it has supported the transfer of thousands of bison.

At the ranch, some of Pogues’ bison have dirty fur from wallowing — rolling in dirt to deter biting flies. Bison can live up to 20 years and are led by a matriarch rather than a bull, and the cows begin breeding at two years old. Pogue said her family will begin checking for pregnant cows soon.

Chris Pogue, 43, said the family would like to keep the herd small to ensure they can survive by grazing alone. He said the bison’s grazing behavior is good for the environment because they prefer grasses and often avoid other plants, leaving some areas ungrazed, which helps plant diversity.

Right now, the Pogues are hoping the new bison will easily integrate with their existing herd. They’ve already witnessed some pecking order disputes, but “they will get it worked out and eventually it will be a cohesive unit,” Chris Pogue said.

Theda hopes once they’ve adjusted, she can start her mission: creating a place for Indigenous people to reconnect with the bison.

“I have always been taught, if you're given an abundance of something, you don't build a high wall to keep it to yourself, you build a bigger table to share it with everybody else,” she said.

Passing down the bison’s cultural legacy

Andrea Poncho, a 51 year-old member of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, said her kids had no idea the treat they were in for when they arrived at GP Ranch that morning from Livingston.

Her sons Waylon, 7, and Gunnar, 6, experienced a lot of firsts: running in and out of a tipi, a bumpy hayride on the back of a trailer attached to a white 2004 Chevy Silverado and seeing bison up close.

“They don’t know the background or what the purpose of all of this is,” Poncho said. “This will be educational for them.” It was her first time seeing bison in person, too.

When the bison stepped slowly toward the crowd, the boys stopped picking the grass in front of them and stood up, staring in wonder.

“They are coming,” whispered Gunnar, his hands covering his mouth.

“They are kind of cute,” Waylon said.

A couple feet away stood the Cortez family — 57-year-old Donna Cortez McCormick, her daughter Candice Cortez and her two granddaughters. The family had traveled from Irving that morning to see the bison. Cortez McCormick said she knows they have Indigenous roots, and she is starting to research her family’s forgotten history to pass down to her children and grandchildren.

“I’ve always felt the connection, you feel something but just are not quite sure what it is,” she said. “You have the spirits inside you and the buffalo is one of them.”

Wearing a jacket with a black buffalo pattern, Cortez McCormick said bringing her daughter and granddaughters to events like these is a way to start learning about their heritage.

“We’ve lost so many people [in our family],” Candice Cortez, 36, said. “We are barely researching our family's past, the reservation that we come from and about our ancestors.”

After a five-minute hay ride back to a building on the ranch, the kids grabbed paper and crayons and began coloring bison drawings, next to a pile of pamphlets: 10 fascinating facts about the buffalo.

As a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Pogue said she was happy to see that so many tribal members brought kids and teenagers to the ranch. She’s in the early stages of arranging a trip for youth with the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas to see the bison and share oral histories.

She said that many younger generations may have forgotten what bison has represented for Native Americans. She wants to change that.

“So one of our goals is education and reminding Native Americans where they came from.”

Disclosure: The Texas Parks And Wildlife Department and The Nature Conservancy have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Correction, Nov. 13, 2023 at 10:59 a.m.: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the number of cows in the Pogues' bison herd. There are 11 cows in the herd.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/13/texas-native-american-tribes-bison-return/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By William Melhado, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 7, 2023

"Texas voters reject proposal to increase judges’ retirement ages" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas voters refused to increase the retirement age of judges during Tuesday’s constitutional amendment election. Proposition 13 was the only amendment on Texans’ ballots that did not pass.

The measure would have increased the mandatory retirement age for judges from 75 to 79 and would have increased the minimum retirement age from 70 to 75. Proposition 13 supporters argued that people are working later into their lives and longer-serving judges bring much needed experience to the bench.

Few groups publicly opposed the amendment and House Joint Resolution 107 passed both the House and Senate with broad bipartisan support. Authors of the legislation did not respond to requests for comment.

A House Committee Report on the resolution outlined one reason to increase the retirement ages: Given “today's longer life expectancies, 75 is no longer a reasonable age to mandate someone step down from the bench.”

But ultimately, voters did not agree. Over 60% of voters declined to increase the retirement age, according to preliminary election results.

With the amendment’s failure, some high level judges will be forced to retire in the coming years. That includes Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, who will be 75 next year.

If reelected, five other appellate court judges will turn 75 during their next term, according to the Houston Chronicle: Texas Supreme Court Justice Debra Lehrmann and Court of Criminal Appeals Justices Sharon Keller, Barbara Hervey, Bert Richardson and Scott Walker.

The age of elected officials is likely to be on voters' minds during next year’s presidential race that could result in another showdown between President Joe Biden, who is 80 years old, and former President Donald Trump, who is 77 years old.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/07/texas-judges-retirement-proposition-results/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Joshua Fechter and Karen Brooks Harper, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 7, 2023

"Texas homeowners and businesses will get a tax cut after voters approve Proposition 4" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas homeowners and businesses will get potentially thousands of dollars cut from their property tax bills in the coming years after voters Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that changes how public schools are funded.

“Fighting for property tax reform is something Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and I have been doing together for almost 20 years in the making,” the bill’s author, Houston Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt, said in an emailed statement. “To have all of everyone’s hard work pay off, it's fantastic to see the public finally getting the property tax reduction they have always wanted and deserved. It’s great to give people their money back from excess budget collections.”

Proposition 4, an $18 billion property tax-cut package, was approved by 84% of voters in Tuesday’s constitutional amendment election, according to Decision Desk HQ. Nearly 1.1 million voted in favor of the amendment, with 89% of estimated votes counted.

The proposition is aimed squarely at lowering school district property taxes, which make up the lion’s share of a Texas landowner’s property tax bill.

Under the proposition, school districts will get $7.1 billion to lower their tax rates by replacing local revenues they would have collected with state dollars, which lawmakers call “compression.” That will reduce the tax rates school districts use to pay for operating costs like teacher salaries by 10.7 cents for every $100 of property value.

The proposition also more than doubles homeowners’ homestead exemption on school district taxes, the amount of a home’s value that can’t be taxed to pay for public schools. The constitutional amendment raises the exemption from $40,000 to $100,000.

Together, those breaks — which will be applied to landowners’ 2023 tax bill — will amount to more than $2,500 in tax savings over the next two years for the typical Texas homeowner, with bigger savings for seniors, according to figures provided by the office of Bettencourt, a Houston-area Republican and the Senate’s chief tax-cut proponent. That comes out to a little more than $100 a month.

Despite Texas’ reputation as a low-tax state, thanks largely to the lack of a state income tax, landowners here pay some of the highest property tax bills in the nation, according to the conservative Tax Foundation. Cutting property taxes has been a top priority for the state’s highest-ranking Republicans.

This year, Republicans got the chance to take a big swing on tax-cuts, promising to use a considerable chunk of a record $33 billion state budget surplus, the result of Texas’ considerable economic growth and a glut of federal COVID-19 relief funds. After months of infighting, GOP lawmakers sent Gov. Greg Abbott the $18 billion tax-cut proposal, but voters still had to sign off on the idea at the ballot box.

The package also includes $5.3 billion to pay for tax cuts approved by lawmakers in previous years.

Voters approved other tax changes as part of Proposition 4 — including a new cap on how much certain businesses’ property values, which helps determine an owner’s tax bill, can grow each year.

Owners of commercial, mineral and residential properties — like rental homes and apartment buildings — that don't receive a homestead exemption and are valued at less than $5 million now will have a 20% cap on their value growth each year for the next three years. Previously, businesses didn’t have such a cap, unlike homeowners, whose taxable home values can’t rise more than 10% each year under state law.

The cap on certain business properties’ value will expire in 2026 unless lawmakers and voters choose to keep it going.

Proposition 4 also expands the pool of businesses that don’t have to pay the state’s franchise tax. And the amendment allows voters in counties with at least 75,000 residents to pick three new members of their local appraisal districts’ board of directors, which have been appointed positions.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/07/texas-proposition-4-property-tax-cut/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Kevin Vu, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 3, 2023

"Proposition 9 would increase pensions for retired teachers and public school employees" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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For 28 years, Joe Ramirez taught social studies in Austin for students including President George W. Bush’s daughters, four-time Grammy award winning musician Gary Clark Jr. and former Gov. Rick Perry’s son. After retiring in 2012, he said he initially was able to live on his $2,200 a month check from the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.

A decade later, his rent in Austin has doubled, and despite having a higher pension than the state average because he retired as an administrator, he’s worried that it won’t keep up with his increasing expenses and inflation.

“It’s tough for me, even with my higher pension,” said Ramirez, who is president of Austin’s Retired Teachers Association. “It’s more of a month to month thing because of rent, rising cost of groceries, medication and gasoline. It’s very difficult to make it.”

Public school teachers and other school employees pay into the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which sends them monthly payments after they retire. Teachers who retired before 2004 have not seen their pensions increase since 2013 despite increasing inflation, said Tim Lee, the Texas Retired Teachers Association’s executive director.

