President Trump is pushing for a major redrawing of Texas’s congressional districts to favor Republicans and shape the outcome of future elections, including next year’s midterms. Voting rights expert Ari Berman says this “unprecedented” Republican gerrymandering scheme manipulates an already-gerrymandered map that “limits democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color, and now that would be much worse.” The map was released this week, and a hearing is underway today as Republicans try to ram it through.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Kerr County’s emergency management coordinator, William B. Thomas IV, spoke publicly for the first time at the hearing, noting that he was sick on July 3, the day before the floods, and had informed supervisors that he wouldn’t be able to participate in coordination meetings. He slept through most of the day and learned of the devastating floods the morning of July 4 when his wife woke him up at 5:30 am. Thomas then went on to reflect on what he could have done differently. 

“The honest answer is that based on the data we had at the time, there was no clear indicator that a catastrophic flood was imminent,” he said, noting that forecasts from the National Weather Service the day before had not been materially different from previous forecasts that had not resulted in flooding.

More significantly, perhaps, the day’s torrential rain had fallen in locations where limited data could be gathered from the half dozen flood gauges along the Guadalupe River. Those gauges provide critical data for monitoring river flows and, during floods, can provide advance warning that can save lives. But the U.S. has a shortage of such gauges, particularly in rural, tribal, and low-income communities. While the U.S. Geological Survey maintains a nationwide network of more than 12,000 gauges in partnership with local agencies, persistent funding shortfalls have limited their maintenance and operation. As of October 2024, more than 4,750 locations met the criteria for inclusion in the network — but only about 3,400 gauges are active due to budget constraints.  

“We need real-time monitoring of rainfall and river gauges, especially in upstream headwaters and watershed zones,” Thomas told lawmakers. “We cannot rely solely on radar or traditional forecasting from the National Weather Service. We need systems that detect what’s happening on the ground minute by minute.”

More gauges may have helped save lives on July 4. Between 2 am and 5 am, the heaviest rain fell on the south fork of the river before it converged with the north fork by the town of Hunt. 

“If there had been more gauges up closer to where the rain started and where the flood started, where those two forks were coming together, that would have been helpful,” said James Goss-Dollin, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. “We want to have as many [gauges] as possible so you can see where the water is and how fast it is coming towards you. There’s a huge need to better monitor rivers.”

At the Thursday hearing, residents shared their accounts braving the floods, as well as their experiences of the recovery process so far. An army of volunteers descended on Kerr County and neighboring areas in the first few weeks after the floods, but as national interest fades, residents are beginning to grapple with the reality of rebuilding. Many have turned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, for help. The agency offers financial aid to help survivors recover in the wake of disasters. Those funds can cover rent for temporary housing, trailers for those whose homes are uninhabitable, and assistance to cover the cost of funerals.

A new analysis by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that advocates for fair housing and post-disaster recovery, shows that FEMA has conducted more than 3,100 inspections of Central Texas homes affected by flooding since July 4 — and rejected more than 1,100 of those applications. Among those approved, funding levels have been modest. The agency has provided an average of roughly $8,600 in assistance to repair homes and $34,000 to those who have to rebuild homes entirely, as of July 26. Despite the modest totals, the aid appears to be in line with that provided during previous disasters.

“Low acceptance rates are not uncommon after any given storm,” said Meg Duffy, a senior policy analyst at Texas Appleseed and one of the researchers who conducted the analysis. “Part of that reflects the difficulty involved in applying for FEMA assistance.”

FEMA assistance was never meant to make disaster survivors financially whole again. Instead, FEMA aid is intended to supplement insurance, loans, state and local assistance, and personal savings. The agency’s grants are capped for the current fiscal year at a maximum of $87,200 per grantee for home repairs and other essential needs.

But most residents in rural Central Texas don’t have flood insurance. (Flood damages are not covered by standard homeowner’s insurance.) In Kerr County, a little more than 2 percent of residents have flood coverage. In fact, Duffy’s research found that about three-fourths of local FEMA applicants didn’t have any home insurance at all. It also found that about two-thirds of those applicants made less than $60,000 a year. 

A number of bureaucratic and logistical hurdles can slow down how quickly aid is distributed. If an applicant has insurance, FEMA requires that they first secure documentation from the insurance company stating how much it is willing to cover. That process can sometimes take weeks, if not months. The agency also tries to meet with individual homeowners to inspect their homes and verify ownership before granting aid. If a resident does not have transportation to meet with FEMA personnel or is unable to secure documentation to prove ownership — because, say, the paperwork has washed away in a flood — the agency will deny applications. In those cases, residents can appeal and provide the missing information, but that can take weeks or months to process. Speeding up that timeline is a key improvement that FEMA should make, according to Duffy.

Grist has a comprehensive guide to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after a disaster.

Explore the full Disaster 101 resource guide for more on your rights and options when disaster hits.

Are you affected by the flooding in Texas and North Carolina? Learn how to navigate disaster relief and response.

Get prepared. Learn how to be ready for a disaster before you’re affected.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Texas lawmakers grill Kerr County officials as flood recovery plods on on Aug 1, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

David Flash, a reporter and publisher for the Big Bend Times, was grabbed, handcuffed and forcibly removed by sheriff’s deputies from a June 27, 2025, meeting of the Jeff Davis County Commissioners Court in Fort Davis, Texas.

Flash was cited for disorderly conduct, but the charge was dropped in late July.

Flash told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he went to the county building to pick up an audio recording of the meeting, only to find that the proceedings had been delayed and were in progress.

He remained to report on the meeting — one of many he’s covered over recent years — setting up a stationary video camera at the back of the room to stream the proceedings live, as instructed by a sheriff’s deputy.

That video, available on the Big Bend Times’ Facebook page, shows Flash sitting and observing the meeting, and occasionally moving around the room to take photos. He said he wasn’t wearing a press pass, but that “my role was widely known.”

At one point, Flash walks toward the back of the meeting room, and has a whispered conversation with an officer — identified by the Texas Tribune as Sheriff Victor Lopez — about taking his photo. After Lopez leaves the room, Sheriff’s Deputy Adriana Ruiloba confronts Flash, telling him, “Don’t come in my personal space,” and ordering him to “back off.”

Flash left the room and continued to record, narrating what had just occurred for the livestream.

Flash later returned to continue to report and to get a photo of Ruiloba, he said. He set up the video camera again in the corner of the room for the livestream and began taking photos of her from an empty row of chairs.

She then walked over to him, grabbed him and pushed him toward the corner of the room, saying he was disrupting the meeting. Flash was taken to the ground and can be heard on the livestream saying, “I’m not resisting.” Ruiloba orders him to put his hands behind his back, and the sound of handcuffs clicking can be heard.

His video camera was knocked over during the encounter and stopped recording.

In body camera video obtained by another local news outlet, the Big Bend Sentinel, several officers, including the sheriff, can be seen detaining Flash and taking him out of the meeting room in handcuffs.

The Sentinel reported that his removal was requested by presiding County Judge Curtis Evans. The video shows Flash being taken to an adjacent room and questioned by Lopez and Ruiloba.

Flash told the Tracker that he was detained for around 30 minutes and then released at the scene. He received a citation for disorderly conduct.

He said he believed he was targeted for taking photos of a public official during a public meeting. “I had complied with all instructions. I wasn’t saying a word, wasn’t bothering anyone, and wasn’t obstructing anything. The only ‘trigger’ was that I turned my still camera toward a deputy who apparently didn’t believe she should be photographed doing her job in a public space.”

He added, “The force used against me appeared retaliatory, not lawful.”

Flash said he received medical treatment after the incident. “The deputy dug her fingernails into my arm with such force that the resulting marks were clearly visible to the urgent care provider who treated me afterward. I also had a visible bruise on my bicep.”

He added that he has experienced “lasting musculoskeletal pain in that arm and shoulder,” impacting his daily movements.

The Big Bend Times reported July 24 that the disorderly conduct charge was dropped due to insufficient evidence.

“His agenda is to be disruptive in court,” Evans told KWES-TV. “He thinks the rules do not apply to him. We do have court decorum in Jeff Davis County that has been adopted by our Commissioners Court, and he was violating it.”

Evans and the Jeff Davis County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

“Hopefully that’s not for us,” he said.

The siren faded, and the teens — who attend an elite, all-boys prep school on the other side of town — got back to work. They are the most dedicated members of its prairie club, which finds them rising early on weekends to “rescue” rare plants from bulldozers and transfer them to restoration sites. Such unauthorized efforts have rattled some professional conservationists in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex; but in an era infused with climate anxiety, it offers a tangible way to make a difference — and a dose of adrenaline. “It’s like collecting Pokemons,” one said.

Max Yan (top, with shovel) and other members of the Blackland Prairie Restoration Crew at St. Mark’s School rescue plants at Coneflower Crest, a prairie in southern Dallas slated for demolition. Laura Mallonee / Grist

Coneflower Crest — as the boys call this place, after the dusty pink flowers that bloom here — is a nearly 300-acre stretch of undeveloped land north of I-20 that they say constitutes the last large prairie in the county. But heavy machinery is expected to crush the majority of its flowers, making way for a self-billed sustainable development with hundreds of homes and businesses that promise to revitalize a neglected corner of Dallas. But even eco-friendly projects come at a cost: The city is trading an ecosystem that naturally mitigates the effects of climate change for more impervious sprawl that only exacerbates them. 

Blackland prairie once stretched 12 million acres in Texas from the Red River to San Antonio — an area twice the size of Vermont. Its limestone geology was formed by an ancient inland sea that enriched its soil, feeding more than 300 species of native grasses and forbes like big bluestem, lotus milkvetch, and devil’s bite.

But since European colonization, agriculture and urban development have swallowed 99.9 percent of the prairie — and are still taking their fill. Last year, a solar farm claimed the majority of the state’s largest remnant, which spanned 2,100 acres near the border with Oklahoma. Over the past five years in Dallas County alone, more than 320 acres have succumbed to data centers, parking lots, high-rises, and warehouses with no coneflowers in sight. 

All that concrete increases flooding, pollution, aquifer depletion, urban heat island effects, and greenhouse gas emissions — the same problems prairies naturally alleviate, said Norma Fowler, a plant ecologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Long grasses slow rainfall, giving the ground more time to soak it up. Their roots spread in fine webs and reach a depth of 20 feet, producing humus-rich soil that holds water and releases it slowly, filtering out excess nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. Prairies also cool cities, temper the impact of wildfires (a fire on a prairie is easier to put out than one in a forested area), and sequester carbon — up to 1 ton per acre per year. It’s why biodiversity loss and climate change are inherently linked. “Everything we do for conservation is also mitigating the effects of climate change,” Fowler said.

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Environmentalists have rallied to save area prairies since at least the 1970s, when one patrolled Pioneer — an 100-acre remnant off I-30 — with a shotgun. By the 1980s, development loomed, prompting naturalist Ken Steigman to start digging up plants. Steigman even used a sod-cutter to roll up ribbons of sod — bugs and all. “It’s like Noah’s Ark,” he said. “You want to save everything you can.”  

But the work has its ups and downs. Activists were relieved when development stalled at Pioneer. But in 2018, a native plant grower named Randy Johnson saw workers pulling cores for a new project. Johnson, 62, rode his minibike through Pioneer as a kid, but by his twenties, that youthful abandon gave way to wonderment. He tried and failed to convince the landowner to spare its most ecologically sensitive areas. “It’s depressing,” he said with a drawl. “[It’s] something you love, and every day you get in your car and see it being destroyed.” 

He had nearly given up hope when a lanky freshman named Akash Munshi wandered into his school’s glass greenhouse, where Johnson worked part-time, in 2019. Munshi was “hyper,” Johnson said, and extremely bright. His extended family are rice farmers in south India, and he wanted to learn how to grow food. But this interest gave way to native plants, and within a couple years, Munshi was as fluent in their Latin names as in their common ones. 

He started the school’s first prairie club his senior year to restore a stretch of bermuda grass along a bike path nearby. To source the seeds, he visited local prairies, including ones he found by scouring satellite imagery. He counted six high-quality sites fated for development, underscoring the need to also salvage plants. Within two years, all but one — Coneflower Crest — were under construction. 

“I didn’t realize how quickly I would lose them,” he said. “There were some sites where there was no sign of development, and I’d come back [the] next week, and the whole thing was scraped.” 

The destruction coincides with unprecedented biodiversity loss. An estimated 40 percent of all known plants are potentially threatened with extinction, and they are disappearing at a rate many magnitudes higher than they have on average historically — the result of both human activity and climate change. Those recently discovered — like glandular blazing star, an imperiled plant first described in 2001 that is only found in Texas — are even more likely to suffer extinction before scientists can understand their ecosystem role or potential application in medicine or agriculture. As the populations of at-risk plants shrink, their gene pools become less diverse, making them more vulnerable to collapse.  

“Each one of those that’s lost is threatening an already under-pressure system,” said Canaan Sutton, a botanist at the National Ecological Observatory Network. Invertebrates, some of which have unique relationships with specific host plants, lose their food and habitat. There are fewer caterpillars to feed the birds and fewer bees to pollinate blooms, including crops like Texas’s famed Fredericksburg peaches. 

Rescuing individual plants won’t save these historic ecosystems, but it can help prevent some species from undergoing “a silent extinction,” Sutton said. Though conservationists focus on collecting seeds, they aren’t always ripe when developers allow them on site. Some are still so poorly understood that no one knows how to germinate them, and others, like compass plants, take years to bloom. Keeping an individual alive helps bridge the gap, enabling a bumblebee to find its way to the pollen it depends on to survive. 

“What we’re in now is this perpetually shifting baseline of, ‘This is what we have, and this is as good as it gets,’” Sutton said. “Ultimately, people doing these rescues are trying to move that baseline back in the direction of the past and a more interconnected, natural world — even if that’s just [with] a handful of plants.”

The summer after his senior year, Munshi was leading a high school tour through another prairie destined to become a highrise. Stopping for a water break, he noticed a tiny yellow flower against a girl’s black shoe. “Oh shoot!” he said. “That’s dalea hallii!”

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Commonly known as Hall’s prairie clover, this globally imperiled plant, listed as threatened by the state, grows nowhere else but chalky, south-facing slopes on limestone prairies, a subset of the blackland prairie where the bedrock surfaces, creating a unique microclimate where rare plants thrive. They face a unique risk, Sutton said: They survived the centuries because they were too rocky for the plow, but as developers seek more land to build on, that same rock now offers an ideal foundation for sprawl.  

At the time of Munshi’s discovery, less than 1,200 hall’s prairie clover were officially known to exist. He counted at least a hundred and shared his find on Instagram, where it caught the eye of a conservation botanist at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, which banks obscure seeds. She used the organization’s heft to arrange an official rescue that October.  

The developer gave them three hours to dig up what they could. Wearing a straw hat shaped like a circumflex, Johnson showed 40 volunteers how to pry open the limestone with pickaxes, knives, sledgehammers, and pneumatic drills. Afterward, he hauled more than 200 daleas to the greenhouse in Forney that he now co-owns with Munshi. Johnson, whose long gray hair and narrowed eyes evoke something of a wizard, nursed the plants with a mycorrhizal fungi tea. A month later, he texted Sutton a picture of a flourishing dalea ready for transplant. “Check it out, dude!” he wrote.

Despite this success, it wasn’t enough time to save the thousands of other plants at Penstemon Point. So, when Kay Hankins, a conservation botanist at BRIT, offered to contact the developer at Coneflower Crest, Munshi asked her not to, fearing they wouldn’t be given enough time. He and others have spent dozens of hours relocating thousands of plants from Coneflower Crest and other patches to the bike path 30 minutes north — casting trespassing worries aside as easily as the rocks their shovels sometimes hit. 

Munshi said no one has ever asked them to leave. Neither have the cops. Once, while he was at another prairie, a passerby suspected him of burying a body, and three police cars pulled up. When the officers saw the plants, they left, merely annoyed. “They don’t care,” Munshi said. “They’re literally about to scrape the entire site.” 

Johnson fears requesting permission could backfire. In Texas, plants deemed threatened or endangered by the state’s wildlife agency aren’t protected by law, but landowners who don’t want the hassle or liability may destroy them more quickly. “This is a war between us and the developers, and nobody’s calling uncle or throwing up no white flags,” he said. “You can get out of jail, you can post bail, but once the [plant] genetics are gone, they’re gone.”

But the approach vexes some in Texas’s native plant community who view permission as essential for “ethical” digs that promote trust with landowners and developers, eventually helping get more on board.  

“If all the experience developers have [with conservationists] is negative, we’ll always be initiating the dialogue from a disadvantaged position every single time,” said Kay Hankins, a botanist with BRIT’s Plant Conservation Team, which has participated in four other rescues since its inception in 2019. 

Developer involvement could ensure that activists don’t inadvertently remove plants that grow outside construction boundaries, and more volunteers are willing to help if it doesn’t involve breaking a law. It also enhances the plants’ value for research and conservation, Hankins said, since reputable institutions, seed banks, and herbaria don’t accept plants collected without paperwork.

But it’s difficult to convince people of the long-term benefits when the few prairies that remain can quickly vanish. Developers aren’t easy to get a hold of, either. Ali Bocaum, who started the Central Texas Plant Rescuers in Austin in 2022, said one 1 of 10 respond. Some deny owning the land, though taking cookies to their offices helps. “They can’t ignore you when you’re there,” she said.  

Ashley Landry, who founded the Native Plant Rescue Project in Williamson County, north of Austin, in 2023, also plays “a long PR game” to gain access. She monitors building permits to watch for new development, then emails, snail mails, and drives by to try and catch landowners in person. In February, her team of volunteers succeeded in relocating 900 square feet of MoKan, the 30-acre “crown jewel” of central Texas prairies. Skid steers excised 56 sections, each as thick as a mattress, and pieced them like quilts at two nearby sites. If the plants survive, the method could be scaled.

“I just always feel so thankful to have seen these places before they’re gone,” said Landry. “It helps frame your understanding of what the landscape is supposed to look like.”

That sense of place isn’t easy to come by for the average kid in Dallas. A few prairie patches exist in public parks, preserves, and liminal spaces like power easements. But concrete – in the form of thousands of roads, highways, and bridges — has reshaped the city, and it’s anyone’s guess what’s buried under it all. The prairie club boys grew up in neighborhoods manicured with shrubs from other continents. They say they lacked a strong connection to the land — a quality that the environmentalist Wendell Berry has written is necessary for living in a locale without destroying it. But encountering landscapes like Coneflower Crest has transformed them. 

Munshi, now a plant science major at Cornell University, vividly remembers the morning two springs ago that he climbed up a roadside embankment and glimpsed part of what quickly became his favorite prairie. Butterflies frolicked amid more echinacea than he had ever seen, indicating the area was likely never plowed. “This is, like, a 10!” he exclaimed, filming the scenery. “Imagine what else is in here!”  

Munshi has explored about 140 acres and said that they contain several rare species, including hall’s prairie clover and white rosinweed, another plant only found in Texas. But in May, just two days after the boys uprooted the last Texas blazing star, a dozen men and women in business suits lined up with shovels to break ground. The young activists knew it was coming, but it still angered them to imagine the landscape razed — even as they grappled with a sense of complicity. “All of our homes were built on indigenous lands and biodiverse areas,” said the senior.  

Stacked against this tremendous loss, their efforts felt almost trivial. “The thought of what was here once and is gone forever will not leave me as long as I live,” Berry wrote in 1968. “It is as though I walk knee-deep in its absence.” But long after the bulldozers at Coneflower Crest move on to the next job, hundreds of its rarest plants will persist, swaying in the breeze along the bike path. Before the boys even transplanted the last ones, a few uprooted daleas bloomed, just as they had for centuries.  

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The guerilla campaign to save a Texas prairie from ‘silent extinction’ on Jul 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Laura Mallonee.

The post ECONOMIC TERROR AND THE TURBOCHUGGF*CK IN TEXAS appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

One day in late May 2024, lawyer Zina Bash spent 6 1/2 hours working on a case against Facebook parent company Meta on behalf of the state of Texas. She reviewed draft legal filings. She participated in a court-ordered mediation session and then discussed the outcome with state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

In her previous job as senior counsel on Paxton’s leadership team, that labor would have cost Texas taxpayers $641.

But Bash had moved to private practice. Paxton hired her firm to work on the Meta case, allowing her to bill $3,780 an hour, so that day of work will cost taxpayers $24,570.

In the past five years, Paxton has grown increasingly reliant on pricey private lawyers to argue cases on behalf of the state, rather than the hundreds of attorneys who work within his office, an investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found. These are often attorneys, like Bash, with whom Paxton has personal or political ties.

In addition to Bash, one such contract went to Tony Buzbee, the trial lawyer who successfully defended Paxton during his 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges. Three other contracts went to firms whose senior attorneys have donated to Paxton’s political campaigns. Despite these connections and what experts say are potential conflicts of interest, Paxton does not appear to have recused himself from the selection process. Although he is not required to by law, this raises a concern about appearing improper, experts who study attorneys general said.

Paxton appears to have also outsourced cases more frequently than his predecessors, available records show. And he’s inked the kind of contingent-fee contracts, in which firms receive a share of a settlement if they win, far more often than the attorneys general in other large states, including California, New York and Pennsylvania. Since 2015, the New York and California attorneys general have awarded zero contingent-fee contracts; Pennsylvania’s has signed one. During that period, Paxton’s office approved 13.

One of those was with Bash’s firm, Chicago-based Keller Postman, at the time known as Keller Lenkner, which she joined as partner in February 2021 after resigning from her job at the attorney general’s office. Paxton had signed a contract with the company two months earlier to investigate Google for deceptive business practices and violations of antitrust law. A little more than a year later, Bash’s firm won a state contract to work on the Meta litigation, alleging its facial recognition software violated Texans’ privacy. This time, Bash was the co-lead counsel.

Meta, which called the lawsuit meritless, settled the case for $1.4 billion in the summer of 2024. It was a windfall for Keller Postman. The firm billed $97 million, the largest fee charged by outside counsel under Paxton’s tenure. Bash’s work alone accounted for $3.6 million of that total.

Bash, a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, said in a statement she is honored the attorney general’s office partnered with Keller Postman based on the firm’s “first-rate attorneys and extensive experience.”

“We have a record of taking on the most significant litigation in the country against the most powerful defendants in the world,” Bash said.

Keller Postman did not respond to a request for comment.

There is little to stop Paxton, or any other occupant of his office, from handing these contracts out. The attorney general can award them without seeking bids from other law firms or asking anyone’s permission.

Asked to provide competitive-bid documents for the contingent-fee contracts it has awarded, the attorney general’s office said it had none because state law “exempts the OAG from having to do all of the solicitation steps when hiring outside counsel.”

Given the high-profile nature of representing an attorney general and the potential for a big payday, many qualified firms would be eager to compete for this work, said Paul Nolette, a professor of political science at Marquette University who studies attorneys general.

“I’d be curious to know what the justification is for this not going on the open market,” Nolette said.

Paxton declined interview requests for this story. He has publicly defended the practice of hiring outside law firms, arguing that his office lacks the resources in-house to take on massive corporations like tech companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

“These parties have practically unlimited resources that would swamp most legal teams and delay effective enforcement,” Paxton told the Senate finance committee during a budget hearing in January.

A spokesperson for Paxton said in a statement that the outside lawyers hired by the office are some of the best in the nation. With the contingent-fee settlements to date, more than $2 billion, the state “could not have gotten a better return on its investment,” the statement said.

Chris Toth, former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General, questioned why so much extra help is needed. Outside counsel is appropriate for small states, he said, that “only have so many lawyers with so many levels of expertise.”

The Texas attorney general’s office, one of the largest in the country, has more than 700 attorneys.

“Large states typically don’t hire outside counsel,” Toth said. “They should have the people in-house that should be able to go toe-to-toe with the best attorneys that are out there.”

When a Texas attorney general previously made a practice of giving lucrative contracts to private counsel, it didn’t end well.

Dan Morales was the last Democrat to hold the office. He became embroiled in scandal after he used outside firms to help secure a $17 billion settlement in Big Tobacco litigation in 1998.

Republicans, including then-Gov. George W. Bush, blasted the $3.2 billion payout to the outside lawyers as exorbitant. Their attacks grew more intense when Morales sought to steer $500 million of that sum to a lawyer, a personal friend, who did very little work on the case. Morales pleaded guilty in 2003 to related federal corruption charges. He served 3 1/2 years behind bars.

John Cornyn, the Republican who succeeded Morales in 1999, criticized his predecessor’s handling of the tobacco case during his campaign for the office. In an interview for this story, Cornyn said he never hired outside counsel as attorney general because he focused on recruiting talented in-house lawyers that he felt could handle all the office’s cases.

Paxton is challenging Cornyn, now a four-term U.S. senator, in next year’s Republican primary.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican who led the office after Cornyn, appears to have rarely used private lawyers. The attorney general’s office was able to produce records for only part of Abbott’s 12-year term because state law allows the files to be deleted after so many years. The office signed nine outside counsel contracts between 2010 and 2014, all pro bono or for hourly rates rather than contingency. Abbott did not respond to an interview request.

Paxton also seldom outsourced cases during his first five years in office. Through 2019, he awarded only nine outside counsel contracts, all pro bono or hourly rate. The most expensive contract capped fees at $500,000 — far less than $143 million the state paid to the two firms, including Bash’s, that handled the Meta case.

He changed course in 2020.

That summer, the attorney general’s office was gearing up to file its first case against Google. It related to allegations that the company monopolized the online advertising market, raising costs for advertisers, who increased the price of their products for average consumers as a result. Paxton initially had no plans to hire outside counsel for the litigation, three former deputy attorneys general told the Tribune and ProPublica.

But before the case was filed, the attorney general’s office was thrown into upheaval. At the end of September, seven of Paxton’s senior advisers reported him to the FBI, concerned his relationship with an Austin real estate investor had crossed the line into bribery and corruption. State House members would later impeach Paxton on counts related to the accusations; state senators eventually acquitted him. The federal criminal investigation into Paxton did not result in any criminal charges.

Over fall 2020, each of the lawyers in his office who had accused Paxton of wrongdoing quit or was fired. That included Darren McCarty, the head of civil litigation who was supposed to lead the Google litigation before he reported his boss to the FBI. He resigned on Oct. 26.

Less than two months later, on Dec. 16, Paxton signed contracts with The Lanier Law Firm and Keller Postman to investigate Google. They filed the lawsuit against the tech giant in federal court the same day.

Paxton replaced the lawyers who complained to the authorities. The staffing of the antitrust and consumer protection divisions, which would have handled these cases, remained constant at more than 80 employees in the following years. Yet Paxton continued to outsource lawsuits against large corporations to private lawyers.

Under Keller Postman’s contract, the firm would be paid only if it secured a settlement or won at trial. These contingent-fee cases have the potential to be far more profitable for the outside firms than those in which they bill at a regular hourly rate. In a successful case, the contracts say that firms are paid either a percentage of a settlement or the sum of hours billed by the firm times four, whichever is less.

In the Meta case, Keller Postman was entitled to 11% of the state’s settlement, a share that totaled $154 million. But because the firm’s fees and expenses totaled $97 million, it billed that sum.

In multiple legislative sessions, Paxton has testified that outsourcing was the only way his office could stand toe-to-toe with corporate titans.

If Paxton has a shortage of qualified in-house attorneys, Cornyn told the newsrooms, that’s because of the damage the whistleblower scandal did to the reputation of the attorney general’s office as a home for ambitious young lawyers.

“He’s a victim of his own malfeasance and mismanagement because people did not want to work for him anymore,” Cornyn said. “And if you run off your best lawyers because you engage in questionable ethical conduct, then you’re left with very few options. But this shouldn’t be a way to reward bad behavior.”

Former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said he was surprised Paxton began hiring contingent-fee outside lawyers only after the scandal, since those contracts, with their potential for high profits, are tougher to ethically defend.

“I would have thought it would have been the other way around — that he got more careful after he got the whistle blown on him,” said Goddard, a Democrat. “But it looked like he got more reckless.”

Paxton’s style of procurement also benefited Buzbee, the man who successfully defended him during his impeachment trial, which stemmed from allegations the whistleblowers raised.

The attorney general chose to skip most of the proceedings, so for the 10 days of trial in the Texas Senate, his most vociferous advocate was the loquacious Buzbee. The pair sat side by side when the attorney general did attend.

A little more than a year later, Paxton hired The Buzbee Law Firm to pursue an antitrust suit against the investment firms BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard that accuses the companies of manipulating the coal market in a way that allegedly increased electricity prices for Texans. The firms deny wrongdoing.

Buzbee is a successful litigator and one of Houston’s most famous plaintiffs’ attorneys. Among other victories, he won settlements for victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and $73 million for Gulf of Mexico oil drillers in a 2001 antitrust case. But he’s known primarily for personal injury work, not antitrust litigation.

His firm, one of two hired for this latest attorney general’s office contingent-fee case, could collect 10% of any judgment or settlement. The case is in its early stages, though the Trump administration in May filed a brief in the case in support of Texas.

Buzbee downplayed the potential for a big payday in an email to the newsrooms and argued there is no buddy system at play, noting he believed other law firms also interviewed with Paxton’s office for the job. (The attorney general’s office did not confirm this.) He said his firm has to pay for significant expenses up front, without any guarantee of payment.

“The current arrangement may be a good deal for other lawyers, but in all candor, it’s not for me,” Buzbee said, adding that his normal hourly rate is $2,250. “Frankly, the only reason I’m even doing it is that I am proud to represent the state in such a landmark case.”

The connections between Paxton and the lawyers he has hired also extend to other firms. The attorney general’s office hired the firm Norton Rose Fulbright, one of the largest in the country with more than 3,000 lawyers on staff, to work on separate Google cases for the state, focusing on consumer protection allegations.

The attorney general’s office has awarded three contracts to the firm since 2022 for cases against the tech giant. Three times during that period, Joseph Graham, the firm’s lead counsel on the Google litigation, contributed $5,000 to Paxton’s campaign for attorney general. Twice, the donations came within 16 days of Graham signing one of the firm’s contracts with the attorney general.

The firm and its attorneys have contributed $39,500 to Paxton’s campaign since he took office. Neither Graham nor Norton Rose Fulbright responded to requests for comment.

Mark Lanier, founder of The Lanier Law Firm, which the state hired to work on a separate Google case, is a large donor to Texas elected officials. He has contributed $31,000 to Paxton’s campaigns since 2015. The largest contribution, for $25,000, came six months after Lanier signed his firm’s Google contract.

The Lanier contract is slightly different from the others the attorney general’s office awarded, in that the firm’s payment is partially based on a basic hourly rate but it could also be paid more if it wins the case, as in the contingent-fee model. Lanier noted in an emailed statement to the newsrooms that he took a reduced fee on this case and maintained that the attorney general’s office needed the kind of firepower his team can bring against an opponent like Google.

“The Texas AG office and its lawyers are good, but specialists are needed in a war like this. And it is a war,” Lanier wrote. “It would be irresponsible to pursue Google on behalf of Texans without bring[ing] the fullest resources you can.”

A competitive, open process for awarding contracts can be a strong defense against accusations of favoritism, Goddard said.

Unlike some other states, Texas does not require these contracts be put out to competitive bid.

Florida, for example, has one of the most robust laws in the country for procuring outside counsel, requiring the attorney general to explain in writing why a contingent-fee contract is necessary. It also mandates most contracts be put out to competitive bid and caps contingent-fee payouts at $50 million.

Texas has no such cap.

It also has virtually no method for state lawmakers to truly supervise this kind of practice. State law mandates only that the attorney general notify the Legislature when his office awards a contingent-fee contract, and certify that no in-house lawyers or private attorneys at an hourly rate can handle the task. Paxton has done so in boilerplate two-page letters that all say outside attorneys are needed because of the “scope and enormity” of the cases.

If lawmakers are concerned about these contracts, there is no mechanism for them to challenge Paxton’s determination that private counsel is needed.

Having lawyers bid for work would eliminate the appearance of impropriety that hangs over Paxton’s hires, Goddard said.

“A couple look like paybacks, which is extraordinarily improper, in other words to award a contract to someone who’s a major contributor or has recently left your office,” he said. “All of those would not be allowed in our state.”

Officials in other states have said they can still secure big wins for their constituents without relying on private firms.

California, for example, reached a $93 million settlement with Google in 2023 over claims that the company was clandestinely tracking users’ locations. A year earlier, in a case with similar allegations, Oregon and Nebraska led a 40-state coalition that won a $392 million settlement against the company. Texas was not part of this suit.

The latter agreement required Google to make new privacy disclosures to consumers, restricted its ability to share users’ location information with advertisers and required the company to prepare an annual report detailing how it was complying with the settlement terms.

Doug Peterson, the Republican attorney general of Nebraska at the time, said negotiating the financial penalty — Nebraska’s share was $11.9 million — was a secondary goal of the settlement.

“The most important thing we’re trying to do is to stop the bad behavior,” Peterson said.

McCarty, one of the attorney general employees who blew the whistle on Paxton, said private lawyers can be talented, but they have an incentive to fixate on the financial portion of settlements — which is tied to their compensation — rather than enforcement provisions that may best protect a state’s residents.

“Government enforcers, especially in the antitrust context, can focus on more effective solutions,” McCarty said.

Norton Rose Fulbright has yet to send its final billing records to the attorney general’s office but is likely to be rewarded handsomely. The firm helped the state secure a $1.38 billion settlement with Google in May. Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the Texas settlement, which has not been finalized, will contain no new restrictions on the company’s practices.

Under the terms of its contracts, the firm’s fees could exceed $350 million.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Zach Despart, The Texas Tribune.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Sixteen months had passed since Hurricane Harvey tore through the Texas coast in August 2017, killing more than 80 people and flattening entire neighborhoods. And when Texas lawmakers gathered in Austin for their biennial session, the scale of the storm’s destruction was hard to ignore.

Legislators responded by greenlighting a yearslong statewide initiative to evaluate flood risks and improve preparedness for increasingly frequent and deadly storms. “If we get our planning right on the front end and prevent more damage on the front end, then we have less on the back end,” Charles Perry, a Republican senator from Lubbock who chairs a committee overseeing environmental issues, said at the time.

In the years that followed, hundreds of local officials and volunteers canvassed communities across Texas, mapping out vulnerabilities. The result of their work came in 2024 with the release of Texas’ first-ever state flood plan.

Their findings identified nearly $55 billion in proposed projects and outlined 15 key recommendations, including nine suggestions for legislation. Several were aimed at aiding rural communities like Kerr County, where flash flooding over the Fourth of July weekend killed more than 100 people. Three are still missing.

But this year, lawmakers largely ignored those recommendations.

Instead, the legislative session that ended June 2 was dominated by high-profile battles over school vouchers and lawmakers’ decision to spend $51 billion to maintain and provide new property tax cuts, an amount nearly equal to the funding identified by the Texas Water Development Board, a state agency that has historically overseen water supply and conservation efforts.

Although it had been only seven years since Hurricane Harvey, legislators now prioritized the state’s water and drought crisis over flooding needs.

Legislators allocated more than $1.6 billion in new revenue for water infrastructure projects, only some of which would go toward flood mitigation. They also passed a bill that will ask voters in November to decide whether to approve $1 billion annually over the next two decades that would prioritize water and wastewater over flood mitigation projects. At that pace, water experts said that it could take decades before existing mitigation needs are addressed — even without further floods.

Even if they had been approved by lawmakers this year, many of the plan’s recommendations would not have been implemented before the July 4 disaster. But a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of legislative proposals, along with interviews with lawmakers and flood experts, found that the Legislature has repeatedly failed to enact key measures that would help communities prepare for frequent flooding.

Such inaction often hits rural and economically disadvantaged communities hardest because they lack the tax base to fund major flood prevention projects and often cannot afford to produce the data they need to qualify for state and federal grants, environmental experts and lawmakers said.

Over the years, legislators have declined to pass at least three bills that would create siren or alert systems, tools experts say can be especially helpful in rural communities that lack reliable internet and cell service. A 2019 state-commissioned report estimated flood prevention needs at over $30 billion. Since then, lawmakers have allocated just $1.4 billion. And they ignored the key recommendations from the state’s 2024 flood plan that are meant to help rural areas like Kerr County, which is dubbed “Flash Flood Alley” due to its geography.

Spokespeople for Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, did not answer questions about why the plan’s recommendations were overlooked but defended the Legislature’s investment in flood mitigation as significant. They pointed to millions more spent on other prevention efforts, including flood control dam construction and maintenance, regional flood projects, and increased floodplain disclosures and drainage requirements for border counties. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick did not respond to questions.

This week, the Legislature will convene for a special session that Abbott called to address a range of priorities, including flood warning systems, natural disaster preparation and relief funding. Patrick promised that the state would purchase warning sirens for counties in flash flood zones. Similar efforts, however, have previously been rejected by the Legislature. Alongside Burrows, Patrick also announced the formation of committees on disaster preparedness and flooding and called the move “just the beginning of the Legislature looking at every aspect of this tragic event.” Burrows said the House is “ready to better fortify our state against future disasters.”

But Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, a Democrat from Richardson, near Dallas, said state lawmakers have brushed off dire flood prevention needs for decades.

“The manual was there, and we ignored it, and we've continued to ignore these recommendations,” said Rodríguez Ramos, who has served on the House Natural Resources Committee overseeing water issues for three sessions. “It’s performative to say we’re trying to do something knowing well we’re not doing enough.”

One recommendation from the 2024 flood plan would have cost the state nothing to enact. It called for granting counties the authority to levy drainage fees, including in unincorporated areas, that could fund local flood projects. Only about 150 of 1,450 Texas cities and counties have dedicated drainage fees, according to a study cited in the state assessment.

Kerr, a conservative county of 53,000 people, has struggled to gain support for projects that would raise taxes. About a week after the flooding, some residents protested when county commissioners discussed a property tax increase to help cover the costs of recovery efforts.

The inability to raise such fees is one of the biggest impediments for local governments seeking to fund flood mitigation projects, said Robert R. Puente, a Democrat and former state representative who once chaired the state committee responsible for water issues. Lawmakers’ resistance to such efforts is rooted in fiscal conservatism, said Puente, who now heads the San Antonio Water System.

“It’s mostly because of a philosophy that the leadership in Austin has right now, that under no circumstances are we going to raise taxes, and under most circumstances we’re not even going to allow local governments to have control over how they raise taxes or implement fees,” he said.

Another one of the flood plan’s recommendations called for lawmakers to allocate money for a technical assistance program to help underresourced and rural governments better manage flood prone areas, which requires implementing a slew of standards to ensure safe development in those hazardous zones. Doing this work requires local officials to collect accurate mapping that shows the risk of flooding. Passing this measure could have helped counties like Kerr with that kind of data collection, which the plan recognized is especially challenging for rural and economically disadvantaged communities.

Insufficient information impacts Texas’s ability to fully understand flood risks statewide. The water board’s plan, for example, includes roughly 600 infrastructure projects across Texas in need of completion. But its report acknowledged that antiquated or missing data meant another 3,100 assessments would be required to know whether additional projects are needed.

In the Guadalupe River region, which includes Kerr County, 65% of areas lacked adequate flood mapping. Kerrville, the county seat, was listed among the areas identified as having the “greatest known flood risks and mitigation needs.” Yet of the 19 flood needs specific to the city and county, only three were included in the state plan’s list of 600. They included requests to install backup generators in critical facilities and repair low-water crossings, which are shallow points in streets where rainwater can pool to dangerous levels.

At least 16 other priorities, including the county’s desire for an early warning flood system and potential dam or drainage system repairs, required a follow-up evaluation, according to the state plan. County officials tried to obtain grants for the early warning systems for years, to no avail.

Gonzales County, an agriculture-rich area of 20,000 people along the Guadalupe River, is among the rural communities struggling to obtain funding, said emergency management director Jimmy Harless, who is also the county’s fire marshal. The county is in desperate need of a siren system and additional gauges to measure the river’s potentially dangerous flood levels, Harless said, but doesn’t have the resources, personnel or expertise to apply for the “burdensome” state grant process.

“It is extremely frustrating for me to know that there’s money there and there’s people that care, but our state agency has become so bureaucratic that it’s just not feasible for us,” Harless said. “Our folks’ lives are more important than what some bureaucrat wants us to do.”

For years, Texas leaders have focused more on cleaning up after disasters than on preparing for them, said Jim Blackburn, a professor at Rice University specializing in environmental law and flooding issues.

“It’s no secret that the Guadalupe is prone to flash flooding. That’s been known for decades,” Blackburn said. “The state has been very negligent about kind of preparing us for, frankly, the worst storms of the future that we are seeing today because of climate change, and what’s changing is that the risks are just greater today and will be even greater tomorrow, because our storms are getting worse and worse.”

At a news conference this month, Abbott said state committees would investigate “ways to address this,” though he declined to offer specifics. When pressed by a reporter about where the blame for the lack of preparedness should fall, Abbott responded that it was “the word choice of losers.”

It shouldn’t have taken the Hill Country flooding for a special session addressing emergency systems and funding needs, said Usman Mahmood, a policy analyst at Bayou City Waterkeeper, a Houston nonprofit that advocates for flood protection measures.

“The worst part pretty much already happened, which is the flooding and the loss of life,” he said. “Now it’s a reaction to that.”

Misty Harris contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lexi Churchill and Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

Lucas and her husband live over 100 miles away in New Braunfels, but they drove to the unincorporated riverside town of Hunt to “put a good 12-hour day in and try to put a dent in any of this,” in Celbi’s words. The work was personal: She lost a second cousin, Reese Manchaca, to the floods. Manchaca, a 21-year-old college student, was visiting Hunt for the holiday with three of her friends when floodwaters overwhelmed the cabin they’d rented. In the disaster’s solemn aftermath, Texas officers arranged a procession to escort Manchaca’s body back to her hometown in Montgomery County, 300 miles away, so she could be laid to rest.

Another volunteer, Bryan Hill, has been driving two hours each way from his ranch in nearby Kimble County to volunteer. Hill, who is a road construction worker for the city of Austin, felt compelled to help after watching news coverage; he was helping operate heavy equipment to clear debris. 

“I’ve just seen everything on TV,” he said. “It bothers me. If I see somebody in need or something, I want to help.”

At least 134 people lost their lives in the flash floods that overwhelmed Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, and other communities along the Guadalupe River earlier this month. Those who survived tell harrowing stories of clinging to electric poles, trees, and rooftops as the river raged around them. The camera crews may have left, but helicopters continue to buzz overhead, an army of volunteers is traversing the river banks, and the county is considering draining a lake in an effort to find the more than 160 people who have been reported missing.

Volunteer efforts were delayed by more rain and a flash flood watch over the weekend. For about two days, the county ordered that all volunteer search and rescue operations halt as river levels rose yet again. On Monday, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said the search for the missing could take up to six months. 

The larger rebuild and recovery process will likely take much longer. Several river crossings on the roads in and out of Hunt have been ripped apart by fast-flowing waters. The trees along the river banks are bowed, having succumbed to the force of the river, and littered with blankets, clothes, and the wreckage of people’s lives. Mattresses, refrigerators, debris, and other belongings from flooded homes are piled all along Highway 39, the main road that runs along the Guadalupe and through Hunt. 

Hunt is an unincorporated town of roughly 1,100 people in the heart of Texas’ Hill Country in western Kerr County. The region is so named because of its rolling hills, rugged terrain, and dramatic escarpments. While the community of permanent residents is small, the population of the town increases over the summer when vacationers camp and hike along the river. RV parks and cabins dot the river banks, and the region relies on tourism and recreation for revenue. Many residents of nearby Austin and San Antonio maintain second homes in the area. In fact, officials have had a difficult time estimating the number of missing people in part because many were visiting from out of town. 

Although the region has been in a severe drought for the past several years, it’s no stranger to flash floods. In 1932, about 20 years after the town’s founding, the river rose 36 feet and Hunt “was washed away in a flood,” according to a webpage maintained by the Kerr County Historical Commission. The Guadalupe has flooded several times since then — including in 1987, an event locals refer to as “the big one.” 

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Nevertheless, the conditions that powered the recent floods had all the hallmarks of a changing climate. As the Gulf has warmed, it has increased the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, and with it the potential for intense rainfall. The storm that caused the floods dumped 2 to 4 inches of rain over Kerr County every hour; given the region’s limestone deposits, which don’t absorb water, the rainfall had nowhere to go but down. The region’s extended drought, which had left the soil dry and compacted, didn’t help either. Hillsides turned into runoff channels, and the Guadalupe swelled up and outward, hundreds of feet beyond its banks. 

Many of Hunt’s part- and full-time residents have left the devastated town, but some have stayed — or returned — to assess the damage. On Wednesday afternoon, LeAnn Levering was spraying a wooden table with vinegar in a desperate attempt to save it from mold. The table, built by her ex-husband and cherished by her children, sat on the front porch along with all the salvageable possessions from her cabin. The house had been inundated with five feet of water as the Guadalupe swelled in the early morning of July 4. The river rose furiously, climbing several dozen feet up a hill before spreading another 300 or so feet across the land to reach the cabin. Levering, a psychotherapist who primarily lives near Austin, was fortunate not to be staying in the cabin that weekend. When she and her son arrived a couple of days later to assess the damage, she found dead fish and sewage backflow amid the wreckage. 

“We’re so high up this hill — it should never have happened,” Levering said. “I understand we’re in a flash flood alley but not this high. This is just bizarre.”

The floods arrived too quickly for many of those present to evacuate. Douglas Bolduc’s family, which owns three of the neighboring cabins and was staying in one of them, retreated to a loft as the floodwaters overwhelmed the home. They were eventually rescued and taken to higher ground. Another one of the family’s cabins was pulled off of its foundation and into the raging river.

“It’s a pile of rubble over there in the field,” Bolduc told Grist, pointing to a large open meadow.

While the flash flood itself was unavoidable, the region’s devastating death toll was exacerbated by the limits of cell-phone-based warning systems. Unlike neighboring communities, Kerr County was not equipped with sirens or other alarm systems to alert residents when the river rose in the middle of the night. The county sent phone alerts to those who had signed up through its CodeRED initiative, but it did not use FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, which sends blaring alerts to all cell phones in a region, until after the most devastating flooding. 

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Bolduc himself was in Colorado during the floods, but he returned to help rebuild the homes with his sister. Volunteers had helped empty out the homes, power wash the floors, and set up blowers to dry them out.

“We didn’t lose anybody,” Bolduc said of his family. “All we lost was stuff. And stuff can be replaced.”

Levering and Bolduc, who do not have flood insurance to cover their homes in Hunt, will be shouldering the cost of rebuilding their cabins on their own. (Nationally, only 4 percent of homeowners have flood insurance; in Kerr County, that figure is only 2.5 percent.) Bolduc’s family plans to dip into savings to rebuild, while Levering is planning on looking into low-interest loans. She estimates rebuilding will cost at least $100,000 and hasn’t yet investigated if any form of assistance might be available from FEMA or any other government entity.

“I have no idea,” she said. “I haven’t had time for paperwork.”

Grist has a comprehensive guide to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after a disaster. Explore the full Disaster 101 resource guide for more on your rights and options when disaster hits.

Are you affected by the flooding in Texas and North Carolina? Learn how to navigate disaster relief and response.

Get prepared. Learn how to be ready for a disaster before you’re affected.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After deadly flash floods, a Texas town takes halting, painful steps toward recovery on Jul 17, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

In late September 2000, longtime Kerr County, Texas, resident W. Thornton Secor Jr. sat down with an oral historian to tell his story. Like many of the residents recorded as part of a decadeslong effort by the Kerr County Historical Commission to document the community’s history, Secor had a lot to say about the area’s floods.

“It always seems to happen at night too,” Secor said of local floods he and his family had experienced. “Can’t see most of it.”

Secor, who died in 2022, was a third-generation manager of a lodge that still operates along the Guadalupe River. His oral history shares family memories of floods going back to 1932 — like the time a flood that year washed away most of the cabins his grandfather built.

Now, Secor’s daughter, Mandi Secor Lipscomb, is left considering the future of the lodge in the aftermath of another devastating flood, on July 4. Secor Lipscomb is the fourth-generation owner and operator of the same lodge, Waltonia on the River.

Often when I try to understand a place or process a big news event, I look for records kept by local historical societies and libraries. In archived documents, preserved photographs and oral history collections, one can start to see how a community understands itself. So, as news reports about the floods in the Central Texas Hill Country poured in throughout the week, I went looking for historical context. What local knowledge is held by people who live, or have lived, in what’s repeatedly described as “Flash Flood Alley”? How have people in Kerr County’s past contended with floods of their own time?

A trove of more than 70 oral histories recorded by the Kerr County Historical Commission begins to answer those questions. The recordings document memories of floods going back to 1900, but oral histories alone rarely tell a full or accurate story. Still, there’s at least one conclusion to draw: Everything has a history. The flood that killed more than 130 people in the Kerr County area this month is not the first time a flash flood on the Guadalupe River took lives of people, including children.

I keep this history in mind when I hear local and state officials say no one could have seen this coming. Take this exchange between a reporter and Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly:

Reporter: Why weren’t these camps evacuated?

Kelly: I can’t answer that. I don’t know.

Reporter: Well you’re the judge. I mean you’re the top official here in this county. Why can’t you answer that? There are kids missing. These camps were in harm’s way. We knew this flood was coming.

Kelly: We didn’t know this flood was coming. Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming. We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States. And we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.

My colleague Jennifer Berry Hawes wrote last week about the uncanny similarities between the Texas floods and Hurricane Helene, which struck North Carolina last year. In both disasters, weather forecasts predicted the potential devastation, yet people were left in harm’s way.

And as another colleague, ProPublica editor Abrahm Lustgarten, pointed out in a piece about how climate change is making disasters like the flood in Texas more common, “there will be tireless — and warranted — analysis of who is to blame for this heart-wrenching loss” in the weeks to come.

“Should Kerr County, where most of the deaths occurred, have installed warning sirens along that stretch of the waterway, and why were children allowed to sleep in an area prone to high-velocity flash flooding?” Lustgarten wrote. “Why were urgent updates apparently only conveyed by cellphone and online in a rural area with limited connectivity?”

As we wait for answers — or as journalists dig for them — the oral histories show Kerr County residents have warned one another, as well as newcomers and out-of-towners, about flooding for a long time. In his 2000 oral history, Secor said he remembered a time in the spring of 1959 when his father tried to warn one new-to-town woman about building a house so close to the river.

“He took her out and showed her the watermarks on the trees in front of our house and all,” Secor said, likely referring to the watermarks from the flood of 1932, which a local newspaper described at the time as “the most disastrous flood that ever swept the upper Guadalupe Valley.” The flood killed at least seven people.

“‘Oh,’ she says, ‘that will never happen again,’” Secor recalled.

He said her body was found in a tree a few months later after a flood swept her and the roof she stood on away.

“It’s going to surprise newcomers when we get another flood like the ’32 flood,” Secor said in 2000.

“It’ll get us again someday.”

As the Guadalupe River rose over the July 4 weekend, the 16-cabin lodge his daughter owns was sold out and full of guests. All of them escaped the floods, said Secor Lipscomb. They ran, some barefoot in the mud, up a steep hill beyond the property’s retaining wall. They took shelter in a barn.

Later, Secor Lipscomb assessed the damage to her family property. What she saw left her in tears: Four cabins had water up to the ceiling. Another two had flooded about 5 feet. But among the wreckage was a crew of nearly 40 volunteers, ready to help with the cleanup.

By the time I reached out to her to ask her about her father’s oral history, six cabins and the main camp office were already demolished.

The cabin her great-grandfather and grandfather built together more than 100 years ago still stood. But it won’t for much longer. It is so damaged with water that it, too, will have to go.

“This is our family history, our family legacy,” Secor Lipscomb told me. “Of course we’re going to rebuild.”

When they do, their customers will be ready. Many of the families who survived the flood already told her they’ll be first in line to book for the next available July 4.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Logan Jaffe.

Later that day, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. The law gutted public food and healthcare safety nets, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, while also codifying massive tax breaks for wealthier individuals and major corporations. The devastation in Texas, then, became the first major disaster to expose the grave effects of Trump’s extensive disinvestment from disaster resilience programs — and his administration’s newest food and hunger policies. 

Charitable groups such as food banks and pantries typically serve as frontline distributors of food and water in a time of a crisis, working in tandem with other responding national and global relief organizations and government agencies. Now, though, because of the policy and funding decisions enacted by the Trump administration over the last six months, the primary food banks that are responding to the needs of residents throughout central Texas have less food to distribute. 

Near the beginning of Trump’s second term, the Department of Agriculture stopped the flow of some of the money that pays for deliveries of products like meats, eggs, and vegetables known as “bonus commodities” through The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, to charitable organizations like food banks. TEFAP is one of the primary ways that state and federal governments have ensured food reaches communities in need in the aftermath of climate-fueled disasters like a hurricane or heatwave. 

In March, the USDA also moved to end future rounds of funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. These two programs, which are also designed to support emergency food providers such as food banks, were slated to distribute more than a billion dollars this fiscal year to states, tribes, and territories. 

In April, the funding cuts drove the Central Texas Food Bank to cancel 39 loads of food — the equivalent of 716,000 meals — scheduled to be delivered through September, said Beth Corbett, the organization’s vice president of government affairs and advocacy. The state of Texas lost more than $107 million for programs that allowed food banks and schools to buy food locally because of the administration’s funding cuts, the Austin Monitor and KUT reported. The San Antonio Food Bank also endured similar losses to its inventory. 

San Antonio Food Bank’s president and CEO Eric Cooper told Grist he is consumed by concern that they may not be able to meet the emergency food demand prompted by the flooding tragedy in central Texas. 

“Prior to this disaster, we just don’t have the volume of food in our warehouse that we need to have,” said Cooper, noting that they are “struggling to keep up” with the demand intensified by the deluge. “We have had to try to pivot a little bit to ration some of what we do have across the population we serve so that we can stretch [our supply],” he added. “USDA cuts have made it harder to keep up. The flood will make it even more difficult. Pending SNAP cuts feel like it will be impossible.”

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Over a week after the floods, more than 160 people remain unaccounted for, and on Sunday another round of heavy rains halted some rescue efforts. The food bank, which has pantries and distribution sites throughout 29 Texan counties, is now acting as the central community-based anti-hunger hub serving some of the hardest hit swaths of Hill Country. Throughout the last week, the bank distributed more than 160,000 pounds of food relief to households in affected counties — an amalgamation of heated and ready to eat meals, groceries, pallets of water, and snacks, that equates roughly $300,000 in value and provides up to 120,000 meals. In the period of recovery to come, they expect to distribute another 40,000 pounds or so worth of food every day, an amount which feeds anywhere between 300 and 500 families. 

That volume, according to Cooper, is far more than the bank normally distributes. They are already seeing a 10 percent increase in demand — a rapid uptick in the span of a little over a week. “We’re doing what we can to make sure that people don’t go hungry, but it has been tough,” he said. The biggest problem they are running up against, he noted, is how federal funding cuts have obstructed their ability to fully respond. 

“I feel like the parent whose child asked what’s for dinner tonight, and not knowing, not able to totally confirm, that I’ve got it.” 

With more than 5 million residents facing food insecurity, 17.6 percent of the state’s total population, Texas leads the rest of the nation in hunger rates. The region struck by floods is no exception. Among the six Hill Country counties most severely affected by the floods is Tom Green County, home to 120,000 or so residents. Preliminary estimates by Feeding America show that, based on location trends and new individuals registering for San Antonio Food Bank distributions, about 1,872 people in the area are now at further risk of hunger because of the expected economic impacts of the floods. About 20,080 residents living in Tom Green already confront food insecurity — nearly 17 percent of the population. 

But most of the destruction wrought by the floods was seen across neighboring Kerr County, where about 9,310 people already grapple with food insecurity, according to the latest public Feeding America data. With a total population of little more than 53,000 people, the towns found in this rural belt of south-central Texas include places like Hunt, an unincorporated community on the Guadalupe River, with a permanent population that sits at around 1,300. Roughly 876 residents in Hunt — more than half — now face a deeper food insecurity risk because of the floods, according to the Feeding America data shared with Grist.

Hunger typically intensifies in disaster zones because of the lasting economic repercussions of an extreme weather event. Poverty rates — and issues with food access — surge in areas significantly impacted by floods and storms because many Americans are less able to afford the mounting costs needed to best prepare for a disaster or recover from the damages they wreak. 

In the last week, the USDA has issued flood-related waivers for households already enrolled in SNAP but not yet announced broader food assistance through programs like D-SNAP, or the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In flood-ravaged places like Hunt, humanitarian organizations are stepping in to provide assistance where the government isn’t. 

The World Central Kitchen set up its main distribution site in Hunt. Their on-the-ground team of ten has handed out over 12,100 meals throughout Hill Country and has begun coordinating with local food banks to assess their longer-term resource needs.

“There is an influx of aid here because of this national tragedy,” said Samantha Elfmont, who leads emergency global food relief operations for World Central Kitchen. “We’re in that period now of ‘How do we support the community much longer than the month of July?’”

The latest round of torrential rainfall has complicated those efforts: Over the weekend, the Hunt site was flooded, so they are now also working to evacuate the team and food truck.

Getting a hot meal to those reeling from the floods is important for not just physical recovery from a disaster, but also for the emotional recovery process, said Elfmont. “People often think of health and shelter,” she said, but “emergency feeding helps people get through the trauma.” 

Grist has a comprehensive guide to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after a disaster.

• Explore the full Disaster 101 resource guide for more on your rights and options when disaster hits.

• Are you affected by the flooding in Texas and North Carolina? Learn how to navigate disaster relief and response.

• Get prepared. Learn how to be ready for a disaster before you’re affected.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Texas food banks are rationing meals for flood survivors because of Trump’s cuts on Jul 14, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

After being stopped for an alleged traffic infraction, 29-year-old Timothy Michael Randall was shot and killed less than a minute after stepping out of his car at the request of an officer. Cop watcher Otto the Watchdog arrived on the scene in Henderson, TX, to protest and was promptly arrested for disorderly conduct related to alleged profanity on his signage. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of the Police Accountability Report engage the officer’s credibility issues as a state trooper, the dismissal of his criminal charges for the death of Randall, and the potential loss of qualified immunity for the shooting.

Credits:

• Produced by: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
• Written by: Stephen Janis
• Studio Post-Production: Adam Coley

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis.

Nearly 1.3 million Texas homes are similarly situated in parts of the state susceptible to dangerous floodwaters, according to a state estimate. A quarter of the state’s land carries some degree of severe flood risk, leaving an estimated 5 million Texans in possible jeopardy.

Yet, local governments — especially counties — have limited policy tools to regulate building in areas most prone to flooding. The state’s explosive growth, a yearning for inexpensive land, and a state far behind in planning for extreme weather compound the problem, experts said.

While cities can largely decide what is built within their limits, counties have no jurisdiction to implement comprehensive zoning rules that could limit people from living close to the water’s edge.

Camp Mystic and many of the other camps along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, where the disaster’s wreckage has been concentrated, were far outside city limits and any regulatory authority of the Kerrville City Council.

Some guardrails exist when it comes to building on flood plains. For property owners in flood-prone areas to tap federal flood insurance, localities have to enact minimum building standards set by the federal government. And counties can use a limited supply of federal dollars to relocate residents out of flood zones. However, those programs have had mixed success. Other programs to fortify infrastructure are tied to federally required hazard mitigation plans, which most rural counties in Texas do not have on file.

Keeping people out of the state’s major flood zones altogether is unrealistic if not impossible, experts in flood plain management and infrastructure said.

For one, it’s human nature to want to be near water — whether it’s to live or vacation there.

“Everybody is drawn to water,” said Christopher Steubing, who heads the Texas Floodplain Management Association. “It becomes challenging when you’re telling people what they can and cannot do with their property. It’s a delicate balance, especially in Texas.”

Families have flocked to Texas from more expensive parts of the country in search of a lower cost of living, moving to places more vulnerable to severe weather events like flooding and wildfires intensified by climate change, research shows.

The state’s population has mushroomed over the last decade, spurring a building frenzy in cities and unincorporated areas alike. The state’s total population has grown by more than 7 percent since 2020. Meanwhile, the Hill Country, which includes Kerr County, has grown by about 9 percent.

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Kerr County has seen relatively little population growth in the last few years, said Lloyd Potter, the state’s demographer. But other parts of the Hill Country, including neighboring Gillespie County, have seen relatively steady population growth.

“It is a desirable area for retirees,” Potter said. “It’s beautiful, and it’s reasonably close to urbanized areas, so I think that (growth is) likely to continue.”

Some people don’t have a choice but to live in flood-prone areas, where land is typically cheaper. Often, cities and towns only allow cheaper housing like mobile and manufactured homes to go in places that carry a higher risk of flooding, said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who studies climate risk. When a weather disaster destroys a mobile home park, often it gets rebuilt right where it was, Rumbach said.

“The only place you can build it is right back in the flood plain,” Rumbach said.

Determining what can be built on flood plains is largely left to local officials, who may feel uneasy about limiting what property owners do with their land — especially in a state like Texas, known for prioritizing personal liberty — for fear that doing so will harm the local economy or lead to retribution against them at the ballot box, experts said. Often, the aim is not to stop people from building there altogether, but to create standards that make doing so less risky. Even when places adopt new rules, development that predates those rules is often grandfathered in.

How strictly local officials regulate development in flood plains comes down to political will, said Robert Paterson, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture.

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“Fundamentally, disasters are a human choice,” said Paterson, who specializes in land use and environmental planning. “We can choose to develop in relation to high risk, or we can choose not to. We can stay out of harm’s way.”

Texas adopted its first statewide flood plan last year. As more people move outside of the state’s major urban areas, cities, towns and counties have increasingly adopted flood plain management rules for the first time or enacted stricter ones, Steubing said.

“You have counties that are catching up and adopting standards, but the growth can happen a lot faster than we can get ordinances adopted,” Steubing said.

Even so, localities aren’t tackling development in flood zones quickly enough to keep up with the pace of massive weather disasters, Rumbach said, and states can’t afford to wait for every city and county to adopt stricter standards. State lawmakers, currently weighing what measures to take in the flooding’s aftermath, should consider ways to give cities and counties better tools to manage flood plain development, he said.

“States are the right level of government to do this because they’re close enough to their communities to understand what is needed in different parts of the state and to have regulations that make sense,” Rumbach said. “But they’re far enough away from local governments that we can’t have this race to the bottom where some places are just the Wild West, and they’re able to build whatever they want while others are trying to be responsible stewards of safety and lower property damage.”

There is evidence that some Texas cities are taking flood plain management seriously. Most parts of Texas saw relatively little development on flood plains during the first two decades of this century, according to a study published last year by climate researchers at the University of Miami and other institutions. But parts of the Hill Country like Kerr, Bandera, Burnet and Llano counties saw more flood plain development than other parts of the state, researchers found.

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As the Hill Country population grows, people are increasingly finding themselves in harm’s way, said Avantika Gori, an assistant professor of civil and environmental at Rice University and flood expert. Local and state officials can make different decisions on how to develop around flood plains, she said.

“We can’t prevent extreme rainfall from happening, but we can choose where to develop, where to live, where to put ourselves,” Gori said.

Hill Country, particularly the areas farther from the Interstate 35 corridor, is less developed. There could be a temptation to build more as part of the recovery.

Following the 2015 Wimberley flood, developers pressured regulators to allow for more building in the flood plain as the area’s population continued to grow, said Robert Mace, executive director and chief water policy officer of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University.

“My advice is, a river is beautiful, but as we’ve all seen, it can be a raging, horrific beast, and it needs to be treated with respect,” Mace said. “Part of that respect comes from making careful decisions about where we build.”

A confluence of factors lead to structures being built on the flood plain, said Jim Blackburn, a professor of environmental law in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University.

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Lax regulations with loopholes that allow existing structures to remain on flood plains, out-of-date flood maps that do not show the true risks posed to residents and economic incentives for developers to build on seemingly attractive land near the water all encourage the development to continue, Blackburn said.

“I get it,” Blackburn said. “People want to be by the river. It’s private property, and we don’t like to tell people what to do with their private property, but there comes a point where we have to say we’ve had enough.”

The federal regulation of development on flood plains is largely done through the National Flood Insurance Program, which subsidizes flood insurance in exchange for implementing flood plain management standards. Under federal law, buildings on a flood plain must be elevated above the anticipated water level during a 100-year storm, or a storm with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year. Local governments must implement the program and map flood plains. Local officials may impose additional building restrictions for building in these areas, such as the requirement in Houston that all new structures be elevated two feet above the 500-year flood elevation.

Kerrville last updated its rules overseeing flood plain development in 2011, according to the city’s website. A city spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Texas historically has been unfriendly to federal environmental regulation, which is viewed as excessive red tape that gets in the way of economic progress, Blackburn said.

That has led to the state being decades behind the curve in reacting to more frequent and intense rainstorms fueled by a warming climate. As temperatures on average go up, more water on the Earth’s surface is evaporated into the atmosphere, and the warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. That extra moisture in the atmosphere creates more intense and frequent storms, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Additional development can also leave flood maps even further out of date as more impermeable surfaces replace natural flood-fighting vegetation, Sharif said.

A 2018 study authored by Hatim Sharif, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and other UTSA researchers found that the 2015 Wimberley flood was worsened by new construction removing natural barriers to flooding, although natural causes were the primary drivers of the flood.

Experts said that the flooding in the less-developed Kerr County was likely not worsened in a significant way by development. Sharif did encourage the state to fund a study similar to the one he conducted on the Wimberley flood to allow regulators and residents to better understand how exactly Friday’s flood occurred.

Sharif also argued in favor of further investments in “impact-based forecasting.” That area of study combines regular forecasting with on-the-ground information about what the impact of that forecast will be and who is in harm’s way to provide clearer warnings to residents, or, in Sharif’s words, “What do 7 inches of rain mean for me as a person staying in a camp near the river?”

Many of the flood plain maps throughout the state are out of date, given the reality of more frequent and intense storms and continuing development, Blackburn said, and local officials face political pressures not to restrict new development with tougher building codes.

In 2011, the city of Clear Lake installed, then removed signs warning that a hurricane storm surge could reach as high as 20 feet in the city after concerns were raised that the signs were impacting property values.

“I think that tells us a lot,” Blackburn said. “We’re more worried about home sales than the safety of the people buying the homes.”

— Alejandra Martinez contributed. Graphics by Carla Astudillo.

Disclosure: Institute for Economic Development – UTSA, Rice University, University of Texas at Austin and University of Texas at San Antonio have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Disasters are a human choice’: Texas counties have little power to stop building in flood-prone areas on Jul 12, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joshua Fechter.

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Nine months ago, Hurricane Helene barreled up from the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into the rugged mountains of western North Carolina, dumping a foot of rain onto an already saturated landscape. More than 100 people died, most by drowning in floodwaters or being crushed by water-fueled landslides.

“We had no idea it was going to do what it did,” said Jeff Howell, the now-retired emergency manager in Yancey County, North Carolina, a rural expanse that suffered the most deaths per capita.

A week ago, the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry slipped up from the coast of Mexico, drawing moisture from the Gulf, then collided with another system and inundated rivers and creeks in hilly south central Texas. More than 100 people are confirmed dead, many of them children, with more missing.

“We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here — none whatsoever,” said County Judge Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Kerr County, Texas, where most of the deaths occurred.

The similarities between North Carolina and Texas extend beyond the words of these two officials. In both disasters, there was a disconnect between accurate weather alerts and on-the-ground action that could have saved lives.

Officials in each of those places were warned. The National Weather Service sent urgent alerts about potentially life-threatening danger hours in advance of the flash floods, leaving time to notify and try to evacuate people in harm’s way.

In Texas, some local officials did just that. But others did not.

Similarly, a ProPublica investigation found that when Helene hit on Sept. 27, some local officials in North Carolina issued evacuation orders. At least five counties in Helene’s path, including Yancey, did not. Howell said the enormity of the storm was far worse than anyone alive had ever seen and that he notified residents as best he could.

The National Weather Service described Helene’s approach for days. It sent out increasingly dire alerts warning of dangerous flash flooding and landslides. Its staff spoke directly with local emergency managers and held webinar updates. A Facebook message the regional office posted around 1 p.m. the day before Helene hit warned of “significant to catastrophic, life-threatening flooding” in the mountains. “This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era.”

Similarly, in Texas, the weather service warned of potential for flash flooding the day before. Also that day, the state emergency management agency’s regional director had “personally contacted” county judges, mayors and others “in that area and notified them all of potential flooding,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick later said at a press conference.

AccuWeather, a commercial weather forecasting service, issued the first flash flood warnings for the area at 12:44 a.m. on July 4, roughly three hours before the catastrophic flooding. A half-hour later, at 1:14 a.m., the National Weather Service sent a similar warning to two specific areas, including central Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River’s banks and hills are dotted with vacation homes, summer camps and campgrounds — many filled with July 4 vacationers slumbering in cabins and RVs.

“Flash flooding is ongoing or expected to begin shortly,” the weather service alert said. Impacts could include “life threatening flash flooding of creeks and streams.”

A severity descriptor on that alert sent it to weather radios and the nation’s Wireless Emergency Alerts system, which blasts weather warnings to cellphones to blare an alarm.

AccuWeather’s chief meteorologist, Jonathan Porter, was dismayed to hear news later that all the children attending youth camps in Kerr County had not been ushered to higher ground despite those warnings.

At Camp Mystic, a beloved century-old Christian summer camp for girls, at least 27 campers and counselors were killed. Six still haven’t been found. Its director also died, while trying to rescue children. (People at the camp said they received little to no help from the authorities, according to The New York Times.)

“I was very concerned to see that campers were awoken not by someone coming to tell them to evacuate based on timely warnings issued but rather by rapidly rising water that was going up to the second level of their bunkbeds,” Porter said.

In the area, known as Flash Flood Alley, Porter called this “a tragedy of the worst sort” because it appeared camps and local officials could have mobilized sooner in response to the alerts.

“There was plenty of time to evacuate people to higher ground,” Porter said. “The question is, Why did that not happen?”

But Dalton Rice, city manager of Kerrville, the county seat, said at a press conference the next day that “there wasn’t a lot of time” to communicate the risk to camps because the floodwaters rose so rapidly.

Rice said that at 3:30 a.m. — more than two hours after the flash flood warnings began — he went jogging near the Guadalupe River to check it out but didn’t see anything concerning.

But 13 miles upriver from the park where he was jogging, the river began — at 3:10 a.m. — to rise 25 feet in just two hours.

At 4:03 a.m., the weather service upgraded the warning to an “emergency”— its most severe flash flood alert — with a tag of “catastrophic.” It singled out the Guadalupe River at Hunt in Kerr County: “This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!”

The local sheriff said he wasn’t made aware of the flooding until 4 to 5 a.m. He has declined to say whether the local emergency manager, who is responsible for alerting the public to approaching storms, was awake when the flash flood warnings went out starting at 1 a.m. The Texas Tribune reported that Kerrville’s mayor said he wasn’t aware of the flooding until around 5:30 a.m., when the city manager called and woke him up.

Local officials have refused to provide more details, saying they are focused on finding the more than 100 people still missing and notifying loved ones of deaths.

One challenge as disasters approach is that weather alerts often don’t reach the people in harm’s way.

In rural areas across Texas and North Carolina alike, cellphone service can be spotty on the best of days, and some people turn off alert notifications. In North Carolina’s remote mountains, many people live at least somewhat off the grid. The cell service isn’t great everywhere, and many aren’t glued to phones or social media. In Texas, Kerr County residents posted on Facebook complaints that they didn’t receive the weather service’s alerts while others said their phones blared all night with warnings.

Many counties also use apps to send their own alerts, often tailored to their specific rivers and roads. But residents must opt in to receive them. Kerr County uses CodeRed, but it isn’t clear what alerts it sent out overnight.

Pete Jensen has spent a long career in emergency management, including responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. He served as an official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina and often ponders why more people don’t receive – and heed – weather alerts.

“There’s an awful lot of denial,” Jensen said. “Disasters happen to someone else. They don’t happen to me.” That can include local officials who “don’t always understand what their responsibilities are. They very often react like most humans do – in denial.”

There is one big difference between the disasters in Texas and North Carolina. In Texas, residents, journalists and others have demanded accountability from local officials. Gov. Greg Abbott has called the Legislature into special session starting July 21 to discuss flood warning systems, flood emergency communications and natural disaster preparation.

But that hasn’t happened in North Carolina. The state legislature has yet to discuss possible changes, such as expanding its Know Your Zone evacuation plan beyond the coast, or boost funding for local emergency managers. (Instead, lawmakers went home in late June without passing a full budget.) Many emergency managers, including in Yancey County, operate in rural areas with small tax bases and skeleton staffs.

“There still has not been an outcry here for, How do we do things differently?” said state Sen. Julie Mayfield, a Democrat from Asheville. “It still feels like we’re very much in recovery mode.”

North Carolina’s emergency management agency commissioned a review of its handling of the disaster. The report found the state agency severely understaffed, but it didn’t examine issues such as evacuations or local emergency managers’ actions before Helene hit.

Erika Andresen also lives in Asheville, a mountain city in the heart of Helene’s destruction, where she helps businesses prepare for disasters. A lawyer and former Army judge advocate, she also teaches emergency management. After Helene, she was among the few voices in North Carolina criticizing the lack of evacuations and other inactions ahead of the storm.

“I knew right away, both from my instinct and from my experience, that a lot of things went terribly wrong,” Andresen said. When she got pushback against criticizing local authorities in a time of crisis, she countered, “We need accountability.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jennifer Berry Hawes.

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Texas health officials are overhauling a program designed to steer people away from abortion following a ProPublica and CBS News investigation that found that the state had funneled tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into the effort while providing little oversight of the spending.

The money has been flowing to a network of nonprofit organizations that are part of Thriving Texas Families, a state program that supports parenting and adoption as alternatives to abortion and provides counseling, material assistance and other services. Most of the groups operate as crisis pregnancy centers, or pregnancy resource centers, which often resemble medical clinics but are frequently criticized for offering little or no actual health care and misleading women about their options.

In its 20 years of existence, the program’s funding has grown fortyfold — reaching $100 million a year starting Sept. 1 — making it the most heavily funded effort of its kind in the country.

Under new rules set to take effect then, the organizations in the program must now document all of their expenses, and they will be reimbursed only for costs tied to services approved by the state. And they cannot seek reimbursement when they redistribute donated items, an effort to prevent taxpayer money from going to organizations for goods they got for free.

Meanwhile, Texas is opening administration of the program to a competitive selection process instead of automatically renewing agreements with contractors, including one contractor that has overseen most of the program for nearly two decades.

The changes address failures uncovered a year ago by the ProPublica/CBS News investigation. As Thriving Texas Families currently operates, most providers are paid a flat rate for each service they claim to provide, regardless of the actual cost of that service. As a result, a single client visit can generate multiple stacked charges, significantly increasing the amount of public money being spent. In some cases, providers billed separately for each item or service given to a client — such as diapers, baby clothes, blankets, wipes, snacks and even educational pamphlets — according to records reviewed by ProPublica and CBS News.

