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Newsclips - April 18, 2024 |
Lead Stories
Miriam Adelson and the Texas Sands PAC are ones to watch
Miriam Adelson poured $4.1 million into a political action committee in Texas ahead of March's primary elections — signaling her increased interest in Lone Star State politics amid efforts to legalize gambling. Adelson, part of the new majority ownership group of the Dallas Mavericks and head of the family that controls Las Vegas Sands Corp., made the contribution to the Texas Sands PAC on Feb. 6, according to a Feb. 26 campaign finance report. Her contribution came two months after her family finalized its purchase of a majority stake in the Mavericks from longtime owner Mark Cuban on Dec. 27. Dallas Business Journal dove into the February campaign finance reports to examine the influence of Adelson and her family heading into next year's legislative session.
Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS), a casino company that generated more than $10 billion in revenue in 2023, also contributed $9,000 to the PAC between December and February. The company launched the PAC in January 2022 with $2.3 million of initial funding from Adelson. The campaign finance report shows Texas Sands PAC spent $1.9 million supporting 35 candidates in primary races this year — an average of nearly $56,000 each. A spokesperson for Las Vegas Sands could not immediately be reached for comment. House Speaker Dade Phelan received the largest contribution at $200,000 in his heated state representative primary race. Phelan, a Republican from Beaumont, came in second to David Covey in the primary and the two are headed to a May runoff. Phalen has feuded with the far right wing of the GOP and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who backs Covey. Phelan supported the House's impeachment of Paxton last year. In North Texas, where it's common for Texans to go to Oklahoma to gamble, politicians whose campaigns received funding from the PAC included Rep. Frederick Frazier with $79,000, Rep. Justin Holland with $79,000, Rep. Charlie Geren with $60,000, Rep. Venton Jones with $54,000, Rep. Angie Chen Button with $29,000, Rep. Ben Bumgarner with $29,000, Rep. Morgan Meyer with $29,000 and Rep. Jeff Leach with $15,000.
Read this article at Austin Business Journal - Subscribers Only
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Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas announces plans for new casino resort in Polk County
The Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas has unveiled plans to construct a brand-new casino resort on its tribal lands in Polk County, a move expected to drive the tribe's economy and boost tourism. Announced on Monday, the plans for the new casino resort were met with enthusiasm from Tribal Council chairman, Ricky Sylestine, who expressed excitement about the project's potential impact. "We are incredibly excited to embark on this new chapter," said Sylestine. "This new casino resort will not only provide significant economic benefits for those living and working in the region, but it will also become a vibrant destination for visitors."
While specific details about the resort are still in the works, the property is expected to feature a state-of-the-art casino floor, hotel accommodations, and a diverse array of dining and entertainment options. To bring their vision to life, the tribe has enlisted architectural firm FFKR to design the new resort. In addition to the construction of the new casino resort, the tribe has also outlined plans for an extensive remodel of its existing Ischoopa/One Stop Convenience Store and Truck Stop. This renovation project will include the incorporation of electronic bingo machines. As the project progresses, the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas has assured the public that they will continue to provide updates and news related to the new resort, as well as any additional developments that may arise in the coming months. The tribe also owns and operates Naskila Casino at 540 State Park Rd 56, Livingston, Texas.
Read this article at Pechanga - Subscribers Only
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Candidates clash in race to succeed Whitmire in Texas Senate
If Houstonians found recent political debates to be largely uneventful events, then they were in for a big surprise Wednesday night, when state Rep. Jarvis Johnson and emergency room nurse Molly Cook took to the stage. The two candidates, running to succeed Mayor John Whitmire in the Texas Senate, repeatedly clashed over their backgrounds and records ahead of back-to-back elections. The District 15 seat became vacant for the first time since 1983 when Whitmire left the Legislature to serve as Houston's mayor. During the Democratic primary in March, Johnson and Cook received 36% and 21% of the ballots cast, respectively, eliminating four other candidates from the race. Since neither candidate received a majority of the vote, they are now set to compete against each other in a primary runoff on May 28.
Due to Whitmire’s early resignation, the two will also face off in a special election on May 4 to decide who will complete the remainder of Whitmire’s term this year. Early voting for the special election starts Monday. During a debate Wednesday evening, organized by the Bayou Blue Democrats, Johnson took aim at Cook for her lack of experience serving in elected office. Cook, striving to close a 15-percentage-point gap behind her opponent, in turn leveled sharp attacks against Johnson for the state representative’s voting and donation records. The district has traditionally been a Democratic stronghold, encompassing several of Houston's most prominent neighborhoods, such as Montrose and the Heights. The winning Democrat in the runoff will face local businessman Joseph Trahan, the sole Republican to enter the race for the seat, in November. Johnson’s attendance rate was not the only issue Cook raised on Wednesday. She cited several legislative actions that she argued demonstrate Johnson’s records are out of step with Democratic values. She criticized Johnson for supporting a Republican-backed bill that she said made it more difficult for individuals with pre-existing conditions to secure equitable health insurance coverage. The vote was particularly disturbing to her as a health care professional who “see(s) people day in and day out with fear in their eyes, disease in their bodies,” she said. Johnson said he supported the bill only after the Democrats had successfully added a favorable amendment to improve transparency in the process. Voting against the bill after securing the amendment, he said, would have jeopardized relationships with the Republican majority.
Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only
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Trump campaign asks for cut of candidates’ fundraising when they use his name and likeness
By asking Republican candidates to break off a chunk of their proceeds, the Trump campaign would enlarge its bank account. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO By ALEX ISENSTADT 04/17/2024 02:57 PM EDT Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has found a new way to press for badly needed cash. In a letter received by Republican digital vendors this week, the Trump campaign is asking for down-ballot candidates who use his name, image and likeness in fundraising appeals to give at least 5 percent of the proceeds to the campaign. “Beginning tomorrow, we ask that all candidates and committees who choose to use President Trump’s name, image, and likeness split a minimum of 5% of all fundraising solicitations to Trump National Committee JFC. This includes but is not limited to sending to the house file, prospecting vendors, and advertising,” Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote in the letter, which is dated April 15.
They add: “Any split that is higher than 5% will be seen favorably by the RNC and President Trump’s campaign and is routinely reported to the highest levels of leadership within both organizations.” Trump officials insisted that the purpose of the 5 percent request was not to raise money for themselves but rather to dissuade “scammers” from using Trump’s brand without his permission and diluting his ability to raise cash. The letter comes as Trump is struggling to close a fundraising gap with President Joe Biden. Biden’s campaign has said that it has raised over $190 million, more than double what Trump has taken in. Trump’s campaign has acknowledged that it will be outraised by Biden, though it has been looking to make up ground, with large and small donors alike. By asking Republican candidates to break off a chunk of their proceeds, the Trump campaign would enlarge its bank account. The letter was sent the same week Trump’s hush-money trial began in New York. The trial is expected to last at least six weeks and will greatly hinder the former president’s ability to hit the campaign trail with just seven months left before the November election.
Read this article at Politico - Subscribers Only
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State Stories
County judge calls on Texas to process, jail its own migrants
Citing a lack of resources, El Paso County officials are asking Texas to use its own judges and jail space to hold migrants arrested at the border wall on state charges. The plea comes after the Texas Department of Public Safety on Friday arrested another 200 migrants on rioting charges after some cut razor wire the state had placed along the Rio Grande, and tried to make their way to the Border Patrol on the other side. “It looks like we’ll be able to process 140 to 145 (by) today. […] We’re trying to process 20-30 at a time,” County Judge Ricardo Samaniego told KTSM on Tuesday. “We can handle this one, but if tomorrow we have a number this size… no more (jail) space and the District Attorney would not have the resources to process them.”
Migrants arrested at the border, either by the state or federal agents, are taken to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility. If they face local charges, they’re transferred to the jails. The Downtown County Jail normally can house up to 1,010 inmates but is undergoing construction that robs it of 300 to 350 beds a day. The Far East El Paso Jail Annex can hold another 1,800. County officials said Tuesday that the Jail Annex was at 94 percent capacity, while the Downtown facility was at capacity given the missing beds. Additionally, the county loses money when the state brings in inmates and the county has to turn down federal prisoners. State inmates cost the county $110 a day, while federal inmates bring in $85 to $87 a day. Samaniego suggests DPS take the migrants to the Rogelio Sanchez State Jail in El Paso or other state-run facilities.
Read this article at Border Report - Subscribers Only
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Texas schools fund adopts ‘ESG skeptical’ proxy voting stance
The Texas Permanent School Fund is adopting an “ESG skeptical” proxy voting matrix which pushes back on ESG resolutions put forward during annual shareholder meetings, the fund announced Monday. The new matrix — offered through Institutional Shareholder Services, the fund’s external proxy voting manager — will take effect immediately and be used to cast votes on behalf of the fund during the first half of the year, according to Texas PSF. The matrix was established “in response to widespread criticism” that ISS’s voting policies supported too many ESG shareholder resolutions, the fund said in the release. Texas PSF, which manages over $53 billion in assets and distributes nearly $2.2 billion to Texas K-12 schools annually, said it was among the first to adopt the matrix, which provides specific proxy voting guidance. The new strategy is now poised to impact the 40,000-50,000 proxy votes the fund casts every year.
Read this article at ESG Dive - Subscribers Only
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Communities In Schools of Houston celebrates Mental Health Awareness Month, supports students’ mental health
Communities In Schools of Houston (CIS), a Heights-based educational nonprofit, celebrates Mental Health Awareness Month in May, part of a national campaign by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), centered around the campaign theme “Take the Moment.” NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. In May, CIS team members will be raising awareness across campuses about the importance of good mental health, including coordinated activities. For the past 45 years, supporting students' mental health and well-being has been at the core of what CIS does. CIS of Houston, which celebrates 13 years since the launch of its Mental Health Initiative (MHI), is the largest provider of mental health services for schools in the Harris County area.
Read this article at The Leader - Subscribers Only
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Newly released documentary alleges former Keller ISD trustee ‘begged’ crew to not air interview
After two months of anticipation among Keller ISD parents and staff, parts of an episode shot at Central High School were recently featured on an international TV show called “God, Jesus, Trump!” A film crew hired by a Netherlands-based broadcasting channel called Evangelische Omroep — or EO for short — visited the school in February to film an interview for an episode titled “Texas – War on Woke” with Sandi Walker, a Keller ISD trustee who later resigned. Show host Tijs van den Brink said during the April 14 episode that the aftermath of the visit had “traumatized” Walker and that the show had decided not to broadcast her interview per her request. Legal tensions remain between the district and EO over the footage that aired in the episode. A Keller ISD spokesperson told the Fort Worth Report that the district demanded the unauthorized footage be destroyed or returned to them. The district also said it was disappointed to see the release of the footage, which was “taken without proper approval.”
Keller ISD had about six minutes of airtime in the episode. Van den Brink said he and the film crew initially interviewed Walker about books banned from the school. In “Texas – War on Woke,” the film crew is shown entering the administration building where three Central High School staff members greet them. The crew is checked in, receives visitor stickers and heads to the library to speak with Walker. As part of the episode, van den Brink alleges he received a “desperate text” from Walker an hour after the interview and that Walker “begged” him and the crew to not air her segment. The episode includes local news segments initially covering the film crew’s visit as well as parent’s strong opposition of the visit on TV and school board meetings. In an EO article about the Texas episode, van den Brink wrote that he spoke with Walker in a Zoom call after their initial interview at Central High School. During the hour-long call, van den Brink describes Walker being concerned about how the interview would pose a risk to her husband’s job and kids. She asked him again to not broadcast her interview on the show, van den Brink wrote. “She begs us crying not to broadcast the images of the interview with herself either,” van den Brink wrote.
Read this article at Fort Worth Report - Subscribers Only
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In Travis County, a fight over bail hearings has big stakes for criminal defendants
In Travis County, the magistration process—the initial bail hearing after someone is arrested—isn’t cinematic. Arrestees are either led to a small room within the jail’s central booking area, or a Travis County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) employee might bring a computer to their holding cell. At the end of a short conversation, during which the arrestee can either remain silent or try to plead their case to get released on a personal bond instead of cash or surety bail, a magistrate—a judge who handles pre-trial hearings—determines the conditions of release. These routine hearings can have huge implications beyond determining how long someone will spend in jail (and the potential collateral damages like job loss) or how much they’ll have to pay to a bail bonds firm. If an arrestee chooses to plead their case at magistration, anything they say can be used against them in court. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that people have the right to an attorney at the magistration, also known as arraignment, stage. Yet most Texas counties don’t guarantee free attorneys at these early hearings for people who can’t pay.
“There is a constitutional right to counsel at a critical stage in a criminal case,” said ACLU of Texas staff attorney Savannah Kumar. “Unfortunately, constitutional rights are not always realized for people, even when those rights are firmly established.” In a bid to change this status quo, the Texas ACLU sued Travis County last week, alleging the county’s practices during magistration are unconstitutional. The federal suit, filed alongside the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, stems from the fact that, in Travis County, arrestees who can’t afford private attorneys are sent before magistrate judges without first speaking to a court-appointed lawyer. These hearings often result in high bail amounts that mean they’ll stay in jail until their trial—or until a lawyer can convince a judge to let them out. The suit asks the court to hold that Travis County’s practice is improper, which would force the county to take immediate action. “The lack of counsel at magistration fatally undermines the fairness of criminal proceedings in Travis County,” states the lawsuit. The question of whether lawyers are guaranteed at magistration is particularly critical amid Texas’ ongoing efforts to implement Senate Bill 4, currently blocked by the courts. The law, if it takes effect, could allow magistrates to effectively order the removal of undocumented arrestees as early as their magistration hearing.
