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WASHINGTON (AP) — For two weeks, Donald Trump has welcomed Elon Musk into his world. On Tuesday, it was Musk’s turn to play host to the president-elect.

Trump flew to South Texas to watch as Musk’s SpaceX launched a Starship rocket near the Mexican border. Trump listened intently as the world’s richest man explained how the test would work and demonstrated with a model. And then Trump squinted into the bright sky to watch liftoff.

It didn’t go perfectly -– the reusable booster did not return to the launch pad as it had done on a previous test last month. Instead, the booster was directed to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

But Trump’s presence at the launch was a remarkable display of intimacy between the two men, one with implications for American politics, the government, foreign policy and even the possibility of humans reaching Mars.

Musk spent around $200 million to help Trump beat Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race, and he’s been given unparalleled access. He’s counseled Trump on nominees for the new administration, joined the president-elect’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and been tapped to co-chair an advisory panel on cutting the size of the federal bureaucracy.

In addition to political influence, Musk could benefit personally as well. SpaceX, his rocket company, has billions of dollars in government contracts and the goal of eventually starting a colony on Mars. He’s also CEO of Tesla, which manufactures electric vehicles, and has battled with regulators over safety concerns involving autonomous driving.

 

AUSTIN (AP) — Texas’ education board on Tuesday advanced a new Bible-infused curriculum that would be optional for schools to incorporate in kindergarten through fifth grades, one of the latest Republican-led efforts in the U.S. to incorporate more religious teaching into classrooms.

The vote moves the Texas State Board of Education one step closer to signing off on what is known as the “Bluebonnet” textbook, which drew hours of often emotional testimony from school teachers and parents earlier this week.

The board is expected to hold a final vote on the measure Friday.

The curriculum — designed by the state’s public education agency — would allow teachings from the Bible such as the Golden Rule and lessons from books such as Genesis into classrooms. Under the plan, it would be optional for schools to adopt the curriculum though they would receive additional funding if they did so.

Educators, parents and advocates weighed in Monday at the State Board of Education’s final meeting of the year, where many opponents argued that the proposal’s emphasis on Christian teachings would alienate students of other faith backgrounds. Those in favor testified that it’ll give students a more holistic educational foundation.

Educator Megan Tessler testified Monday that the plan contradicts the public school mission.

“This curriculum fails to meet the standard of an honest, secular one,” Tessler said. “Public schools are meant to educate, not indoctrinate.”

Others strongly backed the idea.

“Parents and teachers want a return to excellence,” said Cindy Asmussen, testifying Monday. “Stories and concepts in the Bible have been common for hundreds of years,” and that, she said, is a core part of classical learning.

Religious experts and the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning watchdog group that monitors the state’s education board, said the curriculum proposal focuses too much on Christianity and also dances around the history of slavery.

The program was designed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year after passage of a law giving it a mandate to create its own free textbook. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has publicly supported the new materials.

Republican lawmakers in Texas have also proposed displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms and are likely to revisit the issue next year.

The proposal to incorporate religious teaching in Texas public schools mirrors similar efforts around the country, which are also drawing court challenges.

In Oklahoma, state officials are seeking to include the Bible in public school lesson plans. But a group of students’ parents, teachers and others recently filed suit, seeking to stop Oklahoma’s top education official from carrying out the plan intended for students in grades 5 through 12. The lawsuit before the Oklahoma Supreme Court also asks the court to stop the Republican state superintendent from spending $3 million to purchase Bibles in support of the plan.

In Louisiana, a new state law sought to have the Ten Commandments displayed in all public classrooms, but a federal judge recently quashed that requirement. U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles in Baton Rouge said last week that the Louisiana law had an “overtly religious” purpose, and rejected state officials’ claims that the government can mandate the posting of the Ten Commandments because they hold historical significance to the foundation of U.S. law. His opinion noted that no other foundational documents — including the Constitution or the Bill of Rights — must be posted.

HOUSTON – The publication Smart Cities says Amtrak is inching closer to developing true high-speed rail, not in the heavily-traveled Northeast Corridor, but in Texas. Andy Byford, Amtrak’s senior vice president of high-speed rail development, said on a Friday webinar that Amtrak sees Texas as being in need of better passenger rail service, especially among Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio: the region known as the Texas triangle. “The state of Texas is growing exponentially, so we have big plans for all three sides of that triangle,” he said. Of all the potential high-speed rail routes in the U.S., he believes that Dallas to Houston “represents the one that is probably the most compelling.”

