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Tag: Gov. Greg Abbott

  • Houston Lawmaker Al Green Blasts Trump for Pulling FEMA Funding During Hurricane Season

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    Texas’ six-month hurricane season just hit the halfway point, and elected officials across the state say they’re bracing themselves for delayed responses, reduced funding, and an increased strain on local resources as President Donald Trump threatens to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    U.S. Congressman Al Green, D-Houston, joined the chorus last week of representatives condemning the president’s actions and calling on state officials like Gov. Greg Abbott to do more than approve “Band-Aid bills” while Texas stands to lose $74 million because of Trump’s cuts.

    Trump has said he’ll “phase out” FEMA after the 2025 hurricane season ends in November. “We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” the president said in June.

    But the cuts have already begun. The U.S. government announced in April it had eliminated FEMA’s $4.6 billion Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program in the middle of a distribution cycle.

    Before adjourning a second special session this month, Texas lawmakers approved, in response to the July 4 Kerr County floods, a $368 million one-time appropriation from the state’s Rainy Day Fund for disaster relief, with $50 million to help local governments purchase flood warning sirens and rain gauges and $28 million for flood monitoring grants. Green said last week that’s not enough.

    “The state of Texas is not known to spend federal dollars wisely, and I’m not sure the state of Texas is prepared to handle the amount of dollars necessary if FEMA is eliminated in its entirety,” the congressman said on a press call last week. “I regret that Texas is not doing more to insist on FEMA being managed as it has been. It’s not a perfect organization but I’ve been in Congress long enough to see how FEMA has benefited my constituents.”

    “Unfortunately, it seems that if Trump can aggressively dismantle an agency, he will,” Green added. “While this is not a good time for the most vulnerable in Texas, it is a great time for us to unite, band together, and fight to protect our communities.”

    In August, Houston Controller Chris Hollins spoke at a virtual press briefing with finance chiefs from New Mexico, Vermont, and Minnesota to discuss the long-term repercussions that FEMA cuts could have on the economic health and safety of the country.

    Harris County’s population is larger than 26 individual states, so the impact of a disaster is widespread, Hollins said.

    “Houstonians deal with and live the consequences of these disasters on a regular basis,” he said. “This is not theoretical for us. There is significant human and economic pain, families who are displaced, small businesses shuttered, city and county budgets that are spread thin, and billions and billions of dollars of damage that we’re still paying for.”

    The federal government is turning disaster relief into a political game, the controller added. “These disasters, when they come, don’t check if you’re rich or poor, Black or white, Republican or Democrat,” he said. “The floodwaters do not stop at the city line because the precinct voted blue or red. When Trump Republicans, when MAGA, go after these programs like FEMA, when they kneecap HUD’s disaster recovery work, they don’t punish a city. They punish human beings.”

    Half of Houstonians can’t afford an unexpected $400 expense, Hollins added, so the impact of a storm and rising insurance premiums can be devastating, forcing people to go into debt or rebuild alone. The homes of some residents in north Houston have still not been repaired after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, he said.

    “They slashed FEMA, hollowed out staffing, they tried to kill proven resilience programs and wrapped it all in red tape that slowed the response down,” Hollins said. “That can be life or death for Houstonians and for Texans. That’s not fiscal discipline. It’s not responsibility. It’s recklessness, it’s partisan sabotage, and it’s a lack of public safety.”

    Harris County commissioners and Houston City Council members have also expressed concern that, while FEMA hasn’t traditionally swept in like a white knight and solved everyone’s problems in the wake of a disaster, the agency is relied upon for much-needed funding that state and local governments don’t have.

    Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis said last month that Trump and Abbott have attacked Harris County, not just by ignoring its needs but by “actively working to undermine our ability to serve the people who need us most.”

    “Donald Trump has slashed, and continues to slash, federal safety net programs, even as more families have fallen into poverty,” Ellis said. “Greg Abbott has imposed state revenue caps that choke local budgets — part of a broader war on local governments and working people.”

    At last week’s press briefing, Green was joined by Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert and Houston-based former FEMA Public Affairs Director Rafael Lemaitre to address how federal budget cuts are “sabotaging the safety” of Texans.

    Calvert said that 13 people in his San Antonio-area precinct died during flash flooding in June. The legislature had an opportunity to earmark funds to repair drainage and coordinate emergency systems, but didn’t do it, he said.

    “They only allocated $50 million out of the Rainy Day Fund for a state that is full of rainy days,” Calvert said. “Texas has more money in its Rainy Day Fund than almost every state in the United States combined. Whether it was Winter Storm Uri, the February freeze that we had in 2021, or a number of emergencies that are truly rainy days for communities, we’ve seen the state benefit the bankers holding onto that money a lot more than Main Street getting that money, and that is shameful.”

    Thousands of lives would be saved if state and federal governments would fund “microgrids” so hospitals and assisted living homes would be self-sustaining in a power outage, Calvert said.

    “When you start seeing microgrids funded in local communities, that’s when you’re cooking with grease,” he said. “Right now we’re not cooking with grease for a state that has a lot of emergencies.”

    “It is an emergency right now that the people in Harris County and the Houston area do not have a congressperson should a hurricane or flooding happen in their area,” Calvert said. “The fact that the governor hasn’t moved that election faster after the death of Congressman Turner is a shame, and it’s going to matter if we have an emergency.”

    Rafael Lemaitre worked as a spokesman for FEMA during the Obama administration and said last week that the agency’s importance has increased as climate change has caused natural disasters to become more frequent and more severe.

