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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A panel of appeals judges has ruled that Tennessee can begin enforcing a law that requires pornographic websites to verify their visitors’ age as the First Amendment debate rises to the U.S. Supreme Court this week for oral arguments over a similar Texas law.

On Monday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 3-0 that Tennessee’s law can take effect while a legal challenge continues. A district court judge had largely temporarily blocked the law from kicking in on Jan. 1, citing free speech protections for adults and saying the law would be ineffective at shielding minors from harmful content.

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult entertainment trade group, sued over Tennessee’s law and those in a half-dozen other states, including Texas. Some 19 states have passed similar laws, the coalition says.

The 6th Circuit panel wrote that the district judge didn’t show that any potentially unconstitutional aspects of Tennessee’s law would outweigh its constitutional uses. It described the law’s goals as “to protect children from the devastating effects of easy access to on-demand pornography.”

Other appeals courts have reversed lower court decisions that had blocked similar laws in Texas and Indiana, the panel wrote. The Supreme Court declined to halt Texas’ law in April while a legal challenge by the Free Speech Coalition continues, with oral arguments Wednesday.

“We see no reason to keep Tennessee’s law on ice while Texas and Indiana may enforce theirs (against at least one of the same Plaintiffs), especially when the Supreme Court will soon offer guidance on the standard of review we should apply,” the 6th Circuit ruling says.

After the decision, the website Pornhub began blocking access in Tennessee. The website had already halted access in 16 other states with verification requirements it has called “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous” and not properly enforced, according to its parent company, Aylo. The company advocates for age verification on individual devices.

Tennessee’s law would require porn websites to verify visitors are at least 18 years old, threatening felony penalties and possible civil liability for violators running the sites. They could match a photo to someone’s ID, or use certain “public or private transactional data” to prove someone’s age. Website leaders could not retain personally identifying information and would have to keep anonymized data.

Age verification would be required if one-third of a website’s content is considered harmful to minors under state standards.

The Free Speech Coalition has argued the law would be ineffective, unconstitutional and force people to transfer sensitive information.

Meanwhile on Monday, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sued Seattle-based SARJ LLC, alleging the company is violating Kansas’ law by operating 13 pornographic websites without “age-gating technology” ensuring visitors are 18 or older.

The consumer protection lawsuit requests potentially millions of dollars in damages — up to $10,000 for each time someone in Kansas accessed one of the websites, and up to $10,000 for each day the company was not in compliance with the law.

In blocking Tennessee’s law, U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman in Memphis wrote that Tennessee’s requirement would not prevent minors from accessing adult sites using VPNs, or virtual private networks, that mask a user’s location. The law would also not stop them from viewing pornographic material on dark corners of the internet — or via social media sites, which would likely be shielded by the one-third content threshold, Lipman said.

The judge said the law’s impact could be overly broad, potentially affecting other plaintiffs such as an online educational platform focused on sexual wellness. She also noted that Tennessee’s definition of “content harmful to minors” extends to include text.

Lipman is an appointee of former President Barack Obama. Former President George W. Bush appointed two of the 6th Circuit judges. President-elect Donald Trump appointed the third.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, who applauded the ruling, noted that the age verification requirement passed unanimously in the Republican-supermajority Legislature.

“As the Court of Appeals noted, this law seeks to stem the flow of toxic content to kids and keep adult websites adults-only,” Skrmetti said in an emailed statement.

Similar Florida and South Carolina laws kicked in Jan. 1. Another age verification law takes effect in July in Georgia.

AUSTIN (AP) — A push by Texas’ hard right to widen control in the state Capitol fell short Tuesday after House lawmakers rejected its choice for the powerful speakership amid a Republican feud accelerated by the historic impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Instead, new House Speaker Dustin Burrows won the job with the support of Democrats, who favored him over a challenger backed by the GOP’s emboldened right.

The outcome is a victory for Texas Republicans’ establishment wing, and it’s possible that Democrats could still lose influence under the new leadership. The race deepened divisions within the GOP, partly driven by Republicans who say an agenda that includes some of the toughest laws in the U.S. over abortion and immigration doesn’t go far enough.