Byford joined Amtrak in April 2023; he previously ran the Toronto Transit Commission, the New York City Transit Authority and Transport for London. In August 2023, Amtrak announced that it was exploring a partnership with Texas Central Partners, which had been working for over 10 years on a high-speed rail line connecting Dallas and Houston. Earlier this year, Amtrak announced it was taking the lead on the Texas Central project. “We inherited this from Texas Central, which was a private entity that had made progress on this and gained some key decisions,” Byford said on the webinar. An Amtrak spokesperson in an email described the relationship between the two entities as a collaboration. More than four years have elapsed since the Federal Railroad Administration signed off on the environmental review for the project, which means the environmental impact statement needs to be reviewed to make sure nothing significant has changed, Byford explained on the webinar. Amtrak advanced the project to the third phase of the FRA’s Corridor Identification Program on Sept. 11, which enables Amtrak to coordinate with the FRA on preliminary engineering and environmental review.

AUSTIN (AP) — Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Monday, directing the Texas Department of Public Safety to target and arrest people trying to execute influence operations on behalf of the Chinese government to return dissidents to China.

Abbott’s action is in response to “Operation Fox Hunt,” a Chinese government initiative that is intended to root out corruption in that country but in practice has also been used to intimidate Chinese citizens living abroad, harass Chinese pro-democracy activists and even forcibly repatriate dissidents and government officials in some cases. The U.S. justice department has successfully prosecuted individuals in connection to the Chinese initiative.

“The Chinese Communist Party has engaged in a worldwide harassment campaign against Chinese dissidents in attempts to forcibly return them to China,” Abbott said in a news release. “Texas will not tolerate the harassment or coercion of the more than 250,000 individuals of Chinese descent who legally call Texas home by the Chinese Communist Party or its heinous proxies.”

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

Conor Hagan, a spokesperson for the FBI office in Houston, said the agency has pushed a public campaign since January to stop the harassment, intimidation and assault of people in the United States by foreign governments. The FBI is looking for potential victims in the Houston area who have been harassed by agents of the Chinese government.

Hagan said the Chinese government has targeted its own citizens living within the United States as well as naturalized and U.S.-born citizens who have family overseas.

“Their actions violate U.S. law and our treasured American individual rights and freedoms,” Hagan wrote in an email.

The FBI office in Houston has set up a hotline for people who believe they are victims of these types of actions by the Chinese Communist Party: (713) 693-5000..

State Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, who was born in China and immigrated to the United States applauded Abbott’s move Tuesday.

“The ability to speak your mind and live freely are the core promises of the American Dream; and any who seek to take that away stand against Texas values,” Wu said.

Last year, Wu criticized Texas Republicans for pushing legislation that would ban citizens and foreign entities from countries including China from buying land in Texas. He urged Abbott to also support Chinese immigrants by opposing such legislation.

The Chinese government has set up “police service stations” across the world, according to Abbott’s executive order, and one such station was rumored to be in Houston.

“We will continue to do everything we can to protect Texans from the unlawful and repressive actions of the Chinese Communist Party,” Abbott said.

Abbott charged DPS with identifying and charging people suspected of crimes related to Operation Fox Hunt; work with local and federal authorities to assess incidents where foreign governments are harassing Texans; provide policy recommendations on how to counter these threats and set up a hotline to reported suspected acts of coercion related to “Operation Fox Hunt.”

On Thursday, Abbott issued a second executive order aimed at hardening the systems of state agencies and public higher education institutions from being accessed by hostile foreign nations.

DENTON (AP) — Katherine Mansfield found out that the title of her spring semester course at the University of North Texas had been changed via email.

The graduate level class that she taught to seasoned teachers who were trying to earn a master’s in educational leadership used to be called “Race, Class and Gender Issues in education.” Now, it would be called “Critical Inquiry in Education.”

The course description was also tweaked. Before the course said students would learn how to be “culturally responsive” to their own students and how to “debunk stereotypes and negative views” about students going to school in places where “race, class and gender inequalities exist.”

Now, the course says students will “critically examine current topics related to providing leadership for various student groups.”

The course change was one of at least 78 edits that UNT, the Denton campus with 47,000 students, made to course titles and descriptions in the College of Education’s graduate program. The university also made around 130 edits to undergraduate courses in the same college.

In an email obtained by the Tribune and first reported by the student newspaper, NT Daily, the changes were made after administrators learned of a directive that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick gave to state lawmakers ahead of the upcoming legislative session to examine programs and certificates at public higher education institutions that maintain diversity, equity and inclusion policies and “expose how these programs and their curriculum are damaging and not aligned with state workforce demands.”