But retirees could soon see an increase in their monthly retirement checks if Texas voters approve Proposition 9, which would authorize the state to use $3.3 billion to fund cost-of-living adjustments for retirees, in the Nov. 7 constitutional amendment election. Lawmakers earlier this year unanimously passed Senate Bill 10, which put the issue on the statewide ballot.

[Taxes, state parks, infrastructure: What you need to know about the Nov. 7 constitutional amendments election]

According to TRS, just under 476,000 retired teachers received an average monthly payment of $2,174 in 2022. Under Prop. 9, retired teachers would see their pensions increase between 2% and 6%.

Those who retired before Aug. 31, 2001, would receive a 6% increase, while those who retired between Aug. 31, 2001 and Aug. 31, 2013 would receive a 4% increase. Teachers and employees who retired between Aug. 31, 2013 and Aug. 31, 2020 would receive a 2% increase.

Over the past 20 years, inflation has eroded retired teachers’ income: According to the Consumer Price Index, $100 in September 2004 has the same buying power as $162.08 in September 2023.

“Our retirees have the same amount of monthly income that they had back in 2004 if they’ve been retired for that long,” Lee said. “It’s a real financial burden that these folks carry. These folks have to live in the same economy that all the rest of us do.”

The money for the pension increase would come from the state’s budget surplus, Lee said, so it would not require a tax increase on Texans. If it passes, Lee said he hopes the proposition sets a precedent for the Legislature to increase teacher pensions more frequently.

“It does give the Legislature an opportunity to enact things like another cost-of-living increase in a future legislative session,” Lee said.

Lee said the cost of living increase would also benefit former public school employees like bus drivers, nurses, paraprofessionals, librarians and others.

“I think it’s important for our current school employees to see that we are going to help take care of our retired school employees,” Lee said. “It’s vital for them to see that their future is not bleak, that there is hope coming when we do things like this for our current retirees and we’ll do it for our future retirees as well.”

Ramirez, who would receive a 4% increase if Prop. 9 passes, said he’d like voters to think about their former teachers when they decide on the measure.

“Think of your favorite teacher who you had in school,” Ramirez said. “And now that they’re retired, think about what they’re trying to survive on. They did a lot for you, now it’s time for you to do something for them.”

Disclosure: Texas Retired Teachers Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/03/texas-proposition-9-election-teacher-pension-constitutional-amendent/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Jayme Lozano Carver and Ayden Runnels, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 3, 2023

"Do Texans have the “right to farm?” Voters will decide with Proposition 1." was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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LUBBOCK — Early voting ends Friday. And if you’re still wondering about Proposition 1, often referred to as “the right to farm,” you wouldn’t be alone.

Texas already has a right to farm statute in the law, along with every state, as there is some variation of the law nationwide. These laws are in the books as a way to protect agricultural operations from nuisance lawsuits. The operations can be a typical farm or ranch, though the Texas statute includes viticulture, or grape growing, and growing trees, also known as silviculture.

With a quickly growing state, proponents of the amendment say it is needed as a way to update protections for farmers and ranchers. Texas voters will have the final say on if it becomes part of the state’s constitution or not.

What difference does this make when it’s already a statute?

The amendment mirrors the statute, and would raise the bar for local regulation over “generally accepted” farming and ranching practices. If approved by voters, municipalities would be required to provide “clear and convincing evidence” that regulation is needed to protect the public from danger.

[Taxes, state parks, infrastructure: What you need to know about the Nov. 7 constitutional amendments election]

The amendment would not affect the authority of state agencies to step in when regulation is needed to protect the public health and safety from imminent danger and to prevent danger to animal health or crop production. State authorities would also retain the authority to preserve or conserve the natural resources of the state.

The Texas Farm Bureau, which is in support of the amendment, gave this example: A city would be prevented from banning farming in an area for no specific reason, but it would allow for a government agency to require ranchers to properly maintain fences so livestock could not escape and cause an accident.

What did the legislature do?

Several state representatives, including Rep. DeWayne Burns, R-Cleburne, and Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, authored House Bill 1750, which limits the requirements a city government can place on an agricultural operation in the city boundaries. Again, this does not apply if there is clear evidence that certain requirements are needed to protect people who reside in the immediate vicinity of the operation.

The bill is closely related to the right to farm proposition. The legislature passed other agriculture-related bills too, not in connection with the proposition, such as House Bill 2308 which states no nuisance or other legal actions can be brought on to restrain an operation that has been lawfully running and “substantially unchanged” for a year.

Both bills passed earlier this year and have been signed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Who opposes it?

Animal care groups, such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, have come out against the proposition. The nonprofit organization called it risky and said it would limit local government’s ability to regulate farm conditions.

“Bills like this can make it harder to hold corporations accountable for cruelly confining animals, endangering public health and damaging the environment,” the organization said in a statement.

Judith McGeary, executive director for Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, said there is a real problem with cities over regulating on big and small farms. But the amendment, she and her organization believe, is unnecessary and would give the agriculture business sector “immense” amounts of protection that would empower larger farms.

“They’re using a nuclear bomb instead of a pistol,” she said.

The alliance is a national organization that advocates for independent family farmers.

McGeary also said the “clear and convincing” evidence requirement in the proposition is an “absurd” standard to apply to an industry. She says that standard is used for fraud cases or removing someone from life support.

“I think there are a lot of regulations that don’t make sense and don’t take into consideration the vital importance of raising food in our state,” said McGeary, who is also a lawyer and farmer. “But, you can address those without going to this extreme and basically giving a blank check to bad actors.”

Who is in support of the proposition?

Farmers, ranchers and others involved in the Texas agriculture industry support it, as they say it’s a way to protect essential agricultural operations and keep the state’s food and fiber sources going.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller encouraged Texans to vote for the proposition in a recent statement, saying agriculture is crucial to the state’s economy. One study found that the industry brought in around $24.7 billion to Texas in 2021.

“I always say ‘No farmers, no food,’ and right now, we are fighting to keep our agriculture industry alive,” Miller said in a statement.

Russell Boening, president of Texas Farm Bureau who also farms on his ranch near San Antonio, said it’s needed as more farmland has been annexed into some cities in Texas and the farmers subsequently faced ordinance issues.

For example, Boening said a city ordinance would say grass can’t be taller than 12 inches. But a towering hay crop would easily exceed that rule, as they grow several feet taller.

“It’s those kinds of things that really don’t have anything to do with public health or public safety that farmers were facing,” Boening said.

Boening added, “If it’s somewhat of an inconvenience for folks for a short time, I think that’s something we should accept because it allows our farmers and ranchers to feed, clothe and provide fuel to this state and this country.”

Why now?

The proposition would be very similar to the statute on the books, but unlike the statute, it would be written into the Texas Constitution. This means the right to farm would have longer staying power as the local municipalities continue adjusting to growing populations.

“Statutes can be changed by future legislatures,” Boening said. “So we think it’s important that it be in the Constitution.”

Disclosure: Texas Farm Bureau has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/03/proposition-1-constitutional-amendment-farming/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 6, 2023

"Appeals court considers whether Texas teens should be allowed contraception without parental consent under federal program" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

For almost a year, Texas teens have been shut out of a federal program that allows minors to access birth control without parental consent.

On Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals indicated they may uphold the court ruling that stymied the program. The three-judge panel did not rule from the bench, but seemed supportive of conservative attorney Jonathan Mitchell’s case, with one judge calling the contraception program a “destruction” of parental rights.

Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general, filed the case on behalf of Alexander Deanda, an Amarillo-area father raising his daughters “in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality.”

The U.S. Department of Justice’s cornerstone argument is that Deanda has no legal right to bring this case because he cannot show that his daughters have ever even visited one of the clinics, let alone were prescribed birth control without his consent.

Less than 30 seconds after the DOJ began arguments Monday, Judge Catharina Haynes interrupted.

“If your kid knows you don't want them to go have sex when they're 15, they're certainly not going to tell you they want to go and get some medicine so that they don't end up pregnant,” Haynes said. “So how the heck is [Deanda] going to know that?”

Appeals courts have repeatedly ruled that minors have a right to confidential contraception under the Title X program, which Mitchell acknowledged Monday. But he asked the judges — two appointed by President George W. Bush and one appointed by President Donald Trump — to reject that precedent and instead find that Texas’ parental consent code should dictate how this federal program operates in the state.

“Texas has been the birthplace of a lot of bad sexual and reproductive health policy that other states have replicated,” said Stephanie LeBleu, program director with Every Body Texas, a nonprofit that administers the Title X grant in Texas. “If the 5th Circuit upholds this ruling, there’s a bigger question about what this means for access to birth control, full stop, and not just in Texas.”

Title X long under attack

In 1969, President Richard Nixon, a Republican, declared that “no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.” The next year, he signed Title X into law, creating a nationwide system of clinics dedicated to providing contraception to anyone who needed it, regardless of age, income or immigration status.

