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HOUSTON (AP) — Kimberly Rubit had one priority in mind as Hurricane Beryl ripped through Houston this summer: her severely disabled daughter.

The 63-year-old worked nonstop to prevent Mary, 42, from overheating without air conditioning, water or lights after Beryl knocked out power to their home for 10 days. At least three dozen other people suffered heat-related deaths during the extended outage.

“It was miserable,” Rubit said. “I’m sick of it.”

Electric grids have buckled more frequently and outages have become longer across the U.S. as the warming atmosphere carries more water and stirs up more destructive storms, according to an AP analysis of government data. In the Pacific Northwest this week, a “ bomb cyclone ” caused roughly half a million outages.

People with disabilities and chronic health conditions are particularly at risk when the power goes out, and many live in homes that lack the weatherizing and backup power supplies needed to better handle high temperatures and cold freezes, or can’t pay their electricity bills, said Columbia University sociomedical sciences professor Diana Hernandez, who studies energy instability in U.S. homes.

At any given time, one in three households in the U.S. is “actively trying to avoid a disconnection or contending with the aftermath of it,” Hernandez said.

In Texas, as another winter approaches, people can’t shake fears of another blackout like the one during a cold freeze in 2021 that left millions without power for days and killed more than 200 people. Despite efforts to create more resilience, a winter storm that powerful could still lead to rolling blackouts, according to ERCOT, which manages most of the state’s power grid.

Beryl also knocked out power to millions for days, sickening many in the sweltering July heat. Local and state officials showered criticism on CenterPoint Energy, Houston’s power utility, saying it should have communicated more clearly, taken more preventive measures such as tree trimming before the storm hit and repaired downed power lines more quickly. The utility’s response remains under investigation by the Texas attorney general.

CenterPoint says it is focused now on improving resiliency, customer communications and community partnerships with the one defining goal: “to build the most resilient coastal grid in the country that can better withstand the extreme weather of the future.”

Texas lawmakers, meanwhile, are debating whether assisted living facilities need more regulation. One suggestion: requiring them to have enough emergency generator fuel to power lifesaving equipment and keep indoor temperatures safe during an extended blackout, as Florida did after a scandal over hurricane-related nursing home deaths.

The legislative panel also reviewed emergency responses this month. Regulated facilities and nursing centers fared better than places such as senior communities that aren’t subject to strict oversight, according to city and state officials. This meant hundreds of apartment complexes catering to older adults, as well as private homes, were likely more susceptible to losing power and going without food.

“We’ve got to find a way to mark these facilities or get it entered into the computer dispatch systems,” said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. “There are so many places in our own city that we have no idea until that 911 call comes in to that facility,” he said.

Texas energy companies have been required since 2003 to provide advance notice of scheduled outages to medically vulnerable households that submit a form with physician approval. But that law didn’t require the utilities to share these lists with state or local emergency management agencies.

Numerous states have similar regulatory requirements and 38 have policies aimed at preventing disconnections during extreme weather, according to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. In Colorado, medically vulnerable residents are protected from disconnection for up to 90 days. In Arkansas, utilities can’t disconnect power to people who are 65 or older if temperatures are forecast to reach above 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34 Celsius).

In Houston, Rubit and her daughter share one of the roughly 3,000 households where unreliable power can quickly spiral into a life-and-death issue because at least one person requires a medical device powered by electricity, according to public filings from CenterPoint. The utility offers such households payment plans to keep the electricity on when they fall behind on their bills.

The utility’s efforts bring little solace to community members at a Houston living center for seniors, Commons of Grace, where outages have become a haunting facet of life for more than 100 residents, said Belinda Taylor, who runs a nonprofit partnered with the managing company.

“I’m just frustrated that we didn’t get the services that we needed,” Taylor said. “It’s ridiculous that we have had to suffer.”

Sharon Burks, who lives at Commons of Grace, said it became unbearable when the power went out. She is 63 and uses a breathing machine for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which causes shortness of breath. She had to resort to her battery-powered breathing pump, which isn’t meant to be used for long periods.

“I didn’t expect anything from CenterPoint,” Burks said. “We’re always the last to get it.”

AUSTIN (AP) – The Texas Supreme Court on Friday overturned a lower court ruling that state Attorney General Ken Paxton testify in a whistleblower lawsuit at the heart of impeachment charges brought against him in 2023.