Read this article at Texas Observer - Subscribers Only
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Saving Lone Star Literary Life
Out in West Texas, a pair of aspiring novelists and enterprising small-town newspaper owners, Barbara Brannon and Kay Ellington, were dismayed by the number of publications that were dropping book sections, cutting critics, and otherwise decimating literary coverage, especially in the Lone Star State. By the 2010s, “93 percent of the state’s newspapers offer no regular books coverage of any kind,” they told the Writers’ League of Texas. Both newswomen worried that Texas authors in particular just weren’t getting enough attention—though plenty deserved it. Out of that gaping hole emerged, fittingly on Groundhog’s Day 2015, a new literary venture: Lone Star Literary Life, an online newsletter aimed at Texas readers, writers, and librarians. “Texas is second only in population to California, Florida is third and New York is fourth. We should be the 800-pound gorilla of literature,” Ellington said of their effort in a 2017 panel discussion.
Initially, it was only a side project for Brannon and Ellington, a dynamic duo who have now published several novels (a series all about The Paragraph Ranch) while still stubbornly championing small-town papers too. (Their company, Paragraph Ranch LLC, now owns three around Lubbock: the Texas Spur, in Spur; the Caprock Courier in Silverton; and the Floyd County Hesperian-Beacon.) Over the next nine years, Lone Star Literary Life grew, creating a network of 6,000 loyal subscribers, including Texas librarians, indie booksellers, publicists, and authors. In 2018, school librarian Kristine Hall took over and Lone Star Lit coasted through the pandemic when many Texans were home reading—and writing. But the upstart venture nearly died in April 2024, a victim perhaps of its own business model of providing substantive but low-cost (or free) services to readers and authors across Texas. It had become popular but not profitable enough to sustain a team of employees large enough to support it without burning out. Here’s the saga of how independent women business owners and book lovers in Texas founded that small company, expanded it, and now aim to save it.
Read this article at Texas Observer - Subscribers Only
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Love and loss in a small Texas town
If you were asked to draw a picture of a cowboy, you’d end up drawing Buck Uptmor. Short and bandy-legged, with the permanently ruddy complexion of a man who spent much of his 45 years in a saddle, he looked exactly like a guy named Buck should look. It runs in the family. His younger brother, Brian, is short, too, but built like a fire hydrant. People call Brian “Peanut.” The Uptmors grew up in and around the tiny town of West, Texas, about an hour south of Dallas. Buck stayed in West and ran his own fencing and welding company. Brian left shortly after high school to fight fires. For a month shy of 11 years, Brian was a firefighter-paramedic in Killeen, near Fort Hood. “Firefighter, it’s the greatest job in the world—if you’re single,” he says. He’d work 24 hours, then have 48 off. He’d finish his shift, go have breakfast with his crew, go to the gym, sleep, return to the gym, then get cleaned up and go out drinking with his fellow firefighters.
Then he got married, had a couple of daughters, and it wasn’t the best job to have anymore. His mother was going to sell a piece of his grandfather’s land in Tours, a tiny town that hugs the east side of West, so Brian bought it to keep it in the family, built a house in 2007, retired from the fire department, and moved his wife and daughters there. He took a job selling cars at a Ford dealership in West. But when there is a pasture fire, or maybe someone is hurt, Brian still gets calls. He has all his certifications, even if he doesn’t do it for a living anymore. On Wednesday, April 17, about 7:30 in the evening, Brian got one of those calls. He was picking up his girls from St. Martin Parish in Tours. They were at their CCE class, the weekly catechism course most Catholic kids attend. His phone rang, but he figured he could call back whoever it was after he’d delivered his daughters safely home. The phone rang again, so he pulled into a parking lot to see who it was. The first call had come from Ted Uptmore Jr. There are many people with that surname in West; some spell it with an “e,” and some don’t. Uptmore’s father is the general manager at West Fertilizer Co., where he has worked for five decades. Now Ted’s wife, Sherry, was on the phone: “Brian, fertilizer plant’s on fire! Ted wants you up here.” West Fertilizer Co. opened in 1962 on a sprawling site hard by the railroad tracks on what was then the northernmost edge of town. It only employed a dozen or so people, but in a farming community like West, it was an important business, if only for the sake of convenience. It saved the farmers from having to make a trip to Waco or Hillsboro. The core of the facility was a 13,000-square-foot wooden building that stored solid fertilizer, such as ammonium nitrate, and two 12,000-gallon metal tanks that held anhydrous ammonia. A fleet of tanker trucks was generally parked outside, and a railroad spur led to the main tracks so that railcars could be loaded and unloaded. When it was built, the plant was surrounded by empty fields, some of which were used as pasture for horses and cattle.
Read this article at D Magazine - Subscribers Only
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As the Suburbs Add More People, Dallas Watches Its Influence Over DART Wane
You don’t need a demographer to see that Dallas isn’t sharing in the rapid growth of its northern suburbs. This reality is beginning to settle in at City Hall, where, in discussions around land use and other policy decisions, planners wrestle with how to encourage more people to move, and afford to stay, in the region’s largest city. The trend affects transportation decisions, too. Dallas is now staring at a future where it no longer controls a majority of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board, whose seats are appointed based on the population share of Dallas and the transportation agency’s 12 suburban partners. DART and the City Council’s transportation and infrastructure committee held a dual meeting on Monday to explore the region’s changing demographics. The population trends show the board makeup flipping as soon as 2025, the next time apportionment gets reviewed, and almost certainly by 2030. (The makeup of board seats is adjusted every five years based on how many people are living in DART’s service area.)
Why is this important? The state statute that created DART tipped the scales to allow the region’s largest city to have a critical eighth seat on the body that sets policy. But since 2010, Dallas’ population has increased by only 9 percent while the surrounding service area has jumped by 40 percent. By 2030, projections show that most of DART’s service population will live outside the city of Dallas for the first time in the agency’s existence. “I’ve been on the board, at the pleasure of the City Council, for almost three and a half years,” said Trustee Rodney Schlosser, a Dallas appointee who put the report together. “In those three and a half years, I have picked up on what I think is obvious for any of us who are watchful of what’s going on in the region, which is there are differences of opinion between what someone in Dallas might consider to be a priority and what someone in a suburb might consider to be a priority.” This change is more of an existential threat than one that immediately dooms Dallas’ ability to direct its public transportation partner. After all, Dallas presently shares one of its seats with Glenn Heights and Cockrell Hill, and there is often a lack of consensus among the city’s appointees, anyway. They represent different neighborhoods that have different priorities, some of which may even align with those of the suburbs.
Read this article at D Magazine - Subscribers Only
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Money, sports and politics catapult 3 Texans onto Time 100 Most Influential People list
Texas has gained some worldwide recognition thanks to some of the state’s biggest names joining Time Magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential of 2024. Dallas entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban, Texas governor Greg Abbott and Tyler native Patrick Mahomes made the list this year. The New York-based magazine has been conducting a 100 most influential list since 2004 and chooses individuals based on how much influence they had on the most important stories of last year. The list takes a crew of more than 100 people from the magazine months to put together.
Read this article at Dallas Morning News - Subscribers Only
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Senate kills Mayorkas impeachment over calls for full trial from Cruz, Cornyn
Democrats put a swift end to the historic impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday, dismissing both articles against him in a matter of hours over objections from Texas Republicans who called for a full trial. The House impeachment managers — a group of Republicans including U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, whose district stretches from Austin to Katy — never got to lay out their case to senators that Mayorkas “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws as border crossings set records under his watch. Democrats dismissed the allegations as policy differences and said they fell short of the high crimes and misdemeanors necessary to remove a Cabinet member. The Senate voted along party lines to declare the two articles against Mayorkas unconstitutional after shooting down a series of efforts by Republicans to delay the votes.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the brief impeachment proceedings “the least legitimate, least substantive and most politicized impeachment trial ever in the history of the United States.” “To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future,” Schumer said. “For the sake of the Senate’s integrity and to protect impeachment for those rare cases we truly need it, senators should dismiss today’s charges.” Texas’ Republican U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn both pushed for a full trial. Cornyn said Mayorkas was impeached for “serious offenses” and dismissing the case without a trial would be a “dangerous precedent to set.” “This would be the first time in our nation’s history that the Senate failed to do its duty to consider evidence, hear witnesses and allow senators to vote guilty or not guilty,” Cornyn said in a recent speech on the Senate floor. “Impeachment is one of the most solemn features in our democracy, and the majority leader must not brush these articles under the rug.”
Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only
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A Texas mayoral candidate's brother indicted in NBA multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme
The estranged brother of an El Paso mayoral candidate was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly running a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme by falsely claiming to be an NBA promoter. Timothy France Johnson, 61, was indicted March 20 on seven counts of wire fraud and three counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, federal court records show. Johnson is the brother of El Paso mayoral candidate Renard Johnson, who has not been implicated in playing any role in the alleged crime. "Like the rest of the public, I learned recently that my estranged brother has been indicted," Renard Johnson said in a statement. "I have not seen or spoken to him in many years. I have full confidence that our judicial system will resolve these allegations."
Timothy Johnson allegedly claimed to be a third-party promoter of NBA pre-season games and "convinced unwary investors to invest money with him to sponsor said pre-season games," officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas said. Timothy Johnson allegedly conducted the fraud through his companies, BOLO Entertainment LLC, BOLO Sports LLC and Shoot N’2 Sports LLC, the indictment states. The Ponzi scheme robbed investors of more than $3 million between Feb. 9, 2009, to May 14, 2020, a federal indictment states. There were at least 30 investors defrauded in the scheme. Timothy Johnson claimed to be a third-party promoter of NBA pre-season games and asked investors to invest money to help promote the pre-season games, the indictment states. He never used any of the investments to promote any NBA pre-season games, officials said. About $1 million of the $3 million taken from investors was used to pay fake investment profits to previous investors, the indictment states. Timothy Johnson allegedly used the rest of the funds for personal use.
Read this article at Austin American-Statesman - Subscribers Only
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'Generosity lived in his heart': Daughter reflects on father's life, killer's conviction
Miguel Rivera was a loving, caring and humble man — helping those in need get their lives back on track — but one of his last acts of generosity ended in his death. Rivera, 64, was fatally shot by a ranch hand, Eduardo Garza Santillana, in the 23100 block of Alameda Avenue in Tornillo, just south of El Paso, on July 25, 2018. Rivera was trying to help Garza fight his drug addiction, Marlene Rivera, Rivera's daughter, said. "My dad was a very, very honorable man," Marlene Rivera said. "Very caring. A very, very generous man. He was all about his family. He loved his family. He was always there to help everyone he met. That was the amazing man he was."
Nearly six years after the fatal shooting, Rivera's family finally received justice April 4, after a jury convicted Garza of capital murder and sentenced him to life in prison. Garza was also sentenced to 40 years on one count of aggravated robbery. The sentences will be served concurrently. While the Rivera family got justice for their father, nothing can ever take away the pain they suffer everyday without him. With Garza spending the rest of his life in prison, the healing process can start, a Rivera family member said. "My dad did get the justice that he deserved," Marlene Rivera said. "We got justice as well. There will really never be closure because my dad is no longer here. But I guess now we start the healing process again. With him (Garza) being convicted and sentenced, now we start the healing process again from scratch. "It's never going to be easy. My dad was, well is, a big part of our family. It's very difficult. Unfortunately, we have to move on, but of course our father's memory is always with us. There's not a day that passes that we don't think of him." Miguel Rivera's other ranch hand, Abelardo Moreno, was also shot by Garza. He survived his injuries. El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks hopes the guilty verdict will bring peace to the Rivera family.
Read this article at Austin American-Statesman - Subscribers Only
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Karl Rove: Disinformation from Russia and China is evolving and has even spread to Capitol Hill.
As Speaker Mike Johnson maneuvered last week to bring Ukraine aid up for a vote, two respected House committee chairmen made a disturbing acknowledgment: Russian disinformation has helped undermine support for Ukraine among some Republicans. Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul admitted that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States” and “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner said “anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages” have been “uttered on the House floor.” To get a sense of the magnitude of the problem, consider one truly ludicrous fiction that GOP lawmakers parroted: that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky diverted U.S. aid to purchase two super yachts.
The accusation surfaced in DC Weekly, a Russian website masquerading as a U.S. media organization. It’s one of many sites aimed at Americans tied to the media network of Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin went down in a private jet crash last August, but his troll farm appears alive and well. Though the Soviet Union is long gone, America still seems to be crawling with useful idiots, Westerners who aid Moscow out of ignorance or naiveté. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio) were among those who repeated the super-yacht charge. Neither has set the record straight or admitted being hoodwinked. Thanks to social media, false information spreads quicker and further. An anonymous Twitter user claimed earlier this month that large numbers of people had registered to vote in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Texas without a photo ID, suggesting they could be illegal aliens. Arizona and Texas election officials quickly denounced this as false, but were too late to keep Ms. Greene, Donald Trump and Elon Musk from drawing attention to the inaccurate posting. It has 64 million views and counting.
Read this article at Wall Street Journal - Subscribers Only
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National Stories
In House hearing, Columbia president’s performance impresses
Despite some tense moments, experts agree that Columbia University President Minouche Shafik gave a better performance addressing campus antisemitism before the House of Representatives’ Education and Workforce Committee than the presidents of MIT, Harvard and University of Pennsylvania did in December. Unlike her peers, Shafik and her fellow witnesses—Board of Trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, along with David Schizer, the law professor leading Columbia's antisemitism task force—quickly and definitively agreed that calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate the university’s code of conduct.