That arrangement allowed organizations to bill the state for more than the services actually cost to provide — and keep the difference. One group, Sealy Pregnancy Resource Center, more than quintupled its assets in three years by banking some reimbursements. Its executive director, Patricia Penner, acknowledged the practice, saying her goal was “to make sure we have enough for this center to continue and to continue for the years to come.”

“There’s no guarantee the funds we receive is going to be sufficient to keep the center going,” Penner added, “and it’s my duty as a director to ensure we are taking whatever service funds we are receiving to ensure we can take care of these young ladies when they come in the door.”

Two others, McAllen Pregnancy Center and Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend in Corpus Christi, used reimbursements to finance real estate deals. The McAllen center, which receives nearly all its revenue from the state, bought a building that had previously housed an abortion clinic. The Coastal Bend center openly acknowledged using state funds to buy land for a new facility. The centers did not respond to questions.

In San Antonio, Thriving Texas Families cut off funding to a pregnancy center known as A New Life for a New Generation after a local news outlet reported it had spent taxpayer money on vacations, on a motorcycle and to fund a smoke shop business owned by its president and CEO. The center did not respond to a request for comment.

ProPublica and CBS News also found that state health officials had no visibility into what services were being delivered or whether they were reaching the people most in need. In many cases, the state reimbursed providers $14 each time they handed out donated goods or materials, regardless of their cost or how they got them.

That included distributing pamphlets on parenting, fetal development and adoption, which could trigger the same reimbursement as providing tangible aid like diapers or formula. The state could not say exactly how much it had spent on these materials because it did not track what was being distributed.

State-approved pamphlets and lessons reviewed by a reporter stated inaccuracies — such as that a fetal heartbeat starts 21 days after conception — and painted single motherhood as risky and lonely, with marriage or adoption as better options.

While flat-rate reimbursement is sometimes used in government contracting, nonprofit and accounting experts said applying it to the distribution of donated goods — without clear standards for quantity or value — was highly irregular.

Officials with the state Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees Thriving Texas Families, did not say what prompted the policy shift, only that it was following guidance from the state comptroller. That guidance recommends awarding state grants as reimbursements for actual expenses.

The state has long allowed its main contractor, Texas Pregnancy Care Network, to handle most of the program’s oversight. The network told the news organizations last year that once state funds were passed to subcontractors, “it is no longer taxpayer money” and those groups were free to spend it as they saw fit. HHSC pushed back against the network, saying it still considered the money to be taxpayer dollars and expected it to be used in line with state guidelines.

The shift to a cost-reimbursement model appears to bring the program more in line with how public money is typically distributed across state agencies in Texas.

Texas Pregnancy Care Network, which in recent years has received nearly 75% of the Thriving Texas Families funding and distributed it to dozens of crisis pregnancy centers, faith-based groups and other charities that serve as subcontractors, did not respond to questions about how it plans to approach the new contract or adapt to the stricter reimbursement rules.

State Rep. Donna Howard, a Democrat from Austin and a vocal critic of the state’s support for anti-abortion programs, said in an interview that while she opposes taxpayer support for anti-abortion programs, she sees the new rules as a step in the right direction.

But with the new reimbursement requirements in place, Howard questioned whether many of the centers would even be able to make use of the funding. Unlike the previous flat-fee system, providers must now track costs, document services and submit receipts to justify their spending. “Who knows if they can actually use the funds now that they have to show receipts,” she said.

By requiring pregnancy centers to track clients’ income, education level and employment — and to provide clients with information about public benefits available to them — the state is moving away from a system that allowed nonprofits to collect funds without regard for who was receiving help.

Pregnancy resource centers and anti-abortion activists lobbied Republican lawmakers to block the policy change during the most recent legislative session, and some publicly denounced it.

On the social media platform X, Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from the northern Dallas suburbs, urged the agency to “not give veto power” over the program “to biased media reporters.” Leach did not respond to requests for comment.

In an interview, Texas Right to Life President John Seago warned that the new reimbursement model would discourage participation. He said it was “not worth small providers getting into the program because of all the red tape.”

And in written testimony, Penner, from Sealy, implored legislators to preserve the current model, saying it allowed her team “to focus on serving our clients rather than staffing up in order to handle the paperwork” required for reimbursement.

Despite the pushback, lawmakers did not take action to block the new rules.

Ge Bai, a professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University, said switching to a cost-reimbursement system could help prevent waste by making sure organizations only get paid for what they actually spend.

But she warned that this model has its own risks. Since providers know they will be reimbursed, they might not be as careful about keeping costs down — or could even inflate their expenses to get more money. She pointed to Medicare, which used a similar system in the past but abandoned it after costs spiraled out of control.

To avoid the same problem, she said, the program will need strong public oversight to make sure organizations aren’t overspending just because they know the state will cover the bill.

One reproductive health policy specialist who has closely tracked Texas’ spending on crisis pregnancy centers cautioned that the reforms do little to address the broader gaps in the state’s social safety net.

“You can’t really make up for a lack of Medicaid health insurance for the very poor in Texas by giving people educational services, pamphlets and diapers,” said Laura Dixon, a researcher with Resound Research for Reproductive Health, based in Austin.

But at the very least, she said, “understanding where money is going is a really good first step for this program.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Cassandra Jaramillo and Jeremy Kohler.

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On July 4, the broken remnants of a powerful tropical storm spun off the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico so heavy with moisture that it seemed to stagger under its load. Then, colliding with another soggy system sliding north off the Pacific, the storm wobbled and its clouds tipped, waterboarding south central Texas with an extraordinary 20 inches of rain. In the predawn blackness, the Guadalupe River, which drains from the Hill Country, rose by more than 26 vertical feet in just 45 minutes, jumping its banks and hurtling downstream, killing 109 people, including at least 27 children at a summer camp located inside a federally designated floodway.

Over the days and weeks to come there will be tireless — and warranted — analysis of who is to blame for this heart-wrenching loss. Should Kerr County, where most of the deaths occurred, have installed warning sirens along that stretch of the waterway, and why were children allowed to sleep in an area prone to high-velocity flash flooding? Why were urgent updates apparently only conveyed by cellphone and online in a rural area with limited connectivity? Did the National Weather Service, enduring steep budget cuts under the current administration, adequately forecast this storm?

Those questions are critical. But so is a far larger concern: The rapid onset of disruptive climate change — driven by the burning of oil, gasoline and coal — is making disasters like this one more common, more deadly and far more costly to Americans, even as the federal government is running away from the policies and research that might begin to address it.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was briefed in 1965 that a climate crisis was being caused by burning fossil fuels and was warned that it would create the conditions for intensifying storms and extreme events, and this country — including 10 more presidents — has debated how to respond to that warning ever since. Still, it took decades for the slow-motion change to grow large enough to affect people’s everyday lives and safety and for the world to reach the stage it is in now: an age of climate-driven chaos, where the past is no longer prologue and the specific challenges of the future might be foreseeable but are less predictable.

Climate change doesn’t chart a linear path where each day is warmer than the last. Rather, science suggests that we’re now in an age of discontinuity, with heat one day and hail the next and with more dramatic extremes. Across the planet, dry places are getting drier while wet places are getting wetter. The jet stream — the band of air that circulates through the Northern Hemisphere — is slowing to a near stall at times, weaving off its tracks, causing unprecedented events like polar vortexes drawing arctic air far south. Meanwhile the heat is sucking moisture from the drought-plagued plains of Kansas only to dump it over Spain, contributing to last year’s cataclysmic floods.

We saw something similar when Hurricane Harvey dumped as much as 60 inches of rain on parts of Texas in 2017 and when Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina last year — and countless times in between. We witnessed it again in Texas this past weekend. Warmer oceans evaporate faster, and warmer air holds more water, transporting it in the form of humidity across the atmosphere, until it can’t hold it any longer and it falls. Meteorologists estimate that the atmosphere had reached its capacity for moisture before the storm struck.

The disaster comes during a week in which extreme heat and extreme weather have battered the planet. Parts of northern Spain and southern France are burning out of control, as are parts of California. In the past 72 hours, storms have torn the roofs off of five-story apartment buildings in Slovakia, while intense rainfall has turned streets into rivers in southern Italy. Same story in Lombok, Indonesia, where cars floated like buoys, and in eastern China, where an inland typhoon-like storm sent furniture blowing down the streets like so many sheafs of paper. Léon, Mexico, was battered by hail so thick on Monday it covered the city in white. And North Carolina is, again, enduring 10 inches of rainfall.

There is no longer much debate that climate change is making many of these events demonstrably worse. Scientists conducting a rapid analysis of last week’s extreme heat wave that spread across Europe have concluded that human-caused warming killed roughly 1,500 more people than might have otherwise perished. Early reports suggest that the flooding in Texas, too, was substantially influenced by climate change. According to a preliminary analysis by ClimaMeter, a joint project of the European Union and the French National Centre for Scientific Research, the weather in Texas was 7% wetter on July 4 than it was before climate change warmed that part of the state, and natural variability alone cannot explain “this very exceptional meteorological condition.”

That the United States once again is reeling from familiar but alarming headlines and body counts should not be a surprise by now. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the number of extreme weather disasters has jumped fivefold worldwide over the past 50 years, and the number of deaths has nearly tripled. In the United States, which prefers to measure its losses in dollars, the damage from major storms was more than $180 billion last year, nearly 10 times the average annual toll during the 1980s, after accounting for inflation. These storms have now cost Americans nearly $3 trillion. Meanwhile, the number of annual major disasters has grown sevenfold. Fatalities in billion-dollar storms last year alone were nearly equal to the number of such deaths counted by the federal government in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000.

The most worrisome fact, though, may be that the warming of the planet has scarcely begun. Just as each step up on the Richter scale represents a massive increase in the force of an earthquake, the damage caused by the next 1 or 2 degrees Celsius of warming stands to be far greater than that caused by the 1.5 degrees we have so far endured. The world’s leading scientists, the United Nations panel on climate change and even many global energy experts warn that we face something akin to our last chance before it is too late to curtail a runaway crisis. It’s one reason our predictions and modeling capabilities are becoming an essential, lifesaving mechanism of national defense.

What is extraordinary is that at such a volatile moment, President Donald Trump’s administration would choose not just to minimize the climate danger — and thus the suffering of the people affected by it — but to revoke funding for the very data collection and research that would help the country better understand and prepare for this moment.

Over the past couple of months, the administration has defunded much of the operations of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s chief climate and scientific agency responsible for weather forecasting, as well as the cutting-edge earth systems research at places like Princeton University, which is essential to modeling an aberrant future. It has canceled the nation’s seminal scientific assessment of climate change and risk. The administration has defunded the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s core program paying for infrastructure projects meant to prevent major disasters from causing harm, and it has threatened to eliminate FEMA itself, the main federal agency charged with helping Americans after a climate emergency like the Texas floods. It has — as of last week — signed legislation that unravels the federal programs meant to slow warming by helping the country’s industries transition to cleaner energy. And it has even stopped the reporting of the cost of disasters, stating that doing so is “in alignment with evolving priorities” of the administration. It is as if the administration hopes that making the price tag for the Kerr County flooding invisible would make the events unfolding there seem less devastating.

Given the abandonment of policy that might forestall more severe events like the Texas floods by reducing the emissions that cause them, Americans are left to the daunting task of adapting. In Texas, it is critical to ask whether the protocols in place at the time of the storm were good enough. This week is not the first time that children have died in a flash flood along the Guadalupe River, and reports suggest county officials struggled to raise money and then declined to install a warning system in 2018 in order to save approximately $1 million. But the country faces a larger and more daunting challenge, because this disaster — like the firestorms in Los Angeles and the hurricanes repeatedly pummeling Florida and the southeast — once again raises the question of where people can continue to safely live. It might be that in an era of what researchers are calling “mega rain” events, a flood plain should now be off-limits.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Abrahm Lustgarten.

“We know we get rains. We know the river rises,” he said as a desperate search for survivors continued along the Guadalupe, a river that rose more than 30 feet in just five hours last week. “But nobody saw this coming.”

County records show that some Kerr County officials did see it coming and raised concerns about the county’s outdated flood warning system nearly a decade ago. 

Their first request for help updating the technology was denied in 2017, when Kerr County applied for roughly $1 million in federal Hazard Mitigation Grant Program aid from the Texas Department of Emergency Management. County officials tried again in 2018 after Hurricane Harvey swept Texas, killing 89 people and causing some $159 billion in damage. Again, the state denied the request, directing most federal assistance toward more densely populated areas, including Houston.  

As neighboring counties invested in better emergency warning systems, Kerr County — the heart of Flash Flood Alley — never modernized an antiquated flood warning system that lacks basic components like sirens and river gauges. At least 110 people, including 27 children, have died so far in the deadliest floods the state has seen since 1921. Most of them drowned in Kerr County, largely because they didn’t know the water was coming. The search for at least 161 other people continues.

The matter of who should have fronted the money for flood system upgrades is at the heart of swelling controversy in Texas. Public outrage has spurred the kind of action that, had it happened years ago, might have saved lives. “The state needs to step up and pay,” said Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on Monday this week. “The governor and I talked this morning at length about it, and he said, ‘We’re just gonna do it.’”

But even as Texas races to prepare Kerr County for future extreme weather events, the federal government is speeding in the opposite direction. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has taken an ax to the country’s resilience efforts, undoing years of progress toward helping communities withstand the consequences of climate change.  

In April, the Trump administration canceled the Building Resilient Communities Program, or BRIC, which funnels billions of dollars to states, municipalities, and tribal nations so they can prepare for future disasters. Ironically, Trump signed this program into law during his first term. But now, in the name of eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse,” the Trump administration has cut $750 million in new resilience funding and clawed back nearly $900 million in grant funding already promised but not yet disbursed to states for improvements like upgrading stormwater systems, performing prescribed burns, and building flood control systems. FEMA also cancelled $600 million in Flood Mitigation Assistance funding to communities this year, money that helps states protect buildings from flooding. Government analyses have determined that every dollar spent preparing for a disaster reaps $6 or more in costs saved down the road.

The federal Hazard Mitigation Program funding that Texas Governor Greg Abbott requested alongside his request for a major disaster declaration following the catastrophic flooding that began July 4 — the same pot of money Kerr County tried to tap to modernize its flood warning infrastructure in 2017 and 2018 — is still pending as of Tuesday, according to the governor’s office. 

“Historically, if a state has requested Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funding as part of the disaster declaration, it’s been approved,” said Anna Weber, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. But the government hasn’t approved that type of funding in months. “Ultimately, the president has the authority to declare the disaster declaration and determine what’s included in that declaration.”

In sum, these actions at the federal level make it more likely that communities across the country will be caught flatfooted as climate change makes extreme weather events more intense and unpredictable. “There’s so many communities that, when they look at their flooding data, their disaster risk data, their future climate projections, they understand their risk and they understand what their new normal may be,” said Victoria Salinas, who led FEMA’s resilience initiatives under former president Joe Biden. “But then they are powerless to do things about it because it often requires money, expertise, and people power.” 

Rural and underprivileged areas like Kerr County are at particular risk. They often lack the resources and know-how to obtain resilience funding from state and federal officials. The BRIC program had a technical assistance arm dedicated to helping these “lower capacity” communities develop strong applications. That’s also gone. “As far as we know, not only will there not be technical assistance provided through this program going forward, but there are communities out there that were, say, one year into a three year technical assistance agreement through this program that are now unsure about whether or not they’re going to be able to continue,” Weber said.

That means it’ll largely be up to states and counties to fund preparedness projects. It’s not a guarantee that states will take action or that communities will embrace solutions. Even a state like Texas, which has the second-biggest economy in the country, has been loath to help counties pay for disaster resilience initiatives. A measure that would have established a government council and grant program to reform local disaster warning systems across Texas failed in the state Senate this year. 

“I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now,” said state Representative Wes Virdell, a Republican from central Texas who voted against the bill.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Amid historic Texas floods, Trump retreats from disaster preparedness on Jul 8, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

“It’s the worst-case scenario for a very extreme, very sudden, literal wall of water,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, during a livestream Monday morning. “I don’t think that’s an exaggeration in this case, based on the eyewitness accounts and the science involved.”

It will take some time for scientists to do proper “attribution” studies here, to say for instance how much extra rain they can blame on climate change. But generally speaking, this disaster has climate change’s marks all over it — a perfect storm of conspiring phenomena, both in the atmosphere and on the ground. “To people who are still skeptical that the climate crisis is real, there’s such a clear signal and fingerprint of climate change in this type of event,” said Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

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Disaster 101: Your guide to extreme weather preparation, relief, and recovery

Lyndsey Gilpin

This tragedy actually started hundreds of miles to the southeast, out at sea. As the planet has warmed, the gulf has gotten several degrees Fahrenheit hotter. That’s turned it into a giant puddle of fuel for hurricanes barreling toward the Gulf Coast, since those storms feed on warm seawater. 

Even when a hurricane isn’t brewing, the gulf is sending more moisture into the atmosphere — think about how your bathroom mirror fogs up when you draw a hot bath. This pushes wet, unstable air higher and higher into the atmosphere, condensing into clouds. As these systems release heat, they grow even more unstable, creating a towering thundercloud that can drop extreme amounts of rainfall. Indeed, preceding the floods, the amount of moisture above Texas was at or above the all-time record for July, according to Swain. “That is fairly extraordinary, in the sense that this is a place that experiences very moist air this time of year,” Swain said. 

That meant the system both had the requisite moisture for torrential rainfall, plus the instability that creates the thunderstorms that make that rain fall very quickly. This storm was dumping two to four inches of rain an hour, and it was moving very slowly, so it essentially stalled over the landscape — a gigantic atmospheric fire hose soaking Central Texas.

Making matters worse, the ground in this part of Texas is loaded with limestone, which doesn’t readily absorb rainwater compared to places with thick layers of soil at the surface. Rainwater rapidly flowed down hills and valleys and gathered in rivers, which is why the Guadalupe rose so fast. “That means that not very much of the rain is going to soak into the ground, partly because the soil is shallow and partly because there’s steep slopes in the terrain, so that water is able to run off fairly quickly,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas’ state climatologist and director of the Southern Regional Climate Center at Texas A&M University

This is exactly the kind of precipitation event that’s increasing fastest in a warming climate, Swain added. In California, for instance, alternating periods of extremely wet conditions and extremely dry ones are creating “weather whiplash.” As the world’s bodies of water heat up, more moisture can evaporate into the atmosphere. And due to some basic physics, the warmer it gets, the more moisture the atmosphere can hold, so there’s more potential for heavier rainfall. 

“The Gulf of Mexico has been going through several marine heat waves recently, and so it’s just adding that much more heat to the atmosphere, loading it up for more extreme rainfall events,” said Brett Anderson, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather. “A lot of these places, 1-in-100-year floods may be becoming more like 1-in-50, even 1-in-10.” AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate puts the economic damage of the flooding at between $18 billion and $22 billion.

The Trump administration did make deep staffing cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration earlier this year, but it’s too early to tell why some people didn’t get warnings in time. The National Weather Service did indeed provide multiple flood warnings, and some people are reporting they got alerts on their cell phones, prompting them to escape. Still, with so many people dead or missing, they either didn’t get the alerts or didn’t adequately understand the danger they were in. Officials in Kerr County previously considered a more robust warning system for Guadalupe River floods, but rejected it as too expensive.

For the girls and staff at the summer camp, the deluge arrived at the worst possible time, in the early hours of the morning while they slept. “In my view — and this seems to be the consensus view of meteorologists — this is not really a failure of meteorology here,” Swain said. “To my eye, the Weather Service predictions, they certainly weren’t perfect, but they were as good as could have been expected given the state of the science.”

Swain warns that if the administration follows through on its promises of further more cuts to NOAA, forecasts of flooding could well suffer. “That really could be catastrophic,” he said. “That will 100 percent be responsible for costing lives.” 

Grist has a comprehensive guide to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after a disaster.

• Are you affected by the flooding in Texas and North Carolina? Learn how to navigate disaster relief and response.
• Get prepared. Learn how to be ready for a disaster before you’re affected.
• Explore the full Disaster 101 resource guide for more on your rights and options when disaster hits.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The science behind Texas’ catastrophic floods on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 05, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

As catastrophic flooding left scores of people dead and missing in Texas Hill Country and President Donald Trump celebrated signing legislation that will eviscerate every aspect of federal efforts to address the climate emergency, officials in the Lone Star State blasted the National Weather Service—one of many agencies gutted by the Department of Government Efficiency—for issuing what they said were faulty forecasts that some observers blamed for the flood’s high death toll.

The Associated Press reported Saturday that flooding caused by a powerful storm killed at least 27 people, with dozens more—including as many as 25 girls from a summer camp along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County—missing after fast-moving floodwaters rose 26 feet (8 meters) in less than an hour before dawn on Friday, sweeping away people and pets along with homes, vehicles, farm and wild animals, and property.

“The camp was completely destroyed,” Elinor Lester, 13, one of hundreds of campers at Camp Mystic, told the AP. “A helicopter landed and started taking people away. It was really scary.”

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said during a press conference in Kerrville late Friday that 24 people were confirmed dead, including children. Other officials said that 240 people had been rescued.

Although the National Weather Service on Thursday issued a broad flood watch for the area, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd—noting that the NWS predicted 3-6 inches of rain for the Concho Valley and 4-8 inches for the Hill Country—told reporters during a press conference earlier Friday that “the amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.”

“Listen, everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service,” Kidd reiterated. “You all got it; you’re all in media. You got that forecast. It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”

Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice also said during the press conference that the storm “dumped more rain than what was forecasted” into two forks of the Guadalupe River.

Kerr County judge Rob Kelly told CBS News: “We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.”

Since January, the NWS—a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—has reduced its workforce by nearly 600 people as a direct result of staffing cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as part of Trump’s mission to eviscerate numerous federal agencies.

This policy is in line with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government that calls for “dismantling” NOAA. Trump has also called for the elimination of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, arguing that states should shoulder most of the burden of extreme weather preparation and response. Shutting down FEMA would require an act of Congress.

Many of the fired NWS staffers were specialized climate scientists and weather forecasters. At the time of the firings, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, was among those who warned of the cuts’ deadly consequences.

“People nationwide depend on NOAA for free, accurate forecasts, severe weather alerts, and emergency information,” Huffman said. “Purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives.”

Writing for the Texas Observer, Henry D. Jacoby—co-director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change—warned that “crucial data gathering systems are at risk.”

“Federal ability to warn the public is being degraded,” he added, “and it is a public service no state can replace.”

On Friday, Trump put presidential pen to congressional Republicans’ so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a $4 trillion tax and spending package that effectively erases the landmark climate and clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act signed by then-President Joe Biden in 2022.

As Inside Climate News noted of the new law:

It stomps out incentives for purchasing electric vehicles and efficient appliances. It phases out tax credits for wind and solar energy. It opens up federal land and water for oil and gas drilling and increases its profitability, while creating new federal support for coal. It ends the historic investment in poor and minority communities that bear a disproportionate pollution burden—money that the Trump administration was already refusing to spend. It wipes out any spending on greening the federal government.

Furthermore, as MeidasNews editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski noted Saturday, “rural areas hit hardest by catastrophic storms are the same areas now in danger of losing their hospitals after Trump’s Medicaid cuts just passed” as part of the budget reconciliation package.

At least one congressional Republican is ready to take action in the face of increasing extreme weather events. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—who once attributed California wildfires to Jewish-controlled space lasers—announced Saturday that she is “introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity.”

“It will be a felony offense,” she explained. “We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering.”

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

At least 82 people have died and dozens are still unaccounted for after flash flooding in central Texas over the weekend, when the Guadalupe River rose about 26 feet in less than an hour on Friday amid torrential downpours. At least 10 girls who attended Camp Mystic, a girls’ summer camp located on the banks of the river, are among the missing. In Kerr County, the most devastated area, at least 40 adults and 28 children have died. The speed and scale of the natural disaster has raised questions about why officials weren’t better prepared, and whether the Trump administration’s cuts to scientific positions exacerbated the situation.

“The National Weather Service, like a lot of federal agencies, went through significant loss of staff back in the spring,” says retired NOAA meteorologist Alan Gerard, now the CEO of Balanced Weather, which provides critical weather and climate alerts. Gerard says that while it appears there was appropriate staffing ahead of the Texas flood, the impact of current budget cuts and even deeper reductions being considered by the administration are a cause for concern. “We still have all of hurricane season to deal with,” he says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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This article is co-published with The Texas Newsroom and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas.

Elon Musk’s team of Texas lobbyists during the 2025 legislative session did not rival those of huge energy and telecommunications companies, which typically employ dozens of people to represent them. But Musk and his companies still hired more lobbyists this year than any other since 2021, according to data from the Texas Ethics Commission.

Musk, the billionaire businessman behind carmaker Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, influenced several new Texas laws this year. How his lobbyists came about these wins, however, is more of a mystery.

His lobbyists, who represented Tesla, SpaceX and the social media giant X Corp., spent tens of thousands of dollars on things like gifts and meals for Texas elected officials and others during the session, according to an analysis of state ethics data. In most cases, Texas transparency laws do not require lobbyists to disclose which politicians they wined and dined or on behalf of which clients.

The Texas Newsroom reached out to all 12 of Musk’s lobbyists registered with the state this session. Only one, Carrie Simmons, a lobbyist who counts Tesla among her clients, responded, but she declined to be interviewed. She said only Musk’s companies could comment on their work this session.

Emails sent to Musk’s companies and to Musk himself were not returned.

The Texas Newsroom was able to find hints of some of their actions in records obtained from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Sen. Adam Hinojosa. Other documents detailing their deeper connections are hidden from disclosure by state laws.

Ethics experts said the responsibility to improve transparency lies with Texas lawmakers. State law provides a “base level of transparency” for the public on who lobbyists are and who they represent, said Andrew Cates, a former lobbyist who wrote a guide on state ethics rules.

“Beyond that, the Legislature simply has not prioritized enough transparency in how the dollars are actually being spent on legislators on a regular basis. But that’s not the lobby’s fault, it’s the Legislature’s,” Cates said.

Tom Forbes, president of the Professional Advocacy Association of Texas, a statewide lobbyist organization, said while lobbyists sometimes get a bad rap, they play a critical role for lawmakers trying to make decisions on complex policies. He told The Texas Newsroom that his group is “agnostic” about making reporting requirements more stringent but will follow any changes the state implements.

“Our association is going to comply with whatever law the Legislature passes,” Forbes said.

Eight of Musk’s lobbyists worked for SpaceX, according to filings with the Ethics Commission. Tesla had four, one of whom also worked for X.

Musk’s lobbyists include former advisers and staffers for Gov. Greg Abbott, among them Mike Toomey and Reed Clay. Another lobbyist, Will McAdams, once sat on the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates the state’s electric, telecommunications, and water and sewer utilities.

All but one lobbyist had other clients for whom they were also working, making it more difficult to track exactly how much spending went to further Musk’s agenda. Benjamin Lancaster, a former legislative staffer, was only on SpaceX’s payroll.

Lobbyists are not required to report their exact salaries, only a pay range. According to Ethics Commission data, Musk pledged to pay somewhere between about $400,000 to nearly $1 million in total to his lobbyists for their work this year. Half of them could rake in more than $110,000 each working for Musk’s companies.

Each month, lobbyists report their total spending. But state rules don’t require them to disclose who was on the receiving end unless the lobbyist shelled out more than $132.60 on one person in a single day. This includes food and beverages, transportation, lodging or entertainment. Taxes and tips are not counted. The disclosure threshold for gifts is $110.

Lobbyists also don’t need to disclose exactly who attended events to which all legislators were invited, like catered lunches for the entire Texas House of Representatives or happy hours hosted off-site.

In practice, these rules mean a lobbyist could buy the same elected official a steak dinner every night. As long as the daily cost stays under that amount, they don’t need to say who got the free meal.

Musk’s lobbyists spent more than $46,000 on food and drink alone for elected officials and their staff, family and guests this year, according to state ethics records. None of them detailed which elected officials may have been on the receiving end, implying all of their spending remained beneath the daily threshold.

Jim Clancy, the former chair of the Ethics Commission, said it’s common for multiple lobbyists to divide a single bill in order to stay below the reporting threshold.

“They have 15 different credit cards in the deal to make sure that it’s all below the limit,” Clancy told The Texas Newsroom. “The Legislature has to change it. And if they did, they wouldn’t get to eat for free.”

A slate of ethics bills, including several to require transparency into who funds mass text messages for political campaigns, failed to become law this year, according to The Texas Tribune. Meanwhile, legislators approved a new law that will reduce the fine for former lawmakers who engage in illegal lobbying activity.

While lobbyists are not required to disclose which bills they discuss in private meetings with officials and their staff, they must note their position if they choose to testify on a piece of legislation. This is how The Texas Newsroom identified the 13 bills on which Musk’s lobbyists took a public stance.

The Texas Newsroom was able to glean some additional insight on lobbyist influence from records received through public information requests.

Calendars for Hinojosa, a newly elected South Texas Republican who authored multiple bills that would benefit SpaceX and other aerospace companies, showed he or his staff had meetings scheduled with lobbyists or representatives from Musk’s rocket company at least three times in two months. Emails showed Patrick penned a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration supporting SpaceX’s ability to increase the number of launches at its South Texas rocket site.

Patrick was also invited to take a tour of the Tesla Gigafactory outside Austin, these records showed, but it’s unclear if he went.

Neither Hinojosa nor Patrick responded to requests for an interview.

The Texas Senate declined to release other documents that could have shed light on how Musk’s companies interacted with elected officials. In denying their release, Senate Secretary Patsy Spaw said communications between state lawmakers and Texas residents are “confidential by law.”

The reason, she said, is “to ensure the right of citizens of the state to petition their state government without fear of harassment, retaliation or public ridicule.”

This could include emails with lobbyists.

Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org. Sign up for KUT newsletters.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lauren McGaughy, The Texas Newsroom.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Newsroom and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas.

Elon Musk’s team of Texas lobbyists during the 2025 legislative session did not rival those of huge energy and telecommunications companies, which typically employ dozens of people to represent them. But Musk and his companies still hired more lobbyists this year than any other since 2021, according to data from the Texas Ethics Commission.

Musk, the billionaire businessman behind carmaker Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, influenced several new Texas laws this year. How his lobbyists came about these wins, however, is more of a mystery.

His lobbyists, who represented Tesla, SpaceX and the social media giant X Corp., spent tens of thousands of dollars on things like gifts and meals for Texas elected officials and others during the session, according to an analysis of state ethics data. In most cases, Texas transparency laws do not require lobbyists to disclose which politicians they wined and dined or on behalf of which clients.

The Texas Newsroom reached out to all 12 of Musk’s lobbyists registered with the state this session. Only one, Carrie Simmons, a lobbyist who counts Tesla among her clients, responded, but she declined to be interviewed. She said only Musk’s companies could comment on their work this session.

Emails sent to Musk’s companies and to Musk himself were not returned.

The Texas Newsroom was able to find hints of some of their actions in records obtained from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Sen. Adam Hinojosa. Other documents detailing their deeper connections are hidden from disclosure by state laws.

Ethics experts said the responsibility to improve transparency lies with Texas lawmakers. State law provides a “base level of transparency” for the public on who lobbyists are and who they represent, said Andrew Cates, a former lobbyist who wrote a guide on state ethics rules.

“Beyond that, the Legislature simply has not prioritized enough transparency in how the dollars are actually being spent on legislators on a regular basis. But that’s not the lobby’s fault, it’s the Legislature’s,” Cates said.

Tom Forbes, president of the Professional Advocacy Association of Texas, a statewide lobbyist organization, said while lobbyists sometimes get a bad rap, they play a critical role for lawmakers trying to make decisions on complex policies. He told The Texas Newsroom that his group is “agnostic” about making reporting requirements more stringent but will follow any changes the state implements.

“Our association is going to comply with whatever law the Legislature passes,” Forbes said.

Eight of Musk’s lobbyists worked for SpaceX, according to filings with the Ethics Commission. Tesla had four, one of whom also worked for X.

Musk’s lobbyists include former advisers and staffers for Gov. Greg Abbott, among them Mike Toomey and Reed Clay. Another lobbyist, Will McAdams, once sat on the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates the state’s electric, telecommunications, and water and sewer utilities.

All but one lobbyist had other clients for whom they were also working, making it more difficult to track exactly how much spending went to further Musk’s agenda. Benjamin Lancaster, a former legislative staffer, was only on SpaceX’s payroll.

Lobbyists are not required to report their exact salaries, only a pay range. According to Ethics Commission data, Musk pledged to pay somewhere between about $400,000 to nearly $1 million in total to his lobbyists for their work this year. Half of them could rake in more than $110,000 each working for Musk’s companies.

Each month, lobbyists report their total spending. But state rules don’t require them to disclose who was on the receiving end unless the lobbyist shelled out more than $132.60 on one person in a single day. This includes food and beverages, transportation, lodging or entertainment. Taxes and tips are not counted. The disclosure threshold for gifts is $110.

Lobbyists also don’t need to disclose exactly who attended events to which all legislators were invited, like catered lunches for the entire Texas House of Representatives or happy hours hosted off-site.

In practice, these rules mean a lobbyist could buy the same elected official a steak dinner every night. As long as the daily cost stays under that amount, they don’t need to say who got the free meal.

Musk’s lobbyists spent more than $46,000 on food and drink alone for elected officials and their staff, family and guests this year, according to state ethics records. None of them detailed which elected officials may have been on the receiving end, implying all of their spending remained beneath the daily threshold.

Jim Clancy, the former chair of the Ethics Commission, said it’s common for multiple lobbyists to divide a single bill in order to stay below the reporting threshold.

“They have 15 different credit cards in the deal to make sure that it’s all below the limit,” Clancy told The Texas Newsroom. “The Legislature has to change it. And if they did, they wouldn’t get to eat for free.”

A slate of ethics bills, including several to require transparency into who funds mass text messages for political campaigns, failed to become law this year, according to The Texas Tribune. Meanwhile, legislators approved a new law that will reduce the fine for former lawmakers who engage in illegal lobbying activity.

While lobbyists are not required to disclose which bills they discuss in private meetings with officials and their staff, they must note their position if they choose to testify on a piece of legislation. This is how The Texas Newsroom identified the 13 bills on which Musk’s lobbyists took a public stance.

The Texas Newsroom was able to glean some additional insight on lobbyist influence from records received through public information requests.

Calendars for Hinojosa, a newly elected South Texas Republican who authored multiple bills that would benefit SpaceX and other aerospace companies, showed he or his staff had meetings scheduled with lobbyists or representatives from Musk’s rocket company at least three times in two months. Emails showed Patrick penned a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration supporting SpaceX’s ability to increase the number of launches at its South Texas rocket site.

Patrick was also invited to take a tour of the Tesla Gigafactory outside Austin, these records showed, but it’s unclear if he went.

Neither Hinojosa nor Patrick responded to requests for an interview.

The Texas Senate declined to release other documents that could have shed light on how Musk’s companies interacted with elected officials. In denying their release, Senate Secretary Patsy Spaw said communications between state lawmakers and Texas residents are “confidential by law.”

The reason, she said, is “to ensure the right of citizens of the state to petition their state government without fear of harassment, retaliation or public ridicule.”

This could include emails with lobbyists.

Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org. Sign up for KUT newsletters.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lauren McGaughy, The Texas Newsroom.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Newsroom and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas.

Elon Musk was pleading.

It was April 2013, and Musk stood at a podium in a small committee room in the basement of the Texas Capitol. The Tesla CEO asked the legislators gathered before him to change state law, allowing him to bypass the state’s powerful car dealership lobby and sell his electric vehicles directly to the public.

He painted a bleak picture of what could happen if they didn’t give him his way.

“We would, I’m afraid, we would fail,” Musk told the assembled representatives. “So for us, it’s a matter of life or death.”

Clad in a dark suit instead of his now ubiquitous black T-shirt and baseball hat, the younger Musk was unable to persuade lawmakers in Austin. That year, the bill he wanted to pass died.

More than a decade later, however, Musk’s fortunes inside the Texas Capitol have changed — dramatically.

Musk is now not only one of the richest people in the world, who, until recently, was a key member of President Donald Trump’s second administration, but he’s also become one of the most powerful business and political figures in the state.

During this year’s legislative session, Musk’s lobbyists and representatives publicly advocated for almost a dozen bills that would benefit his companies. The Texas Newsroom identified these priorities by searching legislative records for committee testimony and other evidence of his public stances.

Musk wanted legislators to pass new laws that would make it faster and easier for homeowners to install backup power generators, like the kind Tesla makes, on their properties. He wanted them to create new crimes so people who fly drones or interfere with operations at his rocket company SpaceX can be arrested. And he wanted to change who controlled the highway and public beach near SpaceX’s South Texas site so he can launch his rockets according to his timeline.

Musk got them all.

In a Capitol where the vast majority of bills fail to pass, all but three of Musk’s public priorities will become law. The two bills his lobbyists openly opposed are dead, including a measure that would have regulated autonomous vehicles.

Musk made gains even on bills he didn’t publicly endorse. Texas lawmakers followed the tech giant’s lead by rewriting the state’s corporate laws and creating a new office modeled after the Department of Government Efficiency, the controversial effort he led in the Trump administration to cut federal spending.

By all accounts, Musk’s influence was great enough that he did not have to formally address lawmakers in person this session to make the case for any of his priorities.

Critics said these new laws will hand Musk’s companies more cash, more power and more protection from scrutiny as his business footprint continues to expand across Texas.

“The real harm is the influence of a private company on the decisions made by government,” Cyrus Reed, the conservation director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, told The Texas Newsroom. The Sierra Club is part of a group suing the state over SpaceX’s activities in South Texas.

Musk and his representatives did not respond to requests for an interview. He recently ended his run with DOGE, and his relationship with Trump has increasingly frayed.

Contrary to his slash-and-burn tactics in Washington, D.C., where he bulldozed his way onto the scene after Trump’s reelection, Musk has played the long game to amass power in Texas. He still hasn’t succeeded in changing Texas law to allow for Tesla direct sales, but that hasn’t stopped him from steadily investing his personal and professional capital in the state over more than a decade. Most of his businesses, including the tunneling firm The Boring Company, social media giant X and Tesla, are now headquartered here. While it’s still based in California, SpaceX operates production, testing and launch sites across Texas.

Musk has also moved his personal home to the state, reportedly securing properties in the Austin area and South Texas.

In the Texas Capitol, Musk’s power is subtle but undeniable.

Calendars and emails obtained by The Texas Newsroom through public information requests show his company’s representatives met regularly with lawmakers backing his priority bills and invited Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to tour SpaceX. Patrick, who leads the state Senate, also penned a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration supporting the rocket company’s request to increase its launches in South Texas.

Texas politics, with its long history of outsize characters, has never seen the likes of Musk, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.

“Even in the heyday of the [George W.] Bush era, you couldn’t find somebody who had such dramatic wealth as Musk, who also had the same level of access and business interests here in Texas,” Jones told The Texas Newsroom. “Today, Elon Musk is arguably the most powerful and influential private citizen in the country.”

When lawmakers convened their 2025 legislative session in January, one of Musk’s top priorities was quickly clear. He wanted more control over the area around SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas.

Known as Starbase, the massive rocket testing and launch facility has come to dominate the small rural area between Brownsville, on the border, and the Gulf of Mexico. It is the launch site for Starship, the rocket meant to eventually take humans to Mars and the heart of Musk’s mission to make humans a multiplanetary species. The FAA recently gave SpaceX permission to increase Starship launches fivefold.

Although SpaceX owns most of the land around Starbase, county officials retained the authority over access to the adjacent public beach, called Boca Chica. The county worked closely with SpaceX to ensure the area was cleared ahead of launches, but the company’s leaders did not have ultimate control over the process.

That changed this year. First, Musk decided to incorporate the launch site as its own city. That happened on May 3, when the few residents who live in the area — most of whom The Texas Newsroom determined work for SpaceX — voted to create the new city of Starbase.

Musk then wanted state lawmakers to hand the new city the power to close Boca Chica Beach and the adjoining public highway during the week, a change the county officials opposed.

State Sen. Adam Hinojosa, a newly elected Republican who represents the area, authored the legislation to shift control to Starbase. Dozens of SpaceX employees got involved in the effort, submitting pages of identical comments to lawmakers in support.

Democrats succeeded in killing Hinojosa’s bill, prompting local activists to celebrate. Their victory was short-lived. Late in the session, lawmakers decided instead to shift some of this power to the Texas Space Commission, which facilitates the state’s space exploration agenda.

The new law states that the commission’s board can close highways and gulf beaches with the approval of a local municipality, which, in this case, is Starbase. SpaceX retains a connection to the commission itself: Kathy Lueders, who confirmed that she left her job as Starbase general manager last month, still sits on the Space Commission board. She directed additional questions to the commission.

The Space Commission declined to answer questions on SpaceX’s potential future involvement with these discussions.

“The way I view it is SpaceX wanted a certain amount of power,” said Reed, with the Sierra Club. “And at the end of the day, they didn’t quite get it, but they got something pretty close.”

The bill passed along largely partisan lines. Republican state Rep. Greg Bonnen, who authored the bill, did not respond to a request for comment about the role Starbase may play now that it will become law.

Lawmakers passed several more bills to benefit spaceports, the sites where spacecraft launch, like SpaceX.

While Texas is home to multiple spaceports, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, SpaceX dwarfs the rest in size and scope of influence across the state and country, boasting large federal government contracts and a growing satellite industry.

Hinojosa was an author or sponsor on most of these bills; he did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment for this story.

Other than the beach closure legislation, many passed with the support of Democrats.

At SpaceX’s urging, Texas lawmakers passed a measure to ban drones over spaceports. They also added spaceports to the state’s “critical infrastructure” facilities, which already include airports and military bases. The law will make it a felony to intentionally damage or interrupt the operation of any site where a spacecraft is tested or launched. Similar critical infrastructure laws have been used in other states to arrest people protesting oil and gas pipeline projects.

Bekah Hinojosa with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, a local activist group, told The Texas Newsroom the new critical infrastructure law will let Musk “militarize our Boca Chica Beach for his dangerous rocket testing endeavors."

The Sierra Club and other groups from South Texas, including a local Indigenous tribe, are suing the state, arguing that closing Boca Chica violates an amendment to the Texas Constitution that protects access to public beaches.

The General Land Office, the main defendant in that suit, declined to comment. In court filings, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argues the state can still regulate beach access for public safety reasons and that it cannot be sued in this case because it has immunity. The case is pending at the Texas Supreme Court.

Legislators also passed two more new laws that will shield companies like SpaceX from public scrutiny and legal challenges.

One will exempt certain military and aerospace issues from public meetings laws, allowing elected officials in some cases to discuss these topics behind closed doors. The proposal was so concerning to residents who live close to SpaceX’s facility near Waco, where locals say the company’s rocket testing has spooked livestock and damaged homes, that they submitted a dozen comments against it.

This law went into effect on May 15.

Another new law will make it harder for crew members and certain other employees to sue space flight companies. This, like most new legislation approved this session, will become law on Sept. 1.

SpaceX’s only significant public defeat during this year’s legislative session was the failure of a bill it supported to give spaceports a tax cut. The measure would have cost nearly $14.5 million over five years, according to an official estimate from the Legislative Budget Board.

Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, believes Texas is pandering to Musk.

“It’s all to help Elon,” said Jah, who added that his viewpoint is rooted in resisting policies that enable what he called “environmental plunder masked as ‘innovation.’” He has concerns that the state is investing in spaceports, most notably Musk’s, while carving out exceptions that prohibit public insight and input into what’s happening at those facilities.

“There’s this whole cloak of secrecy with whatever Elon is doing,” Jah said. “We will not and should not cease to launch satellites or explore space. But the way in which we do it matters a lot.”

This year, Tesla’s lobbyists publicly advocated against only two bills. Both died.

One was a GOP-authored proposal intended to create a buffer zone between homes and large-scale energy storage facilities like the kind Tesla sells.

The other bill would have imposed more regulations on the type of cars that Musk is rolling out as robotaxis in Texas, and would have required a public hearing if a collision involving an autonomous vehicle resulted in a fatality.

Bill author Rep. Terry Canales, an Edinburg Democrat, believes his legislation failed because it was not pro-industry enough.

“Tesla is the worst actor that I’ve ever dealt with in the Capitol. They’re subversive. They never come out of the shadows,” Canales told The Texas Newsroom. “Not only did I not hear from them, I didn’t expect to hear from them because that’s the way they operate.”

Lawmakers instead advanced a different bill, one with a lighter regulatory touch that was crafted with input from the autonomous vehicle industry.

It will require commercial operators, such as robotaxi and driverless big rig companies, to obtain authorization from the state. This approval can be revoked if the company’s vehicles endanger the public, including causing “serious bodily injury,” though it requires no public hearings in the case of a fatality, as Canales’ bill would have done. Autonomous vehicle companies will also have to develop plans for interacting with emergency responders.

Tesla took a neutral stance on the legislation. But the bill’s author, state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, told The Texas Newsroom that Tesla’s team participated in work groups and stakeholder conversations with industry groups, trial lawyers and others.

Texas has been at the forefront of testing this technology for years, rolling out its first regulations in 2017. But with more autonomous vehicles hitting the streets, Nichols said it was time to clarify the rules and called his bill “a real opportunity here to actually improve safety.”

Nichols’ legislation initially died in the Texas House. But with less than a week before lawmakers packed up to go home, a House member added the entirety of Nichols’ bill as an amendment to another transportation bill, which will become law Sept. 1.

Tray Gober, a personal injury lawyer who handles vehicle crash cases in Austin, said it’s smart to get new regulations for autonomous vehicles on the books. But he worries that Texas is rushing to give its blessing to a technology that has not been fully tested.

“We’re not talking about rockets crashing into the ocean. We’re talking about cars crashing into other people,” he said, comparing Tesla to SpaceX. “There’s going to be people that are hurt during this process of improving these systems, and that’s unfortunate. I think it’s viewed as collateral damage by these companies.”

When asked about concerns that there could be fatalities as the number of driverless cars grows in Texas, Nichols said, “There probably will be. Eventually there will be. I would not doubt that.” But he pointed to studies showing autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers.

“If you start looking at the breakdown of the fatalities on the roads and the crashes and the wrecks, what causes them? It’s not equipment failure. It’s driver distraction,” he told The Texas Newsroom.

Critics of these studies argue their scope is too narrow to make conclusions about the safety of self-driving technology. Citing safety concerns, some local lawmakers asked Tesla’s robotaxi rollout in Austin to be delayed. The company continued with the launch but with human monitors in the passenger seats.

Many Democrats opposed Nichols’ proposal. But at least three other bills affecting Tesla got bipartisan support.

At times, the Sierra Club was fighting against Musk’s SpaceX bills while working with his Tesla lobbyists on clean energy legislation, said Reed, the club’s conservation director. For example, Tesla and the Sierra Club both supported legislation to create new fire standards for battery energy storage facilities and address the environmental and financial challenges associated with decommissioning them.

Tesla also backed a bill that had bipartisan support to make it easier for homeowners to install backup power generators, such as the company’s Powerwall.

Reed said Musk’s shift to the right has created interesting bedfellows, sometimes making it easier for Republicans to back some of the energy policies more traditionally associated with progressives.

He remarked, “It’s an interesting time in our country, right?”

For all the bills Musk pushed to see pass, he also indirectly influenced the creation of new laws on which he did not take a public stance.

Texas lawmakers created the state’s own DOGE office housed under the governor, the name an homage to Musk’s controversial federal cost-slashing effort in Washington, D.C.

Musk himself took no public role in creating the new office. But at a signing ceremony for the bill, Gov. Greg Abbott explained he was the inspiration.

Texas legislators also rewrote the state’s corporate laws after Musk raised concerns about business codes in other states. Authored by Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the rewrite shields business leaders from lawsuits and establishes thresholds for the types of legal challenges shareholders can file.

Musk and his lobbyists never came out in support of the bill, but he has long complained that states needed to shore up protections for CEOs and other business leaders.

Musk began crusading on the issue after his $55 billion compensation package at Tesla was challenged in Delaware’s business courts. Musk moved many of his businesses elsewhere, including Texas, and publicly urged other companies to “get the hell out of Delaware.”

The legislation written in response was dubbed the “DExit” bill.

“Texas is much better than Delaware,” Musk posted on X in early April, just days after the bill passed the state Senate. “If Delaware doesn’t reform, it will lose all its corporate business.”

Last year, a Delaware judge ruled Musk’s pay package violated his fiduciary duties to the company’s stockholders. He won most of it back in a shareholder vote, but the judge again rejected his pay package in December.

In an interview, Hughes told The Texas Newsroom he heard input from different groups in crafting the Texas legislation and could not remember whether Musk’s companies were involved.

Abbott signed the DExit bill and a handful of other business bills into law on May 14. Standing behind him at a public ceremony marking the occasion were Hughes and a large group of business representatives.

Standing behind Hughes was a representative from Tesla.

Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT News in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org. Sign up for KUT newsletters.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lauren McGaughy, The Texas Newsroom.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Before states banned abortion, one of the gravest outcomes of early miscarriage could easily be avoided: Doctors could offer a dilation and curettage procedure, which quickly empties the uterus and allows it to close, protecting against a life-threatening hemorrhage.

But because the procedures, known as D&Cs, are also used to end pregnancies, they have gotten tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortion. Reports now abound of doctors hesitating to provide them and women who are bleeding heavily being discharged from emergency rooms without care, only to return in such dire condition that they need blood transfusions to survive. As ProPublica reported last year, one woman died of hemorrhage after 10 hours in a Houston hospital that didn’t perform the procedure.

Now, a new ProPublica data analysis adds empirical weight to the mounting evidence that abortion bans have made the common experience of miscarriage — which occurs in up to 30% of pregnancies — far more dangerous. It is based on hospital discharge data from Texas, the largest state to ban abortion, and captures emergency department visits from 2017 to 2023, the most recent year available.

After Texas made performing abortions a felony in August 2022, ProPublica found, the number of blood transfusions during emergency room visits for first-trimester miscarriage shot up by 54%.

The number of emergency room visits for early miscarriage also rose, by 25%, compared with the three years before the COVID-19 pandemic — a sign that women who didn’t receive D&Cs initially may be returning to hospitals in worse condition, more than a dozen experts told ProPublica.

While that phenomenon can’t be confirmed by the discharge data, which tracks visits rather than individuals, doctors and researchers who reviewed ProPublica’s findings say these spikes, along with the stories patients have shared, paint a troubling picture of the harm that results from unnecessary delays in care.

“This is striking,” said Dr. Elliott Main, a hemorrhage expert and former medical director for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative. “The trend is very clear.”

After the state’s first abortion ban went into effect in September 2021, blood transfusions increased. After abortion became a felony in August 2022, they increased more.

The data mirrors a sharp rise in cases of sepsis — a life-threatening reaction to infection — ProPublica previously identified during second-trimester miscarriage in Texas.

Blood loss is expected during early miscarriage, which usually ends without complication. Some cases, however, can turn deadly very quickly. Main said ProPublica’s analysis suggested to him that “physicians are sitting on nonviable pregnancies longer and longer before they’re doing a D&C — until patients are really bleeding.”

That’s what happened to Sarah De Pablos Velez in Austin last summer. As she was miscarrying and bleeding profusely, she said physicians didn’t explain that she had options for care. Sent home from the emergency room without a D&C two times, she ultimately needed blood transfusions so that she wouldn’t die, according to medical records. “What happened to me was just so wrong,” she told ProPublica. "Doctors need to be providing care to pregnant women — that needs to be a baseline.”

After ProPublica exposed preventable deaths following delays in care, the Texas Legislature passed a bill this year to clarify that doctors can provide abortions when a patient is facing a life-threatening emergency, even if it is not imminent.

But many Texas doctors say the reform does not address the difficulty of treating women experiencing early miscarriages, which almost always involve blood loss; they say it’s hard to know when the expected bleeding might evolve into a life-threatening emergency — one that could have been prevented with a D&C. Women can bleed and remain stable for a long time, until they crash.

Texas forbids abortion at all stages of pregnancy — even before there is cardiac activity or a visible embryo. And while the law allows doctors to “remove a dead, unborn child,” it can be difficult to determine what that means during early miscarriage, when an array of factors can signal that a pregnancy is not progressing.

An embryo might fail to develop. Cardiac activity may not emerge when it should. Hormone levels might dip or bleeding might increase. Even if a doctor strongly suspects a miscarriage is underway, it can take weeks to conclusively document that a pregnancy has ended, and all the while, a patient might be losing blood.

Some OB-GYNs and emergency room physicians have long been advising patients to complete their miscarriage at home, especially at Catholic hospitals, even if that is not the standard of care. But now, physicians across the state are faced with a law that threatens up to 99 years in prison, and more are making a new calculus around whether to intervene or even tell patients they are likely miscarrying, said Dr. Anitra Beasley, an OB-GYN in Houston. “What ends up happening is patients have to present multiple times before a diagnosis can be made,” she added, and some of those patients wind up needing blood transfusions.

While they can be lifesaving, transfusions do not stop the bleeding, experts told ProPublica, and they can introduce complications, such as severe allergic reactions, autoimmune disorders or, in rare events, blood cancer. The dangers of hemorrhage are far greater, from organ failure to kidney damage to loss of sensation in the fingers and toes. “There’s a finite amount of blood,” said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington. “And when it all comes out, you’re dead.”

ProPublica’s findings about the rise in blood transfusions make clear that women who experience early miscarriages in abortion ban states are living in a more dangerous medical climate than many believe, said Amanda Nagle, a doctoral student investigating the same blood transfusion data for a forthcoming paper in the American Journal of Public Health.

“If people are seeking care at an emergency department,” Nagle said, “there are serious health risks to delaying that care.”

In some clinics and hospitals across Texas, the pressure to definitively diagnose a miscarriage has led to delays in offering D&Cs.

Considering the chance of criminal prosecution, some doctors now default to what many pregnancy loss experts view as an overly cautious method for diagnosing miscarriage: ultrasound images alone, using criteria from the Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound. Relying only on images to diagnose — and discounting other factors, like lab results or clinical symptoms — can take days or even weeks.

Dr. Gabrielle Taper was a resident at a Catholic hospital in Austin when the ban was enacted, and a culture of fear took hold among her colleagues, she told ProPublica. “We started asking, ‘Are we certain that we can document that we’ve met the radiology guidelines?’ as opposed to just treating the patient in front of us,” she said.

If they couldn’t show that the likely miscarriage met the criteria, they often felt they had to discharge patients without offering a D&C. “People are already in distress, and you are giving them confusion, a false sense of hope,” she told ProPublica. “Having to send a patient home knowing they may bleed so much they would need a blood transfusion — when I know there are procedures I could do or medicine I could offer — is just excruciating.”

The hospital where she worked did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists does not recommend this approach, advising doctors instead to review the ultrasound as one piece of information among many and counsel patients on all their options.

The Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound said that the guidelines “are not meant to apply in the setting of a life-threatening situation, such as heavy bleeding,” but did not respond to a question about whether it agreed with ACOG that doctors should use a combination of ultrasound images and clinical judgment to assess a pregnancy loss.

Dr. Courtney A. Schreiber, an obstetrics and gynecology professor and expert in early pregnancy care, said that even if a patient wants to let a likely miscarriage complete at home, the medical team should still explain different management options, including medication to speed up the process or a D&C, should symptoms like bleeding get worse.

“It’s our obligation to share information, help manage expectations and keep women safe,” she said.

What happened to Porsha Ngumezi shows how dangerous it can be to delay care, according to more than a dozen doctors who previously reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica.

When the mother of two showed up bleeding at Houston Methodist Sugar Land in June 2023, at 11 weeks pregnant, her sonogram suggested an “ongoing miscarriage” was “likely,” her doctor noted. She had no previous ultrasounds to compare it with, and the radiologist did not locate an embryo or fetus — which Ngumezi said she thought she had passed in a toilet; her doctors did not make a definitive diagnosis, calling it a pregnancy of “unknown location.” After hours bleeding, passing “clots the size of grapefruit,” according to a nurse’s notes, she received two blood transfusions — a short-term remedy. But she did not get a procedure to empty her uterus, which medical experts agree is the most effective way to stop the bleeding. Hours later, she died of hemorrhage, leaving behind her husband and young sons.

Doctors and nurses involved in Ngumezi’s care did not respond to multiple requests for comment for ProPublica’s story last fall, and the hospital did not answer questions about her care when asked about it again for this story. A spokesperson from Methodist Hospital said its OB-GYNs follow ACOG’s miscarriage diagnosis guidelines, which recommend considering clinical factors in addition to ultrasounds.

Even in circumstances in which the abortion ban allows a doctor to intervene — to treat a life-threatening emergency, for example, or to “remove a dead, unborn baby” — there’s plenty of evidence, detailed in lawsuits and federal investigations, that doctors in Texas still aren’t offering procedures.

As soon as Sarah De Pablos Velez, a 30-year-old media director, learned she was pregnant last summer, she began attending regular checkups at St. David’s Women’s Care, in Austin. During her third appointment at about nine weeks, a resident, Dr. Carla Vilardo, and her supervisor, Dr. Cynthia Mingea, reviewed the ultrasound, according to medical records, which indicated her pregnancy wasn’t viable. Instead of being offered treatment for a miscarriage, De Pablos Velez says she was advised to hold out hope and come back for the next checkup.

Five maternal health experts and practicing OB-GYNs who reviewed the records for ProPublica said by that ultrasound visit, doctors would have had enough information to determine that the pregnancy wasn’t viable, even under the most conservative guidelines. If they wanted to be extra sure, they could have done blood work or one more ultrasound during that visit.

Instead, De Pablos Velez was told to come back in two weeks, according to medical records. During a visit when she should have been nearly 11 weeks pregnant, Mingea wrote in her chart she was “not optimistic” about the pregnancy's viability. Still, De Pablos Velez was advised to return in another week to be sure.

Within a few days, when the cramping got so bad she could barely walk, De Pablos Velez went to the emergency room at St. David’s Medical Center, unaware that a D&C could stop the pain and the bleeding. “I’ve never researched what it looks like for women who have a miscarriage,” she told ProPublica. “I always thought you go to the bathroom and have a little bit of blood.”

Over two visits to the emergency room, doctors told her that she could complete the miscarriage at home, even as she reported filling up three toilet bowls with blood and a nurse remarked that they needed a janitor to clean the floor, De Pablos Velez and her husband recalled. No obstetrician ever came to assess her condition, according to medical records, and while her hospital chart says “all management options have been discussed with the patient and her husband,” De Pablos Velez and her husband both told ProPublica no one offered her a D&C.

She was told to follow up with her OB at her next appointment in three days. Six hours after discharge, though, she was trying to ride out the pain at home when her husband heard her muttering “lightheaded” in the bathroom and ran to her in time to catch her as she collapsed. “She was pale as a ghost, sweating, convulsing,” said her husband, Sergio De Pablos Velez. “There was blood on the toilet, the trash can — like a scene out of a horror movie.”

An ambulance rushed her to the hospital, where doctors realized she no longer had enough blood flowing to her organs. She received two blood transfusions. Without them, several doctors who reviewed her records told ProPublica, she would have soon lost her life.

Vilardo and the doctors who saw De Pablos Velez in the emergency room did not respond to requests to speak with ProPublica or declined to be interviewed. St. David’s Medical Center, which is owned by HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain in America, said it could not discuss her case unless she signed privacy waivers. The hospital did not respond to ProPublica’s questions even after she submitted them. The De Pablos Velezes say that a hospital patient liaison told them after the ordeal that the hospital would conduct an internal investigation, educate the emergency department on best practices and share the results. It never shared anything. When ProPublica asked about the status of the investigation, neither the liaison nor the hospital responded.

Mingea, who supervised Vilardo’s care during checkups, reviewed the clinic’s records with ProPublica and agreed that De Pablos Velez should have been counseled about miscarriage management options at the clinic, weeks before she ended up in the ER. She said she did not know why she wasn’t but pointed ProPublica to the Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound criteria, which is hanging on the clinic’s wall and is used to teach residents.

She was adamant that her clinic, which she described as “very pro-choice — about as much as we can be in Texas,” regularly provides D&Cs for miscarrying patients. “I feel badly that Sarah had this experience, I really do,” she said. “Everybody deserves to be counseled about all their options.”

Doctors had five opportunities to counsel De Pablos Velez about her options and offer her a D&C, said Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, who reviewed case records. If they had, the life-or-death risks could have been avoided.

De Pablos Velez “basically received the same care Porsha Ngumezi did, only Porsha died and she survived,” said Abbott. “She was lucky.”

Sophie Chou contributed data reporting, and Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Andrea Suozzo.

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Even though about a million women a year experience a miscarriage, there is little research on complications related to pregnancy loss in the first trimester, when most miscarriages happen. The need to explore this phase is urgent, experts told ProPublica, given the way state abortion bans have disrupted maternal health care.

Although most early miscarriages resolve without complications, patients with heavy bleeding can hemorrhage if they don’t get appropriate treatment — which includes a procedure called dilation and curettage, or D&C, that is now tangled up in legislation that bans abortion. As women recounted being left to lose dangerous amounts of blood, and ProPublica told the story of a mother who died in a Houston hospital while seeking miscarriage care, reporters searched for a way to gain a broader understanding of what was happening in the state.

We consulted dozens of researchers and clinicians to develop our methodology and understand how to look at early miscarriage outcomes in the emergency department.

Our latest analysis, of hospital discharge data from Texas, found that after the state made performing abortions a felony in August 2022, the number of blood transfusions during emergency room visits for first-trimester miscarriage shot up by 54%.

The number of emergency room visits during first-trimester miscarriage also rose by 25%, a sign that women may be returning to hospitals in worse condition after being sent home, more than a dozen experts told ProPublica.

Experts say the spike is a troubling indicator of delays in care.

The most effective way to prevent severe blood loss during miscarriages, experts said, is a D&C, which uses suction to remove remaining tissue, allowing the uterus to close. The procedure is also used to terminate pregnancies.

Dr. Elliott Main, an expert on maternal hemorrhage and the former medical director for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, said the increase in transfusions suggested to him that doctors working under abortion bans are now delaying those interventions for miscarrying patients for longer — “until they’re really bleeding.”

These findings add to ProPublica’s growing body of reporting revealing that maternal outcomes have gotten worse after the state’s abortion bans. In February, we published an analysis of second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations, which found that the rate of sepsis climbed by more than 50% after the state banned abortion. That study focused only on inpatient stays in Texas hospitals. However, many of the clinicians and researchers we spoke with told us that that focus would limit what we could say about miscarriage care earlier in pregnancy; most people experiencing first-trimester pregnancy complications would likely be seen in a shorter emergency department visit, rather than an inpatient stay.

This methodology lays out the steps we took to examine early miscarriage outcomes in the emergency department, to help experts and interested readers understand our approach and its limitations.

We purchased seven years of discharge records for inpatient and outpatient encounters at hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers from the Texas Department of State Health Services. These records contain deidentified data for visits, with information about the encounter, including diagnoses recorded and procedures performed, as well as some patient demographic information and billing data.

We limited our analysis to visits with a diagnosed pregnancy loss across both the inpatient and outpatient datasets. We followed a methodology that maternal health researchers have used for many years to identify “abortive outcomes” — instances of pregnancy loss at less than 20 weeks, which includes diagnoses like ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage. Researchers have typically identified these cases in order to exclude them from metrics assessing complications in childbirth. In contrast, we focused our analysis only on those encounters with a pregnancy loss diagnosis. Medical experts suggested that it's possible more women are self-managing abortions at home; since a self-managed medication abortion would present like a spontaneous miscarriage, however, we can’t differentiate those patients in our data.

We also limited our analysis to either emergency department visits or inpatient stays that began in the emergency department. The state’s outpatient data also includes encounters for outpatient procedures and data for ambulatory surgery centers, which we excluded to focus on emergent hospital care. Ultimately, our analysis focused on 35,500 first-trimester visits per year that came into hospitals through the emergency department, excluding a small number (about 1,400 per year) of inpatient stays that did not begin in the emergency room.

To limit our analysis to pregnancy loss in the first trimester, we looked for a diagnosis code indicating gestational weeks. In cases where a long hospitalization had multiple gestational week codes recorded over the course of the stay, we took the latest one. We excluded any row that had a gestational week code of 13 weeks or more, which marks the start of the second trimester. The vast majority — 78% — of emergency department visits for pregnancy loss had a code indicating unknown gestational week or no gestational week diagnosis code at all. We included those visits in the first-trimester category. Clinicians told us that a pregnant patient coming to the emergency department in her first trimester is less likely to have had a doctor’s appointment establishing gestational age. Since pregnancy loss in the second or third trimester is more serious, and because it is easier to establish gestational age in a pregnancy that is further along, an emergency department doctor would likely be able to establish a gestational age over the course of treatment in those cases.

We then filtered our list of visits to ones where the patient was female and between the ages of 10 and 54, to exclude rows with potential errors. This removed 2,692 visits, or 1.1% of all visits we’d identified.

The number of emergency department first-trimester hospitalizations were relatively stable prior to COVID-19. In 2022, the first full year after the state passed its six-week abortion ban, the number of encounters jumped by 11%. And in 2023, the year after the state criminalized abortion, they rose again, increasing by 25% from pre-COVID levels.

While we could identify an increase in visits, we could not identify patients across visits, which means we can’t say how many of these visits represent the same person returning to the emergency department multiple times for the same pregnancy loss. Texas has seen an increase in live births since the state banned abortion — about 2.7% in 2022, compared with the pre-COVID average, and declining slightly in 2023. But this increase in births — and, by extension, pregnancies — does not explain the rate of change in emergency visits, which far surpasses it.

Clinicians also told us that the threshold for diagnosing pregnancy loss increased after the state banned abortion. To assess how many relevant visits our analysis might be leaving out, and whether we were missing more visits after hospital policy changes, we looked for visits without a pregnancy loss code but with a diagnosis of “threatened abortion” or “early pregnancy hemorrhage,” indicating uterine cramping or bleeding in early pregnancy. Since clinicians told us that these diagnoses might range from light spotting to significant bleeding, and since bleeding in pregnancy is common and does not always indicate a miscarriage in progress, we did not include these visits in our main analysis. However, we also identified a 23% increase in visits with those codes — from an annual average of 70,936 prior to COVID to 87,431 in 2023.

Next, we identified pregnancy loss visits with a transfusion, which typically indicates that there has been a dangerous loss of blood.

For our inpatient dataset, where procedures performed during a hospitalization were recorded as ICD-10-PCS codes, we identified visits with a blood transfusion using a list of codes defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The outpatient dataset, which uses Current Procedural Terminology codes, has just one code — 36430 — for blood transfusions.

Prior to COVID-19, there were 840 first-trimester pregnancy loss emergency department visits each year, on average, with a blood transfusion. In 2022, the first full year after the state passed its first abortion ban, transfusions climbed to 1,076 — an increase of 28% from pre-COVID years. By 2023, the first full year after abortion was criminalized, that number climbed to 1,290 — an increase of 54% compared to pre-COVID. That’s 450 more visits with a blood transfusion in 2023 than the pre-COVID average.

After the state’s first abortion ban went into effect in September 2021, blood transfusions increased. After abortion became a felony in August 2022, they increased more.

Even as the number of visits to the emergency department increased, the proportion of those visits with a transfusion also went up, from 2.5% in pre-COVID years to 2.8% in 2022 and 3% in 2023 — suggesting that the increase in transfusions may not be explained by an increase in encounters alone.

Experts who reviewed ProPublica’s data wondered if the increase in transfusions might be driven by more women experiencing complications of ectopic or molar pregnancies, rare nonviable pregnancies in which the likelihood of a blood transfusion is much higher than for a spontaneous miscarriage. The data did not bear this out. When we excluded visits with ectopic and molar pregnancy diagnoses, the increase in the number of pregnancy loss transfusions was even higher — it rose by 61% by 2023.

To understand whether there were increases in the numbers of transfusions in other maternal visits over the same time period, we also looked at blood transfusions in delivery events, using the federal methodology to identify birth complications. In hospital births, the number of transfusions increased by 6.7% in 2022 and 9.9% in 2023 compared with the pre-COVID average — an increase, but smaller in magnitude than the increase in first-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations.

Sophie Chou contributed data reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Andrea Suozzo, Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser.

It did pass a law that could strengthen the state’s electricity reliability by encouraging the construction of more microgrids — combinations of small-scale gas-fired power, solar, and batteries that can be built quickly. Last week, Texas lawmakers authorized a long-awaited $1.8 billion fund to support microgrid deployment at hospitals, nursing homes, water treatment plants, police and fire stations, and other critical facilities across the state.

The Texas Backup Power Package Program has awaited funding since 2023, when it was created as part of a broader legislative package. The goal is to help Texans protect themselves against extreme weather-driven grid emergencies like the disastrous blackouts during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, or the widespread power outages after 2024’s Hurricane Beryl.

Lawmakers failed to authorize the $1.8 billion in microgrid funding in 2023, however. Instead, the state pushed ahead with $5 billion for the Texas Energy Fund, which offers low-interest loans to developers of large-scale gas-fired power plants. That program has struggled. One project that applied for funding was found to be fraudulent. Others were denied loans. And many more projects have dropped out of contention, as developers deal with the same gas turbine shortages and rising costs that are dogging gas build-outs across the country.

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This year, lawmakers finally approved the microgrid funding, which is part of the remaining $5 billion in Texas Energy Fund spending officially authorized during the just-concluded session. That’s a big deal, said Doug Lewin, president of Texas-based energy consultancy Stoic Energy and author of The Texas Energy and Power Newsletter.

“Now those funds will presumably begin to flow — and I think that puts us in the upper echelon of states for microgrid policy,” he said.

Among the bills that failed this session in the face of opposition from environmental, business, and consumer groups were two — SB 388 and SB 715 — that would have forced new solar, wind, and battery projects to pay for a massive and equivalent amount of new capacity from fossil-gas power plants.

The problem with such policies is not just the fallacy that building more planet-warming gas power plants guarantees a more reliable grid, industry experts say. It’s also that companies simply can’t build gas power plants fast enough to meet booming energy needs, not just in Texas, but across the country. Because those bills would have required gas to be built alongside renewables — and because gas power plant construction is seriously constrained — the legislation would have amounted to a block on many gigawatts’ worth of new solar, wind, and battery developments in the state.

”I think one of the most important things that happened this session is this really broad-based business coalition communicating to anyone who would listen that these policies trying to restrict development of renewables aren’t helpful,” Lewin said.

Low-cost power from renewables and batteries ​“is a big deal to manufacturers, to industrial customers, and to the oil and gas industry that’s been working off diesel generators for decades and are now connecting to the grid,” he said.

Making microgrids happen

For years now, Lewin has been calling on state leaders to focus on helping customers save energy and keep power flowing during hurricanes, heat waves, and winter storms. He thinks microgrids are a good way to do that.

When the broader grid is functioning well, facilities equipped with microgrids can use their solar, batteries, and generators to reduce their use of grid power. But when the grid goes down or experiences serious stress, those facilities can rely on those resources to continue running.

Microgrids could also help meet ballooning power demand from homes, businesses, factories, and especially data centers chasing the AI boom that make up a massive share of future load growth forecasts, he said. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator for most of the state, forecast in April that peak electricity demand could more than double in the next five years. The number of data centers that end up getting built in Texas will ultimately determine how much new power the state actually needs.

The microgrid program limits individual projects to no larger than 2.5 megawatts, Lewin said. That’s far smaller than the hundreds of megawatts of capacity that can come from a single gas-fired power plant. But what microgrid projects lack in size they make up for in speed of construction, and many smaller-scale backup power projects will do more to meet demand than big power plants that take five or more years to build, he said. That’s especially true if the microgrids are located at data centers themselves.

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To be clear, data centers aren’t the target of the Texas Backup Power Package Program. Instead, the fund is set up to help sites that can’t otherwise afford on-site backup power, explained Joel Yu, senior vice president of policy and external affairs at Enchanted Rock. The Houston-based microgrid operator runs 500 megawatts’ worth of projects at grocery stores, truck stops, and other large power customers in Texas. Enchanted Rock has also deployed gas-fired generators at water utilities and irrigation districts, including Houston’s Northeast Water Purification Plant.

“The $1.8 billion is a huge amount of money, and more ambitious than programs we’ve seen in other jurisdictions,” Yu said. ​“But it’s very much in line with state policy to improve resilience at critical facilities since Winter Storm Uri,” which knocked out power to more than 4.5 million people for up to a week in February 2021, leading to the deaths of an estimated 200 people and more than $100 billion in property damages.

Enchanted Rock’s existing customers tend to be larger entities that can secure financing and clearly quantify the financial value of backup power generation, Yu said. The $1.8 billion microgrid program ​“unlocks opportunities for customers who aren’t as sophisticated, and don’t have the wherewithal to pay that extra cost,” he said.

Assisted living facilities are particularly good candidates for state-funded microgrids, given how deadly power outages can be to older adults or medically compromised people. Alexa Schoeman, deputy of the state’s long-term care ombudsman’s office, told the Public Utility Commission of Texas in a March statement that the more than 80,000 residents of assisted living facilities in the state are at risk from extended power outages, and that ​“operators have cited cost as the reason they are not able to install lifesaving backup power at their locations.”

Yu declined to name any customers that Enchanted Rock is working with to take advantage of the fund. ​“But there’s been a lot of interest from critical facilities that might want to make use of this. We’ve talked to folks in nursing homes, assisted living industries, and low-income housing, and other critical infrastructure, trying to get into the program.”

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Enchanted Rock has joined other backup generation providers including Bloom Energy, Base Power, Cummins, Generac, Mainspring Energy, and Power Secure in what Yu called an ​“informal group of like-minded companies.” Dubbed Grid Resilience in Texas, or GRIT for short, the coalition is working with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and the Public Utility Commission on the $1.8 billion microgrid program, he said.

Most of these companies focus on gas-fueled power generation systems, whether those are reciprocating engines like those Enchanted Rock uses, linear generators from Mainspring, or fuel cells from Bloom Energy. Others specialize in battery backup systems, as with startup Base Power, or combine solar, batteries, and energy control systems with generators, as with Generac.

The legislation creating the Texas Backup Power Package Program allows projects to tap up to $500 of state funding per kilowatt of generation capacity installed, and requires solar, batteries, and either fossil gas or propane-fueled generation, Yu said. But it ​“isn’t prescriptive about what proportions are in the mix,” he added.

Different combinations could offer more favorable economics for different types of customers. Some may find that lots of solar panels are useful for lowering day-to-day utility bills, while others may want to maximize gas-fueled generation to cover multiday winter outages, when solar-charged batteries are less useful.