The court on Friday said Paxton’s office does not dispute any issue in the lawsuit by four former Paxton employees and agreed to any judgment in the case.

“In a major win for the State of Texas, the state Supreme Court has sided with Attorney General Paxton against former OAG employees whose effort to prolong costly, politically-motivated litigation against the agency has wasted public resources for years,” a statement from Paxton’s office said.

An attorney for one of the plaintiffs declined immediate comment, and a second attorney did not immediately return a phone call for comment. Continue reading Texas Supreme Court overturns ruling that state Attorney General Ken Paxton testify in lawsuit

AUSTIN – KXAN reports that virtual currency mining facilities within the state’s power grid region have to register with the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). The facilities must provide information to the PUCT annually about the facility’s location, ownership, and demand for electricity. The rule was passed by the 88th Texas Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2023. It is aimed at giving the PUCT and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) a better awareness of the virtual currency miners operating around the state.

“It’s an important first step to get their hands around the potential issues,” said Dr. David Tuttle, a research associate and lecturer at the University of Texas Austin’s Energy Institute. Tuttle said these facilities can use a lot of energy. He noted how they can also quickly adjust their power consumption based on the wholesale price of electricity. “What they could do is radically reduce their load at the right times, and then their measurement for their peak load would be very low, and they would get a very low allocation of cost,” Tuttle said. “But the infrastructure cost would be still there to meet their peak load, and who would pay for it? Every other customer in ERCOT.”

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton failed in every one of his attempts to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to halt President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. But the Texas Republican’s repeated losses might have actually helped clear the way for President-elect Donald Trump to roll out an immigration crackdown that includes mass deportations, detention of migrant families and more. The Texas losses underscore how little appetite the high court has for challenges to presidential authority on immigration matters. Some immigration law experts say the rulings against Texas during Biden’s term could make it more difficult for blue states to try and stop Trump’s crackdown in the courts. The Texas losses “dramatically softened the ground that President Trump has to work with,” said Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney based in D.C.

That is not to say that Democratic-led states and advocacy groups will not turn to the courts to challenge Trump’s immigration policies, as they did repeatedly during his first term, hampering his efforts to institute a travel ban, restrict asylum and force migrants to wait in Mexico while their cases were considered in the U.S. “I wouldn’t be surprised if litigation ends up being a smaller part of immigration advocacy in this administration,” Cabot said. “They’ve been signaling pretty strongly on these issues.” Paxton’s office did not respond to a request for comment. States could now have a harder time showing they have standing to sue in some cases after Texas’ unsuccessful bid to block Biden’s immigration enforcement priorities. When the Democrat took office, he limited U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation targets to just those seen as threats to national security, public safety or border security. Texas and Louisiana sued, arguing in part that the narrower scope would drive up their costs for law enforcement, education and health care, because the federal government was not deporting more immigrants.

AUSTIN (AP) — Texas’ education board voted Friday to allow Bible-infused teachings in elementary schools, joining other Republican-led states that pushed this year to give religion a larger presence in public classrooms.

The curriculum adopted by the Texas State Board of Education, which is controlled by elected Republicans, is optional for schools to adopt, but they will receive additional funding if they do so. The materials could appear in classroom as early as next school year.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has voiced support for the lesson plans, which were provided by the state’s education agency that oversees the more than 5 million students in Texas public schools.

Parents and teachers who opposed the curriculum said the lessons will alienate students of other faith backgrounds.

Supporters argued the Bible is a core feature of American history and that teaching it will enrich students’ learning.

The new Texas curriculum follows Republican-led efforts in neighboring states to give religion more of a presence in public schools. In Oklahoma, the state’s education chief has ordered a copy of the Bible in every classroom, while Louisiana wants to make all of the state’s public school classrooms post the Ten Commandments beginning next year.

With the new curriculum, Texas would be the first state to introduce Bible lessons in schools in this manner, according to Matthew Patrick Shaw, an assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University.

The Texas Education Agency, which oversees public education for more than 5 million students statewide, created its own instruction materials after a law passed in 2023 by the GOP-controlled Legislature required the agency to do so. The lesson plans were publicly released this spring.

The material draws on lessons from Christianity more than any other religion in the proposed reading and language arts modules for kindergarten through fifth grade, which critics say would alienate students from different faith backgrounds and potentially violate the First Amendment.