“Columbia beat UPenn and Harvard,” said Karl Schonberg, a professor of government at St. Lawrence University, quoting what Florida Republican Aaron Bean said during the hearing. Schonberg has argued that Sally Kornbluth of MIT, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of University of Pennsylvania spoke without “moral clarity” at their hearing. He noted that witnessing their interrogation—and the subsequent backlash to their tepid answers—probably helped Shafik, as did the presence of her board members and Schizer. “The soundbites might be the moments when she was a little flustered or didn’t answer a question directly, and I don’t think you’re going to avoid that in that setting,“ he said. “[But] by the standards of the first hearing, which is setting the bar pretty low, I thought it was good.” Hollis Robbins, dean of humanities at the University of Utah, echoed that sentiment in text messages to Inside Higher Ed, saying that Shafik exhibited “poise” in the face of questions that ranged from serious inquiries to attempted “gotchas.” Overall, she said, Shafik’s testimony was especially effective at communicating to the committee the complexity of running a university and balancing the varied interests of campus constituents.
Read this article at Inside Higher Ed - Subscribers Only
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Foreign holdings of US Treasuries hit record high; Japan holdings rise, data shows
Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries surged to a record in February, its fifth straight monthly rise, Treasury Department data released on Wednesday showed. Holdings totaled $7.965 trillion, up from a revised $7.945 trillion in January. Treasuries owned by foreigners rose 8.7% from a year earlier. Holdings of Treasuries grew the most in Belgium, by $27 billion, to hit $320 billion. Japan, the largest non-U.S. holder of Treasuries, increased its U.S. government debt to $1.167 trillion, the largest since August 2022 when the country's holdings were at $1.196 trillion. Investors have been alert to the threat of Japanese intervention in the currency market to boost the yen, which plunged to a 34-year low of 154.79 per dollar on Tuesday.
The Bank of Japan intervened three times in 2022, selling the dollar to buy yen, first in September and again in October as the yen slid toward a 32-year low of 152 to the dollar. In September and October 2022, Japan's Treasury holdings declined $131.6 billion from $1.196 trillion in August. China's pile of Treasuries also fell in February to $775 billion, data showed. The monthly decline of $22.7 billion was the second biggest among the 20 major countries on the Treasury's list. Holdings of Treasuries by China, the world's second largest economy, have been declining, reaching $763.5 billion in February, the lowest since March 2009. Britain listed its Treasury holdings at $700.8 billion, up about $9 billion from January.
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Mike Johnson defies GOP critics, setting up Ukraine-Israel aid showdown
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday he would plunge ahead with a high-stakes vote to move long-stalled funding for Ukraine, Israel and other overseas allies, elbowing aside criticism from his conservative flank. The move sets up an unpredictable weekend showdown that could determine both the fate of the foreign-aid package—which appears closer than ever to actually becoming law—and Johnson’s political career after navigating months of bitter infighting in the Republican conference. Democrats were expected to line up firmly behind the aid effort, with President Biden issuing a strong endorsement. But many GOP lawmakers, angered by the lack of border provisions and critical of more aid for Ukraine, planned to oppose the measure, a familiar conundrum for House Republican leaders.
“We can’t play politics on this; we have to do the right thing,” Johnson said of the aid package. Asked if he was risking his job, he said: “Let the chips fall where they may—if I operated out of fear over a motion to vacate, I would never be able to do my job.” Johnson indicated he expected to need Democratic votes to pass the rule tied to the legislation, a once-routine procedural step that has repeatedly been blocked by GOP holdouts in this Congress. He said he wasn’t seeking Democratic protection to keep his job. “The time has come for the House of Representatives to act, and act decisively, in America’s national security interests,” said Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), adding that his conference was still reviewing the legislation. Johnson’s plan comprises four bills—one each for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, along with one containing many Republican priorities, including a ban or forced sale of TikTok in the U.S. Leaders posted the text of three of the four bills on Wednesday afternoon, laying out a $95 billion aid package that largely matches the price tag and contours of a measure that passed the Democratic-controlled Senate earlier this year. The text of the fourth bill was released Wednesday night.
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Combatting cannibalism and jailing librarians: Idaho Democrats see opportunity in extreme GOP agenda
Democrat Loree Peery knows she’s a long-shot candidate for the Idaho Legislature. But when her state House representative introduced a bill in February expanding an anti-cannibalism law — action prompted by a prank video — Peery decided she had to try to oust the far-right incumbent, Heather Scott. “You can’t win if you don’t run,” Peery said, adding that Scott’s focus on irrelevant issues like cannibalism shows she isn’t a serious lawmaker. “It forces the Republicans to work, it forces [Scott] to get out there and talk to people so they can see what she’s about. It forces Republicans to spend more resources on the races.” Peery, a retired nurse, is one of dozens of Idaho Democrats seeking an office in Boise for the first time.
Under new leadership, the Idaho Democratic Party has deployed a grassroots recruitment strategy to put a record number of candidates on the ballot. In fact, there’s a Democrat running in every district for the first time in at least 30 years. Democrats feel emboldened by the GOP supermajority’s obsession with culture war issues like enacting a strict abortion ban, attacking LGBTQ+ rights and proposing jailing librarians over violating book bans. They also see bitter infighting between the conservative and moderate flanks of the GOP as an opportunity to present voters with a different vision for the future of the state. Idaho was thrust into the national culture war debate again this week when the Supreme Court allowed state officials to temporarily enforce a ban on gender-affirming care, reinvigorating opposition to the law that was passed last year. It’s also not just Idaho. More Democrats than usual are running in states with GOP-dominated legislatures like Tennessee, Iowa and North Carolina. Democrats have made gains in recent years in state legislative races — flipping chambers in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan — after more than a decade of nationwide GOP dominance. But Republicans still control 55 percent of state legislative seats, compared to 44 percent for Democrats.
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‘We’re a dead ship’: Hundreds of cargo ships lost propulsion in U.S. waters in recent years
Less than two weeks after Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was destroyed by an out-of-control cargo ship, another huge container ship passed beneath a busy bridge connecting New York and New Jersey and then suddenly decelerated in a narrow artery of one of the nation’s largest ports. “We’re a dead ship,” said a voice over the maritime radio a short time later, invoking an industry term that often refers to a ship that is unable to move on it own. Three tug boats helped shepherd the APL Qingdao — a vessel more than 1,100 feet long and flying under the flag of Malta — from where it lost propulsion near the Bayonne Bridge to a safe location, authorities said. The ship dropped anchor just upstream from the even busier Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which carries about 200,000 vehicles per day.
The April 5 incident is one of hundreds in which massive cargo ships lost propulsion, many near bridges and ports, according to a Washington Post analysis of Coast Guard records. The findings indicate that the kind of failure that preceded the March 26 Baltimore bridge collapse — the 984-foot Dali is believed to have lost the ability to propel itself forward as it suffered a more widespread power outage — was far from a one-off among the increasingly large cargo ships that routinely sail close to critical infrastructure. Around Baltimore alone, ships lost propulsion nearly two dozen times in the three years before the tragedy last month, the Post review found — including a November 2021 incident in which a 981-foot container ship lost propulsion for 15 minutes soon after it passed under the Key Bridge. In 2020, a ship the same size as the Dali lost propulsion “in the vicinity of the Bay Bridge” near Annapolis, records show. Adding to the danger, experts say, is a lack of consistent rules on when cargo ships should be escorted by tug boats that can keep them on course even if engines turn off. While tugboats escorted the Qingdao, as was called for under local guidelines in the New York area, those attending to the Dali departed before it struck the bridge in Baltimore, where such decisions are left to ship captains and local pilots, the specially trained sailors who guide ships in and out of ports.
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Kari Lake suggests supporters 'strap on a Glock' to be ready for 2024
Arizona GOP Senate hopeful Kari Lake told supporters they can "strap on a Glock" to be prepared for the intensity of the 2024 campaign and urged military and law enforcement veterans to be "ready," as her race heats up in a key battleground state. “We need to send people to Washington, D.C., that the swamp does not want there,” Lake said toward the end of a Sunday speech to a crowd of Arizonans in Mohave County. “And I can think of a couple people they don’t want there. First on that list is Donald J. Trump; second is Kari Lake.” She described standing up to the “swamp” in Washington, saying: “They can’t bribe me, they can't blackmail me. That’s why they don’t want me in Washington, D.C. And that’s exactly what President Trump wants me there fighting with him.”
“He’s willing to sacrifice everything I am. That’s why they’re coming after us with lawfare, they’re going to come after us with everything. That’s why the next six months is going to be intense. And we need to strap on our — let’s see. What do we want to strap on?” Lake asked as some in the crowd chuckled. “We’re going to strap on our, our seat belt. We’re going to put on our helmet or your Kari Lake ball cap. We are going to put on the armor of God. And maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.” “We’re not going to be the victims of crime,” Lake continued. “We’re not going to have our Second Amendment taken away. We’re certainly not going to have our First Amendment taken away by these tyrants.” Earlier in the roughly 30-minute remarks, Lake gave another warning about the period between now and Election Day.
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Fearing legal threats, doctors are performing C-sections in lieu of abortions
When news that Lizelle Gonzalez was suing the local prosecutor’s office for more than $1 million in damages, after being falsely imprisoned for murder over an attempted self-managed abortion in 2022, reproductive rights advocates cheered the move as a pathway to justice for the wrongfully charged southern Texas woman. However, a revelation in the lawsuit gave them pause: At the same hospital that reported her self-induced abortion to authorities, Gonzalez underwent a “classical C-section” for the delivery of her stillborn child, instead of abortion care. Major invasive surgery, Cesarean sections carry much higher risk for health complications, like hemorrhaging, compared with D&E abortion, and can jeopardize subsequent pregnancies. Nancy Cárdenas Peña, a longtime Rio Grande Valley reproductive justice advocate and campaign director for Abortion On Our Own Terms, which works to expand access to self-managed abortion, says that detail is new—and “disturbing”—information to the Texas activist groups that quickly mobilized following her arrest to advocate for her release from jail.
“It’s really alarming and something I’m still trying to wrap my head around,” Cárdenas Peña tells The Nation. “While the medical details are sealed so we don’t know exactly why this was performed, a C-section is not necessary for any sort of abortion management. A C-section carries a lot of risk, and it’s not something that should be happening. I’m still a bit in shock.” As the threat of criminal prosecution looms over doctors and hospitals in the 15 states where abortion is illegal, medical professionals, erring on the side of extreme caution because of vaguely worded laws and few meaningful exceptions, are resisting abortion care, even in life-threatening circumstances. Fear of lawsuits, loss of medical licenses, hefty fines, and considerable jail time have driven doctors to jeopardize patient care, either by delaying or denying pregnancy termination. And as we now know, this also has meant performing medical procedures that imperil patients, including substituting C-sections for abortion care, an emerging pattern researchers and abortion providers say will only increase over time. “I cannot imagine that Lizelle is the only person who has experienced this. There are surely other people in not just Texas but other abortion-hostile states,” says Cárdenas Peña, who has been working on behalf of people who have abortions for over a decade. “Her story is likely the tip of the iceberg.” Indeed, Texas physicians reported in a June 2022 New England Journal of Medicine study that their colleagues have “resorted” to using hysterotomy—a surgical incision in the uterus—because it “might not be construed as an abortion.”
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Newsclips - April 17, 2024 |
Lead Stories
Russia-linked hacking group suspected of carrying out cyberattack on Texas water facility, cybersecurity firm says
A hacking group with ties to the Russian government is suspected of carrying out a cyberattack in January that caused a tank at a Texas water facility to overflow, experts from US cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Wednesday. The hack in the small town of Muleshoe, in north Texas, coincided with at least two other towns in north Texas taking precautionary defensive measures after detecting suspicious cyber activity on their networks, town officials told CNN. The FBI has been investigating the hacking activity, one of the officials said. The attack was a rare example of hackers using access to sensitive industrial equipment to disrupt regular operations at a US water facility, following a separate cyberattack last November on a Pennsylvania water plant that US officials blamed on Iran.
The cyber incidents in Texas also help explain a rare public appeal that US national security adviser Jake Sullivan made last month to state officials and water authorities to shore up their cyber defenses. Cyberattacks are hitting water and wastewater systems “throughout the United States” and state governments and water facilities must improve their defenses against the threat, Sullivan said in a joint letter with the Environmental Protection Agency chief to state officials. US officials have been concerned that many of the country’s 150,000 public water systems have struggled to find the cash and personnel to deal with persistent hacking threats from criminal and state actors. The Texas hacking incidents gained little national attention when they occurred as questions lingered about who was behind the activity. But on Wednesday, Mandiant publicly linked the channel on Telegram, a social media platform, where hackers claimed responsibility for the Muleshoe attack with previous hacking activity carried out by a notorious unit of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.
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‘Now’s the time’: Amtrak leader urges momentum on Dallas-to-Houston high-speed rail
Booming demand, Texas’s rapidly expanding population and growing political will have converged to create the right environment to move high-speed rail ahead, Amtrak leadership said Tuesday. Andy Byford, Amtrak’s senior vice president of high-speed rail development, told participants of the 20th annual Southwestern Rail Conference in Hurst that the Dallas-to-Houston corridor “ticks all the boxes” for a high-speed rail project. It would connect two large population centers, it has straightforward topography and “suboptimal alternatives” for travel, pointing to congestion on Interstate 45 and area airports. “If you put together all those characteristics, and then you figure out okay, which route would you build? There’s one that really stands out, and that is Dallas to Houston,” Byford said.
The proposed train would shuttle passengers from Dallas to Houston in about 90 minutes compared to the three-and-a-half-hour car trip on Interstate 45. Texas Central Partners, developers of the project, plan to model the bullet train after partner Japan Central Railways’ Shinkansen system. Amtrak announced last fall that it would explore a partnership with Texas Central to move the project forward, and it was awarded $500,000 for planning and development from the federal Corridor Identification and Development Program. The grant is a sliver of the estimated tens of billions needed to complete the project. The U.S. Department of Transportation and Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism welcomed Amtrak leadership of the rail project following a State Dinner between President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida last week. Byford was not present at the meeting but said there is “huge interest” in the project among Japanese and American leadership. “I did have a meeting with Secretary Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, and he said he himself is very committed to the project, that the president himself is very committed to the project,” Byford said.