The legislation creating the program does limit projects from actively playing in the grid operator’s market programs, Yu added, meaning microgrid owners will face restrictions on selling the power they generate or the grid-balancing services they can provide to the market.

Still, that ​“does leave some room for customers to leverage the assets for behind-the-meter value,” such as using solar to offset utility power purchases, Yu said. ​“That’s going to be very important to making the economics work.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Texas finalizes $1.8B to build solar, battery, and gas-powered microgrids on Jun 14, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jeff St. John, Canary Media.

The plant would be big enough to power a major city, with 1,200 megawatts of planned generation capacity fueled by West Texas shale gas. It will only supply the new data center, and possibly other large data centers recently proposed down the road. 

“It just sucks,” Lindsey said, sitting on her deck in the shade of tall oak trees outside the city of New Braunfels. “They’ve come in and will completely destroy our way of life: dark skies, quiet and peaceful.”

The project is one of many others like it proposed in Texas, where a frantic race to boot up energy-hungry data centers has led many developers to plan their own gas-fired power plants rather than wait for connection to the state’s public grid. Egged on by supportive government policies, this build out promises to lock in strong gas demand for a generation to come. 

The data center and power plant planned across from Lindsey’s home is a partnership between an AI startup called CloudBurst and the natural gas pipeline giant Energy Transfer. It was Energy Transfer’s first-ever contract to supply gas for a data center, but not likely its last. In a press release, the company said it was “in discussions with a number of data center developers and expects this to be the first of many agreements.”

Previously, conventional wisdom assumed that this new generation of digital infrastructure would be powered by emissions-free energy sources like wind, solar, and battery power, which have lately seen explosive growth. So far, that vision isn’t panning out as desires to build quickly overcome concerns about sustainability.

“There is such a shortage of data center capacity and power,” said Kent Draper, chief commercial officer at Australian data center developer IREN, which has projects in West Texas. “Even the large hyperscalers are willing to turn a blind eye to their renewable goals for some period of time in order to get access.”

IREN prioritizes renewable energy for its data centers—giant warehouses full of advanced computers and high-powered cooling systems that can be configured to produce crypto currency or generate artificial intelligence. In Texas, that’s only possible because the company began work here years ago, early enough to secure a timely connection to the state’s grid, Draper said. 

There were more than 2,000 active generation interconnection requests as of April 30, totaling 411,600 MW of capacity, according to grid operator ERCOT. A bill awaiting signature on Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, S.B. 6, looks to filter out unserious large-load projects bloating the queue by imposing a $100,000 fee for interconnection studies. 

Wind and solar farms require vast acreage and generate energy intermittently, so they work best as part of a diversified electrical grid that collectively provides power day and night. But as the AI gold rush gathered momentum, a surge of new project proposals has created yearslong wait times to connect to the grid, prompting many developers to bypass it and build their own power supply. 

Operating alone, a wind or solar farm can’t run a data center. Battery technologies still can’t store such large amounts of energy for the length of time required to provide steady, uninterrupted power for 24 hours per day as data centers require. Small nuclear reactors have been touted as a means to meet data center demand, but the first new units remain a decade from commercial deployment, while the AI boom is here today. 

Now, Draper said, gas companies approach IREN all the time offering to quickly provide additional power generation. 

Gas provides almost half of all power generation capacity in Texas, far more than any other source. But the amount of gas power in Texas has remained flat for 20 years, while wind and solar have grown sharply, according to records from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Facing a tidal wave of proposed AI projects, state lawmakers have taken steps to try to slow the expansion of renewable energy and position gas as the predominant supply for a new era of demand.

This build-out promises strong demand and high gas prices for a generation to come, a boon to Texas’ fossil fuel industry, the largest in the nation. It also means more air pollution and emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, even as the world continues to barrel past temperature records. 

Texas, with 9 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for about 15 percent of current gas-powered generation capacity in the country but 26 percent of planned future generation at the end of 2024, according to data from Global Energy Monitor. Both the current and planned shares are far more than any other state. 

GEM identified 42 new gas turbine projects under construction, in development or announced in Texas before the start of this year. None of those projects are sited at data centers. However, other projects announced since then, like CloudBurst and Energy Transfer outside New Braunfels, will include dedicated gas power plants on site at data centers. 

For gas companies, the boom in artificial intelligence has quickly become an unexpected gold mine. U.S. gas production has risen steadily over 20 years since the fracking boom began, but gas prices have tumbled since 2024, dragged down by surging supply and weak demand. 

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“The sudden emergence of data center demand further brightens the outlook for the renaissance in gas pricing,” said a 2025 oil and gas outlook report by East Daley Analytics, a Colorado-based energy intelligence firm. “The obvious benefit to producers is increased drilling opportunities.”

It forecast up to a 20 percent increase in U.S. gas production by 2030, driven primarily by a growing gas export sector on the Gulf Coast. Several large export projects will finish construction in coming years with demand for up to 12 billion cubic feet of gas per day, the report said, while new power generation for data centers would account for 7 billion cubic feet per day of additional demand. That means profits for power providers, but also higher costs for consumers. 

Natural gas, a mixture primarily composed of methane, burns much cleaner than coal but still creates air pollution, including soot, some hazardous chemicals, and greenhouse gases. Unburned methane released into the atmosphere has more than 80 times the near-term warming effect of carbon dioxide, leading some studies to conclude that ubiquitous leaks in gas supply infrastructure make it as impactful as coal to the global climate.

It’s a power source that’s heralded for its ability to get online fast, said Ed Hirs, an energy economics lecturer at the University of Houston. But the yearslong wait times for turbines have quickly become the industry’s largest constraint in an otherwise positive outlook. 

“If you’re looking at a five-year lead time, that’s not going to help Alexa or Siri today,” Hirs said. 

The reliance on gas power for data centers is a departure from previous thought, said Larry Fink, founder of global investment firm BlackRock, speaking to a crowd of industry executives at an oil and gas conference in Houston in March. 

About four years ago, if someone said they were building a data center, they said it must be powered by renewables, he recounted. Two years ago, it was a preference.

 “Today?” Fink said. “They care about power.” 

Gas plants for data centers 

Since the start of this year, developers have announced a flurry of gas power deals for data centers. In the small city of Abilene, the builders of Stargate, one of the world’s largest data center projects, applied for permits in January to build 360 MW of gas power generation, authorized to emit 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases and 14 tons of hazardous air pollutants per year. Later, the company announced the acquisition of an additional 4,500 MW of gas power generation capacity. 

Also in January, a startup called Sailfish announced ambitious plans for a 2,600-acre, 5,000 MW cluster of data centers in the tiny North Texas town of Tolar, population 940.

“Traditional grid interconnections simply can’t keep pace with hyperscalers’ power demands, especially as AI accelerates energy requirements,” Sailfish founder Ryan Hughes told the website Data Center Dynamics at the time. “Our on-site natural gas power islands will let customers scale quickly.”

CloudBurst and Energy Transfer announced their data center and power plant outside New Braunfels in February, and another company partnership also announced plans for a 250 MW gas plant and data center near Odessa in West Texas. In May, a developer called Tract announced a 1,500-acre, 2,000 MW data center campus with some on-site generation and some purchased gas power near the small Central Texas town of Lockhart. 

Not all new data centers need gas plants. A 120 MW South Texas data center project announced in April would use entirely wind power, while an enormous, 5,000 MW megaproject outside Laredo announced in March hopes to eventually run entirely on private wind, solar, and hydrogen power (though it will use gas at first). Another collection of six data centers planned in North Texas hopes to draw 1,400 MW from the grid. 

Altogether, Texas’ grid operator predicts statewide power demand will nearly double within five years, driven largely by data centers for artificial intelligence. It mirrors a similar situation unfolding across the country, according to analysis by S&P Global. 

“There is huge concern about the carbon footprint of this stuff,” said Dan Stanzione, executive director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “If we could decarbonize the power grid, then there is no carbon footprint for this.”

However, despite massive recent expansions of renewable power generation, the boom in artificial intelligence appears to be moving the country farther from, not closer to, its decarbonization goals. 

Restrictions on renewable energy

Looking forward to a build out of power supply, state lawmakers have proposed or passed new rules to support deployment of more gas generation and slow the surging expansion of wind and solar power projects. Supporters of these bills say they aim to utilize Texas’ position as the nation’s top gas producer. 

Some energy experts say the rules proposed throughout the legislative session could dismantle the state’s leadership in renewables as well as the state’s ability to provide cheap and reliable power. 

“It absolutely would [slow] if not completely stop renewable energy,” said Doug Lewin, a Texas energy consultant, about one of the proposed rules in March. “That would really be extremely harmful to the Texas economy.”

While the bills deemed as “industry killers” for renewables missed key deadlines, failing to reach Abbott’s desk, they illustrate some lawmakers’ aspirations for the state’s energy industry.

One failed bill, S.B. 388, would have required every watt of new solar brought online to be accompanied by a watt of new gas. Another set of twin bills, H.B. 3356 and S.B. 715, would have forced existing wind and solar companies to buy fossil-fuel based power or connect to a battery storage resource to cover the hours the energy plants are not operating. 

When the legislature last met in 2023, it created a $5 billion public “energy fund” to finance new gas plants but not wind or solar farms. It also created a new tax abatement program that excluded wind and solar. This year’s budget added another $5 billion to double the fund.

Among the lawmakers leading the effort to scale back the state’s deployment of renewables is state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican from Brenham. One bill she co-sponsored, S.B. 819, aimed to create new siting rules for utility-scale renewable projects and would have required them to get permits from the Public Utility Commission that no other energy source — coal, gas, or nuclear — needs. “It’s just something that is clearly meant to kneecap an industry,” Lewin said about the bill, which failed to pass. 

Kolkhorst said the bill sought to balance the state’s need for power while respecting landowners across the state. 

Former state Rep. John Davis, now a board member at Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, said the session shows how renewables have become a red meat issue.

More than 20 years ago, Davis and Kolkhorst worked together in the Capitol as Texas deregulated its energy market, which encouraged renewables to enter the grid’s mix, he said. Now Davis herds sheep and goats on his family’s West Texas ranch, where seven wind turbines provide roughly 40 percent of their income. 

He never could have dreamed how significant renewable energy would become for the state grid, he said. That’s why he’s disappointed with the direction the legislature is headed with renewables. 

“I can’t think of anything more conservative, as a conservative, than wind and solar,” Davis said. “These are things God gave us — use them and harness them.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Data centers are building their own gas power plants in Texas on Jun 8, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Dylan Baddour & Arcelia Martin, Inside Climate News.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Texas state legislators dropped efforts to spend millions of dollars to buy what experts call ineffective child identification kits weeks after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported that lawmakers were again trying to fund the program.

This is the second consecutive budget cycle in which the Legislature considered purchasing the products, which promise to help find missing children, only to reverse course after the news organizations documented the lack of evidence that the kits work.

ProPublica and the Tribune originally published their findings in a 2023 investigation that revealed the state had spent millions of dollars on child identification kits made by a Waco-based company called the National Child Identification Program, run by former NFL player Kenny Hansmire. He had a history of legal and business troubles, according to public records, and although less expensive alternatives were available to lawmakers, Hansmire used outdated and exaggerated statistics about missing children to help boost sales.

He also managed to develop connections with powerful Texas legislators who supported his initiatives. In 2021, Republican state Sen. Donna Campbell authored a bill that created a Texas child safety program. The measure all but guaranteed any state funding would go to Hansmire’s business whenever lawmakers allotted money for child identification kits. That year, the state awarded his company about $5.7 million for the kits.

Two years later, both the House and the Senate proposed spending millions more on the program. But when the final budget was published, about a month after the newsrooms’ investigation, legislators had pulled the funding. They declined to answer questions about why.

Funding for the program appeared again in this year’s House budget. State Rep. Armando Martinez, a Democratic member of the lower chamber’s budget committee, suggested allotting $2 million to buy the kits for students in kindergarten through the second grade. The Senate, however, didn’t include that funding in its version of the budget.

The newsrooms published a story in early May about the proposed spending plan. The final version of the budget that lawmakers passed this week again had no designated funding for the identification kits.

Campbell, Martinez and the leaders of the House and Senate budget committees did not respond to the newsrooms’ interview requests for this story or written questions about why the funding didn’t make the final cut.

Hansmire did not reply to an interview request this week. In a prior response, he told the newsrooms he’d resolved his financial troubles and said that his company’s kits have helped identify missing children, though he did not provide any concrete examples. Hansmire told reporters to reach out to “any policeman,” naming several departments specifically. The newsrooms contacted a number of them. Of the dozen Texas law enforcement agencies that responded to the queries, none could identify one case where the kits helped find a runaway or kidnapped child.

Stacey Pearson, a child safety consultant who previously oversaw the Louisiana Clearinghouse for Missing and Exploited Children, said legislators made the correct decision to eliminate the identification kits from the budget because there is no data proving they actually help improve kids’ safety. She remains disappointed that Texas lawmakers continue to give the program any attention and hopes they won’t contemplate the funding in the future.

“Every dollar and every minute, every hour that you spend on a program like this, is a dollar and a minute and an hour that you can’t spend on something that is more promising or more sound,” said Pearson.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

In a half-empty committee room in late April, one of Texas’ most powerful Republican state senators pitched legislation that would make it harder for immigrants in the country illegally to get jobs.

Her bill would require all employers in the state to use a free federal computer system, known as E-Verify, that quickly confirms whether someone has authorization to work in the United States. Sen. Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham ticked off a handful of Republican-led states that mandate the program for all private companies and listed others that require it for most over a certain size. Yet Texas, which prides itself on being the nation’s toughest on illegal immigration, instructs only state agencies and sexually oriented businesses to use it.

“E-Verify is the most functional and cost-effective method the state of Texas can implement to stem the flow of illegal immigration, or those that are here not legally, to ensure that U.S. citizens and those able to work in the state of Texas are the ones who get the Texas jobs,” Kolkhorst told fellow senators, reminding them that the Business and Commerce Committee passed her nearly identical bill two years ago. (That proposal never made it to the Senate floor.)

No one spoke against the new legislation. Only one committee member, a Democrat, questioned it, asking if supporters would also favor an immigrant guest worker program. A handful of labor representatives called the bill a bipartisan priority, testifying that too many employers cut corners by hiring workers illegally at lower wages. The bill went on to sail through the committee and the Senate.

But then, like dozens of E-Verify bills over the last decade, the legislation died.

Texas’ top Republican leaders have built a political brand on the state’s hard-line stance against illegal immigration, pouring billions of dollars into Gov. Greg Abbott’s state border security initiative, including funding construction of a border wall and deploying state police to arrest migrants on a newly created offense for trespassing. This session, lawmakers voted to require most sheriff’s offices to cooperate with federal immigration agents.

Yet again and again the state’s conservative Legislature has refused to take what some Republicans call the single most crucial step to preventing immigrants from coming and staying here illegally: mandating E-Verify to make it more difficult for them to work.

Since 2013, GOP lawmakers in Texas have introduced more than 40 E-Verify bills. Most tried to require the program for government entities and their contractors, but about a dozen attempted to expand the system to private employers in some capacity. With few exceptions, like mandating E-Verify for certain state contractors, Republican legislators declined to pass the overwhelming majority of those proposals.

This session, lawmakers filed about half a dozen bills attempting to require private companies to use the program. Kolkhorst’s legislation was the only one to make it out of either legislative chamber but eventually died because the state House did not take it up.

Given Texas leaders’ rhetoric on the border, it is a “glaring omission” not to more broadly require E-Verify as other GOP-led states have done, said Lynden Melmed, former chief counsel under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that oversees E-Verify. At least nine majority Republican states — including Arizona, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina — require that most, if not all, private companies use the system. Abbott has frequently positioned Texas as harsher on immigration than each of them.

Still, that a private mandate made it further this session than ever before may illustrate the growing conflict in Texas between the pro-business side of the state’s GOP and Republicans who want to look tougher on immigration, said Melmed, who was a former special counsel on the issue to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

The resistance to E-Verify isn’t just about Texas Republicans’ reluctance to regulate business, Melmed said. It’s about how such a system could impact the state’s labor supply and economy.

An estimated 1.3 million Texas workers, more than 8% of the state’s work force, are here illegally, according to a 2023 analysis of U.S. census data by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. About a quarter of all construction workers in Texas lack legal status, for example, and the industry faces a critical labor shortage as a need for housing booms. Likewise, the state’s understaffed agricultural, restaurant and elder care sectors rely on workers here illegally.

“If you got serious about applying [E-Verify], you would create even worse problems” with labor shortages, said Bill Hammond, a GOP former state lawmaker who once led the Texas Association of Business. “Do you want to go to a restaurant and use paper plates because no one will wash dishes?”

Texas’ political leaders know this, Hammond said, but they don’t want to publicly acknowledge it.

A spokesperson for Abbott refused to say whether the governor supports mandating the program for private companies. However, when running for governor more than a decade ago, Abbott acknowledged that businesses had complained about instituting the system. At the time, he touted federal statistics that E-Verify was 99.5% accurate. State agencies, he said, could serve as a model before legislators imposed it on companies.

A spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who as a senator unsuccessfully pushed legislation to hold employers accountable for hiring immigrants here illegally, did not return requests for comment, nor did a spokesperson for Speaker Dustin Burrows explain why the House refused to take up E-Verify. Kolkhorst declined repeated interview requests on her legislation.

State Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican who authored the first E-Verify bill that the Texas Legislature approved, said in an interview that his 2015 legislation did not go as far as he would have liked. He said that he agreed with Kolkhort’s private-company mandate.

“We need to enforce our immigration laws, both at the border and the interior of Texas, and E-Verify is an important component,” Schwertner said.

Some GOP lawmakers who pushed the issue this session faced “deafening silence” from many colleagues and impacted industries, said state Rep. Carl Tepper, a Lubbock Republican who filed two E-Verify bills.

Lawmakers and industry groups have a “misguided fear” about losing a portion of their workforce who are here illegally and whom they feel dependent on, he said. Although immigration enforcement is overseen by Congress, Tepper said that the state should do what it can to prevent such workers from coming to Texas by making it more difficult to hire them.

Even one of the state’s most influential conservative think tanks has supported more incremental E-Verify legislation, such as extending the state mandate to local governments. Doing so would be an “easier win” than requiring it for businesses, said Selene Rodriguez, a campaign director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Still, she said that the organization generally supports a broader mandate and is disappointed that Kolkhorst’s legislation failed.

E-Verify has been tricky for her group, Rodriguez acknowledged, because lawmakers have done so little over the years that it has had to prioritize what is “attainable.”

“Given the Trump agenda, that he won so widely, we thought maybe there’d be more appetite to advance it,” Rodriguez said. “But that wasn’t the case.”

She blamed “behind-the scenes” lobbying from powerful industry groups, particularly in agriculture and construction, as well as lawmakers who worry how supporting the proposal would influence reelection prospects.

A dozen prominent state industry groups declined to comment to ProPublica and The Texas Tribune on their stances relating to E-Verify.

E-Verify supporters admit the system is not a panacea. The computer program can confirm only whether identification documents are valid, not whether they actually belong to the prospective employee, and as a result a black market for such documents has surged. Employers, too, can game the system by contracting out work to smaller companies, which in many states are exempt from E-Verify mandates.

Even when states adopt these, most lack strong enforcement. Texas legislators have never tasked an agency with ensuring all employers comply. South Carolina, which has among the toughest enforcement, randomly audits businesses to see if they are using E-Verify, said Madeline Zavodny, a University of North Florida economics professor who studied the program for a 2017 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas report. But South Carolina does not check whether companies actually hired immigrants here illegally, said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Some states have carve-outs for small companies or certain employers that often rely on undocumented labor. North Carolina, for example, exempts temporary seasonal workers.

Immigrants here illegally contribute billions to the economy, said Tara Watson, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank. Much of the rhetoric over the issue is “using immigration as a wedge issue to rile up the base of voters who are concerned about cultural change, but at the same time not wanting to disrupt the economy too much.”

Expanding E-Verify, she said, is “not really in anybody’s interest.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

When you think of Feb. 14 do you think of Valentine’s Day? On Feb. 14, 2022, the University of Texas at Austin Faculty Council adopted a fateful resolution affirming that “educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning” (doc. 19141). Little did they realize that their forthright declaration of a principle old as Plato would be waved around like a bloody shirt. Republican politicians went hunting for Socrates.

Three years later, on Apr. 15, 2025, the Lt. Governor of Texas was still denouncing the “rogue faculty senate at the University of Texas” because it had “foolishly questioned the Texas Legislature’s authority over higher education” (ltgov.texas.gov).

But before we get into the story of the Valentine’s Day resolution or how it is being torched by Republican politicians, it is important to note that the Lt. Governor’s 2025 attack on the 2022 resolution commits the ethical fallacy of mistaking ought for is, right for might.

The Valentine’s Day resolution was an argument about what should be done: politicians should not assert authority over teaching, and faculty should be expected to “stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority.” The Lt. Governor, on the other hand, rebuked the faculty council for questioning a fact that they did not question: “the Texas legislature’s authority over higher education.”

Why would the UT-Austin Faculty Council adopt a long argument that politicians should not interfere in college teaching if the council was assuming that politicians did not have the power to interfere? In fact, as we will see, the UT-Austin Faculty Council had very good reasons to believe that the legislature was going to try to interfere with faculty scholarship and teaching, as happened soon enough.

Mature wisdom lies on the side of the faculty in this preview debate. It makes little sense to argue that politicians should tell college faculty what to teach or how to teach it. The UT-Austin faculty were right to declare that they would “stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority.” Little did they know that their Valentine’s Day resolution would serve as a pretext to firehose faculty and douse the flames of civil rights progress, not only at their campus, but all across their great state.

*****

With about one week left to go before the end of the 2025 regular session, the Texas Legislature is preparing to join the Lt. Governor’s call to continue punishing faculty and their councils (also known as senates). Determined to drill Texas faculty in lessons they will not be able to “stand firm against,” the Lt. Governor in his capacity as president of the Texas Senate, is urging passage of Senate Bill 37, a law that would abolish faculty councils as we know them by Sept. 1.

The Lt. Governor is already boasting credit for “significantly weakened tenure” in Texas, following the passage of SB 18 in 2023. He counts the attack on tenure as part of “the largest pushback against wokeness in higher education in U.S. history,” an offensive that also included the passage of SB 17 in 2023 that relentlessly banned diversity, equity, and inclusion activities on campus.

Now he wants to crush faculty governance, too. In place of existing councils elected by faculty, SB 37 would require college presidents to appoint at least one member to the council from each college or school and then name the primary officers of the council (“a presiding officer, associate presiding officer, and secretary from the members.”)

Furthermore, among more than 20 pages of provisions in SB 37, college trustees will newly be required to “approve or deny the hiring of” deans or chief academic officers (commonly known as provosts). Collegial norms of shared governance usually treat the position of dean or provost as a matter for college presidents to decide “with the advice of, and in consultation with, the appropriate faculty” (AAUP Redbook 11^th 119).

Under SB 37’s takeover of faculty councils, the provost, in turn, would be charged with identifying council members who are guilty of “misconduct,” and if the president agrees with the provost, a faculty council member shall be summarily removed from the council.

The general effect of SB 37 is to increase the authority of politically appointed trustees into spheres of academic operations so that influence flows more smoothly from the governor’s desk. Recent revisions to the bill would even require at least two trustees to serve on presidential search committees. Furthermore, the governor would appoint a statewide higher ed ombudsman who will take complaints, conduct investigations, and refer cases to the state auditor or legislature, including recommendations to withhold funding.

Among the many professional indignities that SB 37 will inflict upon faculty across Texas is the provision that strikes their right to serve on faculty grievance reviews. The president and provost will then have sole authority over faculty grievances. Prohibiting faculty representation during grievance reviews contradicts professional standards of the American Association of University Professors, which assumes the existence of faculty grievance committees, and which states that “In collegial work environments, due process includes an opportunity for peer participation in the review process” (AAUP Redbook 11th 215).

According to the Lt. Governor, the extreme undoing of faculty shared governance in Texas is necessary because “senates must have a clearly defined role at our universities.” What role is that? According to the Lt. Governor, “faculty senates generally serve a purpose and help Boards of Regents make critical decisions impacting university students in Texas.” But apparently, this role does not include issuing Valentine’s Day resolutions which assert faculty responsibility for teaching or that declare faculty resistance against external pressure in the classroom.

Once again, mature wisdom would counsel the Lt. Governor that he is correct to say that “senates must have a clearly defined role.” However, there is a critical flaw in his selection of the Senate that is out of bounds. And he still has time in the coming week to reign in the senate that is running amok.

*****

Historical tragedies like SB 37 have backstories. In his Apology, Socrates explained to the jury how the accusations against him resulted from long simmering attitudes about his vocation and political choices. Likewise, behind the world-historical clampdown now being imposed on Texas college campuses, we find grudges against civil rights and academic freedom that have been ripening for years.

When the Valentine’s Day resolution of the UT-Austin Faculty Council publicly affirmed “the rights and academic freedom of faculty to design courses, curriculum, and pedagogy, and to conduct related scholarly research,” they were hoping to immunize their community against political attacks. “More specifically,” the 2022 resolution warned that “state legislative proposals seeking to limit teaching and discussions of racism and related issues have been proposed and enacted in several states, including Texas.” Mindful of attacks already underway, the resolution affirmed “the fundamental rights of faculty to academic freedom in its broadest sense, inclusive of research and teaching of race and gender theory” (doc. 19141).

The Valentine’s Day resolution was presented to the council by the Pharmacy professor who chaired the faculty Committee of Counsel on Academic Freedom and Responsibility that drafted the resolution. Minutes of the meeting report that the resolution was “co-sponsored and endorsed by the University Faculty Gender Equity Council (UFGEC), the Council for LGBTQ+ Access, Equity, and Inclusion (Q+AEI), the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity, and the Faculty Council Executive Committee” (doc. 19152).

Broad outlines of the UT faculty resolution followed a “Template for Academic Freedom” that was published in 2021 by the American Association of University Professors, PEN, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and then endorsed and adopted by numerous reputable groups and faculty senates, all of whom were concerned about growing right-wing attacks on academic freedom.

The “Template Academic Senate Resolution,” finalized on Sept. 21, 2021, and posted to Google Docs, made an attempt to stand fast against the swift backlash that was sweeping the nation following the global protests against the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The Texas legislature led the backlash to closely monitor what could or could not be taught about racism in America. When the Texas Governor signed HB 3979 on June 15, 2021, he issued a terse signing statement that called the bill “a strong move to abolish critical race theory in Texas.” He vowed that “more must be done,” and he promised to add the issue to the summer’s special session agenda (gov.texas.gov).

*****

One year to the day before the Texas Governor signed the bill banning what he called “critical race theory” in public schools, and two years before the Valentine’s Day resolution, the UT-Austin Faculty Council adopted an updated statement on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Passed unanimously by the 55 voting members present, the refreshed statement pledged “to provide equitable access and inclusion in all our activities” (doc. 18263). Although the language had been approved by the council’s executive committee on May 15, 2020, ten days before the murder of Houston Native Son George Floyd, the widescale protests of June 2020 made the timing seem momentous.

Minutes of the June 15, 2020, faculty council meeting are worth quoting at length, because, as the book of Proverbs advises, “let the wise listen and add to their learning” (Prov. 1:5). The council minutes presented below have been edited to remove personal names, just as we have done with the Governor and Lt. Governor above:

The University President discussed racial equity, diversity, and inclusion in the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many other Black people. Central leadership has put out a statement and are meeting with the various groups that have made requests for action, including student athletes, other student groups, the Precursors, and other alumni groups. The President said, “I want to listen to them and hear what they’re feeling, what they’re seeing, what their priorities are, and work together…on our set of actions.” He has been working with the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE) to reconsider the University’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan. Additionally, they have been working with the Vice Provost for Diversity and the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost on faculty diversity, and the President and Provost are “nearing adoption of the plan that was brought forward.” Recent reports from the Campus Contextualization Committee will inform how they think about physical aspects of the campus. The President shared a conversation he had with a Black student leader who described “all the little ways that it was difficult to feel like she fully belonged.” A minority student taking a campus tour pulled her aside to ask, “What’s it really like here at UT?” Her response: “It’s really hard, but it’s worth it.” The President said his exchange with that Black student leader “hit me,” and he thought “we can do better” by recruiting diverse talent, making sure they enjoy their UT Austin experience, and ensuring they feel empowered to contribute.

The Faculty Council Chair Elect thanked the many participants involved in revising the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement, which was then presented by a Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies. The Professor said that, in 2018, UT Austin adopted a diversity statement for the first time, but a number of constituencies on campus felt the statement was “not particularly inclusive.” The new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement addresses the issue of inclusivity in the second paragraph: “The University is dedicated to attracting highly qualified students, faculty, and staff of all races, ethnicities, peoples, nationalities, religious backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, socioeconomic statuses, disabilities and health histories regardless of their marital, parental, age, veteran, or citizenship status.” A Professor of English proposed an amendment to change “provide” to “providing” in the first sentence, which the FCEC accepted.

A Professor of Classics shared the story of James Reeb, a Protestant minister killed in Selma, who “believed that it was impossible for White people who were in comfortable living situations to do anything for the Black minorities while still living where they were living.” He related this insight to “what we’re doing here with this diversity statement,” adding that the statement “will only have meaning if the resources and the commitment are there to really do something.” He added that the percentage of Black students at UT Austin “never varies from somewhere around 4 percent in a state where there are 13 percent African Americans.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies remarked that “only about 42 percent of the student population is White,” but agreed that Professor of Classic’s “basic observation is absolutely correct.” He asked, “Why hasn’t the White majority [at UT Austin] changed things so that…we don’t have the problems that we have? I think it’s a challenge for all of us.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies agreed that more action is necessary, but reasoned that the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement would set goals, aspirations, and principles to which UT Austin could be held. A Senior Lecturer in Management seconded the Professor of Classic’s concern that a new diversity statement on its own would not solve the problem. He said, “If we’re going to do something, we have to make a commitment to being able to recruit in the marketplace, and the marketplace is more competitive than we’ve ever seen.”

A Clinical Professor from the School of Law suggested that the word “opportunities,” be switched to “access” since the phrase “equal opportunities” in terms of education has come to stand for the narrow hypothesis that students can simply be given a “level starting place” and then “the rest is just…so-called meritocracy.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies said he would be in favor of changing the wording. Chair of Staff Council and Executive Assistant for the McDonald Observatory said calling UT Austin a “campus” in the last sentence risks overlooking colleagues who work in physical areas other than the 40 Acres. The Faculty Council Chair responded that, from one perspective, “campus is everything.”

An Associate Professor from the School of Design and Creative Technologies suggested changing “on a diverse campus” to “at a diverse University” to address the concern about excluding parts of UT Austin not within the 40 Acres. She also proposed that the last sentence read “learning and working on a diverse campus” instead of “learning on a diverse campus” to emphasize the important role played by staff. The Faculty Council Chair said the 2018 diversity statement focused on students, but the new statement has been expanded to explicitly include staff and facility. The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies supported changing the wording. The Faculty Council Chair noted that “this is not the final version”; it will be forwarded to “many, many other groups and administration offices” after being voted on by Faculty Council.

The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies closed by saying, “coming together as a University community around these kinds of commitments and statements is particularly important at this time.”

The Faculty Council unanimously approved the proposed new UT Austin Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement. (Doc. 18300)

The wide representation of faculty, staff, and administration voices resonated with a national awakening that was rolling across the world in June of 2020. Language of the resolution stipulated that “Final approval resides with the President” (doc. 18263). Momentum of the 2020 faculty council meeting is worth remembering, the way we cherish the last few seconds of life and love before the family van gets smashed by a rogue truck.

*****

A Jan. 2025 interim report by the Texas Senate Higher Education Subcommittee alleged that: “Following the political unrest in the summer of 2020, a small group of extremists sought to seize the opportunity to transform public institutions – with the goal of reshaping Texas universities into institutions focused on social justice and equality of outcome” (p. 9). And this is the dark alchemy of how one Texas Senate interim report, signed by three members of a five member subcommittee, came to rebrand June 2020 as a time of “political unrest” and to infer that a gathering at that time of faculty, staff, vice presidents, and the president of UT Austin was but “a small group of extremists.”

The Texas Senate subcommittee interim report of 2025 went on to stipulate that “several legislators received reports from constituents and stakeholders across the state detailing curriculum and course content related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) throughout Texas public institutions.” The lawmakers could have pointed out that the law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus (SB 17) specifically protected classroom teaching. However, in the eyes of the Senate Interim Subcommittee lawmakers, reports about course content were judged to evidence unseemly disrespect for their work: “Though this does not explicitly violate the letter of the law, it contradicts its spirit and does not reflect the expectations of Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” (p. 33).

SB 37 was therefore crafted in 2025 to compel a new “spirit” of compliance in Texas Higher Education. The spirit of the ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion mandated by SB 17 was not being fully assimilated throughout Texas college classrooms. Faculty council meetings like the ones that happened in June 2020 or Valentine’s Day 2022 would not happen again if trustees, appointed by the governor, could be empowered to more closely supervise the selection of presidents, provosts, and deans; if, in turn, presidents could be empowered to appoint a significant share of faculty council members along with all three of their presiding officers; and if, finally, presidents and provosts would be given sole authority to remove faculty council members from their seats.

SB 37 ensures that a spirit of uncontradicted compliance shall emanate from the high source of the Texas Governor’s office down through faculty councils and into the entire curriculum of Texas higher education, fully satisfying what the Senate Subcommittee Interim Triumverate characterized as “the expectations of Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” alike.

*****

Two years after the George Floyd moment, and eight months after the Texas Governor signed the ban against “critical race theory” in public schools, the Valentine’s Day resolution of 2022 was a conscious attempt to rescue civil rights and academic freedom from the disaster that threatens them today. The resolution was debated in an open meeting, where dissent was duly reported in the minutes.

An associate professor of Finance accused the council of requiring “adherence to critical race theory….  and now you are complaining about this hypothetical threat that there might be a ban.” He complained that the council resolution did not make mention of the Chicago Statement or the Kelven Report which encouraged institutions to remain neutral and abstain from “declaring a collective opinion on political and social issues” (goacta.org). Minutes report that his dissent concluded with the declaration that the legislature “did not give you autonomy so you could turn our school into a social justice indoctrination camp. They absolutely should be monitoring this.” Two responses are recorded in the minutes.

A professor of Human Development and Family Science argued that the council resolution did not compel faculty to take any particular positions regarding race or gender theory, but “those people who do research on these areas, historians who have been studying the historical impacts of racism, they have the expertise … and they should have the right to be able to speak about it.”

And a professor who served on the drafting committee argued that the resolution received unanimous support from the committee “after considerable work and thought and interaction with people of other universities.” Citing the great American rule of resistance, that “we have all got to hang together or we will all hang separately,” the professor of Integrative Biology warned that: “It is critical race theory today. It is going to be … climate change or evolution tomorrow, so it affects all of us.” Minutes reflect that the resolution passed “by majority vote: forty-three in favor, five against, and three abstaining” (doc. 19152).

*****

A moral cyclone of backlash is howling to punish Texas faculty for their so-called “wokeness.” When the House Higher Education Committee heard testimony regarding the anti-tenure bill (SB 18) in 2023, long hours produced not a single witness in its favor. Not one. Yet the committee approved the bill that the Lt. Governor now brags about passing because it significantly weakens tenure.

Similarly, this year, the Texas AAUP counts about three witnesses speaking for SB 37, but 300 witnesses against, a ratio of 100-to-one “Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” pleading with Texas politicians that “educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning” in Texas. But once again, the fix was in, the railroad operation blared full steam ahead, and the bill was adopted by the committee along party lines, with Republicans in control.

Finally, under the afternoon light of a simmering Texas sun, on May 24, 2025, when SB 37 was being debated in the Texas House of Representatives, Republicans made it a point to drown out the debate under a crescendo of bar car chatter. The chair of the House tried to gavel them to order. The Democrat who held the floor yelled “shut up!” But the House Republicans, who are on record for mandating orderly classrooms in public schools, could not be bothered to stop talking over the debate.

Voices of faculty and their friends in Texas have been scattered against shrill winds of power. Barring a miracle of conscience, the Lt. Governor’s kneecap campaign will be soon visiting a Texas campus near you. Don’t get caught out supporting civil rights, academic freedom, or social justice. And be sure to get your faculty council opinions realigned with the ruling party in Texas, or there will be hell to pay.

BTW: When I think of Feb. 14 I think of the birthday of Frederick Douglass, author of the term “moral cyclone” who was born into bondage as the property of his father. The term “moral cyclone” is an unexaggerated metaphor for the way Texas faculty will soon be reborn as an intellectual labor force in service to Texas politicians who are eager to crack their power whips against any professor “foolish” enough to “stand firm” against the brazen dictates of a newly revised Texas Education Code. Altogether, Feb. 14th has become a mixed-up metaphor for the passion that joins the love of wisdom to the struggle for a democratic outcome, and only by the grace of God will it turn out differently this year than it did for Socrates back when.

*****

NOTE: SB 37 provisions described above reflect the latest updates reported in the House Higher Education Committee Substitute as of press time.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Moses.

When you think of Feb. 14 do you think of Valentine’s Day? On Feb. 14, 2022, the University of Texas at Austin Faculty Council adopted a fateful resolution affirming that “educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning” (doc. 19141). Little did they realize that their forthright declaration of a principle old as Plato would be waved around like a bloody shirt. Republican politicians went hunting for Socrates.

Three years later, on Apr. 15, 2025, the Lt. Governor of Texas was still denouncing the “rogue faculty senate at the University of Texas” because it had “foolishly questioned the Texas Legislature’s authority over higher education” (ltgov.texas.gov).

But before we get into the story of the Valentine’s Day resolution or how it is being torched by Republican politicians, it is important to note that the Lt. Governor’s 2025 attack on the 2022 resolution commits the ethical fallacy of mistaking ought for is, right for might.

The Valentine’s Day resolution was an argument about what should be done: politicians should not assert authority over teaching, and faculty should be expected to “stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority.” The Lt. Governor, on the other hand, rebuked the faculty council for questioning a fact that they did not question: “the Texas legislature’s authority over higher education.”

Why would the UT-Austin Faculty Council adopt a long argument that politicians should not interfere in college teaching if the council was assuming that politicians did not have the power to interfere? In fact, as we will see, the UT-Austin Faculty Council had very good reasons to believe that the legislature was going to try to interfere with faculty scholarship and teaching, as happened soon enough.

Mature wisdom lies on the side of the faculty in this preview debate. It makes little sense to argue that politicians should tell college faculty what to teach or how to teach it. The UT-Austin faculty were right to declare that they would “stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority.” Little did they know that their Valentine’s Day resolution would serve as a pretext to firehose faculty and douse the flames of civil rights progress, not only at their campus, but all across their great state.

*****

With about one week left to go before the end of the 2025 regular session, the Texas Legislature is preparing to join the Lt. Governor’s call to continue punishing faculty and their councils (also known as senates). Determined to drill Texas faculty in lessons they will not be able to “stand firm against,” the Lt. Governor in his capacity as president of the Texas Senate, is urging passage of Senate Bill 37, a law that would abolish faculty councils as we know them by Sept. 1.

The Lt. Governor is already boasting credit for “significantly weakened tenure” in Texas, following the passage of SB 18 in 2023. He counts the attack on tenure as part of “the largest pushback against wokeness in higher education in U.S. history,” an offensive that also included the passage of SB 17 in 2023 that relentlessly banned diversity, equity, and inclusion activities on campus.

Now he wants to crush faculty governance, too. In place of existing councils elected by faculty, SB 37 would require college presidents to appoint at least one member to the council from each college or school and then name the primary officers of the council (“a presiding officer, associate presiding officer, and secretary from the members.”)

Furthermore, among more than 20 pages of provisions in SB 37, college trustees will newly be required to “approve or deny the hiring of” deans or chief academic officers (commonly known as provosts). Collegial norms of shared governance usually treat the position of dean or provost as a matter for college presidents to decide “with the advice of, and in consultation with, the appropriate faculty” (AAUP Redbook 11^th 119).

Under SB 37’s takeover of faculty councils, the provost, in turn, would be charged with identifying council members who are guilty of “misconduct,” and if the president agrees with the provost, a faculty council member shall be summarily removed from the council.

The general effect of SB 37 is to increase the authority of politically appointed trustees into spheres of academic operations so that influence flows more smoothly from the governor’s desk. Recent revisions to the bill would even require at least two trustees to serve on presidential search committees. Furthermore, the governor would appoint a statewide higher ed ombudsman who will take complaints, conduct investigations, and refer cases to the state auditor or legislature, including recommendations to withhold funding.

Among the many professional indignities that SB 37 will inflict upon faculty across Texas is the provision that strikes their right to serve on faculty grievance reviews. The president and provost will then have sole authority over faculty grievances. Prohibiting faculty representation during grievance reviews contradicts professional standards of the American Association of University Professors, which assumes the existence of faculty grievance committees, and which states that “In collegial work environments, due process includes an opportunity for peer participation in the review process” (AAUP Redbook 11th 215).

According to the Lt. Governor, the extreme undoing of faculty shared governance in Texas is necessary because “senates must have a clearly defined role at our universities.” What role is that? According to the Lt. Governor, “faculty senates generally serve a purpose and help Boards of Regents make critical decisions impacting university students in Texas.” But apparently, this role does not include issuing Valentine’s Day resolutions which assert faculty responsibility for teaching or that declare faculty resistance against external pressure in the classroom.

Once again, mature wisdom would counsel the Lt. Governor that he is correct to say that “senates must have a clearly defined role.” However, there is a critical flaw in his selection of the Senate that is out of bounds. And he still has time in the coming week to reign in the senate that is running amok.

*****

Historical tragedies like SB 37 have backstories. In his Apology, Socrates explained to the jury how the accusations against him resulted from long simmering attitudes about his vocation and political choices. Likewise, behind the world-historical clampdown now being imposed on Texas college campuses, we find grudges against civil rights and academic freedom that have been ripening for years.

When the Valentine’s Day resolution of the UT-Austin Faculty Council publicly affirmed “the rights and academic freedom of faculty to design courses, curriculum, and pedagogy, and to conduct related scholarly research,” they were hoping to immunize their community against political attacks. “More specifically,” the 2022 resolution warned that “state legislative proposals seeking to limit teaching and discussions of racism and related issues have been proposed and enacted in several states, including Texas.” Mindful of attacks already underway, the resolution affirmed “the fundamental rights of faculty to academic freedom in its broadest sense, inclusive of research and teaching of race and gender theory” (doc. 19141).

The Valentine’s Day resolution was presented to the council by the Pharmacy professor who chaired the faculty Committee of Counsel on Academic Freedom and Responsibility that drafted the resolution. Minutes of the meeting report that the resolution was “co-sponsored and endorsed by the University Faculty Gender Equity Council (UFGEC), the Council for LGBTQ+ Access, Equity, and Inclusion (Q+AEI), the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity, and the Faculty Council Executive Committee” (doc. 19152).

Broad outlines of the UT faculty resolution followed a “Template for Academic Freedom” that was published in 2021 by the American Association of University Professors, PEN, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and then endorsed and adopted by numerous reputable groups and faculty senates, all of whom were concerned about growing right-wing attacks on academic freedom.

The “Template Academic Senate Resolution,” finalized on Sept. 21, 2021, and posted to Google Docs, made an attempt to stand fast against the swift backlash that was sweeping the nation following the global protests against the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The Texas legislature led the backlash to closely monitor what could or could not be taught about racism in America. When the Texas Governor signed HB 3979 on June 15, 2021, he issued a terse signing statement that called the bill “a strong move to abolish critical race theory in Texas.” He vowed that “more must be done,” and he promised to add the issue to the summer’s special session agenda (gov.texas.gov).

*****

One year to the day before the Texas Governor signed the bill banning what he called “critical race theory” in public schools, and two years before the Valentine’s Day resolution, the UT-Austin Faculty Council adopted an updated statement on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Passed unanimously by the 55 voting members present, the refreshed statement pledged “to provide equitable access and inclusion in all our activities” (doc. 18263). Although the language had been approved by the council’s executive committee on May 15, 2020, ten days before the murder of Houston Native Son George Floyd, the widescale protests of June 2020 made the timing seem momentous.

Minutes of the June 15, 2020, faculty council meeting are worth quoting at length, because, as the book of Proverbs advises, “let the wise listen and add to their learning” (Prov. 1:5). The council minutes presented below have been edited to remove personal names, just as we have done with the Governor and Lt. Governor above:

The University President discussed racial equity, diversity, and inclusion in the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many other Black people. Central leadership has put out a statement and are meeting with the various groups that have made requests for action, including student athletes, other student groups, the Precursors, and other alumni groups. The President said, “I want to listen to them and hear what they’re feeling, what they’re seeing, what their priorities are, and work together…on our set of actions.” He has been working with the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE) to reconsider the University’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan. Additionally, they have been working with the Vice Provost for Diversity and the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost on faculty diversity, and the President and Provost are “nearing adoption of the plan that was brought forward.” Recent reports from the Campus Contextualization Committee will inform how they think about physical aspects of the campus. The President shared a conversation he had with a Black student leader who described “all the little ways that it was difficult to feel like she fully belonged.” A minority student taking a campus tour pulled her aside to ask, “What’s it really like here at UT?” Her response: “It’s really hard, but it’s worth it.” The President said his exchange with that Black student leader “hit me,” and he thought “we can do better” by recruiting diverse talent, making sure they enjoy their UT Austin experience, and ensuring they feel empowered to contribute.

The Faculty Council Chair Elect thanked the many participants involved in revising the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement, which was then presented by a Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies. The Professor said that, in 2018, UT Austin adopted a diversity statement for the first time, but a number of constituencies on campus felt the statement was “not particularly inclusive.” The new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement addresses the issue of inclusivity in the second paragraph: “The University is dedicated to attracting highly qualified students, faculty, and staff of all races, ethnicities, peoples, nationalities, religious backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, socioeconomic statuses, disabilities and health histories regardless of their marital, parental, age, veteran, or citizenship status.” A Professor of English proposed an amendment to change “provide” to “providing” in the first sentence, which the FCEC accepted.

A Professor of Classics shared the story of James Reeb, a Protestant minister killed in Selma, who “believed that it was impossible for White people who were in comfortable living situations to do anything for the Black minorities while still living where they were living.” He related this insight to “what we’re doing here with this diversity statement,” adding that the statement “will only have meaning if the resources and the commitment are there to really do something.” He added that the percentage of Black students at UT Austin “never varies from somewhere around 4 percent in a state where there are 13 percent African Americans.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies remarked that “only about 42 percent of the student population is White,” but agreed that Professor of Classic’s “basic observation is absolutely correct.” He asked, “Why hasn’t the White majority [at UT Austin] changed things so that…we don’t have the problems that we have? I think it’s a challenge for all of us.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies agreed that more action is necessary, but reasoned that the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement would set goals, aspirations, and principles to which UT Austin could be held. A Senior Lecturer in Management seconded the Professor of Classic’s concern that a new diversity statement on its own would not solve the problem. He said, “If we’re going to do something, we have to make a commitment to being able to recruit in the marketplace, and the marketplace is more competitive than we’ve ever seen.”

A Clinical Professor from the School of Law suggested that the word “opportunities,” be switched to “access” since the phrase “equal opportunities” in terms of education has come to stand for the narrow hypothesis that students can simply be given a “level starting place” and then “the rest is just…so-called meritocracy.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies said he would be in favor of changing the wording. Chair of Staff Council and Executive Assistant for the McDonald Observatory said calling UT Austin a “campus” in the last sentence risks overlooking colleagues who work in physical areas other than the 40 Acres. The Faculty Council Chair responded that, from one perspective, “campus is everything.”

An Associate Professor from the School of Design and Creative Technologies suggested changing “on a diverse campus” to “at a diverse University” to address the concern about excluding parts of UT Austin not within the 40 Acres. She also proposed that the last sentence read “learning and working on a diverse campus” instead of “learning on a diverse campus” to emphasize the important role played by staff. The Faculty Council Chair said the 2018 diversity statement focused on students, but the new statement has been expanded to explicitly include staff and facility. The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies supported changing the wording. The Faculty Council Chair noted that “this is not the final version”; it will be forwarded to “many, many other groups and administration offices” after being voted on by Faculty Council.

The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies closed by saying, “coming together as a University community around these kinds of commitments and statements is particularly important at this time.”

The Faculty Council unanimously approved the proposed new UT Austin Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement. (Doc. 18300)

The wide representation of faculty, staff, and administration voices resonated with a national awakening that was rolling across the world in June of 2020. Language of the resolution stipulated that “Final approval resides with the President” (doc. 18263). Momentum of the 2020 faculty council meeting is worth remembering, the way we cherish the last few seconds of life and love before the family van gets smashed by a rogue truck.

*****

A Jan. 2025 interim report by the Texas Senate Higher Education Subcommittee alleged that: “Following the political unrest in the summer of 2020, a small group of extremists sought to seize the opportunity to transform public institutions – with the goal of reshaping Texas universities into institutions focused on social justice and equality of outcome” (p. 9). And this is the dark alchemy of how one Texas Senate interim report, signed by three members of a five member subcommittee, came to rebrand June 2020 as a time of “political unrest” and to infer that a gathering at that time of faculty, staff, vice presidents, and the president of UT Austin was but “a small group of extremists.”

The Texas Senate subcommittee interim report of 2025 went on to stipulate that “several legislators received reports from constituents and stakeholders across the state detailing curriculum and course content related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) throughout Texas public institutions.” The lawmakers could have pointed out that the law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus (SB 17) specifically protected classroom teaching. However, in the eyes of the Senate Interim Subcommittee lawmakers, reports about course content were judged to evidence unseemly disrespect for their work: “Though this does not explicitly violate the letter of the law, it contradicts its spirit and does not reflect the expectations of Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” (p. 33).

SB 37 was therefore crafted in 2025 to compel a new “spirit” of compliance in Texas Higher Education. The spirit of the ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion mandated by SB 17 was not being fully assimilated throughout Texas college classrooms. Faculty council meetings like the ones that happened in June 2020 or Valentine’s Day 2022 would not happen again if trustees, appointed by the governor, could be empowered to more closely supervise the selection of presidents, provosts, and deans; if, in turn, presidents could be empowered to appoint a significant share of faculty council members along with all three of their presiding officers; and if, finally, presidents and provosts would be given sole authority to remove faculty council members from their seats.

SB 37 ensures that a spirit of uncontradicted compliance shall emanate from the high source of the Texas Governor’s office down through faculty councils and into the entire curriculum of Texas higher education, fully satisfying what the Senate Subcommittee Interim Triumverate characterized as “the expectations of Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” alike.

*****

Two years after the George Floyd moment, and eight months after the Texas Governor signed the ban against “critical race theory” in public schools, the Valentine’s Day resolution of 2022 was a conscious attempt to rescue civil rights and academic freedom from the disaster that threatens them today. The resolution was debated in an open meeting, where dissent was duly reported in the minutes.

An associate professor of Finance accused the council of requiring “adherence to critical race theory….  and now you are complaining about this hypothetical threat that there might be a ban.” He complained that the council resolution did not make mention of the Chicago Statement or the Kelven Report which encouraged institutions to remain neutral and abstain from “declaring a collective opinion on political and social issues” (goacta.org). Minutes report that his dissent concluded with the declaration that the legislature “did not give you autonomy so you could turn our school into a social justice indoctrination camp. They absolutely should be monitoring this.” Two responses are recorded in the minutes.

A professor of Human Development and Family Science argued that the council resolution did not compel faculty to take any particular positions regarding race or gender theory, but “those people who do research on these areas, historians who have been studying the historical impacts of racism, they have the expertise … and they should have the right to be able to speak about it.”

And a professor who served on the drafting committee argued that the resolution received unanimous support from the committee “after considerable work and thought and interaction with people of other universities.” Citing the great American rule of resistance, that “we have all got to hang together or we will all hang separately,” the professor of Integrative Biology warned that: “It is critical race theory today. It is going to be … climate change or evolution tomorrow, so it affects all of us.” Minutes reflect that the resolution passed “by majority vote: forty-three in favor, five against, and three abstaining” (doc. 19152).

*****

A moral cyclone of backlash is howling to punish Texas faculty for their so-called “wokeness.” When the House Higher Education Committee heard testimony regarding the anti-tenure bill (SB 18) in 2023, long hours produced not a single witness in its favor. Not one. Yet the committee approved the bill that the Lt. Governor now brags about passing because it significantly weakens tenure.

Similarly, this year, the Texas AAUP counts about three witnesses speaking for SB 37, but 300 witnesses against, a ratio of 100-to-one “Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” pleading with Texas politicians that “educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning” in Texas. But once again, the fix was in, the railroad operation blared full steam ahead, and the bill was adopted by the committee along party lines, with Republicans in control.

Finally, under the afternoon light of a simmering Texas sun, on May 24, 2025, when SB 37 was being debated in the Texas House of Representatives, Republicans made it a point to drown out the debate under a crescendo of bar car chatter. The chair of the House tried to gavel them to order. The Democrat who held the floor yelled “shut up!” But the House Republicans, who are on record for mandating orderly classrooms in public schools, could not be bothered to stop talking over the debate.

Voices of faculty and their friends in Texas have been scattered against shrill winds of power. Barring a miracle of conscience, the Lt. Governor’s kneecap campaign will be soon visiting a Texas campus near you. Don’t get caught out supporting civil rights, academic freedom, or social justice. And be sure to get your faculty council opinions realigned with the ruling party in Texas, or there will be hell to pay.

BTW: When I think of Feb. 14 I think of the birthday of Frederick Douglass, author of the term “moral cyclone” who was born into bondage as the property of his father. The term “moral cyclone” is an unexaggerated metaphor for the way Texas faculty will soon be reborn as an intellectual labor force in service to Texas politicians who are eager to crack their power whips against any professor “foolish” enough to “stand firm” against the brazen dictates of a newly revised Texas Education Code. Altogether, Feb. 14th has become a mixed-up metaphor for the passion that joins the love of wisdom to the struggle for a democratic outcome, and only by the grace of God will it turn out differently this year than it did for Socrates back when.

*****

NOTE: SB 37 provisions described above reflect the latest updates reported in the House Higher Education Committee Substitute as of press time.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Moses.

When you think of Feb. 14 do you think of Valentine’s Day? On Feb. 14, 2022, the University of Texas at Austin Faculty Council adopted a fateful resolution affirming that “educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning” (doc. 19141). Little did they realize that their forthright declaration of a principle old as Plato would be waved around like a bloody shirt. Republican politicians went hunting for Socrates.

Three years later, on Apr. 15, 2025, the Lt. Governor of Texas was still denouncing the “rogue faculty senate at the University of Texas” because it had “foolishly questioned the Texas Legislature’s authority over higher education” (ltgov.texas.gov).

But before we get into the story of the Valentine’s Day resolution or how it is being torched by Republican politicians, it is important to note that the Lt. Governor’s 2025 attack on the 2022 resolution commits the ethical fallacy of mistaking ought for is, right for might.

The Valentine’s Day resolution was an argument about what should be done: politicians should not assert authority over teaching, and faculty should be expected to “stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority.” The Lt. Governor, on the other hand, rebuked the faculty council for questioning a fact that they did not question: “the Texas legislature’s authority over higher education.”

Why would the UT-Austin Faculty Council adopt a long argument that politicians should not interfere in college teaching if the council was assuming that politicians did not have the power to interfere? In fact, as we will see, the UT-Austin Faculty Council had very good reasons to believe that the legislature was going to try to interfere with faculty scholarship and teaching, as happened soon enough.

Mature wisdom lies on the side of the faculty in this preview debate. It makes little sense to argue that politicians should tell college faculty what to teach or how to teach it. The UT-Austin faculty were right to declare that they would “stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority.” Little did they know that their Valentine’s Day resolution would serve as a pretext to firehose faculty and douse the flames of civil rights progress, not only at their campus, but all across their great state.

*****

With about one week left to go before the end of the 2025 regular session, the Texas Legislature is preparing to join the Lt. Governor’s call to continue punishing faculty and their councils (also known as senates). Determined to drill Texas faculty in lessons they will not be able to “stand firm against,” the Lt. Governor in his capacity as president of the Texas Senate, is urging passage of Senate Bill 37, a law that would abolish faculty councils as we know them by Sept. 1.

The Lt. Governor is already boasting credit for “significantly weakened tenure” in Texas, following the passage of SB 18 in 2023. He counts the attack on tenure as part of “the largest pushback against wokeness in higher education in U.S. history,” an offensive that also included the passage of SB 17 in 2023 that relentlessly banned diversity, equity, and inclusion activities on campus.

Now he wants to crush faculty governance, too. In place of existing councils elected by faculty, SB 37 would require college presidents to appoint at least one member to the council from each college or school and then name the primary officers of the council (“a presiding officer, associate presiding officer, and secretary from the members.”)

Furthermore, among more than 20 pages of provisions in SB 37, college trustees will newly be required to “approve or deny the hiring of” deans or chief academic officers (commonly known as provosts). Collegial norms of shared governance usually treat the position of dean or provost as a matter for college presidents to decide “with the advice of, and in consultation with, the appropriate faculty” (AAUP Redbook 11^th 119).

Under SB 37’s takeover of faculty councils, the provost, in turn, would be charged with identifying council members who are guilty of “misconduct,” and if the president agrees with the provost, a faculty council member shall be summarily removed from the council.

The general effect of SB 37 is to increase the authority of politically appointed trustees into spheres of academic operations so that influence flows more smoothly from the governor’s desk. Recent revisions to the bill would even require at least two trustees to serve on presidential search committees. Furthermore, the governor would appoint a statewide higher ed ombudsman who will take complaints, conduct investigations, and refer cases to the state auditor or legislature, including recommendations to withhold funding.

Among the many professional indignities that SB 37 will inflict upon faculty across Texas is the provision that strikes their right to serve on faculty grievance reviews. The president and provost will then have sole authority over faculty grievances. Prohibiting faculty representation during grievance reviews contradicts professional standards of the American Association of University Professors, which assumes the existence of faculty grievance committees, and which states that “In collegial work environments, due process includes an opportunity for peer participation in the review process” (AAUP Redbook 11th 215).

According to the Lt. Governor, the extreme undoing of faculty shared governance in Texas is necessary because “senates must have a clearly defined role at our universities.” What role is that? According to the Lt. Governor, “faculty senates generally serve a purpose and help Boards of Regents make critical decisions impacting university students in Texas.” But apparently, this role does not include issuing Valentine’s Day resolutions which assert faculty responsibility for teaching or that declare faculty resistance against external pressure in the classroom.

Once again, mature wisdom would counsel the Lt. Governor that he is correct to say that “senates must have a clearly defined role.” However, there is a critical flaw in his selection of the Senate that is out of bounds. And he still has time in the coming week to reign in the senate that is running amok.

*****

Historical tragedies like SB 37 have backstories. In his Apology, Socrates explained to the jury how the accusations against him resulted from long simmering attitudes about his vocation and political choices. Likewise, behind the world-historical clampdown now being imposed on Texas college campuses, we find grudges against civil rights and academic freedom that have been ripening for years.

When the Valentine’s Day resolution of the UT-Austin Faculty Council publicly affirmed “the rights and academic freedom of faculty to design courses, curriculum, and pedagogy, and to conduct related scholarly research,” they were hoping to immunize their community against political attacks. “More specifically,” the 2022 resolution warned that “state legislative proposals seeking to limit teaching and discussions of racism and related issues have been proposed and enacted in several states, including Texas.” Mindful of attacks already underway, the resolution affirmed “the fundamental rights of faculty to academic freedom in its broadest sense, inclusive of research and teaching of race and gender theory” (doc. 19141).

The Valentine’s Day resolution was presented to the council by the Pharmacy professor who chaired the faculty Committee of Counsel on Academic Freedom and Responsibility that drafted the resolution. Minutes of the meeting report that the resolution was “co-sponsored and endorsed by the University Faculty Gender Equity Council (UFGEC), the Council for LGBTQ+ Access, Equity, and Inclusion (Q+AEI), the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity, and the Faculty Council Executive Committee” (doc. 19152).

Broad outlines of the UT faculty resolution followed a “Template for Academic Freedom” that was published in 2021 by the American Association of University Professors, PEN, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and then endorsed and adopted by numerous reputable groups and faculty senates, all of whom were concerned about growing right-wing attacks on academic freedom.

The “Template Academic Senate Resolution,” finalized on Sept. 21, 2021, and posted to Google Docs, made an attempt to stand fast against the swift backlash that was sweeping the nation following the global protests against the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The Texas legislature led the backlash to closely monitor what could or could not be taught about racism in America. When the Texas Governor signed HB 3979 on June 15, 2021, he issued a terse signing statement that called the bill “a strong move to abolish critical race theory in Texas.” He vowed that “more must be done,” and he promised to add the issue to the summer’s special session agenda (gov.texas.gov).

*****

One year to the day before the Texas Governor signed the bill banning what he called “critical race theory” in public schools, and two years before the Valentine’s Day resolution, the UT-Austin Faculty Council adopted an updated statement on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Passed unanimously by the 55 voting members present, the refreshed statement pledged “to provide equitable access and inclusion in all our activities” (doc. 18263). Although the language had been approved by the council’s executive committee on May 15, 2020, ten days before the murder of Houston Native Son George Floyd, the widescale protests of June 2020 made the timing seem momentous.

Minutes of the June 15, 2020, faculty council meeting are worth quoting at length, because, as the book of Proverbs advises, “let the wise listen and add to their learning” (Prov. 1:5). The council minutes presented below have been edited to remove personal names, just as we have done with the Governor and Lt. Governor above:

The University President discussed racial equity, diversity, and inclusion in the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many other Black people. Central leadership has put out a statement and are meeting with the various groups that have made requests for action, including student athletes, other student groups, the Precursors, and other alumni groups. The President said, “I want to listen to them and hear what they’re feeling, what they’re seeing, what their priorities are, and work together…on our set of actions.” He has been working with the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE) to reconsider the University’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan. Additionally, they have been working with the Vice Provost for Diversity and the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost on faculty diversity, and the President and Provost are “nearing adoption of the plan that was brought forward.” Recent reports from the Campus Contextualization Committee will inform how they think about physical aspects of the campus. The President shared a conversation he had with a Black student leader who described “all the little ways that it was difficult to feel like she fully belonged.” A minority student taking a campus tour pulled her aside to ask, “What’s it really like here at UT?” Her response: “It’s really hard, but it’s worth it.” The President said his exchange with that Black student leader “hit me,” and he thought “we can do better” by recruiting diverse talent, making sure they enjoy their UT Austin experience, and ensuring they feel empowered to contribute.

The Faculty Council Chair Elect thanked the many participants involved in revising the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement, which was then presented by a Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies. The Professor said that, in 2018, UT Austin adopted a diversity statement for the first time, but a number of constituencies on campus felt the statement was “not particularly inclusive.” The new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement addresses the issue of inclusivity in the second paragraph: “The University is dedicated to attracting highly qualified students, faculty, and staff of all races, ethnicities, peoples, nationalities, religious backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, socioeconomic statuses, disabilities and health histories regardless of their marital, parental, age, veteran, or citizenship status.” A Professor of English proposed an amendment to change “provide” to “providing” in the first sentence, which the FCEC accepted.

A Professor of Classics shared the story of James Reeb, a Protestant minister killed in Selma, who “believed that it was impossible for White people who were in comfortable living situations to do anything for the Black minorities while still living where they were living.” He related this insight to “what we’re doing here with this diversity statement,” adding that the statement “will only have meaning if the resources and the commitment are there to really do something.” He added that the percentage of Black students at UT Austin “never varies from somewhere around 4 percent in a state where there are 13 percent African Americans.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies remarked that “only about 42 percent of the student population is White,” but agreed that Professor of Classic’s “basic observation is absolutely correct.” He asked, “Why hasn’t the White majority [at UT Austin] changed things so that…we don’t have the problems that we have? I think it’s a challenge for all of us.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies agreed that more action is necessary, but reasoned that the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement would set goals, aspirations, and principles to which UT Austin could be held. A Senior Lecturer in Management seconded the Professor of Classic’s concern that a new diversity statement on its own would not solve the problem. He said, “If we’re going to do something, we have to make a commitment to being able to recruit in the marketplace, and the marketplace is more competitive than we’ve ever seen.”

A Clinical Professor from the School of Law suggested that the word “opportunities,” be switched to “access” since the phrase “equal opportunities” in terms of education has come to stand for the narrow hypothesis that students can simply be given a “level starting place” and then “the rest is just…so-called meritocracy.” The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies said he would be in favor of changing the wording. Chair of Staff Council and Executive Assistant for the McDonald Observatory said calling UT Austin a “campus” in the last sentence risks overlooking colleagues who work in physical areas other than the 40 Acres. The Faculty Council Chair responded that, from one perspective, “campus is everything.”

An Associate Professor from the School of Design and Creative Technologies suggested changing “on a diverse campus” to “at a diverse University” to address the concern about excluding parts of UT Austin not within the 40 Acres. She also proposed that the last sentence read “learning and working on a diverse campus” instead of “learning on a diverse campus” to emphasize the important role played by staff. The Faculty Council Chair said the 2018 diversity statement focused on students, but the new statement has been expanded to explicitly include staff and facility. The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies supported changing the wording. The Faculty Council Chair noted that “this is not the final version”; it will be forwarded to “many, many other groups and administration offices” after being voted on by Faculty Council.

The Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies closed by saying, “coming together as a University community around these kinds of commitments and statements is particularly important at this time.”

The Faculty Council unanimously approved the proposed new UT Austin Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement. (Doc. 18300)

The wide representation of faculty, staff, and administration voices resonated with a national awakening that was rolling across the world in June of 2020. Language of the resolution stipulated that “Final approval resides with the President” (doc. 18263). Momentum of the 2020 faculty council meeting is worth remembering, the way we cherish the last few seconds of life and love before the family van gets smashed by a rogue truck.

*****

A Jan. 2025 interim report by the Texas Senate Higher Education Subcommittee alleged that: “Following the political unrest in the summer of 2020, a small group of extremists sought to seize the opportunity to transform public institutions – with the goal of reshaping Texas universities into institutions focused on social justice and equality of outcome” (p. 9). And this is the dark alchemy of how one Texas Senate interim report, signed by three members of a five member subcommittee, came to rebrand June 2020 as a time of “political unrest” and to infer that a gathering at that time of faculty, staff, vice presidents, and the president of UT Austin was but “a small group of extremists.”

The Texas Senate subcommittee interim report of 2025 went on to stipulate that “several legislators received reports from constituents and stakeholders across the state detailing curriculum and course content related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) throughout Texas public institutions.” The lawmakers could have pointed out that the law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus (SB 17) specifically protected classroom teaching. However, in the eyes of the Senate Interim Subcommittee lawmakers, reports about course content were judged to evidence unseemly disrespect for their work: “Though this does not explicitly violate the letter of the law, it contradicts its spirit and does not reflect the expectations of Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” (p. 33).

SB 37 was therefore crafted in 2025 to compel a new “spirit” of compliance in Texas Higher Education. The spirit of the ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion mandated by SB 17 was not being fully assimilated throughout Texas college classrooms. Faculty council meetings like the ones that happened in June 2020 or Valentine’s Day 2022 would not happen again if trustees, appointed by the governor, could be empowered to more closely supervise the selection of presidents, provosts, and deans; if, in turn, presidents could be empowered to appoint a significant share of faculty council members along with all three of their presiding officers; and if, finally, presidents and provosts would be given sole authority to remove faculty council members from their seats.

SB 37 ensures that a spirit of uncontradicted compliance shall emanate from the high source of the Texas Governor’s office down through faculty councils and into the entire curriculum of Texas higher education, fully satisfying what the Senate Subcommittee Interim Triumverate characterized as “the expectations of Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” alike.

*****

Two years after the George Floyd moment, and eight months after the Texas Governor signed the ban against “critical race theory” in public schools, the Valentine’s Day resolution of 2022 was a conscious attempt to rescue civil rights and academic freedom from the disaster that threatens them today. The resolution was debated in an open meeting, where dissent was duly reported in the minutes.

An associate professor of Finance accused the council of requiring “adherence to critical race theory….  and now you are complaining about this hypothetical threat that there might be a ban.” He complained that the council resolution did not make mention of the Chicago Statement or the Kelven Report which encouraged institutions to remain neutral and abstain from “declaring a collective opinion on political and social issues” (goacta.org). Minutes report that his dissent concluded with the declaration that the legislature “did not give you autonomy so you could turn our school into a social justice indoctrination camp. They absolutely should be monitoring this.” Two responses are recorded in the minutes.

A professor of Human Development and Family Science argued that the council resolution did not compel faculty to take any particular positions regarding race or gender theory, but “those people who do research on these areas, historians who have been studying the historical impacts of racism, they have the expertise … and they should have the right to be able to speak about it.”

And a professor who served on the drafting committee argued that the resolution received unanimous support from the committee “after considerable work and thought and interaction with people of other universities.” Citing the great American rule of resistance, that “we have all got to hang together or we will all hang separately,” the professor of Integrative Biology warned that: “It is critical race theory today. It is going to be … climate change or evolution tomorrow, so it affects all of us.” Minutes reflect that the resolution passed “by majority vote: forty-three in favor, five against, and three abstaining” (doc. 19152).

*****

A moral cyclone of backlash is howling to punish Texas faculty for their so-called “wokeness.” When the House Higher Education Committee heard testimony regarding the anti-tenure bill (SB 18) in 2023, long hours produced not a single witness in its favor. Not one. Yet the committee approved the bill that the Lt. Governor now brags about passing because it significantly weakens tenure.

Similarly, this year, the Texas AAUP counts about three witnesses speaking for SB 37, but 300 witnesses against, a ratio of 100-to-one “Texas tuition-payers and taxpayers” pleading with Texas politicians that “educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning” in Texas. But once again, the fix was in, the railroad operation blared full steam ahead, and the bill was adopted by the committee along party lines, with Republicans in control.

Finally, under the afternoon light of a simmering Texas sun, on May 24, 2025, when SB 37 was being debated in the Texas House of Representatives, Republicans made it a point to drown out the debate under a crescendo of bar car chatter. The chair of the House tried to gavel them to order. The Democrat who held the floor yelled “shut up!” But the House Republicans, who are on record for mandating orderly classrooms in public schools, could not be bothered to stop talking over the debate.

Voices of faculty and their friends in Texas have been scattered against shrill winds of power. Barring a miracle of conscience, the Lt. Governor’s kneecap campaign will be soon visiting a Texas campus near you. Don’t get caught out supporting civil rights, academic freedom, or social justice. And be sure to get your faculty council opinions realigned with the ruling party in Texas, or there will be hell to pay.

BTW: When I think of Feb. 14 I think of the birthday of Frederick Douglass, author of the term “moral cyclone” who was born into bondage as the property of his father. The term “moral cyclone” is an unexaggerated metaphor for the way Texas faculty will soon be reborn as an intellectual labor force in service to Texas politicians who are eager to crack their power whips against any professor “foolish” enough to “stand firm” against the brazen dictates of a newly revised Texas Education Code. Altogether, Feb. 14th has become a mixed-up metaphor for the passion that joins the love of wisdom to the struggle for a democratic outcome, and only by the grace of God will it turn out differently this year than it did for Socrates back when.

*****

NOTE: SB 37 provisions described above reflect the latest updates reported in the House Higher Education Committee Substitute as of press time.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Moses.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t education reform. It’s economic sabotage by design, not accident, as evidenced by the billion-dollar diversion from the public to the private sector with no public oversight. It’s a calculated attempt to shrink public institutions and turn education into a product, reserved for those who can already afford access. Despite the confetti statements from the Governor’s office, no, this is not a win for “parent choice.” It’s a win for privatization, and Texans—especially those in rural, immigrant, and working-class communities—will be paying the price.

Vouchers Passed, but Who’s Buying?

SB2 establishes a $1 billion Education Savings Account (ESA) program, giving qualifying families about $10,000 yearly to cover private school tuition, homeschool costs, transportation, textbooks, and therapy. On paper, it’s being sold as a lifeline for underserved students, but let’s not get distracted by the branding.

That $10,000 doesn’t come close to covering the actual cost of elite private schools in Texas, which average more than $11,000 annually and climb much higher in urban centers. More importantly, private schools participating in the ESA program aren’t required to accept anyone. They can—and will—cherry-pick their enrollees. That means students with disabilities, discipline histories, or families who can’t foot the rest of the bill will be left behind. Unlike public schools, these private institutions don’t have to abide by federal protections like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

To top it off, SB2 bars undocumented students from participating altogether. That’s right—while public schools remain constitutionally obligated to educate all students, the state is now writing checks that explicitly exclude immigrant families. So much for “choice.”

Rural Reality Check 

Take it from Hazel, a Students Organized for a Real Shot (SORS) organizer and student in rural North Texas: “There’s no ‘choice’ where I live. My public school is the only school. And now they want to take money from it?”

That’s the reality for thousands of families across Texas. Public schools in small towns aren’t just classrooms—they’re lifelines. They’re often the largest employers, food hubs, and mental health support systems in the entire community. Gutting them doesn’t create opportunity. It hollows out the very infrastructure that keeps these places alive.

Some conservatives have recognized this contradiction. Though when it came time to vote, only two Republicans, former House Speaker Dade Phelan and Rep. Gary VanDeaver, dared to oppose SB2. The rest folded under pressure from Governor Abbott and the powerful voucher machine which includes groups like the American Federation for Children and Texas-based mega-donors (like Dick Uihlein and Jeff Yass) who’ve spent millions reshaping the Legislature through targeted primary campaigns. Make no mistake: This wasn’t just a policy fight. It was a hostile takeover.

What About Public Schools?

While many lawmakers were busy high-fiving over vouchers, public schools continued to drown under outdated funding formulas and chronic disinvestment. Texas still ranks in the bottom third of states for per-pupil spending, and even after the Legislature approved a $7.7 billion education package through House Bill 2, many districts are still facing budget shortfalls and teacher shortages.

Sure, HB2 raises the basic allotment from $6,160 to $6,555, and ties future increases to property value growth. But educators on the ground know it’s not enough. The funding doesn’t account for years of inflation or meet the rising costs of special education, staffing, and school maintenance. It’s a start, but it’s far from transformative, and lawmakers knew that when they passed it.

Meanwhile, teachers continue to leave the profession in staggering numbers. According to the Texas American Federation of Teachers, more than 66 percent considered quitting in 2022. Instead of offering competitive salaries or mental health support, this Legislature gave them censorship bills like Senate Bill 13, which would authorize politically-appointed parents to make sweeping decisionsabout what books students will be able to find in their school libraries, coupled with gestapo-like legal action against teachers deemed to have violated Texas state law by “teaching woke critical race theory.” Because nothing says “thank you for your service” quite like criminalizing your curriculum.