Over the last 50 years, Republicans have tried to require Title X clinics get parental consent before they prescribe birth control to adolescents. But federal appeals courts have repeatedly rejected those claims, pointing to Congress’ original mandate that clinics are required only to “encourage family participation … to the extent practical.”

In Texas, that makes Title X clinics unique. In virtually every other setting, teens must have parental consent to get contraception. Even a teen who has had a baby must get a parent’s permission to get on birth control. (Texas teens on Medicaid don’t need a parent’s permission, but the program doesn’t guarantee confidentiality the way Title X does.)

Texas’ Title X clinics do encourage teens to involve their parents in decision-making, said LeBleu.

“But not every young person has that … trusted adult or a parent or legal guardian that they can go to and get consent to get the services that they need,” she said, pointing to young people in abusive or coercive situations as an example. “There are young people who have no other recourse except to be able to access these services confidentially.”

Texas has 156 Title X clinics, largely centered in urban areas. Nationally, the program has been flat-funded for years, making it difficult to expand its reach in Texas and across the country.

“If Title X funding had kept up with inflation, it would be funded at nearly triple the amount of money that it is right now,” said Robin Summers, vice president with the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. “We are stuck with a Congress that refuses to increase the funding, and instead tries to treat Title X as a political football.”

The program has faced significant national political headwinds. In 2019, the Trump administration disqualified any Title X clinics that performed or provided information about abortions. The number of clinics dropped from nearly 4,000 to 2,700, according to the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, and the number of patients dropped by half between 2019 and 2020.

The federal Office of Population Affairs estimates the Trump-era regulations led to more than 180,000 unintended pregnancies. The Biden administration lifted those regulations in October 2021 and the program is slowly rebuilding.

New legal front 

This Texas lawsuit, originally filed in 2020, could potentially undermine a core component of the federal program.

Deanda claims that this program injured him and other parents by subverting their authority and “weakening their ability to raise their children in accordance with the teachings of the Christian faith,” the original filing said.

The lawsuit argued that the program guidance to “encourage family participation” in minors’ contraception decisions established a minimum level of parental involvement, and Texas’ state laws requiring parental consent should supersede.

Mitchell declined to comment on behalf of himself and Deanda.

But U.S. District Judge MatthewKacsmaryk agreed with their arguments in a December 2022 ruling. Since Trump appointed him as the sole federal judge in Amarillo in 2019, Kacsmaryk has become a popular judge for conservative attorneys and the State of Texas. Before joining the bench, Kacsmaryk worked for First Liberty, a Plano religious liberty law firm, where he litigated against contraception and abortion access.

“Although other courts have held Title X ‘preempts’ state-imposed parental-notification and consent requirements, the Court finds those authorities unpersuasive,” Kacsmaryk wrote. He ruled that Title X clinics “must encourage (under federal law) family participation and obtain (under Texas law) parental consent.”

DOJ attorney Courtney Dixon told the 5th Circuit that this ruling is at odds with the “particular approach” Congress chose when laying out the Title X program.

“Congress considered adolescent services to be so important that it explicitly amended the statute to specify those services in the program,” she said, later adding, “Congress understood that even that goal of encouraging family participation may well have to give way to other competing considerations.”

On the three-judge panel was Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a conservative Trump appointee best known for arguing the Supreme Court case that allowed Hobby Lobby and other religious employers to not cover contraception as part of their health insurance plans.

Duncan equated Texas’ parental rights statute to a fence around a family’s home that’s “helping you be a parent,” he said.

“The federal government comes in, in this case, and says, ‘Well, we’ve taken the fence away. We preempted. No more fence for you. Good luck. Maybe your daughters will listen to you. I hope they do, but maybe they won’t,’” he said. “How can we say that [Deanda] is not injured by that?”

Up on appeal

The 5th Circuit has taken a wide view of standing in recent cases, including another controversial Kacsmaryk case involving the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone, where a panel of judges agreed that doctors who opposed abortion had standing to challenge the medication’s approval.

“We are clearly in a period where there's a conservative, judge-driven expansion of standing in a number of different ways,” said Liz Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “This could be a bridge too far, though.”

Sepper said this ruling is in line with other cases conservative lawyers have brought to Kacsmaryk about sexual and reproductive health.

“It seems entirely outcome driven,” she said. “I think it similarly showcases a willingness to bulldoze over lots of precedent and lots of procedural arguments.”

While this case has moved through the courts, Title X clinics in Texas began requiring parental permission before they provided birth control to minors. Teens already receiving birth control through a Title X clinic lost access unless they could go back and get parental permission, LeBleu said.

“It was devastating,” LeBleu said. “There was a lot of confusion from providers about what’s still available, what documentation was required, what new policies they had to draft up, which takes energy and effort away from caring for clients.”

It’s unclear when the 5th Circuit will rule on this case. If the appeals court overturns Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Title X clinics in Texas are prepared to “flip the switch” and resume offering confidential contraception to teens, LeBleu said.

But if it is upheld, this case will serve as a “harbinger for things to come,” Summers said.

“They're following a playbook here,” she said. “Once they have successful litigation in one place, then they start replicating it across the country.”

Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/06/texas-5th-circuit-kacmsaryk-birth-control/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Erin Douglas, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 6, 2023

"Texas could spend federal funds meant to cut carbon emissions on highway projects" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

The Texas Department of Transportation plans to spend about half a billion federal dollars on projects that the agency says will lessen the amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide emitted into the air.

But environmental and public transportation advocates say the agency’s draft “Carbon Reduction Strategy” is unlikely to substantially cut carbon emissions from the transportation sector, which emits the most greenhouse gasses of any state.

According to the TxDOT draft document, a chunk of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act money will be transferred to a highway program, and the agency says highway expansions could be eligible for the funds because they will reduce congestion, thereby reducing emissions from idling cars.

Harrison Humphreys, a research and policy coordinator at Air Alliance Houston, an environmental advocacy group, said he sees the strategy as doing “the bare minimum” to get the federal dollars and called the document “disappointing.”

TxDOT created the strategy — which outlines the methods by which it plans to cut emissions — to fulfill federal requirements for the money. TxDOT is expected to receive $641 million over five years for transportation projects that cut emissions, the most of any state.

It’s just one piece of the billions of dollars flowing to Texas from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was passed in 2021 and is funding a range of projects, from clean water to high-speed internet.

Texas’ transportation sector creates 215 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in Texas per year, according to the Energy Information Administration’s most recent data from 2021. It’s the second most carbon-polluting sector in Texas after the industrial sector.

Though the $641 million is small in comparison to TxDOT’s more than $30 billion annual budget, experts and environmental advocates noted that the strategy provides new and important insight on how TxDOT thinks about mitigating climate change and whether it’s even an important goal. Texas is eligible to get more money from the Federal Highway Administration’s $6.4 billion Carbon Reduction Program intended to mitigate transportation-related climate emissions than any other state.

The draft strategy doesn’t use the words “climate change” and nor does it state the importance of reducing emissions to avoid worsening effects of climate change. It projects that as the population grows, Texans will keep driving more miles each year over the next four decades.

California’s version of the same document says plainly, “To achieve carbon neutrality, Californians need to drive less.” In Florida, another populous Republican-controlled state, the plan acknowledges that emissions contribute to “environmental changes” including “rising temperatures, heavy rainfall, and extreme weather events.”

Jacob Corvidae, a principal at RMI, an energy transition think tank, said that while the language in the draft might reveal how state agencies are thinking about climate change, “as long as it’s being used for the right thing, I don’t necessarily care about the nomenclature.”

The bigger question, he said, is: “Does this reduce carbon [emissions] or not?”

Others were more critical of the language, arguing that it shows the state’s lack of urgency in addressing climate change. To reduce emissions, “we want people on bikes, walking, and taking public transit instead of driving,” Humphreys said. “And nowhere does TxDOT say that’s the goal.”

About $112 million of the federal money will transfer to one of the state’s federally-funded highway programs. The remaining $529 million will be spent over five years on projects that fall into at least one of seven different categories:

• Advanced technologies that improve traffic flows, such as traffic signal improvements
• Travel demand management, such as installing roundabouts
• Active transportation, which can include building bike lanes and walking paths
• Transit, such as improving bus stations
• Construction and maintenance, such as using sustainable pavement and construction materials
• Alternative fuels, including things like building electric vehicle infrastructure
• Freight movement, such as constructing “multimodal” facilities or electrifying ports.

Public comments on the draft strategy are due at 5 p.m. Wednesday to TPP_webmail@txdot.gov.

TxDOT, like many other state and federal transportation agencies, has long been criticized by environmental, racial justice and public transportation advocates for an aggressive focus on building and expanding highways over greener methods of transportation like buses or bicycling. Some business groups across the state have generally supported highway expansions — for example, several Austin business groups said they support an expansion of Interstate 35 through the city.

The majority of the agency’s funding is constitutionally dedicated to the construction and maintenance of roads and highways.

Both public transportation and environmental advocates are critical of the agency’s argument that improving traffic flow will reduce carbon emissions from vehicles. Adam Greenfield, board president of Rethink35, a group opposing an I-35 expansion in Austin, called congestion reduction a “stealth way” to continue focusing on expanding highways and other state roads.

