Forrest Wilder
@Forrest4Trees
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Writer, @TexasMonthly . Formerly @texasobserver . Piss and vinegar. Native Texan. Plus: fishing, kayaking, gardening and rock climbing. DMs open.
Austin, Texas
Joined August 2009
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Once again, the world is getting a glimpse into Texas government—and it ain't pretty.
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Texas is 48th in mental-health funding. Greg Abbott has been governor for eight years, plenty of time to do something.
NEW: Gov. Greg Abbott in an interview with Fox News emphasized mental health in response to the Allen mall shooting.
"People want a quick solution," Abbott said. "The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue."
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More than 10,000 night owls, graveyard shift workers, and just generally busy folks took advantage of 24-hour voting in Harris County, including this dude who showed up in a welding mask & said he was motivated to vote b/c voter suppression ticked him off
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Greg Abbott, who is thinking about running for president of the USA, is holding his State of the State address at a corporate site in San Marcos, instead of the Capitol. Cellphones are banned and guests were originally expected to sign non-disclosure agreements. No press allowed.
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ERCOT for sure has a lot of blame to bear for this crisis, but the fundamental feature of Texas's power grid is deregulation. We went further and faster than any other state with turning things over to the market. That's on policymakers.
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.
@GregAbbott_TX
now 20 minutes late for his press conference where he's going to talk about his border blockade. He's appearing alongside Samuel Alejandro García Sepúlveda, the governor of Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Fun fact while we wait: Garcia is 34 and is working on his third PhD.
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What, I thought we were in favor of free speech on campus? Or does that only apply if you hold an opinion on foreign policy in line with the governor?
Arrests being made right now & will continue until the crowd disperses.
These protesters belong in jail.
Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period.
Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.
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Greg Abbott over the years:
Allen: "unspeakable tragedy"
Cleveland: "senseless act"
Uvalde: "senseless crime"
White Settlement: "evil act"
Midland-Odessa: "senseless & cowardly attack"
El Paso: "heinous & senseless act"
Santa Fe: "act of evil"
Sutherland Springs: "horrific act"
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Greg Abbott and the Legislature desperately want everyone to blame ERCOT, but ERCOT is mostly just a traffic cop for the grid. This market was deregulated and designed by the Legislature and maintained and promoted by politicians. They are the deciders.
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One of the many problems with one-party rule in Texas is that our leaders rarely face any accountability. They answer only to their donor and the far right. Texas tough lmao
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Uvalde families asked the TX Legislature to raise the age to purchase semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21. The bill wasn't given a hearing until April 19 and they were kept waiting for 12+ hours to testify. The bill is pending in committee; Mon. is the last day it can be advanced.
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New rule: If you want to be president (or governor for that matter), you don't get to live in a hermetically sealed safe space.
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Say what you will about Beto, but there isn't a politician in the state that can get grandmas to applaud "motherfucker." Highly effective crowd work.
I don’t know if Beto’s gonna win but goddamn is it refreshing to see a politician call someone out like this
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I helped organize an unpermitted walkout and rally in front of the Tower in 2003 to protest the Iraq War. The police were never this heavy-handed.
This has gotten exponentially more violent and out of control since DPS began dispersing protestors. At least 5 arrested now. Watch:
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Two weeks, Greg Abbot was blaming the Texas blackouts that happened on his watch on wind power. Now, a day after he lifted Covid-19 restrictions, he's preemptively blaming the (coming?) surge on immigrants.
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Texas springs and rivers are in really bad shape right now, and maybe none worse than the iconic Jacob's Well in Wimberley. The photo on the left is how the well is supposed to look. The photo on the right is its current dismal state of zero flow.
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Lol at this description of Texas A&M in The Guardian (UK)
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Greg Abbott: Crime is out of control in Austin. Something must be done.
Also Greg Abbott: I shall move heaven and earth to free this convicted murderer!
I am working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry.
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“No market solution” = we, the government, deregulated everything and are now at the mercy of profiteers
Breaking: ERCOT has issued an alert for possible rolling blackouts Monday from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. "A projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution available." Additionally, ERCOT has issued a call for energy conservation Monday.
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NEW from me: My Texas school-finance opus.
They warned me never to write about the insanely byzantine way we fund public schools in Texas, but I am a stubborn fellow.
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Elon Musk and Joe Rogan should record another three-hour podcast tomorrow explaining again how Texas government is so much more competent than California's
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In downballot news,
@RepMattKrause
, the state rep who came up with list of 850 bannable books, is losing badly (61-39) in the race for Tarrant County DA.
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SCOOP: In a private call with Bank of America, Texas's top regulator pledged to protect the profits made by Wall Street during the February blackouts
by
@lsteffy
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Texas, take notice. Deep-red Oklahoma now has:
—Medical marijuana
—No-excuses absentee voting
—Medicaid expansion
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The Bloomberg campaign couldn't have been any clearer when it hired its Texas staff: They would have jobs helping turn Texas blue in November no matter what happened with Bloomberg.
This week, the staff was let go.
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Seems like Texas's junior senator has a lot of time on his hands and that he hungers for useful work. Perhaps he could apply to be a morgue worker in El Paso. Not sure he's qualified, but it's worth a shot.
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Looking through Greg Abbott's campaign donations is an eye-opening exercise. You see how many megamillionaires and billionaires—people most of us have never heard of—quietly write checks to the governor for $10s and $100s of thousands on the regular.
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The elite protection racket at work: the land commissioner's daughter heard a professor criticizing (gasp!) the lt. governor, so she told her mom,who then told the lt guv, whose staff then got in touch with TAMU prez John Sharp, who suspended the prof.
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You won't hear much from Texas GOP politicians about the walking catastrophe that is foster care in Texas because there isn't a drag show or dirty book to blame. Instead, it's just them—they did this.
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Gov.
@GregAbbott_TX
says school vouchers are about "freedom" for families. But whose freedom? In pitching vouchers, the governor only ever appears at expensive private Christian schools.
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In May, a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy died while in Border Patrol custody. His autopsy, obtained by
@TexasMonthly
, shows that he died of the flu, complicated by pneumonia and sepsis. At no point was he ever taken to the hospital.
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We are well on our way to having an eight-month summer in Texas. It’s 104F on September 24th and everyone is excited that it will be 95F tomorrow.
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A lot of new Texans are fixing to learn what "ERCOT" means
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Again, this is a 95% Hispanic county. One of the poorest in the nation. Something went terribly wrong for Democrats here.
Final unofficial numbers from Starr County:
Joe Biden with 52% of the votes, Donald Trump with 46.99%
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ABILENE—"Another man was found dead in his home Wednesday. He did not have power for three days, according to Flores.
Josh Casey said the man 'froze to death in his recliner.'
According to Casey, the victim's wife was beside him."
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The fact that DPS leaders look like fumbling clowns in the national spotlight is so telling. This agency has received *billions* to wage a border operation with virtually nothing to show for it—and only the most nominal of scrutiny from lawmakers. They've gotten used to impunity.
“The active shooter situation, you want to stop the killing, you want to preserve life, but also…”
No, there is no “but also.”
He goes on to say the officers could have been shot if they rushed in.
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Maybe Greg Abbott should have waited 5 minutes before announcing that he would pardon the, um, self-described racist murderer.
'I am a racist:' Texas man convicted of murdering BLM protester’s social media posts reveal racist comments, anti-protester views via
@statesman
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So ineffective at the front mic that her GOP colleagues had to come feed her lines, which you can hear on the mic. This is the same rep who wants to ban voting on college campuses.
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Sorry guys, democracy is canceled, we ran out of paper.
Texas says supply chain issues have limited the number of voter registration forms it can give out,
@AshLopezRadio
reports.
The state doesn’t have online voter registration, so ppl must use paper, which SOS says is hard to get rn
#txlege
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“the drowning of the two bodies”
What this story doesn’t tell you is that I informed Biden almost a year ago about Texas’s constitutional authority to secure the border.
It also ignores the fact that the bouys used by Texas did not cause the drowning of the 2 bodies.
Facts matter.
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This may be my favorite reader email of all time. My kindergarten teacher from 30-plus years ago in Nordheim, Texas, reached out to thank me for my recent article on public education. And I got the chance to thank *her*!
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Austin is a small town. Ken Paxton's chief of staff was having lunch by herself at the Galaxy Cafe one day in 2018 when she overheard a woman talking about Paxton in very personal terms. Paxton lied to her—he said it was his realtor.
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None of this is new. Here's what one critic said in 2011:
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One of the features of the Texas power market is scarcity. It's a feature, not a bug. Scarcity drives up prices, which is good for the industry but not disastrous during a crisis. We saw this play out in 2011 when an ice storm knocked plants offline and led to rolling blackouts.
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We'll learn more soon, I'm sure, but this looks like Abbott flexing for Fox News, showing that he is 10x harder on the campus pinkos than any East Coast authority
NEW: Sources tell
@KXAN_News
Texas DPS sent state troopers from Houston to Austin to handle the UT protest.
A long line of them heading towards the city:
@hueyjayd
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If the TAMU professor said Dan Patrick was responsible for killing policy that would save lives, then she should be commended, not reprimanded. Dan Patrick and the TX Senate killed legislation that would have legalized fentanyl test strips.
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Make that eight expensive private Christian schools that Gov. Abbott has visited to promote school vouchers. The tuition at this one, Cypress Christian School, is more than $20k for high school. Again, we must ask: who are these vouchers actually for?
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CNN’s coverage of the Columbia U situation is an endless parade of law enforcement experts. Even their reporter is going out of his way to justify and praise the police response. Not a single critical voice so far. Just completely one-sided copaganda.
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Funny how people in positions of power keep getting tested (and keep coming up positive). Huh, I wonder about the rest of us.
NEW:
@UTAustin
President
@gregfenves
says he is in self-isolation after his wife tests positive for
#COVID
ー19
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Dear New York Times, that’s not how you spell Lady Bird Lake. That’s also not Lady Bird Lake.
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ERCOT isn't an energy company.
ERCOT & other energy cos have slipped & fallen on their faces & it’s not the ice’s fault. They have left 3+ million homes w/o power for days, including my own.
What do they do in response? Jack up prices, go silent, make excuses, & play the blame game. It’s unacceptable!
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It's very rich that Ken Paxton, who filed a ludicrous lawsuit seeking to throw out the results of a free and fair presidential election in four other states, is now complaining about an effort to "overturn the results of a free and fair election."
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Abbott's state health department is sounding the alarm. Is anyone listening?
This Delta wave is increasing hospitalizations at similar or faster rates as previous Texas waves. Hospitalizations are rising in all age groups and mostly all are unvaccinated.
There is a huge difference this wave: we have a safe and powerful vaccine that saves lives.
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Update on Barton Springs:
The flow at the Springs is now just 11-12 cubic feet per second (cfs). That is lower than at any time in the last 45 years and not much higher than the lowest known flow, of 9.6 cfs in 1956.
The trend appears not to be our friend (see chart).
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no need to worry about the spread of coronavirus at SXSW now, the tech guys have come up with a failsafe plan
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The first headline for this New York Times piece called New Braunfels "remote." Now they've changed it to "outlying."
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This is precisely why Dan Patrick wanted to abolish tenure. He can't abide dissent, and tenure protects dissent. The irony of this whole episode is that now faculty are openly discussing unionization.
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This is a Catholic nonprofit that feeds and clothes refugees, based on a social gospel mission. Naturally, Ken Paxton couldn't be more horrified.
🚨Today, I’m suing to end NGO's operations in Texas.
The chaos at the southern border has created an environment where NGOs, funded with taxpayer money from the Biden Administration, facilitate astonishing horrors including human smuggling. While the federal government…
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In Greg Abbott's Texas, the power of the state is used to investigate the parents of trans children for child abuse. Here's the tick-tock on what happened with the parents of a 16-year-old trans girl just a few days ago. This is from an ACLU suit filed today.
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In an earlier tweet, I cited data showing that Texas is 48th in per-capita mental health care expenditures. In fact, that was for overall health spending. Actually, we are 51st for mental health care *access.* So, yeah, worse than I thought. My bad.
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ERCOT is functionally a wing of industry, not a public agency in any meaningful sense.
From ERCOT media email account: "We are unable to schedule media interviews at this time, however will continue to keep all Texans informed on grid conditions through our communications channels."
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Increasingly I look around Austin and think, "This sucks" — a glittering techscape of soulless condo-holes crowding out everything else. A city that can't make room for the poor, the struggling, the work-to-live is, to be honest, boring af.
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Terrible news. At the present rate of downsizing and layoffs, there may be like seven journalists left in the state soon. Also, how does this state not have a media reporter?!
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The "Louie Belt" will be studied for generations in political science classes
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If this man was confident in his own fanciful interpretation of the Alamo, he wouldn't fear a book talk. But in fact, he is terrified by facts and history and a free exchange of ideas.
As a member of the Preservation Board, I told staff to cancel this event as soon as I found out about it. Like efforts to move the Cenotaph, which I also stopped, this fact-free rewriting of TX history has no place
@BullockMuseum
.
#txlege
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The Greg Abbott border wall has already cost $1 billion and is on track to cost *$20 billion*. Whatever happened to fiscal conservatism?
Great reporting on a sadly under-covered boondoggle
by
@by_jmiller
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Greg Abbott last week: "Everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas.”
Energy conservation request from
@ERCOT_ISO
today. “ERCOT has issued a Conservation Alert, and Texans are being asked to safely reduce their electric use.”
Forecast for demand is expected to exceed capacity this afternoon.
#txlege
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The rationale seems so thin here. HISD has 76 schools and an enrollment of nearly 200,000 students. The state takeover is predicated on the performance of *a single school,* which has made huge strides in recent years.
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I am at a loss for words here. I'll try... This is a tragedy—for the staff, for readers, for anyone who cares about independent journalism, for everyone at TO who put blood, sweet, and tears into the place.
The
@TexasObserver
, a storied liberal magazine, is shutting down and laying off its 17-person staff after a 68-year run marked by feisty, combative and often humorous investigative work from a stable of renowned journalists.
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Let’s check in on one of the University of Texas’ recent “visiting scholars”…
I heard someone say marriage prospects for American men are bad because of how many women are fat. One thing I know is possible is to start dating a fat girl with a pretty face (undervalued stock), make her like you, and then hint the relationship depends on her being skinny.
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Update: The State of the State was even more of a self-contained campaign event that I had thought, complete with Fox News-style b-roll of migrants at the border
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Hatred of immigrants can't be confined to just immigrants because the ideology is grounded in racism. Inevitably, the hatred spreads. What happened in El Paso is evidence of that.
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It never stops being remarkable that the governor of Texas hates the capital city, which happens to be one of the most popular cities in America.
Billboard on I-35 warns 'Enter at your own risk!' after Austin votes to defund police.
#TexasBacksTheBlue
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As a Texan, I support secession. I believe El Paso should be allowed to secede and become part of New Mexico.
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Tarrant County
Biden: 49.12%
Trump: 49.22%
Trump/Clinton in 2016: 52-43
Good result for Bide there
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What's amazing is that ERCOT has had 2.5 years since the Feb. '21 blackouts to figure out how to communicate to the public and yet its leaders still speak gibberish.
ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas says there's a difference between a conservation ask and a conservation appeal. Huh. Does anyone besides ERCOT understand this? I don't.
He also claims conservation has made a difference but presented no data to back up that claim.
#txlege
#energytwitter
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If you live in Austin for any extended period of time expect every place you’ve known and loved to eventually shut down.
Austin's Spider House Café quietly and permanently closes after nearly two years of being shuttered during the pandemic. via
@statesman
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I keep gawking at this chart. I think it means none of my friends who don't already own homes in Austin will be able to buy one.
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This book ban debate is so bizarre. A Democrat just stood up to say she was concerned about books in the school library that teach teens how to use the internet and buy sex toys. Imagine a teen using a book to figure out what's on the internet.
#txlege
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That’s a cool plan if your goal is to destroy Texas’ system of public education.
That's my plan.
Use the TPPF roadmap to end property taxes.
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It's been a remarkable day for Rodney Reed, his supporters, and the Texas death penalty system, reports
@dansolomon
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The notion that Republicans like Greg Abbott believe in small government is beyond laughable at this point. They believe in using the power of the state to harass, intimidate, and provoke political enemies and the most vulnerable. All to cling to power for a little bit longer.
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Must-read by
@cd_hooks
on why a certain TX billionaire is backing Ken Paxton. It's not despite Paxton's alleged misdeeds, it's because of them. "They make the AG so reliant on the billionaire’s favor that the thought of replacing Paxton is unthinkable."
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Good reporting and a good reminder that many rural Texas schools are in danger of insolvency through no fault of their own. The Lege is starving some public schools of funding, perhaps intentionally.
My latest photo assignment for
@TexasTribune
brought me to Alpine ISD. The school district is $200,000 short of a balanced budget and had to dip into its savings again. Read
@brianlopeztx
's story.
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DATELINE Hidalgo, Texas— “These ladders are probably $5 worth of hardware, and they’re defeating a wall that cost $12 million a mile in that location.”
by
@amnelsen
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Astonishing times. Here's the Texas GOP essentially giving the thumbs-up to tossing out 70k-plus votes in Harris County because people voted from their cars, an extremely Houston thing to do.
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A literacy test of sorts?
It's not hard to vote in Texas. Honestly, it should be harder. You should at least have to pass a basic civics test before voting.
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This is hands-down one of the most petty and cynical things any Texas governor has done in my lifetime—a political stunt that does nothing to address a serious and complex issue.
BREAKING:
@GovAbbott
says he will use TxDOT to clear homeless camps under Austin's highways.
#ATXcouncil
#txlege
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Not only has the Lege done nothing to address rising gun violence, they are so desperate to
#2A
that the House yesterday passed a bill, co-sponsored by a rep who is a gun manufacturer, to strike down non-existent city rules requiring gun owners to obtain liability insurance.
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I miss cheap rent, Leslie, and an Austin where our destiny wasn’t controlled by completely un-self-aware California billionaires.
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In May, ERCOT said it "anticipates there will be enough generation to meet the summer 2021 peak demand of 77,144 MW. Based on this forecast, the ERCOT region will have a 15.7% reserve margin..."
Today the peak demand is forecasted to be under 72k MW, yet we are facing blackouts.
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64.70% is the final early vote tally in Travis County
Travis County is at 55% turnout and probably headed to 65%-plus *before* election day. Stunning.
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Without getting into the alleged details of the incident, why would a local TV news cameraman assault an officer? Like, what would the motive be?
New: The Fox 7 photojournalist arrested at the UT protest last week was booked back into the Travis County Jail again today, charged with two misdemeanors - assault and interference with public duties.
From DPS:
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In case this gets lost: The most sweeping Texas elections bill was apparently so hastily put together that in the new section about overturning elections, the authors misspelled "equal" as "egual"
That new language was a straight copy/paste, folks. I don't see "egual" in the dictionary. That shows how quickly this new language was brought.
#txlege
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Jonathan Price was a hometown hero, who, by all accounts, was universally loved in the conservative North Texas town of Wolfe City. On Saturday, a white officer killed him. Price's many friends have one word to explain what happened: racism.
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