“This curriculum is not age-appropriate or subject matter appropriate in the way that it presents these Bible stories,” said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Children who would read the material, she said, “are simply too young to tell the difference between what is a faith claim and what is a matter of fact.”

More than 100 people testified at a board meeting this week that rung with emotion from parents, teachers and advocates. Supporters of the curriculum argued that the Bible is a core feature of American history and teaching it will enrich students’ learning.

“It is said that there are close to 300 common-day phrases that actually come from the Bible,” said Mary Castle, director of government relations for Texas Values, a right-leaning advocacy group. “So students will benefit from being able to understand a lot of these references that are in literature and have a way to be able to comprehend them.”
A narrow early vote

The 15-member board consists of 11 Republicans and four Democrats. It signaled support for the materials in a 8-7 preliminary vote on Wednesday.

One of the board members is a Republican who was appointed to the board just weeks ago by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to temporarily fill a vacant seat. Days after that appointment, a Democrat who ran unopposed was elected to fill that same board seat starting next year.

Abbott has publicly supported the instruction materials.

Whether the lesson plans will be considered constitutional is up in the air if the curriculum passes, Shaw said.

“The question is how is Texas going to frame what is done here to avoid the establishment question or tackle it head-on,” he said.
Bringing religion into schools

Texas’ plans to implement Biblical teachings in public school lesson plans is the latest effort by Republican-controlled states to bring religion into the classroom.

In Louisiana, a law to place the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms was blocked by a federal judge earlier this month. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the bill into law in June, prompting a group of Louisiana public school parents of different faiths to sue.

In Oklahoma, the state’s top education official has tried to incorporate the Bible into lesson plans for children in fifth through 12th grades. A group of teachers and parents recently filed a lawsuit to stop the Republican state superintendent’s plan and his efforts to spend $3 million to purchase Bibles for public schools.

AUSTIN (AP) – Two decades ago, state Rep. Tom Craddick could ask a room of his West Texas constituents what illness they feared the most and the answer, unfailingly, was always cancer.

A few weeks ago, about the time Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick contacted him about a new blockbuster medical research fund idea, Craddick asked a group of his constituents the question again and no one mentioned cancer.

“It was unanimous in the room,” Craddick said. “Alzheimer’s and dementia.”

Craddick, R-Midland, told that story to a room full of rapt researchers gathered at the University of Texas at Austin this week, a day after Patrick made a stunning announcement that he wants lawmakers to approve a dementia research fund modeled after Texas’ successful $6 billion Cancer Prevention and Research Institute, known as CPRIT.

A Texas-funded dementia research fund in the mold of its now successful 15-year-old cancer fund has the potential to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into a field still looking for better ways to slow symptoms as well as a cure. Since CPRIT began in 2007, it has become the country’s second largest funder of cancer research, and if as successful, the dementia counterpart could have global impacts on how to prevent and care for individuals with the disease.

“Like CPRIT, this investment will draw leading researchers and companies to Texas and require them to be based in Texas, leading to their further investment in our state,” Patrick said in a Monday statement.

Patrick added that Craddick along with Senate Finance Committee Chair Joan Huffman, R-Houston, will be working with him to get a bill through the Texas Legislature this year and then present the proposal before voters.

“I don’t think there’s a family in Texas who hasn’t been personally touched by these diseases or doesn’t have a close friend,” Huffman said, noting that roughly 30% of those on Medicaid in Texas who are in nursing homes have dementia-related issues and dementia patients are more likely readmitted to hospitals. “We’re paying a lot on the back end for these diseases.”

Few details have surfaced since Patrick announced he was making a Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas a priority this session, which begins Jan. 14. It’s not clear how much money such a fund would have or how it would be funded, either through bonds as CPRIT was, or whether the state’s enviable Economic Stabilization Fund, also known more commonly as its rainy day fund, would be tapped to get it started. Calls to Patrick’s office for more details were not immediately returned to The Texas Tribune.

But Craddick’s anecdote underscored what Patrick and other lawmakers are finding out in their own districts. Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are a real concern because of its devastating toll and cost.

Patrick’s campaign for dementia research

Patrick’s announcement picks up from 2023, when a similar bill failed. That year state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, together with Craddick and others authored House Bill 15, which would have created a Mental Health and Brain Institute of Texas that would have received $300 million in state grants each year. The House passed the measure but it died in the Senate.