And Humphreys, of Air Alliance Houston, said reducing congestion doesn’t provide massive reductions in carbon emissions.

“We just aren’t going to reduce millions of metric tons of emissions by fixing traffic signals,” Humphreys said.

Ryan LaFontaine, a TxDOT spokesperson, said that most major metro areas in Texas have local tax-funded transportation authorities that build public transit in cities, and that much of the agency’s public transportation funding is directed toward smaller rural and urban areas. The agency is also beginning a process to create a statewide active transportation plan, the first draft of which could be available sometime next year.

The draft strategy also includes improvements in bicycling and walking infrastructure and projects that support the use of public transportation, such as pedestrian bridges. But public transportation advocates point out that the money for carbon reduction projects pales in comparison to the billions of dollars spent every year on highway infrastructure.

Disclosure: Air Alliance Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/06/txdot-carbon-reduction-strategy-climate-transportation/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Martha Pskowski and Peter Aldhous, Inside Climate News

Oct. 31, 2023

"Oil and gas companies spill millions of gallons of wastewater in Texas" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.

The prolific oil and gas wells of Texas also generate billions of gallons of salty liquid known as produced water. A lot of this toxic water, just like crude oil, tends to get spilled.

Not just occasionally, but hundreds of times a year. From a large spill of 756,000 gallons into the Delaware River in West Texas that sent chloride levels soaring, to hundreds of small spills in one Permian Basin county, there’s hardly a corner of Texas not impacted. But messy record-keeping and ambiguous rules at the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas drilling, have long obscured the scope and severity of these spills from the public.

The Railroad Commission has never formally adopted 2009 draft guidelines for reporting and cleaning up produced water spills. The agency delegated the authority to set different reporting thresholds to district offices, in a system that relies on self-reporting by offenders and includes little enforcement to assure accuracy and compliance.

A commission spokesperson said that produced water spills must be reported and that the agency fully investigates and mitigates all spills. But the agency has never adopted official produced water spill guidelines and numerous companies are under the impression they are not required to report spills at all.

Inside Climate News has conducted the first-ever public analysis of produced water spills in Texas, working from data provided in response to open records requests to the Railroad Commission.

Over the decade from 2013 to 2022, the analysis found that oil and gas companies reported more than 10,000 individual spills totaling more than 148 million gallons of produced water. Where possible, companies use vacuum trucks to suck up as much spilled water as they can. But only about 40% of the water reported spilled from 2013 to 2022 was recovered.

The spills ranged from small leaks of less than 10 gallons to massive incidents — 19 of the reported spills exceeded 500,000 gallons. Although they represented a tiny minority of spills, with about 350 reported in the data, some of the most damaging incidents took place when produced water was spilled directly into streams, rivers, or lakes.

Both conventional oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, rely upon large quantities of water, sand and proprietary chemicals, some of which are toxic, to free the oil and gas from geologic formations deep underground. Produced water is the liquid waste that comes back to the surface and contains both the proprietary drilling fluids and naturally occurring hazardous compounds from the earth, including arsenic and organic compounds like benzene, a carcinogen.

The highly saline water can render land barren for years. Residents have filed lawsuits detailing damages from contaminated well water to poisoned cattle.

In East Texas’ Anderson County, cattle rancher Tate Willfong noticed a produced water spill on his property from Vista Energy Consulting’s pipeline in July that killed the grass his cattle graze on. He said he reported the spills to the Railroad Commission but only got help after he went to a local television reporter at KETK in Tyler. Vista Energy Consulting did not respond to a request for comment.

“I ain’t got a beef with the Railroad Commission at this time,” Willfong said. “But I didn’t get a lot out of them in the beginning.”

In Lamesa, the county seat of Dawson County in the high plains where Permian Basin oil production borders cotton farms and towering wind turbines, Doty Huff and Saul Torres filed a lawsuit against an energy firm named Enhanced Midstream, alleging that two leaks from one of the company’s produced water pipelines contaminated their well water and caused a “total loss of fair market value” of their property. Enhanced Midstream did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In Knox County, north of Abilene, rancher Tim Foote sued after his cattle knocked down a fence around a Texcel Exploration tank where produced water and oil was stored. The livestock came into contact with spilled produced water and 132 cattle died. An appeals court recently upheld a trial court’s decision that the company cannot be held responsible.

Left: Produced water bubbles up to the surface near Imperial from an abandoned well. Produced water spills and discharges have taken a toll on lands across Texas. Right: An orphaned well in Crane County began spewing produced water in 2021. The salty water covered an area that required remediation and a large pit was left behind after the salty soil was excavated. Credit: Martha Pskowski/Inside Climate News

“There's a reason why you salted your enemy's land in the Bible,” said Sarah Stogner, an oil and gas lawyer in the Permian Basin, who has documented damages from produced water spills. “Nothing grows.”

Spill logs reveal trends

The Railroad Commission records of these spills are not held in a database allowing easy analysis. Instead, they are recorded in chaotically-maintained spreadsheets called “spill logs.” Before running the analysis, Inside Climate News had to diagnose and fix various problems with the data, including inconsistent use of units, incorrectly entered dates, misaligned columns, duplicated entries, misspellings of company names, and more.

The totals from the analysis are likely incomplete. Different district offices of the Railroad Commission ask companies to report spills at different thresholds, and the entire system depends on operators self-reporting their mishaps — with little enforcement to ensure that they do so consistently and accurately.

In addition to analyzing the central spill logs provided by the Railroad Commission, Inside Climate News obtained spill logs from its regional offices throughout the state. The analysis of these sprawling records, spread across more than 200 spreadsheet files, gave a similar overall picture, but recorded almost 11 million additional gallons of spilled water.

Further scrutiny of the differences between the central- and district-level records revealed several large spills of produced water recorded at the district level which were not found in the Railroad Commission’s central records. In some cases this was because the corresponding central record had apparently not been updated from an initial entry. Others, including a spill of more than 500,000 gallons in November 2022 from a corroded pipe operated by Occidental Petroleum at a site in Gaines County, seemed to be missing from the central records altogether. Occidental did not respond to a request for comment.

“There have been different systems of tracking spills over time, so there could be differences if you’re comparing different logs,” a Railroad Commission spokesperson said.

Railroad Commission leaves produced water spill rules vague

As hydraulic fracturing allowed Texas to rapidly increase oil production, vast amounts of produced water were also generated. But even as fracking transformed the oil and gas industry, the Railroad Commission did not adopt formal rules for reporting and remediation of produced water spills.

A 2022 report calculated that the Permian Basin alone is generating 3.9 billion barrels, or over 168 billion gallons, of produced water a year. That means wastewater must be piped off well pads, stored in tanks, and trucked to disposal wells. At each step in the process, the risk for spills is present.

The Railroad Commission currently has 180 oil and gas inspectors statewide. As of July, Texas had over 161,000 oil wells and 86,000 gas wells in production.

The Railroad Commission’s Rule 3.20 requires oil and gas companies to immediately notify a district office after spills of oil or condensate, a low-density hydrocarbon liquid present in natural gas. Those spills are reported on a publicly available Railroad Commission form known as the H-8. Any crude oil spill of over 210 gallons, or five barrels, must be reported. State law prohibits pollution of above ground or subterranean water.

The H-8 form does not include produced water spills. However, a Railroad Commission spokesperson told Inside Climate News that companies must report produced water spills.

The spokesperson said the commission issued 116 violations of Rule 3.20 during fiscal year 2022. However, Railroad Commission staff were not able to identify how many of these violations were for produced water spills as opposed to oil spills.

The commission drafted the guidelines for produced water spill cleanup in 2009 that were never formally adopted. The guidelines state that companies are not required to report produced water spills but are “encouraged” to do so, an apparent contradiction of the commission’s statement to Inside Climate News.

This ambiguity has bred confusion. A spokesperson for Apache, a Houston-based oil and gas company operating in the Permian Basin, said the Railroad Commission does not require reporting.

In an email exchange provided to Inside Climate News, a Chevron employee told a Crane County land owner who had complained to the company about a produced water spill on her ranch that the company was not required to report produced water spills. A Chevron spokesperson said the company’s policy is “to follow all RRC requirements for reporting spills, including produced water,” without elaborating.

According to the District 8 office in Midland, which covers the heart of the Permian Basin, companies only must report spills larger than 250 barrels (10,500 gallons) of produced water. But there are many smaller spills on the district spreadsheets, indicating companies may have their own internal standards.

Meanwhile, produced water is included in neighboring New Mexico’s spills rule, which classifies spills of 25 barrels or more as major releases and spills between five to 25 barrels as minor releases. In New Mexico, both major and minor releases are prohibited and must be reported and remediated.

According to the conservation non-profit Center for Western Priorities, during 2022, operators in New Mexico reported 5,085,654 gallons (121,087 barrels) of produced water spills.

Company policies vary

Inside Climate News reached out to the 10 companies with the highest total volume of produced water spills with questions about their internal policies for reporting spills and remediation. Several of the companies have been sold since the spills occurred, in which case the new owners were contacted.