    Following his tenure with FEMA, Lemaitre moved to Houston and worked as a senior adviser to County Judge Lina Hidalgo. His family received individual FEMA assistance as disaster survivors of the 2024 derecho, he said, noting that he’s dealt with the federal agency on multiple levels.

    Lemaitre said there’s a dangerous narrative being advanced by Trump that FEMA is not prepared to handle disasters; that it’s the role of state governments.

    “That simply isn’t how disaster management operates,” he said. “During Democratic administrations, FEMA has always had a supporting role in helping states and governors in disaster response when their capacity is exceeded, which happens quite often. Even on what we call blue-sky days, FEMA has a vital role in supporting states and local communities.”

    The agency used to operate the Center for Domestic Preparedness and the National Fire Academy, where first responders trained for free, learning to respond to mass casualty incidents and biological attacks, among other things.

    “This was gutted and closed down at the beginning of the Trump administration, forcing 7,000 first responders from across the country to miss out on the vital training that makes our communities more resilient,” Lemaitre said.

    “I fear that we’re on a course to painfully relearn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina,” he added. “Folks on this call who saw that disaster unravel in real time on television probably remember that it was a bad time for emergency management. FEMA was underfunded. It wasn’t a respected agency. And we saw the result of that. We saw a bungled response to a major disaster.”

    Green said the matter of disaster response and recovery ought to be a bipartisan issue.

    “We have a president who seems to believe that Congress is subordinate to him and that he is a superior personality,” he said. “We’re trying to restore funding, but to do that, you have to have it in a bill that my Republican colleagues need to support. All of these things are very difficult when you don’t have control of the House and don’t have control of the Senate.”

    “Democratic members of Congress will work to maintain FEMA, strengthen FEMA, and get more dollars into states when these events arrive,” Green added. “We cannot eliminate the one agency that has the experience and the expertise to manage a disaster.”

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    April Towery

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  • THC Ban is Probably Dead as Texas Legislature Nears End of Second Special Session

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    The Texas Legislature passed a slew of bills in record time, knocking out high-priority GOP legislation on redistricting, the STAAR test, abortion, and bathroom safety, and nonpartisan laws to strengthen youth camp regulations and disaster preparedness. But THC reform — once designated the sole reason a special session was called — has stalled in the House of Representatives.

    The Legislature’s second 30-day special session began on August 15, following a two-week quorum break in which more than 50 House Democrats fled the state to avoid voting on a congressional redistricting map that they claim is racially discriminatory. Republicans have been working feverishly to make up for lost time, and they’ve also signaled that they’re ready to go home now.

    University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus said it looks like lawmakers are close to the finish line and will not call a third special session. That means THC reform is likely dead in the water, the professor said.

    “Regulating something this broad and financially impactful was going to be a challenge regardless of when it happened,” Rottinghaus said. “For them to put it last means it’s probably not going to happen. It’s a politically very dicey issue where many of the other things that passed were easier for Republicans to present on a unified front. [Legislators] are ready to go back to their real lives, and I think THC reform is going to be one of the casualties.”

    While the Democrats were away, the lawmakers who stayed in Austin teed up their priority bills, which were sure to pass in the majority-GOP House and Senate once a quorum was restored, Rottinghaus said.

    “Republicans were coiled up and ready to pounce,” he said. “Once the Democrats came back, the floodgates were open and the Republicans were foot on the gas, straight ahead, no brakes, with their legislative agenda.”

    But it appears that THC and the powerful multibillion-dollar hemp lobby proved too challenging to tackle in just 30 days, the professor added.

    “THC is a little harder because it cuts across the ideological spectrum,” he said. “It’s a much more challenging political issue to deal with. As a policy matter, the regulatory approach is going to be something that they want to take a more careful look at. A 30-day session is not going to be enough to do everything they need to do to put these regulations in place.”

    “Regulation of something this important and financially impactful, on the fly, would be a potentially serious problem for the state,” he added. “They have to get it right, and I think as a result they wanted to just take a knee and wait until they can have more time to study the issue.”

    Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick once lauded the THC ban as one of the most important pieces of legislation facing the state government, calling it a life-or-death issue. A previous iteration of what is now Senate Bill 6 was approved by both chambers in the regular session that ended in June but vetoed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

    The governor, at the time, was facing pushback from the hemp industry and said he wanted to make revisions before signing it into law. Patrick’s ban would prohibit the sale of products containing any detectable amount of cannabinoid other than CBD and CBG, non-intoxicating components of cannabis.

    Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, proposed alternative bills that push for regulation and decriminalization. Neither has gotten a hearing. If no action is taken on the ban, political experts say hemp-derived THC will remain legal in Texas but manufacturers and distributors should expect more enforcement of the laws already on the books.

    Under current law, products like smokable vapes, gummies, candy, and drinks may not contain more than 0.3 percent concentration, or intoxicating levels, of THC. There has been little enforcement in the past, according to the Texas Tribune, because of the burden it places on the criminal justice system to test the products and cite retailers who have mislabeled packages.

    The House convened on Tuesday at noon. Calendar items included HB 18, which would ban lawmakers from raising money while breaking quorum, and SB 54, which aims to remove bureaucratic voter registration hurdles for residents who move within the same county and don’t have a current address on their voter ID card. The THC bill hasn’t yet been scheduled for a House committee hearing.

    Rottinghaus said that even if nothing else happens before the Legislature gavels out, the accomplishments of the second special session have been impressive.

    “The number of bills and the scope of bills have been pretty successful in advancing the governor’s agenda,” he said. “A lot of these things were pent up and had already been vetted before the Democrats broke quorum and so now this is just executing some of the discussion that was either public or had already been talked about in legislative chambers. This is the culmination of a lot of demand.”