“I think it was too broad,” Craddick said of the 2023 attempt.

Then a few months ago, Patrick began reaching out to Huffman and Craddick about making a fund based on the CPRIT model.

“We sort of had some ideas kind of floating around for several sessions,” Huffman told the Tribune, adding that Patrick had been interested in dementia research for some time. “He wanted to make that one of his priorities.”

By highlighting the proposal this early, Craddick, the former Texas House speaker, doesn’t anticipate any roadblocks.

“I think the chances are excellent,” he said of the proposal’s probability of passing. It already has the support, he said, of House Speaker Dade Phelan.

What is the CPRIT model

Texas voters approved the creation of CPRIT in 2007, financing $3 billion for it through the issue of bonds.

Voters approved another $3 billion for it five years ago, even after it came under scrutiny in 2012 for awarding $56 million in grants to research that wasn’t properly vetted. CPRIT’s director resigned and after a change in leadership, CPRIT has continued to thrive as a medical research engine, awarding more than $3.7 billion in grants so far.

It is now the largest cancer research investment effort, second to the federal government. It has helped recruit 324 researchers to Texas and assisted in either the establishment, expansion or relocation of 74 companies to the state.

“The legislative decision to create this agency via constitutional amendment, and the overwhelming support of the people of Texas, provides CPRIT with the long-term stability needed to take on a task as big as conquering cancer,” said CPRIT CEO Kristen Doyle this week, recognizing the organization’s 15th anniversary.

Growing Alzheimer risk in Texas

Alzheimer’s, a degenerative brain disease, is the most common form of dementia, accounting for about 80% of cases, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Alzheimer’s symptoms — memory loss and the inability to perform simple tasks — tend to develop in the mid-to-late 60s and occur when clumps of abnormal proteins block the communication of brain cells. Symptoms can be mild at first and worsen over time.

Of the nearly 7 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s, nearly two-thirds are women, and dementia care costs Americans more than $300 billion a year.

While a 2023 study shows that the eastern and southeastern United States have the highest prevalence of Alzheimer’s, Texas is one of three states that has the highest estimated number of older residents who are at risk of Alzheimer’s. The Texas Department of State Health Services reports that 459,000 Texans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, about 12% of the state’s population over the age of 65.

In Texas, the Rio Grande Valley, where residents are almost as twice as likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, has become a dementia research center.

Paying for a “bold vision”

News of a fund for dementia being made possible next year has been praised by health advocates.

Andy Keller, president and CEO of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, called it a “bold vision” for treating and ultimately curing dementia and related neurological disorders.

“Upon passage, the state that put a man on the moon and is leading the charge against cancer will hold the incredible potential to prevent, treat, and cure the neurological diseases that affect so many Texans,” Keller said.

The Alzheimer’s Association, which advocates for more research, also voiced their support of Patrick’s efforts.

“Our shared goal is to enhance the quality of life for those currently affected by Alzheimer’s while working toward a future with better treatment options and, ultimately, a cure,” said Melissa Sanchez, Texas senior director of public policy for the association.

At the University of Texas Systemwide Brain Research Summit on Tuesday, Dr. John Zerwas, the vice chancellor for health affairs for the UT System, interviewed Huffman, Craddick and neurosurgeon and state Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, about Patrick’s proposal, hitting on how research efforts like CPRIT have helped make Texas a better magnet for bioscience research. This has happened even while the state falls near the bottom in the amount of per-capita funding it receives for research from the National Institutes of Health.

“Because Texas is an exceptionally large state, well populated, we rank only 30th across the nation,” said Zerwas, a former state lawmaker.

Huffman replied that lawmakers are always looking for a way to draw down more federal dollars and if spending more state funds brings more federal cash to Texas, that’s an opportunity worth considering.

“They always say Texas is a donor state, which means we, you know, we pay more federal income tax than what we get from the federal government,” Huffman said. “That’s just the truth. And so when we see opportunities to make good investments that are sound investments that support Texas’s values and our goals, then we take that opportunity.”

As for how it will be funded, none of the three lawmakers committed to one method.

“There’s more than one way to do it,” Bonnen said. “Almost anything is going to move the ball forward.”