“He’s a leader who will at least have a conversation,” Democratic state Rep. Toni Rose said in a nomination speech for Burrows.

Burrows was challenged by state Rep. David Cook, who pledged to block Democrats from running committees in the House — a longstanding bipartisan tradition in a chamber that has historically been a more moderate balance to the hard-right-leaning Senate.

Burrows will lead one of the state’s highest offices after a dramatic bowing-out of the former House speaker, Dade Phelan, who lost favor with the hard-right faction of his party after Paxton’s impeachment. The state Senate ultimately acquitted Paxton, who in recent weeks campaigned against Republicans who sought to deny Cook’s victory.

The newly elected speaker has few ideological distinctions between himself and Cook, but his opponent came to be the choice of some Republicans who believe Democrats have too much control over the House.

The House’s failure to approve taxpayer funds for private schools in 2023 also intensified Republican squabbles in the run-up to November’s elections, when Republicans expanded their already commanding majority and gained ground on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Texas in recent years has passed some of the nation’s toughest restrictions on abortion, immigration and voting. Republicans this year have proposed bans on public funds for gender-affirming care for adults and giving in-state college tuition for students without legal status in the U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — While Republican states were working to limit school history lessons and ban transgender athletes, President Joe Biden’s education chief says he was focused on what matters: putting more social workers in schools, expanding summer school and building a pipeline of new teachers.

In an interview during his last days in office, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he sought distance from the battles waged by Republican governors who he says were out to make a name for themselves.

“I’m not going to get distracted by culture wars,” Cardona said. “It’s nonsense, and I think the people that spew it, they make a fool of themselves. I don’t need to help them.”

Cardona said he wants to be remembered for “substance, not sensationalism.” He helped schools reopen after the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. He oversaw a historic infusion of federal aid to America’s schools. Under his watch, more than 5 million Americans got student loan cancellation.

Yet his time in office will also be remembered for the politics swirling around him. Conservatives and some experts now say COVID school reopenings were too slow, pointing to ongoing academic shortfalls and concerning trends in youth mental health. Even after the pandemic, education became a battleground, as conservatives rallied to rid what some see as “wokeness” being promoted by educators in the classroom. Republican states passed laws limiting what schools can teach about race and sexuality, and many adopted laws and rules banning transgender athletes in school sports.

Cardona said he did what he could to push back. The Education Department investigated civil rights complaints in cases of alleged discrimination. He issued what was seen as a landmark rule expanding Title IX, a sex-discrimination statute, to protect LGBTQ+ students.

But he ran up against the limits of his authority. A federal judge scrapped the Title IX rule, and Republican states ignored his pleas to promote diversity in education.

“We saw in this country what I think is a step backwards in terms of student rights,” he said. “The reality is, the federal government has a limited role in state policy.”

Cardona, 49, came into office after a rapid rise in the world of education. The son of Puerto Ricans, he spent years as a fourth-grade teacher, a principal and a district administrator before becoming Connecticut’s education chief. Biden had promised to appoint a secretary with teaching experience as a foil to Trump’s first education secretary, pro-school-choice philanthropist Betsy DeVos.

Early in his tenure, Cardona tried to use the bully pulpit to bring Republican governors in line. In letters to the governors of Florida and Texas, Cardona sparred over mask mandates and COVID testing. He says he changed course after finding that’s what they wanted — a national platform to win attention before the 2024 presidential election.

He said it wasn’t a good use of his time “going tit-for-tat with a governor who’s hell-bent on being the most anti-Biden so that he could make it on the presidential ballot.”

Messages left with the offices of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott were not immediately answered.

The political fights extended to the courts, where Republican states successfully killed some of Biden’s signature education plans, including widespread student loan cancellation, a more generous student loan repayment plan, and his Title IX expansion.

Other plans withered after failing to gain support in Congress, including a push for free community college.