The directive builds on Senate Bill 17, a state law that eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion offices on university campuses and prohibited state universities from using funding to support DEI efforts. The law, which went into effect in January, did not apply to course instruction and research.

According to the email from professor Lok-Sze Wong to other faculty in the UNT College of Education, administrators decided this was the best way to protect faculty from being further targeted because course titles and descriptions are “public facing.” Faculty have until fall 2025 to adjust their courses to comply with the new course descriptions, the email said.

The course edits are just one example of how faculty at UNT feel university administrators are overreacting to SB 17, according to interviews with faculty and emails obtained by the Tribune. Faculty say that by reviewing syllabi and courses, the university is overcomplying with a law that doesn’t require such a step.

A university spokesperson denied the changes were related to SB 17 and said the changes to course names, content and readings was part of an effort to ensure the curriculum is in line with state teaching education standards.

“Regardless of their intent, the UNT administration conducted a campaign of censorship of content in more than 200 courses,” said Brian Evans, president of the Texas conference of the American Association of University Professors. “It’s censoring what topics students can discuss and think critically about. In order for students to have the freedom to learn, faculty need to have the freedom to teach.”

Other faculty, including Mansfield, feel the edited course titles and descriptions are administrators’ way of preparing for what’s to come in January when lawmakers come back to Austin.

Last week, at a Texas Senate Higher Education Subcommittee meeting, state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said that while DEI-related curriculum does not violate the law, it “contradicts its spirit.”

“The curriculum does not reflect the expectations of Texas taxpayers and students who fund our public universities,” he said. “It also falls short of equipping graduates with practical knowledge and skills that employers seek.”

Since January, UNT administrators and their counterparts at universities across the state have closed DEI offices and reassigned staff to new roles.

Three faculty senate subcommittees at UNT focused on faculty of color, LGBTQ faculty and women were shuttered as well as the Multicultural Center, which housed multiple student services. Library staff were told they couldn’t host events for Pride Week.

While students protested the changes, faculty said they were especially taken aback during a faculty senate meeting last month when Chief Compliance Officer Clay Simmons said the university was interpreting the law to include “exceptions” to the carveout for teaching and research.

“So if you’re doing research on homelessness, you have to be very careful if you’re going to focus on a certain identity within homelessness,” Simmons told faculty. “So if you’re looking at LGBTQ homeless individuals, then you’ll have to make sure that that is narrowly tailored within the scope of work.”

He also showed a presentation slide that said “classroom lessons on DEI topics must be limited to elements of the course.” For example, “a class on mathematics may not include an activity on SB 17-prohibited topics, whether graded or not.”

Simmons told faculty that research would not be exempt unless it contributes to “generalizable knowledge,” a federal definition that applies to research findings that can be applied to a larger population than those studied in the particular research.

Last week, PEN America, a New York-based free speech organization, slammed Simmons for these comments, calling it “the most extreme case of overcompliance with a censorship law we have ever seen.”

“Making up provisions in SB 17 that do not exist is the hallmark of a higher education system that has gone totally rogue,” said Jeremy Young, PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program director, in a press release. “SB 17 already restricts diversity initiatives and programming on campus, which is bad enough. But by extending the reach of this law into areas explicitly protected by the legislation itself, UNT is not only misinterpreting the law but also putting faculty members’ academic freedom in severe jeopardy.”

A few weeks after the faculty senate meeting, Simmons sent an email out to the faculty senate clarifying that research is exempt from SB 17.

“Faculty members are entitled to full academic freedom in research and in the dissemination of the results,” Simmons wrote.

Adam Briggle, a professor and director of graduate studies of philosophy at UNT, said the university’s willingness to preemptively self-censor when the law doesn’t require it is troubling.

“I’m losing faith a little bit that UNT would ever stop this slide,” he said. “When do we actually push back? Where’s the line here? Because you can see how little by little, this could just become a total violation of academic freedoms.”

AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports Gov. Greg Abbott signaled strong support for a reemerging nuclear power industry Monday, publishing a report that proposes creating a state-backed loan program to develop nuclear power plants. A report commissioned by Abbott’s office proposed a Texas Nuclear Power Fund. The task force report calls on the Texas Legislature to pass a slate of bills supporting nuclear power, including creating a university research network, providing government grants to build a technology supply chain and bolstering the nuclear power supply chain. “Texas is the energy capital of the world, and we are ready to be No. 1 in advanced nuclear power,” Abbott said in a news release. “By utilizing advanced nuclear energy, Texas will enhance the reliability of the state grid and provide affordable, dispatchable power to Texans across the state.”