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Seven jurors picked in Trump’s N.Y. trial as judge presses ahead
The judge overseeing former president Donald Trump’s criminal trial said opening statements could begin as soon as Monday, as the jury selection process sped up and Trump got an earful from the people who might soon decide his fate. Lawyers for Trump on Tuesday repeatedly argued that old social media posts by many of the prospective jurors or their friends showed that they were not being forthcoming about their animosity toward him, while prosecutors argued that old dumb jokes on the internet were not a cause to dismiss someone from the panel. Trump, the likely Republican nominee for president in the November election, spent hours listening as potential jurors offered their opinions of him — some blunt, some guarded and some just funny. By the end of the day, seven people had been sworn in as jurors — more than a third of the total number of people that will be needed to hold a trial with a full jury and six alternates.
If New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan can stick to that pace, the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president will be fully underway in less than a week — a potential turning point for Trump’s campaign to return to the White House. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg says Trump orchestrated a scheme before the 2016 election to pay off an adult-film actress to keep her quiet about a sexual liaison with him years earlier, and then created a false paper trail to hide the true purpose and source of the payment. The court will need to find 11 more panelists to sit in judgment of Trump, which will mean more chances for potential jurors to opine on the pugilistic politician. Merchan has ordered that the names of the prospective jurors remain confidential, although the prosecutors and defense lawyers are made aware of their names. Trump “stirs the pot; he speaks his mind,” said one potential juror, a woman who works at a senior care facility. “You can’t judge him because he speaks his mind.” Pressed by Trump lawyer Todd Blanche on what she thought of Trump’s outspoken nature, she laughed and said, “Come on, what can you say about that? If I told you all the time what I thought about people — I want to say some things to people, but my mama said be nice.”
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Senate set for showdown over Mayorkas impeachment articles
The Senate is set for a showdown over the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as Democrats are expected to move quickly to dismiss the articles, while Republicans insist there must be a full trial. The House transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate on Tuesday and senators are expected to be sworn in as jurors Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not specified exactly how he plans to handle the trial procedurally. But Democratic senators — as well as some Republicans — have suggested they expect the Senate will move to dismiss the case before a full trial. Democrats could pass a motion to dismiss or table the articles on a simple majority vote as early as Wednesday.
Whatever happens, it is highly doubtful that the chamber would vote to convict, which would require a two-thirds majority vote – an exceedingly high bar to clear. Senate Republicans are seeking to reach a time agreement with Democrats that would allow floor debate and for GOP senators to have votes on procedural motions. If a time agreement is not reached, it’s unclear clear how long the process will take as Republicans could attempt any number of procedural delays, although at some point the presiding officer could rule those efforts dilatory and cut them off. Mayorkas is the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in almost 150 years. House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas in February over his handling of the southern border by a narrow margin after failing to do so on their first try. Democrats have slammed the impeachment as a political stunt, saying that Republicans had no valid basis for the move and that policy disagreements are not a justification for the rarely used constitutional impeachment of a Cabinet official.
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State Stories
UT Austin president says 49 former DEI employees lost jobs, contradicting previous estimates
UT Austin President Jay Hartzell said 49 employees are losing their jobs as a result of changes the university has made to comply with a Texas law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs at public higher education institutions. "As the flagship university in this state, we are subject to more scrutiny than others," he said Monday during a meeting with the UT Faculty Council. Hartzell said the employees will be paid through July 5. Many of the affected employees worked for the Division of Campus and Community Engagement that UT Austin is closing. The division was formerly called the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. Hartzell announced the layoffs in an April 2 email but did not say how many positions were affected.
"For the record, because I've seen different numbers floated out, let me be as clear and careful as I can: On that day that we had the announcement there were 49 people whose positions were eliminated," Hartzell said. "Plus, eight associate or assistant deans who are going to return to their full faculty positions." But Brian Evans, president-elect of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors (Texas AAUP), said that figure does not align with the terminations his group has counted. He said 62 employees, who previously worked on DEI programs and policies before Senate Bill 17 took effect Jan. 1, told Texas AAUP they found out this month they were losing their jobs. "So there's a difference in what we have documented in Texas AAUP from the staff themselves who were receiving these termination notices versus the count given at the Faculty Council meeting," he said. "So we'd like to know why these others aren't being counted." KUT previously reported that the Texas NAACP had verified the names of 66 people who had received termination notices.
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After fatal crash, Hays CISD needs to spend $8.9M for seat belts on all its buses
The Hays CISD’s Board of Trustees has created a plan to ensure all school buses are equipped with seat belts following a fatal Hays CISD bus crash last month. A Tom Green Elementary School bus was returning pre-K students from a field trip to a zoo in Bastrop County when a concrete truck hit the front of the bus, resulting in two deaths. Hays CISD began buying school buses with seat belts after a state law passed in 2017 requiring them in new buses, but the bus involved in the incident was an older model and didn’t have seat belts. The district plans to have 100% of its bus fleet equipped with seat belts as soon as possible, according to a plan it published on its website Friday. But the turnaround time for school bus purchases is about a year long. This means it could be a while before Hays CISD meets its goal.
Hays CISD has two types of buses: route buses and support buses. Route buses transport students to and from school each day and are also the first option for field trips. Support buses are the extra supply and are primarily used for athletics, but can also be pulled into rotation when needed. About 86% of route buses have seat belts, but only about 19% of support buses have them. The district plans to purchase new buses and retrofit older models with seat belts to fill in these gaps. Hays CISD has already received 21 new buses that will join the fleet in the next few weeks. The district says by April 30, all route buses and six more support buses will have seat belts. In total, Hays CISD would need to spend about $8.9 million to cover the cost of this proposed plan. The district is looking to retrofit 2017 and 2016 buses for $468,000, which would come from either bond interest money or surplus bond funds.
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Austin's airport is getting a new concourse and 20 more gates, but not until the 2030s
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA) is gearing up to add at least 20 new gates, expanding capacity at the overcrowded airport as it struggles to serve millions more passengers each year than it was designed to handle. The planned gates will be located inside a newly constructed building — temporarily dubbed Concourse B — linked to the main Barbara Jordan Terminal by an underground pedestrian tunnel equipped with moving walkways.
The new concourse isn't expected to welcome the public until 2030 at the earliest. Over the longer term, the concourse could be further extended to accommodate up to 40 gates, more than doubling ABIA's current capacity of 34 gates. Concourse B has been in the planning stages for years, developed as part of a long-term strategy approved by the city council in 2018. That "ABIA 2040 Master Plan" plotted a trajectory for the airport to accommodate 30 million passengers a year by 2037. Those projections were underestimated by a decade. ABIA is already serving more than 22 million passengers per year and expects to reach 30 million by 2027. Since the last major expansion — the addition of nine gates on the east end of the Barbara Jordan Terminal in 2019 — ABIA has only been equipped to handle 15 million passengers annually.
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1st segment of Texas-funded border wall in Zapata County is going up
A segment of state-funded border wall is going up in rural Zapata County, the first to be built in this part of South Texas. Zapata County Judge Joe Rathmell on Monday confirmed to Border Report that the segment is on private land in the ranching county of 14,000 residents east of the more populous border city of Laredo. Zapata County officials for years fought off the federal border wall from going through their land and a popular birding sanctuary in the remote hamlet of San Ygnacio. But Rathmell says they can’t do anything about state-funded border wall being built on private property. Rathmell said construction started within the past month. He says he has reached out to the International Boundary and Water Commission, a federal agency that oversees the Rio Grande, and was told they were unaware of the construction. “The county, we weren’t notified or advised of anything, so we were not involved in it. And the Boundary Commission folks, they also didn’t know anything about it. So I guess it’s a private landowner who is requesting that,” Rathmell said. “If it’s on private property — some landowners want that type of protection — so I don’t know there’s much we can do.”
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Texas DPS shifting resources at southern border, sources say
Law enforcement along the southern border are sounding the alarm, as sources confirm more than 150,000 “gotaways” have been recorded since Oct. 1. A sheriff in one of the busiest immigration sectors says he’s seeing more crossings and noticeably fewer resources. Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland says his officers are feeling the absence of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star between El Paso and Del Rio as resources are being shifted to the El Paso sector to respond to an increase in migrant crossings. “Texas decided to send more personnel out El Paso to help bolster that portion of the border,” said Cleveland. “And a lot of that personnel came from Sanderson and Terrell County. And that’s had an effect on us because now we’re starting to pick up again, and we just don’t have the resources here to assist Border Patrol.”
Cleveland told NewsNation that they would normally have about 15 officers working day shifts but that is now down to about three to four people a day. Cleveland said he relies heavily on state and federal partners as he’s responsible for 2,300 square miles of border-area territory. At current staffing, his department is only able to intercept about 50% of individuals who have crossed the border into Terrell County. Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez said limited resources aren’t unique to Terrell County. “That’s what makes it very challenging with this whole border situation,” he said. “We’re trying to cover as much ground as we can in Texas. And of course, Texas is very large. We cover the majority of the border in Texas but trying to be in every single area and once really is impossible. But the fact is that we do have the majority of our resources dedicated to areas where we see increased activity.”
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HISD scrapped its controversial principal screening after backlash. But teacher screenings remain.
Houston ISD teachers at about half of the district’s campuses will learn on May 6 whether they are eligible to keep their jobs under a proficiency screening process, even after the district reversed course on using a similar process for principals following community backlash. HISD introduced a proficiency screening this academic year to determine which teachers will be eligible to teach in the 130 schools designated as part of state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles’ New Education System program for the 2024-25 academic year. “Districts that are concerned about educational equity and who want to turn around academically struggling schools should place their most effective teachers with their least proficient students,” the district wrote in a document obtained by the Chronicle.
NES teachers must prove proficiency under the state evaluation system’s professionalism criteria and meet benchmarks on achievement and instruction on two screenings developed by HISD to be guaranteed to keep their jobs. If they don’t pass either screening, they will not be able to work at NES schools next year, and a small percentage will not be eligible for any job in the district. HISD notified teachers of the results of the first screening results on March 8 and required all current NES teachers who passed to sign contracts by March 29 or forfeit their positions, according to district documents. Teachers who participate in the second screening will either learn if their contract remains valid or if they obtained eligibility to work in the district in May. HISD still uses the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System as its official evaluation process for all teachers, which is a year-long review of teachers based on planning, instruction, learning environment and professionalism. The district states that the screening is separate from the evaluation process, as a teacher’s screening score may differ from T-TESS results.
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Houston Rockets, the most improved team in NBA, show real signs of optimism for future
The good news is the Rockets were the most improved team in the NBA this season. The bad news is, well, there is no bad news. As disappointed as head coach Ime Udoka and his team were at falling short of a winning record and the play-in tournament, the Rockets’ 2023-24 season was a successful one. They may have left a little meat on the bone with their .500 record, but they ate in what might be the most improvement the team has ever shown from one year to the next. As reasonable as the in-house expectations of making the playoffs were, a 19-game improvement in wins from last year’s 22-60 season ties for the best in franchise history, matching the jumps the Rockets made from 1983-84 to ‘84-85 and from 1977-78 to ’78-79.
No disrespect to the key newcomers to this year’s squad, but none of them is Hakeem Olajuwon or Moses Malone. Olajuwon joining the team as a rookie was the main reason the Rockets went from last in the Western Conference to third in the mid-1980s. The first time the Rockets had a 19-game improvement was in 1978-79. That came off a year in which they lost Rudy Tomjanovich early in the season to “The Punch,” and then went 4-17 to close the season after Moses Malone was injured. The following season, Malone was the league MVP. There were no extraordinary circumstances leading to the Rockets being the worst in the NBA in recent years. They were bad because they were bad. An upgraded roster and desire to win made a difference. As did Udoka, who shined in his first season in Houston. Tim Nissalke and Bill Fitch each coached the poor season and the 19-game uptick.
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Man who died when a semi-truck crashed into a Texas DPS office has been identified. What we know.
A Chappell Hill man crashed a stolen 18-wheeler into the Texas Department of Public Safety building in Brenham on Friday, which authorities said resulted in over a dozen injuries. Authorities charged 42-year-old Clenard Parker in connection with the crash and he was being held in Washington County Jail. Bobby Huff, 78, was transported by medical helicopter to CHI St. Joseph Regional Hospital-Bryan, where he succumbed to his injuries on Friday, according to a news release by the agency. Huff's wife told ABC13 he was there to renew his driver's license. The crash caused significant damage to the office building including a large gaping hole in the entrance. What's more, authorities allege he ran into the building intentionally in response to recently being denied a commercial driver's license,
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CPR for mental health? Dallas nonprofit offering free youth mental health first aid classes
A new survey is highlighting the mental health crisis in youth right now. Politico surveyed 1,400 mental health professionals across the country and found more than half are not happy with the current resources available to address mental health issues in children and teens. A local nonprofit is working to change that by teaching the community how to become a resource. Just like people can get certified in CPR First Aid, Communities In Schools of the Dallas Region is offering free classes that teach people how to become certified in Mental Health First Aid for youth, which can be just as crucial in saving a life.
"I always talk about the fact that first aid is taught pretty widespread, right? We have all heard some kind of way about how to do chest compressions until 911 arrives. And so this course is designed similarly to teach people how to do the metaphor ‘chest compressions’ until they can get the youth connected to their next best step,” said Dr. Summer Rose, chief clinical officer for Communities In Schools of the Dallas Region. "That might look like plugging them into resources. That might look like doing some in the moment kind of interventions to help stabilize them until 911, a youth mental health provider, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a school counselor, or somebody can intervene." The Youth Mental Health First Aid is designed to teach parents, family members, caregivers, teachers, school staff, peers, neighbors, health and human services workers, and other caring citizens how to help an adolescent – between the ages of 12 and 18 – who is experiencing a mental health or addictions challenge or is in crisis.