    Redistricting
    The most contentious item on Governor Abbott’s massive special session agenda was congressional redistricting. Republicans acknowledged publicly that it was an effort to secure five GOP seats in the U.S. House; Democrats labeled it a power grab from President Trump.

    After Democrats returned from the quorum break, the map swiftly passed the House on August 20 and the Senate on August 23. Abbott signed it into law a few days later. Amid accusations that the map exhibits racial gerrymandering and violates the Voting Rights Act, a federal court hearing is set for October.

    Flood Bills
    Nonpartisan legislation to improve emergency response and impose safety standards for youth camps was filed soon after 137 people died in the July 4 Hill Country floods.

    The bills stalled during the quorum break, with Democrats accusing the GOP of putting redistricting before the flood victims and Republicans saying they could have passed the laws sooner if the Dems hadn’t fled the state.

    The Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act passed on August 22 and disaster preparedness legislation, including civil warning sirens to alert residents of severe flooding, was also approved.

    STAAR Test
    After years of debate over how to better administer standardized testing in public schools, both chambers voted last week to eliminate the STAAR test and replace it with three shorter exams staggered throughout the year.

    Rottinghaus said the Democrat walkout actually unified Republicans on the STAAR test when previously they hadn’t been able to reach a compromise.

    “They were pretty far apart in the regular session with some pretty significant differences,” he said. “With enough time and some incentive from Democrats to unify, Republicans were able to find a path forward on STAAR testing.”

    Lt. Gov. Patrick said in a statement that the new system, which will be implemented in 2027, is a victory for Texas parents, educators, and students.

    “For far too long, Texas students and teachers have been burdened by the STAAR test, a cumbersome one-size-fits-all assessment that fails to actually measure student educational achievement,” he said. “The Texas Senate passed HB 8 to phase out the STAAR test once and for all, replacing it with a system to assess student growth and improve educational outcomes.”

    Republican Priorities
    Following the contentious, nationally publicized quorum break, Republicans used their leverage to pass a “bathroom bill” and stricter abortion laws.

    “Now it’s become a process issue where Republicans are not willing to play nicely and pursue a standard legislative process,” Rottinghaus said. “They want to push things as fast as they can because they want to get out of town. My guess is that, regardless, we would have seen a lot of these bills pass, but it was the way in which they passed that definitely illustrated a lot of hard feelings between Republicans and Democrats.”

    The widely criticized abortion bill passed on August 28, after Republican lawmakers rejected “every single Democratic amendment designed to protect Texas women from preventable deaths,” according to Texas House Democrats and the Texas Women’s Health Caucus.

    Texas already has one of the most restrictive “near total” abortion bans in the country, meaning women can’t get a legal abortion but they could order medication online from another state. Attorney General Ken Paxton has pursued prison time for midwives allegedly offering care or resources to women who are seeking to terminate a pregnancy.

    The new law allows private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, distributes, mails, prescribes or provides abortion medication for a minimum of $100,000 and “creates a slush fund system where bounty hunters can direct nearly all their winnings to extremist organizations,” according to those who oppose it.

    “This law will kill Texas women, and Republicans know it,” said Texas House Minority Leader Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston. “This extremist legislation puts Texas politicians in charge of women’s medicine cabinets while creating a surveillance state where your neighbors can profit from reporting your medical decisions.”

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    A sign at Gibsons hardware store in Weatherford designates that only those who are assigned women at birth are permitted in a women’s restroom.

    Photo by April Towery

    The bathroom bill, Senate Bill 8, was approved last week after hours of testimony that went late into the night. Some opponents refer to it as “legalized bathroom stalking” and say it is designed to create “bathroom witch hunts for political profit against Texans across the state.”

    Rep. Jessica González, Texas House LGBTQ Caucus chair, said in a statement that the bill is a “hateful and disrespectful attack on transgender Texans [that] puts millions of innocent, vulnerable lives, including those of children, at risk by encouraging vigilantism in public spaces, all to score political points for Republicans.”

    There’s confusion about how the law prohibiting those whose birth gender is female from using male restrooms and vice versa will be enforced. Some speakers during the floor debate questioned whether women with short hair who favor slacks over dresses will have to carry their birth certificates with them when they use the restroom. A $25,000 fine can be assessed against government facilities that don’t comply with the law. Individuals will not be fined.

    Wu said, “The bathroom witch hunt bill is nothing but another cruel political stunt from Republicans who continue to target vulnerable Texans instead of addressing the real challenges facing our state.”

    The Independent Women’s Law Center and the nonprofit Texas Values praised the Texas Legislature for being one of 17 states to legally define “man” and “woman.”

    “It is long overdue that we put protections in place for women and girls in their private spaces in Texas,” said Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of government relations for Texas Values. “No woman or girl in the gym locker room should have to constantly look over her shoulder to see if a man is there watching her shower or undress. Our Texas legislature has made the message loud and clear: You don’t mess with Texas women and their dignity.”

    Another GOP-backed bill, which will allow Texans to purchase ivermectin over the counter from a pharmacy, was widely debated on the House floor and passed 88 to 51 on August 27.

    What’s Left
    Rottinghaus said that of the remaining items that haven’t been addressed, more attention could be given to property taxes, taxpayer-funded lobbying, and punishment for quorum breakers, but there’s nothing that has to happen.

    “We haven’t seen a lot of overt pressure from the governor,” Rottinghaus said. “That’s not his style exactly, especially when it comes to a broad agenda. He’ll identify specific things and then push those, but in general, he’s not telling the legislature to do everything on his list. That would be impractical. We haven’t seen much pressure from him, but I think [Speaker of the House Dustin] Burrows feels the pressure.”