“Texas has robust reporting requirements and cleanup standards for spills that may incidentally occur during oil and gas production,” Permian Basin Petroleum Association President Ben Shepperd said in a statement. “Oil and gas operators in the Permian Basin each have best practices they follow for handling produced water.”

An Apache spokesperson said the company takes “strict measures to store and transport produced water in a manner that reduces the risk of impacts on soil, groundwater and surface water quality.”

The spokesperson said the company reports any spill larger than 100 barrels (4,200 gallons) that “breaches secondary containment or may be deemed sensitive.”

Left: For years, produced water has bubbled up to the surface from an abandoned well near Imperial. Known as Lake Boehmer, the site is encrusted with salt crystals and high levels of hydrogen sulfide. Right: Salt crystals from produced water that has spewed across a ranch in Crane County. The salt and chlorides can take years to break down and have lasting impacts on soil health. Credit: Martha Pskowski/Inside Climate News

A spokesperson for ExxonMobil, in reference to its subsidiary XTO Energy, said the company complies “with the reporting requirements of the Texas Railroad Commission” but did not elaborate. The spokesperson said remediation depends on salinity and soil type.

Diamondback Energy, which is not on the top 10 list but in 2019 acquired Energen, which appears on the list, is one of few companies to include produced water spill data in its annual sustainability reports. According to the Midland-based company’s 2023 report, spills increased 67% from 2021 to 2022.

Ashley Watt, the owner of Antina Ranch in Crane County who complained to Chevron about a 2020 spill on her property that she said killed a number of mesquite trees, said oil and gas operators in the Permian Basin often fail to report spills to the Railroad Commission.

“I have never seen an operator self-report anything. Full stop, that's it,” Watt said. “How many speeding tickets would be written if the only way that you got caught was self-reporting?”

Watt said her property alone has “hundreds of wells” and “hundreds of miles of flow lines,” which transport oil and gas. Watt said landowners, let alone inspectors, are unable to regularly check on every well or pipeline.

“It's almost just luck when us or anyone catches a spill,” she said.

Watt said a Chevron representative eventually told her that produced water is not included in the Railroad Commission “definition of spills required to give notice” and the company would not be reporting the spill to the Railroad Commission.

A Chevron representative declined to comment on the spill.

Railroad Commission spill response protocol

Although the Railroad Commission spokesperson told Inside Climate News that the agency requires remediation of all spills, records and interviews show that the commission only required cleanup after some spills, not all.

Apache reported that a storage tank spilled 77,500 barrels (3,255,000 gallons) of produced water on July 28, 2020 in Reeves County, about 10 miles north of Balmorhea.

According to documents provided in a records request, Railroad Commission inspectors visited the spill area, which covered approximately one quarter mile by one half mile, on July 29, Sept. 8 and Nov. 12, 2020. During each inspection the RRC noted produced water pooled on the ground, heavy salt crystals and distressed vegetation.

On Nov. 17, the commission moved to sever Apache’s lease because the spill violated state rules. Apache contacted the commission to appeal. On Jan. 26, 2021, District 8 Director Jeffery Morgan replied, siding with Apache.

“After further review, no further action will be needed for this site at this time,” Morgan wrote.

Apache kept the lease. The Railroad Commission did not require remediation or issue any penalties.

An Apache spokesperson said regulators and the company agreed that it would be “more harmful” to dig up the soil instead of allowing rainfall to dilute the produced water.

The commission spokesperson said companies are required to remove as much of the liquid as possible after spills and in some cases remove the contaminated soil. But experts said the agency should take a more holistic approach to remediation.

In the case of the 756,000 gallon spill from a flow line into the Delaware River in West Texas, the Railroad Commission’s Midland District Office was notified immediately on Aug. 1, 2017, but took a back seat to other agencies in monitoring potential pollution.

The event occurred after a Cimarex Energy salt water disposal unit in Culberson County lost power during a rainstorm. Roughly 18,000 barrels of produced water — or 756,000 gallons, more than enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool — spilled from the flow line into the Delaware River, in addition to 420 gallons of oil. The river is home to the endangered Texas hornshell mussel.

The produced water had chloride levels between 80,000 and 100,000 parts per million. The EPA recommends drinking water not exceed 250 parts per million.

On Aug. 4, a staff member at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality emailed a colleague after a counterpart in New Mexico had told her about the spill. “Did they notify y’all about this?” she asked. “We obviously have concerns. Do we have anyone checking this out?”

On Aug. 5, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department documented a fish kill in the Delaware River, including minnows, perch, and carp. A Railroad Commission inspector, Glenn Gainey, visited the site on Aug. 7 and district engineering specialist Wade Goode met with company executives two days later.

“I had a meeting with Cimarex representatives to discuss the progress on the remediation, the plan going forward, and to get water sample test results,” Goode wrote in an email update. “Cimarex informed me the booms they deployed have not seen any oil sheen.”

The Environmental Protection Agency sent their own inspectors on Aug. 9. By Sept. 21, the company seemed to think remediation was wrapping up.

“We conducted a flyover this past Thursday and since we are not observing any sheening or negative impacts to the river or surrounding shoreline, Cimarex will be discontinuing this operation,” a Cimarex supervisor wrote.

The EPA disagreed. The agency’s Region 6, which covers Texas and New Mexico, eventually issued a consent agreement requiring Cimarex to pay a $13,220 penalty and continue water testing for three years on a 40-mile section of the Delaware River.

Cimarex Energy has since merged with Cabot Oil & Gas to create Coterra Energy, which did not respond to a request for comment.

The involvement of EPA, TCEQ and other agencies in the Cimarex spill was, in many ways, atypical. For most produced water spills, the Railroad Commission acts on its own. A TCEQ spokesperson said while the Railroad Commission has jurisdiction over produced water spills, the TCEQ may initially respond to reports of spills.

A spokesperson for EPA Region 6 said the Railroad Commission is not required to notify federal officials about produced water spills, unlike crude oil spills over a certain size.

The Railroad Commission’s 2009 draft guidelines for cleaning up produced water spills focus on reducing chloride levels in soil and identifying potential groundwater contamination. The guidelines also recommend testing for additional contaminants, including benzene, toluene and metals in some cases.

Stogner, the attorney, said in practice, many companies in the Permian Basin simply remove the soil and replace it with caliche, a sedimentary rock common in the area. She said the remediated areas are unfit for any other productive use like agriculture. Stogner is running against incumbent Railroad Commission Chair Christi Craddick as a member of the Forward Party. In 2022, she unsuccessfully challenged Commissioner Wayne Christian.

John Lacik has used his proprietary soil amendment for produced water spills on sites from North Dakota to Louisiana. He advocates for remediating the soil onsite, instead of trucking in soil or rock. Lacik, who now owns the Texas-based remediation company Gromega LLC, said chloride shouldn’t be the only constituent considered in remediation.

“Treatment types have to be based and determined on each site,” Lacik said. “If there was a cure-all fix, we'd be using it everywhere.”

Experts agreed the problem of salty produced water spills in Texas isn’t going away any time soon. But Lacik said there are solutions for those willing to look for them.

“Maybe I'm just a dreamer on this,” Lacik said. “But the good Lord only made so much land. What is the cost limit to restore land so that it will be productive again?”

Disclosure: Ben Shepperd, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Permian Basin Petroleum Association and Texas Parks And Wildlife Department have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/31/texas-oil-gas-fracking-wastewater-spills-railroad-commission/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Karen Brooks Harper, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 2, 2023

"Texas GOP lawmakers’ border and education wishlist would expand state budget by $2.7 billion — and counting" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Republican state lawmakers want to spend $2.7 billion in new tax money during the current special legislative session, raising concerns among some budget watchers that the state may not be able to meet future unexpected costs without cutting programs.

The Texas House and Senate have advanced proposals that would spend $1.5 billion to complete 100 miles of barriers along some of the high-traffic areas of the 1,254-mile Texas-Mexico border. The Senate has also proposed adding $1.2 billion to the public education budget to increase teacher pay, boost school safety and bump state payments to schools.

The proposals would expand the record $321.3 billion state budget for 2024-25 that lawmakers passed just four months ago.

Due to unexpectedly high tax collections in recent months, Texas was flush with more cash than ever as lawmakers headed into session in early October to address border issues and a private-school voucher program — both of which failed during the regular session in spite of being heavily pushed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

If they pass, lawmakers will be left with — at most — $3.3 billion to take care of any unforeseen costs over the next two years before they hit a constitutional spending limit they set to rein in budget growth between cycles.

Analysts on both ends of the political spectrum wonder if that will be enough.

“I think they’re cutting it awfully close,” said Shannon Halbrook, senior fiscal analyst at Every Texan, a progressive policy think tank in Austin that advocates for higher education funding but is against more border spending. “The two biggest items in the budget by far are public education — K-12 and higher ed — and health care. I imagine that's where they would try to cut first. But Texans across the state depend on adequately funding those parts of the budget. And we should make sure enough is left over to deal with natural disasters or other unexpected needs during the next two years.”