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‘You’ll sit there and be quiet,’ Tarrant judge tells commissioner
Tempers flared Tuesday between County Judge Tim O’Hare and commissioner Alisa Simmons over a contract between the judge and a political consultant. O’Hare said the $5,000 contract with political consultant Noah Betz would replace a soon to be vacated communications position in his office. Betz is the principal of Bluestone Creatives, a Metroplex-based political marketing, communications and design firm. He also serves as executive director of Huffines Liberty Foundation, a think-tank that describes itself as advancing liberty and prosperity across Texas.
Before leading the foundation and Bluestone, Betz worked as a campaign consultant for candidates and organizations. Betz served on Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s re-election team and oversaw marketing and communications for Republican state Sen. Don Huffines. The argument between O’Hare and Simmons came after six people spoke to oppose the contract. The speakers cited Betz’s conservative political record, calling it an ethical violation and misuse of taxpayer dollars. Simmons then shared her own concerns with the contract. That prompted Simmons and O’Hare to bicker about their X accounts being political. At the peak of the argument O’Hare lashed out at Simmons and said, “I’m the one talking now, so you’ll sit there and be quiet and listen to me talk.” “Don’t tell me when and when not to talk,” Simmons responded. “This is my court too.” The contract passed with a 3-2 vote along party lines, with Simmons and fellow Democrat Roy Brooks voting against the contract.
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Texas lawmakers look to take zoning changes out of Dallas’ hands
Dallas’ update to its land use plan, which includes reexamining the city’s predominantly single-family zoning, has been met with significant pushback among vocal residents. But if some conservative state policymakers have their way, the debate could become moot. Lt. Dan Patrick has indicated a desire to at least discuss zoning as it relates to housing affordability in the next legislative session. Some conservative groups have also indicated their support for this legislation. ForwardDallas, the city’s not-yet-adopted plan, would only inform the city’s land use and zoning in the future. A great deal of concern around single-family neighborhoods centers on where and how to allow for more density—specifically middle or “gentle” density like triplexes, duplexes, and the like. In our April issue, Matt Goodman wrote about how Dallas needs density to survive, and about just how nasty the fight over density has become.
At a public information session at Samuell Grand Recreation Center recently, a mostly hostile audience took turns at the microphone, reiterating their distaste for the idea of eliminating what they felt protected “the character” of their neighborhoods: single-family zoning. There are very real questions about how and where to introduce middle density. But state Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas, issued a warning before the discussion began: the harsh reality is that Dallas might not have the final say in its zoning updates. Bryant warned that there is an effort to change zoning “at the state level,” too. He couched this as another way Austin would wrest local control from cities and counties. “The Legislature passed over the vigorous opposition of myself and others in this last session a bill that began the process of limiting the ability of cities to deal with a large number of matters that relate to us as local citizens,” he said. Bryant was referring to House Bill 2127, the so-called “Death Star” bill that limits city’s abilities to create ordinances that are more strict than state law. While urbanists and historians have long pointed to the racist history of exclusionary zoning, removing lot size minimums has long been considered somewhat of a “liberal” idea. In fact, four years ago conservative policy analyst Stanley Kurtz warned in the National Review that then Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden planned to “abolish the suburbs” by eliminating single family zoning.
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Texas Lieutenant Governor supports residents in opposition of proposed cement plant
Texas Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, was in attendance at a town hall meeting Monday night to listen to residents’ concerns. By the end of the meeting, he assured Grayson County residents, saying: “I will be sending a letter that this project should not move forward to the TCEQ,” supporting their opposition to Black Mountain’s proposed 600-acre cement plant and quarry in Dorchester. At Monday night’s town hall meeting, citizens, some of whom are landowners and own or work for surrounding businesses, took a stance to express their concerns over the potential impact on air and water quality.
This comes just three weeks after the last public meeting, where over 500 Grayson County residents, including elected officials and nearby cities, let it be known that they do not want this project to move forward. Lieutenant Governor Patrick said though Texas is pro-business, companies that could impact other companies, the economy, and the health of citizens involve public interest. “That’s where you have to balance the two. And for what I’ve studied and what I know and what I’ve been told, this does not appear to be in the best public interest of Sherman,” he said. So, he came out to Sherman to hear from the residents themselves. “I need to get up here and hear from the people so that when I go to check to try to get this stopped, that I can say I’ve been there. I visited the plants, I’ve toured the city, I’ve talked to the people so you have as much credibility as you can because this seems like a really bad idea. I don’t think it helps the economy, I don’t think it helps the air quality,” he said.
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Dallas Rev. Frederick Haynes resigns from role in Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition
A Dallas pastor who took over leadership of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s longtime civil rights organization resigned Tuesday after less than three months on the job. The Rev. Frederick Haynes III told The Associated Press that he submitted a letter with his resignation as head of the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition, effective immediately. “After a time of prayer and consultation, I felt it was best to step down as president and CEO of Rainbow PUSH,” he said by phone from Texas. “I am forever honored that the Rev. Jackson graciously considered me worthy of following him as president of the organization that he founded.” Haynes, 63, said he felt it was “necessary” to move on in light of “challenges that continue to exist,” but declined to elaborate further.
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Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s resignation was in works a week before announcement
Outgoing Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax says City Council members began suggesting he resign one week before it was officially announced, according to a city memo obtained by The Dallas Morning News. In an April 8 memo to City Attorney Tammy Palomino, Broadnax identifies the names of the eight council members who suggested he resign as well as the dates and times, including three suggestions that came the day of the Feb. 21 announcement. Also in the memo, Broadnax says his resignation is now effective as of the end of May 2. He was announced as Austin’s next city manager on Apr. 4 and starts on May 6.
“I notified the City Council of my resignation from my position as City Manager on February 21, 2024 following suggestions that I resign by a majority of the City Council, to allow for a reset, refocus and transition to a new city manager to move the city forward,” Broadnax wrote. “For your awareness and in the interest of transparency, please find below the City Council members referred to above and the dates that the suggestion to resign was made.” According to Broadnax, council members Jaime Resendez and Jaynie Schultz first suggested he resign at 8:15 a.m. on Feb. 14. Council members Adam Bazaldua and Gay Donnell Willis suggested he resign two days later at 10:30 a.m. Council member Carolyn King Arnold, the city’s deputy mayor pro tem, suggested Broadnax resign on Feb. 20 at 6 p.m. Council members Paula Blackmon, Zarin Gracey and Chad West suggested the city manager resign on Feb. 21. Blackmon at 9:15 a.m., Gracey at 12:15 p.m. and West at 2 p.m.
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As Mississippi nears Medicaid expansion, could Texas be next?
After a decade of resistance to expanding Medicaid in Mississippi, Medicaid expansion bills have passed both houses with two-thirds majorities, where Magnolia State Republicans have a supermajority in the legislature. While some wrangling about work requirements remains, the state is set to take advantage of $1 billion in federal funds and add coverage for 200,000 in the country’s poorest state. If there is a state with more conservative bonafides than Texas, it might be Mississippi. Yet, Republican lawmakers there have changed their tune on the legislation as more states take advantage of federal funds to help pay for mounting healthcare costs. Mississippi House Speaker Jason White told Mississippi Today that fiscal impact is responsible for the shift in opinion over the years. “My Republicans think that is the smart, common sense, business-minded thing to do. I’ll admit this. Most of my Republicans don’t get there because of compassion. They get there when they look at dollars and cents.”
Will Mississippi’s movement on Medicaid expansion impact Texas legislators when public opinion and research haven’t? A 2020 poll found that 69 percent of Texans support Medicaid expansion, which would include $5 billion in federal money to pick up 90 percent of the cost of providing insurance to 1.2 million Texas in a state with the highest uninsured rate in the country at 18 percent (the national average is around 8 percent). State leaders have resisted expansion on principle as part of Obama-era federal government expansion, and other thought leaders have argued that it would bust the state’s budget. However, Waco-based The Perryman Group research says that expanding Medicaid could save the state money. It would allow Texans to address their health issues before they become more expensive and require hospitalization. The study found that every $1 spent by the state to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would provide a $1.78 return in state government revenue over the first 10 years. An Episcopal Health Foundation report says the state would save $704 million yearly if the expansion occurred. The coverage gap worsened last year. As the public health emergency ended last year, Texas removed 1.7 million people from its Medicaid rolls.
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County Stories
Top deputy at Bexar County District Attorney's Office resigns
Christian Henricksen, the second in command at the Bexar County District Attorney's Office, announced Tuesday that he's resigning. Henricksen has played a key role in District Attorney Joe Gonzales' administration since the Democrat took office in 2019, first as chief of litigation and then as first assistant district attorney. Prior to that, Henricksen was Gonzales' law partner in private practice and served for eight years as a prosecutor. “Working with Joe Gonzales to serve the people of Bexar County has been the highlight of my career,”Henricksen said in a news release. “We’ve worked to highlight the issue of lower attorney salaries in the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office. It’s a critical issue." "I have an opportunity I cannot pass up and, as my children get closer and closer to college age, that becomes more and more important,” he said.
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National Stories
Democrats return favor, blame GOP for border crisis
Calling it a “wake-up call” for colleagues using migrants as election campaign props, House Democrats have filed a resolution blaming the ongoing border humanitarian crisis on Republican inaction on immigration reform. The resolution enumerates several immigration reform bills from 2007 through 2023 that Republicans in the House or Senate voted down. It also accuses GOP leaders of declaring as “dead on arrival” immigration bills that might help President Joe Biden politically. “It’s been almost 40 years since the last comprehensive immigration reforms were enacted. Forty-years,” U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Oregon, said in a call with reporters on Monday.
“We almost had something from the Senate that was put on the table in a bipartisan way. If it weren’t for (former President) Trump telling the House, then the Senate not to bring something forward because he wanted to use it as a political (electoral) weapon, we would be talking about a proposal right now.” She blames Trump for sinking the latest attempt to address the crisis through legislation and Republicans in Congress for “following him right off that cliff.” The Democratic resolution is sponsored by U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-New Mexico. It has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. “This broken immigration system that we have today has solutions if we can just work together,” Vasquez said during the call. “As we face urgent needs for additional resources at the border for Customs and Border Protection, for detention center oversight and modern border technology, we see a partisan block in Congress. We are here to find solutions, not play political games.”
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Donald Trump brings his campaign to the courthouse as his criminal hush money trial begins
Former President Donald Trump began his day as a criminal defendant lashing out at the judge and prosecutors, casting himself as a victim and angrily posting on social media. In other words: a familiar routine. But inside the courtroom, which was closed to TV cameras, Trump was a different man — reserved and muted in a stark departure from his feisty approach to other legal troubles. The contrast spoke to the gravity of his situation. Trump is now the first former president ever to stand trial on criminal charges and faces the prospect, if he loses, of becoming the first major American presidential candidate in history to run as a convicted felon. Trump is accused in the case of falsifying business records to hide alleged hush money payments made to a porn star to keep her from going public during his 2016 campaign with allegations of an affair.
The trial is expected to last at least six weeks and Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is required to attend every day court is in session — a schedule that will dramatically alter his daily life and his ability to campaign in battleground states. before and after the day’s proceedings, which he again cast as nothing more than a politically motivated effort by his rivals to hinder his campaign. “This is political persecution,” he steamed after arriving with a phalanx of lawyers and several senior aides, but without his wife or other family members. “This is an assault on our country,” he went on. Trump is already well practiced in the art of campaigning from the courtroom. In addition to appearances related to his four criminal trials, Trump this year voluntarily attended most days of his civil fraud trial as well as a defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who had accused Trump of rape. Those two trials did not end well for Trump: The former president was found liable in both cases, and now owes over half a billion dollars, including interest. During those hearings, Trump was often admonished by the judges, who instructed him to be quiet or answer questions more succinctly. At one point, the judge in the Carroll suit threatened to kick Trump out of the courtroom for speaking loudly. Another day he stormed out. Trump also openly sparred with the judge in his civil fraud case, including from the witness stand.
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Biden visits his Pennsylvania hometown to call for more taxes on the rich and cast Trump as elitist
President Joe Biden made a nostalgic return to the house where he grew up in working-class Scranton on Tuesday, kicking off three days of campaigning across Pennsylvania by calling for higher taxes on the rich and casting Donald Trump as an out-of-touch elitist. When the Democratic president wasn’t trying to blunt the populist appeal of his Republican predecessor’s comeback bid, he appeared to savor his trip down memory lane. He lingered longer than expected at his childhood home, where an American flag waved softly in the wind on the front porch and neighbors crowded the sidewalk under flowering trees and a pale blue sky. The president later posed for photos with children, some wearing school uniforms, in the backyard. Biden is looking to gain ground in a key battleground state while Trump spends much of the week in a New York City courtroom for his first criminal trial.
Biden heads to Pittsburgh on Wednesday and Philadelphia on Thursday, but he started his travels in Scranton, which has long played a starring role in his political autobiography. On Tuesday, the city of 75,000 provided a backdrop for Biden’s efforts to reframe the conversation around the economy, which has left many Americans feeling sour about their financial situations at a time of stubborn inflation and elevated interest rates despite low unemployment. The president said he wanted to make the tax code fairer, keeping more money in Americans’ pockets, while criticizing Trump, a billionaire himself, as a tool of wealthy interests. “When I look at the economy, I don’t look at it through the eyes of Mar-a-Lago. I look at it through the eyes of Scranton,” Biden said, contrasting his hometown with the Florida estate where Trump lives. Biden has proposed a 25% percent minimum tax rate for billionaires. He added that taxes are “how we invest in the country.”