    The professor emphasized that this is a part-time legislature and it’s reasonable to expect that they may return soon to their families and professional obligations.

    “It’s probably to [Abbott’s] benefit to take a victory lap, take credit for what’s been done and let the legislators go home,” he said.

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    April Towery

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  • Approved Flood Bills Designed to Address “A Preventable Failure” at Hill Country Youth Camps

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    Houston businessman Matthew Childress should have spent last week moving his 18-year-old daughter Chloe into her first college dorm at the University of Texas.

    Instead, Childress was at the Texas Capitol, pleading with lawmakers — alongside dozens of other parents whose daughters died at Camp Mystic — for safety measures including evacuation routes and emergency management plans. Within 24 hours of his testimony, the Texas Legislature would pass a package of youth camp safety laws, promising they wouldn’t let such a senseless tragedy happen again on their watch.

    Chloe Childress died because, according to her father, she followed instructions outlined in a vague and flimsy training manual: Camp staff were told that, in case of a flood, they and the campers were to stay in their cabins. So that’s what they did when heavy rains hit the Christian girls’ camp on the Guadalupe River.

    Twenty-five campers and two counselors, Kinkaid School graduate Chloe Childress and Memorial High School graduate Katherine Ferruzzo, died at Camp Mystic, among at least 137 total who were swept away in the July 4 Hill Country floods.

    The daughters of Camp Mystic were deemed “Heaven’s 27,” the namesake of a series of laws passed Friday mandating that youth camps have disaster plans in place or lose their licenses to operate.

    No evacuation route or instructions for seeking higher ground were posted inside the Bubble Inn cabin, where Chloe and Katherine were assigned. Parents of survivors in other cabins told stories last week of children leading each other in song and prayer in what would be some of their final moments.

    “We tried our best not to think about the horror, the terror, and the fear that happened in that cabin that night,” Matthew Childress said. “Fourteen girls scrambling for their lives because they did what they were told to do. Chloe and Katherine both died as heroes trying to save all those sweet little girls.”

    Lawmakers on Gov. Greg Abbott’s Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding heard testimony on August 21 from 16 parents who lost their children in the flood. The following day, state representatives passed an amended hybrid of House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1, known as the Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act, which aims to better prepare campgrounds for natural disasters. It’s now awaiting Abbott’s signature.

    Ben Landry spoke of his daughter Lainey, a 9-year-old student at St. Michael’s Catholic School in Houston, who also died at Camp Mystic. Landry said the tragedy was preventable and caused by years of neglect, ego and complacency.

    “These children were put to sleep in a floodplain with no plan for a flood,” he said.

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    CeCe Williams-Steward, center, testified that her 8-year-old daughter Cile is still missing.

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    One grieving mother, CeCe Williams-Steward, said her 8-year-old daughter Cile is still missing. “For Cile, camp meant adventure, memories, friendships, and lessons to carry for a lifetime,” Williams-Steward said. “For me, it meant watching my child grow and learn but always under the assurance that she would be safe. Joy and growth cannot exist without safety.”

    “Obvious common-sense safety measures were absent,” she added. “Protocols that should have been in place were ignored. As a result, my daughter was stolen from us. Cile’s life ended not because of an unavoidable act of nature but because of preventable failures. Our Cile was swept away along with other bright, beautiful girls. She was stolen from her family, from her future, from the world she lit up with her independence and spunk.”

    Requirements under the Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act include installing emergency rooftop egress ladders on cabins in the floodplain, developing an emergency management plan, streamlining notification procedures when a child is injured or missing, increasing training requirements, and maintaining operable weather alert radios in each cabin. Under the new law, the Department of State Health Services will not license camps that don’t meet the requirements.

    Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, said camps that opt to “amend themselves out of a floodplain at the federal level” will not be exempt from the state requirements. “The federal government can grant a waiver, but it will not impact these reforms,” he said. “No more waivers. You’re going to [meet the requirements] or you’re going to close down.”

    “Had the requirements of [Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act] been in place the night of July 4, I have no doubt that some lives, if not all lives, would have been saved on the camp front,” Perry said.

    The new rules will be in place by April 1 or before the next summer camp season begins. Camp Mystic offered its support for the legislation in a social media post but has not publicly released its plans for rebuilding ahead of next summer’s camping season. The most recent public statement on the organization’s website is from July 12.

    The camp safety act passed unanimously in the Senate. Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, cast the lone vote against the measure in the House, citing concerns about rigorous amendments proposed by Democratic legislators that he believed would “shut down Christian camps.”

    Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, carried the bill in the House and said his granddaughters were picked up from Camp Mystic the weekend before the floods, something he’s thought about every night since July 4.

    “Make no mistake, House Bill 1 is fundamentally a bill about failure,” Darby said. “The camp failed these girls. The county failed them. The river authority failed them, and, in a larger sense, their government failed them. In some ways, I know I have failed them. I take this personally. In 10 sessions and now, I think, 16 special sessions, I’ve never filed a bill on campground safety. I could have, but I didn’t.”

    Officials from the Department of State Health Services, Camp Longhorn, Camp La Junta, and Texas Association of Campground Owners testified in support of the bill and a DSHS associate deputy commissioner agreed to immediately provide an inventory of resources needed to ensure the new provisions are implemented before the next camping season. An amendment introduced prior to the bill’s passage provides funding for more state inspectors.