Yet Cardona says there were more victories than losses. Under Biden, the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students saw its biggest increase in a decade. More than 1 million public workers got student loans canceled after the Education Department retooled a troubled program. New legislation allowed schools to hire 16,000 mental health professionals.

“What we did is going to have a tremendous impact in our schools,” he said. “When you have more school social workers, psychologists, more reading teachers, more after-school programs, more summer programs than in the history of our country, there’s 50 million kids out there that are going to benefit from that.”

Cardona sought to play down what critics say was one of the lowest points of his tenure — a bungled overhaul of the federal financial aid form known as FAFSA. Congress ordered the Education Department to simplify the notoriously complex form, but a series of glitches led to delays in college financial aid decisions for months.

Critics called it a crisis and predicted that the frustration would deter some students from going to college at all. Cardona disputed the idea, citing new data from the National Student Clearinghouse finding that enrollment of college freshmen increased this fall.

Cardona called the FAFSA update a trying time that “really tested us.”

“And in my opinion,” he said, “we passed the test.”

In a farewell speech earlier Tuesday, Cardona urged his departing colleagues not to despair, even as they wonder if the next administration will undo policies and slash budgets. Cardona said he’s leaving with hope “because I never, ever bet against our nation’s teachers and students.”

They are the ones “who will write the next chapter, who will decide the fate of public education,” he said. “There’s no one education secretary or president that does that, and no one leader can break our resolve.”

DALLAS — There is a growing risk that the solar power and utility-scale batteries the Texas power grid relied on last summer may be inadequate to meet an expected surge in electricity demand in coming years. Additionally, extreme cold poses different challenges for solar and battery output to overcome than extreme heat, according to a new study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

As the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) forecasts accelerated load growth due to anticipated data center construction and electrification trends, the current generation mix and market design should garner increased scrutiny, wrote the study’s author Garrett Golding, assistant vice president for energy programs at the Dallas Fed.

“Rising solar and battery output in ERCOT clearly enabled a summer of triple-digit heat without the close calls of previous summers and with lower prices to boot,” Golding wrote. “However, the ground is beginning to shift as load is poised for a long climb higher and expected generation installation gets pushed to its limits.”

Other key points in the post include:

Between 11a.m. and 2 p.m. in summer 2024, solar output averaged nearly 17,000 megawatts (MW) compared with 12,000 MW during those hours in 2023. Between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., discharge from battery facilities averaged 714 MW in 2024 after averaging 238 MW for those hours in 2023.

On Aug. 20, when a new load record was set, battery discharge also set a record of 3,927 MW at 7:35 p.m. that evening. ERCOT avoided sending a conservation appeal on that day. Solar and battery output have continued to grow since then.

972 MW of new thermal power plant capacity is expected to enter service within the ERCOT area by summer 2026 versus an additional 22,991 MW of new solar generation.

Peak load can occur early in the morning before the sun rises on cold winter days (when solar can’t contribute any output). Peak load can last for a longer period, too, straining the typical one- to two-hour discharge capacity of the current battery storage fleet within the ERCOT service area.

Market signals are required for development of adequate generating capacity to meet the highest load scenario, even if that scenario is just for one hour over the course of an entire year—or longer, Golding wrote.

“ERCOT’s energy-only market design and new incentive structures such as the Texas Energy Fund do not appear adequate for the magnitude and speed of load growth ERCOT forecasts,” Golding wrote.

TEXAS – The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas lawmakers will return to Austin this week with a budget surplus of nearly $24 billion, buoyed by growing tax revenue and a stalled school funding increase, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said Monday. “Texas is in good financial shape,” Hegar said when he announced the 2026-2027 biennium revenue estimate on Monday. Lawmakers will have $194.6 billion in funds available for general-purpose spending this session, a roughly 1% decrease from the money available during the 2024-2025 biennium. Last session, lawmakers convened with a “once-in-a-lifetime” cash surplus, much of which they spent on property tax relief for homeowners. Now, Hegar said, the Texas economy “will continue to normalize after the profound disruptions of the pandemic, dramatic recovery when COVID restrictions were lifted, and high inflation that accompany a booming economic growth.”