Just before the special session started, state Comptroller Glenn Hegar told lawmakers that there was about $6 billion more in revenue than his office had anticipated in January when the budget-writing process began.

At the time, Hegar suggested they spend some of the extra cash on boosting teacher pay, something that was widely promised but also failed to pass during the regular session.

Free-market economist Vance Ginn said he’d prefer lawmakers not spend the extra cash on government programs — particularly if they’re not going to send back every extra dollar to Texans in the form of more property tax cuts.

"If you're going to spend more in one area, maybe that's the best policy decision that they want to make, and maybe that's the best way to do it," he said. "But I would like to see spending cuts in other places. Like, say we're not gonna spend as much over here and now we have it available over there."

But the Republican budget writers don’t seem to be doing that, he said — leaving little wiggle room in future spending cycles.

The new spending proposals come just four months after a historic $32.7 billion surplus led lawmakers to approve unprecedented levels of spending for the 2024-25 budget cycle, which started in September.

Lawmakers took advantage of overflowing state coffers to spend $144 billion of tax money, including half that surplus, on priorities that included property tax cuts, beefing up border security operations, building mental health hospitals, and investing in water infrastructure, broadband and public parks.

Meanwhile, next week voters are going to decide whether to spend up to $20 billion of that money through constitutional amendments, which Ginn said could lock the state into commitments like continuing to pay billions to public schools or on costly infrastructure projects. It could also create a framework for uncontrolled spending since money approved by voters isn’t subject to any spending limits at all, he said.

“They're just adding to what is the largest spending increase in Texas history, and so as a fiscal conservative, there's a lot of questions about how quickly they're spending taxpayer money,” said Ginn, a former fiscal policy analyst for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. “I've been pretty frustrated by the lack of spending restraint … I think that we're setting ourselves up for unsustainable spending.”

Border bills with no price tag

Lawmakers are facing mounting pressure to address school vouchers, teacher pay and illegal immigration. But the pressure to also rein in tax spending is not lost on those who are making the billion-dollar decisions.

During hearings on the border wall funding, Senate Finance Chair Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican, fielded questions from rural lawmakers about whether putting more money into the barrier would lock them into a spending cycle on an issue that should be handled by the federal government.

Huffman told her colleagues that the wall was just a small part of a larger plan to protect the border through barriers, technology and personnel — before asking Texas Border Czar Mike Banks, who oversees border issues for Abbott’s office, to elaborate for the skeptical committee members.

“I don't want the public to think there's just a bunch of people spending money,” Huffman said. “[We] are trying to look at how we can be most effectively and fiscally responsible in putting this much money into a serious problem … Clearly there’s going to be some pushback. It’s a lot of money.”

Senate Bill 6, by Huffman, and House Bill 6, by state Rep. Jacey Jetton, R-Richmond, both propose sending $1.5 billion to Abbott’s office to administer funds to continue building border barriers that will eventually cover 100 miles — along with floating barriers on the Rio Grande — on parts of the Texas-Mexico border.

The money would be on top of at least $1.5 billion in contracts the state has issued since September 2021 and in addition to $1.5 billion Abbott received for his border mission earlier this year. The state has spent some $10 billion on border operations since 2021, Huffman said.

What’s unknown is how much higher that amount will go if lawmakers pass House Bill 4, by state Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro and Senate Bill 4, by state Sen. Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton, both border-related bills with no price tag attached.

HB 4 would empower Texas law enforcement officers to arrest, jail or send back migrants who cross the border illegally. That bill was approved by the House. Senators are pushing for changes to the bill that would not allow Texas officers to send migrants back across the border; instead they would be turned over to federal authorities.

SB 4 would increase the minimum sentence from two years to 10 years for smuggling immigrants or operating a stash house. That bill has been approved by both chambers and now goes to the governor’s office for Abbott’s consideration.

Fiscal analyses of those bills by the Texas Legislative Budget Board say there will be likely costs to the state and local governments, but that there is no way to reliably predict what they will be.

DPS Chief Steve McCraw told senators in a hearing Wednesday that “clearly we’ll be arresting more people” under the legislation, and that if that happens, “there needs to be capacity built around it” in terms of courts, detention capacity, law enforcement and indigent defense.

McCraw estimated that officers could detain as many as 80,000 border crossers per year if HB 4 passes.

“I would like a more accurate number,” said state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. “We don't really have a handle on the costs … Otherwise we’re just groping in the dark, traveling through the fog, and we don’t have any real plan on what the actual cost is, or how we’re going to manage it.”

The border bills, with their financial unknowns, provide “a lot of opportunity for cost overruns at the local level,” state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, another Senate Finance Committee member, said at a hearing this week.

“My concern is that we’re going to spend $1.5 billion … [but that] probably won’t scratch the surface of the potential cost to the state,” Perry added. “I’m concerned that if this is the only money — and I’m not about spending more money, in fact I’ve got reservations anyway — but that we’re not going to fund the [budgetary] problem we’re creating.”

Education savings accounts and other variables

The uncertainty over the impact of the session on the budget isn’t limited to border spending.

One of the education proposals making its way through the special session is Senate Bill 2, by state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, which would add $1.2 billion in new funding for school security, payments to schools and teacher pay raises.

The lack of clarity for future spending comes with the potential cost of a separate proposal, Senate Bill 1, also by Creighton, which would spend $500 million of the current budget on a voucher program for parents to spend on schools that are not part of the public education system.

What’s not known is what the program could cost in the future if Abbott and other Republican budget leaders decide to use their interim budget authority to bump up the funding for the program in the next two years — not mention how big they’ll allow the program to become in future sessions.

At its current funding levels, the proposed school voucher program would cost at least $1 billion per cycle to maintain.

House and Senate budget writers will have roughly $18.6 billion in surplus cash waiting for them in state coffers when they reconvene in January 2025 to write a new budget, Hegar estimated, but most of that money can’t be used this cycle unless lawmakers take the unlikely step of voting to bust the spending limit.

What they do have available, currently $6 billion before the cap is reached, can be used to fill gaps created in the next two years by unforeseen costs or revenue drops. Lawmakers typically build leeway into the budget to account for those gaps.

But the costs can fluctuate dramatically.

They frequently include about $2 billion to supplement Medicaid services in the state and an average of nearly $200 million to cover prison health care cost increases, both of which are shortfalls legislators plan on each session. In addition, the state often has to cover emergency funding to respond to hurricanes or other natural disasters.

Lawmakers also must be prepared to cover gaps created by recessions or even the slowdown of inflation, which dampens sales tax collections and reduces the amount of money available for the state budget.

Some say that with a considerable surplus waiting for them in the next budget cycle and plenty of ways around spending limits generally, the notion that lawmakers will be strapped to the point of cutting programs is unlikely in the near future.

“Budget writers have some flexibility in adjusting how certain programs are funded and the timing of that funding, which can create more flexibility for budget writers in 2025 to meet the priorities of the 89th Legislature,” said Rahul Sreenivasan, a policy adviser at Texas 2036, an Austin think tank.

But given all the variables between now and then, the $3.3 billion left over if all the proposals pass “might be enough to cover an anticipated Medicaid shortfall, but may not leave room for much else under this spending cap,” Sreenivasan said.

And that’s if nothing about Hegar’s prediction changes in the next 18 months.

“The revenue outlook can change,” Sreenivasan said. “The comptroller previously said this revised estimate was still a conservative estimate, suggesting there are scenarios where our projected fund balance will be even higher, as well as scenarios where the revenues come in even lower than projected.”

Disclosure: Every Texan, Texas 2036 and Texas Public Policy Foundation have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/02/texas-budget-surplus-border-education/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Sneha Dey, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 2, 2023

"These home-schooling moms want to create a “microschool” for Black kids. They need vouchers to make it happen." was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

ROWLETT — Sharby Hunt-Hart stacked a table at her local library with colored pencils, skin-tone crayons and picture books with Black girl protagonists. Four girls, ready to start their school day, looked up at her.

“I want our big girls to think about the kind of person you want to be,” Hunt-Hart, an educator of 17 years and a mom, told the girls.

With a marker, Addi, 6, furrowed her brow and got to work. She drew a picture of herself with her hair short, like it was that day. She added blue scribbles for the sky and green scribbles for the grass. Her arm in the picture was extended, holding a flower: “I gave Mommy a flower.”

“You want to be a giver,” Hunt-Hart said. “Thank you for sharing, Addi.”

Here in the eastern suburbs of Dallas, three mothers are home-schooling to reimagine education for their daughters. During school days, the girls get in about two hours of core instruction like reading and math, but they also draw, go on nature walks and build fairy villages with the rocks they find.

The mothers say their public schools were not equipped to create a learning space that’s wholly safe for Black kids or embraces their culture and identity. Together they create lesson plans to meet each girl’s learning needs and adapt their pace when a child is struggling.