    Camp Mystic passed an inspection two days prior to the July 4 flood, and legislators said they wanted to understand how that happened. Prior to the passage of the law, camps were required to meet 15 standards and 86 inspection criteria in the state health and safety code. A DSHS spokesman said the agency verifies that camps have an emergency plan to be used in case of a disaster, serious accident, epidemic, or fatality. They also verify a ratio of one supervisor per 10 campers.

    “I think we had a lot of complacency and box checking that becomes routine over time,” Perry said.

    Testimony from Camp Mystic parents was heart-wrenching, prompting legislators to dab their eyes, apologize for the lack of oversight that’s gone on for years, and promise that such a tragedy would not happen again.

    “I can’t relieve you of the guilt and the grief that you feel, but I want you to let us relieve some of the responsibility that you feel,” Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, told the parents. “We can take that on and we can make sure this doesn’t happen again. This bill is going to pass. These camps are going to be safe, and that’s our commitment to you.”

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    Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, offered condolences to the “Heaven’s 27” families during an August 21 hearing.

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    Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, appeared to react emotionally to the words of one parent, Lars Hollis of Bellville, who questioned why the camps didn’t appear to subscribe to a simple mantra he’d learned as a child in Boy Scouts: “Be prepared.”

    “I just want you to know you’re being heard,” Kolkhorst said. “You’re impacting lives. This tragedy is going to impact future lives. These lives of these precious children … we will never unhear the stories and we will make changes.”

    The parents who testified said they are united in ensuring youth camp safety, noting that they spoke on behalf of many more who were unable to attend the hearing or just couldn’t bear the pain of reliving the loss again.

    “My daughter should still be here,” said Clarke Baker of Beaumont, father to 8-year-old Mary Grace. “Her death was 100 percent preventable. Complacency, among other things, led to the deaths of 27 amazing, innocent, beautiful girls. We can’t let complacency claim the life of another child.”

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    Blake and Caitlin Bonner testified at an August 21 committee hearing in support of the Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act.

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    Caitlin and Blake Bonner told stories of their 9-year-old daughter Lila, who they described as a rule follower who would have done what she was told. “I sent her to Camp Mystic to grow closer to God, make lifelong friends, try new activities, encourage independence, to spend time outside away from a screen surrounded by like-minded girls that I knew she would cross paths with for life,” Caitlin Bonner said.

    “I naively assumed she was safer at camp than anywhere else. When I think about the trauma and fear that our girls endured, it makes me physically ill. This loss is one that no parent should have to endure.”

    Lila’s father Blake Bonner added that what happened at Camp Mystic wasn’t an act of God; it was an act of complacency.

    “A common tragic theme you will find among the 27 angels we lost is that they were dutiful. They were perfect children who followed the rules,” he said. “They did exactly what they were told to do that morning: stay in their cabins. Our daughters paid the ultimate price for their obedience to a plan that was destined to fail.”

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    Brandt Dillon echoed the concerns of other Camp Mystic parents that the tragedy was preventable and an act of complacency.

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    Brandt Dillon, father of 8-year-old Lucy, a straight-A student at Houston’s Spring Branch ISD, said his family’s “world was shattered by a tragedy that was 100 percent preventable.”

    “She was my best friend, my greatest contribution to society,” Dillon said. “Today I sit before you, a broken man. When Lucy left for camp, it was the very first time she had ever slept away from us. We entrusted her care to the camp operators and never for a moment did we believe she would be returned to us in a casket. I will never forget that emotionless call that she was simply unaccounted for.”

    Matthew Childress lauded the unity of the parents who lost children at Camp Mystic and their efforts to get the bills passed.

    “I’m honored to be the father of a hero,” he said. “These are the realities that we will live with for the rest of our lives. As you said, Senator Kolkhorst, don’t unhear them. We need you to remember them. We need you to be tortured by them, as we are every single day.”

    “We have to see this through,” Childress added. “There is nothing we can do to bring our daughters back but we can honor them by ensuring their deaths lead to meaningful change. For now, the time is to act and support SB 1 for my hero Chole Madeline Childress, the rest of Heaven’s 27, and for the millions of campers and parents in the future so this does not happen again.”

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    April Towery

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  • Redistricting Map May Not Be the Success Story Republicans Think It Is

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    Texas Republicans celebrated a victory last week as the House and Senate approved new congressional districts amid criticism that the lines are racially gerrymandered. But the success of the redistricting effort hinges heavily on whether previous GOP voters will stay true to their party in 2026.

    House Bill 4, introduced by Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, was approved August 20 in an 88-52 vote. During an eight-hour discussion in Austin, Hunter stood firm in his position that although mid-decade redistricting is unusual, it’s not illegal, nor is drawing new boundaries in an effort to gain more GOP congressional seats, which was his intent when he introduced the legislation.

    The Senate adopted the new map along party lines in an 18-11 vote early Saturday morning. Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, was planning a filibuster but Republicans blocked it in a rare procedural motion that ended the debate.

    “The One Big Beautiful Map has passed the Senate and is on its way to my desk, where it will be swiftly signed into law,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement. “I promised we would get this done, and delivered on that promise.”

    University of Houston law professor David Froomkin agreed that a state is entitled under existing federal law to engage in “extreme partisan gerrymandering for partisan advantage,” but it doesn’t appear that’s what’s happening, he said.

    “If the state were in fact doing that, the map would be perfectly legal, but I think there’s strong reason to think that’s not in fact what the state has done,” he said. “They’re invoking that logic, but likely disingenuously. The premise underlying this redistricting plan was that there was a racial problem with the prior map that needed to be corrected.”