Manufactured Crisis, Manufactured Choice

First, they failed to fund us. Then, they blamed us for failing.

That’s the playbook. The state basic allotment per pupil hasn’t budged since 2019, starving school districts of resources. Yet when STAAR test scores dip, schools are cast as the problem, and the Texas Education Agency swoops in with state-mandated takeovers. That’s the manufactured crisis. Lawmakers are selling “choice” as the solution, but it’s a trapdoor, not a lifeline.

Jakiyla, a Students Organized for a Real Shot (SORS) Dallas-Fort Worth area organizer, noted, “After COVID, our schools were already struggling. And now with this voucher bill, we’re being told we don’t even deserve recovery. We’re just collateral damage in someone else’s agenda.” Jakiyla’s words speak to what countless students across Texas are feeling. Let’s not pretend vouchers are happening in a vacuum. They’re part of a broader campaign to destabilize and delegitimize public education.

Since 2021, Texas has passed multiple laws banning so-called “divisive topics,” cracked down on libraries, and launched attacks on curriculum deemed too inclusive. The state even flirted with legislation this session that would allow politicians to micromanage schoolbook collections—because apparently, To Kill a Mockingbird is a bigger threat than poverty or crumbling campuses.

This isn’t about helping kids. It’s about consolidating power and controlling what students learn and how they learn it. It’s about shifting accountability away from the public and into the hands of private actors with no obligation to serve all students, uphold civil rights, or even report outcomes.

What Happens After Sine Die?

As we approach June 2, the focus will shift to the implementation of these programs, legal challenges to SB2’s more extreme provisions (like its citizenship clause), and the behind-closed-doors conference committee process to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill. Expect behind-closed-door negotiations over who gets priority for vouchers, what oversight looks like, and how funding rules may shift over time. Generally, expect more spin, but the facts don’t lie. Texas educates more than 5.4 million public school students, and each one deserves a fully funded, fully staffed, censorship-free education. That’s not some radical demand —it’s a moral and constitutional imperative.

Yet, with the passage of SB2, the Legislature made a choice to invest in exclusion instead of equity and privatization instead of the public good.

This Is How We Fight Back

This legislative session was billed as a turning point—a chance to “reinvest in Texas kids.” Instead, lawmakers handed our future over to lobbyists and political donors, making it clear that public schools are not their priority. Unless we organize, speak out, and hold them accountable, this billion-dollar heist will be just the beginning.

Charter expansions are next. Teacher “accountability” bills are on the horizon. More manufactured outrage over library and classroom content is guaranteed. The goal isn’t excellence—it’s control.

But here’s what they don’t expect: resistance. From rural towns to big cities, from high schoolers to retired educators, Texans are waking up. We know what’s being taken from us. And we’re not going quiet.

If Texas has taught us anything, it’s that underdogs don’t stay quiet—and when we rise, we raise hell, and we’re just getting started.

This article originally appeared on https://www.projectcensored.org/texas-billion-heist-public-education/

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Da’Taeveyon Daniels.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Texas lawmakers are pushing to impose steep penalties on local governments that don’t post campaign finance reports online, after an investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found some school districts weren’t doing so.

The initial posting requirements, designed to make election spending more transparent, went into effect nearly two years ago. Most of the school district leaders said they had no idea they were out of compliance until the newsrooms contacted them. Even after many districts uploaded whatever documentation they had on file for their trustee elections, reports were still missing because candidates hadn’t turned them in or the schools lost them.

“I was surprised and disappointed,” said Republican state Rep. Carl Tepper, who authored the online posting requirement. “I did realize that we didn’t really put any teeth into the bill.”

Tepper is aiming to correct that with a new bill this legislative session. He cited the newsrooms’ findings in a written explanation of why the state needs to implement greater enforcement.

The measure would require the Texas Ethics Commission, the agency that enforces the state’s election laws, to monitor thousands of local governments’ websites across the state and to notify them if any campaign finance reports are missing. If those government agencies do not upload the records that candidates have turned in within 30 days of the state’s notice, the commission can fine them up to $2,500 every day until they comply.

The proposed measure also recommends the state allot funding for the ethics commission to hire two additional staff members, whose job would be to monitor all local government entities that hold public elections in the state’s 254 counties and roughly 1,200 cities and towns. The newsrooms previously found the agency did not have any staff dedicated to enforcing compliance in local elections and, instead, investigated missing or late reports only when it received a tip.

The bill has cleared the Texas House but still needs approval from the Senate by May 28 if it has a chance of becoming law.

The superintendent of Galveston Independent School District, which was among those that ProPublica and the Tribune found hadn’t posted any campaign finance reports online last year, said the measure would help schools like his.

“I do like the suggestion of a 30-day period to achieve compliance after an issue is reported,” Matthew Neighbors said of the new proposal in an emailed statement. “Our district, for example, had no objections to posting the necessary campaign information once our new employees were aware of the requirements.”

Kelly Rasti, the associate executive director of governmental relations for the Texas Association of School Boards, said districts do not flout the law intentionally. Rasti said the employees tasked with handling school board election documentation are not always well versed in the state’s regulations but that the association plans to provide additional resources later this year.

District employees are accustomed to handling a plethora of education-related paperwork and reporting requirements imposed by the state. But “elections are just different, and they seem to have ever-evolving laws and rules associated with them,” Rasti said.

Notably, Tepper’s bill would not directly require the ethics commission to penalize or follow up with candidates who fail to turn in their reports. He initially included a provision in his bill that would make candidates ineligible to run for office if they didn’t file those records, even if they won an election. He told the newsrooms that he cut the penalty after realizing the logistical challenges it might present.

That means the ethics commission must still decide whether to investigate and fine any of the candidates and officeholders for the state’s estimated 22,000 local elected positions should they miss a filing. By contrast, candidates who run for statewide office are automatically fined by the commission if they don’t make a deadline.

Tepper’s ultimate goal is to create a unified system in which the ethics commission compiles campaign finance records for state and local candidates in one central database, rather than leaving local filings scattered across thousands of city, county and school district government websites. The Republican lawmaker withdrew his proposal to create such a system in 2023 after the commission estimated it would cost $20 million, but he told the newsrooms that he hopes to gain enough support to make that investment next session, in 2027.

For now, he sees his proposal as a necessary advance.

“I’m a big believer in incrementalism,” said Tepper. “This is another step toward better enforcement.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

The post Dispatch from Texas: The Billion-Dollar Heist of Public Education​ appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

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Ronald Carver was skeptical when his investment adviser first tried to sell him on an “ugly houses” investment opportunity eight years ago. But once the Texas retiree heard the details, it seemed like a no-lose situation.

Carver would lend money to Charles Carrier, owner of Dallas-based C&C Residential Properties, a high-producing franchise in the HomeVestors of America house-flipping chain known for its ubiquitous “We Buy Ugly Houses” advertisements. The business would then use the dollars to purchase properties in which Carver would receive an ownership stake securing his investment and an annual return of 9%, paid in monthly installments.

“Worst case, I would end up with a property worth more than what the loan was,” Carver said of the pitch.

Carver started with a $115,000 loan in 2017. And sure enough, the interest payments arrived each month.

He had worked three decades at a nuclear power plant, and retired without a pension and before he could collect Social Security. He and his wife lived off the investment income.

The deal seemed so good, Carver talked his elderly father into investing, starting with $50,000. As the monthly checks arrived as promised, both men increased their investments. By 2024, Carver estimates they had about $700,000 invested with Carrier.

Then, last fall, the checks stopped. The money Carver and his father had invested was gone.

Carrier is accused of orchestrating a yearslong Ponzi scheme, bilking tens of millions of dollars from scores of investors, according to multiple lawsuits and interviews with people who said they lost money. The financial wreckage is strewn across Texas, having swept up both wealthy investors and older people with modest incomes who dug into retirement savings on the advice of the same investment advisor used by Carver.

As early as 2020, Carrier had begun taking out multiple loans on individual properties — some of which he never owned. In cases reviewed by ProPublica, as many as five notes were recorded against a single property, far exceeding the property’s value. Carrier also failed to properly record many deeds that were supposed to secure the loans, accumulating more debt than he could ever repay while investors remained unaware they had no collateral for their investments.

“It’s incalculable the amount of damage this guy did,” said one investor who lost about $1 million and asked not to be named to avoid embarrassment and not to interfere with a criminal investigation into Carrier’s scheme. “He’s ruined some lives.”

Carrier, who declined an interview request, said in a brief phone conversation that he’s not trying to avoid responsibility for the harm he caused. “When this thing finally stopped, it was completely driven by me saying ‘enough’ and going to the people and saying, ‘Here’s the mess I’ve created,’” he said. “This is a mess created by me.”

Investors also blame HomeVestors. For nearly two decades, Carrier used the company’s carefully cultivated brand as the “largest homebuyer in the United States” to gain investors’ trust. They accuse HomeVestors of failing to provide oversight that could have prevented the fraud, despite claiming to hold its franchises accountable for best business practices. In its answers to their lawsuits, HomeVestors has denied responsibility for Carrier’s actions, claiming its franchises are independently operated, despite earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from Carrier’s business.

HomeVestors revoked Carrier’s franchise on Oct. 24, about the time interest payments stopped arriving in investors’ accounts. The company said it had received a tip on its ethics hotline — created in 2023, after ProPublica detailed predatory buying practices by multiple franchises. When confronted by HomeVestors, Carrier admitted that “he and his business had entered into debts that they could not pay,” a HomeVestors spokesperson said. The company reported him to the FBI. In May, HomeVestors filed suit against Carrier for trademark infringement and for not indemnifying it against these lawsuits.

“We take all allegations of misconduct incredibly seriously as demonstrated by our decisive action,” the spokesperson said. “It is truly disheartening for us that anyone who lent Mr. Carrier money was misled or harmed by his alleged fraudulent activity.”

Now, Carrier is under investigation by the Department of Justice, according to a recording of an April call between the lead prosecutor and potential victims. (The FBI and DOJ declined to comment.) A judge in one of the many lawsuits against Carrier has deemed allegations of fraudulent loans to be true because Carrier never answered the complaint. And the investors are in a race with one another to recoup even a small amount of what they lost, by either waiting for the DOJ to pay restitution, suing Carrier or trying to foreclose on properties still left in his portfolio.

Just months after learning they had lost all of their investments, and before any restitution could be paid, Carver’s father died.

In 2005, Carrier opened a HomeVestors franchise in Dallas, where HomeVestors is headquartered. In the early days, records show, he relied on a handful of institutional lenders to finance his house purchases. Soon, the Wharton School of Business MBA who had come to house-flipping following a career at Pepsi and a food service equipment company, started cultivating his wealthy friends for loans.

Carrier didn’t fit any stereotype of a glad-handing huckster with a bad loan to sell. Those who knew him describe him as a serious person, “cordial but very direct.” He always had files in front of him, constantly focusing on his business. It made him seem trustworthy, one investor said.

At HomeVestors, he was held up as a model franchise operator. C&C Residential Properties routinely made the top volume and top closer lists and was even named franchise of the year. Carrier led training sessions at company conferences and described his business as “the largest and most successful HomeVestors franchise in the United States” — a claim that remained on the website for Carrier’s business through early May.

“Chas Carrier, for maybe 15 years, was one of the golden boys at HomeVestors,” said Ben Ahern, who over two decades worked for a HomeVestors franchise and later owned one before leaving the company in 2021. “Internally, it was like, ‘Do whatever Chas Carrier’s doing.’”

It isn’t unusual for HomeVestors franchises to rely on private investors to finance their house-flipping. Banks aren’t typically interested in house-flipping loans, which are often short-term and riskier than a standard mortgage. Because of that risk, investors who lend to house-flippers earn a substantially higher return.

To further minimize their risk and ensure they had a legitimate ownership stake in the house, savvy investors would verify the transaction with an independent title company to research whether there were other liens against the property and then record the deed with the county recorder. But many of Carrier’s investors, after years of consistent payments led them to trust him, let Carrier handle recording the deeds and did not confirm that he’d done so.

As Carrier grew his business, he began relying more on individual investors. ProPublica identified through public records at least 124 people who have lent money to Carrier since 2009. Not all of them have lost money.

Carrier’s search for new investors was aided by Robert Welborn, an investment adviser in Granbury, Texas, southwest of Dallas. Welborn had built a network of clients in Granbury, a city of about 12,000 people on the Brazos River, through church, friendships and referrals. Many of his clients were older and had modest nest eggs, which Welborn said were “well diversified.” He said he built a relationship with Carrier in 2012, after researching his background for about two months. That Carrier was a successful franchisee lent him credibility, Welborn said.

“I never imagined the No. 1 franchisee with a fast-growing franchise company, HomeVestors,” would defraud investors, he said.

At the time, Welborn also solicited new investors with invitations to steak dinners where they would hear his pitch. An investment in Carrier’s business, according to Welborn’s sales material, which also featured the HomeVestors caveman mascot, Ug, was both lucrative and secure. “Your investment is protected,” the sales material assured potential clients.

For loans he sent Carrier’s way, Welborn earned a 2% commission, he said. Welborn had at least two dozen clients who invested with Carrier, most of whom had multiple loans to him, according to a public records search. He would not comment on how many of his clients invested with Carrier.

Many investors were happy for years — in some cases, more than a decade. The interest payments came in like clockwork. A lot of Welborns’ clients relied on the payments for retirement income.

“I was real tickled with it,” said Tom Walls, 85, who said he lost $50,000 of his retirement savings by investing with Carrier.

Some investors noticed small problems — a payment that arrived a few days late or an error on the paperwork to secure the loan. But Carrier always fixed the problems promptly, investors said.

“When you have this 10-year continuous, pleasant and mutually beneficial relationship, you build up a great deal of trust,” said John Moses, who estimates he lost more than $1 million to Carrier.

Looking back, the investors who spoke with ProPublica said they wished they had taken those warning signs more seriously.

By fall 2024, Carrier’s payments to his lenders stopped. That’s when the house of cards fell.

Carrier had spent that summer scrambling for money. Not only did Carrier have to make loan payments to scores of investors, but he also needed to keep up with the HomeVestors franchise fees and advertising payments. The company requires its franchises to make regular reports on sales and to open their books for audits, to provide financial statements when requested, and to report all assets and liabilities. Any of those reports could have called into question Carrier’s ability to stay solvent. But, according to former franchise owners and employees, HomeVestors’ audits of its franchises are mostly geared toward ensuring they’re paying all their franchise fees, which are based on sales.

Before Carrier’s tangle of fraudulent loans collapsed and was exposed in court, there were signs of trouble.

In 2016, Carrier was fined by the Texas Real Estate Commission for managing properties without a license. The HomeVestors franchise agreement requires owners to follow all laws and regulations, particularly real estate regulations. In 2020, two title insurance companies issued special alerts on Carrier’s business, advising their title officers not to enter into transactions with him without further legal and underwriting review. Carrier hasn’t paid taxes on some of his properties since early 2023, according to court and public records, another violation of his franchise agreement. Despite the apparent violations, HomeVestors didn’t terminate Carrier’s franchise agreement.

“I don’t really think they do have much in place to prevent something like this,” Ahern, the former HomeVestors franchise owner, said of the company. “HomeVestors at the time didn’t seem to have an internal system policing how franchises finance buying properties.”

A HomeVestors spokesperson said the company focuses on its franchise customers’ experiences selling their homes and does not “dictate” how franchises raise capital. “The more than 950 franchises of HomeVestors are independent businesses with a wide variety of finance options available to them,” the spokesperson said.

Last spring, Carrier began borrowing against his future receipts in exchange for cash advances with exorbitant fees and annualized interest rates that he later claimed ranged as high as 600%. Between May and October, he did this at least seven times, racking up more than $1.2 million in debt beyond what he owed his investors, exhibits included with court filings show. By fall, he owed more than $75,000 in payments a week, according to the original terms. Seven companies filed suit over the cash-advance agreements, accusing him of default. Carrier has denied the allegations of default and has countersued four of the companies, claiming he was charged unreasonably high interest rates.

The lending scheme appears to have fallen in a gray area for state and federal securities regulations. It’s unclear whether the promissory notes Carrier issued to investors meet the definition of a security, two experts told ProPublica.

In October, Carrier’s investors began to confront him about the missing payments, including Jeff Daly and Steve Needham, two of Carrier’s largest investors who had been lending him money for years. Carrier came clean to Daly, admitting he had been running a lending scheme for “several” years, according to a lawsuit Daly and Needham filed. He told Needham he had taken out multiple loans on individual properties without disclosing them to the investors, according to the lawsuit. The two men claimed in their lawsuit, which resulted in default judgments against Carrier, that combined they had lost $13.5 million to Carrier.

The investor who spoke to ProPublica and asked not to be named said in an interview that Carrier broke down in tears when confronted about losing more than $1 million of the investor’s money. Carrier admitted the loans paid for his operating expenses, not for buying and refurbishing houses, the investor said.

“He just pencil whipped those deeds at the end,” the investor said, explaining that Carrier drew up documents but didn’t record them. Because the deeds were never recorded, the investor had no lien on the properties and therefore no collateral. Some deeds were for houses that Carrier didn’t own or never bought, the investor said. “It was a complete fabrication.”

Welborn’s clients, who typically invested much smaller amounts with Carrier, also learned of the house-flipper’s collapse in the fall, when their payments stopped. Carver said that Welborn called him a couple of days after the October payment was due and said, “Hey, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Chas has called me and admitted to fraud.”

Carver said he got in the car and drove to Welborn’s office, where he learned the nightmarish truth that all the money Carrier had taken was gone.

Investors are deploying a variety of strategies to get their money back — some of which pit bigger investors against smaller ones and early investors against more recent ones. Those who acted quickly are recovering some money through foreclosures and lawsuit settlements. Although Carrier is denying allegations in lawsuits brought by the cash-advance companies, he’s not fighting individual investors who are suing him. Three of their lawsuits have resulted in judgments against Carrier, and he has so far not defended himself against the others.

Welborn said he’s doing his best to help his clients recover their money by providing the necessary paperwork, connecting them with buyers for the houses used as collateral and researching lien histories on the homes. When he first learned of the scheme, Welborn tried to convince his clients to sign on with his lawyer to sue Carrier. The lawyer, Anthony Cuesta, hoped a court would seize Carrier’s assets to help recover the investors’ lost funds. But he quickly learned there were too many investors and not enough equity in the properties to fund the litigation. Now, many of Welborn’s clients are waiting for the FBI and DOJ to act, while wealthier investors are foreclosing on properties and making them ineligible to be used for restitution. Welborn said some of his clients have been paid restitution through a DOJ-appointed real estate agent’s sale of Carrier’s properties, but he declined to provide details.

Carver isn’t optimistic: “We are not going to get a dime.”

At least one investor went after Welborn individually. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure, the claim was settled for $130,000. In his response to the SEC disclosure, Welborn denied breaching fiduciary duty to the client and said he “resolved the claim to avoid controversy.” Welborn told ProPublica that $120,000 of the settlement came from the sale of the house used as collateral for the family’s loan and he paid $10,000 for their attorney fees.

Welborn said he’s “devastated” by the loss of his clients’ money. “But every day I drag myself to work with God’s help and spend most of my day helping lenders with their own personal restitution battles,” he said.

Some investors said they will have to go back to work after having retired or are scrambling to find some way to replace their lost income.

Carver wishes he had paid more attention to red flags, like paperwork errors. But the monthly checks were so reliable, he didn’t listen to his gut. Or his wife.

“Every time I added money, my wife would say, ‘Don’t do it,’” Carver said. “My mother, too. She would push on my dad not to add any more. But he liked getting the monthly check.”

Carver’s dad, Larry, believed it was the best performing investment he had ever made. When the money disappeared, Carver went to work trying to recoup some of it. Maybe he could write it off on his taxes, he thought. He wanted to get at least something back for his dad. But Larry was in ill health, and in February, he died.

“My dad passed thinking he lost all of his money to this guy,” Carver said, adding he hopes Carrier “goes to jail for a very long time.”

The investor who asked not to be named said the loss was “a life-changing hit.” He had retired at 53, after sticking it out in a job he hated until his stock options vested. When he finally quit, he put the money into Carrier’s business and lived off of the monthly payments. He may have to go back to work.

“He was an arrogant son of a bitch,” the investor said. “It was gone before he told anyone there was a problem. That’s the unforgivable piece. He squandered it all away. And he had to get backed into a corner before he admitted it was all gone.”

Byard Duncan contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Anjeanette Damon and Mollie Simon.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Two years ago, Texas lawmakers quietly cut millions of dollars in funding for kits intended to help track down missing kids, after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed there was no evidence they had aided law enforcement in finding lost children.

The company that made the kits had used outdated and exaggerated statistics on missing children to bolster their sales and charged for the materials when similar products were available for less or for free.

Now, some Texas legislators are again pushing to spend millions more in taxpayer dollars to purchase such kits, slipping the funding into a 1,000-page budget proposal.

Although the proposal does not designate which company would supply them, a 2021 bill introduced by Republican state Sen. Donna Campbell all but guarantees Texas will contract with the same vendor, the National Child Identification Program. Back then, Campbell made clear that her intent was to enshrine into law a long-standing partnership between the state and NCIDP that goes back more than two decades. Her legislation, signed into law that June, also specified that whenever the state allocated funding for such materials, the Texas Education Agency must purchase identification kits that are “inkless,” a technology that NCIDP has patented.

The Waco-based company is led by former NFL player Kenny Hansmire, who ProPublica and the Tribune found had a history of failed businesses and financial troubles, including millions of dollars in federal tax liens and a ban from conducting certain finance-related business in Connecticut due to his role in an alleged scheme to defraud investors.

Hansmire cultivated relationships with powerful Texas legislators who went on to support his initiatives. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who oversees the Senate, championed Campbell’s legislation funding the kits and later told the news organizations that the state should prioritize anything that can speed up the return of a missing child. Campbell told lawmakers in a hearing that the bipartisan measure, which was brought to her by Hansmire and Patrick, was important to “protect our children.”

Patrick, Campbell and Hansmire did not respond to interview requests for this story. Hansmire previously told the newsrooms that his debts and other financial issues had been resolved. He also defended his company’s kits, saying they have helped find multiple missing children, and instructed reporters to ask “any policeman” about the kits’ usefulness. However, none of the dozen Texas law enforcement agencies that the news organizations reached — including three that Hansmire specifically named — could recall any examples.

Stacey Pearson, a child safety consultant and former Louisiana State Police sergeant who oversaw that state’s Clearinghouse for Missing and Exploited Children, said she has never seen any cases demonstrating that these kits work, including in the last two years since lawmakers discontinued the funding.

“I don’t understand why we’re going back to this,” said Pearson, who spoke with the newsrooms recently and for their previous investigation. “It wasn’t a good idea in 2023 and it’s not a good idea now.”

Despite the lack of evidence, Pearson said companies like NCIDP are able to profit off the kits by marketing them as part of a larger child safety program, a strategy that makes opposing lawmakers look as if they are against protecting children. Texas allocated nearly $6 million for the kits between 2021 and 2023.

Lawmakers did not explain their reasoning when they decided to stop paying for the kits in 2023. Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, who chairs the high chamber’s Finance Committee, told the newsrooms at the time that both the House and the Senate had agreed to remove the funding “after review and consideration.”

During this year’s budgeting process, Democratic state Rep. Armando Martinez proposed adding $2 million to the House’s budget to provide kits to families with children in kindergarten through second grade.

Martinez did not respond to an interview request.

State Rep. Greg Bonnen, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, did not respond to interview requests or written questions.

Bonnen was among the 33 lawmakers who voted against Campbell’s bill that established the child identification kit funding four years ago. The newsrooms attempted to reach a handful of those legislators, but none responded.

Huffman and the Senate have so far chosen not to restore the program’s funding. Huffman declined the newsrooms’ interview requests.

“The entire budget process is ongoing,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “No final decisions have been made on most issues.”

Legislators from the two chambers will continue hashing out the differences between their budget proposals in a joint committee that operates behind closed doors. There’s no guarantee that the funding will make it into the final budget, which lawmakers must pass before the legislative session ends in early June.

Pearson cautioned legislators to question whether the kits are the best use of state funding, given the absence of documented success.

“My advice would be for lawmakers to ask themselves, ‘If this was your personal money and not the taxpayers’, would you spend it on this program?’” Pearson said. “And the answer is going to be no.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Nearly four years ago in Texas, the state’s new abortion law started getting in the way of basic miscarriage care: As women waited in hospitals cramping, fluid running down their legs, doctors told them they couldn’t empty their uterus to guard against deadly complications.

The state banned most abortions, even in pregnancies that were no longer viable; then, it added criminal penalties, threatening to imprison doctors for life and punish hospitals. The law had one exception, for a life-threatening emergency.

Heeding the advice of hospital lawyers, many doctors withheld treatment until they could document patients were in peril. They sent tests to labs, praying for signs of infection, and watched as women lost so much blood that they needed transfusions.“You would see the pain in peoples’ eyes,” one doctor said of her patients.

Not every hospital tolerated this new normal, ProPublica found. A seismic split emerged in how medical institutions in the state’s two largest metro areas treated miscarrying patients — and in how these women fared.

Leaders of influential hospitals in Dallas empowered doctors to intervene before patients’ conditions worsened, allowing them to induce deliveries or perform procedures to empty the uterus.

In Houston, most did not.

The result, according to a first-of-its-kind ProPublica analysis of state hospital discharge data, is that while the rates of dangerous infections spiked across Texas after it banned abortion in 2021, women in Houston were far more likely to get gravely ill than those in Dallas.

As ProPublica reported earlier this year, the statewide rate of sepsis — a life-threatening reaction to infection — shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost a second-trimester pregnancy.

A new analysis zooms in: In the region surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth, it rose 29%. In the Houston area, it surged 63%.

ProPublica has documented widespread differences in how hospitals across the country have translated abortion bans into policy. Some have supported doctors in treating active miscarriages and high-risk cases with procedures technically considered abortions; others have forbidden physicians from doing so, or left them on their own to decide, with no legal backing in case of arrest.

This marks the first analysis in the wake of abortion bans that connects disparities in hospital policies to patient outcomes. It shows that when a state law is unclear and punitive, how an institution interprets it can make all the difference for patients.

Yet the public has no way to know which hospitals or doctors will offer options during miscarriages. Hospitals in states where abortion is banned have been largely unwilling to disclose their protocols for handling common complications. When ProPublica asked, most in Texas declined to say.

ProPublica’s Texas reporting is based on interviews with 22 doctors in both the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth metro areas who had insight into policies at 10 institutions covering more than 75% of the births and pregnancy-loss hospitalizations in those areas.

The findings come as evidence of the fatal consequences of abortion bans continue to mount, with a new report just last month showing that the risk of maternal mortality is nearly twice as high for women living in states that ban abortion. Last year, ProPublica documented five preventable maternal deaths, including three in Texas.

One second-trimester pregnancy complication that threatens patients’ lives is previable premature rupture of membranes, called PPROM, when a woman’s water breaks before the fetus can live on its own. Without amniotic fluid, the likelihood of the fetus surviving is low. But with every passing hour that a patient waits for treatment or for labor to start, the risk of sepsis increases.

The Texas Supreme Court has said that doctors can legally provide abortions in PPROM cases, even when an emergency is not imminent.

Yet legal departments at many major Houston hospitals still advise physicians not to perform abortions in these cases, doctors there told ProPublica, until they can document serious infection.

Dr. John Thoppil, the immediate past president of the Texas Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said he was “blown away” by this finding. He said it’s time for hospitals to stop worrying about hypothetical legal consequences of the ban and start worrying more about the real threats to patients’ lives.

“I think you’re risking legal harm the opposite way for not intervening,” he said, “and putting somebody at risk.”

In the summer of 2021, Dr. Robyn Horsager-Boehrer, a Dallas specialist in high-risk pregnancy, listened as hospital lawyers explained to a group of UT Southwestern Medical Center doctors that they would no longer be able to act on their clinical judgment.

For decades, these UT Southwestern physicians had followed the guidance of major medical organizations: They offered patients with PPROM the option to end the pregnancy to protect against serious infection. But under the state’s new abortion ban, they would no longer be allowed to do so while practicing at the county’s safety net hospital, Parkland Memorial, which delivers more babies than almost any other in the country. Nor would they be permitted at UT Southwestern’s William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital.

Lawyers from the two hospitals explained in a meeting that the law’s only exception was for a “medical emergency” — but it wasn’t clear how the courts would define that. With no precedent or guidance from the state, they advised the doctors that they should offer to intervene only if they could document severe infection or bleeding — signs of a life-threatening condition, Horsager-Boehrer recalled. They would need to notify the state every time they terminated a pregnancy. ProPublica also spoke with six of Horsager-Boehrer’s colleagues who described similar meetings.

As the new policy kicked in, the doctors worried the lawyers didn’t understand how fast sepsis could develop and how difficult it could be to control. Many patients with PPROM can appear stable even while an infection is taking hold. During excruciating waits, Dr. Austin Dennard said she would tell patients at Clements, “We need something to be abnormal so that we can offer you all of the options that someone in New York would have.” Then she would return to the physicians’ lounge, lay down her head and cry.

Their only hope, the doctors felt, was to collect data and build a case that the hospital’s policy needed to change.

Within eight months, 28 women with severe pregnancy complications before fetal viability had come through the doors of Parkland and Clements. Twenty-six of them were cases in which the patients’ water broke early. Analyzing the medical charts, a group of researchers led by Dr. Anjali Nambiar, a UT Southwestern OB-GYN, found that a dozen women experienced complications including hemorrhage and infection. Only one baby survived.

The research team compared the results with another study in which patients were offered pregnancy terminations. They found that of patients who followed the “watch and wait” protocol, more than half experienced serious complications, compared with 33% who immediately terminated their pregnancies.

Armed with the research, the doctors, including Horsager-Boehrer, returned to the lawyers for the two hospitals. Everyone agreed the data demanded action. Alongside physicians, the lawyers helped develop language that doctors could include in medical charts to explain why they terminated a pregnancy due to a PPROM diagnosis, Dennard said.

At Parkland, the new protocol required doctors to get signoff from one additional physician, attach the study as proof of the risk of serious bodily harm — part of the “medical emergency” definition in the law — and notify hospital leaders. At Clements, doctors also needed to get CEO approval to end a pregnancy, which could create delays if patients came in on a weekend, doctors said. But it was vastly better than the alternative, Dennard said. The message from the lawyers, she said, was: “We have your back. We are going to take care of you.”

A spokesperson for UT Southwestern said “no internal protocols delay care or otherwise compromise patient safety.” A spokesperson for Parkland said that “physicians are empowered to document care as they deem appropriate” and that hospital attorneys had “helped review and translate the doctors’ proposed language to make sure it followed the law.”

Parkland and UT Southwestern are not the only ones providing this care in Dallas. ProPublica spoke with doctors who have privileges at hospitals that oversee 60% of births and pregnancy loss hospitalizations in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, including Baylor Scott & White and Texas Health Resources. They said that their institutions support offering terminations to patients with high-risk second-trimester pregnancy complications like PPROM.

At Baylor Scott & White, doctors said, the leadership always stood by this interpretation of the law. (When asked, a spokesperson said miscarrying patients are counseled on surgical options, and that its hospitals follow state and federal laws. “Our policies are developed to comply with those laws, and we educate our teams on those policies.”)

Texas Health and other hospitals in the region did not respond to requests for comment.

While efforts to be proactive have meant more patients are able to receive the standard of care in Dallas, that is still not the case at every medical campus in the region. Doctors at Parkland said they have seen patients come to them after they were turned away from hospitals nearby.

In other parts of the state, however, it’s been impossible to know where to turn.

In Houston, one of America’s most prestigious medical hubs, Dr. Judy Levison mounted her own campaign.

The veteran OB-GYN at Baylor College of Medicine wanted hospital leaders to support intervening in high-risk complications in line with widely accepted medical standards. In 2022, she emailed her department chair, Dr. Michael Belfort, who is also the OB-GYN-in-chief at Texas Children’s. She told him colleagues had shared “feelings of helplessness, moral distress and increasing concerns about the safety of our patients.”

They needed training on how to protect patients within the bounds of the law, she said, and language they could include in charts to justify medically necessary abortions. But in a meeting, Belfort told her he couldn’t make these changes, Levison recalled.

He said that if he supported abortions in medically complicated cases like PPROM, the hospital could lose tens of millions of dollars from the state, she told ProPublica. “I came to realize that he was in a really difficult place because he risked losing funding for our residency program if Baylor and Texas Children’s didn't interpret the law the way they thought the governor did.” She wondered if he was deferring to hospital lawyers.

Belfort did not respond to requests for comment about his stance. Nor did Baylor or Texas Children’s.

Although Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has threatened hospitals with civil action if they allow a doctor to perform what he views as an “unlawful” abortion, he hasn’t filed any such actions. And in the years since the ban, there have been no reports of the state pulling funding from a hospital on account of its abortion policy.

A spokesperson at only one major Houston hospital chain, Houston Methodist, said that it considered PPROM a medical emergency and supported terminations for “the health and safety of the patient.”

Five other major hospital groups that, together, provide the vast majority of maternal care in the Houston region either continue to advise doctors not to offer pregnancy terminations for PPROM cases or leave it up to the physicians to decide, with no promise of legal support if they’re charged with a crime. This is according to interviews with a dozen doctors about the policies at HCA, Texas Children’s, Memorial Hermann, Harris Health and The University of Texas Medical Branch. Together, they account for about 8 in 10 hospitalizations in the region for births or pregnancy loss.

Most of the doctors spoke with ProPublica on the condition of anonymity, as they feared retaliation for violating what some described as a hospital “gag order” against discussing abortion. In a sign of how secretive this decision-making has become, most said their hospitals had not written down these new policies, only communicated them orally.

Several doctors told ProPublica that Dr. Sean Blackwell, chair of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Houston’s University of Texas Health Science Center, which staffs Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital and Memorial Hermann hospitals, had conveyed a message similar to Belfort’s: He wasn’t sure he would be able to defend providers if they intervened in these cases. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and his institution, UTHealth Houston, declined to comment.

ProPublica reached out to officials at all five hospital groups, asking if they offer terminations at the point of a PPROM diagnosis. Only one responded. Bryan McLeod at Harris Health pointed to the hospital system’s written policy, which ProPublica reviewed, stating that an emergency doesn’t need to be imminent for a doctor to intervene. But McLeod did not respond to follow-up questions asking if patients with PPROM are offered pregnancy terminations if they show no signs of infection — and several doctors familiar with the chain’s practices said they are not.

The state Senate unanimously passed a bill last week to clarify that doctors can terminate pregnancies if a woman faces a risk of death that is not imminent. ProPublica asked the hospitals if they would change their policies on PPROM if this is signed into law. They did not respond.

Last fall, ProPublica reported that Josseli Barnica died in Houston after her doctors did not evacuate her uterus for 40 hours during an “inevitable” miscarriage, waiting until the fetal heartbeat stopped. Two days later, sepsis killed her.

Barnica was treated at HCA, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, which did not respond to a detailed list of questions about her care. With 70% of its campuses in states where abortion is restricted, the company leaves the decision of whether to take the legal risk up to the physicians, without the explicit legal support provided in Dallas, according to a written policy viewed by ProPublica and interviews with doctors. A spokesperson for the chain said doctors with privileges at its hospitals are expected to exercise their independent medical judgment “within applicable laws and regulations.” As a result, patients with potentially life-threatening conditions have no way of knowing which HCA doctors will treat them and which won’t.

Brooklyn Leonard, a 29-year-old esthetician eager for her first child, learned this in February. She was 14 weeks pregnant when her water broke. At HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood, her doctor Arielle Lofton wrote in her chart, “No interventions can be performed at this time legally because her fetus has a heartbeat.” The doctor added that she could only intervene when there was “concern for maternal mortality.” Leonard and her husband had trouble getting answers about whether she was miscarrying, she said. “I could feel that they were not going to do anything for me there.” Lofton and HCA did not respond to a request for comment.

It was only after visits to three Houston hospitals over five days that Leonard was able to get a dilation and evacuation to empty her uterus. A doctor at Texas Children’s referred her to Dr. Damla Karsan, who works in private practice and is known for her part in an unsuccessful lawsuit against the state seeking permission to allow an abortion for a woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal anomaly. Karsan felt there was no question PPROM cases fell under the law’s exception. She performed the procedure at The Woman’s Hospital of Texas, another HCA hospital. “She’s lucky she didn’t get sick,” Karsan said of Leonard.

Many Houston doctors said they have continued to call on their leadership to change their stance to proactively support patients with PPROM, pointing to data analyses from Dallas hospitals and ProPublica and referring to the Texas Supreme Court ruling. It hasn’t worked.

Houston hospitals haven’t taken action even in light of alarming research in their own city. Earlier this year, UTHealth Houston medical staff, including department chair Blackwell, revealed early findings from a study very similar to the one out of Dallas.

It showed what happened after patients at three partner hospitals stopped being offered terminations for PPROM under the ban: The rate of sepsis tripled.

Still, nothing changed.

To examine second-trimester pregnancy loss outcomes in Houston and Dallas, we used a methodology we developed to determine sepsis rates in inpatient hospitalizations where a pregnancy ended between 13 weeks’ gestation and the end of the 21st week. To assess regional differences, we grouped hospitals by perinatal care region and focused on the two regions with the highest population: Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

We grouped hospitalizations in the nine quarters after the implementation of the state’s six-week abortion ban (October 2021 through December 2023) and compared them with hospitalizations in the nine quarters immediately before. Each region had about 2,700 second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations over the course of the time span we examined.

Sophie Chou contributed data reporting, and Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Andrea Suozzo.

While state officials and legislators have positioned Texas to be “the bitcoin mining capital of the world,” in small towns like Granbury, working-class residents living next to giant, loud, environmentally destructive data centers are the ones paying the price for Texas’s crypto boom. “None of us are sleeping,” Cheryl Shadden, a Granbury resident who lives across the street from a 300-megawatt bitcoin mining data center owned by Marathon Digital, tells TRNN. “We can’t get rid of this alien invasion in our homes…This is like being a prisoner of war. It’s like being tortured with loud sounds and bright lights and being sleep deprived.”

In this episode of Working People, we dive deeper into the reality of living next to crypto mining data centers like the one in Granbury, the unseen threats they pose to human and nonhuman life, and what residents in Granbury are doing to fight back. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with: Cheryl Shadden, a registered nurse anesthetist and resident of Granbury, who lives right next to the site of the Marathon bitcoin mining operation; Dr. Shannon Wolf, Precinct Chair in Hood County, who lives about 3 miles from the bitcoin mine; and Nannette Samuelson, County Commissioner for Precinct 2 in Hood County.

Additional links/info:

• Protect Hood County website
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “A bitcoin mine in Texas is “killing us slowly,” local residents say”
• Andrew R. Chow, TIME, “‘We’re living in a nightmare:’ Inside the health crisis of a Texas bitcoin town”
• Andrew R. Chow, TIME, “Noisy neighbor: Bitcoin’s hidden health cost” (Video Report)
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster”
• Keaton Peters, Inside Climate News, “Texas leaders worry that bitcoin mines threaten to crash the state power grid”
• NBC News, “Inside the Texas bitcoin mine reportedly making residents sick”
• James Pollard, The Texas Tribune, “Texas Republicans want to make the state the center of the cryptocurrency universe”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are diving back into a new sacrifice zone investigation that we began two weeks ago, and we’re returning to the small rural town of Granbury, Texas, which is about an hour southwest of Fort Worth. In the first episode that we did on this, I spoke with Danny Lakey, Karen Pearson, and Karen’s parents, Nick and Virginia Browning, four residents of Granbury who all lived near the site of a giant 300 megawatt Bitcoin mining operation.

I mean, Danny, Nick, and Virginia literally live right across the street from that thing. And the Bitcoin mine itself, which is owned by Marathon Digital, a Florida based cryptocurrency company uses a mix of liquid immersion and industrial fans to prevent the over 20,000 computers there from overheating on a daily basis. And many residents say that it’s the constant sound from those fans that has made life increasingly unbearable in their town, that they are developing negative health effects like hypertension, heart palpitations, tinnitus, migraines and more. And they say that their concerns are going ignored by the company and government officials. And speaking of government officials, let’s not forget that Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz said in 2021, I would like to see Texas become the center of the universe for Bitcoin and crypto and quote, and it was Republican governor Greg Abbott who said in 2024 that Texas wears the crown as the Bitcoin mining capital of the world.

But in small towns like Granbury residents are the ones paying the price for Texas’s crypto boom. In today’s episode, we dive deeper into the reality of living next door to crypto mining data centers like the one in Granbury, Texas, and the unseen but not unheard threats that they pose to human and non-human life and what residents in Granbury are doing to fight back. I was extremely grateful to get a chance to sit down and talk with Cheryl Shadden, a registered nurse anesthetist and resident of Granbury who lives right next to the site of the Marathon Bitcoin Mining operation, Dr. Shannon Wolf, precinct chair in Hood County, who lives about three miles from the Bitcoin mine and Nannette Samuelson County Commissioner for Precinct two in Hood County. Here’s our conversation recorded on April 27th, 2025.

Well, Cheryl, Dr. Wolf, Nannette, thank you all so much for joining us today. And as I told your neighbors in our last episode, it’s really great to connect with you, but I really truly wish we were connecting under les horrifying circumstances, but I’m really grateful to y’all for joining us today to help us and our listeners understand this situation on a deeper level and to show how it’s not even just the marathon Bitcoin mine that we’re talking about here. So we’ve got a lot to dig into here. And Cheryl, I wanted to start by asking if we could first get just a little introduction to you. You live right across the street from this Bitcoin mine, like the folks we talked to in the last episode. So could you tell us just a little more about yourself, where you live, what you do, and how your life has changed since this Bitcoin mining operation moved in right next door to you?

Cheryl Shadden:

Absolutely. Thank you, max. We really appreciate this opportunity. My name is Cheryl Shadden. I’m a certified registered nurse anesthetist. So I work in healthcare when I’ve been here for over 30 years. My home was here long before crypto. Mine came in long before the power plants that they’re plugged into came in. So I’m living out here in the country with my horses and my dogs, and I just want a peaceful life. I want to be able to do my job, take care of patients, have my horses, ride them around and have a peaceful country life. In the fall of 23, I hear all of this noise. This isn’t just a little bit of the power plant noise. This is standing on the edge of Niagara Falls. This is sleeping with a vacuum cleaner. This is laying on a flight deck where jets are taking off, but the jets don’t take off.

They stay there and they keep running. And so when we first started hearing this noise, we thought, well, they’re just building onto the power plant here. That’s what all of this humming is. And it was just a slight hum in the background. And then the hum got worse and worse and worse. It felt like an airline invasion. None of us in this area knew what a crypto mine is. Nobody knew what a data center was. Nobody had any idea. And then as the initial owners sold out to somebody else and then sold out to somebody else, the noise got worse and worse and worse. Finally, by the fall of 23, we didn’t know what this was. Now the sound is invading our homes. It’s inside of my house with ceiling fans on and TVs on. You can’t think you’re motion’s sick, nauseated, you’re dizzy. You have a hard time getting out of bed.

You feel like you’ve got a concussion. And so then we realized that this is a crypto mine. Well, we didn’t know what that was, so we started looking it up and the process of all of that, I had family come to visit and they asked me their mom, what is this? And I said, well, it’s a crypto mine. They’re like, why are you living like this? What’s going on? How can you live this way? And I thought, well, how can my family come and see me from out of state and be appalled? Why am I not more appalled? Why am I not doing anything about this? So I started calling my commissioner and I talked to my constable and I said, what can I do? I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what this is. What do we do? And so my constable said, you’re going to have to get community involvement.

If you want anybody to be aware of this, you’re going to have to get the community involved. I thought, well, I have no idea how to do that. So I started reaching out on social media and I was telling everybody what’s going on and posting videos and asking if everybody was sick or if anybody was ill. Next thing you know, neighbor, after neighbor, after neighbor in our county and the county south of it is telling me the same things that are going on with me and some are sicker and some are less sick and children are sick. And I thought, oh my God, it’s not just me. It’s so many people in this area. So I started reaching out and collecting health information on everybody. And when this happened in the fall, commissioner Samuelson said Yes, she’d already started getting complaints about all of this.

She was planning on having a town hall in January. And so I thought, well, I dunno how many people in this area are on social media. So I started driving house to house, house to house and knocking on doors and telling people, this is what’s going on. We have to do something. We’re having a town hall. Please come. I’m Cheryl. I’m standing up. I’m here. We have to do something. Oh my God. And so then Commissioner Samuelson had a town hall. It was well attended. There was standing room only and story after story of community member after community member after community member of the horrific things that they’re having to live with on a daily basis. Wildlife that’s gone, dogs that are having seizures, people that can’t sleep. One person said he lives near Shannon and the noise was so bad in his driveway at night, he said it would drop him to his knees.

None of us are sleeping. We have sleep disturbances. We can’t get rid of this alien invasion in our homes. We didn’t know what to do about it. And so it was a pretty heated town hall meeting. We had media there and we started reaching and from connection to connection to connection, I got in touch with Texas Coalition Against Crypto Mining and they got me in touch with Andrew Chow with Time Magazine. He did the first article we had here and got us some national interest and people are shocked that we’re living this way. And then with all of the media coming out and doing videos and interviews, it was horrific what we’re living through. This is like being a prisoner of war. It’s like being tortured with loud sounds and bright lights and being sleep deprived until you crack and you talk. It feels like being a prisoner of war, but I get the feeling that prisoners of war are treated better than we are here. This is not Okay.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and Commissioner Samuelson, I’d love to bring you in here and ask like what the hell this was all looking like from your side, both as a resident and elected official. Could you help our audience understand a bit more where this crypto came from and I guess what the regulation situation is over there that has allowed such loud operation to operate so close to residents homes?

Nannette Samuelson:

Right. Thank you again for getting us all together. And again, I’m Nannette Samuelson. I’m the commissioner for Precinct two, which includes the unincorporated area that Shannon, Dr. Wolf and Cheryl and all the people that you’ve mentioned live in as well as the cryptocurrency data center. So I took office in January of 23 and almost immediately started getting phone calls about what is this noise I’m hearing out here? And I asked the person, well, tell me more about it. Do you have a decibel meter? What are the decibels? And so we just started collecting information. I started researching what the noise regulations were in the state of Texas and what we could do about it. And so the state of Texas does not give counties very much regulatory authority at all. If you live in a city, you can have a noise ordinance, you can have zoning for residential or commercial.

But in unincorporated parts of the counties in Texas, you have very little, we don’t regulate zoning. We don’t regulate noise. So all we have is to rely on is what the state calls a noise nuisance, which is 85 decibels or higher. That is industrial level noise. That’s not something that someone should be subjected to 24 hours a day, seven days a week without hearing protection. And that’s what I tell people that ask about this. I said, it’s like putting a leaf blower next to your bed and never turning it off and trying to live with that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, people go, if you go to NASCAR or something loud, you wear hearing protection and you know that in a little while you’re going to leave and go home to peace and quiet. These people cannot do that. They are subjected to this 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So I started looking into it. So back to the history, and Constable Shirley and I, he bought a what I’d call an industrial grade decibel meter because there are decibel meters that you can download on your phone with an app, but those aren’t necessarily that scientific. So we bought an industrial grade commercial decibel meter and started taking readings all over this area all the way six miles away to right across the street right next door, Cheryl’s house, the neighborhood that’s right next door. And we contacted the owners at that time was generate capital, and then it was operated by us Bitcoin, so we started contacting them. So maybe I should back up and talk to you about how it started. You asked me that. That was before I took office, but let me go back to that. So as I mentioned, the county does have platting authority, but unless something is infringing on us, I’m sorry, a TDOT road, not us, but a TDOT road or it’s in a floodplain, there’s really not anything that the county can do to deny it as long as they have proper sewage and water.

So if you’re going to build a housing addition, you have to provide sewage and water, but this isn’t a housing. So as long as they have enough water for the two or three workers that are there and sewage for the two or three workers that are there, and it’s not in a floodplain, there was nothing that the county could do to deny it from being built. That’s how it got there. But when it came it, I was sitting in court, not a member of the court, but I was there as an audience member. And when they brought that to court, it was just Compute North, which is out of North Dakota where the original owners, and it was just called a data center and it was just going to have nine containers. And then they brought back the second development and it had more containers, but it was still called a data center.

The commissioners at the time didn’t really know what a data center was or cryptocurrency. What they said was they were going to harvest unused power to power a data center is what they were telling the court. So when I got there, it had already been well on the way actually Compute North went bankrupt in 2022, I believe, early 2022, and then generate capital, bought it out of bankruptcy, hired us Bitcoin to operate it and complete the development of it. And they went live in either late 2022 or early 2023, but it wasn’t totally built out. But that’s when I started getting the complaints. So we started working with US Bitcoin and they were actually very wanting to be good neighbors. They met with us. They came down here several times. Constable Shirley and I drove them around with our decibel meter and said, look how we’re six miles away and look at the readings that we’re getting.

And they were very open to whatever it is that we have to do to be good neighbors, we want to do it. They did build a wall, but as Cheryl knows, that wall ended up, it wasn’t a wall all the way around. It was a partial wall on the southeast side of the building of the plant right next to the neighborhood there. But all it did was cause the sound to ricochet off that wall and head straight to Cheryl’s house, and it just really amplified it. So I called, this is still US Bitcoin. I emailed or called him back and I said, did you get a performance bond on that or a performance requirement on that wall? Because if whatever they told you it was going to do to the sound, it’s not working, you need to get your money back because I’m getting more complaints now than I did before you built the wall.

And so they actually came back out, we drove around again, and then they said, okay, we’re committed to getting a new sound study. We’re going to do whatever it is we need to do. About two weeks later, he emailed me back and said, well, this was December of 23. We just found out we’re being put up for sale. So I really can’t do anything until I know who the new owners are. So it kind of just drug out until January. The sale closed, really kind of coincidentally, right before I had that town hall. So the new owners marathon, a couple of the people from Marathon actually came to our town hall and listened to heart wrenching Heart, heart-wrenching stories from all of these residents about what it’s like to live with this noise and the illness that they’re going. I don’t know if anyone’s brought up from the previous discussions that you had, but the doctor out of Portugal, Dr. Marina Alvez. Have you heard that name yet?

I have not. Okay. She is an expert in infrasound, which is sound waves that your ear can’t hear, but your body can. Your body is absorbing these sound waves, but your ear cannot detect them. So when you think about the 85 decibels, the 85 decibels is what your ear can hear. It’s not taking any measurement about what your body is absorbing that your ear can’t hear. So we started listening to getting more information from her studies and marathon after that town hall pretty much. That’s really the last conversations that I’ve had with them. They pretty much went radio silent. They did hire PR person. They said, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to first hire a PR person, then we’re going to put all these containers in dielectric fluid, which should decrease the noise and two or three other things. Well, they hired the PR person and that person has never called me, has never emailed me, has never even tried to get in touch with me, and they had an open house last Good Friday.

So that’s another story is they decided to have a town hall in April and they last year they announced it on Wednesday on social media for Friday, which was Good Friday, which didn’t give people very much notice. Plus it’s on Good Friday. So we all went because we were not going to miss an opportunity to speak to the marathon people. And I met the PR person and I asked her, I said, I’m the commissioner for precinct too. I’m kind of surprised that you haven’t tried to call me or contact me. And she said, well, no one told me I was supposed to, and she still hasn’t since then. My phone number’s on the county website, I don’t remember for sure, but I’m sure I gave her my card. I always do when I introduce myself, but still nothing. But so that’s been kind of the history of what’s happened.

And we tried. So one of the things that we did, because the counties don’t have regulatory authority, we started working with our two legislators, our Senator Birdwell and Shelby Slawson about getting something changed in the Texas law that would allow us more ability to put sound, noise, regulation, noise wouldn’t be called an ordinance because that’s what cities do. Counties don’t have ordinances in Texas. But some ability to allow our constable or our sheriff’s department to do something to monitor this noise level for the people that live there. Even if it was like at airports where it’s after eight o’clock at night and before eight o’clock morning, which doesn’t help Cheryl that much. She gets up at like three in the morning. But something that we could do, and we started last summer, we drafted a resolution at Commissioner’s Court, passed five zero. I took it down to a hearing last summer about the grid because the other thing that these cryptocurrency, as you probably know, the cryptocurrency data centers are a huge draw on the grid.

And so that was what the hearing was about. But I used that opportunity to say, in addition to the draw on the grid, this is what it’s doing to people’s lives. And I talked about the illnesses, but I said, which I don’t know if anybody’s mentioned yet, but I said, the people that live around here, their property is not just worth less. It’s worthless. They cannot sell their property even if they wanted to because nobody wants to live next to this constant noise. So we started working with our legislatures. I was on the phone with other senators, Senator Cole Kirst, who’s on the Health and Human Services Committee, Senator May Middleton, again, Brian Birdwell, they are just now here. We are almost at the end of the legislative session and nothing has been changed. So all of our efforts to work with the senator and the legislature and our representative, I don’t think that any bill is going to see the light of day that’s going to give us any more ability to help the people that live here live around this cryptocurrency data center. I don’t have a good feeling for it at all.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Well, I want to pick up on the Good Friday meeting. As Nanette said, we were all there and the first thing that happened was they demanded that we all sign in, give our email addresses and our phone number. So they were gathering information from all of us, and I refused to sign. And I was telling people, you don’t have to do that. And the marathon folks were saying, oh, yes you do. And I just walked in without signing. And a couple of other people did. But the other thing they did was they had plants that were standing in line as people were kind of waiting for others to sign in to get into the town hall. So they had planted attorneys and other that were officials at Marathon were all in line without telling us that that’s who they were. I just happened to recognize an attorney that I knew represented Marathon in line, and then they demanded that we sit at tables where one of their representatives was at.

And so they were wanting to gain information without telling us that they were trying to gain information from us. They wanted to know what the symptoms were. They wanted us to tell them what exactly our grievances were, but not for the purpose of helping us. It was for the purpose of just gaining information, probably to try to lessen the impact of the community’s outcry. That’s my belief from that town hall. They have done nothing. They presented information that could have been pulled, and actually I think it was pulled right off the internet. It was nothing that was thought out, but they made all these promises, this is what we’re doing. We’re in the process of doing this. Fill in the blank, whatever that was. And I don’t think they have done any of that. I might be wrong, Nanette and Cheryl, correct me if I’m wrong on that one, but it did not foster goodwill.

It actually made the majority of us highly suspicious of them. And remember, this is a multi-billion dollar company, and the folks that live out here in this precinct, they are good people, but they are really normal working class kinds of people. So we cannot fight in the court system, these kinds of these problems because they’re drowning us in all kinds of paperwork, all kinds of demands, and they refuse to give information, but they demand it from us. It is just a mess out here. But I have walked with Cheryl and Annette and others that are living out here since what, January of 23? Is that right? Cheryl? January of 24 was when I first became aware of what was going on out there. And I just remember standing outside. My husband and I drove out there and I stood across the street and it gave me an immediate headache.

My head was just pounding. And I had been out there maybe just a few seconds. I stood outside my car. My husband was also feeling it. He said that it was pounding on his chest, he said, and so we ended up leaving and my thought was, surely if somebody knew about this, they would be able to correct it, whoever this somebody was. And as I talked to people, our Constable, Shirley, Nanette, other people, Nanette, and I sat down in a meeting with our representative, Shelby Slauson, and I thought, okay, yes, now, now something’s going to happen. And nothing did, nothing did. And I think for people to understand Texas, Texas is really a live and let live kind of a place. We’re not going to tell somebody else how to live their lives. We just don’t want them to tell us how to live ours.

And so people really like to live in rural areas so that if we want to raise chickens or if we want to ride horses, or if we want to do whatever we want to do, it’s an okay thing as long as we’re not bothering other people. So I understand why people move into the rural areas. It’s a beautiful place out here. I also saw, just skipping a little bit, I also saw an interview, I think it was a B, C news where Marathon said, this is a well-established industrial zone. And that is a lie. That is a lie. This is not an industrial zone. This area out here, we’ve got all kinds of wildlife. We have bald eagles, we have golden eagles, we have endangered species out here. We’ve got horses and cows and farms and orchards and all kinds of stuff. It is a wonderful place to be out here. And as Cheryl said, they moved in on top of us. This is not an industrial zone, but they’re lying to people to justify them being out here. The other thing that I would say that your listeners probably would find interesting, the energy plant that owns the property that Marathon sits on was not running at full capacity when Marathon moved in. Cheryl, correct me if I’m wrong, they were running at two thirds capacity. Is that right?

Cheryl Shadden:

Correct. 66% capacity,

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

66% capacity. And when Marathon moved in, all of a sudden they are running at full capacity. And so Constellation Energy has petitioned our state to build a new energy plant out here. So yet again, they are wanting to buy up ranches and other places in order to build more industry that the community does not want. And quite frankly, it’s making us sicker.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Cheryl Nanette, Dr. Wolf, I wanted to ask about, this is something that high up politicians in Texas have been championing for years. I mean, Ted Cruz said in 2021 that he wanted to see Texas become the center of the universe for Bitcoin and crypto, and Governor Abbott said that wears the crown as the Bitcoin mining capital of the world last year. I wanted to ask y’all, when they were saying stuff like that, were regular working folks around the state, you all, did they give you any sense of what that was going to look like? Did they tell you that this is going to be the reality of making Texas a Bitcoin mining capital of the world, the things that you and your neighbors are going through? Is that something people want? I mean, this isn’t like it’s a manufacturing operation providing jobs. This is a massive data center like creating massive amounts of noise and using massive amounts of water for something that’s harder to grab your hands around than a bigger industrial operation. So I just wanted to ask if you could just say a little bit more from your vantage points about the promise versus the reality of making Texas this crypto capital of the world.

Cheryl Shadden:

For me personally, living this life and living with this barrage of problems here, I feel like I’ve been sold out. So I notice that these crypto mines aren’t next door to probably Ted Cruz’s home or next door to Governor Abbott’s home. And when we started this initial battle and we’re emailing all of the regulatory agencies here in the Texas legislature and state, they’re like, well, nobody could help us. Nobody cared. Nobody wanted to listen. And so when you stop and think about it, technically we’re subsidizing this. Taxpayers are subsidizing this. The infrastructure that it takes to build electric lines to all of these crypto mines that’s subsidized by taxpayers and by you paying your electric bill, all of our electricity out here has gone up.

Now here in the state of Texas, crypto Mars don’t have to rate back when we’re struggling with excessive heat or excessive cold, or when a hurricane comes up through the Gulf of Mexico, they don’t have to regulate back. They don’t have to ramp back. But if they do, they buy their electricity on the cheap bargain, basement, bulk pricing, not what I pay, not what Commissioner Samuelson pays or Shannon or anybody in this area. So they buy their electricity on the cheap. Now if they sell it back to the grid by their own choosing, they don’t have to. This mine here is behind the meter so they can do whatever they want. They sell it back to the grid at inflated prices. And so who takes that in? The fanny is me, taxpayers and people that are paying their electric bills every day, consumers. So we’re actually paying the state of Texas to torture us.

That’s not okay. That’s not remotely, okay, come out here, stay the night at my house, sleep in my house, listen to this noise through shut doors and windows camp out in my backyard. I’d love to have you come stay with me and see what it’s like. It’s not just me, it’s everybody in this area. So you can tell us that this is going to be the crypto mine capital mecca of the United States, but the reality is they don’t care. This is big business in Texas. So that’s all they care about. And reality here, they’re taking a third of the power from this 1200 megawatt power plant, which is Constellation Energy’s Willo two, it’s a gas steam plant constellation doesn’t own the other power plant, which is Willo one, which is a gas turbine plant. So now that they’re drawing all of this power off of Constellation energies, Willo two, now they’re running at 99 6% capacity.

So since this has happened, now we experience valve blows on a regular basis. We had a valve blow that happened last week that went on for three days. And it’s not just extreme noise, honest to God makes you feel like you’ve lost their mind. So everybody in this area has hearing loss. One family had a child that was having seizures. They took a second mortgage and moved out. And so they’re struggling. People here have cardiovascular disease. One of my neighbors, the electrical system in his ventricle shorted out. He had to be resuscitated multiple times. Now he’s in the hospital right now having had a stroke. So it’s not just the noise, it’s the damage to our soft tissues, the damage to our blood vessels. Like Dr. Alvarez says, there’s so much damage here. And Governor Abbott doesn’t care. Ted Cruz doesn’t care. It’s big business in Texas.

Who cares if working class people like me get mowed over? It’s not next to their home. And so the reality is how do we fight that? So we’ve tried everything. We have a lawsuit with Earth Justice right now. That’s an injunctive lawsuit. Some of the people in this area have hired personal attorneys to fight for all of the detriment that’s occurred. My property values have decreased. So going through the checklist, I’ve gone to the Hood County Appraisal District and I’m contesting my property taxes again this year. So my property taxes were dropped 25% and a previous year they were dropped 25%. You’re going, wow, that’s great. Your property taxes have dropped 50%. The reality is that’s drop in the bucket of my property. I have absolutely no value at all. So people say, go ahead and move. You can move. How can I move? I’ve been here for 30 years. My home and my property are paid off. Nobody would buy this property. Nobody.

Nannette Samuelson:

And that just puts an exclamation point on what I told the Senate committee last summer is their property is not just worth less. It’s worthless. So one of the things that the reason that Senate committee had a meeting in summer, so in Texas, the legislature only once every two years. So they went into session in January of 25, and they’re about to be finished unless they call special sessions, they’ll be finished at end of May. But to get prepare for the legislative session, they had hearings last summer. And the hearing that this one was regarding was the grid because the head of the PUC had made a statement last June saying that the demand for electricity in Texas is going to double by 2030 due to data centers and Bitcoin. And so they started having meetings with the legislature to figure out, okay, how do we address this?

So yes, you want all this business to come here, but your infrastructure isn’t able to do that. Hold on, my husband is joining us. So the Texas legislature started trying to figure out how to address the impact to the grid from the Bitcoin and the data centers. One of the things that the legislature needs to do is, and I hope that some legislation will pass this legislative session that will put some type of, it’s called bring your own power kind of thing. But what that’s going to do is require battery energy storage systems to be installed with data centers and cryptocurrency, which those bring their own risks. Battery energy storage systems are at this point in time, lithium ion batteries. And just like with a Tesla or some other electric vehicle, if they start on fire, they cannot be put out with water. They have to just burn out.

And if you have acres and acres and acres of battery energy storage systems with lithium ion batteries, if a fire starts, it’s called a thermal runaway and it just heats up and heats up and while it’s heating up, it’s putting off all kinds of toxins into the air. So one, as Cheryl said, they’re currently drawing from gas powered power plants energy, but the legislature possibly if this bill passes, is going to require crypto and data centers to bring their own power, which means battery energy storage systems, or they can have small gas powered power plants on property. One of the things that is unique, sadly unique about our little precinct is that we have gas pipelines running through our precinct and we have access to the grid very close together. So that is why these projects are coming to our little part of Hood County is because of the gas pipelines and the grid, and so they can get the energy and they can dispatch the energy very quickly. I think that when Governor Abbott and Ted Cruz and all of the legislators that are talking about Texas becoming the crypto and the data center capital of the United States, I don’t think they realize the impact to people’s lives. And if this data center was out surrounded by 500 acres of industrial area or non-residential area, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But that’s not what’s happening. Texas in enjoys businesses. We are a pro business state, but not at the expense of people’s lives or their property. And that’s what is happening in this little community here.

Cheryl Shadden:

So here across the street from where I live, if you think about being on the streets south Baltimore, so Constellation Energy owns this property across the street. They’re the slumlord, the drug dealer on the street corners, marathon Digital. They own all that property there. They’re leasing their property to Marathon Digital, marathon Digital doesn’t own the property that they’re sitting on. So now you have Marathon Digital causing problems with the community, making us sick, dropped our property values, not allowing us to sleep at night. You have Constellation Energy who holds the lease, who is leasing this property. They don’t care that they have a harmful renter on their property. They don’t care. They haven’t done anything to mitigate the noise that it’s there. Now you have Constellation Energy wanting to put in eight turbine gas power plant right in the middle of all of this to cause more problems. So you start looking at all of the air pollution, sulfuric acid, sulfur, hexa, fluoride, ozone, greenhouse gases, and then you have the first power plant here, Wolf Hollow one wanting to extend their air permit and drop some more acid rain on us. So this is a huge problem here. This isn’t just a little bit of a noise problem. This is a huge industrial pollution problem that’s ruining people’s lives here.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

I would also add to this, that regulation usually follows a problem. So regulation’s going to have to catch up with what’s going on out here. Now, as far as Bitcoin goes, I am pro-business as long as they’re not hurting people. I don’t really care if they have a Bitcoin plant, but they’re hurting people. So I’m not angry at Bitcoin itself. It could be any industry that’s doing this, and I would have a problem with ’em, Ted Cruz and Abbott. I’m with Cheryl. I’m frustrated with them, but I also agree with Nanette. I really want to believe that they have no clue the damage that they are encouraging out here. Now, perhaps they are aware, and if that’s the truth of that, then I have lost all respect for them. I do think that they need to hear people because we’re not quiet about this. They have to know that something’s going on out here, and I think that they need to come out here and talk to us.

I think this is a big enough deal that they need to come out here. I want to talk about the valves that are blowing and explain for some of your listeners that may be unaware, and Cheryl, you jump into because you understand this really well. Those valves are a safety mechanism that takes a lot of the pollutants, those really dangerous kinds of things from getting into the air. So when that valve blows, that means that safety measure that is in that particular place is not working. So when a series of valves blow, that means that we are getting contaminants into our air and we’re breathing them. Our animals are breathing them, they’re in the ground. These things are really important to understand. It’s not just the sound, it’s what is being released and we’re breathing it and it’s on our skin. And this is dangerous. I also want to talk about,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Can I ask really quick, is that from the cooling operation that’s at the Bitcoin mine or is this from,

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

This is the plant power plant. Its the power plant. So as Marathon is demanding more and more power, in order for them to do whatever it is that they do, the power plant right next door to it cannot keep up with it. And so it’s blowing their valves, which is the safety mechanism that keeps the pollutants from reaching the air and the people around us. So we are having this more and more and more, and now they want to build Constellation Energy, wants to build another bigger power plant. And we’re talking about an area that, goodness, I don’t even think it’s a mile around this. So we’re going to have three power plants and a Bitcoin mine. And there is talk about moving in another data center within a mile. So I cannot even imagine what this area is going to look like if they are successful.

Nannette Samuelson:

Dr. Wolf, what is the name of the California Battery Energy storage system that

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Was on fire? I looked that up today. And I want to say it was the one out of Monterey, but I don’t remember the actual name of it, but I think it was in Monterey, California, the one that caught on fire back in January of this year. Yes, hit that.

Nannette Samuelson:

Just look up battery energy storage system, fire California. And you’ll be able to see how the toxins that were in the air, the toxins that then were into the soil, the radius of the people that had to evacuate because of that. And that’s one thing, as I was saying, is snowballing into the other. The cryptocurrency is pulling and data centers are pulling so much power from the grid. One of the answers that the Texas legislature may do, or they may, the data centers themselves, may do it on their own. If their business model says this is cheaper or more cost effective is to bring those battery energy storage systems on their own property to how electricity markets work. When the demand goes up, the price goes up, demand goes down, the price goes down. So if I have a business that uses a lot of energy, then one of the things I can do to hedge that is to store my own power in these battery cells.

And then when the demand goes up, when Wolf Hollow can make more money selling their energy to the grid than selling it to me cryptocurrency marathon, I can offset that by storing my own power on my own property. And now I can keep running at full capacity because I’ve stored my own power in batteries. So then we have the add onto that, the risk of the fires with the battery energy storage system. So one of the things we’re looking into as a county is implementing some national fire safety protocols called NFPA 8 85 or 8 55. I’m sorry, I have to look that up to be sure exactly which one it is. But our fire marshal is in the process of working on that because we see this coming next. First, we have the regulation really lack of any regulation to do with noise. And now we have really lack of any regulation to do with fighting the dangers of fires or other situations that are caused by the batteries that are going to start being used to store the energy

Cheryl Shadden:

Well. And then let’s put these battery systems right next to a gas power plant, really make the explosion great,

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Right? Right. Talk about dangerous and then add that we have a volunteer fire department out here, the closest volunteer fire department to the existing best system that’s out here, battery energy storage system that’s already here. The closest fire department is 14 miles away. Their backup is 23 miles away. So imagine putting one of these right next to a gas powered electrical system or energy plant. Imagine what this is going to do to the community. This would be catastrophic. This is inhumane.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It is. I mean there’s so many other words that I have for it, but at base it is inhumane, it’s cruel. It is absurd. And the thing that is really just pummeling my heart right now is how often I hear stories like these around the country, and this should be an exception. This should be the kind of thing we write about in history books as a really awful accident that happened one time and we learned our lesson.

Nannette Samuelson:

Like Aaron Brockovich comes, right,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Right. Yeah. It should not be the kind of thing that I’m interviewing people about every week from all over the country, from Red Hill in Hawaii to Cancer Alley in Louisiana to South Baltimore, 20 minutes from where I am to East Palestinian, Ohio to Granbury, Texas. This crap is everywhere. And that goes to, I wanted to, we only have a few minutes left here with each other and we’re going to have to do more follows. There’s so much more to talk about here. But I wanted to, in the last 10 minutes that we have here, talk about a few of these larger connecting points. And we’re talking directly to the audience here and to people who may hear this because I hear the same refrain that y’all have heard all the time. People say, why don’t they just move first and foremost, most people can’t do that.

You listening to this, do you have the money to just pick up and move somewhere? What if the house that you live in, you couldn’t sell? Like the people in East Palestine not only have their property values plummeted, they don’t want to sell them because they can’t in good conscience pass off a toxic home to another family. So what are they supposed to do? How could Cheryl pass off her home to someone who’s going to have to live across from this massive power plant and data center? So that’s the kind of situation that folks are in in terms of why don’t people just move? First of all, it’s a real huge burden that most working people can’t take on, but if they have to flee and become refugees from their own hometowns to save their lives, like the people we’ve talked to in Conyers, Georgia who had to flee the Biolab fire in September, that’s what they’re going to have to do.

But also as we’re pointing out here, where are you going to go? Because this stuff is everywhere. And if you’re fleeing one sacrifice zone, you may find yourself living next to a toxic landfill. You may find yourself living underneath the side of a mountaintop removal operation. And so when heavy rains come, you’re going to be getting flooded. Like the folks in Asheville, North Carolina we spoke to during Hurricane Helene. So there’s almost nowhere to escape to because we’ve let this stuff pervade our homes all around this country. But the other thing that I always hear that I wanted to give you all a chance to respond to, but I don’t want to make you responsible for it, so I want to really clarify that because it’s something that drives me nuts. As an admittedly, I am a lefty nut job. I grew up very conservative and it’s been a long road to the socialist that you see before you.

But I don’t care about any of that. When I go to towns and talk to people who are suffering through things that they did not cause, they did not ask for whether they’re Trump voters, non voters, Biden voters, anybody and people on the internet will say, well, they deserved it. They voted for this. Or their Republicans, who cares. Or when the fires in my home of Southern California burn whole neighborhoods, people say, well, they’re Democrats. Who cares? We got to stop thinking like this or we’re going to keep dying and our communities are going to keep getting destroyed while the rich assholes, pardon my French, who are causing all this pain are getting off. So that’s my little tirade here. I wanted to ask y’all if you just had any thoughts on that or on how to correct the thinking for people listening to this, knowing that these are the times that we’re in, people are going to say stuff like this and we here are trying to get people to cut through that noise and just care about the fact that flesh and blood, fellow working people, red state, blue state, whatever it is, our people, our neighbors, our fellow workers are hurting and we are being hurt as well.

That is what we should care about. If a car is on fire and someone’s inside you don’t go and ask who they voted for before you pull ’em out. If you guys could just talk to people out there who should be listening to what you’re saying, but are letting stuff like this get in the way, what would you say to them?

Cheryl Shadden:

Where is your humanity? If your family is hurt? Wouldn’t you want me to help take care of them? If you were broken down on the side of the road and you needed a hand, do you care who I vote for when I stopped to help you? When I’m doing your anesthesia and we’re taking your gallbladder out or your kid’s going to emergency surgery, I don’t check your voting status before I take care of you. We take care of people because we, that’s who we all are Now. I don’t care if my neighbors are pink with purple polka dots, I don’t care who they voted for. My community is suffering. I will do anything that I can to help the people in this area that are suffering. Some of these people can’t stand up. They are so sick. And you know what? Step up. Put your money where your mouth is, step up and be a human.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Yeah, I think for me it’s that you look at another human being and you have compassion for another human being. I don’t care where you go to church or if you go to church, you’re a human being. And I think that we need to be more mindful. I think the United States used to be like that some time ago. We just cared about people. And I think that we need to get back to that place where people are more important than industry. People are more important than your thoughts. People are just important and we need to stand up for each other, especially those who cannot stand up for themselves.

Nannette Samuelson:

Yeah, very well said. Both of you. There’s, I think Cheryl or Dr. Wolf said this early on is that the peaceful enjoyment of one’s property is a right that we have and that is not happening in this. They’re not able to peacefully enjoy their property and the respect business needs to respect individual’s rights as well as both of them said so. Well, we are humans. We all care about protecting each other and making sure that each other is safe. And when I became the commissioner, I had no idea that this was going to be part of what I was doing. I thought it was budget and making sure that the county offices are running smoothly and figuring ways to cut taxes and those types of things. And this became front and center right away. And like I said earlier, the stories that people told at that first town hall, what they’re dealing with, it’s just not right. I mean, industries should not be able to impact people’s health and their property without any consequences. Agreed.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Again, we’re going to have to have y’all back on. And to our listeners, we are going to continue our investigation into not just the Bitcoin mine in Granbury, Texas, but looking at the larger surrounds that includes other toxic polluters that folks are also dealing with. Just like here in South Baltimore, as you guys have heard listening to this show, it’s not just the CSX rail terminal that’s getting coal dust over everyone’s houses and in their lungs, they’re also breathing in the toxic pollutants from the medical waste incinerator and all the other toxic polluters concentrated in that part of the city. So we are going to do more follow-ups on and with folks from Granbury, but with the last minute or two that I have y’all, I just wanted to do a quick round around the table and ask if y’all could say, in terms of the struggle to hold marathon accountable and to protect people in Hood County, where do things stand now and what can folks listening do to help?

Cheryl Shadden:

For me personally, we thought we were battling. And so we have more and more battles every day. We thought we were fighting one arm of this octopus. No, there’s eight arms on this octopus that we’re fighting. Stand up for your next door neighbor, knock on their door, see how they’re doing. If you’re suffering from problems, your neighbors all are suffering as well. Stand up, take a stand. Tell them. No, it’s a shame you should have to fight for your life. But when I first started this, it was just a few of us standing here. Now I’m standing with a mighty, mighty group of warriors that actually care about one another. And so it’s not ideal. No, but now I’m not standing by myself.