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Michigan Democrats win special elections, regain full control of state government
Democrats won back a majority in the Michigan House and restored their party’s full control of state government Tuesday thanks to victories in two special elections. Mai Xiong won the special election in the 13th District, which covers Warren and part of Detroit, while Peter Herzberg won in the 25th District, which contains the cities of Wayne and Westland. Both candidates were favorites in the heavily Democratic districts. The lower chamber has been tied 54-54 between Democratic and Republican lawmakers since November, when two Democratic representatives vacated their seats after winning mayoral races in their hometowns. Democrats flipped both chambers in the 2022 midterms while maintaining control of the governor’s office to win a trifecta for the first time in 40 years. They moved quickly to roll back decades of Republican measures and implement the party’s agenda in their first year, including overhauling the state’s gun laws.
Since the House deadlocked, Republicans have pushed to pass legislation they say is bipartisan, such as a government transparency package, which would open the Legislature and governor’s office up to public record requests. With each Democratic candidate winning Tuesday, the party will regain control through the end of the year, with every seat in the House up for reelection in November. Xiong is a Macomb County commissioner who was endorsed in the primary by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Herzberg is a Westland City Council member who defeated a Whitmer-endorsed candidate in the primary earlier this year. Lawmakers are now expected to turn their focus to a state budget with a self-imposed July 1 deadline. Whitmer in her annual State of the State speech in January called on lawmakers to pass a $80 billion budget that would provide free community college for all high school graduates and free preschool for 4-year-olds. In recent months, Democrats have also deliberated on expanding the state’s hate crime law and enacting a comprehensive school safety package of bills in the wake of the 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School.
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New campaign filings highlight rivalries and divides on Capitol Hill
When Kevin McCarthy was ousted as House speaker last fall, Republican operatives were concerned that his successor, Mike Johnson, would not be able to replicate his fundraising prowess. So far, those concerns appear valid, new federal filings show. Johnson announced earlier this month that he had raised $20 million total in the first three months of the year, funds that will go toward his campaign, fellow Republican colleagues and party committees. By comparison, in the first quarter of 2022, McCarthy announced raising $31.5 million for Republicans, and in the first quarter of 2023, he raised even more, $35 million. The latest filings from the leaders’ joint fundraising committees – which were due Monday with the Federal Election Commission – further illustrate that disparity. In last year’s first quarter, McCarthy’s joint fundraising committee, Protect The House 2024, raised $28 million. In contrast, Johnson’s joint fundraising operation, Grow the Majority, raised $9 million between January and March of this year.
McCarthy, of course, had years to cultivate relationships with donors and distribute funds to allies, while Johnson took over as speaker less than six months ago and faces the challenge of building out his fundraising operation in an election year. Still, his inability to match McCarthy’s fundraising could add pressure to the already embattled speaker as he continues to face ouster threats from rebellious members of his caucus. In a statement about his fundraising, Johnson said that “in less than six months as Speaker, we have hit the ground running to ensure House Republicans will have the resources necessary to win in battlegrounds across America – and we cannot slow down now. While families suffer under increasing inflation, rising crime, and open borders, we will stay focused on our goal to grow the majority in November and deliver solutions for our nation.” Meanwhile, the latest filings show that McCarthy, who resigned from Congress at the end of December, still has $6.3 million banked in his personal campaign account, funds he could direct toward other campaign efforts. He did some of that in the first quarter, making $4,000 contributions to both Vince Fong, a former staffer and California assemblyman who is running to succeed him in his Central Valley seat, and to Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, a McCarthy ally whose seat became more Democratic under a new map that is currently being challenged.
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Second Republican endorses push to fire Johnson as speaker
Speaker Mike Johnson’s strategy to pass long-stalled Ukraine aid has driven at least one Republican to join Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's bid to strip him of his gavel. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Tuesday became the second Republican to publicly back an attempt to end Johnson’s speakership, delivering the message directly to the Louisiana Republican during a closed-door GOP conference meeting. Massie is the first Republican to join Greene’s effort amid rising conservative frustration with the speaker’s proposed foreign aid package. It’s not clear when Greene plans to force the ouster vote, though she has vowed to do it eventually. If she does so after Friday, when Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) is retiring, Johnson would need to lean on Democrats to save his speakership. “The motion is going to get called, OK? Does anybody doubt that? The motion will get called. And then he's gonna lose more votes than Kevin McCarthy. And I have told him this in private, like weeks ago,” Massie said after the conference meeting.
The Kentucky Republican told Johnson, according to two lawmakers in the room, that “you’re not going to be the speaker much longer.” Massie also told reporters that he asked Johnson during the closed-door meeting to resign, but that the Louisiana Republican refused. Though Massie predicted there were more than two Republicans who would vote Johnson out, other critics of the speaker refused to say on Tuesday if they would support an effort to oust him. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) refused to talk about Johnson’s speakership, and instead dovetailed into a story about the Ohio state legislature. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who was the first member to warn of an attempt to oust Johnson earlier this year, said he’s “not going into that right now.” Meanwhile, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who like Davidson and Roy is a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, kept the door open to supporting an effort oust Johnson if the supplemental passes by the end of the week. “I don’t think it helps,” Perry said, responding to a question on whether Johnson’s strategy on foreign aid is a threat to his speakership. He added that “there’s always an alternative” to Johnson within the GOP’s ranks. Massie’s decision was not well received during the meeting, according to several members in the room. And Republicans across the conference, including some members of the Freedom Caucus, quickly pushed back on the idea of booting Johnson, noting it would spark chaos without a clear successor — a repeat of the House’s nightmare in October.
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Cheap natural gas means lower electricity prices except in Texas
In 2023, Texans paid more for wholesale electricity and suffered more calls for conservation than residents served by any other grid across the nation. And there's no reason to expect that to change anytime soon. The great irony for the energy capital of the world is that the low price of natural gas drove down electricity prices everywhere but Texas, the nation’s largest natural gas producer. Texas also has more utility scale renewable electricity generation than any other state. The low and zero fuel prices cannot overcome the flawed market design used by ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. The market design handicaps the capital investment required to produce inexpensive and reliable electricity supplies.
We predicted this outcome more than a decade ago. Let’s review. For eight of the 10 years prior to ERCOT’s failure in 2021, the average wholesale price received by generators was less than the cost of building and operating new generating plants—natural gas turbine units to be specific. Unable to recover their costs, investors refused to build new power plants and, in fact, cut back on maintaining existing coal and natural gas power plants, many of which had already been written off. During 2023, ERCOT frequently reported more unplanned outages for its generator portfolio than PJM, a much larger grid that serves all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia. At 1:38 a.m. February 15, 2021, the ERCOT grid suffered a cascading series of failures attributed to a lack of weatherization of key components of the electricity supply chain. Unprotected power plants froze. Natural gas deliveries dropped off. Coal piles froze. A pump for the cooling reservoir of a nuclear power plant froze and tripped off the reactor. ERCOT and the local utilities that distribute electricity failed to manage a process of rolling blackouts that could have preserved grid stability. Facing a demand call of more than 70,000 megawatts, ERCOT came up 52,000 megawatts short at the low point of the debacle. Extended blackouts across a customer base of 26 million people caused 246 deaths and cost the state more than $100 billion in property losses and economic losses. Hundreds of lawsuits for wrongful deaths and economic losses are pending.
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Newsclips - April 16, 2024 |
Lead Stories
Trump's historic hush money trial gets underway; 1st day ends without any jurors being picked
The historic hush money trial of Donald Trump got underway Monday with the arduous process of selecting a jury to hear the case charging the former president with falsifying business records in order to stifle stories about his sex life. The day ended without any jurors being chosen. The selection process was scheduled to resume Tuesday. The first criminal trial of any former U.S. president began as Trump vies to reclaim the White House, creating a remarkable split-screen spectacle of the presumptive Republican nominee spending his days as a criminal defendant while simultaneously campaigning for office. He's blended those roles over the last year by presenting himself to supporters, on the campaign trail and on social media, as a target of politically motivated prosecutions designed to derail his candidacy.
“It’s a scam. It’s a political witch hunt. It continues, and it continues forever,” Trump said after exiting the courtroom, where he sat at the defense table with his lawyers. After a norm-shattering presidency shadowed by years of investigations, the trial amounts to a reckoning for Trump, who faces four indictments charging him with crimes ranging from hoarding classified documents to plotting to overturn an election. Yet the political stakes are less clear because a conviction would not preclude him from becoming president and because the allegations in this case date back years and are seen as less grievous than the conduct behind the three other indictments. The day began with pretrial arguments — including over a potential fine for Trump — before moving in the afternoon into jury selection, where the parties will decide who might be picked to determine the legal fate of the former, and potentially future, American president. After the first members of the jury pool, 96 in all, were summoned into the courtroom, Trump craned his neck to look back at them, whispering to his lawyer as they entered the jury box.
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Judge finds Texas agency in contempt for foster care problems, imposes $100,000-a-day fine
The head of the state’s sweeping health agency is in contempt of court for failing to address shortcomings in the Texas’ foster care system and faces fines of $100,000 a day until they are corrected, a federal judge ruled Monday. In a 427-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said foster care system officials failed to address prior court orders requiring adequate and prompt investigations into allegations of abuse and neglect involving children in state custody. “Delays in completing investigations can create risk of harm for children because alleged perpetrators might remain free to continue causing harm to children until the investigation is finally completed,” Jack wrote in her order. It was the third time the state has been held in contempt since Jack ruled in 2015 that children in state custody faced an unconstitutional risk of harm.
Paul Yetter, lead attorney for the foster children in the lawsuit that began in 2011, said the state continues “running an unsafe foster care system.” “The judge’s ruling is measured but urgent, given the shocking evidence. Innocent children are suffering every day,” Yetter said in an emailed statement. “After all these years, when will state leadership get serious about fixing this disaster?” Jack ruled that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission failed to ensure allegations of serious abuse and neglect are properly investigated in a timely fashion “and conducted taking into account at all times the child’s safety needs.” Cecile Erwin Young, head of the commission, was held in contempt and faces $100,000 in fines to be assessed daily until her agency certifies that problems with investigations have been addressed, Jack ruled. The judge also set a June 26 hearing on requests for additional contempt findings related to high caseloads for caseworkers, the use of psychotropic medications, and methods for informing foster children about how to report abuse. Complaints also persist about the treatment of children housed in unlicensed settings, including leased homes or motel rooms, and supervised by caseworkers on overtime. Asked for comment, agency spokesman José Andrés Araiza said: “HHSC is reviewing the 427 page order and its attachments.”
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More than 2 million Texans lost Medicaid coverage in past year, at double the national rate
Texas continues to disenroll Medicaid recipients at one of the highest rates in the country, part of a broader trend that has seen state health departments across the nation move unqualified recipients off their rolls after a surge in enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Texas has so far removed 2.1 million Medicaid recipients from its rolls, which works out to 49% of the cases it has reviewed, more than twice the national average and a higher proportion than all but six other states, according to analysis by the nonprofit KFF. With the disenrollment process still ongoing, Texas’ Medicaid rolls were down to 4.4 million in December, compared with 4.2 million in February 2020, before the pandemic began.
“The big question is, at the end of the unwinding, where will enrollment stand?” said Bradley Corallo, senior policy analyst at KFF. “Some states like Utah and Idaho are already below pre-pandemic levels. Texas is right on the cusp, with one more batch (of recipients) to review.” The Texas Department of Health and Human Services did not return a request for comment. State health departments suspended their regular process of reviewing Medicaid rolls during the pandemic in exchange for federal funding authorized by Congress. That arrangement ended in March 2023, setting off a state review process that has so far resulted in 20 million Americans losing Medicaid coverage, a national disenrollment rate of 21%. The highest rates of Medicaid recipients losing coverage are in Republican-controlled states such as Texas, many of which had relatively low participation rates to begin with because of their decision not to expand Medicaid coverage beyond children, pregnant women and those in extreme poverty under the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act.
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Trump’s fundraising shows reliance on oil sector, wealthy donors
Donald Trump relied on a small cadre of donors to contribute a hefty portion of his March fundraising haul, showing the early success of his pivot to wealthy benefactors to finance his presidential bid. The $23.6 million from deep-pocketed donors accounted for a substantial part of the $65.6 million he and the Republican Party raised that month, the latest disclosures to the US Federal Election Commission show. While overall figures were known earlier, the filings released Monday were the first to detail donors and other information. Real estate and aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren and Linda McMahon, who was Trump’s pick to lead the Small Business Administration when he was president, were among those who gave more than $800,000 each to support him and the party, the disclosures showed.
Trump, whose criminal trial started Monday for falsifying business records related to hush money payments made in the 2016 election, is also raising money for Save America — the leadership PAC that’s been paying his legal fees. He’s been increasingly relying on the rich and the elite as his rallies fail to whip up enough small-dollar donations to fund his campaign. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has amassed a record war chest for this point in an election year. Outside groups supporting Biden, led by his main super political action committee, the Future Forward PAC, have now pledged $1 billion to support him. Billionaire John Paulson, former Renaissance Technologies co-president and co-CEO, Robert Mercer, as well as Harold Hamm of Continental Resources and Scott Bessent of Key Square Capital Management were among the donors writing big checks to the Trump 47 Committee, which the GOP nominee took over in mid-March. There were 73 donors in all, with some giving $1,000 or less.