    “That’s the position that the Department of Justice took in demanding that the state of Texas engage in this redistricting effort,” he added. “It’s a rationale that the governor accepted as the original justification for a mid-decade redistricting. Republicans backed off of that logic once it became clear that it would pose a legal obstacle to the new map. A court will have to determine whether the new rhetoric that the map is motivated by politics not race is the true motive.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2017 Cooper v. Harris case that the North Carolina General Assembly “used race too heavily” in redrawing two Congressional districts following the 2010 Census.

    In modern-day Texas, Republicans originally theorized that the state’s prior congressional maps, approved after the 2020 Census, were racially gerrymandered and in order to resolve that problem, it was necessary to engage in race-conscious redistricting, Froomkin said.

    Democrats were quick to point out that at the time the maps were approved in 2021, Republicans testified under oath that they were “race blind.”

    The 2021 map is being challenged in federal court, with civil rights groups alleging they violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The U.S. Department of Justice was originally among the plaintiffs in that case and withdrew when Donald Trump became president.

    “In fact, the state and the Department of Justice were incorrect to think that the prior map was a racial gerrymander,” Froomkin said, adding that he believes the map approved last week is a racial gerrymander. “To be clear, I also think they’ve violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is a separate issue but one that no doubt will be litigated.”

    “It’s not just a power grab, it’s an attack on free society,” he added. “What Texas and other states are doing with these gerrymanders is trying to insulate an authoritarian government from democratic accountability.”

    Texas Democrats — bolstered by constituents who oppose the map and party officials including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — avoided voting on the map for about two weeks, fleeing the state to break quorum. A few Democratic legislators, including Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston, didn’t come back. Those who did voted against the map and vowed to challenge it in court.

    The new Texas map is poised to add five GOP seats in 2026 primaries, an effort to retain President Trump’s narrow majority in Congress. California Gov. Gavin Newsom promptly launched a redistricting effort in his state to add more blue seats and counter the effort in Texas. Under California law, this still has to be approved by voters in November.

    The districts planned for a flip from blue to red are District 9 (held by Rep. Al Green of Houston), District 28 (held by Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo), District 32 (held by Rep. Julie Johnson of Farmers Branch), District 34 (held by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen), and District 35 (held by Rep. Greg Cesar of Austin). At least six other districts were redrawn to improve GOP performance. Almost all of Texas’ 38 districts were altered.

    “Four of the five new districts are majority-minority Hispanic,” Hunter said before last week’s vote in the House. “Each of these newly-drawn districts now trend Republican in political performance. While there’s no guarantee in electorate success, Republicans will now have an opportunity to potentially win these districts.”

    click to enlarge

    The Texas House of Representatives approved new congressional districts on August 20, with Democrats vowing to challenge the map in court.

    Texas Legislative Council

    But the new map doesn’t guarantee Republican victories in the 2026 midterms, Froomkin said.

    “The new map is premised on a guess about the voting behavior of Latino Texans, and that guess might turn out to be wrong,” he said. “The maps will go into effect. The question is, will the people put up with it? We can already see a backlash taking place. The Trump administration is horrifically unpopular. Guesses about how people are going to vote in 2026 based on the 2024 numbers may be misleading.”

    Members of the Texas Majority PAC, which advertises that it is dedicated to electing a Democrat to statewide office, gathered for a Zoom call last week to analyze redistricting data. Katherine Fischer, director of the PAC, said Republicans will almost certainly flip Districts 9 and 32.

    “We think it is possible, though challenging, to hold CD 35,” she said. “We think it is very possible to hold CD 28 and CD 34. Those are the Valley and South Texas ones. We believe that CD 15, which is currently a Republican district, will be the most competitive it’s been since 2020 redistricting and is a potential flip for Democrats.”

    The strategy behind the new map is based on the assumption that Trump’s 2024 numbers are an accurate metric to determine how competitive the districts are, Fischer said, adding that she thinks the Republicans overplayed their hand.

    “[Governor] Abbott was tasked with finding five new seats for Trump, but there are too many Democrats in Texas to gerrymander them away completely,” she said. “The data tells us that Texas Democrats can compete to hold most of these seats, and may have new flip opportunities. We intend to fight for every single seat.”

    Former Texas Sen. Wendy Davis joined the call and said the maps reveal the likelihood that the GOP’s “voter suppression efforts” will backfire. “Communities that Republicans hoped to suppress are energized, and Democrats are ready to turn that energy into real, competitive elections,” she said.

    Froomkin said once Governor Abbott signs the bill into law, the maps will be used for the 2026 midterm elections. No member of Congress loses their seat immediately but some, if not all, of the five Democrats in the seats slated for flips will not seek re-election in their now heavily Republican districts.

    Rep. Al Green has said he could run in Congressional District 18, where a special election is planned in November to fill the seat vacated by Rep. Sylvester Turner’s death earlier this year. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, Rep. Jolanda Jones, and former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards are among more than 20 candidates who have filed for the CD 18 seat. Former candidates Corisha Rogers and Rain Eatmon dropped out of the race last week, saying they would endorse Menefee.

    Referencing the fact that the 2021 map is still under review in federal court, Froomkin said such cases take a long time to adjudicate.

    “They involve the presentation of a lot of factual information that takes time to gather,” he said. “I expect that Voting Rights Act challenges to the new map, similarly, will take a lot of time to adjudicate.”

    While the plaintiffs won’t necessarily be just the Democratic lawmakers who fought fiercely against the legislation at the Capitol last week, many of those legislators are likely to be involved and are attorneys who appear prepared to gather technical information about the decomposition of districts and the voting behavior of those who live there.

    Once the new map is approved, the case against the 2021 version doesn’t necessarily become moot just because it’s no longer in effect, Frromkin explained.