Nannette Samuelson:

And Cheryl, did you talk about the incorporation already?

Cheryl Shadden:

I started off doing that. So one of the things that we’re trying to do is we’re trying to incorporate this area, this community, into a township so that we can develop statutes and taxation and environmental impact fees. So we’re giving this a really good, hard, strong try, trying to get control over our area. We need some control of our lives and what’s happening to all the people here.

Nannette Samuelson:

So what that will do, as I mentioned at the beginning, because cities have regulatory authority, zoning, ordinance, authority that counties don’t have, so that if they’re successful incorporating, they will be able to have ordinances and regulations, zoning because they will be a municipality inside of the county. So then that will take precedence over the lack of authority or ability that the county, we don’t have what, like I was saying earlier, it’s pretty much water, sewer, and that’s about it.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

I think with the incorporation, just know that it’s not a done deal. I wish it was an easy thing, but we have a couple of hurdles and we have a person that can say no to us. So we’re a little nervous about that. That’s going to happen this coming week. And yeah, we could use prayer if you pray we could use your good thoughts. If you don’t, that’s okay. But one of the things that I do want to encourage everyone is if you see something coming in your neighborhood, tackle it early. Don’t let it get a foothold because then you’ve got a battle on your hands.

Nannette Samuelson:

And if you live in Texas, call your senator, your state senator, call your state representative, send them emails, call ours, call Senator Birdwell, call Representative Slauson and tell ’em you heard about this that’s happening in their area of responsibility and that their constituents are suffering and that they would support any change to the noise ordinance, regulation or setback requirements, things that would help the residents that live there. That’s what I would say. Call your state rep and your state senator. Call Shelby Slauson. Call Senator Birdwell. Tell him you heard about it. Here’s an ironic thing as Granberry just for what the third or fourth year in a row was, just voted the best historic small town in the United States we’re also the celebration capital of Texas.

Cheryl Shadden:

We’re celebrating air pollution.

Nannette Samuelson:

So that happened and here we are, this whole community of people that live around don’t live in the city limits of Granbury but live very close to in Hood County that are going through this struggle. And because like I said earlier, the proximity of gas lines, the proximity of the access to the grid, low property values, it’s coming. This isn’t the last project that we have in our little precinct.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests from Granbury, Texas. Cheryl Shedden, hood County Precinct Chair, Dr. Shannon Wolf and Hood County Commissioner Nanette Samuelson. And I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the real newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The Texas Senate has unanimously passed legislation that aims to prevent maternal deaths under the state’s strict abortion ban.

Written in response to a ProPublica investigation last year, Senate Bill 31, called The Life of the Mother Act, represents a remarkable turn among the Republican lawmakers who were the original supporters of the ban. For the first time in four years, they acknowledged that women were being denied care because of confusion about the law and took action to clarify its terms.

“We don’t want to have any reason for hesitation,” said Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, who authored the state’s original abortion ban and sponsored this reform with bipartisan input and support. Just last fall, he had said the law he wrote was “plenty clear.”

The bill stops short of removing what doctors say are the ban’s biggest impediments to care, including its major criminal penalties, and doesn’t expand abortion access to cases of fetal anomalies, rape or incest. Sen. Carol Alvarado, the Democratic lawmaker who co-authored the bill, said that its limits were a “real hard pill to swallow” but that it could still make a difference. “I believe this bill will save lives,” she said.

ProPublica’s reporting showed how doctors in states that ban abortion have waited to intervene in cases where women ultimately died of high-risk complications.

To address that problem, Senate Bill 31 states that a life-threatening medical emergency doesn’t need to be “imminent.” It also says doctors can terminate ectopic pregnancies, which occur when the fertilized egg implants outside of the uterine cavity. It would allow for a pregnant patient to receive cancer treatment, Hughes said, even if doing so threatened the viability of a fetus.

The bill also clarifies that medical staff or hospital officials can discuss termination with patients without violating a provision of the law that criminalizes “aiding and abetting” an abortion. It had been unclear to doctors whether simply discussing the option could lead to steep criminal penalties; patients have reported not being able to get straight answers from their providers about their prognosis and options for treatment.

It remains to be seen how the bill, if made law, would be interpreted by doctors and hospitals, and whether risk-averse institutions would still delay care during pregnancy complications.

Many reproductive rights advocates are skeptical given that the bill does not explicitly address many high-risk pregnancy complications. The most common one in the second trimester, previable premature rupture of membranes, or PPROM, occurs when someone’s water breaks early. In these cases, the chance of the fetus surviving is low, but delaying a pregnancy termination leaves the patient at risk of infection, which can lead to sepsis, a potentially deadly condition. Since the state banned abortion, lawyers at many hospitals across Texas have advised physicians not to empty the uterus until they can document signs of infection — an indication of a life-threatening emergency.

The death of Josseli Barnica, which ProPublica reported last year, reveals the dangers of forcing miscarrying patients to wait for care. Diagnosed with an “inevitable” miscarriage at 17 weeks, she showed symptoms similar to PPROM without an official diagnosis — her water had not yet broken. While stable, she was made to wait 40 hours until the fetal heartbeat ended before doctors induced delivery. She later died of sepsis, which medical experts say she likely developed because of the wait.

In addition to documenting cases in which women died of sepsis, ProPublica has shown how rates of the potentially deadly complication spiked by more than 50% statewide in second-trimester pregnancy-loss hospitalizations after Texas banned abortion.

Officials with the Texas Medical Association, the Texas Hospital Association and major anti-abortion groups — Texas Right to Life, Texas Alliance for Life and the American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYNs — told ProPublica they believed that this bill would now allow doctors to offer a termination at the point of a PPROM diagnosis, before infection set in.

Dr. Zeke Silva, chair of the Texas Medical Association’s Council on Legislation, included PPROM on a list of potentially life-threatening conditions he believed may fall under the bill’s clarified exception. The list, which is not exhaustive, includes preeclampsia, renal failure, liver failure, cardiac disease, pulmonary hypertension and neurological conditions. He added that decisions to intervene because a medical condition could be life-threatening “are, by definition, subjective, based on multiple clinical considerations” and must be based on “sound medical judgment.”

However, ProPublica spoke with six legal experts who said they were unsure whether hospitals, wary of litigation or penalties, would interpret the bill to mean that doctors can offer a termination to patients with PPROM.

Some PPROM patients can remain pregnant for weeks and not develop infections, while others can contract an infection and deteriorate very quickly, noted Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “I could see some doctors saying this means, ‘I have more leeway to intervene in all PPROM cases,’ and others saying, ‘I still don’t know, so I’ll wait until signs of infection.’”

The largest association of OB-GYNs, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in an emailed statement that it did not support the bill: “This bill would keep Texas’ abortion ban in place and we strongly oppose the abortion ban and will continue to do so.”

Yesterday, the Texas Senate also passed Bill 2880, which would authorize civil lawsuits against anyone in or outside of Texas who distributes or provides abortion medication to someone in the state. It is expected to face pushback in the state House.

The Life of the Mother Act now goes to the House, where it must be voted out of committee before it heads to the House floor. Both chambers would need to agree on a final version before the governor could sign it into law.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Cassandra Jaramillo and Lizzie Presser.

“I would like to see Texas become the center of the universe for bitcoin and crypto,” US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in 2021. In 2024, Republican Governor Greg Abbott said Texas “wears the crown as the bitcoin mining capital of the world.” But in small towns like Granbury, TX, about an hour southwest of Fort Worth, residents are the ones paying the price for Texas’ crypto boom. Granbury’s 300-megawatt bitcoin mine, which is owned by Marathon Digital, a Florida-based cryptocurrency company, uses a mix of liquid immersion and industrial fans to prevent over 20,000 computers from overheating. Many residents say that it’s the constant sound from those fans that has made life increasingly unbearable in their small town—and that their concerns are going ignored by the company and government officials. In this episode of Working People, we speak with four residents of Granbury living near the Marathon bitcoin mine: Danny Lakey, Karen Pearson, Nick Browning, and Virginia Browning.

Additional links/info:

• Protect Hood County website
• Andrew R. Chow, TIME, “‘We’re living in a nightmare:’ Inside the health crisis of a Texas bitcoin town”
• Andrew R. Chow, TIME, “Noisy neighbor: Bitcoin’s hidden health cost” (Video Report)
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘I had to move away from everything that I ever had’: Chemically exposed residents of East Palestine, OH, and Conyers, GA, have been left behind”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “‘This is murder!’: Industrially poisoned South Baltimore residents march on state capitol, demand help from Gov. Moore”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Steve Mellon, & Mike Balonek, The Real News Network, “Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH (DOCUMENTARY)”
• Keaton Peters, Inside Climate News, “Texas leaders worry that bitcoin mines threaten to crash the state power grid”
• NBC News, “Inside the Texas bitcoin mine reportedly making residents sick”
• James Pollard, The Texas Tribune, “Texas Republicans want to make the state the center of the cryptocurrency universe”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are beginning a new investigation in our ongoing series where we speak with working class people, living, working, and fighting for justice in America’s sacrifice zones. As you know from listening to the voices and stories in this series, sacrifice zones are areas where people have been left to live in conditions that harm and even threaten life itself in sacrifice zones as ghoulish of a term as that is. They can look a lot of different ways and the sources of toxic pollution or environmental devastation don’t all look the same either.

It can look like the mushroom cloud that exploded from the derailed Norfolk southern bomb train in the sleepy rust belt town of East Palestinian, Ohio. It can look like the black coal dust covering the windows and porches and the wheezing lungs of urban residents like here in South Baltimore. It can also sound different and as we’ll discuss in today’s episode, sound itself and the entity producing it intense, relentless torturous noise can be the main thing that’s actually hurting people. And that’s what Andrew R. Chow, a technology correspondent for TIME Magazine, found in the town of Granbury, Texas, about an hour southwest of Fort Worth. “On an evening in December, 2023,” Chow writes, “43-year-old small business owners, Sarah Rosenkrantz collapsed in her home in Granbury, Texas, and was rushed to the emergency room. Her heart pounded 200 beats per minute. Her blood pressure spiked into hypertensive crisis.

Her skull throbbed, it felt like my head was in a pressure vice being crushed. She says that pain was worse than childbirth. Rosecrans migraine lasted for five days. Doctors gave her several rounds of IV medication and painkiller shots, but nothing seemed to knock down the pain. She says this was odd, especially because local doctors were similarly vexed when Indigo, Rosecranz’s five-year-old daughter, was taken to urgent care earlier that year, screaming that she felt a ‘red beam behind her eardrums.’ It didn’t occur to Sarah that symptoms could be linked, but in January of 2024, she walked into a town hall in Granbury and found a room full of people worn thin from strange debilitating illnesses. None of them knew what exactly was causing their symptoms, but they all shared a singular grievance. A dull oral hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep.

The hum local law enforcement had learned was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis. The development of large scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one, but there’s an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage. And one local doctor, ears, nose and throat specialist Celine Baha says he sees patients with symptoms potentially stemming from the Bitcoin mine’s noise on an almost weekly basis. So you guys should definitely read this excellent piece by Andrew Chow in TIME, and you should watch the companion video report, both of which we’ve linked to in the show notes. And I want to thank Brother Andrew for helping me to connect with our guests today who are all residents of Granbury themselves and who have all been affected by the massive 300 megawatt Bitcoin mining operation near their homes.

Now, the mine, which is owned by Marathon Digital, a Florida based cryptocurrency company uses a mix of liquid immersion and industrial fans to prevent the over 20,000 computers from overheating there. And many residents have said that it’s the constant sound from those fans that has made life increasingly unbearable in their small town.

In a statement to NBC News for a report they did 6 months ago on the bitcoin mine, Marathon said what companies always say when I’m investigating stories like these: that they are doing nothing wrong, they’re the best of corporate neighbors, they’re abiding by existing laws, and there’s no proof they’re the ones causing harm to the community. “Since [Marathon] took operational control of the data center in April 2024,” the company said, “we have gone above and beyond what is required in a well-established industrial zone ton ensure our facility is best in industry, including engaging third-party experts to evaluate sound levels and investing millions of dollars to reduce the perceived loudness of the facility. As a result, all levels measured around the facility are well below state and county law sound limits. There is no established link, medical or otherwise, between [Marathon’s] operations and the ailments that are being alleged.” 

So with all of that upfront, let’s do what we do best and take you right to the front lines of the struggle and get the story firsthand from the people who are living it. I am so grateful to be joined today by our four guests. Danny Lakey is a resident of Granberry and he joins us today along with Karen Pearson and her parents, Nick and Virginia Browning, all longtime residents of Granbury. Danny, Karen, Nick, Virginia, thank you all so much for joining us today. I really wish we were connecting under better circumstances, but I’m really, really grateful to all of you for joining us and sharing your stories with us. And I wanted to start by just asking if we could go around the table and have y’all tell us a bit more about who you are and what you do and what your life was like before this Bitcoin mine came to your town.

Danny Lakey:

So I’m Danny Lakey. I’m originally from Arlington, which is east of Fort Worth, and it’s about an hour and 10 minutes from where I live now. I am the newest Granbury residence. My wife and I four years ago, sold everything we had, wanted to move out to the country, get someplace where it was quiet and get away from the big city. Little did I know that it would be louder where I live now than where I came from. So in the middle of 8 million people in the DFW metroplex, I had about a third. The noise that I have in an area where I don’t have, I’ve got 30 people within 200 acres. 300 acres. I mean, you can’t imagine what it is I will admit, because they want to say that they’re not violating any state laws. That’s a lie. Texas has a nuisance law that says if somebody does anything that hinders you from using your property as you intended to use it, which in my case was a retirement place for me and my wife to enjoy life, they’ve taken that from us.

That is a violation of state law. So when they say that they’re not in violation of any laws, they’re not, but that’s a civil law. They are not currently in violation of any state laws, but the state laws are, they’re inefficient in Texas, anything under 85 decibels and most cities limited to about 40 decibels. To put it in that perspective, airports are regulated to 65 decibels during the day. If you want to know how high the threshold is for us on the noise violations. And they’ve gotten very, very close and we have readings where they’ve exceeded it, but we’ve not been able to prove it in court so they can say they’re not in violation of criminal law when they say they’re not in violation of state law, they are misleading people.

Nick Browning:

Well, when we came here, that’s kind of what we wanted to do. We sold our place in Santa Fe, Texas right out of Galveston because this was nice and quiet out here. They moved in on top of us. We didn’t move in on them and they moved. That thing is right across the Bitcoin. Mine is right across the street from my property and I’ve had decimals 83 on my front porch and sometime at night I’ve had more than 83 and a vacuum cleaner’s only 55 and who in the world is going to go to sleep with a vacuum cleaner running all night long in their house? And that’s what it’s like. I’ve been in out of the hospital with all kinds of problems. I never had a problem before and they think I’m old, but I’m kind of seasoned. We’re not old. And my wife has been in out of the hospital.

They said it was a brain tumor, but as it turned out it was not a tumor. All the stuff was sent to the University of Michigan and they still don’t know what it is. It’s not a tumor, it’s not cancer. And a month or so after I had her there the first time, we had to go back again and stay another five days. So they are lying. They put a wall up, but that sound goes right over top of that wall. And a sound expert said, if you live right beside that wall, it wouldn’t bother you as bad. Well, we don’t live beside that wall. So they’re trying to get in good with grandberry. They furnished money for the 4th of July fireworks and they furnished money for the parades and this and that. And they give the sheriff department a big barbecue, but they’re trash. They’re not good neighbors at all. And constellation of fire plans is not either

Virginia Browning:

Out here where we are. We’re in the middle of the country. We have wild animals every place and we enjoy every one of them. Even the coyotes we don’t mind because we know where we live, but they have ran away the birds, all the animals, we don’t even have snakes. So you can see how the sound is destroying the environment out here with the little animals. Besides our health, our health is terrible right now, but it is what it is at the moment. We can’t do too much about it. We’re fighting it. Everybody out here is fighting it, but big corporation, they seem to be able to just get their way. And we are left behind in the rubble of everything, but we don’t like it. We came out here, our children lived here. We wanted to be here with our children, our grandchildren and grandchildren, but we don’t get that peace anymore. So it’s miserable. It’s absolutely miserable. And when have to go in and out of the hospital all the time, doctors all the time, that’s an invasion on us too.

Nick Browning:

There’s a big water line that comes from Lake Granbury all the way to constellation power plant. And that steam, they take that water and they make steam to turn those turbines. Well, when they put some of that steam up in the air, it has all kinds of chemical in it. It has lead, mercury, carbon monoxide amidst the acid and everything. Well, some of the water that they send over the top and to go back through their thin fans and stuff, they condense that steam back to water and they have a holding pond. That water goes in that holding pond. And then from there when they get so much, it’s dumped into Brazos River. Well, that brass River comes right around. It comes right back to Lake Granbury again where there’s already been a content of content. They did a sample and there was a lead content in there, but they don’t want that to get out. So eventually, if they keep on doing what they’re doing now, lake Granbury won’t be a good lake at all to fish in. You won’t be able to eat the fish because they’ll have a lead content in it and they’ll have a mercury content in it, but they don’t want nobody to know any of that. They kind of keep all that hush.

Karen Pearson:

So just to dovetail a little bit off of what mom and dad have said, being out here for me and to have to watch what they go through is extremely stressful too. I know that oftentimes at night they don’t sleep. Their bedroom is upstairs, and so that noise just penetrates their bedroom at night. So that makes their days rough. Cognitively, it causes issues, just the stress of every day, day in and day out task when you’re tired and you don’t have sleep and then it’s so fragmented or interrupted throughout many days, it just causes a lot of stress and wear and tear on them emotionally and also in their physical health. Part of what I wanted to do and their last part of their life that they’ll say they’re seasoned and they are. They’re very seasoned and very independent as much as they can be.

But over the last two and a half years, their independence has definitely declined. And so then I come in as some of their being their caregiver for different things. It makes it very difficult to watch what they go through because this is not what they intended for the second part of their life. And I was given a great part in the first part of my life by my parents and part of my goal was to give them the best quality of life. And their second part that’s not happening out here. Like mom said, a lot of the wildlife has gone away. That’s something that they enjoy every day is to feed the birds and the deer and different things out here, take off on the golf cart and go feed. But that’s becoming less and less. So many other things as far as their health dad with respiratory issues kind going back to mom’s, the complications of the brain issue.

It is true there’s not a lot of data, not a lot of research out there. And so they fall back on that. But kind of the odd thing is that while they say we might not can prove that they’re causing this harm, there’s so many people in the area that are having many of the same similar things going on. And here’s my question back is while we might not can prove it, but you can’t prove that it’s not either. And to mom’s issue, that biopsy, I saw a 1.3 centimeter creature in her brain. It was there and they did a brain biopsy and the University of Michigan could not, it wasn’t cancer, thank God it doesn’t have the cell tissue of a tumor. It didn’t have the cell tissue of a mass and then one back in December, that was in July of this last year, December of this year, she had another episode.

And the tumors, that creature, whatever it was, it’s gone. So it’s not there. But now the doctor is saying, but there was seizure activity in her brain. We don’t have seizures in our family and my mom has never had a seizure in her life. And then in our community, we have had a little child that started having just unexpected seizures and they had to move out of the area. So there’s just so many, they’re not coincidences. There’s so many things that are going on around here that is impacting our community and we are trying to stand up and fight again big companies as best we can with what we have.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Danny, Karen, Nick, Virginia. I wanted to go back around the table and ask if you could just tell that story a bit more about how things have unfolded in your lives from the time that you first heard about this Bitcoin mine to now. When did you start sensing that something was deeply wrong here?

Danny Lakey:

Well, I think for me, and probably for most of us, we started hearing some things late 20, 23, November, December, and it was getting louder. It was intermittent and everybody was, we saw what was going up over at the plant. Everybody was debating on, is it batteries? Nobody really knew what it was. And then somebody finally took a picture and said it’s Bitcoin, and then showed another mine from another area of the same type of machine. So then we knew what it was and we started paying a little more direct attention to where the noise was coming from because up until then, we just thought that the electric plant that had never had a noise problem was having these crazy fluctuations and didn’t know what to think about it. It continued to get worse when the Brownings say that they registered 82 on their property or 80, higher than 82 on their property.

The highest I’ve ever gotten is 82. The day it was 82, I was walking in my backyard and I just looked at the plant and I’m like, what in the heck is that? And then I felt like I got punched in the chest for the next two days. I had a heart arrhythmia and I was having some issues with my heart. I worked in the medical field, and so I have doctors that I can call at a whim and I called my PCP and he said no, because my wife was like, he needs to go to the hospital. And my PCP said, you need to. He said, no, I think this is sound related. Basically, judging from my history, I’d only had that once before I got a steroid injection and found out that I’m allergic to steroids. And so an allergic reaction to a steroid caused that heart palpitations.

But when I had my heart checked out, then my heart is in perfect condition. So this was way out of the ordinary and it was completely from the sound. And that day I registered 82 decibels on my property and you could actually feel the ground shake. My wife started having blackouts. She wrecked her car six times in four months, lost her job, wasn’t able to work. She’s still not working, which has been about seven months now just because of all the issues that it’s caused her within her body. The strangest thing for me is on any given day, if you just want to see something funny, just take me to any public place or whatever. Let me sit for about 10 minutes and I’ll fall asleep. And it doesn’t matter if I just woke up or it doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, when it is, I can fall asleep within 10 minutes because I don’t ever sleep.

I used to sleep through the night through trains, dogs, it didn’t matter. Nothing was waking me up and now I’m up two, three times a night. I don’t sleep well at all. It really, you don’t understand what kind of an impact that has on you, the constant barrage of noise. But if you look at work rules from any osha, if you’re exposed to certain amount of noise levels, the louder it is, the shorter time of exposure and the longer time of exposure, the longer you have to be away from it. Well, we exceed all of that on a daily basis 24 7. And unfortunately we can’t get away from it. And because of what’s going on, they’ve plummeted our property value so much I can no longer get from our property what I put in it. And that’s just ridiculous.

Nick Browning:

We noticed it in 2022 and 2023 and right on up till today, I’ve never in my life had any heart trouble and I started having high blood pressure. So I went to her doctor because she has a pacemaker and her doctor told me there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with my heart, but I take high blood pressure medicine every night that he gave me. And a lot of the doctors around here, they don’t want to get involved in none of this stuff. But it is done a number on us and not only us, all of our neighbors, the same way we got neighbors around here that people you wouldn’t believe that had a heart trouble. And I’ve been in a hospital, I had to go to emergency room one time with my ears, give me a ear infection. I’ve been in a hospital twice for flu. They said flu and pneumonia. So man, it’s been something else. And we’re not the only ones around here. There’s people all around it. Us in this area. And they even had some as a school about three or four miles over from us. And even they’ve had kids in school. It affects their hearings and art and everything else. And it is really done a number on us. They say they’re not doing anything but they’re lying. It is

Karen Pearson:

Like what Danny said, we heard noises just couldn’t identify exactly what it was. And at first too, when you hear something like that and you think it might be the gas plant, that’s a bit alarming too because we weren’t sure if something was about to blow up, take off or what. So then as time continues to progress and if the wind changes, it blows from the south or the different types of nighttime, it’s louder than daytime. There’s so many different factors that cause the noise to ramp up more than others. And really depending on where you’re sitting in reference to the facility too and what portion of the mines that they have going at the time. But once we started realizing that it was actually coming from the mine, we were a bit surprised that they were allowed to even come into the area without us even know what was going on. None of us had been notified publicly that anything was going to take place or they were going to be expanding to a Bitcoin mine company. We had no idea. All of a sudden it’s just upon us

And then we are having to deal with what’s happening. And then at that point, it was more about we started noticing people getting sick, and then we started getting sick in our own homes. And I work from home. So I’m here 24 7 and over the last year and a half, I’ve seen decline in my dad’s hearing. Again, just all these things that have started to come about. And then when you start hearing about your neighbor having some of the same stuff that you’re having, again, it’s not a coincidence. There’s too many people out here just within a couple of mile radius that’s all experiencing some of the same stuff. You know, the best thing about all this, we didn’t know a lot of our neighbors. I didn’t know Danny, I didn’t know Cheryl, I didn’t know a lot of our neighbors. Man. This has brought the community together very rapidly for us to join together.

Because I shared this earlier with you. It’s like environmental euthanasia. We’re all out here in this together, man. We hear when one person, one of our friends had a pulmonary embolism and he was fine. When things like that start happening or if we don’t hear from somebody in a few days, we’re like, okay, is everybody okay? We hear ambulance come down the road, we’re texting each other. Hey, is that going to your house? We never had to do that before. We are now on such hypervigilant alerts about things firetruck go by. Is there anything going on out at the plant? I mean, again, we can’t live peacefully anymore. They’ve invaded that piece and we all stay just hypervigilant all the time. And like Danny said, you don’t sleep. So the community out here is like a war zone is kind of what I also equate it to. And you never know what bomb’s going to go off next.

Virginia Browning:

I was just going to say when she said, you don’t know what bomb’s going to go off next, and we know it’s going to go off and it’s going to hit one of our friends, even though the ones we don’t know personally. But the thing of it is when we speak, when we’re talking to you, we’re talking for all of us out here. Our voice is what you hear, but we’re speaking for them too. So it’s not just a few of us. It’s all of us. And we don’t know how to get out of this. It is just like she said, it’s a war zone and we don’t have any kind of backup, and that’s what we want. We want backup and then we want it cleared out.

Nick Browning:

Another thing we have is she and I are retired. We lived on a fixed income and we’re not the only one. There’s a lot of retired people out here. They try to say that this is an industrial area, it’s not an industrial area, it’s home sites. That’s it. There’s no industrial area out here. But they moved in on top of us anyway, and when they got people coming out here to work on that plant, they shut that plant down. They’re not even running with those people working inside there. And another thing, when they find out if there’s a reporter or something coming, I don’t know where they get their information, but they’ll shut down. They won’t be running, but it’s extremely loud over at Danny’s house. It’s louder at this house than it is at our house. I don’t know if they kind of live down in the valley.

And then we also have a whole bunch of Spanish people that live across the road from it. They live right next to that thing. And some of them have been getting sick, but they won’t say anything because they scared they’ll get in trouble because I don’t know if they’re illegal or illegal, but they’ve been here for 30 something years. So they’re my neighbors. And when we first started feeding all the, I feed the deer, the squirrel, the animals starting off, I had anywhere from eight to 10 squirrels. Well, I had one squirrel left today. I don’t have any squirrels and only just a few deer and just about everything else is gone. There’s just very few animals around here. But when they find out a news reporter or somebody’s coming shut down for two or three days and some of the animals have come back, but still no snakes, no, the bird population is way down. And I’ve been feeding them every day for the last 25 years out of here. And it’s just not happening. They’re just, they’re running everything,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Guys. I cannot help. But here the echoes of other sacrifice zones and other working class residents who have been poisoned, polluted, abandoned, and are dealing with different circumstances, but very similar situations to what you guys are dealing with. It’s harrowing how similar these stories sound. And it’s so mind blowing how different the causes can be. But I’ve heard from so many residents who live near concentrated animal feeding operations, chickens, cows. And they look at that and they know that the waste that these animals are producing and being housed in these massive lagoons and being sprayed over their neighbor’s farmlands, they can see that that’s all getting into their water. The folks here in South Baltimore, I’ve seen the uncovered coal cars car after car after car for miles on these CSX trains not covered. And the wind is just blowing this toxic cold dust all over the place.

And I’ve seen residents wipe it off their windows and yet all the while they’re being told, oh, how do you know it’s cold? Not us. That could be any kind of black dust. Oh, you have respiratory problems. It’s probably because you smoked a cigarette two decades ago. Right? The burden is always put on the residents and it’s never put on the big fat obvious polluters at the center of these stories. And it’s just maddening to hear another community going through something like this. But I think one thing I wanted to ask about is when I’m talking to folks in these other areas and the industries involved, there’s always something that they can at least grasp about those industries. Like, okay, coal, yeah, it’s dirty, but we need it for energy and metallurgical processes. The chicken cafo down the street. Yeah, it’s gross and dirty, but people got to eat chickens. Right? I’ve heard these kinds of things. I just wanted to ask, as you and your other neighbors started realizing what was happening in your town, what did you think all of this was for? What did you know anything about Bitcoin? What is it like to know that you’re going through all this for something like Bitcoin mining?

Danny Lakey:

I don’t know. That was a pretty hard pill for me to swallow at the beginning. It’s really rough because all it is is it’s profiting a corporation and obviously the people are in Bitcoin, but the bitcoin mining people, they’re processing transactions. They’re doing data calculations at phenomenal rates and encoding and uncoding and encrypting. I mean, it’s crazy, but that’s how they’re making their money. So it is just to enrich. A corporation has no play on anything else. It was more disheartening in Texas, obviously Texas is, we like to be the wild wild west and we don’t want anybody bothering with our land and let us do our thing, but that’s if it doesn’t encroach on other people. And this does. And then the Bitcoin mining is part of Greg Abbott’s grand plan to get enough power to cover the state anytime we have peak issues, so we don’t have one of the snow issues like we had a few years back, that’s part of his plan.

If they bring in the Bitcoin mines that drive the power, then they build more power plants that get to sell their power on a regular basis, but then they have more power on the grid for when there’s an emergency. So I understand the process, but to do that, you have opened up a state that doesn’t have any regulations on this. So now they can move. In Texas, if you are not in an incorporated city of some kind, there are no regulations. And so they don’t have any regulations. They don’t have to ask for remission. It’s why they say that they are in an industrial zone. They’re not in an industrial zone. They’re on a piece of property owned by the electric plant. And every square inch that borders that electric plant is either residential, farmland, agricultural, or used for cows or goats. I mean it is an agricultural or a residential piece of property, every inch of it.

And then they want to say, oh, it’s in a well-known industrial area. No, it’s on the grounds of an electric plant and you’re there so you don’t have to pay distribution fees to power running through somebody’s power lines to get to you and you can buy it by the gigawatt on the open market in Texas. So I mean it was very disheartening because you’re no longer fighting the Bitcoin company. You’re fighting Greg Abbott’s master plan. And then we found out it was data centers now, which does ai, and they’re tying AI into our national defense. So now we’re fighting the federal government, the state government, and the stupid mining companies.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Do they say it’s going to bring jobs and economic stimulus or what? I mean, what is it that they’re actually, what are they doing besides using a shit ton of water, pardon my French, and creating a shit ton of sound pollution right next to your homes and generating a shit ton of money for people who are not you?

Danny Lakey:

Well, and now with the more power, they’re about to build a third power plant, which is going to generate more air pollution. So we have water pollution, air pollution, noise pollution, so we got the good trifecta going on. They also recently built a solar farm and as great as good energy is, that heats the air up around it. It’s killing all the birds. So we’ve got increased temperature, increased air pollution, increased noise pollution, and increased water pollution. And what we’re getting out of it is about $8 million a year to the Granbury school districts. And when we appeal to Granbury and ask them to do it because we’re in the county, they have made it very clear we are not part of Granbury.

Virginia Browning:

The day that we read in the newspaper that all of this out here didn’t concern Granbury because we were not in the Granbury city limits. That was a slap in the face. They let us know we’re out here by ourselves and they really don’t care about Granberry doesn’t care about the country around the city. They don’t care about the part of Hood County that doesn’t say Granberry city limits. They just don’t care. And that’s where we are. We are out here floundering by ourselves. It’s like you’re in the boat in the middle of the ocean with no oars. That’s what we feel like.

Karen Pearson:

Danny says it a little more elegant than what we can as far as I guess some of the staff that I think that the people in Texas are not really realizing. And even we have had so much ridicule and people saying that we’re just doing this because we want money and this and that. We’re doing this. We want our peace, but we’re also doing this because for future generations and also in Texas, like what he mentioned, the Bitcoin plants are buying kilowatts at very, very low cost per kilowatt, saving it up. And then when the grid starts weakening and there needs to be more, they then go to the Bitcoin companies and buy it back from them at the consumer’s expense. We are the ones that have to pay for that extra kilowatts or whatever that they’re selling back. And why is it that these companies who, and again, they’re not contributing to jobs in the area, they’re not contributing to the local economy out here where they’re located.

I beg to differ that even I don’t even, I bet not even five of their employees even live here in Granbury or Hood County. So all at our expense, they’re making money. The people in Texas are buying the electricity back at probably double or better rates whenever the grid goes down. And that’s what I don’t think people understand. It’s almost like the great Ponzi scheme is what it seems like and it’s people like you that get the word out. For us, that’s been what has helped us tremendously in this fight. Like mom said, we’re kind of out here floundering all on our own all together, sick as some of us are trying to just be heard and give us our peace back.

Nick Browning:

They’re not allowed in China. They were run out of China, and so why did they come to Texas? It’s just a scheme is all it is and we’re kind of sick and tired of it. I don’t know what we can do about it, but they keep saying that they’re not karma us, but they are. Every one of them, I think that people in town, their palms were padded and that’s why they said we’re not part of Granbury. We’re out here in Hoods County, out in the country, out on our own. It is a scheme. It’s just a scheme. That’s it.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now I wanted to ask you guys with just the last few minutes that we have together, and again, this will not be the only time we cover this story, I promise y’all, we are going to do follow-ups and I want to get y’all on panels with folks that we’ve spoken to from other areas of the country where they’re dealing with industrial pollution or other awful things that have upended their lives. So we promised everyone listening that we are going to stay on this story, but with the time we have left in this episode, I wanted to just ask if you guys could bring us up to speed on where things stand now and what if anything is being done to address your concerns. Have you gotten any help from local officials? Is that help coming from local organizations, community led groups, what is being done and what needs to be done to help you guys get out of this hell that you’re living in?

Danny Lakey:

Well, we’ve had some help. We have a couple of county commissioners that are on our side that have helped us out. They helped get a study, but all we could get was about $6,000. So it was a very small study. We were glad to have it, but you need a bigger sound study in a bigger area than what you can do with six grand and we wouldn’t have been able to get any more out of it. So we were glad to get that. We’ve gotten a lot of help from national media, some international media, and anybody that wants to come out and talk to us, we really, really, really appreciate just people putting eyes on it because that’s about the only place we’re going to get some help. We’re not going to get it from our county. Judge kind of holds all the cards. He gets his little party paid for by people.

Senator Birdwell who is our state senator, he’s of no help. I had a 45 minute conversation trying to get them to not give a grant to the electric plant to expand the electric planning larger and I thought he was on our side and then 45 minutes later he voted against us. So he is not help our local congresswoman. She is not of any help. We are getting some help out of Somerville County, which is our neighboring county because they are impacted too. And everybody down in Somerville has been very, very helpful. So we want to put that out. There’s a lady by the name of Cheryl Shedden who is the driver of our bus. She lives a little bit closer to the plant than I do, so she gets it even worse than I do. And she’s been here quite a while. She is the leader of our ring. She keeps everybody motivated. So you got to give a shout out to Cheryl for all the work she’s done. We’ve got some good news.

We’ve been enough contact with people for litigation about various different things. One, we were fighting to get an injunction to try to get the marathon to stop the noise, bury it, put a building over it, move it out. I don’t care, but just stop the noise. You can do all the Bitcoin mining you want over there. I don’t care, but stop killing me with the noise. Earth Justice came on board to help us with that suit and that is in progress right now and we’re very grateful to them because they’re doing that free of charge. And so they heard about us and offered us our services. We started a nonprofit called Protected County. We had to do that because of litigation. They needed a leadership group. They needed a name. And so we got a 5 0 1 C3 status. We are currently trying to raise $5,000 to fight building a third power plant.

Like I said, the state granted them money to build it. We were able to get enough people and enough written documents to where it’s the first time in the state of Texas that an air permit was not issued to a gas power plant. So they held off on issuing the permit, which made them forfeit their grant. Now they’re going to reapply and the permit has not been diluted. It’s just going through a hearing process. We’ve got a meeting coming up with the state and if we survive that, then we have to go in front of a judge and plead our case for a final ruling on it. And that’s really where we’ve got, we’ve had quotes from 25 to $75,000 when we finally found an attorney that says, if you get there, I’ll take it for five grand and get you in there. But none of us are independently wealthy.

I mean, we may have some land, but land in Texas is not expensive. And these are our retirement homes. We’re not sitting on millions and millions of dollars. I think the Bitcoin mine’s worth about five or 6 billion and the electric company’s worth about 60 or 70 billion. So they’ve got some deep pockets and we’re having to fight ’em. But we did get that injunction to hold off on the air permit, which was a huge win. And we’re hoping that we have a meeting with Marathon and we’re hoping we can have a little bit of a win before the end of the month. But anything anybody can do, if you just want to read about it, you can go to protect hood county.com. There’s a lot of information on it. Like I said, we have a 5 0 1 C3 status that if anybody wants to help donate, we can’t thank you enough.

Again, other communities, other states, other areas are going to be fighting this because it’s no longer Bitcoin. It’s now data centers and the federal government is leaking the power of AI as to how we’re going to fight China in the future and they want to stay ahead of ’em and we have to have power to do it. We’ve got to have it all over the country. So these things are not going away and we need some fight to get some regulation on it. Let’s find a happy way to do it. It was mentioned before that China kicked them out their data centers, they’re bearing in the south seat because it cools ’em. And of course there’s no noise down there. So they’re bury him down in the ocean and then running the power to it to their AI centers are coming back. I’m not saying we go that extreme, but there’s got to be a compromise in ruining all of our lives and killing us slowly is not the answer.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I think that was powerfully put. And Karen, Nick, Virginia, I kind of wanted to just toss it to you to round us out. I think Danny really underlined the most important point here. When I talked to people about why we do this coverage on this show, because for years and even still, we talk to union workers. We talk to people organizing their workplaces. We talk to people in non-union shops about their lives and their jobs. It’s a show buy and for working class people. And so some people will ask, well, why are you talking about a Bitcoin mine in rural Texas? And I’m like, well, who do you think are the people living around this place? They are our fellow workers. They are the people whose lives and ability to make a living are being upended by this. We haven’t even talked about what this is doing to the farmers who live around there or to anyone who’s trying to kind of work the land around this Bitcoin mine and the way it’s impacting them.

But we’ve talked about how you all as flesh and blood people working people, retirees, how this is impacting you and your daily lives. So for everyone listening, just think about what it’s like to try to get through your day-to-day life, make a living while enduring this level of sound, pollutions, stress, and all the gaslighting that comes with it. That’s why we’re talking about it because this is wrong and working people standing together is the only way that we’re going to get out of it. And I wanted to kind of let you guys have the last word and ask if you had any final messages to the working people who listen to this show, the folks in other sacrifice zones who listen to this show, any final messages you wanted to send from out there in Granbury to the folks listening,

Karen Pearson:

We’re out here fighting for everyone, and there is a handful of us that are not giving up. We have big voices and we have a lot of spunk in us. And like he said, Cheryl Shedden, she’s our rockstar team leader in all of this, and we’re motivated to stand toe to toe with them. We might not have the money for attorneys or whatever we would like to. It’s kind of funny, those of us who, like Danny said, we own property and stuff, but they’re on a fixed income. I work 40 hours a week to make ends meet myself. And even when we are needing funds for small projects that we have to keep going with, I come to mom and dad and ask them, do you have $10? Mom will usually give me 20. I’m like, well, just give me 10. That’s all I need.

She’s like, no, you just take this. Even on their fixed income, they still find it necessary to give into this because again, mom’s been in the hospital several times and she still worries about her neighbor. She thinks there’s somebody else that’s worse off than what she is. So the sacrifices that we are all making to try to take care of each other is huge. Like Danny said, go to the website, read on there, join, get on the mailing list. You can keep up with things there. We’re not attorneys, but you know what? We’re fighting this as if we are, there’s five of us that are going toe to toe up against this air permit and to try to, if we can’t block it, then we want to come in with some mediation and we want to put up some safeguards. We’re not stopping and we’re not giving up.

And you can intimidate us as big as you want with your money or your corporation, but we’re not going to go away. And I would say that to any community that’s fighting like we are just what? Stand up for your life because no one else is going to do it for you. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re standing up for our lives, the quality of our lives that we wanted and laid out for ourselves and then also for the others who can’t fight for themselves. We’re not quitting and we’re not going away. So one way another, we’re going to keep plugging.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests from Granbury, Texas, Danny Lakey, Karen Pearson and her parents, Nick and Virginia Browning. And I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Attorney General Ken Paxton has spent much of his career, which has taken him to the heights of Republican politics, trailed by a raft of criminal and civil accusations.

But in the final days of the Biden administration, The Associated Press reported Thursday, the Justice Department defused the most serious legal threat he faced — a federal criminal probe into allegations of corruption — by declining to prosecute and effectively ending the investigation.

With the investigation over, Paxton has nearly cleared his crowded slate of career-threatening legal battles, just as he gears up for a likely 2026 primary run against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

“The end of this investigation is both politically and personally a huge boon for Ken Paxton,” said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “Paxton can point to that and say, ‘You see, even under a Democratic administration, they didn’t feel that there was anything there that merited moving forward.’”

Two sources familiar with the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told the AP of the Justice Department’s decision, including that it was made while President Joe Biden was still in office. The DOJ did not immediately respond to questions about confirming the AP report.

The development extends a multiyear string of legal victories vindicating the once-embattled Republican. It underscores Paxton’s durability through all manner of political, personal and legal troubles and helps burnish his reputation among the right wing of his party as a fighter who, like President Donald Trump, has defied numerous efforts by his detractors to take him down.

“It really sets up those parallels to Trump that will play very well among the Republican primary electorate,” Wilson said. “Paxton is a political survivor. People have written his obituary a couple of times, and he has really forged this loyal base among the grassroots activists in the Republican Party.”

Paxton’s attorney Dan Cogdell said he learned of the outcome from the AP because the Justice Department never notified him of its decision not to prosecute.

“The fact that they declined prosecution is not a surprise,” Cogdell said. “I don’t really think they ever had a case to begin with.”

There was little concern that the case would continue under the Trump administration’s Justice Department, given Paxton’s close alliance with the president.

In January, the Texas Supreme Court tossed the State Bar of Texas’ lawsuit against Paxton over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Biden.

Prosecutors last year dropped felony securities fraud charges against Paxton just three weeks before he was set to face trial, after he agreed to perform 100 hours of community service, take 15 hours of legal ethics courses and pay $271,000 in restitution to those he was accused of defrauding more than a decade ago. The deal ended a nearly nine-year-old felony case that had dogged Paxton since his early days in office.

And when the state Legislature sought to impeach him for the same allegations of corruption that spurred the federal investigation, the Texas Senate acquitted him of 16 charges of bribery, abuse of office and obstruction – charges that more than 70% of his own party had supported in the House.

Paxton’s last outstanding legal battle is a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him by four of the former senior aides who reported him to the FBI, who allege that he fired them improperly after they spoke out. The Texas Supreme Court said in November that Paxton would not have to sit for a deposition in the lawsuit — another win for the attorney general, who has managed to avoid testifying about the corruption allegations through the civil lawsuit, his impeachment trial and the federal investigation. Paxton last year said he would no longer contest the facts of the case in order to end what he called “wasteful litigation” and a distraction for his office.

The whistleblowers are now waiting on a Travis County district judge to rule on a settlement.

“DOJ clearly let political cowardice impact its decision. The whistleblowers — all strong conservatives — did the right thing and continue to stand by their allegations of Paxton’s criminal conduct,” TJ Turner and Tom Nesbitt, attorneys for some of the whistleblowers, told the AP in a statement.

On Thursday, Paxton referenced the end of the federal investigation to take a swing at Cornyn, who has been critical of Paxton’s legal controversies and steadfast in his bid for reelection.

“This former TX Supreme Court Justice and TX Attorney General ignored the rule of law, the Constitution, and innocent until proven guilty while standing with the corrupt Biden DOJ cheering on the bogus witch hunts against both me and President Trump,” Paxton posted on social media in reference to Cornyn, adding, “Care to comment now, John?”

In response to an attempt by Paxton to tag Cornyn as insufficiently conservative and supportive of Trump, Cornyn had said, “Hard to run from prison, Ken.”

The likely matchup could prove to be Cornyn’s toughest primary battle yet as Texas Republican primary voters lurch toward the right and his popularity among GOP voters drops from 2020 highs.

Among Republican-identifying voters, according to polling by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, Cornyn has a 49% approval rating, compared to Paxton’s 62% approval rating. Texas’ other senator, Ted Cruz, meanwhile, has an approval rating of 78% among Republicans.

Still, Cornyn, who has trounced past challengers, is a prodigious fundraiser and wields widespread influence as a senior senator. He has also worked to smooth over his relationship with the hard-right in Texas and tout his work in the Senate in support of Trump.

On Thursday, Cornyn declined to comment on Paxton or the Justice Department decision not to prosecute, saying he was “not going to have any comments about that until he’s an announced candidate. Then I’ll have a lot to say.”

In response to a request for comment, Cornyn’s campaign, meanwhile, sent an endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council that was announced Thursday.

Cruz declined to comment.

“Fundamentally, he’s a fighter, and he’s also a risk-taker,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist and the former Travis County GOP chair, describing Paxton’s position heading into a potential campaign with the federal investigation behind him. “What I think this whole episode taught him is, trust your instincts and never quit. The psychology of that has to be very powerful for him in approaching this race.”

Katharine Wilson of The Texas Tribune and Vianna Davila with ProPublica contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune.

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In 2022, conservative groups celebrated a “great victory” over “wokeified” curriculum when the Texas State Board of Education squashed proposed social studies requirements for schools that included teaching kindergartners how Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez “advocated for positive change.”

Another win came a year later as the state board rejected several textbooks that some Republicans argued could promote a “radical environmental agenda” because they linked climate change to human behavior or presented what conservatives perceived to be a negative portrayal of fossil fuels.

By the time the state board approved science and career-focused textbooks for use in Texas classrooms at the end of 2023, it appeared to be comfortably in sync with conservatives who had won control of local school boards across the state in recent years.

But the Republican-led state education board had not gone far enough for the conservative majority on the school board for Texas’ third-largest school district.

At the tail end of a school board meeting in May of last year, Natalie Blasingame, a board member in suburban Houston’s Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, proposed stripping more than a dozen chapters from five textbooks that had been approved by the state board and were recommended by a district committee of teachers and staffers.

The chapters, Blasingame said, were inappropriate for students because they discussed “vaccines and polio,” touched on “topics of depopulation,” had “an agenda out of the United Nations” and included “a perspective that humans are bad.”

In a less-publicized move, Blasingame, a former bilingual educator, proposed omitting several chapters from a textbook for aspiring educators titled “Teaching.” One of those chapters focuses on how to understand and educate diverse learners and states that it “is up to schools and teachers to help every student feel comfortable, accepted and valued,” and that “when schools view diversity as a positive force, it can enhance learning and prepare students to work effectively in a diverse society.”

Blasingame did not offer additional details about her opposition to the chapters during the meeting. She didn’t have to. The school board voted 6-1 to delete them.

The decision to strip chapters from books that had already won the approval of the state’s conservative board of education represents an escalation in local school boards’ efforts to influence what children in public schools are taught. Through the years, battles over textbooks have played out at the state level, where Republicans hold the majority. But local school boards that are supposed to be nonpartisan had largely avoided such fights — they weighed in on whether some books should be in libraries but rarely intervened so directly into classroom instruction. Cypress-Fairbanks now provides a model for supercharging these efforts at more fine-grained control, said Christopher Kulesza, a scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

“One of the things that would concern me is that it’s ideology pushing the educational standards rather than what’s fact,” he said.

The board’s actions send a troubling message to students of color, Alissa Sundrani, a junior at Cy-Fair High School, said. “At the point that you’re saying that diversity, or making people feel safe and included, is not in the guidelines or not in the scope of what Texas wants us to be learning, then I think that’s an issue.”

With about 120,000 students, nearly 80% of whom are of Hispanic, Black and Asian descent, Cy-Fair is the largest school district in Texas to be taken over by ideologically driven conservative candidates. Blasingame was among a slate of candidates who were elected through the at-large voting system that ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found has been leveraged by conservative groups seeking to influence what children are taught about race and gender. Supporters say the system, in which voters cast ballots for all candidates districtwide instead of ones who live within specific geographic boundaries, results in broader representation for students, but voting rights advocates argue that it dilutes the power of voters of color.

Blasingame and others campaigned against the teaching of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that discusses systemic racism. Most of the winning candidates had financial backing from Texans for Educational Freedom, a statewide PAC that sought to build a “stronghold” of school board trustees “committed to fighting Critical Race Theory and other anti-American agendas and curriculums.” The PAC helped elect at least 30 school board candidates across the state between 2021 and 2023, in part because it focused on anti-CRT sentiment, said its founder, Christopher Zook Jr. “You could literally go out and say, CRT, you know, ‘Stop critical race theory in schools,’ and everyone knew what that means, right?” he said. “The polling showed that that messaging works.”

Shortly before Blasingame and two fellow conservatives won election in 2021, Texas lawmakers passed a landmark law that sought to shape how teachers approach instruction on race and racism. The law, which aimed to ban critical race theory, prohibits the “inculcation” of the notion that someone’s race makes them “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Blasingame made no mention of the law when she pushed to remove chapters about teaching a diverse student body, but pointed to it as the reason for her objection in text messages and an interview with ProPublica and the Tribune. Though Blasingame acknowledged that one of the chapters had “very good presentation on learning styles,” she said removing the whole chapter was the only option because administrators said individual lines could not be stricken from the book.

The textbook referred to “cultural humility” and called for aspiring teachers to examine their “unintentional and subtle biases,” concepts that she said “go against” the law. The school board needed to act because the book “slipped through” before the state’s education agency implemented a plan to make sure materials complied with the law, Blasingame said.

State Board Chairman Aaron Kinsey, who is staunchly anti-CRT, declined to say if he thought the body had allowed textbooks to slip through as Blasingame suggested. Kinsey, however, said in a statement that contracts with approved publishers include requirements that their textbooks comply with all applicable laws. He did not comment on Cy-Fair removing chapters.

Cy-Fair appears to have taken one of the state’s most aggressive approaches to enforcing the law, which does not address what is in textbooks but rather how educators approach teaching, said Paige Duggins-Clay, the chief legal analyst for the Intercultural Development Research Agency, a San Antonio-based nonprofit that advocates for equal educational opportunity.

“It definitely feels like Cy-Fair is seeking to test the boundaries of the law,” Duggins-Clay said. “And I think in a district like Cy-Fair, because it is so diverse, that is actively hurting a lot of young people who are ultimately paying the cost and bearing the burden of these really bad policies.”

The law’s vagueness has drawn criticism from conservative groups who say it allows school districts to skirt its prohibitions. Last month, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Coppell school district in North Texas and accused administrators of illegally teaching “woke and hateful” CRT curriculum. The suit points to a secret recording of an administrator saying that the district will do what’s right for students “despite what our state standards say.” The lawsuit does not provide examples of curriculum that it alleges violates state law on how to teach race. In a letter to parents, Superintendent Brad Hunt said that the district was following state standards and would “continue to fully comply with applicable state and federal laws.”

Teachers and progressive groups have also argued that the law leaves too much open to interpretation, which causes educators to self-censor and could be used to target anything that mentions race.

Blasingame disputes the critique. A longtime administrator and teacher whose family emigrated from South Africa when she was 9 years old, she said she embraces diversity in schools.

“Diversity is people and I love people,” she said. “That’s what I’m called to do, first as a Christian and then as an educator.”

But she said she opposes teaching about systemic racism and state-sanctioned efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, saying that they overemphasize the importance of skin color.

“They seed hate and teach students that they are starting off behind and have unconquerable disadvantages that they will suffer all their lives,” Blasingame said. “Not only does this teach hate among people, but how could you love a country where this is true?”

The assertion that teaching diversity turns students of color into victims is simply wrong, educators and students told the news organizations. Instead, they said, such discussions make them feel safe and accepted.

One educator who uses the “Teaching” textbook said the board members’ decision to remove chapters related to diversity has been painful for students.

“I don’t know what their true intentions are, but to my students, what they are seeing is that unless you fit into the mold and you are like them, you are not valued,” said the teacher, who did not want to be named because she feared losing her job. “There were several who said it made them not want to teach anymore because they felt so unsupported.”

The board’s interpretation of the state’s law on the teaching of race has stifled important classroom discussions, said Sundrani, the student in the district. Her AP English class, a seminar about the novel “Huckleberry Finn,” steered clear of what she thinks are badly needed conversations about race, slavery and how that history impacts people today.

“There were topics that we just couldn’t discuss.”

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Texas Republicans have proposed changes to the state’s strict abortion ban they say would make clear that doctors can terminate pregnancies for serious medical risks without having to wait until a patient’s condition becomes life-threatening.

The legislation comes in response to a ProPublica investigation last fall that revealed how three Texas women died after they did not receive critical procedures during miscarriages. The reporting added to the testimonies and reports of dozens of women denied care during pregnancy complications and led to a statewide reckoning on the dire effects of the law.

The bill, which will have its first committee hearing in the state Senate today, represents a remarkable reversal for Republican leaders who had for years insisted no changes were needed. It was written by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of the original ban who said just four months ago that exceptions for medical emergencies were “plenty clear.” Texas’ governor and lieutenant governor have signaled support for the bill.

It is part of a wave of legislation responding to public pressure after ProPublica’s reporting revealed preventable maternal deaths in states with abortion bans. Bills that have the most traction have been filed and championed by the same Republicans who passed the bans and they have earned a mixed reception.

A bill in Kentucky, for instance, has drawn alarms from critics who cast it as a Trojan horse. It creates modest exceptions to the state’s near-total ban while redefining abortion in a way that advocates fear could greatly restrict patients’ access to critical procedures even in emergencies. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the bill Tuesday, saying it failed to protect women or even clarify the state’s law, an action Republicans could vote to override this week.

The Texas bill however, has broader support and was written in consultation with Democrats, major anti-abortion groups, the Texas Hospital Association and the Texas Medical Association.

Some legal experts and reproductive health care advocates are calling it a significant step forward in a Republican-led state that has shown every sign of clamping down in support of its strict laws, even in the face of public outcry.

“We wish there was a lot more in the bill, but nothing that’s in the bill is bad,” said Bee Moorhead, executive director with Texas Impact, an interfaith-based coalition that sent 6,000 postcards to lawmakers, demanding change after ProPublica’s reporting.

“The basic point is that there are people who would die if this bill doesn’t pass, who would not die if it does pass,” she said.

The bill is intended to make it harder for prosecutors to win a case against a doctor who provided an abortion to a patient experiencing pregnancy complications. It no longer requires a patient’s condition to be “life-threatening.” Doctors can act if their “reasonable medical judgment” assesses a “serious risk to a major bodily function.” It also specifies that doctors do not need to wait until an emergency is “imminent” to terminate pregnancies.

“It goes a long way towards fixing the most serious problems with the Texas abortion law,” said Seth Chandler, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Others are skeptical that the changes would go far enough to reassure risk-averse hospitals and doctors. While the bill attempts to mitigate the criminal risk for providers handling pregnancy complications, it leaves intact the most powerful deterrent: steep penalties of up to $100,000 in fines, 99 years in prison and loss of medical license for those who violate the law.

It also leaves open the question of what constitutes a “serious risk.” Doctors previously told ProPublica the ban’s unclear language and stiff penalties have led to delays in care. In response to ProPublica’s reporting on preventable maternal deaths in Texas, 111 Texas OB-GYNs signed a letter blaming the deaths on the ban and urging lawmakers to “do something to make sure this never happens again.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which has represented 20 women suing the state after they were denied abortions and faced health risks, opposes the bill. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists declined to comment on the bill. Many doctors are adopting a wait-and-see stance.

ProPublica parsed through the language and ran it by six legal experts and six doctors to assess how likely the legislation is to save lives. While some expressed tempered optimism that legislators recognizing there was a problem, most said broader changes would be needed to guarantee the protection of patients.

“Too Many Women Have Died”

Texas’ abortion laws are among the strictest in the country. While the current laws have exceptions, they are written in a way that requires a patient’s condition to be “life-threatening” before receiving an abortion.

The result: Some doctors and hospitals have held back on treatments, waiting for the fetal heartbeat to stop or for patients to wind up in undeniable distress.

ProPublica has investigated three cases in which women in Texas died after doctors delayed care during miscarriages, finding that doctors have failed to provide critical procedures or delayed them while taking extra steps to record documentation, even when there was no fetal heartbeat and a patient’s condition was urgent.

Josseli Barnica was 17 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with an “inevitable” miscarriage at a Houston hospital in September 2021. Though her fetus was already pressing against her cervix, doctors waited 40 hours until the fetal heartbeat stopped to inducea delivery, putting her at serious risk of deadly infection. She returned to the hospital two days later with sepsis and died.

Nevaeh Crain, 18, also died from complications of sepsis after delays in care. In 2023, she was sent home from two hospitals while she showed signs of infection and then made to wait 90 minutes for a second ultrasound to confirm fetal demise as her organs were failing.

Sepsis has become a lot more common in these kinds of cases, ProPublica found, in a first-of-its-kind statewide analysis of hospitalizations for second-trimester pregnancy loss through 2023. After Texas banned abortion, sepsis rates spiked more than 50%.

In every preventable death in a hospital that ProPublica reported on, doctors did not perform procedures that are associated with abortion but are also critical for treating miscarriages.

As Porsha Ngumezi hemorrhaged in 2022, her doctor did not provide a dilation and curettage procedure, the standard way to empty the uterus that a dozen doctors told ProPublica would be the quickest way to stop the bleeding. She died, leaving behind a husband and two sons.

Supporters of the new legislation say it aims to prevent such outcomes.

Current law specifies that the woman must be suffering a “life-threatening” physical condition in order for doctors to intervene. The amendment strikes that phrase and says doctors can perform abortions if, using their reasonable medical judgment, they believe there’s a “serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function” or “risk of death.” (Like federal law, Texas law defines major bodily functions as systems including the body’s reproductive, digestive, bowel, bladder, respiratory and neurological processes.)

The bill also states it should be viewed as consistent with recent rulings from the Texas Supreme Court, which state that the risk to a woman’s life or major bodily function does not need to be “imminent” for doctors to provide abortions under the law. That’s the most important change in the new bill, according to Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University. She credited ProPublica’s reporting with pushing lawmakers to act.

“I think the GOP in Texas has been shamed a little bit by those stories,” she said. “If nobody is telling the stories of people with wanted pregnancies who are dying and suffering severe harm they can pretend that isn’t happening.”

The bill says an abortion may also be performed for ectopic pregnancies and for removing “a dead unborn child” after a miscarriage. It removes the “affirmative defense” that applied to certain exceptions in the civil code. That part of the law puts the burden of proof on the doctor to show the abortion was necessary — similar to claiming self-defense in a homicide case.

It seeks to insulate medical staff from being accused of “aiding or abetting” an abortion — so nurses and other colleagues don’t need to be afraid they could be prosecuted for participating in an abortion or discussing it.

Another part of the proposal says that the physician should try to preserve the fetus’ life but does not need to “alter or withhold” medical treatment if that delay poses a greater threat to the woman’s life or a major bodily function.

That is meant to show doctors that they can provide abortions for cases with known risks such as pre-viable premature rupture of membranes, or PPROM, when a patient’s water breaks before viability, even if the patient is still stable, said Amy and Steve Bresnen, two lobbyists involved in negotiating the bill for Texas Campaign for Mothers. The nonprofit, which has powerful Republicans on its advisory board, is focused on reproductive health.

Other changes specify that it’s not a violation of the law if a doctor provides a treatment to a pregnant patient and the fetus dies accidentally in the process. The Bresnens say these changes are intended to reassure physicians they shouldn’t delay treatments for other conditions, like cancer, out of fear they could be blamed for harming the fetus.

All of this should add up to a wide buffer for doctors in Texas to provide the same standard of care that major medical organizations recommend, the Bresnens said, because the exceptions will rely on the doctor’s “reasonable” judgment.

For prosecutors, “proving that no other reasonable physician would have done this is a high, high burden,” Steve Bresnen said.

Texas state Rep. Ann Johnson, a Democrat who signed on as a co-author of the bill, believes the amendment would give “all the tools in the medical toolbox” back to physicians.

“Do not delay, do not alter your treatment. Do not second guess it. Do exactly what you need to do to protect this woman,” Johnson said in describing the proposal.

At a press conference last week, Texas state Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican sponsoring the legislation in the House, said the bill was the most important he has ever carried and acknowledged the toll of the abortion ban he and his colleagues passed four years ago.

“Too many women have suffered, too many women have died — if one woman has died, it’s too many and more have,” he said. “I have friends whose wives can no longer conceive because of the problems they went through with their first pregnancy and the delay that doctors faced in addressing the problem.”

“They Don’t Want to Run the Risk”

But the law hasn’t changed in the one way doctors most want it to: It can still effectively send them to prison for life if found guilty of a violation.

“The criminalization of medical decision-making makes the stakes different than it has ever been,” said Tony Ogburn, an OB-GYN practicing in Texas. He was hopeful the bill might lead to some change, but warned, “I think people are still going to be overly cautious because of the severity of the potential outcome and the criminal penalties.”

ProPublica spoke with six OB-GYNs in the state who worried the amendments may not be enough to spur hospital systems to change their policies to make abortions more accessible for patients with medical risks. Besides leaving the threat of penalties in place, they noted that the amendment doesn’t explain what constitutes a “serious risk” to a major bodily function — the circumstance that would justify an abortion.

“It doesn’t really clear things up that much,” agreed Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law and leading historian of the U.S. abortion debate. ”Hospitals are not advising doctors not to intervene just because they don’t understand the law — it’s that they don’t want to run the risk.”

The bill directs the State Bar of Texas and the Texas Medical Board to create courses to educate lawyers and doctors about when they can provide abortions under the exceptions. Both declined to comment on specifics. Doctors said it will be crucial to see what guidance comes out of that effort.

In South Dakota, a similar directive resulted in the state medical board collaborating with a professional association of doctors devoted to anti-abortion causes.

In any case, the changes in Texas law would still apply only to the narrowest of cases. Many doctors noted that Republicans have so far rejected efforts to make a broader health exception in the bill or include exceptions for fetal anomalies, rape or incest. The law still explicitly says a medical emergency can’t be based on any diagnosis that patients may harm themselves — effectively a ban on mental health exceptions.

Competing bills filed by Texas Democrats that have included some of those provisions so far have not received support from Republicans. Several Democrats have also filed legislation to better examine how the state’s abortion ban is affecting the maternal health crisis following ProPublica’s reporting.

Texas state Sen. José Menéndez introduced legislation to allow the state committee investigating maternal deaths to review deaths due to abortion, or a miscarriage if an abortion procedure or medication was administered. Currently, state law prohibits the committee from studying such deaths.

Another bill seeks to compel the state committee to report its findings to the CDC’s federal program tracking causes of maternal mortality. Both bills are currently pending in committee and have not been scheduled for a hearing.

Meanwhile, Texas Republicans continue to crack down on abortion in other ways. Another Republican bill filed by Hughes this session is aimed at stopping the flow of abortion pills through the mail as well as restricting online information about the procedure. And last week, the state charged a midwife and an associate with illegally providing abortions.

“I don’t think [the amendment] solves the larger problem of who can have an abortion and when they can have an abortion, and that it’ll be done in a timely manner for all those that need it,” Ogburn said. “There’s a lot of variables, which is why it’s really hard to legislate health care, and I think those decisions could be left to patients and their doctors.”

Ziva Branstetter contributed reporting. Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Kavitha Surana and Cassandra Jaramillo.

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The findings were stark. In one investigation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded that a Texas state agency had steered $1 billion in disaster mitigation money away from Houston and nearby communities of color after Hurricane Harvey inundated the region in 2017. In another investigation, HUD found that a homeowners association outside of Dallas had created rules to kick poor Black people out of their neighborhood.

The episodes amounted to egregious violations of civil rights laws, officials at the housing agency believed — enough to warrant litigation against the alleged culprits. That, at least, was the view during the presidency of Joe Biden. After the Trump administration took over, HUD quietly took steps that will likely kill both cases, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

Those steps were extremely unusual. Current and former HUD officials said they could not recall the housing agency ever pulling back cases of this magnitude in which the agency had found evidence of discrimination. That leaves the yearslong, high-profile investigations in a state of limbo, with no likely path for the government to advance them, current and former officials said. As a result, the alleged perpetrators of the discrimination could face no government penalties, and the alleged victims could receive no compensation.

“I just think that’s a doggone shame,” said Doris Brown, a Houston resident and a co-founder of a community group that, together with a housing nonprofit, filed the Harvey complaint. Brown saw 3 feet of water flood her home in a predominantly Black neighborhood that still shows damage from the storm. “We might’ve been able to get some more money to help the people that are still suffering,” she said.

On Jan. 15, HUD referred the Houston case to the Department of Justice, a necessary step to a federal lawsuit after the housing agency finds evidence of discrimination. Less than a month later, on Feb. 13, the agency rescinded its referral without public explanation. HUD did the same with the Dallas case not long after.

The development has alarmed some about a rollback of civil rights enforcement at the agency under President Donald Trump and HUD Secretary Scott Turner, who is from Texas. “The new administration is systematically dismantling the fair housing enforcement and education system,” said Sara Pratt, a former HUD official and an attorney for complainants in both Texas cases. “The message is: The federal government no longer takes housing discrimination seriously.”

HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett disagreed, saying there was precedent for the rescinded referrals, which were done to gather more facts and scrutinize the investigations. “We’re taking a fresh look at Biden Administration policies, regulations, and cases. These cases are no exception,” Lovett said in a statement. “HUD will uphold the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act as the department is strongly and wholeheartedly opposed to housing discrimination.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The Harvey case concerns a portion of a $4.3 billion grant that HUD gave to Texas after the hurricane inundated low-lying coastal areas, killing at least 89 people and causing more than $100 billion in damage. The money was meant to fund better drainage, flood control systems and other storm mitigation measures.

HUD sent the money to a state agency called the Texas General Land Office, which awarded the first $1 billion in funding to communities affected by Harvey through a grant competition. But the state agency excluded Houston and many of the most exposed coastal areas from eligibility for half of that money, according to HUD’s investigation. And, for the other half, it created award criteria that benefited rural areas at the expense of more populous applicants like Houston.

The result: Of that initial $1 billion, Houston — where nearly half of all homes were damaged by the hurricane — received nothing. Neither did Harris County, where Houston is located, or other coastal areas with large minority populations. Instead, the Texas agency, according to HUD, awarded a disproportionate amount of the aid to more rural, white areas that had suffered less damage in the hurricane. After an outcry, GLO asked HUD a few days later to send $750 million to Harris County, but HUD found that allocation still fell far short of the county’s mitigation needs. And none of that money went directly to Houston.

HUD launched an investigation into the competition in 2021, ultimately finding that GLO had discriminated on the basis of race and national origin, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and possibly the Fair Housing Act as well.

“GLO knowingly developed and operated a competition for the purpose of allocating funds to mitigate storm and flood risk that steered money away from urban Black and Hispanic communities that had the highest storm and flood risk into Whiter, more rural areas with less risk,” the agency wrote. “Despite awareness that its course of action would result in disparate harm for Black and Hispanic individuals, GLO still knowingly and disparately denied these communities critical mitigation funding.”

GLO has consistently disputed the allegations. It contends that many people of color benefited from its allocations. The Texas agency has also argued that the evidence in the case was weak, citing the fact that, in 2023, the Justice Department returned the case to HUD. At the time, the DOJ said it wanted HUD to investigate further. The housing agency then spent more than a year digging deeper into the facts and assembling more evidence before making its short-lived referral in January.

Asked about the rescinded referral, GLO spokesperson Brittany Eck told ProPublica: “Liberal political appointees and advocates spent years spinning false narratives without the facts to build a case. Four years of sensationalized, clickbait rhetoric without evidence is long enough.”

The other HUD case involved Providence Village, a largely white community north of Dallas of around 9,000 people. Purported concerns about crime and property values led the Providence Homeowners Association to adopt a rule in 2022 prohibiting property owners from renting to holders of Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, through which HUD subsidizes the housing costs of poor, elderly and disabled people. There were at least 157 households in Providence Village supported by vouchers, nearly all of them Black families. After the HOA action, some of them began leaving.

The rule attracted national attention, leading the Texas Legislature to prohibit HOAs from banning Section 8 tenants. Undeterred, the Providence HOA adopted amended rules in 2024 that placed restrictions on rental properties, which HUD found would have a similar effect as the previous ban.

Throughout the HOA’s efforts, people peppered community social media groups with racist vitriol about voucher holders, describing them as “wild animals,” “ghetto poverty crime ridden mentality people” and “lazy entitled leeching TR@SH.” One person wrote that “they might just leave in a coroner’s wagon.”

The discord attracted a white nationalist group, which twice protested just outside Providence Village. “The federal government views safe White communities as a problem,” flyers distributed by the group read. “The Section 8 Housing Voucher is a tool used to bring diversity to these neighborhoods.”

In January, HUD formally accused the HOA, its board president, a property management company and one of its property managers of violating the Fair Housing Act. The respondents have disputed the allegation. The HOA has argued its rules were meant to protect property values, support well-maintained homes and address crime concerns. The property management company, FirstService Residential Texas, said it was not responsible for the actions of the HOA.

The HOA and FirstService did not respond to requests for comment. The property manager declined to comment. Mitch Little, a lawyer for the HOA board president, said: “HUD didn’t pursue this case because there’s nothing to pursue. The claims are baseless and unsubstantiated.”

The Providence Village and Houston cases stretched on for years. All it took was two terse emails to undo them. “HUD’s Office of General Counsel withdrew the referral of the above-captioned case to the Department of Justice,” HUD wrote to Pratt this month regarding one of the cases. “We have no further information at this time.” That was the entirety of the message; neither email explained the reasoning behind the decisions.

The cases may have fallen victim to a broader roll-back of civil rights enforcement at the Justice Department, where memos circulated in January ordering a freeze of civil rights cases and investigations.

The development is the latest sign that the Trump administration may dramatically curtail HUD’s housing discrimination work. The agency canceled 78 grants to local fair housing groups last month, sparking a lawsuit by some of them. HUD justified the cancellations by saying each grant “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” (Pratt’s firm, Relman Colfax, is representing the plaintiffs in that suit.) And projections circulating within HUD last month indicated the agency’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity could see its staff cut by 76% under the new administration.

If HUD does not pursue the cases, the complainants could file their own lawsuits. But they may not soon forget the government’s about-face on the issue. “If there is a major flood in Houston, which there almost certainly will be, and people die, and homes get destroyed, the people who made this decision are in large part responsible,” said Ben Hirsch, a member of one of the groups that brought the Harvey complaint. “People will die because of this.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jesse Coburn.

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Texas lawmakers and an advocacy group representing charter schools harshly criticized a tiny charter school network that has paid its superintendent up to $870,000 annually, making him one of the highest-paid public school leaders in the country.

The criticism came after ProPublica and the Texas Tribune published a story last week about Valere Public Schools, revealing that the district had only reported paying its superintendent, Salvador Cavazos, less than $300,000 per year. In fact, bonuses and one-time payments roughly tripled his income for running a district that has fewer than 1,000 students across three campuses.

Lawmakers brought up the story during a critical Texas House of Representatives committee hearing on March 6 to discuss how much funding the state should provide traditional public and charter schools in the coming years. Legislators repeatedly pressed Bryce Adams, the vice president of government affairs for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, about Cavazos’ compensation and asked why charter schools need additional state funding if they use it for high administrator pay.

“You got a report in The Texas Tribune today about one of your guys making $800,000 a year,” said State Rep. John Bryant, a Democrat from Dallas. “None of our superintendents at the public level who have 100,000, 150,000 kids make anything close to that.”

State Rep. Terri Leo Wilson, a Republican from outside Houston who previously served on the Texas State Board of Education, called Cavazos’ bonuses “ridiculous, unheard-of, outrageous.”

In response, Adams said his organization is also opposed to the superintendent’s high compensation. He handed out copies of a letter the charter association had sent to the three members of the Valere Public Schools board stating they should pay Cavazos less. The association said it rarely questions a district’s actions but described the additional $500,000 to $600,000 the board awards Cavazos on top of his annual salary as “completely out of alignment” with the market. The letter urged the school board to tie Cavazos’ bonuses to specific metrics.

“This behavior will cast a shadow over the public charter school system in Texas and could be detrimental to TPCSA’s ability to advocate on behalf of its members and the students they serve,” the association’s board members wrote in the Jan. 22 letter.

The association sent the letter to Valere after learning about the newsrooms’ findings but before the article was published. ProPublica and the Tribune also shared that two other charter school systems pay their superintendents hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of their base salaries. The association did not answer questions about whether it also reached out to those schools.

The strong public rebuke of Cavazos’ compensation comes as leaders from traditional public and charter schools are lobbying legislators for more money after going years without increases to their base funding. That push has intensified given lawmakers’ ongoing efforts to implement a voucher-like program this legislative session, which would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send their kids to private schools. Legislative budget experts found that doing so could take money away from public schools. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has championed the voucher program.

Since charter schools are considered public, not private, lawmakers questioned whether taxpayers could be confident that additional spending on public education would go to students’ needs rather than into the pockets of administrators like Cavazos.

Valere Public Schools’ board members provided no direct response to legislators’ concerns about Cavazos’ pay in an emailed reply to the news organizations’ questions this week. They also wrote they had not answered the letter from the charter association and said the association has “no regulatory or other authority over Valere.”

Cavazos has declined multiple interview requests. Board members have defended his compensation, explaining that he is also the charter network’s CEO and his contributions justify his pay. The members also said that a “significant” part of Cavazos’ compensation comes from private donations, but they would not provide evidence to support their claim.

Bryant, the Dallas representative, told the newsrooms in an interview that Valere Public Schools’ actions show why the state needs stronger oversight of its charter schools.

He said legislators must tighten the Texas Education Agency’s current reporting requirements. The agency mandates districts post all superintendent compensation and benefits on their website or in an annual report. Districts must also send information about the superintendent’s annual salary and any supplemental payments for extra duties to the state directly, but the state education agency did not clarify if that includes bonuses. It told the newsrooms it does not check whether districts follow the first requirement unless a potential violation is flagged.

“We need to put it in the law that they have to report it and that there’s a penalty for failing to do so,” said Bryant. “Otherwise, it’ll continue to be obscured.”

The Texas Education Agency did not respond to questions the newsrooms sent after the legislative hearing about the state’s current oversight of charter schools and superintendent compensation. Nor did Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows or Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who set the legislative priorities for state lawmakers.

Andrew Mahaleris, press secretary for Abbott, sent a written statement to the news organizations scolding school districts that spend the state’s funding on “administrative bloat instead of the teachers they employ and the students they serve.” Abbott will work with lawmakers to ensure public dollars go to “students and teachers, not systems and overpaid administrators,” Mahaleris wrote. He did not mention specific bills or solutions.