Public Utility Commissioner Jimmy Glotfelty, an Abbott appointee to the state’s energy regulatory board and head of the governor’s Texas Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group, said the proposed Texas Nuclear Energy Fund would be similar to a $5 billion loan program lawmakers created in 2023 that offers taxpayer-backed, 3% interest loans to companies that build natural gas power plants. “We hope that the Legislature will agree that [the fund] mitigates risk,” Glotfelty said Monday at a nuclear power conference in Austin, adding that loans would fund roughly 60% of development costs and would be repaid over 20 to 25 years. “We’re helping reduce the front-end cost by putting state dollars to work.” The Public Utility Commission advanced several applications for proposed natural gas power plants for loans earlier this year, although the program has faced lawmaker scrutiny after one of the proposals was headed by a woman convicted of a federal crime. The commission has since removed that application from contention. The fund’s administrator, Deloitte, refunded $7.3 million of its contract over failing to question that proposal. The accounting firm is conducting a due diligence review of loan applications that is expected to take up to eight months, according to PUC spokeswoman Ellie Breed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump headed to Brownsville, Texas, on Tuesday to watch one of Elon Musk ’s companies test its Starship rocket, the latest sign of a deepening bond between the president-elect and the world’s richest man.

Ever since Musk began camping out at Mar-a-Lago after the election, there’s been speculation over when Trump would grow tired of having him hanging around and giving him advice on running the country.

But Tuesday’s outing was a remarkable display of intimacy between the two, one with implications for American politics, the U.S. government, foreign policy and even the possibility of humans reaching Mars.

Musk spent around $200 million to help Trump beat Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race, and he’s been given unparalleled access. He’s counseled Trump on nominees for the new administration, joined the president-elect’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and been tapped to co-chair an advisory panel on cutting the size of the federal bureaucracy.

Musk could benefit personally as well. SpaceX, his rocket company, has billions of dollars in government contracts and the goal of eventually starting a colony on Mars. He’s also CEO of Tesla, which manufactures electric vehicles, and has battled with regulators over safety concerns involving autonomous driving.

“Trump has the biggest possible regard for people who break the rules and get away with it,” said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “Musk has demonstrated extraordinary accomplishment in doing that.”

To top if off, Musk owns the social media company X, formally known as Twitter, which he has harnessed as an influential perch to promote Trump and his agenda.

“Stop the Swamp!” he wrote on Tuesday as he shared a warning that entrenched Washington interests are trying to undermine Trump before his inauguration.

Before the election, Musk rejected the idea that he was expecting any favors in return for supporting Trump in the presidential race.

“There is no quid pro quo,” he posted on X in September. “With a Trump administration, we can execute major government reform, remove bureaucratic paperwork that is smothering the country and unlock a new age of prosperity.”

However, Trump has not gone anywhere without Musk in the two weeks since beating Harris. Musk joined Trump at a meeting with House Republicans in Washington and sat next to him at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York. The trip to Texas for the rocket launch will be Trump’s third time outside Florida since the election.

Much of Trump’s activity is happening with little public access for the press. Unlike his predecessors, he has opted against regularly making his travel plans or events open to journalists.

The relationship between Trump and Musk was not always so close.

Two years ago, Trump was mocking Musk in stump speeches and Musk was saying it was time for Trump to “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”

“Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America,” Musk wrote on social media.

But Musk swiftly endorsed Trump after the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. He quickly became a central figure in Trump’s orbit, appearing at times more like his running mate than Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

Trump started boasting about Musk’s accomplishments at campaign rallies, such as when Starship’s reusable rocket booster returned to the launch tower and was caught by mechanical arms.

“Those arms grab it like you grab your baby, just like you grab your little baby. And it hugged it and just put it down, and there it was,” Trump said.

Musk was with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on election night and has spent much of the two weeks since there. Trump’s granddaughter Kai Trump posted a photo of her with Musk at one of Trump’s golf resorts, writing that Musk was “achieving uncle status.”

Last week, Musk appeared in a golden ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, seated in the center of the room as a guest of honor at an event. Trump, in his remarks at the black tie event, said Musk’s IQ is “about as high as they can get” and praised him as “a really good guy.”

“He launched a rocket three weeks ago and then he went to Pennsylvania to campaign because he considered this more important than launching rockets that cost billions of dollars,” Trump said.

He joked about Musk’s constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, saying, “He likes this place. I can’t get him out of here.”

He added, “And you know what, I like having him here.”

Musk was so heralded by Trump’s crowd that he was invited to speak on stage at the event after Trump, in which he spoke of the president-elect’s victory like he was his running mate.

“The public has given us a mandate that could not be more clear,” Musk said of the election results.