Hegar attributed much of the state’s surplus to “prudent decisions by the Legislature last session to do one time expenses, not spend all the dollars, to be cautious,” he said. Some of the state’s nearly $24 billion cash surplus comes from $4.5 billion that was set aside last session for school funding and a school voucher program but never enacted. Gov. Greg Abbott has said creating a voucher program is his top legislative priority, and he has refused to take up increased public school funding until it passes. In 2023, state lawmakers allocated $18 billion to property tax relief, and they are likely to consider passing further tax breaks onto homeowners this session. Lawmakers have also signaled they will tackle the skyrocketing cost of home insurance, which is now among the most expensive in the country. Hegar noted that insurance tax collections, which make up a small share of the state’s revenue, skyrocketed in the past two years, jumping by nearly 16% in 2022 and more than 30% in 2023, compared to roughly 5% growth in prior years.

DALLAS (AP) – Southwest Airlines is hitting the pause button on some of its hirings, internships and employee events this year as the company looks to lower costs.

“We are limiting discretionary costs, including holding on the Southwest Rallies for this year, as we focus on reducing costs,” the company said in a prepared statement on Tuesday. “We’re also pausing on most summer internship positions (honoring offers already made) and pausing all noncontract internal and external hiring.”

Southwest said that it will continue to evaluate its hiring needs on an ongoing basis to determine when it makes the most sense to restart hiring.

Back in September Southwest announced that it would revamp its board and that its chairman would retire in 2025, in a partial concession to hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, which has been pushing for changes at the airline.

Elliott, the fund led by billionaire investor Paul Singer, has built a minority stake in Southwest and advocated for changes it says will improve the company’s financial performance and stock price.

The two sides reached a settlement in October. At the time, Southwest said that Chairman Gary Kelly and six board members would depart on Nov. 1 and be replaced by five Elliott-backed candidates and a former Chevron executive.

Southwest was a profit machine for its first 50 years — it never suffered a full-year loss until the pandemic crushed air travel in 2020. Since then, the company has been more profitable than American Airlines but far less so than Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.

Southwest was a scrappy upstart for much of its history. It operated out of less-crowded secondary airports where it could turn around arriving planes and take off quickly with a new set of passengers. It appealed to budget-conscious travelers by offering low fares and no fees for changing a reservation or checking up to two bags.

But Southwest now flies to many of the same big airports as its rivals. With the rise of “ultra-low-cost carriers,” it often gets undercut on price.

As part of its efforts to turnaround the business, Southwest has announced plans to increase revenue by converting nearly one-third of its seats to premium ones with extra legroom. It will also begin assigning seats — ending the longtime practice of letting passengers pick their own seats after boarding the plane. And it is pursuing partnerships with international airlines, starting with Icelandair, to offer destinations beyond North America and Central America.

In November the Dallas-based airline offered buyouts and extended leaves of absence to airport workers to avoid what it called “overstaffing in certain locations,” which it blamed on a shortage of new planes from Boeing.

Shares of Southwest rose slightly in morning trading.

Gov. Greg Abbott threatened Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh III’s job over claims the university broke the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The threat came after conservative activist Christopher Rufo shared a university email inviting some staffers and PhD students to attend a conference that limited participation to people who are Black, Hispanic or Native American.

On Monday, someone asked Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton on social media whether they were going to tolerate the behavior.

“Hell, no,” Abbott replied hours later on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It’s against Texas law and violates the U.S. Constitution. It will be fixed immediately or the president will soon be gone.”

The A&M email said the university’s general counsel had confirmed that the conference complied with the state’s DEI ban.

Senate Bill 17, which took effect last year, prohibits public universities not only from having DEI offices, but from compelling any person to provide a DEI statement or undergo DEI training and giving preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.

On Tuesday, Welsh released a statement that the university “will continue to honor both the letter and intent of the law.”

“Texas A&M does not support any organization, conference, process or activity that excludes people based on race, creed, gender, age or any other discriminating factor,” the statement said. “The intent of SB-17 is very clear in that regard.”

This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune. You can read the original article by clicking here.