    “It could be the case that a court would grant preliminary relief to plaintiffs challenging the new map and say that map can’t immediately go into effect, in which case the old maps, at least for the time being, would still be in effect,” he said.

    Republicans Double Down

    Prior to the passage of the bill, some GOP lawmakers appeared to be frustrated with their party leaders. Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows threatened to remove quorum-breaking Democrats from their seats, assess hefty fines, and arrest them. Not much of that has happened, leading some GOP legislators and watchdogs to believe that the party was rolling over for the Dems.

    Letters were issued Friday afternoon notifying Texas House Democrats who fled the state that they’d have to pay about $9,000 each in fines for “impeding the action of the House.”

    Shortly after the Speaker’s opening remarks early last week, the quorum breakers were asked to sign permission slips so a DPS trooper could tail them until the Legislature reconvened a couple of days later. Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, refused and spent two nights in the House of Representatives. At least six other lawmakers joined her on the second night.

    When Collier went into a House bathroom for a Zoom call with Newsom and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, during the August 20 floor debate, authorities accused her of committing a felony.

    Froomkin, the law professor, said Abbott and other Republicans have made some threats, particularly that of criminal prosecution, that they weren’t authorized to make. And when the July 7 letter came from Trump’s Department of Justice strongly suggesting that Texas redraw its map, Abbott didn’t have to do it, Froomkin said.

    “The governor clearly made a number of threats that were beyond his legal power,” he said. “It seems like those threats were effective. The Democrats returned sooner than a lot of people expected they would, and I think that is likely attributable to the governor’s threats of criminal prosecution, which I found shocking. The suggestion that state officials would use their official powers to persecute members of the opposition simply for taking positions on legislative matters is extremely unusual and disturbing.”

    “It seems like we’re entering a new era in politics in which incumbents try to use every ounce of their power in order to try to maintain their power,” he added. “There’s no doubt that the goal of the new map is straightforwardly to dilute and diminish the political power of communities of color, and it is part of a broader plan to do that on the national stage.”

    But most Republican lawmakers have doubled down on the decision to redistrict, lauding the measure as a historic victory for the right and sharing their endorsements from Trump and Abbott.

    Reps. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, announced a celebratory dinner toasting the passage of the maps last week, and Cain promptly filed the day after the House vote to run for the newly drawn Congressional District 9.

    Burrows said when the House convened on August 18 that his responsibility now that a quorum was established was to maintain an atmosphere of decorum and respect until “the job is finished.”

    “No one here needs a reminder that the last few weeks have been contentious,” he said, referencing the walkout of at least 50 Democrats in early August. “From this point forward, the rules of engagement are clear. Debate is welcome but personal attacks and name-calling will not be tolerated.”

    Name-calling ensued almost immediately, primarily accusations from Democrats that the bill was racist and that some of its authors and supporters were too.

    Hunter emphasized that the law allows redistricting for political performance. He repeatedly explained that the map was developed by Butler Snow LLP law firm at his direction and became frustrated with several Democratic legislators who questioned him about the process, saying they were permitted to interrupt and talk over him.

    “I’m standing with Republican members,” he said. “What’s wrong with Republicans standing up and stepping up and being honest, which you don’t like? The Supreme Court says we can do political and partisan redistricting. We will not agree on this issue. We will push forward.”

    Rep. Katrina Pierson, R-Rockwall, also took issue with the accusations.

    “You call my voters racist, you call my party racist, but yet we’re expected to follow the rules,” she said. “Well, that double standard ends today. I have traveled all over this country for the better part of a decade and I can tell you that more and more minority voters are voting their values, not their skin color. And many of them are moving to Texas to escape the blue states because their values have been successfully gerrymandered into suppression.”

    click to enlarge

    Rep. Katrina Pierson, R-Rockwall, said the new redistricting map is not racist but reflects the will of the people and the majority party.

    Screenshot

    Pierson further pointed out that Trump won Hispanic voters in Texas. “I get it, you don’t like that,” she said. “In 2024, Democrats lost. President Trump won big. You’re losing at the ballot box but you will not silence the majority in the state of Texas. You can throw your tantrum. You can leave, you can run, and you can ignore the will of the rest of the voters, but it’s honestly time to pick a new narrative. The racist rhetoric is old. News flash: Democrats do not own minorities in Texas.”

    Many Democratic lawmakers allege the redistricting effort involves “packing and cracking,” or widening the GOP advantage by unconstitutionally compressing people of color into some districts while spreading them throughout others to reduce their ability to elect their preferred candidates.

    It’s hard to predict what will happen in a legal battle because the U.S. Supreme Court has “sent some signals that the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is uncertain,” Froomkin said.

    “There are two cases before the Supreme Court that put the future of the Voting Rights Act in question,” he said. “In one of them, the court is planning to rule in a few months on the constitutionality of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and a number of experts expect that this court will be hostile to section 2. That will of course dramatically shake up the redistricting process, particularly in southern states like Texas.”

    “In the absence of the Voting Rights Act, southern states would be able to completely gerrymander maps so as to deny minority communities any political representation, as they largely did before 1965,” he added.

    The actions of the federal government in micromanaging state legislatures is unprecedented, the law professor added. “That is another really surprising development,” he said. “The Republican Party used to, at least rhetorically, be a party that embraced federalism. Today, a Republican administration is trying to aggrandize federal power at the expense of states, including by coercing states to participate in the federal executive’s agenda.”