Lawmakers have submitted at least five bills during this legislative session that would restrict superintendents’ salaries, but most would not have applied to the vast majority of Cavazos’ compensation because the proposals don’t limit bonuses.

State Rep. Carrie Isaac, a Republican representing counties between Austin and San Antonio, filed a proposal that would restrict superintendents’ pay to no more than twice that of the highest-earning teacher in the school district. Isaac’s current proposal does not account for superintendents’ bonuses. After learning about the Valere School Board’s method of awarding Cavazos hefty payments on top of his base salary, she said she was “absolutely” open to revising her bill to include bonuses.

“I don’t see any justification for that,” Isaac said in an interview. “I would like to see superintendents that pursue their role out of a dedication for student success, not a means to secure these excessive salaries.”

Despite the outcry from lawmakers and experts inside and outside the charter school sector, the Valere board has so far stood behind its decisions. Asked by the newsrooms whether it had any current plans to make changes to the pay that Cavazos receives on top of his base salary, the board sent a one-word response:

“No.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Ellis Simani, ProPublica.

An unvaccinated child has died of measles, Texas officials announced Wednesday, the first death from measles in the United States in a decade. The child’s death in a hospital in Lubbock, in West Texas, comes as the largest measles outbreak in the state in over 30 years is now spreading to New Mexico. Since last month, 124 people have contracted the disease, most of them unvaccinated children. “The minute you stop vaccinating and maintaining that vigilance of 90-95% vaccine coverage, measles comes roaring back, and that’s what’s happened here in West Texas,” world-renowned pediatrician, virologist and vaccine expert, Dr. Peter Hotez, tells Democracy Now!

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

An unvaccinated child has died of measles, Texas officials announced Wednesday, the first death from measles in the United States in a decade. The child’s death in a hospital in Lubbock, in West Texas, comes as the largest measles outbreak in the state in over 30 years is now spreading to New Mexico. Since last month, 124 people have contracted the disease, most of them unvaccinated children. “The minute you stop vaccinating and maintaining that vigilance of 90-95% vaccine coverage, measles comes roaring back, and that’s what’s happened here in West Texas,” world-renowned pediatrician, virologist and vaccine expert, Dr. Peter Hotez, tells Democracy Now!

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion in 2021, ProPublica found in a first-of-its-kind data analysis.

The rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester, ProPublica found.

The surge in this life-threatening condition, caused by infection, was most pronounced for patients whose fetus may still have had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital.

ProPublica previously reported on two such cases in which miscarrying women in Texas died of sepsis after doctors delayed evacuating their uteruses. Doing so would have been considered an abortion.

The new reporting shows that, after the state banned abortion, dozens more pregnant and postpartum women died in Texas hospitals than had in pre-pandemic years, which ProPublica used as a baseline to avoid COVID-19-related distortions. As the maternal mortality rate dropped nationally, ProPublica found, it rose substantially in Texas.

ProPublica’s analysis is the most detailed look yet at a rise in life-threatening complications for women losing a pregnancy after Texas banned abortion. It raises concerns that the same pattern may be occurring in more than a dozen other states with similar bans.

To chart the scope of pregnancy-related infections, ProPublica purchased and analyzed seven years of Texas’ hospital discharge data.

When abortion was legal in Texas, the rate of sepsis for women hospitalized during second-trimester pregnancy loss was relatively steady. Then the state’s first abortion ban went into effect and the rate of sepsis spiked.

“This is exactly what we predicted would happen and exactly what we were afraid would happen,” said Dr. Lorie Harper, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Austin.

She and a dozen other maternal health experts who reviewed ProPublica’s findings say they add to the evidence that the state’s abortion ban is leading to dangerous delays in care. Texas law threatens up to 99 years in prison for providing an abortion. Though the ban includes an exception for a “medical emergency,” the definition of what constitutes an emergency has been subject to confusion and debate.

Many said the ban is the only explanation they could see for the sudden jump in sepsis cases.

The new analysis comes as Texas legislators consider amending the abortion ban in the wake of ProPublica’s previous reporting, and as doctors, federal lawmakers and the state’s largest newspaper have urged Texas officials to review pregnancy-related deaths from the first full years after the ban was enacted; the state maternal mortality review committee has, thus far, opted not to examine the death data for 2022 and 2023.

The standard of care for miscarrying patients in the second trimester is to offer to empty the uterus, according to leading medical organizations, which can lower the risk of contracting an infection and developing sepsis. If a patient’s water breaks or her cervix opens, that risk rises with every passing hour.

Sepsis can lead to permanent kidney failure, brain damage and dangerous blood clotting. Nationally, it is one of the leading causes of deaths in hospitals.

While some Texas doctors have told ProPublica they regularly offer to empty the uterus in these cases, others say their hospitals don’t allow them to do so until the fetal heartbeat stops or they can document a life-threatening complication.

Last year, ProPublica reported on the repercussions of these kinds of delays.

Forced to wait 40 hours as her dying fetus pressed against her cervix, Josseli Barnica risked a dangerous infection. Doctors didn’t induce labor until her fetus no longer had a heartbeat.

Physicians waited, too, as Nevaeh Crain’s organs failed. Before rushing the pregnant teenager to the operating room, they ran an extra test to confirm her fetus had expired.

Both women had hoped to carry their pregnancies to term, both suffered miscarriages and both died.

In response to their stories, 111 doctors wrote a letter to the Legislature saying the abortion ban kept them from providing lifesaving care and demanding a change.

“It’s black and white in the law, but it’s very vague when you’re in the moment,” said Dr. Tony Ogburn, an OB-GYN in San Antonio. When the fetus has a heartbeat, doctors can’t simply follow the usual evidence-based guidelines, he said. Instead, there is a legal obligation to assess whether a woman’s condition is dire enough to merit an abortion under a prosecutor’s interpretation of the law.

Some prominent Texas Republicans who helped write and pass Texas’ strict abortion bans have recently said that the law should be changed to protect women’s lives — though it’s unclear if proposed amendments will receive a public hearing during the current legislative session.

ProPublica’s findings indicate that the law is getting in the way of providing abortions that can protect against life-threatening infections, said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington.

“We have the ability to intervene before these patients get sick,” she said. “This is evidence that we aren’t doing that.”

Health experts, specially equipped to study maternal deaths, sit on federal agencies and state-appointed review panels. But, as ProPublica previously reported, none of these bodies have systematically assessed the consequences of abortion bans.

So ProPublica set out to do so, first by investigating preventable deaths, and now by using data to take a broader view, looking at what happened in Texas hospitals after the state banned abortion, in particular as women faced miscarriages.

“It is kind of mindblowing that even before the bans researchers barely looked into complications of pregnancy loss in hospitals,” said perinatal epidemiologist Alison Gemmill, an expert on miscarriage at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In consultation with Gemmill and more than a dozen other maternal health researchers and obstetricians, ProPublica built a framework for analyzing Texas hospital discharge data from 2017 to 2023, the most recent full year available. This billing data, kept by hospitals and collected by the state, catalogues what happens in every hospitalization. It is anonymized but remarkable in its granularity, including details such as gestational age, complications and procedures.

To study infections during pregnancy loss, ProPublica identified all hospitalizations that included miscarriages, terminations and births from the beginning of the second trimester up to 22 weeks’ gestation, before fetal viability. Since first-trimester miscarriage is often managed in an outpatient setting, ProPublica did not include those cases in this analysis.

When looking at stays for second-trimester pregnancy loss, ProPublica found a relatively steady rate of sepsis before Texas made abortion a crime. In late 2021, the state made it a civil offense to end a pregnancy after a fetus developed cardiac activity, and in the summer of 2022, the state made it a felony to terminate any pregnancy, with few exceptions.

In 2021, 67 patients who lost a pregnancy in the second trimester were diagnosed with sepsis — as in the previous years, they accounted for about 3% of the hospitalizations.

In 2022, that number jumped to 90.

The following year, it climbed to 99.

ProPublica’s analysis was conservative and likely missed some cases. It doesn’t capture what happened to miscarrying patients who were turned away from emergency rooms or those like Barnica who were made to wait, then discharged home before they returned with sepsis.

Our analysis showed that patients who were admitted while their fetus was still believed to have a heartbeat were far more likely to develop sepsis.

For patients in Texas hospitals who lost a pregnancy, about half were not diagnosed with fetal demise when they were admitted, meaning that their fetus may still have had a heartbeat at that time. Those patients saw a dramatic increase in sepsis after the state banned abortion.

“What this says to me is that once a fetal death is diagnosed, doctors can appropriately take care of someone to prevent sepsis, but if the fetus still has a heartbeat, then they aren’t able to act and the risk for maternal sepsis goes way up,” said Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UW Medicine and an expert in pregnancy complications. “This is needlessly putting a woman’s life in danger.”

Studies indicate that waiting to evacuate the uterus increases rates of sepsis for patients whose water breaks before the fetus can survive outside the womb, a condition called previable premature rupture of membranes or PPROM. Because of the risk of infection, major medical organizations like the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advise doctors to always offer abortions.

Researchers in Dallas and Houston examined cases of previable pregnancy complications at their local hospitals after the state ban. Both studies found that when women weren’t able to end their pregnancies right away, they were significantly more likely to develop dangerous conditions than before the ban. The study of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, not yet published, found that the rate of sepsis tripled after the ban.

Dr. Emily Fahl, a co-author of that study, recently urged professional societies and state medical boards to “explicitly clarify” that doctors need to recommend evacuating the uterus for patients with a PPROM diagnosis, even with no sign of infection, according to MedPage Today.

UTHealth Houston did not respond to several requests for comment.

ProPublica zoomed out beyond the second trimester to look at deaths of all women hospitalized in Texas while pregnant or up to six weeks postpartum. Deaths peaked amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and most patients who died then were diagnosed with the virus. But looking at the two years before the pandemic, 2018 and 2019, and the two most recent years of data, 2022 and 2023, there is a clear shift:

In the two earlier years, there were 79 maternal hospital deaths.

In the two most recent, there were 120.

Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College, said it’s crucial to examine these deaths from different angles, as ProPublica has done. Data analyses help illuminate trends but can’t reveal a patient’s history or wishes, as a detailed medical chart might. Diving deep into individual cases can reveal the timeline of treatment and how doctors behave. “When you see them together, it tells a really compelling story that people are dying as a result of the abortion restrictions.”

Texas has no plans to scrutinize those deaths. The chair of the maternal mortality review committee said the group is skipping data from 2022 and 2023 and picking up its analysis with 2024 to get a more “contemporary” view of deaths. She added that the decision had “absolutely no nefarious intent.”

“The fact that Texas is not reviewing those years does a disservice to the 120 individuals you identified who died inpatient and were pregnant,” said Dr. Jonas Swartz, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University. “And that is an underestimation of the number of people who died.”

The committee is also prohibited by law from reviewing cases that include an abortion medication or procedure, which can also be used during miscarriages. In response to ProPublica’s reporting, a Democratic state representative filed a bill to overturn that prohibition and order those cases to be examined.

Because not all maternal deaths take place in hospitals and the Texas hospital data did not include cause of death, ProPublica also looked at data compiled from death certificates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It shows that the rate of maternal deaths in Texas rose 33% between 2019 and 2023 even as the national rate fell by 7.5%.

Texas’ abortion law is under review this legislative session. Even the party that championed it and the senator who authored it say they would consider a change.

On a local television program last month, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the law should be amended.

“I do think we need to clarify any language,” Patrick said, “so that doctors are not in fear of being penalized if they think the life of the mother is at risk.”

State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who once argued that the abortion ban he wrote was “plenty clear,” has since reversed course, saying he is working to propose language to amend the ban. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told ProPublica, through a spokesperson, that he would “look forward to seeing any clarifying language in any proposed legislation from the Legislature.”

Patrick, Hughes and Attorney General Ken Paxton did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about what changes they would like to see made this session and did not comment on findings ProPublica shared.

In response to ProPublica’s analysis, Abbott’s office said in a statement that Texas law is clear and pointed to Texas health department data that shows 135 abortions have been performed since Roe was overturned without resulting in prosecution. The vast majority of the abortions were categorized as responses to an emergency but the data did not specify what kind. Only five were solely to “preserve [the] health of [the] woman.”

At least seven bills related to repealing or creating new exceptions to the abortion laws have been introduced in Texas.

Doctors told ProPublica they would most like to see the bans overturned so all patients could receive standard care, including the option to terminate pregnancies for health considerations, regardless of whether it’s an emergency. No list of exceptions can encompass every situation and risk a patient might face, obstetricians said.

“A list of exceptions is always going to exclude people,” said Dallas OB-GYN Dr. Allison Gilbert.

It seems unlikely a Republican-controlled Legislature would overturn the ban. Gilbert and others are advocating to at least end criminal and civil penalties for doctors. Though no doctor has been prosecuted for violating the ban, the mere threat of criminal charges continues to obstruct care, she said.

In 2023, an amendment was passed that permitted physicians to intervene when patients are diagnosed with PPROM. But it is written in such a way that still exposes physicians to prosecution; it allows them to offer an “affirmative defense,” like arguing self-defense when charged with murder.

“Anything that can reduce those severe penalties that have really chilled physicians in Texas would be helpful,” Gilbert said. “I think it will mean that we save patients’ lives.”

Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Democrat from outside Dallas who filed a bill to create new health exceptions, said that ProPublica’s latest findings were “infuriating.”

She is urging Republicans to bring the bills to a hearing for debate and discussion.

Last session, there were no public hearings, even as women have sued the state after being denied treatment for their pregnancy complications. This year, though some Republicans appeared open to change, others have gone a different direction.

One recently filed a bill that would allow the state to charge women who get an abortion with homicide, for which they could face the death penalty.

Do you live in a state that has passed laws affecting abortion in the last few years? In the time since, have you or a loved one experienced delayed health care while pregnant or experiencing a miscarriage?

ProPublica would like to hear from you to better understand the unintended impact of abortion bans across the country. Email our reporters at reproductivehealth@propublica.org to share your story.

We understand this may be difficult to talk about, and we have detailed how we report on maternal health to let you know what you can expect from us.

Lucas Waldron contributed graphics. Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lizzie Presser, Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Kavitha Surana.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

A first-of-its-kind analysis by ProPublica found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50% after Texas’ near-total abortion ban went into effect in September 2021. The analysis also identified at least 120 in-hospital deaths of pregnant or postpartum women in 2022 and 2023 — an increase of dozens of deaths from a comparable period before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neither the CDC nor states are investigating deaths or severe maternal complications related to abortion bans. And although the federal government and many states track severe complications in birth events using a federally established methodology, far less is known about complications that arise during a pregnancy loss. There is no federal methodology for doing this, so we consulted with experts to craft one.

We acquired Texas hospitalization data from 2017 through 2023, giving us more than two years of data after the implementation of the state’s six-week abortion ban in September 2021, and more than a year of data following its full abortion ban, which went into effect in August 2022.

We spoke with dozens of researchers and clinicians to adapt the federal algorithm for birth complications to focus on severe complications in early pregnancy, before fetal viability.

This methodology lays out the steps we took to complete this analysis, to help experts and interested readers understand our approach and its limitations.

We purchased seven years of inpatient discharge records for all hospitals from the Texas Department of State Health Services. These records contain de-identified data for all hospital stays longer than a day, with information about the stay, including diagnoses recorded and procedures performed during the stay, as well as some patient demographic information and billing data.

Within this dataset, we opted to focus on second-trimester pregnancy loss, because first-trimester miscarriage management often occurs in an outpatient setting. In the future, we plan to look at outpatient data as well.

To examine outcomes in the second trimester, we first identified hospitalizations where a pregnancy ended. We used a methodology to identify severe complications in birth events developed by the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health, an initiative of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The method is outlined in statistical code published by HRSA, and it first identifies every hospitalization with a live birth, stillbirth or an “abortive outcome” (which refers to an intended or unintended pregnancy loss before 20 weeks). Rather than excluding those abortive outcomes to focus on birth, as the HRSA code directs, we included them to look at all hospitalizations where a pregnancy ended. This narrowed our list of hospitalizations to an average of 370,000 per year.

The HRSA methodology further filters hospitalizations to only patients who are female and between the ages of 12 and 54. Our dataset had five-year age ranges, so we filtered to ages between 10 and 54. This brought our hospitalization list to 364,000 each year, on average.

For each hospitalization where a pregnancy ended, we looked for a diagnosis code recording the gestational age of the fetus. In cases where a long hospitalization had multiple gestational week codes recorded over the course of the stay, we took the latest one.

We excluded pregnancy-end hospitalizations without a gestational week code from our analysis — removing about 49,500 hospitalizations, or 1.9% of our dataset. More than two-thirds had coding that indicated a birth, likely to have occurred after 20 weeks.

Based on conversations with doctors and researchers, we narrowed our focus to hospitalizations where a pregnancy ended in the second trimester before fetal viability, from the start of the 13th week through 21 weeks and six days. While pregnancies that end at 20 and 21 weeks are often coded as births, rather than abortive outcomes, we included those weeks in our definition of pregnancy loss because experts told us it’s extremely unlikely that a baby born at 21 weeks could survive. This brought our list of hospitalizations to 15,188.

The number of second trimester hospitalizations, and characteristics of the women hospitalized, was largely stable from 2017 through 2023, the years of our analysis. In 2023, however, as the number of births in the state increased, the number of hospitalizations in our window declined to 2,036, below the yearly average of 2,169.

The race and ethnicity of patients each year, as well as the proportion of these hospitalizations in which the patients were covered by Medicaid or uninsured, did not change significantly after the state’s 2021 abortion ban, known as SB 8, went into effect.

Within these hospitalizations, we looked for diagnoses of sepsis, a life-threatening complication that can follow delays in emptying the uterus. The CDC defines a list of sepsis codes associated with severe maternal complications, which formed the basis of our definition. However, that list of codes is developed to look at sepsis in birth events, the vast majority of which occur much later in a pregnancy than our hospitalizations. We identified five sepsis codes associated with early pregnancy events like ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage, adding them to the existing list of sepsis codes to develop a definition that more fully captured early pregnancy complications.

To compare rates before and after the implementation of SB 8, we grouped the nine quarters of data we had after the implementation of the ban (October 2021 through December 2023) and compared it with the nine quarters immediately before (July 2019 through September 2021). Our dataset gives us the quarter in which a patient was discharged from the hospital but not the exact date, so the “before” group contains one month of data from after SB 8 went into effect on Sept. 1, 2021.

The standard of care for second-trimester miscarriage or rupture of membranes prior to fetal viability is to offer patients a dilation and evacuation or an induction to end the pregnancy — even if there is still a fetal heartbeat. In our reporting, we’d heard that because of the language of Texas’ abortion law, some hospitals and doctors were waiting for the fetal heartbeat to stop or the mother to develop a life-threatening illness, whichever occurred first. To look into this, we wanted to separate hospitalizations in which doctors would have theoretically been able to offer a termination immediately under the law — ones where the patient had a diagnosis indicating that there was no fetal heartbeat at the time of admission to the hospital — from ones where doctors may have waited to provide care.

We determined that about half of our second-trimester hospitalizations did not have a fetal heartbeat on admission. We identified these cases by focusing on two sets of diagnosis codes: Prior to 20 weeks gestation, a diagnosis of “missed abortion” refers to a miscarriage where the fetus has stopped developing, but the body has not yet expelled the tissue. After 20 weeks, a diagnosis of “intrauterine death” indicates that the fetus has died. For both diagnoses, we included only those that were marked as “present on admission.”

Our analysis found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased after the state’s ban went into effect, and the surge was most pronounced in cases in which the fetus may still have had a heartbeat when the patient arrived at the hospital.

In the nine quarters before SB 8 went into effect, the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations was 2.9%. In the nine quarters after SB 8 went into effect, the sepsis rate was 4.5%, an increase of 55%.

Since our total number of sepsis cases was relatively small, we measured whether the two groups of data were significantly different using a t-test. We calculated sepsis rates for second-trimester hospitalizations in the nine quarters after SB 8 went into effect and compared that with sepsis rates during the nine quarters immediately prior. We found that increase to be statistically significant (p-value < 0.05).

We compared the nine quarters after SB 8 went into effect — from October 2021 through December 2023 — to the nine quarters before the ban went into effect — July 2019 to September 2021.

Sepsis is a reaction to an infection, and the most common additional infection diagnosis in sepsis hospitalizations was chorioamnionitis, an infection of the amniotic fluid that can also cause early rupture of membranes. Rates of chorioamnionitis in sepsis cases remained stable before and after SB 8.

Our analysis also showed that patients admitted while their fetus was still believed to have a heartbeat were far more likely to contract sepsis.

For patients in Texas hospitals who lost a pregnancy, about half were not diagnosed with fetal demise when they were admitted, meaning that their fetus may still have had a heartbeat at that time. Those patients saw a dramatic increase in sepsis after the state banned abortion.

In the nine quarters prior to the implementation of SB 8, the rate of sepsis was nearly twice as high for those with no fetal demise diagnosis on admission compared with those with a fetal demise diagnosis on admission. After SB 8, the rate increased in both groups, and the gap between them widened.

Again, since the number of total sepsis cases was relatively small, we used a t-test to see if there was a statistically significant difference before and after SB 8 in both groups. We found the increase in rates to be significant on both counts (p < 0.05).

Maternal health experts noted that discharge data offers a limited window into the details of patient care. Changes in the frequency of a diagnosis code can signal a change in patient health but also a change in coding practices. Our analysis can’t isolate changes in outcomes from changes in sepsis coding practices over time or doctors taking additional documentation steps to show they’ve complied with the law. And billing records offer no detail into a patient’s history and medical wishes or the decisions that medical staff make in the course of care.

Our analysis also does not account for changes in health care outside of hospitals. Though births typically take place in a hospital, other early pregnancy care often occurs in an outpatient setting and does not require a hospitalization, so we can only see a small subset of this type of care — specifically, the most severe cases. We also can’t account for how closures of reproductive health care clinics in the wake of Texas’ abortion ban changed the role hospitals play in miscarriage care.

We cannot see when hospitals turn patients away rather than admitting them. And if a patient who is miscarrying has an inpatient stay at one hospital and is then transferred to another hospital for another inpatient stay, that patient would be double-counted in our analysis, since we can’t connect patients across visits. This could potentially inflate the number of hospitalizations in our dataset, artificially pushing the sepsis rate down.

Our dataset is missing a handful of records from the fourth quarter of 2023; in a small number of cases — about 300 per quarter, or 0.04% of records — providers submit data on a hospitalization late, and that record is released in the dataset for the following quarter.

Billing data is widely used by researchers to study maternal health. While it will never tell the whole story, in aggregate, particularly in a state with a large population, it can paint a picture of changing health outcomes. Our analysis gives us a broad view of care at Texas hospitals before and after a major policy change.

More than a dozen maternal health experts reviewed ProPublica’s findings and said our analysis adds to mounting evidence that the state’s abortion ban is likely leading to dangerous delays in care. Many said the ban is the only explanation they could see for the sudden jump in sepsis cases.

We found 120 women who died while hospitalized during pregnancy or up to six weeks postpartum in 2022 and 2023 in the inpatient billing data. The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee will not review deaths from these years, stating that they will skip to 2024 in an effort to get a more “contemporary” view of deaths, a choice that faced widespread criticism. (The committee chair said there was “absolutely no nefarious intent” behind the decision.)

To identify inpatient deaths in the Texas hospital discharge data, we included all records with a “patient status” of “expired” and with a diagnosis or procedure code indicating that the patient was pregnant or up to six weeks postpartum, with a specific postpartum complication based on the “Identifying Pregnant and Postpartum Medicaid and CHIP Beneficiaries” code list by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The CDC looks at deaths up to within one year of a pregnancy’s end, but our dataset doesn’t explicitly identify pregnant or recently pregnant patients, so we were limited in the hospitalizations we could identify through codes.

Our tally does not include those who died in a hospitalization that took place separately from the end of a pregnancy, unless the patient was diagnosed with a specific postpartum complication. We did not filter for age and gender for our death records, as that data was less reliably filled out than the diagnosis and procedure codes.

Our count of inpatient deaths does not attempt to determine what role a person’s pregnancy or the state’s abortion ban played in their death. That type of analysis would require access to medical records. Our tally would include, for example, a person who was hospitalized after a car crash but who was also pregnant. Experts advised us to leave these cases in, because without investigation by the maternal mortality committee, it’s impossible to know, for example, if there was any relationship between the patient’s pregnancy and the cause of the accident, or if there were any delays in maternal care after the accident.

We found that deaths increased sharply during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and peaked in 2021, and that many cases in 2020 and afterward included COVID-19 diagnostic codes. More than 60% of the deaths that we analyzed had a diagnosis of COVID-19 in 2021, and 27% had a COVID-19 diagnosis in 2022. The COVID-19 diagnostic code was not introduced until October 2020, several months after the pandemic began, and was updated in January 2021. The coding changes, combined with changes in hospital protocols around identifying COVID-19 cases, make it impossible to filter out all COVID-19 related deaths during this time period.

The hospital billing data only includes information about Texas, so to compare with national rates, we used data from the CDC’s WONDER portal, which is based on birth and death certificates. For this analysis, we used a definition of maternal death recommended by CDC research guidelines for this data source. Our denominator includes all live births. For statewide rates, we use the state of residence of the mother in both the numerator and denominator. Rates are reported per 100,000 births.

Between 2019 and 2023, we found a 33% increase in maternal mortality rates in Texas, compared with a decrease of 7.5% nationally during the same time.

While both nationally and in Texas rates of maternal mortality peaked in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic and have dropped since, rates in Texas remain higher than before the pandemic.

The federal methodology we used as a basis for our analysis of severe complications in pregnancy hospitalizations was outlined in a document available for download from HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The instructions included statistical code that we adapted to do our own analysis, and they were accompanied by a spreadsheet of maternal and child outcome measures over time for all 50 states and nationally.

As of early February, both the instructions and the spreadsheet had been replaced by documents noting that the files were “currently under construction and not available.”

Lucas Waldron contributed graphics.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Lizzie Presser.

Wilson found the news particularly alarming. She has spent years fighting to clean up pollution from another petrochemical plant and won a $50 million settlement against its owners, Formosa, in 2019. Exxon would build its proposed facility across from that factory and discharge waste into the same waterways Wilson has spent decades fighting to protect.

“We have been cleaning the piss out of [Cox Creek], and this is the very place where Exxon is going to try to put its plastics plant,” Wilson, who lives in nearby Seadrift, said of the facility’s potential location. “You see this nightmare of another plant, trying to do the very same thing.”

Exxon’s proposal calls for a steam cracker, a facility that uses oil and natural gas to make ethylene and propylene — the chemical building blocks of plastic. Factories like this produce and sell plastic pellets, called nurdles, to other manufacturers who turn them into intermediary or final goods, like bottles and packaging. Besides ethylene and propylene, steam crackers produce climate pollution and hazardous chemicals like ammonia, benzene, toluene, and methanol.

“It looks like a big facility,” Alexandra Shaykevich, research manager for the Environmental Integrity Project, which tracks fossil fuel development, said of the plan Exxon has dubbed the Coastal Plain Project. But she said that because much of the application was redacted and the company hasn’t made a public announcement, few details are available. “We’re going to be looking at this one closely.”  

Beyond the Formosa plant, Point Comfort is home to a nitrile factory, a plastics facility, and a Superfund site. Several other industrial sites dot the coast around Galveston. Many of them sit alongside communities, and previous analyses have shown that steam crackers in particular are disproportionately sited near marginalized groups. According to an environmental justice mapping tool from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than half of Point Comfort residents are people of color, more than half have less than a high school diploma, and more than half of households speak limited English.

“They talk about a sacrifice zone — this is the real deal,” said Wilson.

Exxon filed for tax subsidies from the Calhoun County Independent School District under the state’s Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation, or JETI, Act, which uses tax incentives to lure businesses to the state. Lawmakers passed that law in 2023 to replace an earlier tax-break program that critics said undermined school finances and amounted to “corporate welfare.” 

Exxon wrote in its application that it plans to apply for more abatements from the county, groundwater conservation district, and port authority. In return, it argued, the facility would create 300 jobs during its first five years in operation. Construction would begin next year and, once it’s operating at full capacity in 2032, Exxon says the operation will raise the state’s economic output by $3.6 billion a year.

“These tax incentives have become one of the early battles in these facilities,” said Robin Schneider, executive director Texas Campaign for the Environment, an advocacy organization. She estimates that Exxon could get about $250 million in local tax breaks over a 10-year period — almost $1 million per job. 

“Why is this massively profitable business getting this money from taxpayers?” she asked. Exxon brought in $33.7 billion last year, on record-high production, and distributed more money to shareholders than ever before.

School district officials did not respond to requests for comment and, in an email, County Judge (the title given to county administrators in Texas) Vern Lyssy did not answer specific questions, only repeated the language used in Exxon’s statement. A county commissioner, Joel Behrens, expressed support for Exxon and the economic development it could bring, comparing the opportunity to his positive experiences with Formosa. “If they were to pick this area to come to, they’d probably be just as good a neighbor as Formosa,” he said. “They’ve helped the county out when the county needed help.”

Exxon did not respond to questions about the pollution a new steam cracker might create. Company spokesperson Lauren Kight said the application for tax subsidies in Calhoun County does not mean Exxon has committed to building there. The company indicated in its JETI filing that its focus was on “the U.S. Gulf Coast” but that it is still considering other locations, including abroad. “The Gulf Coast presents tremendous advantages,” said Kight, but it’s “very early in our evaluation process.”  

The proposal comes at a time of booming growth for the plastics industry, and for the pollution that it inevitably creates. The world produces about 57 million metric tons of plastic pollution every year, according to a study published in September in the journal Nature. World leaders have spent the past two and a half years negotiating a United Nations treaty to “end plastic pollution,” and at least 69 countries say they want to do that by limiting how much is created in the first place.

Plants like the one Exxon is planning are “the absolute opposite direction we should be going,” said Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency official and president of the nonprofit Beyond Plastics. She worries that this facility, like others, would spew pollution for decades. “Once these things are built, it’s hard to get them to stop operating.”

Setting aside the environmental argument, financial analysts say it’s imprudent to invest in more plastic production. All three credit rating agencies have issued warnings over expanding fossil fuel and plastics infrastructure, including one from Standard & Poor’s in 2021 that cited oversupply of petrochemicals, protests from local residents, and “surging global pressure to reduce carbon emissions as well as chemical and plastic pollution worldwide.”

Abhishek Sinha, an energy finance analyst for the nonprofit Institute for Environmental Economics and Financial Analysis, said that while the Trump administration may be ushering in a period of lax regulation for polluting industries, the petrochemical sector is in “structural decline” — as shown by the poor returns Shell’s chemicals division and Formosa Plastics recently reported.

“I think it’s going to be the same story that’s being told again and again,” Sinha said, referring to Exxon’s proposed steam cracker. “This is not going to be a positive value-add project for them; it’s going to be detrimental to the equity holders in the long run.”   

Kight did not directly address these concerns but said that Exxon would “continue to evaluate the market conditions before we make a decision.”

For Wilson, Exxon’s proposal feels like déjà vu. More than three decades ago, the Taiwanese petrochemical conglomerate Formosa proposed its plant, just miles from the Gulf of Mexico, where Wilson’s family had been shrimpers for generations. Her fight against the company started with hunger strikes to protest its permits and eventually became a lawsuit over the exact outcomes she had feared.

Wilson and local environmental groups collected tens of thousands of nurdles from Lavaca Bay and nearby waterways like Cox Creek, and alleged that Formosa had illegally dumped them along with other pollutants. Her $50 million settlement is the largest award in a citizen suit against an industrial polluter in the history of the federal Clean Water Act.

The settlement funded dozens of projects, including cleaning up waterways, and provided $20 million for a fishing cooperative aimed at helping rebuild that battered industry. But Wilson worries another mega-factory coming to the area would undermine that work.

“Where Exxon is going to put their bloody plant is smack-dab in front of one of the largest oyster farms in Texas,” said Wilson, who is not convinced that any plastics factory can operate without polluting. She noted that Formosa has already violated its settlement agreement nearly 800 times, racking up over $25 million in fines. “Exxon is going to be exactly like Formosa.”

Wilson considers the fact that Exxon could still decide not to build in Calhoun County an opportunity to resist, and plans to fight the company at every step of the process.

“A lot of people over the years have asked me what my one regret is, and I always say: ‘I didn’t try hard enough to stop Formosa,’” reflected Wilson. This time, she said, “I will do everything I can, for as long as I live, to stop that plant from coming in.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Exxon is quietly planning a new $8.6 billion plastics plant in Texas on Feb 5, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tik Root.

Now, a new industry is being developed in the waters that were once the most productive grounds in the nation for fish, shrimp, and oysters. 

A company called OnStream CO2 is developing the GeoDura hub, which it says could hold millions of tons of carbon dioxide captured from fossil fuel industries, including LNG terminals, a mile or more below the waters off Cameron Parish’s shores. It would be among the first of its kind in the United States. Currently, there are just a handful of projects in the world developing offshore carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS.

“These people are book smart, but when it comes to common sense, they have nothing,” said Travis Dardar about the project. Dardar is a Cameron-based fisher and founder of the group Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage, or FISH.

According to a report from the Center for International Environmental Law, in the best-case scenario, the injection of captured carbon may temporarily disrupt fisheries because of drilling and seismic testing. 

In the worst-case scenario, underwater carbon sequestration wells could fail and release the stored carbon, killing off the plants, fish, and even the people in boats in the waters above. Storing carbon also has potential global implications, if, as opponents claim, carbon capture and sequestration will allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain the status quo as one of the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gasses.

The federal government, which is supporting the GeoDura hub with a recently announced $26 million award, and geologists who have studied carbon storage say offshore sequestration projects make a lot of sense.

But as with other climate change mitigation efforts supported by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law — such as hydrogen and direct air capture — the effectiveness of offshore carbon storage is unclear. Worries and claims on both sides of the offshore carbon capture debate are mostly hypothetical, based on modeling and just a few existing offshore storage sites. 

Gulf offshore carbon storage pushed 

The geology of the Gulf of Mexico combined with the fossil fuel-heavy industries along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas make carbon capture and sequestration under the Gulf “the single best opportunity for developing a CCS industry in the United States that can effectively address national emission reduction strategies at the required scale,” University of Texas at Austin research scientist Tip Meckel told a congressional committee in 2022.

Acknowledging that potential, Congress directed federal agencies to develop regulations to permit carbon storage under federal offshore waters. Draft regulations, requested by November 2022, have yet to be issued. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told Floodlight it will issue its first draft of a proposed rule this year.

In the meantime, companies have focused on developing carbon storage in the state waters off Louisiana, stretching 3.5 miles from the shore, and Texas, which controls the waters for about 10 miles from the shoreline.

Meckel says there are 10 proposed projects in the two states, including GeoDura. Louisiana, unlike Texas, has the authority to permit carbon storage underground, including under state waters.

But the development of carbon storage in waters near the coast raises concerns about the higher number of abandoned, idle, or older oil and gas wells closer to shore that could allow stored carbon to leak out through existing wells. There are also questions about whether Louisiana would do a good job permitting and regulating carbon storage.

“I can’t say it cannot be done, but the history of this technology, the history of the lack of pollution monitoring in the Gulf and in Louisiana waters in particular, we are extremely skeptical,” said Scott Eustis, community science director for Healthy Gulf, a Louisiana-based community and environmental advocacy group.

Land grabs onshore and off

The concept of storing carbon under offshore waters was supercharged by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which increased tax credits for capturing and permanently storing carbon underground from $39 per ton to $85. The incentive spurred a rush of development in the United States, with about 125 new carbon capture, transport, or storage projects announced since 2022, according to the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit that focuses on solutions to the climate crisis.

The incentives also sparked a land grab in Louisiana and Texas, with companies competing to purchase rights for underground storage onshore, often acquiring multiple parcels from multiple landowners to have access to a single deep reservoir for carbon storage.

With offshore sites, though, a developer usually only has to deal with a single landowner, the state or federal government. 

In August 2023, Castex Carbon Solutions signed an agreement with Louisiana for the rights to store carbon underneath 24,000 acres off Cameron Parish, around Monkey Island, at an initial cost of $7.25 million. Additional millions will flow to the state when the project begins injecting carbon. Castex is one of the partners of the GeoDura hub, along with Carbonvert and Enbridge.

The OnStream CO2 collaboration says the hub will have the capacity to store 250 million metric tons of captured carbon, or the annual emissions from 58 million gas-powered cars. It has signed a contract with Commonwealth LNG in Cameron Parish to store the 9 million tons of carbon Commonwealth expects to capture each year from its terminal after it is operational.

Venture Global has signed similar, but less initially lucrative, contracts with the state to store captured carbon from its Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines LNG facilities under waters off Calcasieu Parish and Barataria Bay, respectively.

The carbon captured from an LNG terminal, which super chills and liquefies natural gas for transport, equals just about 8.8 percent of the carbon emissions created by the LNG industry, according to a lifecycle analysis published by Cornell University Professor Robert Howarth. Howarth’s study, which has been attacked by oil and gas companies and House Republicans, concluded that LNG is worse for the climate than burning coal.

Offshore CCS raises a litany of concerns

OnStream says its project will be operational in 2028. In addition to completing a geologic assessment of the site — funded in part by the Department of Energy grant — the company will need to build a pipeline to move captured carbon from the nearby industrial hubs of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Port Arthur, Texas. It will also need to obtain a permit to inject the carbon from the state of Louisiana.

Louisiana is the third state, and the first with a coastline, to receive permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to permit carbon sequestration wells. Patrick Courreges, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources, said the state will be examining the same things in offshore carbon sequestration projects as it does for the onshore projects.

“What our folks are looking for is confining layers,” he said. “Clay, shale, something real thick and non-permeable that’s not going to allow anything to bubble up past it. Whether you’re offshore, onshore, that geology below ground is what we’re looking at.” 

The state will also examine the construction of wells and pipes to move the carbon, he said, adding that the offshore wells also will have to be built to handle hurricanes and storm surges.

Another concern, acknowledged by both sides, is the possibility the injected carbon will come back out through abandoned, idle, or older wells. Such concentrated carbon could kill vegetation, sea life, and possibly even the fishers in the waters above.

Debra James, a spokesperson for OnStream, told Floodlight there are no existing wells directly above the storage site.

“Technical evaluations show that the CO2 will not interact with wellbores near the project area,” she said.

Environmental advocates have a litany of other concerns, including that drilling and the injection of carbon could cause seismic activity in the region, a hotspot of industry. Meckel told Floodlight that “we do not anticipate much induced seismicity.”

These advocates are also concerned the storage of carbon under or near coastal marshes could damage the thousands of acres of wetlands along the Louisiana coast, which are already disappearing at a rate of 25 to 35 square miles a year.

Louisiana “is spending millions of dollars to protect the coast in one area, and then another area, they’re permitting the wholesale destruction of it. That is just totally inconsistent,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the environmental group Louisiana Bucket Brigade.

Brian Lezina, chief of planning for the Louisiana Coastal Restoration Protection Authority, said it’s the responsibility of the state’s Department of Energy and Natural Resources to ensure carbon storage along the state shorelines is done correctly. He added that the coastal agency — which has a stalled $3 billion project to help rebuild wetlands in Barataria Bay — will be paying attention to the activity.

Technology largely untested 

There are just a handful of operating subsea carbon sequestration projects in the world, and none in the United States.

Two offshore carbon storage projects off Norway’s coast have been called a success. But in 2023, the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis published a study pointing out that even in those two projects — in what the institute called some of the most studied offshore waters — the storage of carbon yielded some unwelcome surprises.

In one of the fields, the carbon unexpectedly migrated out of where it was injected, though it has remained underground. Injection into a second field had to be halted when the reservoir reached capacity 15 years before anticipated.

The research “has revealed that storing carbon dioxide underground is not an exact science,” the report said. “It may carry even more risk and uncertainty than drilling for oil or gas, given the very limited practical, long-term experience of permanently keeping CO2 in the ground.”

Dardar hasn’t followed the offshore carbon debate closely. But the way he sees it, the presence of any more industry in his corner of Louisiana is “just no good, all the way around.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Developers eye Louisiana, Texas coasts for offshore carbon storage on Jan 5, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Pam Radtke, Floodlight.

KPRC-TV reporter Gage Goulding was shoved and his camera smacked out of his hands while reporting at a Houston-area used-car dealership in Pasadena, Texas, on Dec. 5, 2024.

In a report for the outlet, Goulding recounted that he and photojournalist Oscar Chavez went to the business to investigate a young woman’s allegations that she was conned out of $1,500 when trying to buy a car.

Goulding reportedly went undercover as a potential customer to see whether he’d have a similar experience.

“Wearing a microphone, but without a camera, Goulding got the keys to a Jeep and with the salesman, started the engine and talked about test-driving the vehicle,” KPRC-TV reported. “At that point, he informed the salesman who he was and why he was there.”

In recordings of the exchange that followed, the salesman is heard inviting Goulding inside to speak with the manager, David Estrada. Goulding — with Chavez following behind with a camera — began asking Estrada about the woman’s experience.

“When we do these stories and confront businesses, we usually are met with one simple answer: Please leave. And we do, we abide by that,” Goulding reported. “But this story was different from the get-go.”

Estrada stood and without warning placed his hand on Chavez’s camera and began pushing the photojournalist outside. Outside the office, Estrada continued grabbing the camera while Goulding yelled for him not to touch their equipment and Chavez said that they were leaving.

“Meanwhile, the car salesman is grabbing (Chavez’s) camera, twisting his arm and throwing elbows,” Goulding said in his report.

Estrada also smacked Goulding’s phone “through the air” and pinned Chavez in the journalists’ vehicle.

Neither journalist responded to requests for additional comment.

KPRC-TV reported that Estrada was arrested that day on two counts of assault. Estrada is also facing unrelated charges for allegedly embezzling more than $140,000 from another dealership, according to the station.

The woman whose experience sparked the investigation was contacted by the dealership and told she would be overnighted a check for the full $1,500.

“The goal of this story wasn’t to create any drama,” Goulding reported. “It was to get answers for (the woman) and her family. And the good news is: We did get those answers.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

KPRC-TV photojournalist Oscar Chavez was grabbed, pushed and elbowed multiple times while reporting at a Houston-area used-car dealership in Pasadena, Texas, on Dec. 5, 2024.

In a report for the outlet, reporter Gage Goulding recounted that he and Chavez went to the business to investigate a young woman’s allegations that she was conned out of $1,500 when trying to buy a car.

Goulding reportedly went undercover as a potential customer to see whether he’d have a similar experience.

“Wearing a microphone, but without a camera, Goulding got the keys to a Jeep and with the salesman, started the engine and talked about test-driving the vehicle,” KPRC-TV reported. “At that point, he informed the salesman who he was and why he was there.”

In recordings of the exchange that followed, the salesman is heard inviting Goulding inside to speak with the manager, David Estrada. Goulding — with Chavez following behind with a camera — began asking Estrada about the woman’s experience.

“When we do these stories and confront businesses, we usually are met with one simple answer: Please leave. And we do, we abide by that,” Goulding reported. “But this story was different from the get-go.”

Estrada stood and without warning placed his hand on Chavez’s camera and began pushing the photojournalist outside. Outside the office, Estrada continued grabbing the camera while Goulding yelled for him not to touch their equipment and Chavez said that they were leaving.

“Meanwhile, the car salesman is grabbing (Chavez’s) camera, twisting his arm and throwing elbows,” Goulding said in his report.

Estrada also smacked Goulding’s phone “through the air” and pinned Chavez in the journalists’ vehicle.

Neither journalist responded to requests for additional comment.

KPRC-TV reported that Estrada was arrested that day on two counts of assault. Estrada is also facing unrelated charges for allegedly embezzling more than $140,000 from another dealership, according to the station.

The woman whose experience sparked the investigation was contacted by the dealership and told she would be overnighted a check for the full $1,500.

“The goal of this story wasn’t to create any drama,” Goulding reported. “It was to get answers for (the woman) and her family. And the good news is: We did get those answers.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Digital news outlet 404 Media was subpoenaed by the state of Texas on Oct. 22, 2024, in connection with an ongoing lawsuit against Google in Midland County’s district court, according to court filings reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Google in 2022 on the state’s behalf, alleging that the company captured the biometric data of millions of its users in Texas without obtaining consent.

The subpoena to 404 Media seeks communications and documents from investigative journalist Joseph Cox’s article on a leak from Google, including a copy of an internal Google database obtained by the outlet “which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues.”

In an announcement, 404 Media’s founders wrote, “Paxton’s subpoena seeks to turn 404 Media into an arm of law enforcement, which is not our role and which we have no interest in doing or becoming.”

They added that attorneys representing the outlet “vociferously objected” to the subpoena on Dec. 6. The court filing, reviewed by the Tracker, argues the news organization is protected from having to disclose the information by the First Amendment, as well as laws in California — where the outlet is based — and Texas.

404 Media’s founders, who declined to comment further when reached by the Tracker, wrote that the subpoena undermines a free and independent press and demonstrates an alarming trend.

“It also highlights the fact that the alarm bells that have been raised about legal attacks on journalists in a second Trump administration are not theoretical; politicians already feel emboldened to use the legal system to target journalists,” they wrote. “Paxton’s subpoena highlights the urgency of passing the PRESS Act, a federal shield law that has already passed the House and which has bipartisan support but which Democrats in the Senate have dragged their feet on for inexplicable and indefensible reasons.”

Paxton had previously sought records from Media Matters for America using a “civil investigative demand” — a type of administrative subpoena — in 2023 as part of a probe his office launched to investigate “potential fraudulent activity” by the media company. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction forbidding Paxton from pursuing Media Matters’ reporting materials.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Texas leaders have shown a decadeslong antipathy toward Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program that covers millions of low-income and vulnerable residents.

They declined additional federal money that, under the Affordable Care Act, would have allowed Medicaid to offer health care coverage to more low-income families. The state was among the last to insure women for an entire year after they gave birth. And when the federal government last year ended a policy that required states to keep people on their Medicaid rolls during the coronavirus pandemic, Texas officials rushed to kick off those they deemed ineligible, ignoring persistent warnings that the speedy process could lead to some people being wrongfully removed.

Come January, when Donald Trump assumes the presidency for the second time, Texas leaders could get another opportunity to whittle down the program — this time with fewer constraints.

Trump has not shared any plans to cut Medicaid, which covers about 80 million Americans, and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Health care advocates and experts, however, say that his past efforts to scale back the program, as well as positions taken by conservative groups and Republican lawmakers who back him, indicate that it would likely be a target for severe reductions.

“We expect the Republicans to move very quickly to cut Medicaid dramatically and indeed end its guarantee of coverage as it exists today,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families in Washington, D.C.

Currently, the federal government picks up, on average, nearly 70% of Medicaid spending, with states assuming the remaining costs. (A state’s share varies based mostly on what percentage of its residents are impoverished.) Any decisions to cut federal spending would likely lead states to shrink the number of people they deem eligible and the care that enrollees are entitled to receive, Alker and other experts said.

That would be particularly devastating in Texas, which already has one of the country’s lowest percentages of residents covered through Medicaid and where officials lack the political will to make up the difference in funding with state money, experts say. Parents with two children, for example, must earn less than $285 monthly to qualify for Medicaid for themselves.

“Our elected officials would have to decide whether they want to cut health care for pregnant women, kids, people with disabilities, or seniors because that is essentially who Medicaid covers in Texas,” Adriana Kohler, a policy director for Texans Care for Children, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for families, said in a statement.

Spokespeople for Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and the state’s Health and Human Services Commission did not respond to repeated requests for comment. During Abbott’s prior role as the state’s attorney general, he helped to lead a successful lawsuit against the federal government, ensuring that states did not risk losing Medicaid funding entirely if they didn’t want to cover more residents as part of the Affordable Care Act.

Even when Texas does offer Medicaid coverage to its most vulnerable residents, state officials enabled a system that creates often insurmountable barriers to receiving care. A 2018 Dallas Morning News investigation found that some of the insurance companies Texas hired to administer Medicaid benefits systematically denied expensive and, at times, life-saving treatments to bolster profits. Critics say problems with the system persist despite legislative reforms spurred by that series of stories.

Texas insures more than 4 million residents through Medicaid, which amounts to a smaller percentage of its total population than almost any other state. But given its sheer size, the state still covers the third most people in the nation, behind only California and New York. The program provides health care for 3 in 8 children, 3 in 5 nursing home residents and 2 in 7 people with disabilities in Texas, according to KFF, a national health policy research organization. It is the top funder for nursing homes and long-term care services for the disabled and elderly, and it pays for nearly half of all births in the state.

Michael Morgan, a 75-year-old retired nurse who lives in Fort Worth, is among those who worry that if Trump caps or cuts the amount of money the federal government spends on Medicaid, the state could make it even harder to get coverage for his daughter Hannah. She has Down syndrome and schizencephaly, a brain malformation, and she is deaf and partially blind, she doesn’t speak, and she needs assistance to walk and eat.

Morgan is depleting his limited savings to pay for Hannah’s health care expenses after she lost Medicaid coverage earlier this year when she turned 19. He submitted a new application for her in May — she should qualify for Medicaid because of her disabilities. State officials denied her coverage in November, arguing that Morgan did not meet the deadline to return a form providing his consent for the agency to access his daughter’s medical and financial records. Morgan, who plans to appeal the denial, said in an interview that he received the form a day before the deadline.

“I don’t know how much more they can cut it,” he said of Medicaid in Texas.

During his first term, Trump tried unsuccessfully to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which provides health coverage to 45 million Americans. His administration also repeatedly supported spending caps for Medicaid, including block grants that would give states a fixed amount of federal funding, no matter how many people needed the insurance or how much their health care cost. Currently, Medicaid covers all people who qualify, no matter the expense.

While those efforts did not significantly advance during Trump’s first term, Republicans will hold majorities in both the House and the Senate come January, and they have signaled an openness to impose caps on spending and establish requirements that most adults in the program hold jobs. They argue that Medicaid spending is unsustainable and that the program is susceptible to waste, fraud and abuse.

Republicans who have supported such measures include U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, a Lubbock Republican who leads the House Budget Committee.

GOP policy primers — including Project 2025, published by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, and one from the Republican Study Committee, a conservative congressional caucus — have also called for cutting Medicaid.

Arrington, whose spokespeople did not respond to repeated requests for an interview, told reporters last month that he supported a “responsible and reasonable work requirement.” Harvard University health professors who studied a previous work mandate in Arkansas that Trump allowed during his first term found that most adults using Medicaid were already employed or qualified for an exemption, but thousands of residents still lost health care, at least in part because of the onerous process of continuously proving their eligibility.

This is not the first time Arrington has pushed work requirements and sought to lower the share of health care costs that the federal government pays to states. He previously proposed cutting federal Medicaid spending by more than a quarter, or $1.9 trillion.

Cornyn, whose spokespeople also repeatedly declined to comment, said last month that he would not support cuts to Medicare, the federal health insurance program for seniors and the disabled, or to Social Security. Still, he suggested that Medicaid cuts were on the table.

“We can’t just keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them,” Cornyn told Politico Pro, adding that “block grants make a lot of sense.”

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

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

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

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

Caught in Texas’ Medicaid and Food Stamp Application Backlog? Know Someone Who Is? Help Us Report.

Dan Keemahill contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lomi Kriel and Jessica Priest.

The post #18. Constitutional Loophole Propels Xenophobic Border Policies in Texas appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

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Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.

Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”

Hope dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal. “You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.

But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. Hope trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.

Three hours later, her heart stopped.

The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

It was clear Porsha needed an emergency D&C, the medical experts said. She was hemorrhaging and the doctors knew she had a blood-clotting disorder, which put her at greater danger of excessive and prolonged bleeding. “Misoprostol at 11 weeks is not going to work fast enough,” said Dr. Amber Truehart, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health. “The patient will continue to bleed and have a higher risk of going into hemorrhagic shock.” The medical examiner found the cause of death to be hemorrhage.

D&Cs — a staple of maternal health care — can be lifesaving. Doctors insert a straw-like tube into the uterus and gently suction out any remaining pregnancy tissue. Once the uterus is emptied, it can close, usually stopping the bleeding.

But because D&Cs are also used to end pregnancies, the procedure has become tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortions. In Texas, any doctor who violates the strict law risks up to 99 years in prison. Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.

ProPublica condensed 200 pages of medical records into a summary of the case in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists and then reviewed it with more than a dozen experts around the country, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in maternal health.

Texas doctors told ProPublica the law has changed the way their colleagues see the procedure; some no longer consider it a first-line treatment, fearing legal repercussions or dissuaded by the extra legwork required to document the miscarriage and get hospital approval to carry out a D&C. This has occurred, ProPublica found, even in cases like Porsha’s where there isn’t a fetal heartbeat or the circumstances should fall under an exception in the law. Some doctors are transferring those patients to other hospitals, which delays their care, or they’re defaulting to treatments that aren’t the medical standard.

Misoprostol, the medicine given to Porsha, is an effective method to complete low-risk miscarriages but is not recommended when a patient is unstable. The drug is also part of a two-pill regimen for abortions, yet administering it may draw less scrutiny than a D&C because it requires a smaller medical team and because the drug is commonly used to induce labor and treat postpartum hemorrhage. Since 2022, some Texas women who were bleeding heavily while miscarrying have gone public about only receiving medication when they asked for D&Cs. One later passed out in a pool of her own blood.

“Stigma and fear are there for D&Cs in a way that they are not for misoprostol,” said Dr. Alison Goulding, an OB-GYN in Houston. “Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended. People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal.”

Doctors and nurses involved in Porsha’s care did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Several physicians who reviewed the summary of her case pointed out that Davis’ post-mortem notes did not reflect nurses’ documented concerns about Porsha’s “heavy bleeding.” After Porsha died, Davis wrote instead that the nurses and other providers described the bleeding as “minimal,” though no nurses wrote this in the records. ProPublica tried to ask Davis about this discrepancy. He did not respond to emails, texts or calls.

Houston Methodist officials declined to answer a detailed list of questions about Porsha’s treatment. They did not comment when asked whether Davis’ approach was the hospital’s “routine.” A spokesperson said that “each patient’s care is unique to that individual.”

“All Houston Methodist hospitals follow all state laws,” the spokesperson added, “including the abortion law in place in Texas.”

Hope marveled at the energy Porsha had for their two sons, ages 5 and 3. Whenever she wasn’t working, she was chasing them through the house or dancing with them in the living room. As a finance manager at a charter school system, she was in charge of the household budget. As an engineer for an airline, Hope took them on flights around the world — to Chile, Bali, Guam, Singapore, Argentina.

The two had met at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. “When Porsha and I began dating,” Hope said, “I already knew I was going to love her.” She was magnetic and driven, going on to earn an MBA, but she was also gentle with him, always protecting his feelings. Both were raised in big families and they wanted to build one of their own.

When he learned Porsha was pregnant again in the spring of 2023, Hope wished for a girl. Porsha found a new OB-GYN who said she could see her after 11 weeks. Ten weeks in, though, Porsha noticed she was spotting. Over the phone, the obstetrician told her to go to the emergency room if it got worse.

To celebrate the end of the school year, Porsha and Hope took their boys to a water park in Austin, and as they headed back, on June 11, Porsha told Hope that the bleeding was heavier. They decided Hope would stay with the boys at home until a relative could take over; Porsha would drive to the emergency room at Houston Methodist Sugar Land, one of seven community hospitals that are part of the Houston Methodist system.

At 6:30 p.m, three hours after Porsha arrived at the hospital, she saw huge clots in the toilet. “Significant bleeding,” the emergency physician wrote. “I’m starting to feel a lot of pain,” Porsha texted Hope. Around 7:30 p.m., she wrote: “She said I might need surgery if I don’t stop bleeding,” referring to the nurse. At 7:50 p.m., after a nurse changed her second diaper in an hour: “Come now.”

Still, the doctor didn’t mention a D&C at this point, records show. Medical experts told ProPublica that this wait-and-see approach has become more common under abortion bans. Unless there is “overt information indicating that the patient is at significant risk,” hospital administrators have told physicians to simply monitor them, said Dr. Robert Carpenter, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who works in several hospital systems in Houston. Methodist declined to share its miscarriage protocols with ProPublica or explain how it is guiding doctors under the abortion ban.

As Porsha waited for Hope, a radiologist completed an ultrasound and noted that she had “a pregnancy of unknown location.” The scan detected a “sac-like structure” but no fetus or cardiac activity. This report, combined with her symptoms, indicated she was miscarrying.

But the ultrasound record alone was less definitive from a legal perspective, several doctors explained to ProPublica. Since Porsha had not had a prenatal visit, there was no documentation to prove she was 11 weeks along. On paper, this “pregnancy of unknown location” diagnosis could also suggest that she was only a few weeks into a normally developing pregnancy, when cardiac activity wouldn’t be detected. Texas outlaws abortion from the moment of fertilization; a record showing there is no cardiac activity isn’t enough to give physicians cover to intervene, experts said.

Dr. Gabrielle Taper, who recently worked as an OB-GYN resident in Austin, said that she regularly witnessed delays after ultrasound reports like these. “If it’s a pregnancy of unknown location, if we do something to manage it, is that considered an abortion or not?” she said, adding that this was one of the key problems she encountered. After the abortion ban went into effect, she said, “there was much more hesitation about: When can we intervene, do we have enough evidence to say this is a miscarriage, how long are we going to wait, what will we use to feel definitive?”

At Methodist, the emergency room doctor reached Davis, the on-call OB-GYN, to discuss the ultrasound, according to records. They agreed on a plan of “observation in the hospital to monitor bleeding.”

Around 8:30 p.m., just after Hope arrived, Porsha passed out. Terrified, he took her head in his hands and tried to bring her back to consciousness. “Babe, look at me,” he told her. “Focus.” Her blood pressure was dipping dangerously low. She had held off on accepting a blood transfusion until he got there. Now, as she came to, she agreed to receive one and then another.

By this point, it was clear that she needed a D&C, more than a dozen OB-GYNs who reviewed her case told ProPublica. She was hemorrhaging, and the standard of care is to vacuum out the residual tissue so the uterus can clamp down, physicians told ProPublica.

“Complete the miscarriage and the bleeding will stop,” said Dr. Lauren Thaxton, an OB-GYN who recently left Texas.

“At every point, it’s kind of shocking,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco who reviewed Porsha’s case. “She is having significant blood loss and the physician didn’t move toward aspiration.”

All Porsha talked about was her devastation of losing the pregnancy. She was cold, crying and in extreme pain. She wanted to be at home with her boys. Unsure what to say, Hope leaned his chest over the cot, passing his body heat to her.

At 9:45 p.m., Esmeralda Acosta, a nurse, wrote that Porsha was “continuing to pass large clots the size of grapefruit.” Fifteen minutes later, when the nurse learned Davis planned to send Porsha to a floor with fewer nurses, she “voiced concern” that he wanted to take her out of the emergency room, given her condition, according to medical records.

At 10:20 p.m., seven hours after Porsha arrived, Davis came to see her. Hope remembered what his mother had told him on the phone earlier that night: “She needs a D&C.” The doctor seemed confident about a different approach: misoprostol. If that didn’t work, Hope remembers him saying, they would move on to the procedure.

A pill sounded good to Porsha because the idea of surgery scared her. Davis did not explain that a D&C involved no incisions, just suction, according to Hope, or tell them that it would stop the bleeding faster. The Ngumezis followed his recommendation without question. “I’m thinking, ‘He’s the OB, he’s probably seen this a thousand times, he probably knows what’s right,’” Hope said.

But more than a dozen doctors who reviewed Porsha’s case were concerned by this recommendation. Many said it was dangerous to give misoprostol to a woman who’s bleeding heavily, especially one with a blood clotting disorder. “That’s not what you do,” said Dr. Elliott Main, the former medical director for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative and an expert in hemorrhage, after reviewing the case. “She needed to go to the operating room.” Main and others said doctors are obliged to counsel patients on the risks and benefits of all their options, including a D&C.

Performing a D&C, though, attracts more attention from colleagues, creating a higher barrier in a state where abortion is illegal, explained Goulding, the OB-GYN in Houston. Staff are familiar with misoprostol because it’s used for labor, and it only requires a doctor and a nurse to administer it. To do a procedure, on the other hand, a doctor would need to find an operating room, an anesthesiologist and a nursing team. “You have to convince everyone that it is legal and won’t put them at risk,” said Goulding. “Many people may be afraid and misinformed and refuse to participate — even if it’s for a miscarriage.”

Davis moved Porsha to a less-intensive unit, according to records. Hope wondered why they were leaving the emergency room if the nurse seemed so worried. But instead of pushing back, he rubbed Porsha’s arms, trying to comfort her. The hospital was reputable. “Since we were at Methodist, I felt I could trust the doctors.”

On their way to the other ward, Porsha complained of chest pain. She kept remarking on it when they got to the new room. From this point forward, there are no nurse’s notes recording how much she continued to bleed. “My wife says she doesn’t feel right, and last time she said that, she passed out,” Hope told a nurse. Furious, he tried to hold it together so as not to alarm Porsha. “We need to see the doctor,” he insisted.

Her vital signs looked fine. But many physicians told ProPublica that when healthy pregnant patients are hemorrhaging, their bodies can compensate for a long time, until they crash. Any sign of distress, such as chest pain, could be a red flag; the symptom warranted investigation with tests, like an electrocardiogram or X-ray, experts said. To them, Porsha’s case underscored how important it is that doctors be able to intervene before there are signs of a life-threatening emergency.

But Davis didn’t order any tests, according to records.

Around 1:30 a.m., Hope was sitting by Porsha’s bed, his hands on her chest, telling her, “We are going to figure this out.” They were talking about what she might like for breakfast when she began gasping for air.

“Help, I need help!” he shouted to the nurses through the intercom. “She can’t breathe.”

Hours later, Hope returned home in a daze. “Is mommy still at the hospital?” one of his sons asked. Hope nodded; he couldn’t find the words to tell the boys they’d lost their mother. He dressed them and drove them to school, like the previous day had been a bad dream. He reached for his phone to call Porsha, as he did every morning that he dropped the kids off. But then he remembered that he couldn’t.

Friends kept reaching out. Most of his family’s network worked in medicine, and after they said how sorry they were, one after another repeated the same message. All she needed was a D&C, said one. They shouldn’t have given her that medication, said another. It’s a simple procedure, the callers continued. We do this all the time in Nigeria.

Since Porsha died, several families in Texas have spoken publicly about similar circumstances. This May, when Ryan Hamilton’s wife was bleeding while miscarrying at 13 weeks, the first doctor they saw at Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville noted no fetal cardiac activity and ordered misoprostol, according to medical records. When they returned because the bleeding got worse, an emergency doctor on call, Kyle Demler, said he couldn’t do anything considering “the current stance” in Texas, according to Hamilton, who recorded his recollection of the conversation shortly after speaking with Demler. (Neither Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville nor Demler responded to several requests for comment.)

They drove an hour to another hospital asking for a D&C to stop the bleeding, but there, too, the physician would only prescribe misoprostol, medical records indicate. Back home, Hamilton’s wife continued bleeding until he found her passed out on the bathroom floor. “You don’t think it can really happen like that,” said Hamilton. “It feels like you’re living in some sort of movie, it’s so unbelievable.”

Across Texas, physicians say they blame the law for interfering with medical care. After ProPublica reported last month on two women who died after delays in miscarriage care, 111 OB-GYNs sent a letter to Texas policymakers, saying that “the law does not allow Texas women to get the lifesaving care they need.”

Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN in Dallas, told ProPublica that if one person on a medical team doubts the doctor’s choice to proceed with a D&C, the physician might back down. “You constantly feel like you have someone looking over your shoulder in a punitive, vigilante type of way.”

The criminal penalties are so chilling that even women with diagnoses included in the law’s exceptions are facing delays and denials. Last year, for example, legislators added an update to the ban for patients diagnosed with previable premature rupture of membranes, in which a patient’s water breaks before a fetus can survive. Doctors can still face prosecution for providing abortions in those cases, but they are offered the chance to justify themselves with what’s called an “affirmative defense,” not unlike a murder suspect arguing self defense. This modest change has not stopped some doctors from transferring those patients instead of treating them; Dr. Allison Gilbert, an OB-GYN in Dallas, said doctors send them to her from other hospitals. “They didn’t feel like other staff members would be comfortable proceeding with the abortion,” she said. “It’s frustrating that places still feel like they can’t act on some of these cases that are clearly emergencies.” Women denied treatment for ectopic pregnancies, another exception in the law, have filed federal complaints.

In response to ProPublica’s questions about Houston Methodist’s guidance on miscarriage management, a spokesperson, Gale Smith, said that the hospital has an ethics committee, which can usually respond within hours to help physicians and patients make “appropriate decisions” in compliance with state laws.

After Porsha died, Davis described in the medical record a patient who looked stable: He was tracking her vital signs, her bleeding was “mild” and she was “said not to be in distress.” He ordered bloodwork “to ensure patient wasn’t having concerning bleeding.” Medical experts who reviewed Porsha’s case couldn’t understand why Davis noted that a nurse and other providers reported “decreasing bleeding” in the emergency department when the record indicated otherwise. “He doesn’t document the heavy bleeding that the nurse clearly documented, including the significant bleeding that prompted the blood transfusion, which is surprising,” Grossman, the UCSF professor, said.

Patients who are miscarrying still don’t know what to expect from Houston Methodist.

This past May, Marlena Stell, a patient with symptoms nearly identical to Porsha’s, arrived at another hospital in the system, Houston Methodist The Woodlands. According to medical records, she, too, was 11 weeks along and bleeding heavily. An ultrasound confirmed there was no fetal heartbeat and indicated the miscarriage wasn’t complete. “I assumed they would do whatever to get the bleeding to stop,” Stell said.

Instead, she bled for hours at the hospital. She wanted a D&C to clear out the rest of the tissue, but the doctor gave her methergine, a medication that’s typically used after childbirth to stop bleeding but that isn’t standard care in the middle of a miscarriage, doctors told ProPublica. "She had heavy bleeding, and she had an ultrasound that's consistent with retained products of conception." said Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, who reviewed the records. "The standard of care would be a D&C."

Stell says that instead, she was sent home and told to “let the miscarriage take its course.” She completed her miscarriage later that night, but doctors who reviewed her case, so similar to Porsha’s, said it showed how much of a gamble physicians take when they don’t follow the standard of care. “She got lucky — she could have died,” Abbott said. (Houston Methodist did not respond to a request for comment on Stell’s care.)

It hadn’t occurred to Hope that the laws governing abortion could have any effect on his wife’s miscarriage. Now it’s the only explanation that makes sense to him. “We all know pregnancies can come out beautifully or horribly,” Hope told ProPublica. “Instead of putting laws in place to make pregnancies safer, we created laws that put them back in danger.”

For months, Hope’s youngest son didn’t understand that his mom was gone. Porsha’s long hair had been braided, and anytime the toddler saw a woman with braids from afar, he would take off after her, shouting, “That’s mommy!”

A couple weeks ago, Hope flew to Amsterdam to quiet his mind. It was his first trip without Porsha, but as he walked the city, he didn’t know how to experience it without her. He kept thinking about how she would love the Christmas lights and want to try all the pastries. How she would have teased him when he fell asleep on a boat tour of the canals. “I thought getting away would help,” he wrote in his journal. “But all I’ve done is imagine her beside me.”

Mariam Elba and Lexi Churchill contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana.

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Register for our Nov. 21 virtual discussion, where our reporters take you inside ProPublica’s reproductive health coverage.

Weeks after ProPublica reported on the deaths of two pregnant women whose miscarriages went untreated in Texas, state lawmakers have filed bills that would create new exceptions to the state’s strict abortion laws, broadening doctors’ ability to intervene when their patients face health risks.

The legislation comes after the lawmaker who wrote one of Texas’ recent abortion bans wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle defending the current exceptions as “plenty clear.”

But more than 100 Texas OB-GYNs disagree with his position. In a public letter, written in response to ProPublica’s reporting, they urged changes. “As OB-GYNs in Texas, we know firsthand how much these laws restrict our ability to provide our patients with quality, evidence-based care,” they said.

Texas’ abortion ban threatens up to 99 years in prison, $100,000 in fines and loss of medical license for doctors who provide abortions. The state’s health and safety code currently includes exceptions if a pregnant woman “has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.” A separate exception exists that provides doctors with some legal protections if they perform an abortion for an ectopic pregnancy or in cases when a patient’s water breaks.

The bills, filed in the state House and Senate last week, create new health exceptions. They would allow doctors to induce or perform abortions necessary to preserve the mental or physical health of a patient, including preserving the patient’s fertility. Doctors could also provide abortions in cases where the fetus had an anomaly that would make it unable to survive outside the womb or able to survive only with “extraordinary medical interventions.”

State Rep. Donna Howard, who filed the bill in the Texas House, said ProPublica’s recent reporting adds to evidence that the current legislation is a threat to the safety of pregnant women in Texas and increases the urgency to make changes. “This is my reaction,” she said. “It’s one of extreme sadness and disbelief that we are at a point where we are allowing women to die because we haven’t been able to clarify the law,” she said.

Investigations by ProPublica have found that at least four women, including two in Texas, died after they could not access timely reproductive care in states that ban abortion. There are almost certainly others.

In Houston, Josseli Barnica died in September 2021, just days after the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect. Barnica, 28, was miscarrying at 17 weeks, but doctors did not offer her the medical standard of care — to speed up labor or empty her uterus — for 40 hours, until after the fetal heartbeat had stopped. Her husband said she was told it would be a “crime” to intervene. This left her seriously exposed to infection, experts told ProPublica. Three days later, she died from an infection, leaving behind a young daughter.

Her death was “preventable,” according to more than a dozen medical experts who reviewed a summary of her hospital and autopsy records at ProPublica’s request; they called her case “horrific,” “astounding” and “egregious.”

The doctors involved in Barnica’s care at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest did not respond to multiple requests for comment on her case. In a statement, HCA Healthcare said, “Our responsibility is to be in compliance with applicable state and federal laws and regulations,” and that physicians exercise their independent judgment. The company did not respond to detailed questions about its policy.

Nevaeh Crain, 18, made three trips to emergency rooms in rural southeast Texas last year for vomiting and abdominal pain, waiting 20 hours before doctors admitted her. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to document “fetal demise” as Crain’s vital signs grew more alarming. By the time they rushed to operate, sepsis had spread throughout her body and her organs failed.

Experts who reviewed a summary of Crain’s medical records for ProPublica said it may have been possible to save both the teenager and her pregnancy if she had been admitted earlier for close monitoring and continuous treatment.

Doctors involved in Crain’s care did not respond to several requests for comment. The two hospitals — Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas and Christus Southeast Texas St. Elizabeth — declined to answer questions about her treatment.

The cases highlight how abortion laws can interfere with maternal health care, even for those who want to have a child.

Much of the confusion hinges on the definition of a “medical emergency.” In many cases, women experiencing a miscarriage or a pregnancy complication may be stable. But requiring them to wait for an abortion until signs of sickness are documented or the fetal cardiac activity stops violates the professional standard of care, putting them at higher risk that a life-threatening infection or other complications could develop and be harder to control.

Attaching criminal penalties to abortion procedures has led to a chilling effect, making some physicians more hesitant to care for patients experiencing pregnancy complications in general, doctors told ProPublica.

After ProPublica’s reporting, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of one of the state’s abortion bans, wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle. He said the women were “wrongfully denied care,” but he blamed media outlets including ProPublica for publishing stories that made doctors “afraid to treat the women.”

“When a mother’s life or major bodily function are in jeopardy, doctors are not only allowed to act, but they are legally required to act,” he wrote. “And contrary to what ProPublica would have us believe, Texas law does not prevent them from aiding their patients and saving their lives.”

He argued that the medical emergency exceptions in Texas’ new abortion bans use the same language as abortion laws from the 1800s. “We did not want to risk confusing medical providers by changing the definition,” he said. But that language was written at a time when many more women died in pregnancy and childbirth — before medical innovations such as suction devices to empty the uterus and lower the risk of sepsis helped make maternal care vastly safer.

Hughes is a licensed attorney who lists no medical training on his Senate webpage.

ProPublica repeatedly requested an interview with Hughes to further understand his interpretation of how doctors should apply the law in specific scenarios. He did not respond to a detailed list of questions and requests to comment for this article.

There is no state office that doctors can call to make sure their decisions in miscarriage cases do not violate the law. Yet Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has made it clear he will not hesitate to prosecute doctors if the abortions they provide do not meet his interpretation of a medical emergency.

Last year, a Dallas woman asked a court for approval to end her pregnancy because her fetus was not viable and she faced health risks if she carried it to term. Paxton fought to keep her pregnant, arguing that her doctor hadn’t proved her situation was an emergency, and threatened to prosecute anyone who helped her. The courts sided with him, and the woman traveled out of state for the abortion.

After reading ProPublica’s stories, 111 Texas OB-GYNs signed a letter placing blame for the deaths squarely on state abortion law that “does not allow us as medical professionals to do our jobs.”

“The law does not allow Texas women to get the lifesaving care they need and threatens physicians with life imprisonment and loss of licensure for doing what is often medically necessary for the patient’s health and future fertility,” they wrote.

Their letter adds to years of warnings from the medical community and from patients themselves: 20 women who were denied abortions for miscarriages and high-risk pregnancy complications joined a lawsuit against the state. They asked the courts to clarify the law’s exceptions, but the Texas Supreme Court refused.

Dr. Austin Dennard, a Dallas OB-GYN, is one of the women represented in the lawsuit. She has seen the consequences of the laws from both sides. As a doctor, she has to call a hospital lawyer any time she wants to provide abortion care to patients facing emergencies. She also was personally affected when she was pregnant and learned her fetus had anencephaly — a condition in which the brain and skull do not fully develop. Texas’ law would have forced her to carry to term, putting her through more health risks and making her wait longer to try again for another pregnancy, so she traveled out of state for an abortion.

She said lawmakers have failed for years to listen to the doctors who have to navigate these laws.

In response to Hughes’s op-ed, she said: “We’re the ones with their boots on the ground. We’re the ones taking care of these patients, and we’re the ones telling you it is very nebulous and confusing, and we’re all terrified,” Dennard said.

State Sen. Carol Alvarado, who filed the Senate version of the bill, said she worked with physicians who represent major medical organizations to draft the exceptions.

“This bill is not about politics — it’s about ensuring that doctors can provide life-saving care without hesitation or fear of prosecution,” Alvarado said. “This bill is about restoring trust in our health care system and ensuring that no one has to endure the heartbreak of wondering whether more timely medical care could have saved their loved one.”

Molly Duane, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights who represents women who are suing the state, said the bill, if passed, could help save some lives, but cautioned that without removing the threat of criminal penalties, some doctors might still deny care.