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State Stories
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson: State lawmakers should ban payouts for exiting city employees
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson says he believes state lawmakers should prevent contract payout clauses for municipal government employees like the lump sum payment due to outgoing City Manager T.C. Broadnax. Johnson in his weekly email newsletter to residents on Sunday called a severance clause in Broadnax’s contract that mandates he be paid a year’s worth of his $423,246 annual salary if he resigns at the suggestion of the majority of the City Council a “golden parachute” and said it leaves taxpayers footing the bill. The mayor referred to the exit as “backroom maneuvering” between other council members and Broadnax, whose resignation was announced Feb. 21. He was selected as Austin’s next city manager six weeks later on Apr. 4. Other cities have paid large severances to city managers, Johnson said, “although not in this way — and not to someone who was already lining up a job somewhere else.”
“The Texas Legislature ought to take the step to protect taxpayers by forbidding these golden parachutes for city employees in any locality in the state,” Johnson said in the newsletter. “Until then, as the search for a new city manager continues, it’s time for the Dallas City Council to take a stand by definitively stating that there won’t be a golden parachute clause in the next city manager’s contract.” Broadnax’s city contract was approved by the City Council in Dec. 2016. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Carolyn King Arnold is the only current council member who was elected at the time. Johnson is among a few of the 15-member City Council who has said publicly that they weren’t aware Broadnax was going to resign until it was announced. A city news release announced Broadnax’s resignation, as well as a joint news release from council members Adam Bazaldua, Zarin Gracey, Omar Narvaez, Jaime Resendez, Jaynie Schultz and Gay Donnell Willis saying the city manager was stepping down “at the suggestion of the majority of the Dallas City Council.” A key reason for the suggestion was that the working relationship between Johnson and Broadnax “has not been conducive to effective governance and the advancement of Dallas’ interests,” the February news release from the council members said. According to terms of Broadnax’s contract, the city must pay him a lump sum equal to 12 months of his base salary if there is an “involuntary separation” from his duties as city manager. He could also be in line to receive even more money in payouts tied to health care benefits and unused vacation days.
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Texas Agriculture Chief Sid Miller says bird flu concerns are ‘overhyped’
Concerns about avian influenza cases among dairy cows in Texas have been “a little bit overhyped” as its spread can be contained, according to the state’s top agriculture official. Texas hasn’t seen any further infections in almost three weeks, and new transmissions from migrating waterfowl are unlikely as birds have headed north, according to Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. What’s more, contagion through contaminated milk can be easily avoided by disinfecting equipment used in barns, he added. “We’re over the hump,” Miller said in an interview Thursday. “We can take measures to stop that.”
The infection of cows by the same virus strain that emerged in Europe in 2020 — and has since caused an unprecedented number of deaths in wild birds and poultry globally — has raised concerns that the outbreak may hurt demand for dairy and beef and disrupt supplies. Miller said only 10% of milking cows in the state have been infected by bird flu, and that little milk has been thrown away so there is not a shortage of the staple. While no infected dairy has entered the food chain, consumption of pasteurized milk as well as cooked eggs is safe. “If you’re worried about it, cook your eggs and make sure you get your milk pasteurized,” Miller said.
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Texas leaders, advocates build momentum on pre-K, child care ahead of Legislature
Statewide leaders and advocates want to build momentum on child care and early education conversations ahead of next year’s legislative session. Alfreda Norman, former senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said one of the most pressing challenges for families across the state continues to be finding affordable, high quality child care. The annual cost of infant care is comparable to that of a public university. Waitlists for child care scholarships are at an all-time high with more than 70,000 families currently hoping to receive such support, she said. Receive our in-depth coverage of education issues and stories that affect North Texans. “Too many children are missing out on an opportunity to receive a high-quality early education,” Norman said. The economy also takes a hit when parents can’t find options.
Texas loses about $9.4 billion annually because of child care issues, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Bryan Daniel in a panel spoke about the current landscape of early education in Texas. Kara Waddell, president and CEO of Child Care Associates, an advocacy nonprofit based in Fort Worth, moderated the discussion. The group noted how, in 2019, lawmakers attempted to expand pre-K options for Texas families by encouraging partnerships between school districts or charter networks and child care programs. However, only about 12 out of the state’s nearly 1,200 districts and charters figured out how to team up, Morath said. “From a school district perspective, it is actually quite logistically difficult to make these partnerships work,” Morath said. With districts already overburdened with other challenges, the Texas Education Agency recommends bringing in nonprofit organizations to act as intermediaries and simplify the process for school leaders, he suggested. Waddell noted how states can experience a greater return on investment by bolstering programs in the first three years of childrens’ lives. However, most of the country instead pours more funds into students in kindergarten through high school.
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Students walk out of Wilmer-Hutchins High School days after on-campus shooting
Students at Wilmer-Hutchins High School staged a walkout Monday, saying they do not feel safe at school, days after a student shot and injured a classmate. The shooting happened Friday morning in a classroom and the victim was shot in the upper thigh, officials said at the time. The student suspected in the shooting was taken into custody but their identity has not been released to the public. No other injuries were reported. About 40 students could be seen in the parking lot of Wilmer-Hutchins High School on Monday morning, speaking to reporters, holding up signs and talking in small groups. Students said they had been outside for more than an hour when the walkout started to disperse.
Yanely Gamino, a student who participated in the walkout, said she felt like school leaders did not substantially address the shooting when they arrived at school Monday morning, instead telling students counseling services are available and sending them to do regular classwork. “It was like they brushed it over,” said Jose Morales, a fellow Wilmer-Hutchins student. Students said they had not planned the walkout in advance and instead discussed the possibility in first period. Other students said they heard about the possibility of a walkout from their teachers and decided to participate. Multiple students said the school’s metal detectors are not regularly used and the school does not consistently enforce its clear bag policies, both points of frustration. “We have whole metal detectors, we have wands, but now they want to finally use [them] after something bad happens,” Gamino said. Treasure Daniels, a student who walked out, also said school officials have been attempting to stop students from speaking to the media, something other students described as well.
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2 Dallas crash victims sue Chiefs’ Rashee Rice, SMU’s ‘Teddy’ Knox seeking more than $1M
A six-vehicle accident Saturday in northeast Dallas left at least four injured. Police suspect the crash may have involved Kansas City Chiefs' Rashee Rice. A Dallas couple is suing Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice and SMU cornerback Theodore “Teddy” Knox in connection with a multivehicle crash last month that injured them and at least five others. Edvard Petrovskiy and Irina Gromova are seeking more than $1 million through the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Dallas County. Their attorney, Sanjay Mathur, told The Dallas Morning News on Monday they’re both “pretty upset about what occurred” and still undergoing treatment. He said they haven’t heard from Rice or Knox. “They felt that the accountability measures that need to be taking place — both for them, but also the public at large — would best be served by filing a lawsuit,” Mathur said.
Attorneys for Rice and Knox did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit alleged the two football players challenged each other “to a high-speed race” despite knowing the road was “heavily trafficked with commuters.” Petrovskiy and Gromova were “severely injured,” the lawsuit said, noting brain trauma, lacerations to the face that required stitches, contusions, disfigurement and internal bleeding. The filing appeared to be the first lawsuit reported in connection with the March 30 crash. Rice and Knox also each face one criminal count of aggravated assault, a count of collision involving serious bodily injury and six counts of collision involving injury, Dallas police officials announced last week. Officials have said Rice admitted to driving one of two high-end sports cars that triggered the six-vehicle crash in the 6600 block of North Central Expressway. He and Knox turned themselves into Glenn Heights police last week. Mathur said there are limits in the criminal justice system for how much money can be issued as a fine, noting most felonies have a maximum of $10,000.
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New vaping law lands hundreds of North Texas students in alternative school
Hundreds of North Texas students were sent to disciplinary alternative schools this school year because they were caught vaping — an offense that requires strict punishment under a new state law. More than one-fifth of students assigned to such campuses in eight Dallas County districts were there because of e-cigarettes, according to discipline records analyzed by The Dallas Morning News. The state mandate raises questions among education advocates — and even the legislator who pushed for the law addressing vaping. Some are worried that time spent in alternative school can derail students’ learning. Public health officials are concerned about the idea of disciplining children who likely need help. “You can’t punish your way out of an addiction issue,” said Charlie Gagen, the American Lung Association’s Director of Advocacy for Texas. “We’d really like to see more resources for youth education and cessation and leave the punishment aspect for those retailers” who sell products to minors.
The News requested data covering the first five months of the academic year that detailed how many students were sent to Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs, or DAEP, because of vaping. More than one in 10 Dallas ISD students sent to alternative schools as of Feb. 1 were removed from their home campuses because of e-cigarettes. The percentages are more striking in districts such as Duncanville and Mesquite, where around 40% of alternative school placements were for vaping. Students are generally sent to these alternative schools for serious offenses, such as making terroristic threats, selling drugs or assaulting an employee. Now schools across the state have information campaigns reminding students: VAPE = DAEP. Some DAEP campuses were pushed to capacity, which meant children were routed to in-school suspension instead. More than one in 10 high school students in Texas reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days in 2021, according to statewide survey data. Nearly 6% of middle schoolers did so. Dallas County reported its first vaping-related death — a teenager — in 2020.
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Biden administration to give $6.4 billion to Samsung to make computer chips near Austin
The Biden administration has reached an agreement to provide up to $6.4 billion in direct funding for Samsung Electronics to develop a computer chip manufacturing and research cluster in Texas near Austin. The funding announced Monday by the Commerce Department is part of a total investment in the cluster that, with private money, is expected to exceed $40 billion. The government support comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 with the goal of reviving the production of advanced computer chips domestically. “The proposed project will propel Texas into a state of the art semiconductor ecosystem,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters. “It puts us on track to hit our goal of producing 20% of the world’s leading edge chips in the United States by the end of the decade.”
Raimondo said she expects the project will create at least 17,000 construction jobs and more than 4,500 manufacturing jobs. Samsung’s cluster in Taylor, a city of about 17,000 people some 35 miles northeast of Austin in Williamson County, would include two factories that would make four- and two-nanometer chips. Also, there would be a factory dedicated to research and development, as well as a facility for the packaging that surrounds chip components. The first factory is expected to be operational in 2026, with the second being operational in 2027, according to the government. The funding also would expand an existing Samsung facility in Austin. Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Samsung will be able to manufacture chips in Austin directly for the Defense Department as a result. Access to advanced technology has become a major national security concern amid competition between the U.S. and China.
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Study: Texas No.1 in fatal crashes involving construction zones
A new study identified Texas as the No.1 state for fatal automobile crashes occuring in the vicinity of road construction, according to the national law firm Schmidt & Clark. According to the law firm, Texas saw a staggering 582 fatal crashes involving construction zones of the total 17,549 crashes that occurred between 2017 and 2021. This means that 3.3 percent of all accidents during that five-year period involved work zones, which is more than double the national average of 1.3 percent. Schmidt & Clark examined data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on fatal motor vehicle crashes to determine which state has the most dangerous utility, construction, and maintenance work zones. The law firm said that construction zones and maintenance work zones are more accident-prone due to the higher probability of narrowed lanes, congested traffic and uneven pavement.
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Racism in the health care system is killing Black pregnant Texans
A few months after Si'Mone Scott gave birth to her daughter, she knew something was off. This was her third pregnancy, and her toughest. The Dallas resident had been put on bed rest early on in her first trimester because she was at high risk of a miscarriage. “I've never experienced a miscarriage before and I didn't want to,” Scott said. “I was already going through a lot at home, and then to basically have to stop working, I couldn't even clean.” When Scott gave birth to her daughter via C-section, she started bleeding, losing more than 1,300 units of blood. Postpartum hemorrhage is categorized as losing more than 1,000 units of blood within 24 hours to 12 weeks after delivery, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “I basically almost died on the operating table,” Scott said.
The health issues Scott experienced are some of the most common reasons Texans die in pregnancy. Texas is among the worst states in the country for maternal mortality, and Black Texans die at higher rates than their white counterparts from pregnancy-related causes. Scott got connected with Delighted to Doula Birth Services, a Black-led organization in Dallas providing postpartum doula support to new parents. The organization's aim is to reduce maternal mortality rates. Scott said she felt calm and relaxed immediately after coming to the office and meeting her doula. “Everything just started coming out of me,” Scott said. “I was speaking for hours, uninterrupted. She just listened. She just listened. And I know I was going on and on and on. But it was just being heard.” Over the next few months, Scott said she came to Delighted to Doula every week as part of her “self-care routine.” She started to notice changes in her mood. She felt happier and had more energy to play with her daughters. “They never treated me like I was overstaying my welcome or anything, I was always welcomed,” Scott said. “That helped me to realize that I do matter and that all my feelings are valid.”
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Express News, MySA staffers opt not to join union
The San Antonio News Guild announced Friday afternoon that staffers at the Hearst-owned Express-News and MySA voted 36-31 against unionizing as part of the Media Guild of the West. Guild officials told the Current in February that 68% of union-eligible staff at both publications signed authorization cards to be represented by the Guild. In a Friday social media post, organizers blamed the failed vote on “strong union-busting tactics from Hearst.” Express-News Publisher Mark Medici was unavailable for comment for the Current's article. “Independent of today’s vote, my focus is on the journalism we produce and, with the support of Hearst, providing the best workplace I can for our journalists and all of our employees,” Medici said in a statement supplied to the Express-News.
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Precinct chair deemed ineligible after win sues Tarrant County Republican Party
A Republican precinct chair who won his election, only to be declared ineligible after the fact, is suing the Tarrant County Republican Party. Chris Rector won a primary election to chair Tarrant County Precinct 4230 with 75% of the vote. A week later, Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French sent Rector a letter accusing him of pretending to be a Republican in order to dissolve the party and merge it with the Tarrant County Democratic Party. As a result, French wrote, he would not issue a certificate of election to Rector. The lawsuit, filed April 10, alleges French “concocted a bogus, fraudulent claim that Contestant was ineligible for the position to which he had been elected.”
Rector is asking a judge to declare him eligible and confirm his election as precinct chair. In the interim, he is asking for a temporary restraining order to ensure the Tarrant County Republican Party can’t appoint someone else as chair. No amount of money can compensate Rector for a lost political office, nor can it compensate the residents who voted for him, Rector’s lawyers argued in the suit. In a written statement, French said the party will defend itself against the lawsuit and win, “whatever it takes.” “This is a blatant assault on our First Amendment rights to freedom of association, engineered by Democrats bent on destroying our organization,” French wrote. The party chair said Rector’s lawsuit is a prime example of why Texas needs to close its primaries. Currently, Texas voters are not required to register as a Republican or Democrat before voting in either party’s primaries, a fact Republicans have lamented across the state. Julie McCarty, founder and CEO of the True Texas Project, joined French in calling for closed primaries following the lawsuit.
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Pilots union at American Airlines says it's seeing more safety and maintenance issues
The pilots union at American Airlines says there has been “a significant spike” in safety issues at the airline, including fewer routine aircraft inspections and shorter test flights on planes returning from major maintenance work. The union also says it has seen incidents in which tools were left in wheel wells and items were left in the sterile area around planes parked at airport gates. A spokesman said Monday that union officials have raised their concerns with senior managers at the airline and were encouraged by the company's response. American, which is based in Fort Worth said it has an industry-leading safety management system. An airline spokesperson said American is in regular contact with regulators and unions “to further bolster our strong safety record and enhance our ever-evolving safety culture."
Dennis Tajer, a pilot and spokesman for the union, said the union spoke recently with senior management, “and management’s initial response to our request was encouraging. We fully intend to do everything we can to assure that American maintains strong margins of safety.” The Federal Aviation Administration declined to comment directly on the union's allegations or whether the agency has increased its oversight of American as a result. In a statement, an FAA spokesperson said airlines required to have systems for identifying potential hazards before they become serious problems. The safety committee of the Allied Pilots Association said in an email to members Saturday that the union “has been tracking a significant spike in safety- and maintenance-related problems in our operation.” The union said American has increased the time between routine inspections on planes. It also said American has ended overnight maintenance checks unless a plane is written up for special attention or due for scheduled maintenance and now does “abbreviated” test flights on planes returning to service after major maintenance checks or long-term storage. The union asked its members to report any safety or maintenance problems.
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County Stories
Hidalgo says commissioners who stand in way of changing contract process are 'part of the problem'
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Monday called out the county's methods of awarding millions of dollars in contracts to companies building infrastructure like roads and parks, arguing that the county spends local tax dollars with far less transparency than when it is working with federal money. Hidalgo cited a recent report prepared by Harris County Auditor Michael Post's office that found the county doesn't produce a rigorous paper trail when choosing the winners of contracts. The engineering department, which oversees major infrastructure projects along with commissioners' offices, did not have consistent records available until as recently as July 2023. Now, Hidalgo is calling on her four colleagues on Harris County Commissioners Court to give up their control of these decisions and hand over the reins to the county's independent purchasing department.
"I'm not trying to point the finger with what I'm going to present," Hidalgo said at a news conference Monday. "But I am trying to say if you don't change this, and change it promptly, then you are part of the problem." Hidalgo said she will present her proposal at the upcoming April 23 meeting of Commissioners Court. Currently, companies are chosen by engineering department staff, as well as staff from the four commissioner's offices. There were no conflict of interest certifications on file for those employees and no written policies requiring staff to document their conflicts, according to the audit. The auditor report also surveyed that Harris County was the only county that procures professional services — such as engineering — independent of the purchasing office. Hidalgo has made repeated attempts to broach the topics of improving public trust and streamlining county services, even if that has sometimes meant going it alone. She has consistently refused contributions from county vendors since she ran for her first term in office in 2018, unlike her colleagues on court. At the March 26 meeting of Commissioners Court, Hidalgo argued the county's efforts to improve efficiency have a tendency to get left on the shelf when studies are completed but the results aren't released.
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National Stories
Biden raises oil and gas leasing costs on federal land
The Bureau of Land Management is raising bonding requirements and royalty rates for oil and gas companies operating on federal lands, the first major overhaul of leasing rules since the late 1980s. Under regulations finalized Friday, the minimum bond for oil and gas leases will be $150,000, up from $10,000, and minimum royalties on oil and gas production will increase to 16.7% from 12.5%, part of a Biden administration strategy to increase government revenues and deter oil companies from buying up oil leases and sitting on them as they wait for oil prices to rise. “These are the most significant reforms to the federal oil and gas leasing program in decades,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said. “They will cut wasteful speculation, increase returns for the public and protect taxpayers from being saddled with the costs of environmental cleanups.”
Minimum bids on oil leases will also increase to $10 per acre from $2. And rental rates paid on those leases will step up over time, reaching $15 an acre after eight years. The updated regulations have drawn pushback from oil and gas lobbyists, who maintain they will slow drilling on federal lands and shrink U.S. energy production. Federal lands accounted for 11% of U.S. oil production and 9% of natural gas production in 2022, according to BLM. “The regulatory environment has become so hostile to American oil and natural gas producers operating on federal land that it’s clear the Biden administration intends for 'multiple use' lands to only be used for conservation and recreation,” said Dan Naatz, chief operating officer of the trade group Independent Petroleum Association of America. The new oil and gas rules come as the Biden seeks to expand wind and solar energy generation on federal lands. BLM announced Thursday it was adjusting its rules to lower costs for renewable developers and speed up the permitting process, part of an effort to expand the more than 25 gigawatts of renewable projects already permitted.
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Biden’s options for retaliating against Iran risk antagonizing China
President Biden’s aides are preparing to hit Iran with economic sanctions over Tehran’s attack on Israel, but experts say they face limited meaningful options for doing so without antagonizing China or risking a spike in the price of oil. In retaliation for a strike against its consulate, Iran over the weekend sent more than 300 drones and missiles toward Israel. The unprecedented aerial barrage did not cause major damage or injuries, as U.S.-led forces intercepted most of the projectiles. Still, U.S. officials and their European allies are discussing potential economic responses to Iran, as leading Western officials converged Monday on Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Their options are limited because Iran is already one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, with U.S. penalties in effect on its banking, manufacturing and energy sectors.
Among the most obvious remaining options is aggressively expanding sanctions on Chinese firms that have bought large quantities of Iranian crude oil exports, which have provided a financial lifeline for Tehran as it remains cut off from the West. The United States has over the last year imposed sanctions on some commercial links in the oil trade between China and Iran, but experts say the administration could go further by hitting many more Chinese refineries and banks with the restrictions. Doing so carries its own risks, however. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and other administration officials have tried stabilizing relations with China in recent months, and a sudden blow to energy production could infuriate Beijing. Additionally, cutting off sales of Iranian crude could cause oil prices to spike globally amid tighter supply, potentially leading to higher gas prices ahead of the 2024 presidential election. “There are not a lot of options that are game changers, because so much of Iran is already sanctioned,” said Rachel Ziemba, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a foreign policy think tank. “But if you really want to cut off oil revenue for Iran, you have to go through China and Chinese institutions.”
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A tech-stock bubble and burst, all within three weeks
Distilled, the value proposition of buying public shares of the parent company of Truth Social is: Donald Trump will make you money. This is not an unusual value proposition for a stock, certainly; they are all predicated on someone making you money. In this case, though, the proposition is unusually centered in the moneymaking skills of one person, more so than perhaps any stock besides Tesla. This has been the value proposition of nearly everything Trump has ever done. Even his presidential campaigns are rooted to no small extent in the idea that Trump will make you richer; his 2024 campaign is certainly investing a lot of energy in the idea that he did or will present Americans with a financial windfall. The problem, of course, is that the most reliable beneficiary of Trump’s theories of enrichment is Donald Trump. In the case of Truth Social, even he isn’t doing terribly well at the moment.
It’s interesting to consider what Truth Social is presenting to potential investors without the Trump element. It’s a social network, like Twitter back when it was Twitter. There’s nothing technically exceptional about it; in fact, it’s simply a slightly modified instance of an out-of-the-box social-media-site tool kit called Mastodon. The only thing that makes it different from anything else is that Donald Trump owns it and posts on it and has pointed his huge base of support at it as a venue. And that was enough for a lot of people to jump in when the stock went public, including some people who bet their futures on it. What’s happened since the stock went public at the end of last month is not normal. Consider three other tech stocks, ones that put a bit more effort into the “tech” part. When Google and Twitter went public in 2004 and 2013, respectively, prices quickly jumped upward from their initial offer prices and then held fairly stable. Facebook’s stock, made public in 2012, stayed flat at the outset and then dropped over the next few weeks. Now let’s superimpose shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (ticker: DJT). It rose from the offer price, pushing Trump into Bloomberg’s list of the 500 richest billionaires in the world. And then it started steadily shedding value.
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Big Tech is downsizing workspace in another blow to office real estate
Big technology companies are cutting back on office space across major coastal cities, leaving some exposed landlords with empty buildings and steep losses. The pullback marks a sharp reversal after years when companies such as Amazon.com, Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Google parent Alphabet had been bolstering their office footprints by adding millions of square feet of space. Their expansion continued even after the pandemic erupted and many employees started working remotely. Tech companies have been the dominant tenant in West Coast cities like Seattle and San Francisco, and by 2021 these companies came to rival those in the finance industry as Manhattan’s biggest user of office space. Now, big tech companies are letting leases expire or looking to unload some offices. Amazon is ditching or not renewing some office leases and last year paused construction on its second headquarters in northern Virginia. Google has listed office space in Silicon Valley for sublease, according to data company CoStar. Meta has also dumped some office space and is leasing less than it did early on in the pandemic.
Salesforce, the cloud-based software company, said in a recent securities filing that it leased or owned about 900,000 square feet of San Francisco office space as of January. That is barely half the 1.6 million of office space it reported having in that city a year earlier. Tech giants looking to unload part of their workplace face a lot of competition. Office space listed for sublease in 30 cities with a lot of technology tenants has risen to the highest levels in at least a decade, according to brokerage CBRE. The 168.4 million square feet of office space for sublease in the first quarter was down slightly from the fourth-quarter 2023 peak but up almost threefold from early 2019. Even tech companies that are renewing or adding space want less than they did before. The amount of new office space tech companies leased fell by almost half in the fourth quarter of last year compared with 2019, CBRE said. Tech’s voracious appetite for office and other commercial real estate had been an economic boon for cities. The new workspace usually brought an influx of well-paid employees, boosted cities’ property-tax revenue and translated into more business for local retailers and shop owners.
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The House plans to hold separate votes on aid for Israel and Ukraine after delays
House Speaker Mike Johnson has announced a path forward on aid to Ukraine and Israel after months of delay because of GOP divisions. Iran's unprecedent attack on Israel over the weekend increased pressure on Congress to act. Johnson plans to bring forward three separate bills on funding for Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine. A fourth national security bill would likely include a provision that could lead to a ban on TikTok in the U.S. Lawmakers say there's renewed urgency in passing the aid to Israel after Saturday's attack. "My phone melted over the weekend, you know, with all the members letting me know all their ideas," Johnson told reporters after the closed-door meeting with his members Monday evening. "It really was the will of my colleagues to vote on these measures independently and not have them all sandwiched together, as the Senate had done."
Top congressional Democrats, President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had called on the House to swiftly vote on the Senate-passed $95 billion foreign aid package that combines aid for Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine. But that has long been a no-go in the House, where various GOP members remain deeply opposed to further funding for Ukraine. "The Ukraine piece is — clearly on the Republican side — the most controversial one, the one that has the most difference of opinion," Johnson said Monday. Timing of the House vote remains to be seen. House GOP rules require 72 hours to review legislation, which Johnson said he would honor. "That probably means that if we get bill text sometime early tomorrow — that's the hope, that's the ambition — then that probably puts us into perhaps Friday evening [for votes]," he said. "We'll have to see how the clock works." The proposal drew early signs of support from members. "It's the right way in which the House should function," said Republican New York Rep. Marc Molinaro. "The speaker wants four votes, four measures. Everybody can vote their conscience, vote their constituency, and then defend their position." Oklahoma Rep. Kevin Hern, who is the chair of the Republican Study Committee, told reporters he thinks Johnson is "doing the right thing."
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US regional banks dramatically step up loans to oil and gas
A group of US regional banks is ratcheting up lending to oil, gas and coal clients, grabbing market share as bigger European rivals back away. The list of banks includes Citizens Financial Group Inc., BOK Financial Corp. and Truist Securities Inc., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The companies have climbed between 13 and 40 steps up the league table for fossil-fuel lenders since the end of 2021, placing them among the world’s top 35 banks by number of deals. Fifth Third Securities Inc. and US Bancorp, already in the top 30, both ascended 10 steps in the same period. Five regional US banks dramatically stepped up lending to fossil-fuel clients since the start of 2022.
Since the start of 2022, the combined number of fossil-fuel loans provided by Citizens Financial, BOK Financial, Truist Securities, Fifth Third and US Bancorp rose more than 70% on an average annualized basis, compared with the preceding six years, the Bloomberg data show. Spokespeople for Truist, Fifth Third and US Bancorp declined to comment. Rory Sheehan, a spokesperson for Citizens Financial, said the bank supports initiatives enabling the transition toward a lower-carbon future. He also said the bank recognizes the role of the oil and gas industry. The development offers a glimpse of how the US banking landscape is being altered against a backdrop of stricter climate regulations across the Atlantic. US regional lenders — shaken by the crisis that followed Silicon Valley Bank’s meltdown — are participating in more fossil-fuel loans as banks in Europe begin to pull away for fear of getting caught on the wrong side of environmental, social and governance regulations and climate litigation.
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