    What’s Next for Special Session No. 2

    Sixty-nine bills were read into the record on August 18 and referred to committees. More followed throughout the week, ranging from THC regulation to STAAR test elimination. Most were aimed at improving emergency preparedness and enhancing youth camp safety standards, a response to the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods. Several have already passed at least one chamber.
    Public hearings were held last week before the Select Committee on Flooding and Disaster Preparedness, at which several parents testified about the loss of their children at Camp Mystic during the Hill Country floods.

    Democratic lawmakers criticized Republicans for not putting flood victims ahead of redistricting. Republicans said they could have passed bills sooner if the Democrats hadn’t fled the state.

    Following the House passage of the redistricting bill, Abbott announced the addition of three more items to the special session agenda: Legislation imposing punishment for legislators who are willfully absent during a session; authorizing the purchase of Ivermectin over the counter; and proposing a groundwater study of East Texas aquifers by the Texas Water Development Board.

    Burrows has said he hopes to finish the second special session by addressing all 22 items on the governor’s agenda before Labor Day weekend.

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  • Special Session No. 2 is Underway As Democrats Make Their Way Back to Texas

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    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the House Republicans are hoping to make up for lost time in a second special session that began Friday and includes all 18 items on the previous agenda, including redistricting, plus a new proposal for legislation to improve youth camp safety.

    Abbott’s first special session adjourned last week without signing any new bills into law, due to the absence of a quorum prompted by House Democrats who left the state to avoid voting on new U.S. Congressional boundary lines. The rare mid-decade redistricting initiative was ordered by President Donald Trump to pick up five Republican seats in U.S. Congress ahead of the 2026 primaries.

    The Democrats announced that they would return to Texas if the Legislature adjourned and if California introduced a redistricting plan that “would neutralize the Trump-Abbott voter suppression effort.” Both of those demands were met, and a quorum of lawmakers was expected to be in Austin by Monday, August 18.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom said his state will call a special election to seek voter approval for a new congressional map that would pick up more blue seats, countering the effort in Texas.

    The Democrats still think the proposed Texas redistricting maps are racist and illegal. Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, refiled House Bill 4 on Friday. Democrats say they’re preparing for a legal battle in court.

    “Under the advice of legal counsel, Democrats must return to Texas to build a strong public legislative record for the upcoming legal battle against a map that violates both the current Voting Rights Act and the Constitution,” officials with the Texas House Democratic Caucus said in a press release on August 14.

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    At least 50 Texas Democrats have been absent from the Capitol for about two weeks.

    Screenshot

    Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, announced the adjournment of the first special session on Friday morning and told lawmakers not to stray far from the Capitol, as he expected the governor would call a second special session “very, very soon.” A second special session began two hours later, and a quorum was still not present.

    “I want to point out that today’s outcome may be a win for Texans and for the rest of the governor’s call,” Burrows said. “If our absent colleagues had shown up this morning, they could have used a few remaining days to stall, or possibly even block, the passage of critical legislation: property tax relief, protections for the unborn, safeguarding women’s private spaces, and reining in runaway local taxes.”

    “By following Governor Newsom’s lead, instead of the will of Texans, they have allowed us to reset the clock,” he said, adding that he hopes to accomplish every item on the agenda and adjourn the second special session before Labor Day weekend.

    A quorum of at least 100 state representatives and 21 senators — two-thirds of each elected body — is needed not just to pass redistricting legislation but to vote on disaster response, elimination of the STAAR test, THC reform and numerous other measures on Abbott’s special session call.

    Scott Braddock, editor of the nonpartisan Texas political newsletter Quorum Report, said on social media last week that the Democrats are “about to come home to lose here while rallying their party to maybe win nationally.”

    The Republican-majority Legislature has accused the Democrats of being cowardly and ducking their duties at the expense of important disaster response bills that would help families in the Texas Hill Country who are still recovering from deadly July 4 floods.

    The Democrats have said they wanted to consider flood legislation but Abbott pulled a fast one and instead made redistricting the top priority.

    “We do not believe stealing five seats to attempt to determine the outcome of the next election is the right thing to bring us back for,” said Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, in a Zoom livestream from Chicago last week. “Yes, we are in the position of breaking quorum, which is an extraordinary and exceptional act but it is the only tool that we have in our toolbox, as the minority, to try and defeat [redistricting].”

    The Dems would ultimately like Abbott to set aside redistricting, which technically doesn’t have to be taken up until the 2030 Census. Several have pushed for an independent redistricting commission to redraw the lines.

    “I’ll offer it again and if Governor Abbott wants to accept that bill and put it up for a hearing, we can find out if both sides are really willing to do this,” Johnson said. “I would love it if the solution to all of this is that the people rise up and say, ‘Hey, politicians, stop drawing your lines. We’re going to draw them for you.’ To me, that’s the ultimate win.”

    Rep. Jon Rosenthal, D-Houston, is also on board with an independent redistricting commission.

    “From my perspective, we should be doing what the people want us to do,” Rosenthal said, noting that about 99 percent of those who spoke at public hearings before the quorum break were against mid-decade redistricting. “I would love to see federal law enact a nonpartisan redistricting commission process.”

    The redistricting conversation isn’t just about Texas, the lawmakers said.

    “One of our big pushes, one of our big priorities, is for this to become a national conversation,” Rosenthal said. “Redistricting in Texas in the midterm just for the purpose of rigging an election will affect the entire country.”

    Representatives from both parties have indicated they’re not backing down.

    “Trump thought he could easily get his way in Texas with compliant Republicans, but Democrats fought back ferociously and took the fight to Trump across America,” Texas Dems said in a statement. “We will return to the House floor and to the courthouse with a clear message: the fight to protect voting rights has only just begun.”

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    April Towery

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