“Exceptions don’t work in reality, no matter how clear they are,” Duane said. “We’ve seen hospitals turn away Texans facing life-threatening ectopic pregnancies, even though providing an abortion in these cases is legal under state law. As long as doctors face the threat of jail time and loss of license, they will be terrified to provide care.”

In his op-ed, Hughes said that the Texas Medical Board has issued guidance that an emergency doesn’t need to be “imminent” to keep physicians “from doing what is medically necessary” under the law.

But Dennard, echoing many doctors who spoke to ProPublica, said the board was “incredibly unhelpful.” The guidance instructed doctors on ways they could document why the abortion was necessary and still left open the question of how lawyers and courts might interpret “medically necessary.”

“None of them want to face the reality of the situation, which is that the laws that were put in place are directly harming pregnant people, and it is their fault,” she said.

The board, whose members are appointed by the governor, issued the guidance earlier this year after declining for more than two years to respond to questions about how the law should be interpreted, even as patients facing health risks publicly shared their stories of being denied abortion care and journalists asked the board to respond. The board issued guidance only after the Texas Supreme Court directed it to do so.

The president of the board, Dr. Sherif Zaafran, said in an interview that it would have been “inappropriate” to weigh in without that direction.

“Somebody could easily sue the medical board and say, ‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ and then we’d be in limbo also, and that could have actually dragged things out even longer.”

In the meantime, women’s lives were left in the balance.

Last year, lawmakers created a new exception for two conditions that the original law had not addressed: ectopic pregnancies and previable premature rupture of membranes, when a patient’s water breaks too early, causing a miscarriage.

But the exception is small comfort, some doctors say. It’s written in a way that only allows doctors to make an “affirmative defense” for a legal penalty. An affirmative defense, if found credible by a judge or jury, means the defendant wouldn’t be liable for the alleged acts even if he or she committed them.

“Nobody wants to be that poster child,” said Dr. Robert Carpenter, a Houston OB-GYN who signed the letter.

The Houston Chronicle also published 10 letters to the editor in response to Hughes’ editorial, eight of them arguing against his claim that the Texas abortion ban is clear.

Among them was Trevor M. Bibler, an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

“If doctors weren’t threatened with jail time and accused of murder just for upholding a basic standard of care, then these tragedies wouldn’t happen,” he wrote. “The possibility that the cause of these tragedies are the doctors who read the writings of the left-wing media rather than the law is absurd, disingenuous and not at all convincing. His law, not the media, is the cause.”

Howard said she’s hopeful the Texas Legislature will listen to the medical community and the public and create health and other exceptions in the abortion laws. She also pointed out that President-elect Donald Trump has said that he supports exceptions in cases of rape and incest, which Texas’ ban does not include. She filed a separate bill to propose such exceptions.

“It’s really just unbelievable, from a state that considers itself to be pro-life, that these obstacles will be put in place that are the antithesis of pro-life,” Howard said.

As other states assess whether to ban or protect abortion rights, Texas is providing an example of what to expect.

In Wisconsin, state Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky recently pressed an attorney for the state to explain whether an abortion ban on the books from 1849 would stop doctors from providing abortion care to patients who were experiencing miscarriages if the court allowed it to go into effect.

Describing Barnica’s case, she asked for clarification: “She suffered an infection that killed her because medical providers were unwilling or unable to give her the health care that she needed,” she said. “That’s a scenario that could easily — and perhaps has easily — play out here in Wisconsin under your interpretation of [the law], couldn’t it?”

“I’m not sure, Justice Karofsky,” the attorney responded. “I’m not a doctor.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Cassandra Jaramillo, Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Ziva Branstetter.

The farmers are hesitating to accept it.

Farmers and the irrigation districts that supply water to farmers remain in a stalemate with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality over 120,000 acre-feet of water that Mexico offered up to the U.S.

This is the catch: If the farmers accept the water now, they will have to give up the water they already own and need for next year.

In mid-October, farmers and irrigation districts met with representatives from TCEQ and the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency that oversees water treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, to discuss the offer.

It entails more than 120,000 acre-feet of water that Mexico offered up to the U.S. after heavy rains caused significant runoff from Mexico’s Marte Gomez reservoir, which is at 123.7 percent capacity.

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Martha Pskowski, Inside Climate News

If IBWC accepted the water and allocated it to Texas, TCEQ would be responsible for distributing the water within the state through their watermaster program based on who owned the rights to water.

Many water rights holders don’t have sufficient water for the planting season in the spring, said Sonny Hinojosa, a water advocate with the Hidalgo County Irrigation District Number 2. If TCEQ were to charge them for accepting the water being offered by Mexico now, the water they already own and which they intended to preserve for the next planting cycle would be released for other uses.

“A farmer’s not going to invest in seed and prepping the land if he doesn’t see enough water stored behind the dam to finish out his crop,” Hinojosa said. “It’s too big of an investment.”

TCEQ told farmers and employees of irrigation districts who were present that not charging them for that water would be unfair to other water rights holders who don’t receive the San Juan river water, according to Hinojosa, who hopes to convince the department that everyone would benefit.

If they’re not charged and their current water is maintained in the reservoirs, that water could be reallocated to others if enough water comes in later from rain or other sources.

“The water that we don’t ask to be released for us stays behind the dam, and when there’s the next allocation, everyone gets a piece of the pie,” he said.

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The Falcon and Amistad reservoirs supply water to farmers and irrigation districts in the Rio Grande Valley, but levels there remain low from a lack of sufficient rainfall to meet farmers’ needs.

The U.S. side of the reservoirs is also supposed to receive water from Mexico under the terms of a 1944 treaty. Mexico must deliver 1,750,000 million acre-feet of water to the U.S. from six tributaries every five years, or an average of 350,000 every year. But Mexico has fallen behind, with a balance of more than 1.3 million acre-feet it needs to deliver by the October 2025 deadline.

The San Juan River is not one of those six tributaries, but if that water is accepted, it would be credited towards Mexico’s water debt.

Reaching an agreement on the offered water soon is important as that water is in danger of spilling over the dam.

“There is a danger if they get rain in this region and the water starts to spill,” said Maria-Elena Giner, IBWC commissioner. “The other thing is that if we don’t start using some of that water, or that commitment isn’t made very soon, others in Mexico may say, ‘Well, then we’ll keep it, and we’ll use it for our users.'”

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It’s that urgency that motivated Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller to issue an executive order last month authorizing farmers and irrigation districts to use water from the Rio Grande.

“Every day is critical,” Miller said, adding that TCEQ’s hands were tied on the matter. “By the time they got through the bureaucratic red tape, I was afraid the water’s already out the Gulf.”

But Miller’s authority to give farmers that access is questionable at best. TCEQ said water rights were governed by the Texas Water Code and TCEQ regulations.

“All Texans along the Rio Grande should continue to comply with these requirements,” a spokesperson for TCEQ wrote in an email.

The department added it continued to work with local stakeholders and the IBWC on negotiating water deliveries from Mexico.

The IBWC said they appreciated Miller’s efforts to help South Texas producers and irrigation districts. Giner said the agency continues to urge Mexico to provide a plan to address the shortfall and make good on their water deliveries.

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Mexico is offering water to South Texas. But there’s a catch farmers aren’t happy about. on Nov 9, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune.

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Texas Democrats have long viewed the state’s growing Latino population as their ticket to eventually breaking through the Republican Party’s dominance. Tuesday night, however, showed that the GOP has made significant gains in peeling away those voters, and nowhere was that more apparent than along the border.

After years of losing the statewide Latino vote by double digits, Republicans set a high-water mark with Donald Trump capturing 55% of the critical voting bloc, besting Vice President Kamala Harris’ 44% share, according to exit polls.

In the traditionally Democratic strongholds along the border, Trump managed a near sweep.

He won 14 out of the 18 counties within 20 miles of the border, a number that doubled his attention-grabbing 2020 performance in the Latino-majority region. He carried all four counties in the Rio Grande Valley just eight years after drawing a mere 29% in the region — a feat that included delivering 97% Latino Starr County to Republicans for the first time since 1896. And, though he lost El Paso, one of the border’s most populous counties, he narrowed margins there in ways not seen in decades.

Trump was the top vote-getter in a majority of the counties along the Texas-Mexico border in 2024. This continues the trend of border counties voting more conservatively in presidential races. Shown is how many counties have voted for each party’s candidate in each race since 1996.

His gains along the border were the most for a Republican presidential candidate in at least 30 years, exceeding even the inroads made by native Texan George W. Bush in 2004.

Trump’s success in appealing to heavily Latino communities was evident throughout the country as he became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Miami-Dade County in more than three decades and nearly doubled his share of the Latino vote in Pennsylvania, even after a comedian at one of his rallies called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” But Trump’s performance is particularly striking in Texas, where Democrats have all but tied their fate to the idea that, as long as the state’s Latino electorate continued to grow and stayed reliably blue, Republicans would one day cease to win statewide elections.

In addition to dominating the presidential race, Republicans saw other gains along the border. U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, a Republican from Edinburg, held onto a key GOP seat anchored in the Rio Grande Valley, and Republicans picked up a state Senate seat and two state House districts in South Texas that were previously held by Democrats. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who won reelection by carrying a majority of Latino voters, said the results amounted to “generational change.”

Democrats saw their own bright spots. Eddie Morales Jr., a state representative for a sprawling border district that stretches from Eagle Pass to El Paso, held onto his seat on Tuesday, though he narrowly eked out a victory two years after winning by a more comfortable 12-point margin. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, also won by an unexpectedly narrow margin of about 5 percentage points against a GOP challenger whom he vastly outspent.

Joshua Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said it’s too early to tell if Republican gains will hold or extend beyond Trump himself. But, Blank said, Democrats would be wise to worry about the possibility that this shift endures.

Trump’s success among Latino voters seemed to stem from an understanding that, in places like Texas, many Latinos “think of themselves as multiracial” and have grown up in communities where race and ethnicity are not top of mind, Blank said. Trump targeted Hispanic men who rarely vote by appealing “to their pocketbooks, to their masculinity, to their place in culture and society, but not directly to an identity as a racial and ethnic minority.”

“Does that mean that these voters are going to stay in the Republican column? We don’t know. Does it mean that they’re going to support somebody who’s not named Donald Trump? Unclear,” Blank said. “But he has changed the terms of the debate in a way that I think Democrats are uncomfortable with.”

Nine counties within 20 miles of the Texas-Mexico border flipped from supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 to Republican Donald Trump in 2024.

Not unlike his appeal among other constituencies, Trump won over Latino voters by hammering Harris on economic challenges that many of them — rightly and wrongly — blame on President Joe Biden.

University of Houston political science professor Jeronimo Cortina said Trump’s challenge now would be to deliver on his promises to improve voters’ economic fortunes. And he said he’d expect voters to hold Trump accountable if he doesn’t. Cortina noted that many Latinos supported Bush’s 2004 reelection, only to desert the Republican Party in favor of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 amid a flailing economy.

“Realignments occur when there’s a sustainable change, and right now, it’s not clear we have that,” Cortina said.

He also said it would be premature to say whether Trump’s appeal — to say nothing of the Republican Party’s — was anything other than fleeting because, in local races, Latinos still tended to prefer Democrats.

One such example is the race for sheriff in Val Verde County, nearly three hours west of San Antonio.

In that race, Democrat Joe Frank Martinez held onto his seat, beating his Republican challenger after receiving 57% of the vote, even as Trump won the county with 63% of the vote.

According to Martinez, Project Red TX, a GOP-backed PAC, initially tried to get him to switch parties. When he declined, the PAC backed his opponent, who ran a campaign centered around the issue of immigration, even though that is not part of the sheriff’s job.

This year, the group supported more than 50 local candidates, primarily in border counties. The three candidates it backed in Val Verde County lost, though Wayne Hamilton, a veteran GOP operative who heads the group, noted that he also supported a number of local candidates who won their races with Trump carrying the county atop the ballot. One such case was in Jim Wells County, where Trump received 57% and the Democratic sheriff was narrowly ousted by a Republican challenger.

Hamilton said Latino voters living at or near the border flocked to Trump over what they see as the Biden administration’s “collapse in border enforcement and failing to do their job” by preventing more migrants from crossing into Texas.

Record numbers of arrivals overwhelmed border infrastructure in numerous communities. In Val Verde, some 20,000 mostly Haitian migrants arrived almost at once in 2021, forcing officials to shut the international port of entry while they figured out how to respond to the situation.

Public outcry was most acute, Hamilton said, in counties with high poverty rates where residents were more likely to feel that their community was “being overrun by people that are even poorer, with even greater needs.”

Hamilton celebrated that Trump flipped Starr by 16 points this year, a 76-point swing from his 60-point deficit there in 2016.

Down the ballot, though, Democrats, including the incumbent sheriff, managed to hold on to their positions despite aggressive campaigns on the Republican side. “All of those candidates that ran as Democrats, all won, so the Trump presidency is basically an isolated seat,” Starr County Democratic Chair Jessica Vera said.

Still, she said, if national and statewide Democrats want to keep the county blue, they need to work together with local leaders to connect with voters there.

Hamilton said some newly converted Trump voters might feel less inclined to vote against their local Democratic officials, especially in the smaller border counties, because they tend to be known in the community.

“The further down the ballot you go, it all becomes more personal,” Hamilton said. “It’s not a guy I see on TV, right? It’s the guy I go to Mass with.”

Local Democratic Party officials, including Sylvia Bruni in Webb County, a longtime Democratic stronghold, said they had warned their state and national headquarters about the advances Republicans were making in their districts. But she said she had gotten little support and instead had to rely almost entirely on whatever funds her group could raise on its own.

That’s not going to be good enough in the future, Bruni said. “We need help.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

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Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez has served four terms as the top law enforcement officer in Val Verde County, Texas, a sprawling rural territory that shares 110 miles of border with Mexico. It is a position his father dreamed of holding before he died at the age of 51. Martinez says his father, a staunch Democrat, raised him and his nine siblings to serve their community.

Martinez describes himself as “Catholic and pro-life and pro-gun.” He’s also committed to his father’s party. His relationships in Val Verde County have repeatedly propelled him into office, thanks to support from both Democrats and Republicans. But this year, Martinez’s victory is less certain because some in Val Verde County don’t think he’s tough enough on immigration — even though securing the border is not a local sheriff’s responsibility.

This short documentary follows Joe Frank, along with his brothers David and Leo Martinez, as they wrestle with the tensions around immigration in Del Rio, nearly three hours south of San Antonio. Martinez’s run for office provides a glimpse at how new patterns of immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border have coincided with, if not driven, changing attitudes among voters who live there. Some communities once considered Democratic strongholds have begun to turn red, a trend bolstered by Republican efforts to court Latino voters.

Those efforts are changing politics in Val Verde County. A political action committee called Project Red TX has backed a candidate named Rogelio “Roger” Hernandez to run against Martinez. Since 2018, the PAC has been recruiting and financially supporting Republican candidates in local races across majority Latino border counties. This year, it has backed 50 local candidates, including three in Val Verde County. Hernandez’s signs have appeared all over town, with his slogan of “bringing order to the border.”

As border towns become the backdrop of a national immigration debate, how will it shape Del Rio? Watch this pressing short film presented by ProPublica, in partnership with The Texas Tribune, and go deeper by reading this story.

Lisa Riordan Seville, Mauricio Rodriguez Pons, Liz Moughon and Katie Campbell contributed to the production.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.

Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.

In states with abortion bans, such patients are sometimes bounced between hospitals like “hot potatoes,” with health care providers reluctant to participate in treatment that could attract a prosecutor, doctors told ProPublica. In some cases, medical teams are wasting precious time debating legalities and creating documentation, preparing for the possibility that they’ll need to explain their actions to a jury and judge.

Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, said patients are left wondering: “Am I being sent home because I really am OK? Or am I being sent home because they’re afraid that the solution to what’s going on with my pregnancy would be ending the pregnancy, and they’re not allowed to do that?”

There is a federal law to prevent emergency room doctors from withholding lifesaving care.

Passed nearly four decades ago, it requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients in medical crises. The Biden administration argues this mandate applies even in cases where an abortion might be necessary.

No state has done more to fight this interpretation than Texas, which has warned doctors that its abortion ban supersedes the administration’s guidance on federal law, and that they can face up to 99 years in prison for violating it.

ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain’s medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.

Some said the first ER missed warning signs of infection that deserved attention. All said that the doctor at the second hospital should never have sent Crain home when her signs of sepsis hadn’t improved. And when she returned for the third time, all said there was no medical reason to make her wait for two ultrasounds before taking aggressive action to save her.

“This is how these restrictions kill women,” said Dr. Dara Kass, a former regional director at the Department of Health and Human Services and an emergency room physician in New York. “It is never just one decision, it’s never just one doctor, it’s never just one nurse.”

While they were not certain from looking at the records provided that Crain’s death could have been prevented, they said it may have been possible to save both the teenager and her fetus if she had been admitted earlier for close monitoring and continuous treatment.

There was a chance Crain could have remained pregnant, they said. If she had needed an early delivery, the hospital was well-equipped to care for a baby on the edge of viability. In another scenario, if the infection had gone too far, ending the pregnancy might have been necessary to save Crain.

Doctors involved in Crain’s care did not respond to several requests for comment. The two hospitals, Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas and Christus Southeast Texas St. Elizabeth, declined to answer detailed lists of questions about her treatment.

Fails and Crain believed abortion was morally wrong. The teen could only support it in the context of rape or life-threatening illness, she used to tell her mother. They didn’t care whether the government banned it, just how their Christian faith guided their own actions.

When they discovered Crain was pregnant with a girl, the two talked endlessly about the little dresses they could buy, what kind of mother she would be. Crain landed on the name Lillian. Fails could not wait to meet her.

But when her daughter got sick, Fails expected that doctors had an obligation to do everything in their power to stave off a potentially deadly emergency, even if that meant losing Lillian. In her view, they were more concerned with checking the fetal heartbeat than attending to Crain.

“I know it sounds selfish, and God knows I would rather have both of them, but if I had to choose,” Fails said, “I would have chosen my daughter.”

Crain had just graduated from high school in her hometown of Vidor, Texas, in May of 2023 when she learned that she was pregnant.

She and her boyfriend of two years, Randall Broussard, were always hip to hip, wrestling over vapes or snuggling on the couch watching vampire movies. Crain was drawn to how gentle he was. He admired how easily she built friendships and how quickly she could make people laugh. Though they were young, they’d already imagined starting a family. Broussard, who has eight siblings, wanted many kids; Crain wanted a daughter and the kind of relationship she had with her mom. Earlier that year, Broussard had given Crain a small diamond ring — “a promise,” he told her, “that I will always love you.”

On the morning of their baby shower, Oct. 28, 2023, Crain woke with a headache. Her mom decorated the house with pink balloons and Crain laid out Halloween-themed platters. Soon, nausea set in. Crain started vomiting and was running a fever. When guests arrived, Broussard opened gifts — onesies and diapers and bows — while Crain kept closing her eyes.

Around 3 p.m., her family told her she needed to go to the hospital.

Broussard drove Crain to Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas. They sat in the waiting room for four hours. When Crain started vomiting, staff brought her a plastic pan. When she wasn’t retching, she lay her head in her boyfriend’s lap.

A nurse practitioner ordered a test for strep throat, which came back positive, medical records show. But in a pregnant patient, abdominal pain and vomiting should not be quickly attributed to strep, physicians told ProPublica; a doctor should have also evaluated her pregnancy.

Instead, Baptist Hospitals discharged her with a prescription for antibiotics. She was home at 9 p.m. and quickly dozed off, but within hours, she woke her mother up. “Mom, my stomach is still hurting,” she said into the dark bedroom at 3 a.m. “I’m in a lot of pain.”

Fails drove Broussard and Crain to another hospital in town, Christus Southeast Texas St. Elizabeth. Around 4:20 a.m., OB-GYN William Hawkins saw that Crain had a temperature of 102.8 and an abnormally high pulse, according to records; a nurse noted that Crain rated her abdominal pain as a seven out of 10.

Her vital signs pointed to possible sepsis, records show. It’s standard medical practice to immediately treat patients who show signs of sepsis, which can overtake and kill a person quickly, medical experts told ProPublica. These patients should be watched until their vitals improve. Through tests and scans, the goal is to find the source of the infection. If the infection was in Crain’s uterus, the fetus would likely need to be removed with a surgery.

In a room at the obstetric emergency department, a nurse wrapped a sensor belt around Crain’s belly to check the fetal heart rate. “Baby’s fine,” Broussard told Fails, who was sitting in the hallway.

After two hours of IV fluids, one dose of antibiotics, and some Tylenol, Crain’s fever didn’t go down, her pulse remained high, and the fetal heart rate was abnormally fast, medical records show. Hawkins noted that Crain had strep and a urinary tract infection, wrote up a prescription and discharged her.

Hawkins had missed infections before. Eight years earlier, the Texas Medical Board found that he had failed to diagnose appendicitis in one patient and syphilis in another. In the latter case, the board noted that his error “may have contributed to the fetal demise of one of her twins.” The board issued an order to have Hawkins’ medical practice monitored; the order was lifted two years later. (Hawkins did not respond to several attempts to reach him.)

All of the doctors who reviewed Crain’s vital signs for ProPublica said she should have been admitted. “She should have never left, never left,” said Elise Boos, an OB-GYN in Tennessee.

Kass, the New York emergency physician, put it in starker terms: When they discharged her, they were “pushing her down the path of no return.”

“It’s bullshit,” Fails said as Broussard rolled Crain out in a wheelchair; she was unable to walk on her own. Fails had expected the hospital to keep her overnight. Her daughter was breathing heavily, hunched over in pain, pale in the face. Normally talkative, the teen was quiet.

Back home, around 7 a.m., Fails tried to get her daughter comfortable as she cried and moaned. She told Fails she needed to pee, and her mother helped her into the bathroom. “Mom, come here,” she said from the toilet. Blood stained her underwear.

The blood confirmed Fails’ instinct: This was a miscarriage.

At 9 a.m, a full day after the nausea began, they were back at Christus St. Elizabeth. Crain’s lips were drained of color and she kept saying she was going to pass out. Staff started her on IV antibiotics and performed a bedside ultrasound.

Around 9:30 a.m., the OB on duty, Dr. Marcelo Totorica, couldn’t find a fetal heart rate, according to records; he told the family he was sorry for their loss.

Standard protocol when a critically ill patient experiences a miscarriage is to stabilize her and, in most cases, hurry to the operating room for delivery, medical experts said. This is especially urgent with a spreading infection. But at Christus St. Elizabeth, the OB-GYN just continued antibiotic care. A half-hour later, as nurses placed a catheter, Fails noticed her daughter’s thighs were covered in blood.

At 10 a.m., Melissa McIntosh, a labor and delivery nurse, spoke to Totorica about Crain’s condition. The teen was now having contractions. “Dr. Totorica states to not move patient,” she wrote after talking with him. “Dr. Totorica states there is a slight chance patient may need to go to ICU and he wants the bedside ultrasound to be done stat for sure before admitting to room.”

Though he had already performed an ultrasound, he was asking for a second.

The first hadn’t preserved an image of Crain’s womb in the medical record. “Bedside ultrasounds aren’t always set up to save images permanently,” said Abbott, the Boston OB-GYN.

The state’s laws banning abortion require that doctors record the absence of a fetal heartbeat before intervening with a procedure that could end a pregnancy. Exceptions for medical emergencies demand physicians document their reasoning. “Pretty consistently, people say, ‘Until we can be absolutely certain this isn’t a normal pregnancy, we can’t do anything, because it could be alleged that we were doing an abortion,’” said Dr. Tony Ogburn, an OB-GYN in San Antonio.

At 10:40 a.m, Crain’s blood pressure was dropping. Minutes later, Totorica was paging for an emergency team over the loudspeakers.

Around 11 a.m., two hours after Crain had arrived at the hospital, a second ultrasound was performed. A nurse noted: “Bedside ultrasound at this time to confirm fetal demise per Dr. Totorica’s orders.”

When doctors wheeled Crain into the ICU at 11:20 a.m., Fails stayed by her side, rubbing her head, as her daughter dipped in and out of consciousness. Crain couldn’t sign consent forms for her care because of “extreme pain,” according to the records, so Fails signed a release for “unplanned dilation and curettage” or “unplanned cesarean section.”

But the doctors quickly decided it was now too risky to operate, according to records. They suspected that she had developed a dangerous complication of sepsis known as disseminated intravascular coagulation; she was bleeding internally.

Frantic and crying, Fails locked eyes with her daughter. “You’re strong, Nevaeh,” she said. “God made us strong.”

Crain sat up in the cot. Old, black blood gushed from her nostrils and mouth.

Crain is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, ProPublica found.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has successfully made his state the only one in the country that isn’t required to follow the Biden administration’s efforts to ensure that emergency departments don’t turn away patients like Crain.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, the administration issued guidance on how states with bans should follow the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. The federal law requires hospitals that receive funding through Medicare — which is virtually all of them — to stabilize or transfer anyone who arrives in their emergency rooms. That goes for pregnant patients, the guidance argues, even if that means violating state law and providing an abortion.

Paxton responded by filing a lawsuit in 2022, saying the federal guidance “forces hospitals and doctors to commit crimes,” and was an “attempt to use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

Part of the battle has centered on who is eligible for abortion. The federal EMTALA guidelines apply when the health of the pregnant patient is in “serious jeopardy.” That’s a wider range of circumstances than the Texas abortion restriction, which only makes exceptions for a “risk of death” or “a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

The lawsuit worked its way through three layers of federal courts, and each time it was met by judges nominated by former President Donald Trump, whose court appointments were pivotal to overturning Roe v. Wade.

After U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, quickly sided with Texas, Paxton celebrated the triumph over “left-wing bureaucrats in Washington.”

“The decision last night proves what we knew all along,” Paxton added. “The law is on our side.”

This year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the order in a ruling authored by Kurt D. Engelhardt, another judge nominated by Trump.

The Biden administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the justices to make it clear that some emergency abortions are allowed.

Even amid news of preventable deaths related to abortion bans, the Supreme Court declined to do so last month.

Paxton called this “a major victory” for the state’s abortion ban.

He has also made clear that he will bring charges against physicians for performing abortions if he decides that the cases don’t fall within Texas’ narrow medical exceptions.

Last year, he sent a letter threatening to prosecute a doctor who had received court approval to provide an emergency abortion for a Dallas woman. He insisted that the doctor and her patient had not proven how, precisely, the patient’s condition threatened her life.

Many doctors say this kind of message has encouraged doctors to “punt” patients instead of treating them.

Since the abortion bans went into effect, an OB-GYN at a major hospital in San Antonio has seen an uptick in pregnant patients being sent to them from across Southern Texas, as they suffer from complications that could easily be treated close to home.

The well-resourced hospital is perceived to have more institutional support to provide abortions and miscarriage management, the doctor said. Other providers “are transferring those patients to our centers because, frankly, they don’t want to deal with them.”

After Crain died, Fails couldn’t stop thinking about how Christus Southeast Hospital had ignored her daughter’s condition. “She was bleeding,” she said. “Why didn’t they do anything to help it along instead of wait for another ultrasound to confirm the baby is dead?”

It was the medical examiner, not the doctors at the hospital, who removed Lillian from Crain’s womb. His autopsy didn’t resolve Fails’ lingering questions about what the hospitals missed and why. He called the death “natural” and attributed it to “complications of pregnancy.” He did note, however, that Crain was “repeatedly seeking medical care for a progressive illness” just before she died.

Last November, Fails reached out to medical malpractice lawyers to see about getting justice through the courts. A different legal barrier now stood in her way.

If Crain had experienced these same delays as an inpatient, Fails would have needed to establish that the hospital violated medical standards. That, she believed, she could do. But because the delays and discharges occurred in an area of the hospital classified as an emergency room, lawyers said that Texas law set a much higher burden of proof: “willful and wanton negligence.”

No lawyer has agreed to take the case.

Mariam Elba contributed research. Cassandra Jaramillo contributed reporting. Andrea Suozzo contributed data reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.

The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”

For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.

Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.

Barnica is one of at least two Texas women who ProPublica found lost their lives after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, which fall into a gray area under the state’s strict abortion laws that prohibit doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus.

Neither had wanted an abortion, but that didn’t matter. Though proponents insist that the laws protect both the life of the fetus and the person carrying it, in practice, doctors have hesitated to provide care under threat of prosecution, prison time and professional ruin.

ProPublica is telling these women’s stories this week, starting with Barnica’s. Her death was “preventable,” according to more than a dozen medical experts who reviewed a summary of her hospital and autopsy records at ProPublica’s request; they called her case “horrific,” “astounding” and “egregious.”

The doctors involved in Barnica’s care at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest did not respond to multiple requests for comment on her case. In a statement, HCA Healthcare said “our responsibility is to be in compliance with applicable state and federal laws and regulations” and said that physicians exercise their independent judgment. The company did not respond to a detailed list of questions about Barnica’s care.

Like all states, Texas has a committee of maternal health experts who review such deaths to recommend ways to prevent them, but the committee’s reports on individual cases are not public and members said they have not finished examining cases from 2021, the year Barnica died.

ProPublica is working to fill gaps in knowledge about the consequences of abortion bans. Reporters scoured death data, flagging Barnica’s case for its concerning cause of death: “sepsis” involving “products of conception.” We tracked down her family, obtained autopsy and hospital records and enlisted a range of experts to review a summary of her care that ProPublica created in consultation with two doctors.

Among those experts were more than a dozen OB-GYNs and maternal-fetal medicine specialists from across the country, including researchers at prestigious institutions, doctors who regularly handle miscarriages and experts who have served on state maternal mortality review committees or held posts at national professional medical organizations.

After reviewing the four-page summary, which included the timeline of care noted in hospital records, all agreed that requiring Barnica to wait to deliver until after there was no detectable fetal heartbeat violated professional medical standards because it could allow time for an aggressive infection to take hold. They said there was a good chance she would have survived if she was offered an intervention earlier.

“If this was Massachusetts or Ohio, she would have had that delivery within a couple hours,” said Dr. Susan Mann, a national patient safety expert in obstetric care who teaches at Harvard University.

Many noted a striking similarity to the case of Savita Halappavanar, a 31-year-old woman who died of septic shock in 2012 after providers in Ireland refused to empty her uterus while she was miscarrying at 17 weeks. When she begged for care, a midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” The resulting investigation and public outcry galvanized the country to change its strict ban on abortion.

But in the wake of deaths related to abortion access in the United States, leaders who support restricting the right have not called for any reforms.

Last month, ProPublica told the stories of two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, whose deaths were deemed “preventable” by the state’s maternal mortality review committee after they were unable to access legal abortions and timely medical care amid an abortion ban.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called the reporting “fear mongering.” Former President Donald Trump has not weighed in — except to joke that his Fox News town hall on women’s issues would get “better ratings” than a press call where Thurman’s family spoke about their pain.

Leaders in Texas, which has the nation’s oldest abortion ban, have witnessed the consequences of such restrictions longer than those in any other state.

In lawsuits, court petitions and news stories, dozens of women have said they faced dangers when they were denied abortions starting in 2021. One suffered sepsis like Barnica, but survived after three days in intensive care. She lost part of her fallopian tube. Lawmakers have made small concessions to clarify two exceptions for medical emergencies, but even in those cases, doctors risk up to 99 years in prison and fines of $100,000; they can argue in court that their actions were not a crime, much like defendants can claim self-defense after being charged with murder.

Amid the deluge of evidence of the harm, including research suggesting Texas’ legislation has increased infant and maternal deaths, some of the ban’s most prominent supporters have muted their public enthusiasm for it. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who once championed the fall of Roe v. Wade and said, “Pregnancy is not a life-threatening illness,” is now avoiding the topic amid a battle to keep his seat. And Gov. Greg Abbott, who said early last year that “we promised we would protect the life of every child with a heartbeat, and we did,” has not made similar statements since.

Both declined to comment to ProPublica, as did state Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose commitment to the ban remains steadfast as he fights for access to the out-of-state medical records of women who travel for abortions. Earlier this month, as the nation grappled with the first reported, preventable deaths related to abortion access, Paxton celebrated a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed Texas to ignore federal guidance requiring doctors to provide abortions that are needed to stabilize emergency patients.

“This is a major victory,” Paxton said.

To Barnica, an immigrant from Honduras, the American dream seemed within reach in her corner of Houston, a neighborhood filled with restaurants selling El Salvadoran pupusas and bakeries specializing in Mexican conchas. She found work installing drywall, saved money to support her mother back home and met her husband in 2019 at a community soccer game.

A year later, they welcomed a big-eyed baby girl whose every milestone they celebrated. “God bless my family,” Barnica wrote on social media, alongside a photo of the trio in matching red-and-black plaid. “Our first Christmas with our Princess. I love them.”

Barnica longed for a large family and was thrilled when she conceived again in 2021.

Trouble struck in the second trimester.

On Sept. 2, 2021, at 17 weeks and four days pregnant, she went to the hospital with cramps, according to her records. The next day, when the bleeding worsened, she returned. Within two hours of her arrival on Sept. 3, an ultrasound confirmed “bulging membranes in the vagina with the fetal head in the open cervix,” dilated at 8.9 cm, and that she had low amniotic fluid. The miscarriage was “in progress,” the radiologist wrote.

When Barnica’s husband arrived, she told him doctors couldn’t intervene until there was no heartbeat.

The next day, Dr. Shirley Lima, an OB on duty, diagnosed an “inevitable” miscarriage.

In Barnica’s chart, she noted that the fetal heartbeat was detected and wrote that she was providing Barnica with pain medication and “emotional support.”

In a state that hadn’t banned abortion, Barnica could have immediately been offered the options that major medical organizations, including international ones, say is the standard of evidence-based care: speeding up labor with medication or a dilation and evacuation procedure to empty the uterus.

“We know that the sooner you intervene in these situations, the better outcomes are,” said Dr. Steven Porter, an OB-GYN in Cleveland.

But Texas’ new abortion ban had just gone into effect. It required physicians to confirm the absence of a fetal heartbeat before intervening unless there was a “medical emergency,” which the law did not define. It required doctors to make written notes on the patient’s condition and the reason abortion was necessary.

The law did not account for the possibility of a future emergency, one that could develop in hours or days without intervention, doctors told ProPublica.

Barnica was technically still stable. But lying in the hospital with her cervix open wider than a baseball left her uterus exposed to bacteria and placed her at high risk of developing sepsis, experts told ProPublica. Infections can move fast and be hard to control once they take hold.

The scenario felt all too familiar for Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who used to work in Tennessee and reviewed a summary of Barnica’s records at ProPublica’s request.

Abortion bans put doctors in an impossible position, she said, forcing them to decide whether to risk malpractice or a felony charge. After her state enacted one of the strictest bans in the country, she also waited to offer interventions in cases like Barnica’s until the fetal heartbeat stopped or patients showed signs of infection, praying every time that nothing would go wrong. It’s why she ultimately moved to Colorado.

The doctors treating Barnica “absolutely didn’t do the right thing,” she said. But she understood why they would have felt “totally stuck,” especially if they worked at a hospital that hadn’t promised to defend them.

Even three years after Barnica’s death, HCA Healthcare, the hospital chain that treated Barnica, will not disclose whether it has a policy on how to treat miscarriages.

Some HCA shareholders have asked the company to prepare a report on the risks to the company related to the bans in states that restrict abortion, so patients would understand what services they could expect and doctors would know under what circumstances they would be protected. But the board of directors opposed the proposal, partly because it would create an “unnecessary expense and burdens with limited benefits to our stockholders.” The proposal was supported by 8% of shareholders who voted.

The company’s decision to abstain has repercussions far beyond Texas; the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain has said it delivers more babies than any other health care provider in America, and 70% of its hospitals are in states where abortion is restricted.

As the hours passed in the Houston hospital, Barnica couldn’t find relief. On the phone with her aunt Rosa Elda Calix Barnica, she complained that doctors kept performing ultrasounds to check the fetal heartbeat but were not helping her end the miscarriage.

Around 4 a.m. on Sept. 5, 40 hours after Barnica had arrived, doctors could no longer detect any heart activity. Soon after, Lima delivered Barnica’s fetus, giving her medication to help speed up the labor.

Dr. Joel Ross, the OB-GYN who oversaw her care, discharged her after about eight more hours.

The bleeding continued, but when Barnica called the hospital, she was told that was expected. Her aunt grew alarmed two days later when the bleeding grew heavier.

Go back, she told her niece.

On the evening of Sept. 7, Barnica’s husband rushed her to the hospital as soon as he got off from work. But COVID-19 protocols meant only one visitor could be in the room with her, and they didn’t have a babysitter for their 1-year-old daughter.

So he left and tried to get some sleep.

“I fully expected her to come home,” he said.

But she never did. Her family planned two funerals, one in Houston and another in Honduras.

Nine days after her death, Barnica’s husband was processing his shock, learning how to be a single dad and struggling to raise funds to bury his wife and the son he had hoped to raise.

Meanwhile, Lima was pulling up Barnica’s medical chart to make an addition to her records.

The notes she added made one point abundantly clear: “When I was called for delivery,” she wrote, “the fetus no longer had detectable heart tones.”

Texas has been on the forefront of fighting abortion access.

At the time of Barnica’s miscarriage in 2021, the Supreme Court had not yet overturned the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. But Texas lawmakers, intent on being the first to enact a ban with teeth, had already passed a harsh civil law using a novel legal strategy that circumvented Roe v. Wade: It prohibited doctors from performing an abortion after six weeks by giving members of the public incentives to sue doctors for $10,000 judgments. The bounty also applied to anyone who “aided and abetted” an abortion.

A year later, after the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling was handed down, an even stricter criminal law went into effect, threatening doctors with up to 99 years in prison and $100,000 in fines.

Soon after the ruling, the Biden administration issued federal guidance reminding doctors in hospital emergency rooms they have a duty to treat pregnant patients who need to be stabilized, including by providing abortions for miscarriages.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fought against that, arguing that following the guidance would force doctors to “commit crimes” under state law and make every hospital a “walk-in abortion clinic.” When a Dallas woman asked a court for approval to end her pregnancy because her fetus was not viable and she faced health risks if she carried it to term, Paxton fought to keep her pregnant. He argued her doctor hadn’t proved it was an emergency and threatened to prosecute anyone who helped her. “Nothing can restore the unborn child’s life that will be lost as a result,” he wrote to the court.

No doctor in Texas, or the 20 other states that criminalize abortion, has been prosecuted for violating a state ban. But the possibility looms over their every decision, dozens of doctors in those states told ProPublica, forcing them to consider their own legal risks as they navigate their patient’s health emergencies. The lack of clarity has resulted in many patients being denied care.

In 2023, Texas lawmakers made a small concession to the outcry over the uncertainty the ban was creating in hospitals. They created a new exception for ectopic pregnancies, a potentially fatal condition where the embryo attaches outside the uterine cavity, and for cases where a patient’s membranes rupture prematurely before viability, which introduces a high risk of infection. Doctors can still face prosecution, but are allowed to make the case to a judge or jury that their actions were protected, not unlike self-defense arguments after homicides. Barnica’s condition would not have clearly fit this exception.

This year, after being directed to do so by the state Supreme Court, the Texas Medical Board released new guidance telling doctors that an emergency didn’t need to be “imminent” in order to intervene and advising them to provide extra documentation regarding risks.

But in a recent interview, the board’s president, Dr. Sherif Zaafran, acknowledged that these efforts only go so far and the group has no power over criminal law: “There’s nothing we can do to stop a prosecutor from filing charges against the physicians.”

Asked what he would tell Texas patients who are miscarrying and unable to get treatment, he said they should get a second opinion: “They should vote with their feet and go and seek guidance from somebody else.”

An immigrant from El Salvador who works 12-hour shifts, Barnica’s husband doesn’t follow American politics or the news. He had no inkling of the contentious national debate over how abortion bans are affecting maternal health care when ProPublica contacted him.

Now he is raising a 4-year-old daughter with the help of Barnica’s younger brother; every weekend, they take her to see her grandmother, who knows how to braid her hair in pigtails.

All around their home, he keeps photos of Barnica so that the little girl grows up knowing how much her mother loved her. He sees flashes of his wife when his daughter dances. She radiates the same delight.

When asked about Barnica, he can’t get out many words; his leg is restless, his eyes fixed on the floor. Barnica’s family calls him a model father.

He says he’s just doing his best.

Mariam Elba and Doris Burke contributed research. Lizzie Presser contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is produced in collaboration with The Texas Tribune and Votebeat. Sign up for newsletters from The Texas Tribune and from Votebeat.

Mary Howard-Elley fervently believes illegal immigration in the U.S. is a critical problem that only former President Donald Trump can solve. She says the continuation of his border wall and promised mass deportations will make the country safer.

She agrees with Trump’s unfounded claims that Democrats are opening the borders to allow noncitizens to vote, fearing that it could ultimately cost him the election.

Howard-Elley didn’t pay much attention when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott helped fuel that narrative by announcing that the state had removed thousands of supposed noncitizens from its rolls, claiming some had a history of voting.

Then the U.S. citizen learned she was among them.

The elections office in Montgomery County, just north of Houston, had sent Howard-Elley a letter in late January saying that she had been flagged after she indicated that she was not a U.S. citizen in response to a jury summons. She had 30 days to provide the county proof of citizenship or she would be removed from the voter rolls, according to the letter.

The retired Transportation Security Administration agent was confused by how the county could come to that conclusion. And she seethed at the idea that anyone would question the citizenship of a former federal employee with the “whitest name you could have.”

“Who is allowing people to do this to United States citizens? I understand we have a problem with immigration, but come on now,” Howard-Elley said in an interview.

The 52-year-old disputes the county’s claim that she responded to the jury duty summons by saying she was not a citizen. Instead, Howard-Elley said, she called and asked to be exempted from jury duty because of guardianship duties for three of her grandchildren.

The Montgomery County district clerk’s office, which organizes jury duty, did not respond to repeated questions and denied a public records request for Howard-Elley’s response to the jury summons, asserting it was exempt from disclosure.

Regardless of how she was flagged as a noncitizen, Howard-Elley wanted to ensure she could vote. She ordered several copies of her certified Louisiana birth certificate and confirmed receipt with an elections office employee. She thought the matter was resolved.

But Howard-Elley’s registration was not reinstated, making her the 10th U.S. citizen identified by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Votebeat who was removed from the rolls as a potential noncitizen. The news organizations tracked them down as part of an investigation that found Abbott’s claims about the state removing more than 6,500 noncitizens were likely inflated and, in some cases, wrong.

The 10 U.S. citizens who were struck from the rolls represented a range of racial and political backgrounds, and most were removed as the result of human error.

Abbott’s press release provided fodder for Republicans warning that noncitizens could vote in large numbers and sway the election, though experts say such instances are exceedingly rare.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the federal government last week, claiming the Department of Homeland Security has refused to help the state check the citizenship status of some registered voters. The federal agency offers states access to a database that can be used to verify immigration status, but Paxton argued it’s inadequate and requires a fee for each verification. Ten other states use the database for voting-related purposes.

Neither Abbott nor Paxton responded to questions for this story. DHS has not filed a response to the attorney general’s lawsuit in federal court.

Howard-Elley’s case shows how eligible voters can be removed from the rolls — and how tough it can be to get back on.

She didn’t realize her registration was canceled until reporters called her this month. Darla Brooks, the Montgomery County voter registration manager, told both Howard-Elley and the news organizations that she had not been reinstated in March because her birth certificate arrived after the 30-day window she was given to prove her citizenship.

On Oct. 14, Brooks said Howard-Elley had now also missed the registration deadline for this year’s election and would not be able to vote.

The election official was wrong.

Multiple voting rights lawyers pointed to a state law that says counties should immediately reinstate voters’ registrations that were wrongly canceled. Brooks initially told reporters that the law did not apply to Howard-Elley because the county had followed proper procedures when removing her.

But when the news organizations brought the same question to the secretary of state’s office, which provides counties with guidance on implementing election laws, the answer was different.

A 2021 agency advisory instructs counties to immediately reinstate voters removed for failing to respond to a notice as soon as they present proof of citizenship. They can even be reinstated at a polling place on Election Day.

Less than two hours after the news organizations sent the secretary of state’s advisory to Montgomery County, Howard-Elley was back on the rolls.

“I’m sorry that Montgomery County has to be shown the law to abide by it,” Howard-Elley said. She added that this election would have been the first time in more than 30 years she failed to cast a ballot for president. “I just hope they don’t do this to anybody else ever again because it’s not fair.”

Montgomery County elections administrator Suzie Harvey said her office had never had to deal with a situation like Howard-Elley’s, and while she likely saw the advisory when it was issued, she had forgotten about the specific guidance. She said her office worked quickly to reinstate Howard-Elley when the news organizations flagged the advisory and she is gratified that Howard-Elley will be able to vote.

“That would have been extremely tragic,” Harvey said.

Not every voter has Howard-Elley’s tenacity, or news organizations asking persistent questions about how their case was handled.

If your voter registration is canceled because you failed to respond to a letter trying to confirm your citizenship, here’s what you can do:

• Contact your county elections office before heading to the polls. Show proof of your citizenship and ask to be reinstated.
• You can also share this 2021 advisory from the Texas secretary of state’s office on reinstating citizens to the voter rolls.
• Common forms of documentation include a U.S. passport or certified birth certificate. See the full list of acceptable proof of citizenship in the advisory.
• If you don’t find out until you arrive at the polls that you need to show proof of citizenship, that advisory still requires election officials to reinstate you immediately after you do so.
• Contact the Texas secretary of state’s office for additional assistance.

“Voting should not be so hard that you have to be a lawyer or have lawyer skills to be able to vote,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Perales said it would take “heroic efforts” by the average voter to research the election laws and advocate for their registration to be reinstated.

Even then, the decision would depend on how election officials in their county interpret laws and guidance.

Three county election officials gave different answers to the question of whether they would reinstate a voter in Howard-Elley’s situation, though all stressed they would try their best to follow the law.

One said the voter should be reinstated. The other two said they would likely reinstate the voter after the registration deadline only if the county had erred in some way.

Those differences give “voters in some counties fewer rights than voters in other counties,” said Emily Eby French, the policy director at Common Cause Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for voting access.

Howard-Elley said she is disturbed at how close she came to losing her ability to vote. If reporters hadn’t called her, Howard-Elley said, she might have been turned away at the polls.

The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and Votebeat want to hear from Texas voters who believe their registrations have been incorrectly canceled or flagged, in order to inform our reporting on issues with the state’s voter registration review system.

Get in Touch

She said she worries about whether other eligible voters are among those labeled as noncitizens and that Abbott should look into whether there are more U.S. citizens among them. The lifelong Republican said state and county officials need to be held accountable to ensure more U.S. citizens are not erroneously removed.

“The system is very flawed,” Howard-Elley said. “I feel really sad that we’re in a situation like this. You would think in 2024 we wouldn’t have issues like this.”

She intends to cast her ballot for Trump.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is produced in collaboration with The Texas Tribune and Votebeat. Sign up for newsletters from The Texas Tribune and from Votebeat.

In late August, with a hotly contested presidential election less than three months away, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott boasted that the state had removed more than 1 million ineligible voters from its rolls, including more than 6,500 noncitizens.

The Republican governor said the Texas secretary of state’s office was turning over nearly 2,000 of those characterized as noncitizens to Attorney General Ken Paxton for investigation because records showed they had a voting history.

“Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated,” Abbott said in a press release.

The former registered voters whom Abbott called noncitizens, and the other people removed from the rolls since September 2021, were taken off through a routine practice local election officials conduct that includes culling the names of people who have moved or died. Election experts have urged caution in using the numbers to make definitive statements about registered noncitizens.

But Abbott did just that, initially stating in his news release that thousands of noncitizens had been stripped from the rolls.

His office then edited the press release after publication, softening it by adding the word “potential” before noncitizens.

Abbott’s claims helped to fan ongoing unsubstantiated Republican allegations that noncitizens plan to cast ballots en masse to sway elections for Democrats, assertions that former President Donald Trump and his party are using to cast doubt on the integrity of the upcoming November election.

An investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Votebeat, however, found that the governor’s claims about noncitizens on the rolls appear inflated and, in some cases, wrong.

The secretary of state’s office identified 581 people, not 6,500, as noncitizens, according to a report it gave Abbott in late August that the newsrooms obtained through a public information request.

In response to questions about the basis for Abbott’s larger number, the secretary of state’s office told the news organizations that it had “verbally” provided the governor’s office with a separate number of people removed from the rolls who failed to respond to letters alerting them that there were questions about their citizenship.

The governor’s news release combined the two figures.

That means U.S. citizens who simply never received or responded to such letters are almost certainly included in Abbott’s 6,500 number. Abbott did not respond to requests for comment, and Secretary of State Jane Nelson declined to be interviewed.

After attempting to contact more than 70 people across both categories, the news organizations have so far found at least nine U.S. citizens in three Texas counties who were incorrectly labeled as noncitizens or removed from the rolls because they did not respond to the letters about their citizenship. In each case, they showed reporters copies of their birth certificates to confirm their citizenship, or reporters verified their citizenship using state records.

One of them is 21-year-old Jakylah Ockleberry.

Ockleberry, a native Texan who provided the news organizations with a copy of her birth certificate, had only left the state twice in her life, including a recent trip to California.

She had no idea Travis County had mislabeled her as a noncitizen until the news organizations contacted her. “How would something like that happen?”

When the governor’s press release came out, election experts and local officials were worried about cases such as Ockleberry’s, saying the press release implied officials had confirmed the noncitizen status of 6,500 people when they had not.

Five years ago, Texas officials suggested that nearly 100,000 noncitizens were registered to vote and that nearly half of them had cast ballots. Those claims quickly unraveled under scrutiny and spurred a lawsuit and settlement that now governs how Texas can flag someone as a potential noncitizen.

Asked whether the nine people the news organizations identified as U.S. citizens were included in Abbott’s latest figure, the secretary of state’s office said it could not confirm or deny the inclusion of any specific people. Local election officials said they don’t know which voters were included in Abbott’s tally, but emphasized the data originates at the county level.

The discrepancies show the pitfalls inherent in using this data to make assertions about noncitizens.

In Ockleberry’s case, as well as those of four others the newsrooms identified in Travis County, election workers should have selected a code that indicated the voters had moved. Instead, they mistakenly selected a code for noncitizens.

Bruce Elfant, the Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, acknowledged the errors made by his office. But he also said the numbers suggested that noncitizen voting “is an infinitesimal, small issue.”

Routine maintenance of voter rolls is important, and if noncitizens are registered, they should be removed, said Marc Meredith, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on election administration.

But Meredith said Abbott’s decision to announce without explanation that 6,500 noncitizens were removed from the rolls, and to initially do so without qualifying that these were only potential noncitizens, “reduces trust in the Texas voter registration process in an unnecessary way.”

Voter rolls are naturally fluid. People move, die, become citizens and turn 18. Election officials across the country are constantly adding and removing people for legitimate reasons.

“So long as we have requirements about keeping lists clean, and so long as we don’t have a police state that has a single database with all of our names in it, like in much of the rest of the world, including democratic nations, we’re going to come across these sorts of problems,” said Charles Stewart III, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

Elfant, for one, said he was frustrated by Abbott’s public promotion of voter removal data. He said the governor’s press release created confusion among residents who feared they might have been wrongly removed and would not be able to cast ballots in the upcoming presidential election.

“It scared a lot of people. We’ve received a lot of phone calls and emails from people who are concerned that they’re not on the voter rolls,” Elfant said.

Any number of things can trigger a question about a voter’s eligibility.

For example, county registrars contact anyone who has marked on a jury summons that they’re not a citizen. The registrars need to confirm if that’s true, because it would mean the person is also ineligible to vote. The secretary of state’s office also gets information weekly from the Texas Department of Public Safety about people who have signed up for licenses and state identification and identified themselves as noncitizens. That information is then sent to counties.

In such cases, county election officials must follow up. They are required by law to notify voters and give them 30 days to respond before they’re removed from the rolls.

But election officials know those safeguards don’t always work.

“The post office messes up. We get a lot of cards back or mail back that says ‘undeliverable’ and the person will be like, ‘I’ve lived at this address for 20 years and I’ve never moved,’” said Trudy Hancock, elections administrator in Republican-leaning Brazos County, home to Texas A&M University. “So you have to consider that there are outside circumstances that can affect our efforts to reach them.”

Failure to respond to a letter questioning someone’s citizenship is not a confirmation that they are not a citizen, election officials said.

The 2019 episode, when the secretary of state’s office announced that it had identified 95,000 registered voters as potential noncitizens and said that more than half of them had previously cast ballots, highlighted failures in the process.

Paxton, the attorney general, immediately turned to social media, posting “VOTER FRAUD ALERT.” Abbott thanked Paxton and the secretary of state’s office on Twitter for “uncovering and investigating this illegal vote registration.” Trump also piled on with a tweet calling the state’s numbers “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Voting rights groups sued, decrying the state’s efforts as deliberate attempts to suppress the votes of actual citizens. Texas’ assertions didn’t hold up. Many of the flagged registered voters turned out to be naturalized citizens whom the state incorrectly identified as ineligible because it was using outdated DPS data from driver’s license and state identification card applications. (DPS did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

The state settled the case and agreed to only flag people with the secretary of state’s office if they identify as noncitizens when applying for a new ID with DPS and if they previously registered to vote.

State officials should be transparent about how they arrived at the latest assertions, said David Becker, executive director and founder of The Center for Election Innovation & Research.

The state appears to have presented a figure without fully explaining its methodology or double-checking the information, said Becker, who is a former senior trial attorney in the voting section of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

If the governor presented this data in a court of law without evidence, Becker believes it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny.

“Their claims would likely be dismissed until they could come up with something that actually documents how they got to those numbers,” he said.

When Justin Comer, 29, heard that the state had removed thousands of noncitizens from the voter rolls, it never occurred to him that he might be one of them. Comer was born in Harris County, the home of Houston, and grew up in conservative Montgomery County just outside the city. He said he’d been registered to vote there since he was 18 and had cast ballots in presidential elections since then.

“I’ve always been interested in especially local politics, and just making sure I stay up to date with that,” Comer said in a phone interview. “I’m always pushing my wife now, I’m like, ‘Hey, we need to stay active in that respect and do our part.’”

It wasn’t until the news organizations contacted him that he made the connection between a peculiar voter registration issue he encountered last year and the Republican leaders’ sweeping noncitizen voting claims.

In 2023, he received a notice from the county elections office that he’d been flagged as a potential noncitizen. He needed to show proof of his citizenship in the next 30 days or his registration would be canceled. The letter Comer received indicated he’d said he wasn’t a citizen in a response to a jury summons. Comer assumes he clicked the wrong button when responding to the notice online; he had meant to reply that he had moved. He’s now registered to vote in Collin County, where he lives.

“I was more just confused,” Comer said. “I’ve lived in Texas my whole life. It was never a question for me.”

In some cases, it’s unclear what happened. Diana Colon spent much of her life in the mountains of Puerto Rico, in the town of Aibonito, but moved to El Paso County on the far western edge of Texas in 2018 to be closer to her daughter.

She was surprised when she learned the county had kicked her off its voter rolls after she apparently failed to respond to a question about her citizenship. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, and she is an American citizen. She showed a copy of her birth certificate to a reporter.

“That’s crazy,” she said.

Colon does not recall registering to vote, though the county said it received an application from her at some point in which she did not answer a question about her citizenship. Public information the county provided the news organizations indicated she was flagged as a potential noncitizen in DPS data.

Colon has since moved to California but would like to return to the El Paso area and would register to vote, if only to clear up the fact that she can. “I wouldn’t like people saying I’m not a U.S. citizen,” she said in an interview.

There are almost certainly additional U.S. citizens among the thousands of removed voters Abbott characterized as noncitizens. For example, reporters identified Texas birth certificates for another two voters whose registrations in Montgomery County were canceled for not responding to questions about their citizenship. The news organizations could not reach those voters for comment.

Noncitizens have occasionally voted, but experts say these cases are rare and there is no evidence that they affect election outcomes. Noncitizens who vote face criminal penalties, including the loss of their residency status and deportation. In 2017, Rosa Ortega, a U.S. permanent resident living in North Texas, said she believed her green card authorized her to vote and cast five ballots over a decade. A Tarrant County jury convicted her of voter fraud and sentenced her to eight years in prison.

Meredith, the University of Pennsylvania elections expert, said he wouldn’t be surprised if some people removed from the Texas rolls are indeed noncitizens who had cast ballots in a previous election. But that doesn’t mean the problem is widespread. “You shouldn’t use the fact there may be a few as evidence that it happens all the time,” Meredith said.

Reporters also found some noncitizens, including two who said they had inadvertently registered after receiving what they said were unsolicited voter registration applications, an ongoing concern for Republicans who believe this kind of outreach will result in large numbers of noncitizens signing up to cast a ballot. One got the application from a voting advocacy group. But the other got it while filling out other state paperwork.

In both cases, they had truthfully filled out the form and said they were noncitizens. Neither voted. Election workers in the two counties involved, Collin and Travis, said those voter registration applications should not have been processed because the applicants identified themselves as noncitizens and both people were added to the rolls through clerical error.

One of them, Austin resident Son Mai, had no idea he had ever been on the rolls until a reporter contacted him.

The news organizations viewed three voter registration applications from Mai in which he checked a box saying he was not a U.S. citizen. They interviewed Mai, who is originally from Vietnam and speaks limited English, through an interpreter.

Mai, who has been a permanent resident and green card holder for over 40 years, receives Social Security disability benefits and food stamps. Voter registration applications are included with that paperwork, which he believes is how he was mistakenly signed up.

However, Mai always marked that he is not a U.S. citizen on the forms, the county confirmed. As a result, Travis County should have automatically rejected his application, but elections officials said he was accidentally added to the rolls instead. The county confirmed Mai has never voted, though he said he hopes to become a naturalized citizen.

“I told them I couldn’t vote,” he told the reporters. “I never vote.”

With the election less than a month away, claims about noncitizen voting have continued to ratchet up despite numerous elections experts saying such instances are very rare. These efforts can have significant consequences.

The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit last month in Nevada alleging that nearly 4,000 noncitizens may have cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election and that thousands could vote in the coming election. (Nevada’s former secretary of state, who is Republican, did not find evidence to substantiate the 2020 claims during an investigation at the time).

Last month, the Justice Department filed suit against Alabama after its secretary of state flagged more than 3,000 alleged noncitizens and instructed county officials to remove any noncitizens from their voter rolls, although systemic voter roll cleaning is illegal so close to a federal election. In a statement, the Justice Department said its review found that naturalized and native-born American citizens had been caught up in the effort.

In Texas, both Abbott and Paxton have promoted claims of noncitizens seeking to vote in the November election.

On a single day in August, Paxton said his office would investigate an allegation that nonprofits were setting up booths outside state driver’s license offices and signing up noncitizens to vote, which followed an unfounded claim peddled by a Fox News host, and announced his agency had raided homes in three South Texas counties to investigate allegations of voter fraud. The next day, the attorney general appeared on the radio show of conservative personality Glenn Beck pushing debunked claims that President Joe Biden is allowing immigrants to enter the country illegally so they can vote for Democrats in elections.

In recent weeks, Paxton put out a flurry of news releases, continuing the hunt for noncitizen voters.

Paxton, who did not respond to a request for comment, sent a public letter to Nelson, the secretary of state, last month urging her to demand the federal government’s assistance in identifying potential noncitizens on the rolls.

But Nelson, a Republican and an Abbott appointee, apparently didn’t move aggressively enough for Paxton. In an Oct. 2 news release, the attorney general expressed frustration with Nelson, saying she had not provided the federal government any information about the possible noncitizens. He then asked Nelson’s office to provide him with the list of names so he could send it on to the government himself.

Hours later, Nelson provided Paxton the voter records for anyone who does not have a Texas driver’s license or identification card number on file in its statewide voter registration system. The list was accompanied by an explicit warning.

“The records do not reflect, and are in no way indicative of, a list of potential non-United States citizens on the State’s voter rolls,” Nelson wrote.

Dan Keemahill of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, Alejandra Martinez of The Texas Tribune and Thomas Wilburn of Votebeat contributed data research and reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

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Over the past two decades, Tim O’Hare methodically amassed power in North Texas as he pushed incendiary policies such as banning undocumented immigrants from renting homes and vilifying school curriculum that encouraged students to embrace diversity.

He rode a wave of conservative resentment, leaping from City Council member of Farmers Branch, a suburb north of Dallas, in 2005 to its mayor to the leader of the Tarrant County Republican Party.

Three years ago, O’Hare sought his highest political office yet, running for the top elected position in the nation’s 15th-largest county, which is home to Fort Worth. Backed by influential evangelical churches and money from powerful oil industry billionaires, O’Hare promised voters he would weed out “diversity inclusion nonsense” and accused some Democrats of hating America. His win in November 2022 gave the GOP’s far right new sway over the Tarrant County Commissioners Court, turning a government that once prided itself on bipartisanship into a new front of the culture war.

“I was not looking to do this at all, but they came after our police,” he said in his victory speech on election night. “They came after our schools. They came after our country. They came after our churches.”

In Texas and across the country, far-right candidates have won control of school boards, swiftly banning books, halting diversity efforts and altering curricula that do not align with their beliefs. O’Hare’s election in Tarrant County, however, takes the battle from the schoolhouse to county government, offering a rare look at what happens when hard-liners win the majority and exert their influence over municipal affairs in a closely divided county.

Since he was elected county judge — a position similar to that of mayor in a city — O’Hare has pushed his agenda with an uncompromising approach. He has led efforts to cut funding to nonprofits that work with at-risk children, citing their views on racial inequality and LGBTQ+ rights. And he has pushed election law changes that local Republican leaders said would favor them.

O’Hare’s rise in Tarrant County has come as he and his allies continue to align with once-fringe figures while targeting private citizens with whom they disagree politically. In July, O’Hare had a local pastor removed from a public meeting for speaking eight seconds over his allotted time. Days later, O’Hare appeared onstage at a conference that urged attendees to resist a Democratic campaign to “rid the earth of the white race” and embrace Christian nationalism. The agenda prompted some right-wing Republicans to condemn or pull out of the event.

“We’re seeing a shift of what conservatism looks like, and at the lower levels, they’re testing how extreme it can get,” said Robert Futrell, a sociologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who studies political extremism. “The goal is to capture local Republican Party infrastructure and positions and own the party, turning it to more extremist goals.”

Frequently, those aims include pushing back against broader LGBTQ+ acceptance, downplaying the nation’s history of racism and the lingering disparities caused by it, stemming immigration, and falsely claiming that America was founded as a Christian nation and that its laws and institutions should thus reflect conservative evangelical beliefs.

O’Hare declined multiple interview requests and did not answer detailed lists of questions emailed to him. His spokesperson instead touted a list of eight accomplishments, including cutting county spending and lowering local property tax rates.

With 2.2 million people, Tarrant County is Texas’ most significant remaining battleground for Democrats and Republicans. When the county voted for Beto O’Rourke for U.S. Senate in 2018 and Joe Biden for president in 2020, many political observers suspected the end was nigh for the era of Republican dominance in the purple county.

Two years later, voters elected the most hard-line Tarrant County leader in decades. After two years under O’Hare’s leadership, voters in November will decide two races between Republican allies of O’Hare and their Democratic opponents. The election of both Democrats would put O’Hare into the minority.

The changes in county leadership have been dramatic, said O’Hare’s Republican predecessor, Glen Whitley, who served as Tarrant County judge from 2007 until retiring in 2022. Whitley said O’Hare has implanted an “us vs. them” ideology that has increasingly been mainstreamed on the right.

“They no longer feel like they have to compromise,” said Whitley, who recently endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Texas in the U.S. Senate race. “You either vote with these people 100% of the time, or you’re their enemy.”

In 2005, when O’Hare initially ran unopposed for a seat on the City Council in Farmers Branch, a small town just outside of Tarrant County, his platform included plans to revitalize the public library and bring in new restaurants. In 2006, however, O’Hare began taking positions that were outside of the Republican mainstream at the time. He pushed for the diversifying town to declare English its official language, ban landlords from renting to residents without proof of citizenship, and stop publishing public materials in Spanish.

“The reason I got on the City Council was because I saw our property values declining or increasing at a level that was below the rate of inflation,” O’Hare said at the time. “When that happens, people move out of our neighborhoods, and what I would call less desirable people move into the neighborhoods, people who don’t value education, people who don’t value taking care of their properties.”

Hispanic residents mobilized and sued to block the rental ban’s implementation. O’Hare doubled down: He pushed for Farmers Branch police to partner with immigration enforcement authorities to detain and deport people in the country illegally, and urged residents to oppose a grocer’s plan to open a store that catered to Hispanics, arguing it was “reasonable” to prefer “a grocery store that appeals to higher-end consumers.”

O’Hare was elected as mayor in 2008. Foreshadowing moves he’d make as Tarrant County judge, he abruptly ended a public meeting after cutting off and removing one resident who criticized him. He led opposition to the local high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and fought against a mentorship program for at-risk high school students that included volunteers from a Hispanic group that opposed his immigration resolution.

Meanwhile, the city continued to defend the immigration ordinance after it was repeatedly struck down by federal judges. As costs for the seven-year legal battle ballooned, Farmers Branch dipped into its reserves, cut nearly two dozen city employees and outsourced services at the library that O’Hare had campaigned on improving during his City Council run. “At the end of the day, this will be money well spent, and it will be a good investment in our community’s future,” O’Hare said after the town laid off staff in 2008.

O’Hare stepped down as mayor in 2011. Three years later, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the city’s appeal, Farmers Branch stopped defending the ordinance. It was never enforced, but the related lawsuits cost the town $6.6 million, city officials said in 2016.

After leaving office, O’Hare moved his family a few miles away to Tarrant County, where demographic changes have dropped the share of white residents from 62% of the county’s population in 2000 to 43% in 2020.

Home to some of the nation’s most influential evangelical churches and four of former President Donald Trump’s spiritual advisers, the county is an epicenter for ultraconservative movements in Texas, including those that call for Christians to exert dominance over all aspects of society. In 2016, O’Hare was elected chair of the Tarrant County GOP. Under him, the party distributed mailers that listed the primary voting records for local candidates — breaking with the longstanding nonpartisan tradition of county elections.

In 2020, following a series of racist incidents at the mostly white Carroll High School in Southlake — including one viral clip in which white students chanted the N-word — O’Hare co-founded a political action committee that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to oust school board members who supported the Carroll Independent School District’s plans for diversity and inclusion programming. The dispute helped catapult the small Tarrant County suburb into the national spotlight amid Republican panic over critical race theory and “gender ideology,” and created a blueprint for right-wing organizing that was copied in suburbs across America.

In 2021, O’Hare launched his campaign for Tarrant County judge, squaring off in the GOP primary against the more moderate five-term mayor of Fort Worth, whom he painted as a RINO, or “Republican in name only.” O’Hare rode a wave fueled by backlash to COVID-19 mandates, baseless election fraud conspiracy theories and opposition to what he called “diversity inclusion nonsense,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. O’Hare’s campaign was condemned by moderate Republicans, including Whitley, the outgoing judge, who accused him of trying to “divide and pit one group against another.” O’Hare won the primary by 23 percentage points.

Whitley and other longtime Republican leaders declined to endorse O’Hare in the 2022 general election. It didn’t matter; by then, he was backed by a coalition of far-right megadonors, pastors and churches. His top campaign donors included a PAC funded by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. The two west Texas oil billionaires have given tens of millions of dollars to candidates and groups that oppose LGBTQ+ rights, support programs that would use public dollars to pay for private schools, and have led efforts to push moderates out of the Texas GOP.

O’Hare received another $203,000 from the We Can Keep It PAC. The PAC’s treasurer is an elder at Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth, whose leaders have endorsed multiple GOP candidates, including O’Hare. The church’s pastor has claimed Democrats can’t be Christian and dared critics to complain to the IRS that the church was flouting federal prohibitions on political activity by nonprofits.

O’Hare took office in early 2023, as Republicans continued to question President Joe Biden’s razor-thin win in Tarrant County two years earlier. A 2022 audit by Texas’ Republican secretary of state found no evidence of widespread fraud and that Tarrant County held “a quality, transparent election.”

Despite that — and while saying he had no proof of malfeasance — O’Hare immediately set out to prevent cheating he claimed was responsible for Democrats’ steady rise in the long-purpling county. Soon after taking office, he helped launch an “election integrity unit” that he’d lead with the county sheriff who had spoken at a “Stop the Steal” rally in the days after the 2020 presidential election.

No Democrats were initially on the unit. Nor was the county’s elections administrator, Heider Garcia, who by then had faced three years of harassment, death threats and accusations of being a secret agent for Venezuela’s socialist government by election fraud conspiracy theorists. Garcia opted for radical transparency — making himself accessible to answer questions about the election process and earning praise from across the political aisle for his patient public service.

But Garcia lasted only a few months under O’Hare: In April 2023, he resigned his position, citing his relationship with O’Hare in his resignation letter. “Judge O’Hare, my formula to ‘administer a quality transparent election’ stands on respect and zero politics; compromising on these values is not an option for me,” Garcia wrote. “You made it clear in our last meeting that your formula is different, thus, my decision is to leave.”

Garcia, now the Dallas County elections administrator, did not respond to an interview request.

One day after Garcia resigned, O’Hare told members of True Texas Project — a group whose leaders have sympathized with a white nationalist mass shooter and endorsed Christian nationalism — that he was encouraged by the potential for low turnout in that year’s upcoming elections, which he said would help Republicans win more local seats. (O’Hare previously served on True Texas Project’s advisory team, according to a 2021 social media post by the group’s CEO, Julie McCarty).

In June 2024, the election integrity unit reported that, over the previous 15 months, it received 82 complaints of voter fraud — or about 0.009% of all votes cast in the 2020 presidential election in Tarrant County — and that none had resulted in criminal charges. Meanwhile, O’Hare has proposed a number of changes to the election system that Tarrant County GOP leaders have said were intended to help Republicans or hurt Democrats.

In February, O’Hare and fellow Republicans cut $10,000 in county funding to provide free bus rides to low-income residents, a program that Tarrant GOP leaders decried as a scheme to “bus Democrats to the polls.”

O'Hare said he opposed the funding on fiscal grounds. “I don’t believe it’s the county government’s responsibility to try to get more people out to the polls,” he said before the vote.

A few months later, commissioners prohibited outside organizations from registering voters inside county buildings after Tarrant County GOP leaders raised concerns about left-leaning organizations holding registration drives. Democrats and voting rights groups assailed the moves as attempts to lower voter turnout.

In September, O’Hare proposed eliminating voting locations on some college campuses that he called a “waste of money and manpower.” But this time, his Republican allies on the Commissioners Court said they could not go along with the vote and joined Democrats to defeat the measure. Tarrant County Republican leaders condemned the recalcitrant commissioners in a public resolution that made it clear they saw the effort to close polls on college campuses as a move that would help them in November. The GOP commissioners, the resolution claimed, “voted with Democrats on a key election vote that undermines the ability of Republicans to win the general election in Tarrant County.”

Manny Ramirez, one of those Republican commissioners, said in an interview he thinks the GOP should try to win college students with their conservative ideas rather than limit on-campus voting.

“We’ve been providing those same exact sites for nearly two decades,” Ramirez said. His role as commissioner, he added, is to provide “equal access to all of our citizens.”

Less than a year into his term, O’Hare began targeting long-established nonprofits whose websites and social media accounts contained language the county judge considered politically objectionable on issues of gender and race.

In October 2023, he moved to block a $115,000 state grant to Girls Inc. of Tarrant County, for its Girl Power program offering summer camps and mentoring to help participants focus on stress management, hygiene and self-esteem.

About 90% of the youth served by Girls Inc. of Tarrant County are people of color and come from families making less than $30,000 a year, according to the organization’s website.

Four months earlier, the national Girls Inc. group, which has chapters across the country, had tweeted out its support for abortion rights and LGBTQ+ pride, which conservative media and activists seized upon.

“Girls Inc. is an extremist political indoctrination machine advocating for divisive liberal politics,” Leigh Wambsganss, the chief communications officer of Patriot Mobile, told commissioners. Patriot Mobile is a Christian nationalist cellphone company whose PAC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of far-right candidates across Tarrant County, including O’Hare.

Local leaders of Girls Inc., who did not respond to requests for comment, said at the time their chapter is independent of the national organization. They told commissioners they were reviewing their affiliation with the parent organization.

In denying the funds, O’Hare told the Commissioners Court the government shouldn’t support “an organization that is so deeply ideological and encourages the children that they are teaching to go advocate for social change.”

Commissioners killed the contract on a 3-2 party-line vote.

Six months later, O’Hare raised questions about another local nonprofit, Big Thought. It provides youth in the Tarrant County juvenile detention system with summer and after-school programs aimed at helping them get their lives back on track through music, acting and performance arts. Big Thought has had a contract with the county for the past three years and says on its website that youth who go through its programs reoffend at a lower rate than those who don’t, potentially saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in juvenile detention costs.

At an April meeting of the Tarrant County Juvenile Board, O’Hare raised questions about the program’s advocacy for “racial equity” after reading the organization’s website, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. (The board’s meetings are not streamed or recorded).

Asked about O’Hare’s concerns, a Big Thought spokesperson said in an email that the organization focuses on the realities facing at-risk youth in Tarrant County. “Young people in our communities experience challenges like economic inequality, racism, and more, and it is our responsibility to provide a safe place to build the skills they need so they can thrive,” said Evan Cleveland, Big Thought’s senior director of programs.

The county’s juvenile probation director, Bennie Medlin, who has not responded to requests for comment, told board members the program had not had any “negative results” during the partnership, according to minutes of the meeting. Members of the board were not swayed and voted not to renew the program.

Three months later, at the juvenile board’s July meeting, O’Hare and a district judge proposed ending a contract with the Pennsylvania nonprofit Youth Advocate Programs after probing the nonprofit about the position it had taken in briefs to the Supreme Court, its opinion on school choice and police in schools, and whether “they work to eliminate systemic racism,” according to minutes of the meeting.

Board members voted to cut ties with the nonprofit, which had worked with the county for over three decades to provide mentoring, job training and substance abuse counseling as alternatives to detention.

Gary Ivory, the organization’s president, said that a week after the July vote, he met with O’Hare for about a half-hour in O’Hare’s office. He said O’Hare questioned him about his personal views on the LGBTQ+ community and “hot-button cultural war issues." Also during that meeting, O’Hare pulled up Youth Advocate Programs’ website, Ivory said, and asked him why the group takes funding from Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun control.

“They are saying if anybody is too woke in Tarrant County, we are going to put them in the dustbin of history and they won’t exist anymore,” Ivory said.