The mothers want to expand their group and create a “microschool” that serves more Black boys and girls in the region, mirroring the Black Mothers’ Forum schools in Arizona. Microschools refer to learning settings where class sizes are small, typically composed of fewer than 15 students, and the schedule and curricula are tailored to the needs of each student. It is seen as an arrangement between home-schooling and traditional schooling.

“What we're doing with the microschools is decolonizing what we know of education,” Chantel Jones-Bigby, mom to Addi, said. “And we have so much less resources. We're working with so much less, but yet, our children are doing academically, emotionally better.”

The mothers already have spoken with other parents ready to pull their kids out of private and public schools to participate in their collective. But to grow, they say they need the Legislature to create education savings accounts, a voucher-style program through which families could access state funds and pay for private school or alternative education settings.

At the state Capitol, legislators are at odds over whether to use taxpayer dollars for non-public education. Democrats and rural Republicans in the Texas House have long blocked voucher programs, saying any funds for education should go to public schools struggling financially after the pandemic and amid inflation. Supporters say education savings accounts give parents choices beyond public schools on how their children can learn.

Jones-Bigby said the public education system must face the reality that they often fail to serve Black kids well.

“I didn't just remove my daughter from a building in a school. I removed her from the consciousness that was there that was creating the symptoms of what I was seeing with her in her learning,” she said. “Even if [schools] have more money, if you still have the same culture and consciousness, but new technology, what does that change?”

Year one in public school 

Hunt-Hart’s daughter Lacey had a hard time in public school.

Meltdowns were commonplace after coming back from kindergarten, stretching out for over an hour when she got home. The exhaustion and overstimulation from the classroom often boiled over into tears.

Lacey, who prefers to cartwheel instead of walking and shouts when she sees a bird, stifled herself in kindergarten, Hunt-Hart said. Lacey learned her energy would not be celebrated. She watched other kids in her class be disciplined for their loudness. So she shifted her mannerisms, even earning a leadership award at the end of the year for being quiet and well-behaved.

“I don't want my kid getting the leadership award at 5; I want her to work through her humanity,”said Hunt-Hart, who knows all too well that loudness in Black girls is often seen as a threat. “Schools teach kids to color inside the lines, to walk down the hall with your hands behind your back, to not to feel the pattern on the wall. They teach you not to talk and to not let your voice be loud.”

Lacey also struggled in a classroom where she was the only Black student — a worry that she shared with her kindergarten teacher after class. Just 15% of students were Black at her public elementary school, Hunt-Hart said.

One school day in February, Lacey got pulled out of class for not keeping up with the school’s dress code. She had dressed herself for the first time that morning, carefully picking out navy blue leggings with unicorns on them. The school’s uniform only permits students to wear khaki or navy blue pants.

Within 10 minutes of school starting, the principal had pulled her out of class and instructed her to wear another student's khaki pants, a few sizes too big.

“Is uniform what’s really important? Or is it that she’s here, that she’s present and ready to learn?” Hunt-Hart said. “The rules [in public schools] are so much more important than their humanity, making them comply to what's easiest for adults instead of what's best for kids.”

Four generations in public schools

Generations of Hunt-Hart’s family have struggled as Black children in Texas public schools. Lacey’s grandmother was one of the last graduating classes at Dunbar High School in Lufkin before desegregation. Lacey’s great-grandmother started school but had to drop out to clean homes for work.

When Hunt-Hart entered the Lufkin public school district, she quickly learned that some remnants of segregation had never truly been scrubbed away — much like the “Blacks only” and “whites only” signs over the water fountains in town that were still up, just painted over.

Her principal, a pillar of the Black community, would greet her and other students at the front every morning in a suit. He was an anchor for Hunt-Hart and made her feel protected. But one year, his office was set on fire.

When Hunt-Hart got to fourth grade, her teacher seemed to stare at her and the Black kids with a misplaced anger. For the first time, Hunt-Hart got Cs on her report card.

“She hated the Black kids. ... It didn't matter how much we smiled or tried to dazzle with good handwriting or completing our work early or being as quiet as a mouse,” Hunt-Hart said. “I just remember knowing I don't know how to be smart anymore as a 9-year-old.”

Up through high school, Hunt-Hart mastered the tap dance of people pleasing. Now she was watching her daughter learn the same dance. She had to try a different way.

“You find that they're pieces of you that have been eaten away because of the assimilation,” she said.

Public school is ‘our bread and butter’

The home-schooling mothers have invested decades in public education. Their husbands are athletic coaches and high school teachers.

"We believe in the public school system," Hunt-Hart said. "It’s our bread and butter."

They also know its shortcomings, she said.

Anna Sneed, a mom in the home-schooling trio, spent 14 years as a high school teacher before she became an assistant principal. Her classes were “heavy on the love, light on the social studies,” Sneed likes to say.

Her students knew what they were going to get in her classroom. She was going to be tough on them but she would respect them and make them feel seen and heard.

But Sneed didn’t have the space as a teacher to tailor her instruction to every students’ needs.

"I see them for 90 minutes at a time," she said. "I can't teach you about the fall of the Roman Empire 34 different ways in 90 minutes."

When her daughter turned school age, Sneed looked into the neighborhood school her family was zoned for. It had received a C in the Texas Education Agency’s accountability rating system. And students of color were performing far worse than their white peers. Sneed knew there were good teachers in public schools, but she still couldn’t send her daughter to a system she saw as broken beyond repair.

“Becoming a mom took the rose-colored glasses off of my career as a teacher,” Sneed said.

Arizona, education savings accounts and microschools

Black students tend to experience harsher discipline than white students in public school, even when it comes to minor infractions like dress code violations. That has damaging effects on their sense of belonging at school and their academic performance years later, according to research from the American Psychological Association.

In the 2018-19 school year, 26% of students in Texas who received in-school suspensions were Black, though they made up just 13% of public school enrollment. A Black teen at Barbers Hill High School in Chambers County was suspended and sent to a disciplinary program this year for his hairstyle, testing a new law that bars discrimination of hair styles based on race.

If schools don’t rethink how they discipline and treat Black kids, Jones-Bigby worries it can put them on the wrong track.

“Most of the day, they spend it in an environment where they are devalued. They are lost. They are waiting for direction,” Jones-Bigby said. “Someone has a plan for my child when they are lost. It involves an orange suit and a 4-by-4 box.”

In Arizona, 40 Black moms gathered in 2016 with the same worries for their children, ready to dismantle what they call the school-to-prison pipeline. Their kids were bullied in school and did not feel supported by the teachers. The moms started by pushing school districts to form a re-entry-after-suspension plan and find alternatives to suspension as a disciplinary measure.

By 2021, they had opened their own microschool, also known as outsourced home schooling. The Arizona microschools depend on the state’s education savings account program for sustainability.

“The public school system that was in place was not doing what it was supposed to do. Our children were not reaping the benefits,” said Janelle Wood, the founder of Black Mothers Forum in Arizona. “And so we needed a tool to help us fuel our vehicle of the microschool in order for us to grow.”

Arizona is widely seen as ground zero for school vouchers. The state has one of the largest education savings account programs in the country, where almost any child is eligible. The state began with a limited version of the program in 2011 that only served students with disabilities. In 12 years, enrollment in the program has grown from about 150 students to over 60,000.

A stalemate at the Texas Legislature 

Like in Arizona, the mothers in the Dallas suburbs want to grow their small teaching collective with the help of an education saving accounts program in Texas.

Education savings accounts would allow families to exit the public education system and use taxpayer dollars to pay for alternative learning settings like a microschool. The three mothers would welcome those funds to scale up and pay for instructional materials and a dedicated learning space.

The fate of school vouchers and the mothers’ plans hang in balance while the state Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott wrestle over creating this type of program.

The governor — a staunch supporter of education savings accounts — called a special legislative session last month asking lawmakers to pass a voucher program after similar legislation failed during the regular session. With less than a week to go before the end of the special session, it remains to be seen if lawmakers can reach a consensus. Abbott has threatened to call another special session if lawmakers don’t act on vouchers and promised political repercussions during next year’s elections for those who get in the way.

Chantel Jones-Bigby helps her daughter with a story time activity at the Rowlett Public Library. Credit: Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune

While voucher bills have routinely passed in the Senate, they have not gotten a floor vote in the House in recent years. Rural Republicans have often banded with Democrats to shut down vouchers.

Opponents say vouchers mean less money for public schools, which already do not get enough funding to raise teacher salaries and meet their other needs. When students leave public schools for alternative education settings, schools get less funds because state funding is tied to student attendance.

Supporters like Jones-Bigby hope student departures will push public schools to innovate. She said families need more school options to ensure their kids can get what they need.

“As much as I would love the public school system to work for my child, it doesn’t,” Jones-Bigby said. “Am I responsible to the system or am I responsible to my child?”

She doesn’t have to think twice — she picks her daughters every time.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/02/texas-microschool-black-children-school-vouchers/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Zach Despart, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 2, 2023

"Gov. Greg Abbott travels to Israel to offer Texas’ support in war" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday morning announced that he flew overnight to Israel to reaffirm Texas’ support for the Middle Eastern nation.

Abbott, joined by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a fellow Republican, said in a statement that he wanted to learn more about how Texas can assist Israel in its war against Hamas. The militant group, based in Gaza, killed more than 1,400 Israelis in a surprise attack Oct. 7.

“Unfortunately, never has freedom in Israel been more threatened than it is right now — and the people of Israel are vigorously fighting to defend it,” Abbott said in a statement. “Texas stands ready to offer our complete and total support to Israel in their fight against brutal terrorist organizations like Hamas."

Abbott said he will meet with Israeli officials and visit with victims. His office released a photo of the governors and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Abbott’s unannounced trip came as the third special legislative session he called unraveled over disagreements on school vouchers, the governor’s top priority.

[With time running out, House punts on taking action on school vouchers]

Though Abbott said Wednesday morning that he believed the Texas House would pass a voucher bill before the session ends next Tuesday, the House hours later signaled it has no plans to work on such a bill. House Speaker Dade Phelan recessed the chamber, likely until Monday or Tuesday, pending the Senate’s approval of several House bills related to border security.

Abbott did not immediately respond to questions Thursday morning about why he would leave the state if he believed the passage of a major piece of legislation was imminent.

His statement said the trip was coordinated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel and the Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest. It is Abbott’s third trip to Israel since he was elected in 2014.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/02/greg-abbott-travels-israel-legislature/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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By Caroline Wilburn, The Texas Tribune

Nov. 1, 2023

"School leaders say Texas’ campus safety funding doesn’t cover new state mandates" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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State legislators made school safety a top priority this year after 19 students and two teachers died in the 2022 Uvalde school shooting. But even after they passed a sweeping bill on the topic this May, schools have been raising the alarm that the $1.4 billion approved to fund the new initiatives doesn’t go nearly far enough.

School districts are now worried that political fighting over vouchers might prevent them from getting additional help.

House Bill 3, signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in June, requires school districts to develop active-shooter plans and mandates mental health training for certain employees. It also provides funds for schools to install silent panic buttons in classrooms and requires each campus to have an armed guard present during school hours.

[New school safety laws seek to add armed guards, chaplains and mental health training. Here’s what you need to know.]

All those measures created new costs for schools already dealing with high inflation, a challenging labor market and a disappointing end to this year's regular legislative session, in which a measure that would have sent schools an additional $4.5 billion fell victim to squabbling between the Texas House and Senate over voucher programs.

Many school officials have said the $10 per student and $15,000 per campus that each district got for school safety expenses doesn’t go far enough to cover what for many districts includes the need to hire new full-time personnel at each school.

When safety measures like protective fencing are mandated by the state, the limited number of vendors who offer the service greatly increase prices, said Craig Bessent, a Texas School Safety Center board member appointed by Abbott. This creates an issue for smaller school districts that spend most of the funding they receive on other needs like school buses and teacher pay.

Hearne Independent School District Superintendent Adrain Johnson said his rural district has been forced to spend other funds on the new safety measures. In recent years, the district has made several safety upgrades, including adding metal detectors, silent panic buttons, new fencing and additional cameras to campuses.

In addition to increased safety measures, the district spends approximately $115,000 a year to pay for two officers, equipment, training and a vehicle for the district’s campuses.

“It's disappointing that we didn't get the funding to do it at a level that doesn't hurt the district, and allows us to keep most of our funding dedicated to the education of children,” he said.

Last month, Abbott called lawmakers back for a special legislative session, urging them to pass his top legislative priority: a school voucher program that would create a way for Texas parents to use state dollars to pay for their children’s private school tuition or home-schooling expenses.

The Senate has already passed Senate Bill 2, a companion measure meant to provide additional funding for school districts to support teacher pay and safety measures. That bill would double the per-student school safety allotment to $20 and increase the per-campus allotment to $30,000. It would also clarify who qualifies as an armed security officer required to be on each campus.

But the state constitution says lawmakers can only pass bills on topics designated by the governor in a special session, and so far Abbott has not added school safety funding to his agenda. He has indicated a willingness to consider school finance as an issue later this session, but only after a voucher bill passes. That seems uncertain, given sustained opposition in the House.

The House has not taken any action on the Senate bill yet, and a House proposal appears similarly stuck. The special session must end by Nov. 7.

But even if SB 2 were to pass, many schools say it wouldn’t be enough. Dallas ISD Chief Operations Officer David Bates said installing some safety measures would still be financially difficult for the large urban school district. Paying an armed guard can cost $65,000 to $70,000 per campus, Bates said.

“To go from $15,000 to $30,000 per campus would be a big lift, but still misses the mark by about 50%,” he said.

Safety measures mandated by the Legislature are an added financial burden for the district on top of recapture payments and declining enrollment, Bates said. To continue to upgrade and install safety measures, the district will have to draw funds from its savings account, as it often has done in the past.

Meanwhile, for Khang Ngo, a junior at Clear Brook High School south of Houston, the measures being implemented — including the hiring of four police officers — are a stressful reminder of being a student in the age of school shootings.

“I feel like the guards just set in stone the reality even more,” Ngo said. “It's apparent now that we need more police officers in order to make sure we're safe.”

But Ngo said he doesn’t feel much safer going to school and fears no amount of increased safety is enough.

“I’m still scared that someday, someone will come in and shoot at my school,” he said. “After all, these other schools had all these security changes implemented and they still had shootings, so why can’t mine?”

Bessent, the school safety board member, said Texas leaders have continued to make the security of students a priority.

“The state of Texas is one of the leading states in school safety,” he said. “They're very proactive, our legislators have supported us, Gov. Abbott has supported us. … No one ever said it was going to be a fast and easy process. We have to keep going, we have to keep working at it even in times when we don't have a school safety bill.”

Johnson, the Hearne superintendent, said he hopes his district can work collaboratively with the state to come up with a plan that helps it carry out these measures without an overbearing cost on the district and the taxpayers.

In the meantime, Johnson said the district will continue to do everything it can to protect students.

“It's not going to stop us,” he said. “We're going to do what we can, all we can do for the safety of our students. That's our number one priority, along with educating our kids.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/01/texas-school-safety-funding/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The post School leaders say Texas’ campus safety funding doesn’t cover new state mandates appeared first on KVIA.

By Karen Brooks Harper, The Texas Tribune

Oct. 31, 2023

"Sweeping ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates by private employers heads to governor" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A sweeping ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates for employees of private Texas businesses is on its way to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, carrying with it a $50,000 fine for employers who punish workers for refusing the shot.

Senate Bill 7, by state Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, cleared its final hurdle Tuesday when senators agreed on a 17-11 vote to accept the House version of the legislation, which raised the fine from the $10,000 initially proposed in the bill.

The legislation, which Republican lawmakers have been trying to pass since 2021, offers no exceptions for doctors’ offices, clinics or other health facilities. The bill also includes unpaid volunteers and students working in medical internships or other unpaid positions as part of graduation requirements.

Private employers are allowed by the legislation to require unvaccinated employees and contractors to wear protective gear, such as masks, or enact other “reasonable” measures to protect medically vulnerable people who work or come into their places of businesses or medical facilities.

The legislation makes it illegal, however, for any employer to take action against or otherwise place requirements on an unvaccinated employee that the Texas Workforce Commission determines would adversely affect the employee or constitute punishment.

Bill sponsors said the ban will be the strongest in the nation.

“At the end of the day, this is about protecting the individual's ability [to stay employed] and making sure that they have the right to choose whether or not to get the shot,” Middleton said.

Enforcement would be handled through employee complaints to the workforce commission, with violators subject to the fine and potential lawsuits by the Texas attorney general.

Opponents of the bill, mostly Democrats, argued that it took away business owners’ freedom to decide who to hire, which contractors to do business with, and how to keep their customers and employees safe. Critics also argued that the ban would prevent health care professionals from imposing vaccine policies that lower the risk of viral spread for their patients.

Some lawmakers also said they were concerned that business owners could be subject to expensive legal and administrative costs for trying to enact other measures to protect their employees, like requiring unvaccinated employees to change offices or work remotely. The bill is vague on whether such actions would be prohibited.

“Are you telling me if I'm making my living, running a food truck, and I want to hire someone to help me flip the burgers, and I happen to be one of those crazy people who think that COVID is bad for me, I can't precondition their employment on them being vaccinated?” said state Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas. “Where’s the balance in that?”

Abbott included the ban in his agenda for the special legislative session, which ends next week.

Texans lived for three years under a statewide COVID-19 emergency declaration, which Abbott maintained in spite of pushback from his party. He promised to lift it only after lawmakers had codified his executive orders that prohibited local COVID restrictions.

During the regular legislative session, lawmakers obliged by prohibiting local governments from requiring masks, vaccines or business shutdowns in response to COVID-19. That law went into effect Sept. 1. Efforts to extend the ban to private businesses, however, fell short.

Abbott ended the emergency declaration over the summer, which the bill’s supporters say triggered a critical need to protect workers who did not want to be vaccinated against the virus.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/31/texas-legislature-covid-vaccine-mandates-ban-bill/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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