On Oct. 1, Tarrant County commissioners voted to sign a similar contract with another nonprofit. At the meeting, O’Hare denied pushing to kill Youth Advocate Programs’ contract “because of a phrase on a website.” Instead, he claimed Ivory told the juvenile board that 15% of the money Tarrant County gives the program goes to lobbyists and to “law firms to file amicus briefs against many of the things the people in that room that voted disagree with.”

Ivory said that is incorrect. “I said generally 85 cents on a dollar stays in Tarrant County and 15 cents goes to overhead,” he said. “And I made it clear that YAP doesn’t spend any of that 15 cents on the dollar for lobbying.”

Phil Sawyer, a longtime juvenile probation officer in Tarrant County who retired two years ago, said the program was well respected within the department and helped give badly needed services that the department could not provide. “It’s a shocker,” he said of the county’s decision to cut ties with the group. “Without them, it would just be insanity. There are things we can do as probation officers, but it’s not the same.”

In recent months, O’Hare has taken aim at private citizens who disagree with him, ordering several political opponents removed from Commissioners Court meetings and calling for the firing of a local college professor.

As Ryon Price’s allotted three minutes of public comment during the July 2 Commissioners Court meeting expired, O’Hare issued a sharp warning to the man, a local Baptist minister who was a frequent antagonist of O’Hare’s at such meetings: “Your time is up.”

It’s not uncommon for residents to go over their allotted time during public comment sessions. But after Price continued criticizing conditions in the Tarrant County Jail for an extra eight seconds, O’Hare ordered sheriff’s deputies to step in: “He’s now held in contempt. Remove him.”

As Price was escorted out of the meeting, someone in the audience booed. “Was that you?” O’Hare snapped. “Well, try me.”

Price said that in the lobby, sheriff’s deputies handed him a trespassing warning that banned him from the premises. “I think it’s symbolic of a broader, more authoritarian shift” in Tarrant County government, Price said of his removal. “And I have to wonder if he really wants to govern this place, a place that splits red and blue evenly, or just please some higher-ups in his own party.”

Price appealed his ban to the Tarrant County sheriff’s department and said the appeal was granted in August, allowing him to resume addressing the court during public comment sessions.

Minutes after Price was escorted from that July meeting, Lon Burnam, a Democrat who served nine terms in the Texas House, approached O’Hare to confront him about his decision to cut off another commissioner who was requesting information about sheriff department policies. Burnam later received a trespass warning from sheriff’s deputies and said he is banned from public meetings until Jan. 1.

At their meeting two weeks later, commissioners amended public speaking rules as O’Hare warned residents that “refusal to abide by the Commissioners Court’s order or my order as the presiding judge or continued disruption of the meeting may result in arrest and prosecution under the laws of the state of Texas.”

O’Hare said the changes were needed to ensure civility in the meeting room. “This is not in any way shape or form attempting to stifle free speech,” he said during the meeting.

Also in August, O’Hare called for the firing of a Texas Christian University professor over social media posts from 2021 that called for police to be abolished. The professor, Alexandra Edwards, drew the ire of local right-wing activists after writing about them and the pro-Christian nationalism conference that O’Hare attended in July. Not long after, a local right-wing website published an article about her “antifa” views in which O’Hare called her a “radical” and said Edwards should be fired.

“The full force of the repression of the Tarrant County GOP and the various right-wing extremists kind of came down upon me,” Edwards said in an interview, adding that she was inundated with threats and harassment.

Such crackdowns are a sign that the local GOP has been taken over by extremists, said Whitley, the county’s Republican former judge.

“They’ve gone so far to the right that most folks who used to be adamant Republicans are not so much anymore,” he said, adding that some in the GOP are too afraid of retaliation by O’Hare to speak out publicly.

O’Hare’s term doesn’t end until 2027. But this year’s elections will decide which party controls the powerful commissioners court and, in some ways, will be a referendum on the first two years of his tenure in county government.

Whitley said he hopes it will be a unifying moment for voters from across the political spectrum. “I want us to be Americans, to be Texans and to not just care about parties,” he said. “I hope people will vote for the best person and not just vote for the party.”

Jodi S. Cohen of ProPublica and Juan Salinas II of The Texas Tribune contributed reporting. Dan Keemahill of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune contributed research.

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Last December, Sid Miller, the Texas commissioner of agriculture, posted a photo of himself brandishing a double-barrel shotgun on X and invited his followers to join him on a “RINO hunt.” Miller had taken to stumping in the March primary election against incumbents he deemed to be Republicans in Name Only. Not long after that, he received a text message from one of his targets, a state representative named Glenn Rogers. “You are a bought and paid for, pathetic narcissist,” it began. “If you had any honor, you would challenge me, or any of my Republican colleagues to a duel.”

Rogers, a 68-year-old rancher and grandfather of five, represents a rural district west of Fort Worth. He was proud to serve in a Legislature that, as he told me recently, “couldn’t be more conservative if it tried.” Since entering office in 2021, he co-authored legislation that allowed Texans to carry handguns without a permit, supported the Heartbeat Act that grants citizens the right to sue abortion providers and voted to give the police the power to arrest suspected undocumented migrants in schools and hospitals. In a statehouse packed with debate-me agitators, he was comparatively soft-spoken — a former professor of veterinary medicine with an aversion to grandstanding. He was not in the habit of firing off salvos, as he had to Miller, that ended with “Kiss My Ass!”

But the viciousness of the primary season had been getting to him. Nearly a year before the March elections, ads began to appear in Rogers’ district castigating him not simply as a RINO but as a closet liberal who supported gun control and Shariah law. (Rogers was especially peeved by an ad that photoshopped his signature white cowboy hat onto a headshot of Joe Biden.) Some of the attacks originated from his challenger’s campaign, while others were sponsored by organizations with grassroots-sounding names, like Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, Texas Gun Rights and Texas Family Project. By the time voters headed to the polls, they could have been forgiven for thinking that Rogers had disappointed a suite of conservative groups.

In reality, Rogers had disappointed two men: Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think tanks, media organizations, political action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on. Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. “They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,” he says. “You kiss the ring or you’re out.”

Like the Koch brothers, the Mercer family and other conservative billionaires, Dunn and Wilks want to slash regulations and taxes. Their endgame, however, is more radical: not just to limit the government but also to steer it toward Christian rule. “It’s hard to think of other megafunders in the country as big on the theocratic end of the spectrum,” says Peter Montgomery, who oversees the Right Wing Watch project at People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group.

Texas, which has few limits on campaign spending, is home to a formidable army of donors. Lately Dunn has outspent them all. Since 2000, he and his wife have given more than $29 million to candidates and PACs in Texas. Wilks and his wife, who have donated to many of the same PACs as Dunn, have given $16 million. Last year, Dunn and his associated entities provided two-thirds of the donations to the state Republican Party.

The duo’s ambitions extend beyond Texas. They’ve poured millions into “dark money” groups, which do not have to disclose contributors; conservative-media juggernauts (Wilks provided $4.7 million in seed capital to The Daily Wire, which hosts “The Ben Shapiro Show”); and federal races. Dunn’s $5 million gift to the Make America Great Again super PAC in December made him one of Donald Trump’s top supporters this election season, and he has quietly begun to invest in efforts to influence a possible second Trump administration, including several linked to Project 2025.

Rogers believes he provoked the ire of the Dunn and Wilks machine for two reasons. He refused to support a school voucher bill that would funnel taxpayer dollars to private schools, and he voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of the machine’s most powerful allies. (Paxton, who did not respond to requests for comment, was impeached in part for misusing his office to help a friend under federal investigation.)

Since neither of these issues particularly excited voters, many attacks focused on distorting Rogers’ record on immigration instead. When his wife joined a text group for the spouses of incumbents under siege (they called themselves the Badass Babes), she saw that her husband was not the only opponent of vouchers who had supposedly given Democrats “control of the Texas border.” The mailers sent across the state were identical, with only the names and faces swapped out.

The onslaught worked. Rogers lost his seat by 27 percentage points, and more than two dozen statehouse candidates backed by the two billionaires prevailed this spring. These challengers received considerable support from Dunn-and-Wilks-backed allies like Miller, the agricultural commissioner, as well as from GOP heavyweights like Gov. Greg Abbott. “You cannot overstate the absolute earthquake that was the March 5 primary,” says Matt Mackowiak, a political consultant and chair of the Travis County GOP.

The morning after his routing at the polls, Rogers published an editorial in The Weatherford Democrat. Commendably short on self-pity, it argued that the real loser in his race was representative democracy. “History will prove,” he wrote, “that our current state government is the most corrupt ever and is ‘bought’ by a few radical dominionist billionaires seeking to destroy public education, privatize our public schools and create a theocracy.”

Dunn and Wilks are often described as Christian nationalists, supporters of a political movement that seeks to erode, if not eliminate, the distinction between church and state. Dunn and Wilks, however, do not describe themselves as such. (Dunn, for his part, has rejected the term as a “made-up label that conflicts with biblical teaching.”) Instead, like most Christian nationalists, the two men speak about protecting Judeo-Christian values and promoting a biblical worldview. These vague expressions often serve as a shorthand for the movement’s central mythology: that America, founded as a Christian nation, has lost touch with its religious heritage, which must now be reclaimed.

Exactly what this reclamation would look like is up for debate. Some Christian nationalists advocate for more religious iconography in public life, while others harbor grander visions of Christianizing America’s political institutions. Those on the extreme end of this spectrum are sometimes called Dominionists, after the passage in Genesis in which man is given “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

David Brockman, a nonresident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, has extensively reviewed the speeches and donations of Dunn and Wilks and believes the two men to be thoroughgoing Dominionists. Zachary Maxwell, a Republican activist who knows the Wilks family personally and used to work for Texas Scorecard, a media group associated with Dunn and Wilks, agrees. “They want to get Christians in office to change the ordinances, laws, rules and regulations to fit the Bible,” he told me. According to Texas Monthly, Dunn once told Joe Straus, the first Jewish speaker of the Texas House since statehood, that only Christians should hold leadership positions. (Dunn has denied the remark.)

Wilks did not respond to detailed lists of questions. In an email, Dunn directed me to his previous public statements. In one of them, he explained that every Christian should avoid the label “Christian Nationalist” because “it makes ‘Christian’ an adjective — in other words, subjugated to something else.” A self-proclaimed proponent of limited government, he has also rejected the way in which the label, a “smear,” suggests that Christians would replace “God as King with earthly kings who claimed God’s authority.”

Unlike most billionaires, Dunn and Wilks are also pastors. Friends and critics alike described the pair as conspicuously down-home and devout. “They love God, they serve God,” said Jerry Maston, an evangelical pastor and Wilks’ brother-in-law. Dunn, who is 68, has served on the “pulpit team” of a nondenominational church in Midland. Wilks, who is four years older, practices a form of Christianity that hews closely to the Old Testament at the Assembly of Yahweh, a church his family founded outside of Cisco, a town in Central Texas. When I saw him preach there earlier this year, he warned his followers that “absorption in bounty makes us forgetful of the giver.” The two men may differ on certain points of doctrine — Wilks doesn’t celebrate Christmas, considering it a pagan holiday — but they share the same vision of a radically transformed America.

Many of their ideas have been shaped by David Barton, a former teacher in Aledo, Texas, and the closest the Christian nationalist movement has to an in-house intellectual. Barton has been advancing the same revisionist thesis for decades: The founders intended for the barrier between church and state to protect Christianity from the government, not vice versa. “‘Separation of church and state’ currently means almost exactly the opposite of what it originally meant,” explains the website for WallBuilders, Barton’s advocacy group, to which Wilks has donated more than $3 million.

This view, dismissed by historians but increasingly common among white evangelicals, has been encouraged by recent Supreme Court decisions reinterpreting the establishment clause and embraced by prominent Republicans, most notably the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Johnson lauded Barton at a 2021 WallBuilders event, citing his “profound influence on me and my work and my life and everything I do.” The day after Johnson was elected speaker, Barton said on a podcast, “We have some tools at our disposal now we haven’t had in a long time.”

With its high concentration of movement leaders, conservative pastors and far-right megadonors, Texas has become the country’s foremost laboratory for Christian nationalist policy, and many of its experiments have been bankrolled by Dunn and Wilks. Several of the lawmakers they’ve funded have introduced bills linked to Project Blitz, a coalition of religious groups, including Barton’s WallBuilders, that drafted model legislation to advance Christianity’s role in civic life. One bill directs educators to hang posters of the Ten Commandments “in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom.” Another, now law, requires schools to display “In God We Trust” placards.

“You can look here to see what’s coming to other states soon,” said Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit legal advocacy group. After Texas passed a law allowing the work of licensed mental health counselors in public schools to be done by unlicensed chaplains — representatives of “God in government,” one of the bill’s sponsors called them — a dozen other states introduced similar bills. That includes Louisiana, which became the first state to sign a bill into law this June requiring schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms. (Trump celebrated on Truth Social: “I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER.”)

It is no accident that Dunn and Wilks have concentrated their energies on infusing Christianity into education. Many far-right Christians trace the country’s moral decline to Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s and early 1970s that ended mandated prayer and Bible reading in public schools. Texas recently proposed an overhauled reading curriculum that strongly emphasizes the Bible “in ways that verge on proselytizing,” according to Brockman, the scholar at the Baker Institute; The 74, a nonprofit newsroom, reported that the state’s educational consultants contracted with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, whose board Dunn has served on since 1998. Wilks and his brother, Dan, have given around $3 million to PragerU, a video platform co-founded by Dennis Prager, the conservative radio host. It is not an accredited university; instead it provides “a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media and education.” Public school leaders in Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and South Carolina have recently approved PragerU’s teaching materials. One lesson shows an animated Frederick Douglass explaining that slavery was a compromise the founding fathers made to “achieve something great.”

Predictably, these attempts to control what happens in the classroom trigger local culture wars, which, in turn, lead Christian nationalists to contend that religious values are under siege. “They’re going to be things that people yell at, but they will help move the ball down the court,” Barton said in a 2016 conference call with state legislators that was later made public. The ultimate aim of these skirmishes is to end up with a religious liberty case before an increasingly conservative Supreme Court.

Last year, researchers at the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that more than half of Republicans support Christian nationalist beliefs, including that “being a Christian is an important part of being truly American,” that the government should declare the United States a Christian nation and that “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” They have also found that Christian nationalists were roughly twice as likely as other Americans to believe that political violence may be justified. Those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 with wooden crosses and Christian flags did not see themselves as insurrectionists overturning democracy but as patriots defending the will of God. They had been spurred on by years of rhetoric that recast political debates as spiritual battles with apocalyptic stakes.

In 2016, Trump received a higher share of the white evangelical vote than any presidential candidate since 2004, but the sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry have found that Christian nationalist beliefs were an even better predictor of support for his candidacy than religious affiliation. The slogan Make America Great Again can be interpreted, not unreasonably, as a dog-whistle to make it Christian Again, too. During the same speech in which he boasted that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue without losing voters, Trump warned that Christianity was “under tremendous siege” and pledged that when he was president, “Christianity will have power.” This June, he promised a Christian coalition “a comeback like just about no other group,” and in July, he encouraged Christians to vote “just this time” because in four years “you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Dunn has placed himself in a favorable position to guide a second Trump administration — and transform the nature of the federal government. He helps fund America First Legal, a conservative law firm headed by the former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller that represents itself as the MAGA movement’s answer to the ACLU, as well as the Center for Renewing America, a far-right policy group led by the former Trump budget director Russell Vought. According to documents obtained by Politico, the Center for Renewing America has explicitly listed “Christian Nationalism” as one of its top priorities. Both groups have played a role in shaping Project 2025, an extreme policy agenda, published by the Heritage Foundation, that proposes consolidating executive power and remaking the federal bureaucracy, agency by agency.

“Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies,” Vought said in a video captured in August by undercover reporters from the Centre for Climate Reporting. “I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation.” Vought has publicly defended the Christian nationalist label as “a rather benign and useful description for those who believe in both preserving our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage and making public policy decisions that are best for this country.”

Since 2021, Dunn has also been a founding board member of the America First Policy Institute, yet another group assembled by Trump loyalists to prepare for his possible return to the White House. One of its papers, “Ten Pillars for Restoring a Nation Under God,” discusses how America was “founded as a self-governing nation on biblical principles” — a favored Dunn talking point. Brooke Rollins, a former domestic policy adviser in the Trump administration who worked with Dunn at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, recruited him to the institute. “We wanted to create a national organization similar to what we built in Texas,” she told The Wall Street Journal. “This is a 100-year play.”

“I am by nature a tightwad,” Dunn writes in “Yellow Balloons,” a book he self-published in 2018. His mother once told him that as a child, he needed to be turned upside down to shake a nickel out of his pocket for the church collection basket. The youngest of four boys, Dunn grew up modestly in Big Spring, Texas. In the 1980s, he settled with his wife and six children in Midland, the seat of the Permian Basin, to become the chief financial officer at an oil company before founding his own in 1996. When the British writer Peter Stothard traveled to Midland for The Times of London during the 2004 presidential election, he spoke to Dunn, a “thin-faced, blue-jeaned Bush-backer” who was “convinced that his oil has existed for only 4,000 years, the time decreed by Genesis, not 200 million years as his geologists know.”

CrownQuest Operating, as Dunn’s company is called today, keeps most of its operations within Texas to limit interactions with the federal government. It ranks among the top 10 biggest oil producers in the state and has made Dunn one of the wealthiest people in Texas. But for many years, when it came time to pick up the check at lunch with colleagues, Dunn writes, he found himself with “alligator arms.” It wasn’t until he came to better understand the parable of the unjust steward, a cryptic story from the Gospel of Luke, that he discovered his charitable side. Its moral, according to Dunn, is that when we get to heaven, “part of our reward will be being invited into people’s homes to reciprocate for things we did for them in this life, and we’re supposed to make that part of our investment calculation.”

In the meantime, many of Dunn’s investments have brought him treasures here on Earth. In 2007, he started his own PAC, Empower Texans, to fight a tax on oil wells financed through investors. Dunn has donated a majority of its funds, lending it the air of a special interest group of one. Around a decade later, when one of Dunn’s political advisers connected him to Farris Wilks, Empower Texans became an interest group of two.

Wilks was raised in a goat shed on a homestead just south of Cisco, a town of 3,900 people and more than a dozen churches. He went to work at his father’s masonry business, and on weekends, he helped his family build their own church, the Assembly of Yahweh. In the 1990s, Wilks and his younger brother, Dan, decided to use their knowledge of stone to prospect for oil in their own backyard. In 2000, the brothers founded Frac Tech, a fracking services provider, and a decade later they sold their stake for $3.5 billion. Not long before the deal closed, the brothers established charitable foundations to fund conservative groups, including Focus on the Family and the Heritage Foundation. In 2015, they made their first significant campaign gift — $15 million to a Ted Cruz super PAC connected to David Barton — and the San Antonio Express-News said they were gaining a reputation as the “Koch brothers of the Christian Right.”

Wary of the media spotlight, Dan Wilks made fewer headline-grabbing campaign donations after that. Farris, however, was only getting started. Though he does not regularly socialize with Dunn, he relies on the same fleet of consultants and synchronizes his donations to many of the same campaigns. By 2018, he’d become the largest donor to Empower Texans, after Dunn.

At first glance, what’s most striking about Dunn and Wilks’ political giving, apart from its unprecedented scale, is its low rate of return. For more than a decade, their PACs and the lawmakers they supported won a handful of proxy wars — obstructing legislation, forcing retirements, generating scandals — but they were snubbed by the establishment Republicans who controlled the statehouse. In 2022, according to The Texas Tribune, 18 out of the 19 candidates backed by the group lost their races.

Political strategists have attributed this poor showing to the group’s uncompromising approach. Luke Macias, a longtime consultant to Dunn-and-Wilks-backed campaigns, has refused to work with candidates who support exceptions for abortion bans. (Macias did not respond to a request for comment). “My job is to communicate a candidate’s beliefs to a broader audience,” a consultant who worked with Macias on an Empower Texans-funded campaign told me. “His job is to find people who believe exactly what they believe and try to get them elected. From a financial perspective, Luke is the worst possible investment you can make, because he doesn’t seem to make decisions based on the facts, polls or strength of the opposition, but that right there tells you something about the strength of Tim Dunn’s ideology: Loyalty and fidelity are more important to him than short-term outcomes like winning.”

Dunn and Wilks, however, are focused on the long term. Gerrymandering has meant that most Republicans in Texas only fear for their seat if they’re challenged in a primary election — the Texas equivalent of term limits, Dunn has said. The tactical brilliance of Empower Texans has been to transform the political climate of Austin into a perpetual primary season. A dark money subsidiary, Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, warns legislators about how upcoming votes will affect their conservative rankings on its index, while a separate media arm, Texas Scorecard, publishes editorials, podcasts and documentaries to hound incumbents it disapproves of out of office. “The irony is that most of the incumbents they attack agree with them on 95% of the issues,” Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said of Dunn and Wilks. “I’m not sure how to explain the purity test they demand, except that it comes down to wanting people they can completely control.”

Some donors might hesitate to back a losing candidate, but Dunn and Wilks’ PACs often resurrect their challengers as though they are fighters in an arcade game. “They find candidates with an exceptionally high pain tolerance,” said a Texas House staff member who has worked for an incumbent opposed by Empower Texans. “They might not beat you on the first go, but they slowly chip away at your support and keep you under a microscope by hammering you with the same guy 52 weeks a year.” Shelley Luther, a beautician who was jailed for refusing to close her hair salon in Dallas during the pandemic, won the primary for a House seat this March after two failed campaigns supported by Dunn and Wilks. For Bryan Slaton, a former youth pastor and Empower Texans-backed candidate, the third time was the charm, though he was later unanimously expelled from the House after an internal investigation found that he got a 19-year-old aide drunk and had sex with her.

The political muscle of Christian nationalism is driving a growing share of attacks on Republicans across the country. Since 2010, a historically high number of Republicans have been defeated by primary challengers in the most evangelical House districts, according to an analysis posted on Substack by Michael Podhorzer, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. The former Texas Gov. Rick Perry recently expressed his concerns about the internecine warfare consuming the state party. “If we continue down this path pointing our guns inside the tent,” he told The Texas Tribune earlier this year, “that is the definition of suicide.”

David Pepper, the author of “Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-Up Call From Behind the Lines” and the former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, calls this trend the Texas Lesson. “It’s a tragic case study in how statehouses have flipped from serving the public interest to serving the far-right interests of private donors,” he told me. “These billionaires have been relentless and systematic about punishing moderates — ” Pepper paused and corrected himself. “Actually, I wouldn’t even call these lawmakers ‘moderate.’ These are simply officials who maybe, on one occasion, will stand up for the best interest of their district.”

Not long after he arrived in Austin at the start of his first term, Glenn Rogers began to sort his colleagues into categories. There was a close-knit contingent of unabashed loyalists, who took most of their money from Empower Texans and its spinoffs. There were legislators who may or may not have taken some money from Dunn and Wilks, but who followed most of their agenda out of fear of facing a primary challenger. And there were representatives who reliably voted for the interests of their district, though this last category, Rogers conceded, was “largely aspirational.” When Dunn and Wilks win, they win, Rogers told me, “and when they lose, they still win, because the people left in office are afraid to disagree with them. You can’t be in politics long without being influenced by them in one way or another.”

That influence, Rogers soon realized, extended well beyond the House. In the 2022 gubernatorial primary, Dunn and Wilks backed Don Huffines, a real estate investor and former state senator who ran to the right of Abbott, through a new PAC they dubbed Defend Texas Liberty. Huffines called for sending troops to the border, abolishing property taxes and passing a school voucher program. Abbott handily won the primary, but he also started to sound a lot more like Huffines, particularly when it came to private school vouchers.

Abbott’s newfound ardor for vouchers was striking. He asked faith leaders to “go to the pulpit” for the measure and called four special sessions of the Legislature in an attempt to rally the House into passing it. That vouchers undermine church-state separation while also draining resources from public schools has made them appealing to both free-market fundamentalists and far-right Christians. Yet vouchers are unpopular in rural districts across Texas, where Friday night football games are sacrosanct and private schools are scarce. When Abbott failed to corral the votes he needed, he began to vigorously campaign against the holdouts, including Rogers.

“How did someone who pitched himself as a governor committed to public education end up leading the charge to destroy public schools?” asks James Talarico, a Democratic member of the House and a former public school teacher. “Follow the money.” Abbott’s motivations have remained a subject of speculation in Austin, but Talarico suggested that the governor started to push for vouchers in earnest because he was shut out by Dunn and Wilks. Last December, Abbott intensified his push after receiving $6 million from Jeff Yass, a pro-voucher billionaire in Pennsylvania, to spend in this year’s primaries.

In an opinion essay in the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Dunn wrote that he is “basically uninvolved” with the voucher movement, but candidates he and Wilks backed have repeatedly testified in support of vouchers; Texans for Fiscal Responsibility has given high marks to those who support the measure; and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Dunn has long served on the board, joined Abbott on a tour of private Christian schools across the state.

As the voucher fight escalated, the House decided to bring impeachment charges against Attorney General Paxton, claiming, among other charges, that he had abused public trust and committed bribery. Paxton, one of the biggest recipients of Dunn and Wilks largess, had refused to defend the Texas Ethics Commission against lawsuits filed by Empower Texans in an effort to strip the campaign-finance watchdog agency of its powers. The Dunn-Wilks political machine seemed to view the impeachment as an existential threat. In May 2023, Jonathan Stickland, a political adviser to Dunn and Wilks and the president of their new PAC, Defend Texas Liberty, wrote on X that a vote to impeach Paxton was “a decision to have a primary.” In June, Defend Texas Liberty paid for a billboard in Rogers’ district attacking him for joining “61 Democrats to impeach Ken Paxton,” without mentioning that in doing so Rogers had also joined the majority of Republicans.

That same month, Defend Texas Liberty contributed $3 million to Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor and a former conservative talk show host, shortly before he was set to preside over the impeachment trial in the Senate. (Patrick did not respond to a request for comment, but he has denied that the donation influenced his impartiality at the trial, during which Paxton was acquitted on all 16 articles.) Texas Monthly calculated that the well-timed gift from Defend Texas Liberty was 30 times more than what the group gave Patrick when he ran for reelection in 2022. Hours after the donation was made public in a campaign-finance report, Stickland, the political adviser, wrote on X: “This is just the beginning, wait till you see the next report. We will never stop. Ever.”

He spoke too soon. Last October, The Texas Tribune reported that Stickland met for hours with Nick Fuentes, one of the country’s most prominent white supremacists, at an office park near Fort Worth owned by Wilks Development, the family’s real estate company. A Holocaust denier and antisemite, Fuentes has popularized the idea of an imminent “white genocide,” a fear that has been used as a justification by several mass shooters, including the one who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019. (Defend Texas Liberty replaced Stickland and released a terse statement opposing Fuentes’ “incendiary views.” Stickland did not respond to requests for comment.)

After the Tribune’s reporting prompted a rare bipartisan outcry, Dunn and Wilks phased out Defend Texas Liberty and poured $6.8 million into a new vehicle, Texans United for a Conservative Majority. The rebranded PAC has not been shy about communicating its vision. Its new logo replaces the Goddess of Liberty statue that crowns the top of Austin’s Capitol building with a cross.

“We have a three-party system in Texas, and they all loathe each other,” Vinny Minchillo, a Republican-aligned consultant in Plano, said. “You have the Democrats, the more traditional moderate Republicans and the official state GOP, a dysfunctional organization which has been pretty much completely overtaken by the Dunn and Wilks side of things.” Once ridiculed as unserious fanatics by the conservative establishment, Dunn and Wilks are now its kingmakers.

Nowhere was this more evident than at the Texas Republican Convention in San Antonio in May. In the exhibit hall, there was plenty of generic Republican fare — gold-standard absolutists, Patriot Mobile vendors, merch stores hawking sweatshirts printed with “Jesus was accused of Insurrection too” — but many booths were linked to the Dunn-Wilks universe. Wilks Development co-sponsored the weekend, and the Dunn family hosted a “grassroots” breakfast, closed to the press. A WallBuilders booth was selling “The American Story,” a two-volume revisionist history that Barton co-wrote with his son. State Sen. Angela Paxton, the attorney general’s wife, spoke on a panel dedicated to “Upholding Our Judeo Christian Heritage & Values.”

On a prominent stage erected by Texas Scorecard, lawmakers talked up the Contract With Texas, an open letter that began to circulate in the weeks before the convention. It asked for “all GOP legislative priorities” to receive a floor vote before any Democratic bill and for the removal of all Democratic committee chairs. No one knew for sure who was behind the letter, which would significantly curb the influence of a party that holds 42% of seats in the House, but at least 21 of its 23 signatories had taken money from Wilks and Dunn’s entities.

One morning, I ran into Mark McCaig, the publisher of The Texas Voice, a conservative political blog, in the main lobby, where children wearing bright yellow sandwich boards printed with the phrase “Abolish Abortion” had been serving as an unofficial welcome party. McCaig has a close-cropped beard and a wonkish demeanor. The previous day, the general counsel of the Texas Republican Party posted a photo of McCaig chatting with a Texas Tribune journalist on Facebook; her caption denounced McCaig as a “plague” and the Tribune journalist as a “pagan reporter.”

McCaig told me he didn’t mind “committing the sacrilege” of talking to other reporters, though he confessed that he often had trouble articulating Dunn and Wilks’ goals when asked. “They say they want to make things even more conservative,” he observed, “but I don’t know what else is left to accomplish socially.” Buoyed by the MAGA wave, the Legislature has passed bills — permitless-carry laws, abortion bans, LGBTQ+ restrictions, border militarization — that would have seemed far-fetched just a few years earlier. “A lot of pro-life leaders in the state don’t want to give women the death penalty,” McCaig continued. “You start to wonder what their true agenda is, and I think it’s power.”

The most far-reaching of these efforts to consolidate power may be the Convention of States Project. A highly controversial effort, partly funded by Dunn, it represents one of the best hopes for Christian nationalists, among other interested parties, who want to transform the laws of the land in one fell swoop. “When we started the Convention of States — and I was there at the beginning — I knew we had to have a spiritual revival, a Great Awakening and a political restoration for our country to come back to its roots,” Dunn said at a 2019 summit for the group, where he spoke alongside Barton. “What I did not expect is that the Convention of States would be an organization that would trigger that Great Awakening.”

The Convention of States Project takes its cues from Article V of the Constitution, which proposes two paths for constitutional amendments. The familiar path — a two-thirds vote in each chamber of Congress to be ratified by three-fourths of states — has been deployed successfully 27 times. The other path, which involves two-thirds of states passing resolutions to call for a constitutional convention, is rarely discussed and has never been used.

One afternoon in San Antonio, Mark Meckler, the president of the Convention of States and one of Dunn’s close friends, pitched a packed room of delegates on this second path. Wearing a blue trucker cap printed with a COS logo, he mocked the group’s critics, which included “every other baby-killing America-hating Marxist organization in the country” as well as the John Birch Society. “Thank God, those people were not at the Alamo,” Meckler said. “Because we wouldn’t remember the Alamo, because there would have been no Alamo, because all those people would have just run away.”

Meckler, who lives in a home that Dunn transferred to him near Austin, is a deft salesman. He said he regularly hears from people who find the prospect of a convention frightening. During his lecture, he sought to assuage those fears, casting the prospect of a constitutional convention as a humdrum exercise that would bore even its own attendees. “What’s going to happen at a convention?” Meckler asked, pausing for dramatic effect. “People are going to make suggestions.” Some of the delegates laughed. “Are you guys scared? I’ve never been to a meeting where I was afraid of people making suggestions.” Yet nothing in Article V limits the scope of the laws that might be changed.

“It’s a gamble, but if it pays off, it would be the biggest opportunity ever for billionaires to transform the government,” Montgomery, the researcher of the religious right, said. The Mercer family and Koch-funded groups have also backed the effort. The Convention of States says that 19 states have passed its resolutions. To win over the remaining 15, the group has started to back primary challengers to Republicans who oppose them in states across the country. During a 2018 appearance on Fox, Meckler admitted that critics of the movement were getting at “something truthful” when they complained that the convention was “intended to reverse 115 years of progressivism. And we say, ‘Yes, it is.’”

This spring, Rogers took me on a tour of his ranch, a 3,000-acre property that abuts the Brazos River. “Our forefathers intended for ranchers and farmers to be able to serve in the Capitol,” he told me as we cut through the tall grass.

Rogers insisted to me that he was better off working his land, because it allowed him to spend more time with his grandchildren. But as the afternoon turned to evening and he began to play the consolatory voicemail messages he had received from constituents and colleagues, it was evident the loss still rankled. “I’ve been coming up with a short list of people interested in running for office,” he said, “but I’ve yet to find anyone who’s willing to go through what I did without billionaire support.”

Dunn’s wealth is only growing. Last December, he signed an agreement to sell his oil company to Occidental Petroleum in a deal valued at $12.4 billion. Seventeen days later, he made the $5 million contribution to a Trump PAC. Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2016 digital campaign manager, recently bought a modern farm-style house around the corner from Dunn’s compound in Midland. Dunn has poured millions into a new effort led by Parscale to use AI to target voters.

Before I left, Rogers brought out a little-known book, first published in 1998, called “Confrontational Politics.” Its author, H.L. Richardson, was a Republican state senator in California who was known for ruthlessly campaigning against other Republicans in the 1970s and 1980s.

The text had been recommended to Rogers by someone who knew that Dunn encouraged his associates to study it, and the tactics deployed against Rogers appeared to be lifted directly from its pages. Richardson advised conservatives to cultivate single-issue groups, to “joyfully punish the adversaries” and to keep in mind a vital principle: The route to political domination starts at the local level. “Control the bottom,” he wrote, “and one day you control the top. One day the man you elected to city council becomes the state senator and then moves to Congress and talks to the president on your behalf. If you really become effective, one day the phone rings and you are asked to come to Washington to advise the president. Somebody is leveraging the president at this very moment. Why not you?”

Doris Burke contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Ava Kofman.

Dockworkers from Maine to Texas have walked out on the job at all East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, launching the first strike of its kind in almost 50 years. The International Longshoremen’s Association represents some 45,000 workers at 36 ports who are demanding higher wages and guarantees that jobs won’t be automated. “This is a time of labor mobilization in this country,” says Peter Goodman, New York Times global economics correspondent, who explains President Biden is caught between union pressure to back the strike and the threat of consumer prices rising while shipping is disrupted. “We’re only weeks away from a presidential election that could very well hinge on economic sentiments and unhappiness over inflation.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Hundreds of thousands of Texas families have been waiting months for the state to process their Medicaid applications. The median processing time is 79 days despite a federal requirement to do so in 45 days. We’ve heard from families who say they could not access critical care during that time, such as not being able to afford to reset their child’s broken nose. Health care providers have reported patients struggling to get lifesaving heart surgeries.

The delays worsened after the federal government lifted pandemic-era protections last year. Our reporting shows that Texas rushed through the process, removing more than 900,000 children not because they were ineligible, but for procedural reasons like their families failing to fill out a form.

The backlog for food benefits is not much better. The state most recently reported having nearly 97,000 applications to process for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — often referred to as food stamps — and said that the median time it took was 33 days.

We are committed to reporting on long-standing issues with Texas’ social safety net and their root causes. We need help from those who know the delays firsthand and the harm they may cause: the families who rely on and are currently waiting for benefits. We want to show any failures to the people who are responsible for overseeing these systems — lawmakers, advocates, even the federal government — and explain where the state may be falling short of its obligations.

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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

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For three years during the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government gave Texas and other states billions of dollars in exchange for their promise not to exacerbate the public health crisis by kicking people off Medicaid.

When that agreement ended last year, Texas moved swiftly, kicking off more people faster than any other state.

Officials acknowledged some errors after they stripped Medicaid coverage from more than 2 million people, most of them children. Some people who believe they were wrongly removed are desperately trying to get back on the state and federally funded health care program, adding to a backlog of more than 200,000 applicants. A ProPublica and Texas Tribune review of dozens of public and private records, including memos, emails and legislative hearings, clearly shows that those and other mistakes were preventable and foreshadowed in persistent warnings from the federal government, whistleblowers and advocates.

Texas’ zealousness in removing people from Medicaid was a choice that contradicted federal guidelines from the start. That decision was devastating in Texas, which already insures a smaller percentage of its population through Medicaid than almost any other state and is one of 10 that never expanded eligibility after the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

“The difference in how Texas approached this compared to a lot of other states is and was very striking. It wanted everybody off, anybody extra off, even though we knew that meant that state systems would buckle under the pressure,” said Erin O’Malley, a senior policy analyst with Every Texan, a left-leaning statewide advocacy group.

Medicaid rolls swelled nationally during the pandemic, with tens of millions of people added to the program and no one removed. In Texas, the number of people receiving Medicaid benefits grew by more than 50%, to 6 million. When the federal government stopped requiring continuous coverage in April 2023, states had to determine who was no longer eligible.

The question wasn’t whether to remove people but instead how to do it in a way that caused the least disruption and ensured those who qualified stayed on.

To that end, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services advised states to proceed slowly and rely heavily on existing government data to automatically renew eligible residents, steps the agency believed would prevent poor families from wrongly losing coverage. Congress gave states a year for the so-called “Medicaid unwinding.”

But Texas opted for speed, launching reviews of about 4.6 million cases in the first six months. It also decided against the more vigorous use of automatic renewals urged by the federal government, forcing nearly everyone to resubmit documents proving they qualified. Nearly 1.4 million of those who lost coverage were disenrolled for bureaucratic reasons like failing to return a form or completing one incorrectly, not because they weren’t eligible.

The decision to buck federal government guidelines was one of many that led to serious repercussions for Texas residents who rely on the program.

Among them were children forced to forgo or postpone lifesaving operations such as heart surgeries, said Dr. Kimberly Avila Edwards, an Austin pediatrician and Texas representative for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Children with severe diseases such as sickle cell anemia, as well as those with neurodevelopmental delays and autism, also unnecessarily lost critical care.

One of her colleagues treated a boy with a rare heart condition who lost Medicaid coverage in January after his parents failed to sign a form that even his caseworker was not aware the family needed to complete.

The boy’s parents couldn’t afford his $6,000 monthly pulmonary hypertension medication, nor could they pay for an ultrasound that would help determine whether he could survive without the drugs, said Avila Edwards, who declined to identify him because of medical privacy laws.

“If we have children who are less healthy, who are unable to get the preventative care they need for their chronic medical conditions, that fundamentally should raise concern for all of us,” she said.

The boy was eventually reenrolled in Medicaid after Texas pediatricians persuaded the state health agency to restore his coverage, Avila Edwards said.

Thomas Vasquez, a spokesperson for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, acknowledged that the agency “learned many lessons” and is working to improve eligibility processes. HHSC representatives defended the rollout, saying that the agency conducted community outreach and hired more than 2,200 employees.

Texas’ approach to the Medicaid unwinding reflected the state’s long-standing conservative ideology regarding the government-subsidized program, said Simon Haeder, an associate professor at Texas A&M University’s School of Public Health.

As attorney general more than a decade ago, Gov. Greg Abbott helped lead a successful lawsuit against the federal government to ensure states didn’t have to cover more residents under Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. Since then, Abbott and state lawmakers have continued to severely limit the program to mostly children, pregnant women and disabled adults. Poor adults aren’t typically eligible for Medicaid unless they have children. Parents of two kids must earn a combined income of less than $285 monthly to qualify for coverage.

A spokesperson for Abbott declined an interview on his behalf and did not respond to a request for comment on the state’s handling of the unwinding.

Texas’ stance during the unwinding, Haeder said, was, “We don’t do anything illegal, but we want to get our program as fast as we can down to what it was before the pandemic.”

It was inevitable that the COVID-19 public health emergency would eventually end, as would the prohibition against pushing people off the rolls. Federal officials worried about the effects of the unwinding on vulnerable Americans almost from the start. In fact, the Biden administration repeatedly extended the emergency declaration, even after the peak of the crisis, to maintain safeguards that included keeping millions of low-income people on Medicaid.

Once the emergency officially ended in April 2023, states were free to cull their rolls. In preparation, federal officials advised states not to review more than 11% of their caseloads each month, cautioning that moving more quickly could overwhelm their systems and lead to the wrongful removal of eligible people.

But that was guidance, not a requirement, and Texas chose a far more aggressive plan.

In the first month of the unwinding, the state started the review process for about a million cases, or 17% of its caseload.

The federal government in May 2023 pressed Texas on why the state was moving so quickly. State officials downplayed the concerns, writing in an email obtained by the news organizations that they were frontloading people who most likely no longer qualified and were reviewing entire households at once.

Within the first four months of the unwinding, the state dropped more than 600,000 people from Medicaid. The vast majority were removed not because the state determined they were no longer eligible but for reasons such as failing to provide the proper documents in time.

That July, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra called on Texas and other states to increase the number of eligible people they automatically renewed with existing government data. He warned in a letter that his agency would take action against states that were not complying.

In the same week, a group of employees anonymously emailed HHSC Executive Commissioner Cecile Young and media organizations, claiming senior management had alerted them that tens of thousands of people had improperly lost Medicaid due to the agency’s poor handling of the unwinding. Young’s chief of staff responded in an email that she couldn’t address the allegations of unidentified whistleblowers.

Texas alerted the federal government days later that it had erroneously dropped nearly 100,000 people, according to records obtained by the news organizations.

In August 2023, CMS once again implored the state to stop requiring eligible people to resubmit paperwork proving they still qualified. The federal agency said it appeared that many people didn’t know they needed to reenroll, didn’t understand the forms or faced obstacles in submitting the required information.

Other states that had taken a similar approach, such as Pennsylvania and Maine, made significant changes. Not Texas.

The state agency flagged to CMS last September that more than 30,000 kids lost their coverage, even though most of them should have been moved from Medicaid to the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to emails the news organizations obtained through the state’s Public Information Act.

State officials later told the news organizations that 95,000 people had been wrongly removed, instead of close to 130,000, as originally reported to CMS. Asked why the figures had decreased, a spokesperson said the agency “provided approximate numbers as we worked to resolve the issue.” Agency representatives said the state quickly reinstated coverage and implemented changes to prevent further improper denials. They did not provide specifics.

Alarmed by the deluge of disenrollments, advocacy groups, health providers and newspaper editorial boards began calling on the state last summer to pause the unwinding and ensure people were not incorrectly losing coverage. It did not do so.

In October, after Texas had already disenrolled more than 1.2 million people, the state gave about 400,000 people who likely qualified for Medicaid an extra month to submit paperwork, according to an agency spokesperson.

Still, problems persisted.

In December, Becerra appealed directly to Abbott and eight other governors of states with the highest shares of children who had lost coverage. Texas accounted for nearly a quarter of all children in the U.S. who had lost Medicaid or CHIP during the unwinding, Becerra wrote. He again urged the state to employ a series of actions, including automatically renewing eligible people.

Without providing details, Becerra said the federal government would not hesitate to take action against states that did not comply with federal requirements.

Three months later, Micaela Hoops’ children lost the government-subsidized health insurance for which they had qualified their entire lives. After years of not having to renew their Medicaid coverage under the pandemic rules, the 37-year-old North Texas mother said she was confused about when she was required to reapply and missed the deadline to provide proof of the family’s income.

In other states, the kids might have been automatically renewed using other government information, like quarterly payroll data reported by employers to the state or federal tax records. Instead, Hoops had to frantically reapply seven days after the coverage lapsed in March, submitting 24 pay statements for her husband’s weekly wages as a marketing director for a real estate company. This put the family at the back of a monthslong waiting list.

During that time, Hoops, a stay-at-home mom who homeschools the children, had to take her eldest son to the emergency room for a debilitating migraine. The visit came with a $3,000 bill that she and her husband could not pay. A few months later, the 14-year-old broke his nose while playing with his brother on a trampoline. She paid a few hundred dollars out of pocket for the doctor but couldn’t afford the CT scan required to reset his nose.

More than 100 days after Hoops reapplied, the state restored her children’s coverage retroactively. She hopes Medicaid will cover the hospital visit, but her son’s nose remains crooked.

“My children didn’t deserve to go without insurance,” Hoops said. “They’re kids. They have medical emergencies, things happen, and they deserve to be taken care of.”

While Hoops’ children got their Medicaid back, some families that believe they wrongly lost Medicaid are still waiting after being forced to reapply. Texas’ median processing time for Medicaid applications is almost three months, according to a recent agency briefing obtained by the news organizations. This exceeds the federal limit of 45 days for most cases.

The sudden suspension of health insurance for a population the size of New Mexico has had additional ramifications in Texas, including higher treatment costs for hospitals and clinics forced to take on more uninsured patients.

Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, the largest pediatric hospital in the country, laid off employees this year after significant budget shortfalls. A hospital spokesperson declined to comment, but, in a recent financial filing, the hospital attributed some of the challenges to losing Medicaid patients during the state’s unwinding process.

Across the state, some safety net clinics reported a 30% decrease in Medicaid revenue due to the unwinding, said Jana Eubank, who heads the Texas Association of Community Health Centers. She said the extra costs added to challenges for the already financially strapped facilities.

“Some centers are having to lay off staff. Some centers are furloughing staff,” Eubank said. “I’ve got a couple of CEOs that aren’t taking a salary right now. I’ve had centers that are unfortunately having to cut back certain services or extended hours, like behavioral health services, dental services, just because they can’t afford to continue to offer that care.”

Separately, some families that were pushed off Medicaid are also waiting more than a month for food assistance because Texas uses the same eligibility system to process applications for both.

San Antonio Food Bank CEO Eric Cooper said the nonprofit was crushed by demand this summer when families faced sudden medical bills, kids were out of school and the state had a backlog of more than 277,000 food stamp applications. The situation worsened when Texas declined to participate in a federal nutrition program, turning down an estimated $450 million that could have helped feed nearly 3.8 million poor children during the summer. HHSC officials said they could not get the program running in time.

“It’s felt like a one-two punch, the double whammy,” Cooper said.

“We haven’t really felt any relief since the Medicaid unwinding and the official end of the public health emergency,” he added. “It’s still an emergency. It’s still a crisis.”

In May, after Texas’ unwinding ended, the federal government launched an investigation into long waits faced by people who had applied for Medicaid coverage. Addressing these persistent delays was especially important because they affected eligible people who lost coverage in the past year, Sarah deLone, director of CMS’ Children and Adults Health Programs Group, wrote in a letter to the state.

Former federal officials and health policy experts called the probe a significant step by the agency, which typically works with states behind the scenes.

But CMS has few options to hold Texas accountable if it finds wrongdoing, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The Biden administration’s major enforcement tool is yanking federal funding, but that could cause low-income people to lose health insurance and invite a lawsuit from Texas, Alker said. And the investigation likely won’t go anywhere if Donald Trump wins in November, she said, since the former president previously encouraged states to restrict Medicaid access and promised to undo the Affordable Care Act entirely.

CMS spokesperson Stephanie Rossy declined to comment directly on its investigation or on Texas’ handling of the unwinding. But in a statement she wrote that “states’ choices have real consequences for eligible people’s ability to stay covered.”

Texas officials also declined to discuss the probe, but in a letter to the federal agency two weeks after the May investigation announcement, the state’s Medicaid director, Emily Zalkovsky, acknowledged that Texas experienced “severe operational and systems challenges” during the unwinding.

Although the federal probe was welcomed by advocacy groups, as well as some health care providers and Texas families, it’s unlikely to immediately help eligible people who lost Medicaid during the unwinding and are waiting to get back on.

While Hoops’ children have regained coverage, she believes that what her family endured reflects state leaders’ attitudes toward low-income people.

“Maybe they didn’t realize they were making cruel decisions,” she said. Still, she feels like the state’s mentality is basically, “Well, you just shouldn’t be dependent on us.”

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Texas lawmakers nearly three years ago promised changes to prevent the devastation from a deadly winter storm from happening again. But the damage caused by Hurricane Beryl last month shows that much remains the same, particularly when it comes to preventing carbon monoxide poisoning.

Roughly 400 Texans landed in emergency rooms for CO poisoning after Hurricane Beryl pummeled the state on July 8, marking the highest numbers since the 2021 winter storm, state data shows. Two people died of CO poisoning in Harris County, according to Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd. (The county Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet confirmed the deaths.)

Debbie Wells, 72, her husband and her daughter were among the hundreds poisoned. The family used a portable generator to keep the air conditioning on to combat the brutal summer heat.

Though generators have been linked to deaths after nearly every major power outage, including 10 fatalities in Texas during the 2021 winter storm and power grid failure, Wells was not worried.

Her family had routinely used the generator when the power was out, including during the 2021 freeze, which resulted in the worst carbon monoxide poisoning event in recent history. They always kept the device at a safe distance to prevent the colorless, odorless gas from seeping inside. On July 11, however, they moved it a few feet closer to their home in Cleveland, Texas, placing it under the porch in anticipation of rain from the hurricane.

Early the next day, Wells and her husband woke up feeling disoriented and weak. She called her daughter, Jenny Hare, who lives in a trailer house attached to their home. Hare went to check on them and managed to call 911 before passing out on the living room floor.

Emergency responders took the family to Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, where they were given treatment reserved for the most severely poisoned patients, according to Dr. Joseph Nevarez, the medical director of the Center for Hyperbaric Medicine, Wound and Lymphedema Care at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.

The family did not have a CO detector. Nothing in state law required them to. At the time of the 2021 winter storm, Texas was one of six states with no statewide requirement for CO detectors in homes. State lawmakers later updated building codes to require them in new and renovated homes starting in 2022 but allowed cities to opt out. Though more than half of states require the alarms in some or all existing residences, Texas does not, excluding millions of homes and apartments.

“I think it’s important for everybody to understand that we’re not stupid. We did a stupid thing. We got careless, and it only takes one time,” Wells said. “And if we had the detector, it would have been a different story.”

Wells’ nephew brought her a CO detector after the family was released from the hospital that day. They have since purchased two more.

Gov. Greg Abbott, House Speaker Dade Phelan and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the top Republican state leaders, did not respond to questions about whether they planned to take steps to prevent future poisonings.

Regulations that only require CO detectors in certain types of homes do not go far enough, according to Nevarez, who supports legislation that would mandate detectors anywhere people sleep.

“If safety belts save lives but you said only this portion of the population needs them, that doesn’t make sense,” Nevarez said. “So again, why are we leaving so many Texans at risk for something that’s relatively inexpensive?”

Measures to prevent CO poisoning have also been slow at the federal level and in the county that was most hard hit during the two major outages.

In Harris County, the fire marshal submitted a proposal to County Judge Lina Hidalgo in December 2021 that would ban certain appliances such as grills and heaters from patios and balconies in multifamily residences and apartments. But the proposal did not go anywhere, according to a fire marshal spokesperson, who said the department continues to review possible regulation changes to help prevent CO poisonings. Hidalgo’s office did not respond to questions.

At the federal level, the Consumer Product Safety Commission advanced a proposal in April 2023 to make portable generators safer by requiring the devices to emit lower levels of carbon monoxide and automatically switch off when the gas reaches a certain level. The commission, however, did not provide a timeline for when the regulations will be finalized.

CO poisonings caused by widespread power outages are growing more common as climate change contributes to increasingly frequent extreme weather events, according to scientists.

“Whether you want to blame it on this, that or the other, I don’t care. The world is changing. The climate is changing,” said Dr. David Persse, Houston’s chief medical officer. He added that the state Legislature must continue to strengthen the reliability of the electric grid while also employing back up measures such as requiring CO detectors to ensure residents who turn to alternative power sources like generators stay safe.

“I think with what’s happened here in the last couple of years, it’s undeniable that we need to do something different and so now is the time to take action,” Persse said. “Now is our opportunity to get ahead of this, because this is certainly going to happen again, and we need to better prepare for the next time around.”

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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lexi Churchill.

That’s the sobering conclusion Rio Grande Valley officials are facing as water levels at the international reservoirs that feed into the river remain dangerously low — and a hurricane that could have quenched the area’s thirst turned away from the region as it neared the Texas coast.

Although a high number of storms are forecast this hurricane season, relief is far from guaranteed as the drought drags on.

For now, the state’s most southern cities have enough drinking water for residents. However, the region’s agricultural roots created a system that could jeopardize that supply. Cities here are set up to depend on irrigation districts, which supply untreated waters to farmers, to deliver water that will eventually go to residents. This setup has meant that as river water for farmers has been cut off, the supply of municipal water faces an uncertain future.

This risk has prompted a growing interest among water districts, water corporations, and public utilities that supply water to residents across the Valley to look elsewhere for their water needs. But for several small, rural communities that make up a large portion of the Valley, investing millions into upgrading their water treatment methods may still be out of reach.

A new water treatment facility for Edinburg will undoubtedly cost millions of dollars, but Tom Reyna, assistant city manager, believes the high initial investment will be worth it in the long run.

“We see the future and we’ve got to find different water alternatives, sources,” Reyna said. “You know how they used to say water is gold? Now it’s platinum.”

For Edinburg, one of the fastest growing cities in the Valley, the need for water will only grow as its population does. While the city hasn’t faced a water supply issue yet, the ongoing water shortage in South Texas combined with the growing population has put local officials on alert for the future of their water supply.

The Falcon and Amistad International reservoirs feed water directly into the Rio Grande. And while water levels have been low, cities and public utilities have instituted water restrictions that limit when residents can use sprinkler systems and prohibit the washing of paved areas.

Cities have priority over agriculture when it comes to water in the reservoirs. Currently, the reservoirs have about 750,000 acre feet, of which 225,000 acre feet are reserved for cities.

Of those 225,000 acre feet, each city or public utility or water supply corporation can purchase what are known as “water rights” which grant permission from the state to use that water.

But without water for farming, more and more of the water that cities own is being lost just in transporting the water to their facilities, and that’s directly due to the loss of water for farmers.

This relationship with the agriculture industry arose because irrigation districts were created here first. Cities came after, and because they used less water, they were set up to depend on irrigation districts.

Water meant for residential use rides atop irrigation water to water treatment plants. Without irrigation water, cities start to use water they already own to push the rest of their water from the river to a water treatment facility. It’s referred to as “push water.” Much of that water is lost for this purpose.

When water levels at the reservoirs got dangerously low in in the late 1990s, the average city would only get about 68 percent of the water it owned because the rest would be used as push water, according to Jim Darling, board member of the Rio Grande Regional Water Authority and chair of the local water planning group, a subset of the Texas Water Development Board.

The board is tasked with managing the state’s water supply.

Darling, a former McAllen mayor, has been trying to get cities to think of ways to increase their water supply.

As cities try to temper water demand by issuing restrictions on water usage, Darling said public utilities need to think about the drought not just from the standpoint of managing demand but also by increasing supply.

Darling has been floating the idea of creating a water bank of push water so that water districts can get by without having to go through the process of obtaining approval from the state for more water.

These discussions have been ongoing with the watermaster from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, who ensures compliance with water rights. The talks are still preliminary, but a conversation with the watermaster’s office in early July revealed that three or four of the Valley’s 27 irrigation districts were out of water.

“Something needs to be done,” Darling said.

Edinburg’s proposed water plant is still in the early planning stages, but the goal is to stave off water woes by turning to water sources underground.

The plan is to dig up water from the underground aquifers as well as reuse wastewater. The two sources of water would be blended and treated through reverse osmosis.

Reserve osmosis consists of pushing water through membranes, large cylinders that filter the water. This is done several times until the water is pure and meets drinking water standards set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

This method isn’t new.

By implementing this practice, Edinburg is following in the footsteps of the North Alamo Water Supply Corporation, a utility that supplies water to eastern Hidalgo County, Willacy County, and northwestern Cameron County.

After the drought in 1998, North Alamo turned to reverse osmosis in the early 2000s.

Its facilities currently treat about 10 million gallons of water per day through reverse osmosis, which represents one-third of all the water it treats. The rest is surface water from the river, but the utility aims to switch that split, treating two-thirds through reverse osmosis and only a third of surface water.

“We’ve got that mindset that we have to get away from the river,” said Steven P. Sanchez, general manager of North Alamo. “We have to start going to reverse osmosis.”

Hidalgo County officials are trying to take a more “innovative” approach to the area’s water problems.

In April, county officials touted a proposed regional water supply project, dubbed the Delta Water Reclamation Project, that would capture and treat stormwater to be used as drinking water.

The project, expected to cost $60 to 70 million, started off as a project to mitigate flooding by drawing water away from a regional drainage system. But now, plans include a water plant that would take daily runoff and treat it through reverse osmosis.

“We are the first drainage district to do something like this and of course that’s an exciting thing for us, to be able to do something that’s so innovative and green,” said Hidalgo County Commissioner David Fuentes, who sits on the drainage district board. “But it comes with a lot of obstacles and a lot of unknowns.”

One challenge will be financing the water plant. Drainage districts are limited on the bonds they can issue in exchange for a loan. Obtaining funds from the Texas Water Development Board would also be an uphill battle since a drainage district doesn’t fit the usual metrics that a water supply corporation does.

County leaders made the case for their project before a Texas Senate committee hearing in May on water and agriculture, requesting that legislative leaders direct the water development board to give a higher consideration to projects like theirs or to provide a grant program their project would qualify for.

The county drainage district already completed a pilot test of the project and those results are now under TCEQ for review. Leaders expect TCEQ will give them the green light as well as instructions on how to design the plant and steps they need to take to ensure water quality.

Fuentes said they expect that review to be completed early in the legislative session, which would give them a better idea of what they need to ask legislators for.

If the project becomes a reality, the county would sell to water corporations like North Alamo.

In Cameron County, located on the east end of the Valley, the Brownsville Public Utilities Board was also motivated by drought conditions to reduce dependence on the river. With help from partners in the Southmost Regional Water Authority, the public utilities board spearheaded the construction of a desalination facility that also employs reverse osmosis.

Despite its growing popularity in the Valley, desalination has its drawbacks. The practice has faced pushback from environmentalists over the disposal of the concentrated salts and because the process requires a lot of energy.

Southmost and North Alamo hold permits from TCEQ to discharge the concentrate, or reject water, into the Brownsville Ship Channel and a drainage ditch that flows to the Laguna Madre, respectively.

Representatives for both entities said the salinity of the concentrate is less than the salinity of the bodies of water that are receiving that discharge.

“All the aquatic life that’s there, the plant life and everything that feeds off that water is not being harmed at all,” Sanchez said. “We monitor that.”

Sanchez said another solution would be drying beds, a process of evaporating the water into sludge, and injecting the water about 20,000 feet back into the ground.

North Alamo has also made improvements to its energy consumption. In May, the water corporation upgraded its 16-year-old water filtering equipment, reducing the amount of energy used to create the pressure to push the water through its filtration system.

Sanchez said reverse osmosis has also been more efficient for North Alamo.

The utility’s surface water treatment plant treats about 2.7 million gallons of water daily, while the reverse osmosis plant treats 3 million gallons. It’s also become cheaper in the last few years. Treatment of surface water costs $1.21 per thousand gallons while reverse osmosis costs $0.65 per thousand gallons, according to Sanchez, who said reverse osmosis would still be cheaper even with depreciation.

This wasn’t always the case, he said, but the high cost of chemicals has driven up the cost of treating surface water. But where surface water treatment is cheaper is in the initial cost to establish it.

Sanchez estimated that the initial capital investment for reverse osmosis treatment capable of treating a million gallons per day would conservatively cost about $6 to 7 million, while a surface treatment facility of the same capacity would cost $3 to 4 million.

Southmost’s plans to double its plant’s capacity would cost an estimated $213 million.

Reyna, the Edinburg assistant city manager, agreed that the initial investment would be the biggest cost for the city, but believes it will end up paying for itself.

Not all cities have that as a viable option, though. That initial cost can be an insurmountable hurdle for smaller, rural communities, leaving them unable to invest in solutions. The state could possibly alleviate some of that cost.

During the last legislative session, lawmakers established the Texas Water Fund with a $1 billion dollar investment that will go to a number of financial assistance programs at the Texas Water Development, including one that has never had funding before, called the Rural Water Assistance Fund.

This will be additional state funding to help rural communities with technical assistance on how to decide what kind of design and what kind of assistance is best for their community. This will help them navigate the process of applying for funding.

Plans for how the water development board will allocate funds to these new financial assistance programs will be released in late July.

Sarah Kirkle, the director of policy and legislative affairs at the Texas Water Conservation Association expects the state will provide interest rate reductions for loans that will be used on expensive projects.

However, the $1 billion allocated to the Texas Water Fund will not get very far.

“The needs for implementing this state water plan are something like $80 billion and those are outdated numbers that we’re looking to update in the new water planning cycle,” Kirkle said, adding that the plan doesn’t include the cost of wastewater or flood infrastructure.

She noted that the cost of water infrastructure is about two or three times what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic because of disruptions in the supply chain and additional federal requirements for federally-funded projects.

Many small communities also don’t have the resources to plan for their needs, Kirkle said, so many of them don’t participate in the water planning process, leaving no one to speak up for them.

“We really need to make sure that as we see additional water scarcity around the state, that our communities are engaged in planning for their needs and understand where they might have risks and where their water might not be reliable,” Kirkle said.

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas Inc.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As the Rio Grande runs dry, South Texas cities look to alternatives for water on Jul 27, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune.

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Year after year, while Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, Texas legislators passed measures limiting access to abortion — who could have one, how and where. And with the same cadence, they added millions of dollars to a program designed to discourage people from terminating pregnancies.

Their budget infusions for the Alternatives to Abortion program grew with almost every legislative session — first gradually, then dramatically — from $5 million starting in 2005 to $140 million after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion.

Now that abortion is largely illegal in Texas, lawmakers say they have shifted the purpose of the program, and its millions of dollars, to supporting families affected by the state’s ban.

In the words of Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from Plano, the goal is to “provide the full support and resources of the state government … to come alongside of these thousands of women and their families who might find themselves with unexpected, unplanned pregnancies.”

But an investigation by ProPublica and CBS News found that the system that funnels a growing pot of state money to anti-abortion nonprofits has few safeguards and is riddled with waste.

Officials with the Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees the program, don’t know the specifics of how tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent or whether that money is addressing families’ needs.

In some cases, taxpayers are paying these groups to distribute goods they obtained for free, allowing anti-abortion centers — which are often called “crisis pregnancy centers” and may be set up to look like clinics that perform abortions — to bill $14 to hand out a couple of donated diapers.

Distributing a single pamphlet can net the same $14 fee. The state has paid the charities millions to distribute such “educational materials” about topics including parenting and adoption; it can’t say exactly how many millions because it doesn’t collect data on the goods it’s paying for. State officials declined to provide examples of the materials by publication time, and reporters who visited pregnancy centers were turned away.

As they restricted access to abortion, lawmakers also poured money into a program that was first called Alternatives to Abortion and recently rebranded as Thriving Texas Families. The program funds counseling, baby items and brochures, but not medical care.

For years, Texas officials have failed to ensure spending is proper or productive.

They didn’t conduct an audit of the program in the wake of revelations in 2021 that a subcontractor had used taxpayer funds to operate a smoke shop and to buy land for hemp production.

They ramped up funding to the program in 2022 even after some contractors failed to meet their few targets for success.

After a legislative mandate passed in 2023, lawmakers ordered the commission to set up a system to measure the performance and impact of the program.

One year later, Health and Human Services says it’s “working to implement the provisions of the law.” Agency spokespeople answered some questions but declined interview requests. They said their main contractor, Texas Pregnancy Care Network, was responsible for most program oversight.

The nonprofit network receives the most funding of the program’s four contractors and oversees dozens of crisis pregnancy centers, faith-based groups and other charities that serve as subcontractors.

The network’s executive director, Nicole Neeley, said those subcontractors have broad freedom over how they spend revenue from the state. For example, they can save it or use it for building renovations.

Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend in Corpus Christi, for instance, built up a $1.6 million surplus from 2020 to 2022. Executive Director Jana Pinson said two years ago that she plans to use state funds to build a new facility. She did not respond to requests for comment. A ProPublica reporter visited the waterfront plot where that facility was planned and found an empty lot.

Because subcontractors are paid set fees for their services, Neeley said, “what they do with the dollars in their bank accounts is not connected” to the Thriving Texas Families program. “It is no longer taxpayer money.”

The state said those funds are, in fact, taxpayer money. “HHSC takes stewardship of taxpayer dollars, appropriated by the Legislature, very seriously by ensuring they are used for their intended purpose,” a spokesperson said.

None of that has caused lawmakers to stop the cash from flowing. In fact, last year they blocked requirements to ensure certain services were evidence-based.

Leach, one of the program’s most ardent supporters, said in an interview with ProPublica and CBS News that he would seek accountability “if taxpayer dollars aren’t being spent appropriately.” But he remained confident about the program, saying the state would keep investing in it. In fact, he said, “We’re going to double down.”

What’s more, lawmakers around the country are considering programs modeled on Alternatives to Abortion.

Last year, Tennessee lawmakers directed $20 million to fund crisis pregnancy centers and similar nonprofits. And Florida enacted a 6-week abortion ban while including in the same bill a $25 million allocation to support crisis pregnancy centers. John McNamara, a longtime leader of Texas Pregnancy Care Network, has been working to start similar networks in Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa. He’s also reserved the name Louisiana Pregnancy Care Network.

And U.S. House Republicans are advocating for allowing federal dollars from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — intended to help low-income families — to flow to pregnancy centers. In January, the House passed the legislation, and it is pending in the Senate. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., castigated Democrats for voting against the bill.

“That’s taking away diapers, that’s taking away resources from families who are in need,” she said in an interview with CBS News after the vote.

But, as Texas shows, more funding doesn’t necessarily pay for more diapers, formula or other support for families.

Lawmakers rebranded Alternatives to Abortion as Thriving Texas Families in 2023. The program is supposed to promote pregnancies, encourage family formation and increase economic self-sufficiency.

The state pays four contractors to run the program. The largest, which gets about 80% of the state funding, is the anti-abortion group Texas Pregnancy Care Network.

Human Coalition, which gets about 16% of the state funding, said it uses the money to provide clients with material goods, counseling, referrals to government assistance and education. Austin LifeCare, which gets about 3% of the state funding, could not be reached for comment about this story. Longview Wellness Center in East Texas, which receives less than 1% of the funds, said the state routinely audits its expenses to ensure it’s operating within guidelines.

Texas Pregnancy Care Network manages dozens of subcontractors that provide counseling and parenting classes and that distribute material aid such as diapers and formula. Parents must take a class or undergo counseling before they can get those goods.

The state can be charged $14 each time one of these subcontractors distributes items from one of several categories, including food, clothing and educational materials. That means the distribution of a couple of educational pamphlets could net the same $14 fee as a much pricier pack of diapers.

A single visit by a client to a subcontractor can result in multiple charges stacking up. Centers are eligible to collect the fees regardless of how many items are distributed or how much they are worth. One April morning, a client at McAllen Pregnancy Center, near the Texas-Mexico border, received a bag with some diapers, a baby outfit, a baby blanket, a pack of wipes, a baby brush, a snack and two pamphlets. It was not clear how much the center invoiced for these items.

McAllen Pregnancy Center and other Texas Pregnancy Care Network subcontractors were paid more than $54 million from 2021 to 2023 for distributing these items, according to records.

How much of that was for handing out pamphlets? The state said it didn’t know; it doesn’t collect data on the quantities or types of items provided to clients or whether they are essential items like diapers or just pamphlets, making it impossible for the public to know how tax dollars were spent.

Neeley said in an email that educational materials like pamphlets only accounted for 12% of the money reimbursed in this category last year, or roughly $2.4 million out of $20 million. She did not respond to questions from ProPublica and CBS News about evidence that would corroborate that number.

The way subcontractors are paid, and what they’re allowed to do with that money, raised questions among charity experts consulted for this investigation.

In the nonprofit sector, using a fee-for-service payment model for material assistance is highly unusual, said Vincent Francisco, a professor at the University of Kansas who has worked as a nonprofit administrator, evaluator and consultant over the past three decades. It “can run fast and loose if you’re not careful,” he said.

Even if nonprofits distribute items they got for free or close to it, the state will still reimburse them. Take Viola’s House, a pregnancy center and maternity home in Dallas. Records show that it pays a nearby diaper bank an administrative fee of $1,590 for about 120,000 diapers annually — just over a penny apiece. Viola’s House can then bill the state $14 for distributing a pack of diapers that cost the center just over a quarter.

But before they can get those diapers, parents must take a class. The center can also bill the state $30 for each hour of class a client attends.

Rep. Donna Howard, a Democrat from Austin, said the program could be more efficient if the state funded the diaper banks directly. Last year, she proposed diverting 2% of Thriving Texas Families’ funding directly to diaper banks, but the proposal failed.

Records show that in fiscal year 2023, Viola’s House received more than $1 million from the state in reimbursements for material support and educational items plus another $1.7 million for classes. Executive Director Thana Hickman-Simmons said Viola’s House relies on funding from an array of sources and that just a small fraction of the diapers it distributes come from the diaper bank. She said the state money “could never cover everything that we do.”

In some cases, reimbursements have created a hefty cushion in the budgets of subcontractors. The state doesn’t require them to spend the taxpayer funds they get on needy families, and Texas Pregnancy Care Network said subcontractors can spend the money as they see fit, as long as they follow Internal Revenue Service rules for nonprofits.

McAllen Pregnancy Center received $3.5 million in taxpayer money from Texas Pregnancy Care Network over three years, but it spent less than $1 million on program services, according to annual returns it filed with the IRS. Meanwhile, $2.1 million was added to the group’s assets, mostly in cash. Its executive director, Angie Arviso, asked a reporter who visited in person to submit questions in writing, but she never responded.

The nonprofit McAllen Pregnancy Center is a case study showing how anti-abortion centers can amass a surplus from the Alternatives to Abortion program, which is now called Thriving Texas Families

“This is a policy choice Texas has made,” said Samuel Brunson, associate dean for faculty research and development at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, who researches and writes about the federal income tax and nonprofit organizations. “It has chosen to redistribute money from taxpayers to the reserve funds of private nonprofit organizations.”

Tax experts say that’s problematic. “Why would you give money to a recipient that is not spending it?” said Ge Bai, a professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University.

The tax experts disagree with Texas Pregnancy Care Network’s argument that the money is no longer taxpayer dollars after its subcontractors are paid.

“It’s still the government buying something,” said Jason Coupet, associate professor of public management and policy at Georgia State University, who has studied efficiency in the public and nonprofit sectors. “If I were in the auditor’s office, that’s where I would start having questions.”

State legislators and regulators haven’t installed oversight protections in the program.

Three years ago, The Texas Tribune spotlighted the state’s refusal to track outcomes or seek insight into how subcontractors have spent taxpayer money.

Months later, Texas Pregnancy Care Network cut off funding to one of its biggest subcontractors after a San Antonio news outlet alleged the nonprofit had misspent money from the state.

KSAT-TV reported that the nonprofit, A New Life for a New Generation, had used Alternatives to Abortion funds for vacations and a motorcycle, and to fund a smoke shop business owned by the center’s president and CEO, Marquica Reed. It also spent $25,000 on land that was later registered by a member of Reed’s family to produce industrial hemp.

In an interview with ProPublica, a former case manager recalled how Reed would get angry if employees forgot to bill the state for a service provided to a client.

The former case manager, Bridgett Warren Campbell, said employees would buy diapers from the local Sam’s Club store, then take apart the packages. “We’d take the diapers out and give parents two to three diapers at a time, then she would bill TPCN,” said Campbell.

Reed declined to comment to a ProPublica reporter or to answer follow-up questions via email or text. Neeley, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network’s executive director, said the pregnancy center was removed from the program because its nonprofit status was in jeopardy, not because it had used money on personal spending. She said the network wasn’t responsible for monitoring how A New Life for a New Generation spent its dollars: “The power to investigate these matters of how nonprofits manage their own funds is reserved statutorily to the Texas Attorney General and the IRS.”

The Texas attorney general’s office would not say whether it has investigated the organization. Records show that after KSAT’s story, state officials referred the case to an inspector general and that the Texas Pregnancy Care Network submitted a report detailing how it monitored the subcontractor.

The state requires contractors to submit independent financial audits if they receive at least $750,000 in state money; Texas Pregnancy Care Network meets this threshold. However, its dozens of subcontractors don’t have to submit these audits — something experts in nonprofit practices said should be required. In the fiscal year before the alleged misspending came to light, A New Life for a New Generation received more than $1 million in reimbursements from the state, records show.

When ProPublica and CBS News asked how the Health and Human Services Commission detects fraud or misuse of taxpayer funds, Jennifer Ruffcorn, a commission spokesperson, said the agency “performs oversight through various methods, which may include fiscal, programmatic, and administrative monitoring, enhanced monitoring, desk reviews, financial reconciliations, on-site visits, and training and technical assistance.”

Through a spokesperson, Rob Ries, the deputy executive commissioner who oversees the program at Health and Human Services, declined to be interviewed.

The agency has never thoroughly evaluated the effectiveness of the program’s services in its nearly 20 years of existence.

It is supposed to make sure its contractors are meeting a few benchmarks: how many clients each one serves and how many they have referred to Medicaid and the Nurse-Family Partnership, a program that sends nurses to the homes of low-income first-time mothers and has been proven to reduce maternal deaths. The Nurse-Family Partnership does not receive Alternatives to Abortion funding.

In 2022, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network failed to meet two of three key benchmarks in its contract with the state: It didn’t serve enough clients and it didn’t refer enough of them to the nursing program. The state didn’t withhold or reduce its funding. McNamara disputed the first claim, saying the state changed its methodology for counting clients, and said the other benchmark was difficult to hit because too few clients qualified for the nursing program.

In May 2023, when lawmakers passed the bill rebranding the program, the state also ordered the agency to “identify indicators to measure the performance outcomes,” “require periodic reporting” and hire an outside party to conduct impact evaluations.

The agency declined to share details about its progress on those requirements except to say that it is soliciting for impact evaluation services. Records show the agency has requested bids.

Lawmakers decided last year against enacting requirements that would ensure certain services were evidence-based — proven by research to meet their goals — instead siding with an argument that they would be too onerous for smaller nonprofits.

Texas’ six-week abortion ban took effect in 2021, and more than 16,000 additional babies were born in the state the following year. Academics expect that trend to continue.

But the safety net for parents and babies is paper thin.

Texas has the lowest rate of insured women of reproductive age in the country and ranks above the national average for maternal deaths. It’s last in giving cash assistance to families living beneath the poverty line.

Mothers told reporters they are struggling to scrape together enough diapers and wipes to keep their babies clean. A San Antonio diaper bank has hundreds of families on its waitlist. Outside an Austin food pantry, lines snake around the block.

Howard, the Austin state representative, said ProPublica and CBS News’ findings show that the program needs more oversight. “It is unconscionable that a [Thriving Texas Families] provider would be allowed to keep millions in reserve when there is a tremendous need for more investment in access to health care services,” she said.

Do you have any tips on state-funded anti-abortion programs? Cassandra Jaramillo can be reached by email at cassandra.jaramillo@propublica.org or by Signal at 469-606-9665.

Caroline Chen and Kavitha Surana contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .